You need now to think of the government not so much as the computer, but rather that amazing little hard drive that sits inside.  This hard drive has its limits and can only hold so much data, and take on so much responsibility.  Ask it to do too much and at some point it will begin to fail.  Push it too far and it will crash.  Depend on it to much and ….you get the idea.  The hard drive has been around for most of human existance, and has gone through many re-formats and upgrades but it’s limits have never changed.  If you look back through time, you can find many examples where it has failed societies as they have over used it, depended too much on it, and become a slave to it. 

In the 1780’s we installed Constitution 2.0 on it after 1.0 (known as the Articles of Confederation) lacked most of the needed drivers and networking support to remain stable.  Just like any time you put in a new operating system, and fire things up for the first time, amazing things happen.  America took off like a rocket, powered by this new operating system, but just like that 5 year old PC you have let your kids play on too long, or a your co-workers use at the office to go on sites they would never go on if their wife knew, over time it catches up with you.  Finally one day you realize it’s time to take a look at your system to find out what’s wrong. 

Note to Reader - My analogy is based on a Windows operating system since it is still the one most widely used and understood so keep that in mind as we take look under the hood.

The first thing we do is try to run some basic system checks like a congressional disc clean up.  Sadly no matter how we vote not a whole lot seems to change or improve, that is where we are today.  Next we try to run a drive defragmentation program, first scanning the drive and what do we find?  The hard drive has almost no space left on it, and everything is colored red!  Over the years we have added more and more files to the drive, and bits of these file are scattered all over making the system completely in efficient and dangerously unstable.  So we immediately hit the run button to begin cleaning things up, and get prompted with a warning…we don’t even have enough system recourses left to fix the problems on the hard drive!   We completely out grew the capacity, and began plugging in external drives to keep up with the memory demand; drives with fancy names like Czars and Fed Reserves ... things the system was never even designed for.  And they too are all dependant on this overloaded hard drive with an operating system near the point of crashing!  We need to act, and fast!

A good place to start is the programs we have installed.  In a few moments we are looking at the programs directory and shaking our heads in fear.  Over the years we have added more and more.  Over here are Fanny Mae Word and Freddy Mac Works that both do the same thing, poorly might I add, and are gobbling up a lot of resources.  We have added way too many security programs, like ICE 1.0 and ATF 2.5, that every year we pay crazy money to update, even though they drag our system down and never work as promised.  As we have entertained ourselves on the internet we have fallen victim to hundreds of thousands of pork barrel malware and spyware programs that eat away at our system integrity and unlawfully intrude on our privacy.  There are update files on top of update files, archived and read/write protected. Heck, you can’t even see what they are or what they do because every time you try to open one the system throws up some error warning of a fatal crash if tampered with! 

In complete fear many decide to pick up the phone and start calling into our congressional support lines.  First we have to find the number to call…have you noticed how hard it has become to find a phone number to call for congressional support on web sites these days?  When you finally acquire a number, you have to navigate your way through one automated prompt after another.  If you’re lucky, you get someone on the phone that offers almost no assistance with how to fix the problem, as they read from a canned script of useless platitudes and talking points.

So, now what do we do with the mess we have created?  We can’t replace this hard drive, it is a permanent part of who we are.  If we ignore things much longer, it will fail all of us, and without it chaos will ensue.  There are lots of people who claim to know what they are doing that will give you advice on yet another program to install. Some will deceive you by telling you their programs are free or will save you money like National Healthcare 2.0.  Some might tell you it’s time to install a new operating system like Fundamental Change Vista and hope for the best.  Some have suggested a revolutionary reboot of the system, but what happens while the system is off line?  Or worse yet, what if it never comes back on at all?

All of these fixes sound good on the surface, but deep down you know there is only one way to truly make things right.  You’re going to have to do it yourself, file by file, program by program.  You’ll have to read up before some of the changes to understand what you are doing but it’s not that bad once you get your feet wet.  Along the way there may even be a program or two you will wish you didn’t delete…but don’t worry!  If you truly need it you can always reinstall a better one after you have finished cleaning things up…it will run better than the old one anyway.  Over time, you’ll get that old hard drive running lean and smooth, this time knowing better then to click on some misleading pop up add promising free energy from windmills or what ever that year’s fad is.  You will vote for those congressional disc clean ups on a more regular basis before old, archived, virus-latent representatives get out of hand.  You won’t need some external system you have no real control of, operating on the side, like a TARP 2.0 stealing valuable resources and doing far more harm than good.

Think of the satisfaction you had the last time you got your computer running at top speed.  With it, you thought you could do anything.  Well guess what, if you help me fix this one, we all really will be able to do anything!

Just a side note: In researching departments for the “Add Remove” graphic in this article I found my self astonished by some of the insanely ridiiculous federal organizations listed on USA.gov.  Here is my list of organizations to be removed simply on name alone: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Interagency Coordinating Committee Bureau of International Labor Affairs Bureau of Transportation Statistics Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion Commission on International Religious Freedom English Language Acquisition Office Federal Interagency Committee for the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds Federal Interagency Council on Statistical Policy Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service Indian Arts and Crafts Board   Innovation and Improvement Office Institute of Peace Interagency Alternative Dispute Resolution Working Group Migratory Bird Conservation Commission Multifamily Housing Office National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Office of Compliance Office of Thrift Supervision Pardon Attorney Office Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars