An Alibi for All Seasons - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
An Alibi for All Seasons
by

The problem with government that thinks it’s running Disney World.

People seeking medical attention from the VA face long wait times but, then, so do people waiting to ride on the cup and saucer at Disney World. It isn’t the time spent waiting that is the important thing; it is the experience.

So said the head of the VA. Something like that anyway.

He was criticized and mocked for making the comparison but one imagines that there are plenty of people inside the government who are thinking that he got it exactly right and “why didn’t I think of that?”

Long lines at the airport, harassed travelers waiting on TSA “agents” to pat them down and go through their stuff? Just tell them they’d have to wait at Disney World, too.

Takes half an hour of standing in line to sign for a registered letter?

Just like at the Magic Kingdom.

Brilliant, why didn’t someone think of this sooner?

Of course, the comparison is both absurd and insensitive. People go to Disney World out of choice and they can choose not to endure the waiting in lines. Those who are seeking medical attention through the VA don’t have a lot of what we like to call “options.” It is interesting to consider the fact that a number of them are no doubt draftees from the Vietnam War era. Those men truly had no options. They were called up, trained, and shipped out. Now, years later, when they need assistance from the government that conscripted them into service under penalty of prison, what they get is … “sorry about the delay but, hey, it’s just as bad at Disney World.”

So hang in there with that prostate cancer.

The government has grown so big, so arrogant, and so insensitive that it doesn’t even bother to apologize or hide from its own incompetence. When the long airport lines started making news, the head of Department of Homeland Security told travelers, essentially, to suck it up. Get to the airport early. It is not an existential crisis. And, oh, by the way, we need more money.

Things have reached a point, it seems, where the government doesn’t do anything well, doesn’t apologize, and nobody expects anything much different. Meanwhile, the people who are supposed to be overseeing the bread and butter, pick and shovel operations of the government can’t be bothered. They are concerned with larger things. With getting the United States over on the “right side of history.” And taming the climate.

Perhaps the most interesting manifestation of this sort of arrogance and cluelessness can be found in Washington, D.C. where the Metro is a failing rattletrap method of public transportation that generally gets riders to their destinations late and fuming at the delays, the crowding, and the filth. Many, no doubt, console themselves by thinking, “Well, at least I arrived alive.” This is not always a certainty with the Metro which, investigations recently revealed, actually sent trains into tunnels that were known to be on fire. With fatal results.

Meanwhile, prominent members of the political class, like Senator Elizabeth Warren, want us all to rise up in anger against… Uber. Too unregulated and no unions, don’t you see. Can’t have free exchange of goods and services, mutually arrived at. Where might that lead?

Down into the death tunnels of the Metro, probably. Which is okay since it is mass transport run by government and funded by taxes which, strangely, never seem to raise quite enough to make the trains run on time. Or, in some cases, run at all.

But, then, who among us expects such a thing. Anyway, people wait in line at the Magic Kingdom, too, you know.

But only if they choose to.


Ian D. Keating / Foter / Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

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