It is always difficult to see the water in which we swim. It is so natural we just don’t see it. For decades our minds have been poisoned by the poisonous little people that haunt the dark places on the right. And we have been poisoned by lies and false assumptions to believe that most public employees are parasites on society. Such criticism is so common and so prevalent that we just don’t see it any more. I heard it so often I believed it must be true.

I remember as a young lawyer my principal (boss)  asked me to attend each week at the Land Titles Office to go and try to correct mistakes our office had made on Land Titles documents in order to correct them to avoid the time and extra expense of a rejection, for  that meant we would have to start over.  It was great experience for a young lawyer to see all the mistakes law firms could make on legal documents. After all, we all make mistakes. What really impressed me was how the employees at the Land Titles Office were diligent about reviewing our documents to make sure their office did not accept documents which for various reasons were unacceptable and if accepted would make the system worse and less reliable. And they were always eager to make it better. They did not do it to make our job harder. They just did it to make our work better for the benefit of all who worked in the land titles system. It opened my eyes, which badly needed opening.

The shallow common assumptions held by so many, that public workers are lazy, unreasonable, and incompetent are frequently wide of the mark.

The author Michael Lewis was interviewed recently  on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. He talked about civil servants whom he had recently written about in his new book. He pointed out that many of them could make more money in the private world, but they were actually devoted to public service. They did it because they wanted to do some good and that gave them great satisfaction and they are often under-appreciated for that. He said, “The fact that we have allowed these government workers to be demonized says a lot about the state of our souls.”

I would add, and the fact that we have allowed public servants to be defamed by the likes of Elon Musk and Donald Trump, tells us even more about the state of our souls.