Stop Worrying! Your Government is on the Job!
Reassuring reassurance in a time of anxious anxiety.
 
On a recent morning during one of my lucid periods, I arose and tiptoed downstairs to retrieve the newspaper. As always, I first leaned carefully out of the doorway, peeked cautiously left and right, and finding no more than the usual hobgoblins and chimaerae on the front lawn, hurriedly snatched up the daily account of internecine war, murderous endeavor and hideous new bacilli thought to be lurking in the oatmeal.
 
The deepening gloom and tachycardia occasioned by that day's journal was capped by a petrifying report on the Doings of Government, which because I have impaired judgment I began to read. But apparently I am not made of the stern stuff required for such a task, for halfway through the article I put down the paper, carefully folded and pocketed my reading glasses, and then bolted three steps at a time up to my bedroom, where I slammed and locked the door and then, on a whim, secured the entrance with several stout lengths of timber and a handful of tenpenny nails.
 
I then scooted under the bed, where I intended to remain until the trembling subsided--which I thought might be around 4 PM if there were no loud noises.
 
Government is of course a fearsome thing, and one not suited to deep reflection by those of a nervous nature. There is in the contemplation of government something that fosters stillness in the soul, a quality of watchfulness similar, I imagine, to that of a gopher surrounded by rottweilers.
 
Government belongs to that class of human endeavor that inevitably metamorphoses into something quite opposite its original intent. The Doctors Frankenstein and Jekyll have much to say about this.
 
And yet it must be said also that government will sometimes bring to our lives a piquant quality that lifts us above the ordinary. What, for example, could be more stimulating than to know that somewhere in our green and fertile union someone no smarter than you is making decisions that might at any moment result in your conversion to a cloud of molecules wafting serenely over the land?
 
Government enriches us by replacing our prosaic old fears--waxy yellow buildup, unpleasant wetness, Anna Nicole Smith--with new and challenging concerns with war, disease, hunger and molecular conversion...the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse practically on our doorstep! Exciting? Well, I guess!
 
And so I say, let's put an end to all the irresolute whining. Let us instead take up resolute whining. Embrace your fear! Take delight in your dread! The next time you see your letter carrier or other uniformed government representative, flip him or her a proud thumbs-up and say, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself...and that's enough for me!"
 
And keep reading those newspapers!
 
 
Hank