Comments Elsewhere

“In the middle of the last decade, political scientist Marc Hetherington wrote about the declining public trust in government. . . . And such [media] portrayals contribute to a remarkable problem: not ideological hostility to government . . . but diminished expectations—in the public and in the press—about what government can accomplish. . .” – Greg Marx, “How the Press Erodes Our Belief [sic] in Government” in THE NATION (April 9, 2012) http://www.thenation.com/article/166968/how-press-erodes-our-belief-government . . . The same government that accomplished the killing of over 180,000 people in Iraq, in the pursuit of a transparent lie and an ever-shifting set of flimsy rationalizations? http://reason.com/blog/2013/03/15/iraq-war-latest-cost-estimate-likely-6-t . . . The same government that accomplished the ongoing, decade-long state of perpetual siege in Baghdad? http://www.npr.org/2013/03/19/174708589/1-decade-since-the-war-where-iraq-stands-now . . . The same government that accomplished the displacement of 3,000,000 war refugees? http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/ There is nothing that should turn you against government as much as simply watching what it can accomplish when it is let loose.