What Hope Looks Like

I happened to spend a few minutes watching the legislature of the Great State of South Carolina on television today.  As I sat there, eating my granola, they passed a few laws.  I think they were actually amendments to other laws, but close enough for right now.  What they passed seemed to be largely in the minutia.  Actually, in reality what they passed seemed to be unintelligible gibberish.

My granola finished, I went back to my day.   I was apparently not done thinking about that gibberish.  What did it mean?  Someone spent a lot of time - a lot of intention - making that gibberish say exactly what they needed it to say and then getting it passed.  Why?  What was their intention?  Were they looking out, either directly or more probably indirectly for themselves?  Was it their intention to act exclusively in the best interest of the people affected by the gibberish?

I have to hold in my thoughts that even though legislation and policy has created such wide-spread have-and-have-not access to resources, the only path that leads to a conclusion in which they shouldn't all be thrown in jail is the path that starts with them having the best interest of the governed in mind.

If I can't hold that - and I fear I may not be able to hold that much longer - the backup thought is that the institutionalized inequity was premeditated.  That convincing people all across America to abandon critical thought and to vote, believe and even act contrary to their own best interest was not some unintended side effect.  It wasn't some bonus.  It was intentional.  Now, thirty years later, those very Americans who long ago set aside their critical thinking skills have come to occupy the very seats in the very halls which were supposed to be occupied those who had created this whole ruse.  Talk about an unintended consequence. That would mean that the joke is so big, and so present, that nobody knows its a joke anymore.

So, you see, I have to have hope that our government is one, gigantic unintended consequence.  Otherwise, it is theft by lawmaking and I'm just not ready to hold that.