Bureaucracy is evil. Sometimes by design but usually by incompetence and pettiness. Take for example, the case of the Marine who has served two tours of duty in Iraq and is being told he’ll have to pay the higher out of state tuition fees for his college education becuase he isn’t a resident of his home state.
If you live in the United States for any length of time, you’ll discover many illogical and maddeningly stupid inconveniences foisted upon citizens and visitors alike. Why do we tolerate them? The stupidity and arrogance of government can affect all of us in negative ways, from minor inconveniences to events that ruin lives. I experienced a minor inconvenience yesterday. Apparentely, it’s important to the U.S. Army that my driver’s license not expire while I’m in Iraq. The logic behind this escapes me. If my license expires will I suddenly become a crappy driver? Anyhow, I’m forced to stop my normal activities and go get my license renewed. This is inconvenient because I live in Georgia and work in Tennessee. That means I have to go back to Georgia and cut a half day out of my planned work activities.
Once I arrive at the driver’s license bureau, I’m please to discover that there isn’t much of a waiting period, but irritated because I have to pay $20 for the privilege of being forced to renew my driver’s license early in order to go to Iraq where my license is not only unnecessary but useless. Are the Iraqi traffic police going to issue me speeding tickets or something? Of course not! The purpose of renewing my driver’s license is merely to further the cause of faceless, nameless bureaucrats who I’ll never meet, but who have managed to inconvenience me anyhow.
Ah, the sweet taste of freedom! I’m free to be fingerprinted by my state. I’m free to pay a $20 fee in the furtherance of ensuring I’ll be certified by the State of Georgia to drive well while in Iraq. Sometimes, I wonder why I bother. I guess it’s because the alternative is to lay down and die, having given up. I can’t do that. It’s not in my nature.
I’m going to beat the bureaucrats or die trying.