I hate failing. The sense of doomed futility I have when I interact with the broken bits of the American bureaucracy weighs on me. Every time a crucial piece of the business of government fails I feel helpless. Like I am a loser.
I feel deeply that the machine has ground out some remaining spark of hope in me.
“It’s the hope that kills you”
Phrase Ted Lasso ain’t too crazy about
I spent some time today feel like it was the hope thar kills me. I felt it deeply.
But I couldn’t wallow in it. Being made victim to a system is awful but I am not a victim.
Some time passed and I reminded myself that while I can accept finite disappointment, I can never accept losing the grace of an infinite capacity for hope.
“I think it’s the lack of hope that comes and gets you. … See, I believe in hope. I believe in belief.”
Ted Lasso
I’ve written a lot about how broken the process of coming to America especially when you try to do so legally and transparently. It’s a challenge to get even basic travel documents like tourist visas.
I see cases on socially media daily of award winners, brilliant engineers, academics, and simple good faith aspirants who wish to spend time with the American dream and are denied.
I have hope that we can recognize that tourists, students, entrepreneurs and others that genuinely wish to contribute to our nation deserve an efficient transparent system that lets people come to America.
It should be unacceptable that these systems are unaccountable and impossible to navigate. It shouldn’t feel like we are living within a Kafka novel when getting a visa. This is America not the Soviet eastern block.
I believe that the network state is coming for badly run governments. But it cannot come soon enough. It may sound dramatic but consider that venal, impossible to navigate and expensive government serves none of us and harms the markets, businesses and people. It’s an embarrassment to our national character.
The longer we tolerate these state of affairs the closer we edge to anarcho-tyranny. When the government and help you but it can hurt you. We should be ashamed as Americans that we let this monstrous machine do us so much harm.