LAMENTING OVER GOVERNMENT FAILURE.

A Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel writer called Lori Nickel notices what happens when government fails.  She starts with a passage that suggests her readers are too comfortable.

Who gives a damn about sports right now in the wake of the Waukesha Christmas parade tragedy?

I don’t care about Wisconsin’s big win and Green Bay’s close loss and I'd like to know who out there still thinks the Milwaukee Bucks unified our bitterly divided city and surrounding suburbs with their championship.

When a person is mowing down our children and grandmothers at a Christmas parade, I want the whole world to stop and take stock of what is happening.

What is happening is that people have to think about things they ordinarily wouldn't have to think about.

Wisconsin, what are we doing? The rest of the world thinks Wisconsin is a dumpster fire, and after everyone has weighed in on Aaron Rodgers’ admission to refusing the COVID vaccine, and the Rittenhouse acquittal Friday, it is traumatic just to endure another gut-wrenching news cycle. Worse still, the toxic, ignorant inhumanity in the debates says a lot about us as a society.

It was, as she notes, a long time in coming.  In a division of labor society, we trust others to do their part, and it's when they stop doing their part that we notice.

So no, I don’t care about sports today. And probably won’t care ever again. Some things should just demand more of our time, energy and attention. We are not taking care of each other. We are not looking out. We are not doing the work that it takes to make this world better. We are not helping by watching games.

I am deeply ashamed that I know more about special-teams snafus and proper tackling and blocking than I know the names of the elected people who govern our towns and decide our laws. That changes. Today. And so will a lot more. I'm done with the sports-obsessed culture. I do hope this is not virtue signaling; it's the smallest attempt to reprioritize and live by renewed values. I was not paying close enough attention to the things that matter.

Until she turns her attention to the policy failures, she's going to have to go to more blood drives and write more checks. "But deconstruction is human action, and human action can deconstruct the deconstruction."  That, dear reader, is the impasse where she finds herself.