The Grand Illusion
Let me say from the onset that I am not the biggest fan or supporter of Barack Obama, and I certainly think he’s made more than his share of mistakes, both in leadership and in the tactics he’s used or failed to use in attempting to set and carry out his policies. That said, I am absolutely and totally appalled by the continuing furor over whether he is a U.S. citizen and the fact that he felt compelled to use his own discretionary funds to send an attorney to Hawaii to obtain an official birth certificate from the state government there.
Copies of his birth certification have been available online for years. There are newspaper stories in the original Honolulu papers from fifty years ago announcing his birth in Hawaii. Come on… those couldn’t have been planted fifty years ago. Who back then even knew that the son of an 18 year old Kansas girl and a black Kenyan graduate student would be president of the United States?
Now, I realize that such rational arguments will not suffice against the blind fanaticism of the most rabid “birther” types, because nothing penetrates fanaticism, whether that fanaticism is of the far right or the far left, or of Islamic fundamentalists or of hard-core IRA members or of the extreme Northern Ireland protestants.
But why do the rest of us buy into this “debate”? Why do the supposedly “reputable” members of the press keep fanning the issue to keep it alive? Why do theoretically intelligent politicians and candidates harp on it? Because there’s nothing too low and base they won’t do to garner votes from the most ignorant and prejudiced of Americans? And why is it even being discussed when the United States is involved in two or more wars, when the financial and economic future of the United States is on the line, and when the Congress will have to decide the future of what our government will be like in what it funds and what it does not, and who gets taxed how much and who doesn’t?
Is it because no one wants to face the hard issues, including the issue of global warming, which was certainly a factor in the formation of the terrible tornadoes that just devastated Alabama? Is it because all too many Americans don’t understand much of anything beyond their daily focus… or that they just don’t care? Because the press is incompetent in conveying what is at stake? Or because most Americans don’t want to know that they can’t keep having all the programs that now exist without raising taxes and that they and their elected representatives must choose between fewer and less comprehensive programs and comparatively lower taxation [but likely some more taxes] and continuing all current programs with much higher taxes, particularly on the middle class [since, as I’ve pointed out time and time again, taxing just the richest of the rich won’t raise the necessary revenue]?
Both the Republicans and the Democrats are effectively avoiding dealing with these issues and threatening, implicitly, if not explicitly, to shut down government and to destroy the credit-worthiness of the United States rather than back down – and the lead item in the news is that the president has been forced by media and popular pressure to provide – once again – an “official” copy of his birth certificate? And now some of Obama’s black supporters are outraged that he did provide the certificate, while our “bread and circus” media hypes the whole situation.
If we aren’t the laughing stock of the world over this “birther” nonsense… we deserve to be.
As much as I hate quoting a certain work. People are stupid, they will believe anything either out of fear or desire.
Aside from your very valid point of folks not wanting to face the big issues, people somehow feel more comfortable with the wierdest things. Someone on The Escapist actually covered it very well a few months back. People are some how more comfortable believing in some evil conspiracy controlling things than that things just happened. For some reason it’s easier to believe there’s an evil plot to put a foreign person in the white house than it is for some people to accept a person they didn’t like. It was easier to believe a Vice President somehow sat on an evil cabal controlling both sides of the war than believe that we elected someone who just wasn’t all that competant.
We live in a society where someone predicted that the end of the world would occur in 1994. And it didn’t. And now that same individual claims the world is going to end come May 21st, and people believe him…
I tend to think that the Tenth Amendment effectively disqualifies (or would justify impeachment and removal, if the Congress were not both highly political and nearly gutless) all who would practice policies that assign to the _federal_ government functions beyond those listed or obviously following those listed in the Constitution – that the point of the Constitution was something that would reduce the impotence and inability to manage interstate disagreements under the Articles of Confederation that preceded it, while still preserving most of the sovereignty of the states, keeping the vast bulk of political power as close as possible to the people.
I think that regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court agrees, because I think that while the Court may be the final arbiter of subtle or contradictory meanings, the Constitution should otherwise be read to mean what it says according to the language and records of debate of the time in which it or its amendments were written.
When it comes to someone that I perceive as far to the left…I’m inclined to give them less benefit of the doubt than I would someone that was center to conservative or libertarian. I would very nearly _prefer_ to believe anything consistent with facts that aligns other reasons for regarding them as illegitimate along with what I consider to be their illegitimate policies, at least unless they significantly reversed their policy pattern, and not just to be seen to be moving to the center before a general election.
