News from Florida where governor Rick Scott is Aynrandizing everything, as I wrote earlier:
Next month the Broward County Police Benevolent Association is holding a "Party to Leave the Party" -- an event coordinated with the Supervisor of Elections where police officers and the general public can switch their voter registrations from Republican to Democratic or Independent.
The reason for the switch? The association, which serves as the bargaining union for the county's law enforcement officers, is unhappy with the leadership of Governor Rick Scott and the results of the past legislative session, including changes to the Florida Retirement System that will require the workers to pay more of their own wages into retirement savings.
The PBA may be a union, but it's not traditionally a bunch of liberals. "You'd be surprised," says Broward PBA President Patrick Hanrihan. "I think most of our police officers and stuff are Republicans." Well, until the party-switching party, that is.
"We've been supporting Republican governors for the past 20 years," Hanrihan continued.
But this one's antics may be too much for the traditionally red-voting, gun-wielding, meat-eating, hippie-busting (OK, we'll stop) cops to stomach.
Hilarious, really. It's all good to vote against big government until you realize that cutting the government means they cut your skin. They were supposed to stop with the teachers and the nurses, dammit!
Well, that's my interpretation. But all this comes partly from the American myth of seeing the government as Someone Else, as an enemy, most of the time. Not as a group in the society consisting of various kinds of people with various kinds of power, some bad, some good, some indifferent. This particular way of thinking about a democratically elected government really is a particularly American myth. Like Apple Pie and Mom-Required-To-Be-Virgin-Mary-Without-Pay.