The cupcake wars
by digby
George Will:
Contempt for government cannot be hermetically sealed; it seeps into everything. Which is why cupcake regulations have foreign policy consequences.
Yes, he said that.
His point is that people mistrust government because of silly regulations and therefore they mistrust it to make foreign policy decisions too. And from my perspective, if that's what it takes to mistrust the government's foreign policy then so be it. They should mistrust the government's foreign policy and question the hell out of it.
To be fair, Will takes the right and the left to task for this by pointing out the bloodthirsty border politics of the right wing as an example of government overreach although he then throws a little red meat to the wingers by implying that Joe Biden and Harry Reid are the leaders of a nanny state movement emanating from Washington when the militarization of police he decries throughout the piece is energetically backed by the right wing warhawks and law and order Republicans. And he also fails to address the fact that Republicans are acting batshit crazy which almost certainly has an effect on the public's faith in government. Watching these clowns on TV doesn't exactly inspire a lot of confidence. (But then George Will appears on FOX news every day so he's an accomplice to the crime.)
The funny thing is that the silliest of these "nanny state" laws Will holds responsible for the mistrust in government come from the vaunted local governments so revered by conservatives as the most legitimate form of democratic representation. It turns out they can be very petty bureaucrats too. How odd. Why one might just think that it's not really a problem with government, big or small, but with flawed human beings, an insoluble problem that can only be mitigated by education and social/cultural influence, a much harder task and one that's ongoing. Devolving to the local governments will hardly make things better. It's likely to make it much worse for a whole lot of people. Think Salem and witches.