But I was never _stupid_ enough to believe this birther foolishness, nor do I care one way or the other where someone’s ancestors came from or what they looked like. And I half suspected that this issue was tolerated until now because it allowed a small vocal portion of critics to be used to justify portraying even more policy oriented critics also as bigots or fools.
Are there people who are less careful – who aren’t concerned with facts, consistency, or avoiding gratuitously provocative positions?
Obviously.
Conspiracy theories imply there is more control in the world than there really is. Simple explanations are scary because they make us realize how little control we really have. Conspiracy theories give people the ability to claim they are right, justified even, but the system was rigged against them.
Those who did not vote for Obama might have difficulty with the concept that their political beliefs and values did not rue the day, and that there wasn’t as wide a spread of support for their views as they thought. It’s easier to accept a conspiracy theory than accept that their beliefs don’t resonate with everyone else.
Similar thoughts on the Kennedy assassination. Simple explanation, all the power of the U.S. Government couldn’t stop a crazed lone gunman, which makes all of us feel powerless. Instead, saying the government being involved in the assassination to explain how it happened gives us the illusion of some form of control and logic to our world. And hey, even if ‘we’ aren’t in control and some shadow government is, at least it implies there IS control. Still more comforting to some than a simple horrible event.
The same can be said for 9/11 truthers… etcetera…
And yet sometimes, not nearly as often as many believe perhaps, but sometimes, there actually is a conspiracy. Which unfortunate truth sends the world off into further confusion as some try to attribute everything to such a cause, and others deny that men ever meet in secrecy to conspire on anything.
Another social division with two groups, both sure of their own inherent correctness, both willing to point out faults in their opponent’s logic without admitting the errors in their own, and both at least half wrong. What a world we have.
Not only are real conspiracies rare, but those whose elements could be made to sound dramatic _before_ the consequences become known are even rarer…possibly because we’re biased to see potentially threatening patterns even if they don’t exist, or because we like to blame something big enough to absolve ourselves of responsibility, or just because legal if obviously unsound financial practices, or seemingly minor exchanges of favors, are really boring until people are hurt by them or until someone makes them worse by attempting a cover-up.
And of course a secret is harder to keep the more people know it, or if it really is controversial. Someone with a delayed case of principles, or simply with a different agenda, will eventually compromise secrets whose compromise will be widely hailed as appropriate.
Incompetence, or ignoring a simple principle like how conservation laws not unlike those of physics might also apply over time to even convoluted finance, is just not as sexy as a good conspiracy theory, although preferring the dramatic means that little is learned from the failings revealed by a more factual explanation, and more posturing than effective remedies will probably follow.
Congressmen and occasionally governors often haven’t yet learned not to avoid saying something that might be caught as a lie later. But at the level of President, most will have learned to use indirection when necessary (as in military secrets or negotiations that should remain quiet while in progress) instead of outright lies, with the understanding that it will all come out eventually, and misdirection to a valid purpose will be accepted in a way that an outright lie would not be.
But what recent Presidents, particularly of the populist or left-leaning sort seem to have forgotten, is to make sure of the outcome before putting their prestige behind something, unless it’s something that only they can do, and critical enough to risk diminishing the effectiveness not just of themselves but of the office (i.e. of at least their immediate successors, too).
It’s all balance. You have to do things that are less than perfect in an imperfect world…but only what you have to, and in such a way that the backlash from leaks or history is also considered. An emergency may justify variation from the ideal…but manufacturing the perception of an emergency in pursuit of political power, or anything resembling “the end justifies the means” so as to be seen as activist, is dangerous at best…dangerous to liberty. To the contrary, the character (and competence) of the means is what justifies the end, although that may be more difficult to communicate.
I’m really tired of Presidents thinking they have to comment on everything right away. They ought to stick to saying “we’re aware of the situation, and will continue to follow it as long as the situation remains fluid”, and leave it at that. Preserve your options until you have to act, use the time to plan, and only act when the result (or the result of failing to act) is as certain as possible. Then act precisely and conclusively. Now…that’s for foreign policy, where it’s useful to have the mythos of prescient wisdom and power. For the domestic audience, it’s more effective (and safer for liberty) to be seen to involve people and to play to the center and not just to the base.
