the government is not here to be your friend. the government is not here to be your enemy. the government is here to ensure there is a tomorrow.
Well, you see, you got a bunch of Neanderthals saying it should be run like a business, and businesses piss literally everyone off to a high degree, so here we are.
We had millions of tomorrows before governments even existed.
Governments are here to more strictly enforce social contracts. They do this with varying levels of consent, but that is nevertheless what they do.
Hardly. They’re there to enforce the will of politicians, who are funded and influenced by the owning class (regardless of who voted for them once every four years).
the government is not here to be your enemy.
“The government” as an abstract entity might not mean to be anyone’s “enemy,” but the one currently running the show absolutely views its own people as such.
I never set out to be anyone’s enemy. I want a peaceful life, like most people do. Yet, by doing no more than the radical act of “existing,” the current United States government has hand-picked me and others like me to be their enemies. Anyone who’s LGBTQ, female, non-white, foreign-born, science-minded, and/or financially poor is liable to be scapegoated (at best) or outright targetted by those currently in charge.
Make no mistake - “the government” might not be here to be anyone’s enemy, but this government definitely is.
There’s reason to be cynical but not outright nihilistic. Also, most of that is due to corporations and lobbyists in the US.
No, that’s also the case in most countries. Corporations and their political influence aren’t a US-only phenomenon - they legally own almost all major media outlets around the world, along with holding influential positions in each economy which can pressure their governments into compliance. If a government doesn’t earn the general support of the owning class, it doesn’t have a realistic chance of remaining in government, either by corporations funding and endorsing alternative parties in elections, or through boss strikes to sabotage the national economy if a government they don’t like does somehow get elected (e.g. Allende in Chile). A modern government cannot survive without either the support of major corporations trying to exploit their workers, unless they empower the workers to overpower the corporations and survive off their strength instead (which, in practice, contradicts capitalism).
Capitalism doesn’t exist without forming those corporations, so governments tending to billionaires isn’t some weird quirk, or some US phenomenon, it’s a systematic trait of capitalism which happens every time.
