Is there anything more absurd than the phrase “Government Accountability”?
As a 30-year retail business operator, I can’t help but laugh at the mock seriousness of politicians when they congratulate themselves on being “public servants”. To be clear, the politicians I am highlighting in this post are of the high-profile type. The ones who climb, connive, scratch and claw their way to the upper echelons of the poltical world to achieve American Royalty status. They may actually be servants, but it isn’t the general public that they serve. They serve the powerful, not the powerless. Every move they make is judged by it’s potential to help or hurt their “brand”.
In retail, we obey one primary rule: DO NOT FRUSTRATE THE CUSTOMER.
For politicians, the primary rule is: STAY IN POWER.
In retail, the customer is everybody. No hierarchy. Just people who may be in need of our services, today or someday. The most well-trained retailers – take Scheels as an example – will intentionally treat every person who visits their stores like they are the most important customer they have, regardless of how much $ that person may spend.
In politics, the customer is the man who drops off the bag of money. In politics, the voters are the product, to be acquired & sold as necessary in the service of maintaining power. Think of a politician as the fulcrum of a lever, with powerful special interests at one end & the People at the other.
In retail, I have personally replied to every single 1-star Google review I’ve had the misfortune to receive.
In politics, they don’t even allow reviews! (Just IMAGINE if they did!)
In fact, unless your are a citizen who is connected- i.e. a large donor or otherwise powerful- you will be ignored by those who lord over you.
The picture above illustrates this quite nicely. I have tried to get ahold of the Sioux Falls mayor many times over the past six years; with requests, concerns and complaints that pertain primarily to some of the challenges I’ve faced running my relatively small business, which is located in the city he mayors (Is mayor a verb?). But for reasons unknown to me, I have been ghosted by him. It’s like I don’t even exist. Even though I collect and pass on a substantial amount of sales tax, which benefits the City of Sioux Falls. Even though I dutifully and voluntarily pay my business’ property taxes every year, which also benefit the City that the mayor presides over. Even though I am a law abiding citizen. These things don’t make me special, but they do make me a citizen. Recently, I reached out to the mayor in my capacity as the Chair of the NO in NOvember campaign. Just to talk, and maybe see if he’d be willing to support what we were trying to accomplish.
Crickets.
But as you can see in the above post, Mayor Paul managed to find some time in his extremely Very Important schedule to pop in on this ribbon cutting photo-op to commemorate the Very Special opening of Sanford’s millionth new clinic//hospital/profit center. And if you look real close at the guy sitting in the chair sortof holding the giant prop scissors, you will come to understand the point I am trying to make here. To the mayor, this event was not something to be missed. To the Public Servant, everyone is special, sure, but some people are definitely more special than others. Some phone calls you ABSOLUTELY must answer.
“Sir, T. Denny is on line 1”
“Put him through!!!”
More Stories…
A few weeks ago, I had the uh, well, pleasure isn’t the right word…opportunity, to meet SD’s lone DC Rep, the Highly Respected diminutive Dusty Johnson. It was a casual outdoor political event with several dozen pro-life folks who were there for one last door-knocking voter drive that kicked off like a pep rally. For the majority of the attendees, it was a well-deserved pre-election mini-celebration at the end of a long 2 year battle against the evil Amendment G. But for johnny-come-lately Dusty, it was obviously just a photo-op – literally covered by an Argus Leader photographer – to fool the Normie Republicans in SD into forgetting that Dusty is a 100 % USDA RINO. I asked Dusty (I call him Dusty not out of disrespect; if I wanted to disrespect him I’d call him Howdy Doody) if he’d take picture next to my huge NO in NOvember sign. He said “sure”, but then weaseled his way on out of the venue just as soon as he could. I imagined him using a bunch of Wet Wipes upon entering his getaway vehicle, in order to get the grease of the common folk off of his hands toot sweet.
A couple months ago I had the privilege of working a booth at the highly recommended completely wholesome slice of Americana that is the Turner County Fair. At one point, a murmur made it’s way through fairgoers that a certain BigTime celebrity was milling about; gracing the crowds with the simple exhibition of his presence. I’ll admit to getting a bit excited at the prospect of me placing one of our 5” x 7” freshly printed NO in NOvember flyers into the hand the honorable United States Senator John Thune. But when I actually did, a while later when I sorta ambushed him next to the chislic truck, it didn’t feel that momentous at all. He didn’t seem to care about my flyer or our campaign the least little bit. In that moment my cynicism about politicians – actually, the cynicism held by us all – was made truth. I realized that John wasn’t at the fair to learn about what his constituents were up to, what battles we may be engaged in, or what life was like for the average South Dakotan. I won’t speculate on his motivations for attending the Turner County Fair, walking through the crowds like a normal person would. But I will state the hard truth that when I interacted with him, looked him in the eye as I would any man: There was nothing there. He simply…didn’t see me.