Interviews that even _might_ result in lines like “I lusted in my heart”, or “boxers or briefs” should be limited to the attention or money hungry trash paraded on Jerry Springer or similar shows, and not participated in by Presidents. It’s all well and good to look like common folk, not _proclaiming_ that you’re better than everyone else; but reasonable people still want someone with the appearance of good taste and judgement. You want to show you have a sense of humor, pick something mildly self-deprecating, and set enough in the past that you can be thought to have learned from it.
This stuff is obvious even to me, and while I’m a major info junkie I’m the last person in the world to want any sort of office – I wouldn’t want to lead two or three people, let alone a country. So it really frustrates me that a political process so eager to see people fall that it probably discourages many able but less resilient persons is unable to consistently select those who have a strong grasp of the basics. Of course, I doubt that most liberal journalists or candidates ever bothered to read anything like Sun Tzu…or if they did, thought of it as pompous, outdated, or militaristic rather than practical.
Mr. Modesitt, copies of Obama’s birth certificate were made available for the first time on 25 April 2011. If, indeed, that is what Obama released to the public on that date. What he released during his campaign for office was a Hawaiian certification of live birth (COLB), which is a document which Hawaii sometimes created for persons born abroad to parents who resided in Hawaii.
Obama SHOULD have released his birth certificate years ago, but he did not. And he continues to obstruct access to his financial aid records.
There is an obvious other motive for the planting of those birth announcements, sir. Although his parents could not have known that he would someday run for POTUS, they would have wanted him to have the rights and privileges of a US citizen. It was to secure those things that his parents would have done whatever they could do to lay an illusory paper trail.
Barack, by the way, is spelled with one “r” and not two.
Is this birth certificate genuine? I don’t know. You’d expect that at this stage any hoax would be a very good hoax, with all of the small details attended to. You would not expect to find any stupid mistakes in any forged document released by someone acting as President of the United States. If the CIA can do something, then Obama could have had it done.
But it might be the real thing. As I said, I don’t know. Maybe Obama was born in Hawaii, despite what some of his African relatives and Kenyan Ambassador Peter Ogego have said, despite the sums of money Obama spent on legal firms tasked to block lawsuits seeking to require him to divulge this very same document, and despite earlier Kenyan birth registration documents that appeared before Obama released one apparently made in Hawaii.
If Obama had released his birth certificate sooner, say instead of that inconclusive COLB, then there would have been no question of its authenticity. But now he’s had the powers of the office of US president at his disposal for two and a half years. So it isn’t a surprise that the skepticism has, although lessened, not gone away.
This is not a surprising response from you.
Number one reason a birth certificate was not released… It’s a pretty political bludgeon that can be used to discredit the GOP, as the majority of birthers are from that voting bloc and many of it’s candidates and leaders pander to it. Birtherism is pure craziness, with a dash of racism for flavoring. By not releasing the document, they can point out the absurd behavior of those who still resent the results of the last presidential election.
“Barrack” spelling corrected. Thank you.
President Obama’s certificate of live birth looks just like mine. I was born in Hawaii ten years before the President. I had to replace the original because the original was destroyed by an Act of God. It qualifies as enough proof of birth to obtain a driver’s license in Missouri. I could even qualify for a run for the US Presidency with it.
Why are we (the American people) wasting time on this issue? Use that energy for the budget fight!
As far as Mr. Obama’s parents wanting him to have the rights and privileges of a US citizen, since his mother was already a US citizen, he would have been eligible for those rights and privileges wherever he was born. No illusory paper trail needed. Which fact, speaking from experience since I lived there about that time, was well known to people in the Hawaiian Islands
Call me cynical, but every time serious things are happening in the world that actually qualify for discussion as they pertain to everybody’s future, we get this type of “news”.
1.Democracy–issues/laws/actions are broadly decided by the majority and implemented by their representatives?
or
2.Democracy–more appropriately called Magic Tricks employed by a few?
The second one seems more and more realistic as I get older.
Option one doesn’t feel like it applies to the United States… When we talk of majorities in democracy here, we are actually talking about the majority among the minority of people who actually vote. We’re led by representatives elected by a minority of citizens in the United States… This can be either good or bad depending on how you want to look at it.
