disheartening

Three weeks ago or so--maybe longer--I wrote about a less than pleasant experience with the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles.

Today I can say that the practical problem has been solved, as I managed to successfully identify myself, and pass the written and driving tests.

Nonetheless, a certain amount of discomfort remains--despite the helpfulness of a manager at the office very distant from my home.

In brief, the manager jumped me to the front of the line and approved my documentation.
I think that was fair as my time had been wasted due to an error.

Nonetheless, I cannot stop myself from drawing a few lessons from the experience--lessons about the sorry state of democracy in the country possessed of the greatest amount of destructive power of all the countries in the world.

The helpful supervisor would have been happy to bury the past, but I brought up the subject of my flawed attempt at discussion with two Troopers. I told him that I hoped no one took anything I'd said personally. As the two patrolmen or officers who'd taken me into a room where they shut the door were not under his immediate authority, it seems that the man I refer to as the supervisor (I think that is his actual title) had needed to use some diplomacy in discussing my case. It seems the Troopers did not appreciate my behavior, but I gather that the helpful supervisor took the viewpoint of a businessman who wants to be sure a customer is satisfied. (That too is a bit unsettling as what I've seen in the past is that customers can be crazy but a certain business mind requires humoring their craziness; but I don't think I'm in the least crazy or unreasonable--not about this matter, at any rate.)

Unfortunately, that does not satisfy me completely. He could not resist remarking that the individuals involved were only following orders...(those are not his exact words)...

That is, however, no excuse whatsoever. It would appear that among the police or highway patrol or whatever is their exact title there is a certain spirit of obedience. One must follow orders. And I had, in effect, broken that rule. Which, one guesses, would mean that they had, in a way, resented me.

And, if I grasp the situation rightly, they are indeed right to think that their culture of obedience is not one I respect. Nor do I think it has any place in a society of free individuals.

Yet, as I was correct in my reading of the relevant laws and regulations, it was, actually, they who had broken the law, and disobeyed the relevant authorities.... as I actually said in an email to one Trooper. Which is a curious irony in the entire situation....

So, this incident could be filed together with other militaristic tendencies--for the military is the institution, above all, which attempts to train people to obey--, or perhaps, we could label the file "non-democratic" or even "anti-democratic tendencies in the USA".... (And, indeed, many police are former soldiers....)

None of which makes me happy or pleased.

It is also significant that the manager/supervisor backtracked from his earlier position in which he admitted that I had correctly read and interpreted the appropriate laws. Now, he too, was, in effect, excusing a stance that meant blind obedience. I say this now, but I did not dare to say this to him then. I write these words now, but I could not have spoken them then--before I'd actually gotten my driver's license. So, I say it now, in public, but not to the man's face.--And that, too, is deeply unsatisfying..... It is in fact the sort of division between what one says or thinks in public and what one says or thinks in private that is characteristic of totalitarian societies, as we know from accounts of communism in Europe....