Here we go with another "Oh look, Kruiser is being contrarian again" column. I assure you, dear readers, that I don't wake up intending to be this way. It's just that I often find a good "salmon swimming upstream" take on something to be quite invigorating, especially at the beginning of the week.
I would like to make it very clear to the people I work for that I am not denigrating content that drives traffic. We are a for-profit company, after all, and I am rather fond of being able to pay my bills.
Ever since the Republicans managed to barely wrest control of the House of Representatives away from the Democrats a couple of years ago, the whisper-thin majority has been active in hauling many nefarious players in the Biden administration before the cameras for a good upbraiding. I will admit that it's fun to watch at times.
House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and his fellow Republicans are very adept at providing plenty of red-meat video moments for conservative media when they have a persona non grata Democrat in front of them for a hearing.
Sadly, that's about all. The person on that day's hot seat knows that he or she can soon return to the almost consequence-free comfort of bureaucratic incompetence. As I wrote in my classic "Don't' Let the Hippies Shower" lo those many years ago: "The federal bureaucracy exists solely to bloat and perpetuate itself." Accountability is not only frowned upon, it's antithetical to the very nature of the enterprise.
Comer and the other Republicans on Oversight aren't to blame for this. Their job isn't to perp-walk people out of these hearings or fire them on the spot, after all. There's value in getting things on the record, even though most experienced federal bureaucrats can obfuscate for an hour when you ask them to state their names.
What this all boils down to for me is minimizing the aggravation in my life. It's infuriating to see people being exposed as so thoroughly awful at what they do, all the while knowing that they'll be laughing at us from their taxpayer-funded offices in an hour or two. Or, in Anthony Fauci's case, getting fabulously wealthy in the private sector when he should be picking out his next read from the prison library.
If I want to deliberately introduce more aggravation into my world, I'll start golfing again. Frustrating things are much easier to take when accompanied by a beer cart.
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