Option two is sad, I’m not cynical enough yet to believe it. Give me a few more years. Or twenty minutes of Fox News…
I don’t take Fox News, or even their more provocative commentators, as reason to believe that democracy is phony. To the contrary, I find it desirable that among a sea of those that seldom challenge the assumptions of the left, and tend to appeal to either pop culture or left-of-center activists instead, there is at least one major news outlet more likely to appeal to right-of-center activists. It would be a poor democracy where all activists were only on one side of the political spectrum, or even constrained to a narrow range of bland centrism. Therefore, I find that the existence and expressions of a range of opinions to include those with which I disagree to be symptomatic of democracy still being alive, and I think that any person or group that brings a distinctive perspective while still not contributing worse than their political opposites to the coarsening of discourse, or advocating violence or radical social transformation beyond what a large supermajority would consent to, contributes positively to the preservation of democracy.
Beck, Hannity, and even O’Reilly are commentators; they will also participate in news coverage during their shows, but certainly not lead it outside of their shows.
I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with it when purported news shows, without stating a distinction between fact and opinion, blur the line between news and editorial; I don’t think violations of that principle should be censored, but I do think they should be challenged as unprofessional. Similarly, I think even as a commentator, MS-NBC’s Chris Matthews was very unprofessional when mentioning that Obama gave him a “tingle up his leg”. It would have been enough make any valid point to say that he could understand, or even identify with, a visceral appeal, without actually demonstrating that he participated in the contagiousness of visceral appeal. But I wouldn’t want to see him censored either; and in one sense I’m even glad for his statement, because it means that if he’s highly opinionated, sometimes on visceral rather than necessarily rational grounds, he’s at least not attempting to portray himself as a master of objectivity. (Olberman on the other hand seemed to be purely nuts in his later days at MS-NBC, from some of the clips and alleged tweets; I wouldn’t have demanded his absence either, but I don’t see it as taking away depth from the range of valuable discourse.) Another example: way back when Gumbel was on Today, I mostly liked him as being persistent but not too abrasive, suitable to a morning show when one really doesn’t need to start the day hearing a bunch of angry voices. That despite my perception that the opinions that he blurred with the news were not much to my liking. But he lost me when he treated one particular interviewee (Oliver North?) contemptuously. To me, the whole point of watching him was to separate the pursuit of issues from gratuitous provocation, and when that was revealed to not be there any more (if it ever had been – I didn’t watch him every day), neither did I remain among the audience.
I didn’t even know this questioning of Obama’s birthplace was going on.
Makes me think though how stupid it is that he could be a US Citizen but for the technicality of where he was born.
He’s lived the vast majority his life as a US citizen been raised there and yet none of that counts if he was born somewhere else.
That’s what the constitution says. From article II, section 1 (paragraphs not numbered in the original):
== quote ==
No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
== end quote ==
This is obviously intended to prevent those whose first allegiance is to a foreign power from attaining the office of President, just as the increasing age requirements respectively for Representative, Senator, and President, are intended to assure if not wisdom, then at least sufficient time passed for depth of experience.
I think those are reasonable precautions. So it means one can’t vote for anyone one pleases, or that in that one respect alone, those who only became citizens later in life aren’t equal to those born as citizens. I don’t have a problem with that as it stands now. Of course it _was_ a problem at the time it was written, insofar as slaves and in some states even free blacks were not considered citizens; but that condition was a compromise rather than universally accepted even at the time, and was fixed on paper if not immediately in practice by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Having said that, I think and always did think that the whole birther notion is no less stupid, irrelevant, and ad-hominem than the various conspiracy theories that blamed GWB for 9/11, or for not having properly performed his National Guard service, etc.
I merely am not prepared to assume that the foremost explanation for idiocy like birthers is racism, although it probably explains a few of them, as it probably does a few but not most of those subscribing to various other non-policy criticisms. But merely because an idea might appeal to either racists or idiots doesn’t require that those that it appeals to are both; they might be, but could also be either one to subscribe to it. And unless the idea could not appeal to anyone else _other_ than those two categories, there are probably also those whose major beefs are other but who, having enough of those, are more predisposed to pile on one more without thoroughly evaluating its reasonableness. Pandering to stupidity, or to at the very least the uncritical mixing of criticisms without regard to whether they all meet the same level of substance, is common to politics regardless of race. But except that unsubstantiated or nonspecific accusations of racism only exacerbate real tensions and problems, it doesn’t greatly bother me that those that pander to one audience may also be thought to pander to another. _Both_ major parties have at one time or another had candidates and office-holders that have spoken very differently to the point of near or actual contradiction when speaking to different audiences. It has been said for example (I don’t know the truth of this) that Nixon advocated affirmative action for the cynical reason of hoping to split the union and minority vote; so that the Democrats couldn’t get both. Now…I don’t hold with the Democrats appealing specifically to special interests like unions and minorities (whose concerns should really be just special _cases_ of concerns common to all) any more than with such cynicisms, but I certainly don’t see either sort of conduct justifying the other as a response.
