Worried

I had an interaction on social media the other day, and there was a rather minor bit that's actually troubling me the more I think about it.

I've written a lot about group think, team building, the importance of eliciting feedback and opinions and so on and so forth... 

But there has definitely been a trend in politics, on both sides of the political aisle, where they value loyalty more than anything else. 

More than competence. 

And it generally veers into valuing 'yes-men' (and women) who never trouble you with things you don't want to hear. After all, it's all too easy to paint that as a lack of loyalty.

I get why it's happened. I get how frustrating it must be, for staff members who disagree with a decision to go leaking to the press. To feeling like they're airing your dirty laundry, and/or trying to do a run around to get a decision changed.

But it def contributes to a culture where nobody can is in a position to 'speak truth to power', as the much desired cliche says.

And it contributes to the poor decision making we've seen, over and over again, among those who supposedly ought to know better. 

But I didn't start this to write about the importance of having a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people."

I think far too many of those powers that be don't really believe that, or don't realize what it takes to make that happen. (Side note - we were seriously lucky, as a nation, to have George Washington as our first president, who se the unofficial policy of only serving two terms. It set a great precedent on how to transfer power. Something that, as just one example, the Russian Provisional Government utterly failed to do after Tsar Nicholas II abdicated.)

Anyways. I generally call myself an independent, and have criticized pretty much every president when they were in power. Not much point in doing so when they're not, after all. I tend to focus most of that on the current party (I think. Not like I've done an analysis of my posts to confirm that), so Democrats when there's a Democratic president and Republicans when it's Republican.

But during this interaction, it seemed clear someone seemed to think even criticizing the current president was bad. 

I'm sure there were people who felt that way before (for example, that nobody should criticize President Bush. I'd say the same for President Obama, except that this is another case where the hypocrisy tends to show - people who feel this way tend to be conservative, and generally aren't upset about it when the President is a Democrat. And with Obama, some even go so far as to buy into that birther crap so they can even argue that he's somehow not legitimate, and criticizing him is okay), so maybe it's just that I've expanded my network.

Still, that tendency to see any criticism as somehow unpatriotic, or un-American, or whatever their claim, is deeply disturbing. After all, grouching about our political leadership is a time-honored American tradition, and it's my right to speak out as much as I want to.

Its yet another disturbing example of how some 'patriots' are throwing out everything that makes us great, are undermining our freedoms... And don't even seem to care, so long as it empowers someone they agree with.