Nothing New Under The Sun

I keep coming back to @gtconway3d’s point about Trump’s failure to grasp that a chief executive is a fiduciary—obligated to put the interests of his constituents above his own. Cuomo failed in the same way: https://t.co/3oJ4Ad0ViW https://t.co/tSYlfN8hXH

— Yoni Appelbaum (@YAppelbaum) August 13, 2021

I would like to be appalled by this (and I'm not sorry such selfishness caught up with Trump and Cuomo), but how many people call local government offices (schools, etc.) and demand something be done the way they want it done because "I pay your salary!" or "My taxes pay for you!", or something similar.

I know of a public meeting recently where, during a break, an audience member walked up to the dias the elected members has just vacated for a brief respite, and helped himself to the candy an employee (not an elected official) had placed there.  "My tax dollars paid for that!," he said, as an excuse.  Of course they didn't, except very indirectly.  The candy was purchased by the employee, for the benefit of the officials at the meeting.  But that sense of entitlement, of government owing me something rather than being a fiduciary for all of us (the ideal of our democratic institutions) is as widespread (and false) as the idea that you can't shout "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.*

It becomes a distinct problem when it is the attitude of the elected officials.  We have to insist on the fiduciary nature of public office, or just like the rule of law (which we must also insist on), we lose it.  It all comes back to we, the people; and what we do, and often more importantly, what we don't do.  The ancient Greeks had a concept of the world arising into order out of chaos.  Consequently, the struggle for order was always waged against the background preference for chaos.   The more our diligence to maintain order relents, the more the chaos gains.  But we can't relent, because the chaos never loses and disappears.  Only order, or the rule of law, loses; and can disappear.

Aye, there's the rub.**

*yes, you can.  That familiar trope was dicta, and was explicitly overruled a few decades later, but long, long ago, now.

**Which is no, not at all a Judaeo-Christian view of the cosmos.  But that's an entirely different conversation.