I find the concept of a “natural born citizen” to be poorly reasoned. If I were someone who hated the US and its way of life, and wished to enforce Sharia law, but just happened to be born here, would I be more fit to be president than someone who came here, adopted US culture, and benefited many people because I believed in freedom and hard work?
Rather than citizenship, something most people just get and don’t work for, should we not rather worry about a person’s culture, something he had to work for?
Barack Obama is clearly American culturally. He knows better than many of us how to pull strings to become president. Indeed he’s so well integrated, it’s hard to distinguish his corruption from that of any other president we’ve had recently. Give unto those that hath for they will pay for your next campaign! Do not punish those that hath, even if they hath stolen from the rabble, for they will pay for your next campaign!
Even presuming your point, consider that “natural born citizen” might have been the best approximation of your procedure available at the time the Constitution was written; and still retains some advantages, namely that it is at least a relatively simple and objective standard compared to evaluating the cultural integration of an individual. Constitutions and laws can’t attempt complex and potentially subjective standards without being subject to even more abuse than they already have been.
I doubt that it often _matters_ if such a simple standard might exclude an otherwise qualified candidate. While exceptional individuals do exist, most people, let alone most that cannot operate without a large team and a lot of support, are products of the times at least as much as exceptional individuals. Ecological niches tend to be filled, and I assume that applies to politics as well.
The only person who wouldn’t have met the native-born condition that I’ve ever heard wishful thinking for President about is Schwartzenegger, but that was before his relative ineffectiveness dealing with an opposing legislature became apparent. So he wouldn’t have had a chance anyway, and we’ve lost little of value by using the simpler standard, save having to endure a foolish and pointless controversy that distracted from far more substantive differences. Such idiocies are inevitable anyway in politics regardless of the specific point in dispute, only the details vary.
I think there’s a good chance Obama didn’t release full certificate in order to allow the fringe of the Republican wing of American politics to continue looking like extremist morons. He finally released it after Trump made a big deal out of it, giving the issue more perceived legitimacy. Additionaly, a conspiracy-nut book is about to be released about what “must” be on the long form certificate that Obama is “afraid” will be revealed. Two birds with one stone.
On a more general level, I think this sort of thing persists because journalists have simply been easier on Obama than most presidents. We know “private” information about the education, for instance, of Gore and Bush 2 because it is the job of the media to intensely scrutinize candidates. For some reason, people inquiring about aspects of Obama’s life that have been considered very valid issues when applied to other presidents are called “racist”. This is a simple linguistic tool that seems more designed to quash discussion than encourage tolerance.
Would it be fear of being perceived as racist that reduced the intensity of the media rectal examination of Obama, or would it be that much of the media considers itself natural allies of the left? Or both, maybe…
Probably cases of both. Plus, the media loves to cover people that come off easily as attractive and charismatic. Obama has a way similar to Reagan without looking like grandpa. A lot of it may just be shallow simple-mindedness on the part of the media.
I like the quote that Edith Hamilton includes in her “Mythology” anthology from the old Norse:
‘The mind only knows what lies close to the heart.’
This is a sad commentary on human nature. What Hamilton’s quoted Norseman observes is that if our heart, that is our desires, is more interested in selfish goals than the the objective truth, then the truth will lose in the contest. No amount of proof will suffice. It is like the revenant officer whom Trystan captures in “The Parafaith War.” It is apparent to Trystan that the revenant officer is intelligent, capable. The officer states that so long as he believes in his faith there is nothing Trystan or anyone can do to shake that faith. Birthers and Revvies follow their gut not their brain.
There is an interesting study featured in Scientific American about this cognitive dissonance, the struggle between what we know and what we feel/desire. The researchers dubbed this sub-category of cognitive dissonance ‘implicit social cognition’ defined as the ‘deep-rooted assumptions we all carry around, and may act on without realizing it.’
Researchers asked white Americans whether they viewed a white European, actor Hugh Grant, as more American than Asian-American Connie Chung and, similarly, compared Tony Blair to Obama. In both instances, white Americans viewed the white man as more American than the Chung or Obama.
The podcast about this research is available here:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=whats-behind-birthers-obama-belief-09-08-10
I want to comment about some of the foregoing comments on citizenship and whether it should be more cultural than ‘an accident of birth’.
