You haven't heard of disfunction and polarisation in all branches of govt?
Yeah, but what I wondered was
why that would make Capra movies harder to enjoy than in decades past.
I think dysfunction has ALWAYS been lurking in all branches of government, and also in 'the private sector', and personal and family relationships, and on and on. The polarization... well, that's been there too (skim the book 'Nixonland' for a depressing historical reminder;
nobody ends up looking very good), but lately it IS more extreme in the halls of Congress, and that leads to a lot of the dysfunction-- as in, "We'll hold up the passage of any bills and approval of any nominees to the Federal bench, and even shut down the government, unless we get
exactly what we want-- and what we want is for the other side to quit and let us take over, even though
they were the ones elected." I'm not gonna say which side is the 'we' and which side is the 'they', because that should be obvious enough.
What sets me off is the almost casual proclamation, in some circles (mostly, but not all, right-wing), that "the government [meaning State, Federal, or both] is just a complete disaster". Or, "What good does government really do for anybody?" These are not just straw-man imaginings on my part. I have seen those very assertions in message boards on this site and elsewhere. And to me they represent sheer mental laziness.
Anyone can toss off a line like "What good did (x) ever do for me, my town, my family?" if they never make the slightest effort to look into what different parts of 'the bureaucracy' actually DO.
Most of those parts do function pretty well from day to day; if they didn't, the U.S. would be in a state of nationwide chaos right now, and, despite the hyperbolic hysteria of some online pundits, we are
not. If I had a research staff, I'd comb the media for specific examples of Republicans introducing bills-- or slipping amendments in-- to slash the budgets of particular agencies (federal, state, or local) and then, some time after the slashing was done,
making a big deal of how ineffective those agencies are. Talk about deliberately creating a self-fulfilling prophecy!
Having said all that... I suspect what you meant by 'not being able to enjoy Capra movies anymore' was, you can no longer muster the feeling of (hard-won) optimism that he wanted us to have at the finale of this movie, or "Mr Smith", etc. And I can understand that. But what struck me last night when seeing some of "Mr Smith" was the world-weary and cynical view of Congress that
Capra seemed to have. It's almost as if he were saying, "America, I'm going to show you much more of the behind-the-scenes ugliness of your elected leaders-- their venality, self-aggrandizement, and jaded outlook-- than you've ever seen in other movies. But I'll redeem it all with a happy ending, to make sure that you
and I don't walk out of the theatre feeling overly depressed and pessimistic. That's the deal we're going to make." Certainly some things have devolved since the '30s and '40s, but look how bad they were
even then, as Capra depicted them!
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