Same thing with Dusty. He craned his neck & looked up at me like I was the lone cloud on a clear day that had inconveniently parked in front of the sun.
I don’t think it is misanthropy that plagues these worthies. I think it is the byproduct of their hierarchal worldview; their survival mechanism. John & Dusty saw me as just another peasant; a business calculation. They don’t despise us, or love us. They’re just not that into us.
Some might mistake these observations as envy, or even jealousy. But I’m not butthurt. I don’t care about being a senator, or even being noticed by one. I’m perfectly fine with who I am, and where I’ve been. What I am not OKAY with is being treated like a serf, by anyone frankly; but particularly by politicians (Public Servants) or any other government employee who’s salary I contribute to.
THE RETAIL STANDARD
A few years ago, I had a few run-ins with the principal of the public high school that one of my kids was attending at the time. He had no compunction with letting me know where we, the parents – the Customers – stand in his hierarchical view of his world. At best we were considered a necessary evil, a pest. At worst, well…it wasn’t a good feeling for us parents at all. This experience was not a one-time thing either. Many employees of our public school system seem to be missing the point of the whole exercise: Be accountable to parents for the education of our children.
That’s when I started to develop my idea of implementing what I called “The Retail Standard”. Basically, I began to expect to be treated with the same level of respect and courtesy that I and my employees would treat this same person if they came into my business as a customer.
Crazy, right!?
In retail, we completely understand that the whole reason we even exist is to serve the customer. Without them, we are nothing. We are open 7 days a week, 11 hours a day, 362 days a year, for the convenience of the customer. Our customers don’t need an appointment to come in and get serviced. Whether they are potential buyers or existing customers with a complaint, they all expect and receive an attitude from us, at all times, that may most accurately be described as subservient. We patiently listen to them, and try to make them feel important, because they are important to us! Our policies, our hours, our showroom, our products and services are all geared towards leaving them feeling satisfied with the money they choose to spend with us. If we make a mistake, we are held accountable and take responsibility. This is the Retail Standard in practice.
Just IMAGINE if our elected officials and government employees all worked under this operating system.
Rare is the office holder who publicly admits when one of their grand ideas – what they refer to as “solutions” to some real or imagined “problem” – fails miserably.
Rarer still is the self-proclaimed “public servant” who responds to criticism from a taxpayer in any meaningful way that isn’t obviously geared towards protecting their brand. If something they are responsible for – say, for example, protecting their constituents from government-forced injections of experimental pharmaceuticals, or gross misapplication of Eminent Domain (E.D.!) laws that violate landowners’ property rights that also Oh-by-the-way-and-this-is-totally-unrelated enrich the Donor Class that happen to support their current and future career advancements – actually leads to widespread disgust and blowback from the citizens they are sworn to “serve”, they somehow skate on through anyway.
Politics has to be the #1 profession where the participants always seem to Fail Upwards. “Failing” being the pivotal word here; where the experts will clash with the average citizen on exactly what the definition of fail is. A politician will rarely admit failure, because in their math, the concept of failing only applies to their grip on power. If they somehow lose an election, they have failed. If they manage to stay in power for decades, they are considered “successful”; regardless of how effective they actually were at safeguarding the rights of their constituents while honoring the spirit and the provisions of the Constitution that they swore to uphold.
For examples of politicians “failing upward”, let’s look at our most recent elections, where the enormous aftershocks are just beginning to be felt. In South Dakota, the Patriot movement saw successes against every ballot measure, and in many of the individual races. The Establishment RINO power structure was wounded grievously, at least at the state level. Three days after the election, legislators representing the Patriot movement took control of both the SD House and Senate, which is as it should be. However, the PP’s (professional politicians) at the very top did quite well for themselves. Both Sen Thune & Gov Noem were rewarded by the system, even though they were recently awarded the dubious honor of being placed on the now-infamous RINO BlackList.
Sad!
The reasons for this phenomenon, and what if anything we little people can do about it will have to be explored in a future post.
For now, let us enliven our imaginations with the fantastical notion of applying the same standard of service that we all expect to get at your average steakhouse from the Public Servants who seek to rule over us.
Maybe we can start by forcing every federal office holder to have a Google page so we can leave them reviews.
Then they would have to deal with the occasional (or not so occasional) “TERRIBLE SERVICE!!! I’D GIVE ZERO STARS IF I COULD!!! WORST CONGRESSMAN I’VE EVER HAD!!!!!! NEVER DOING BUSINESS WITH THEM AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!%#@!”