In America we do not generally follow Jus Sanguinis (the right of blood), which is the policy of determining citizenship by having a parent(s) who are citizens of the nation. Rather, we follow jus soli (the right of soil), by looking at birthplace.
Most countries follow Jus Sanguinis and that is in part because most nations are true nations in the sense of being one people, one tribe. I think many white Americans feel that this concept does or should apply, hence the animus many Anglos feel toward ‘foreign people’ who were born here. For instance, there was a raid by Immigration and Customs Officials (“ICE”) today down the street from my office of a Mexican Bakery where Hispanics employees work (some foreign born and probably without legal staus). A group of rednecks (all Anglos) gathered across the street cheering on the ICE officers (all white).
Kathy Pennington wrote: “As far as Mr. Obama’s parents wanting him to have the rights and privileges of a US citizen, since his mother was already a US citizen, he would have been eligible for those rights and privileges wherever he was born. No illusory paper trail needed.”
No, Kathy. If Obama were born abroad, his having an 18-year-old US citizen for a mother would not have made him a citizen himself. Under the federal laws existing at that time, Ann Dunham was too young (by one year) to have bequeathed citizenship jus sanguinis on Barack Obama. Since Ann Dunham could not falsify her own age at birth, it would have been necessary to falsify Barack Obama’s birthplace, if he were born in Kenya. So gaining the rights and privileges of US citizenship for Obama would have been, indeed, a motive to this parents for laying a false paper trail in regard to where he was born.
Kedron, I’d have cheered too. Man is primarily a biological creature, rather than an economic or a political one. The human being is an organism whose virtues are passed on to his children, not to his customers, nor to his workers, nor to his neighbors.
Evolution has put into people a tribal instinct. It isn’t only a human instinct, either. All primates have it to some extent. We form groups for self-defense and for the pursuit of collective interests. Originally these groups arose naturally as an extension of the family social structure: the tribe. When agricultural surpluses made it possible, the grouping pattern was copied by human collectives based on something other than biology, such as political or economic interests.
However, family never stopped being a man’s fundamental interest, and those who lead governments or corporations don’t like having family as a persistent rival for the loyalty of their troops or their workers. Both governments and corporations, whatever they might say to deny it, regard the biological institution as an enemy. Both demand that man sacrifice his family loyalty to other interests. And that’s why Marxism and capitalism both harm people, why both seek to transfer the worth of man out of man himself and into an artificial social construct that has no value to the race.
Both governments and corporations present individual persons with both positive and negative inducements to betray family. Positive inducements are money, entitlements to money, opportunities to make money. Negative inducements are threats, fines, imprisonment, and death for stubbornly adhering to family principles in defiance of either government or corporate authority which would have men give them their ultimate loyalty, rather than letting them vest it in their families.
That’s why governments promote multiculturalism and multi-racial demographics. It’s why the governments of white majority countries turn a blind eye to their own immigration laws when the illegal immigrants are not white. (However, a white foreigner might be in very serious trouble if she is caught in a minor infraction, such as a few days of overstaying her visa, ten years previously. A woman from Iceland was arrested and held incommunicado by the US customs service for that very reason alone.)
This is strange because governments are created by men in order to promote their interests in the world. Apparently, it doesn’t take long for some men to capture the driver’s seat in the national vehicle and, by a thousand different roads, take the country into causes where their own interests are best served, at the expense of most of the people who must pay for the ride. So, if one of them must go, government or family, then sacrifice government (if you can). Keep family. Get rid of the foreigners, even if they are neighbors, co-workers, employers, employees, or members of your social set, and keep your children, your brothers, your cousins, your nieces and your nephews.
You seem to ignore or conveniently forget that the code of “family above all” characterizes not the most technologically advanced or powerful nations, but the most fragmented and powerless… and, of course, the Mafia… all of which represent lawlessness in the extreme. There’s a difference between idealists and ideologues. Idealists strive for things to be better, but incorporate pragmatism. Ideologues don’t seem to care if things work, only that their sacred principles come first, regardless of what happens to anyone else, or even whether society will actually work, and that’s a tried and true recipe for lawlessness and anarchy. A number of your recommendations, such as states as independent nations, were already tried, and didn’t work. You, Mr. Sims, are not an idealist, but an ideologue… and the world already has too many of them.
Given the mindless, superficial behaviour described above, is it really a surprise that the general public escapes into mindless, superficial ‘entertainment’?