Erring to Republican

'To err is human; to forgive, divine"
- Alexander Pope

I'll be honest, this quote has very little to do with anything else in this blog entry aside from the fact that it also contains the rather under utilised (in my opinion at least) word: err. It was however interesting looking up the quote as I had originally marked it down as something from Wilde which would at least have allowed me to tie in some of the rest of this post... but Alexander Pope is a man I know little about and rather sent me down the Wiki-hole as I got sucked into an impromptu education on Jacobite/Hanoverian clashes - a subject I never really covered in History class at school and will not resurrect here however if Catholic/Protestant fighting in England in the 1700s is of interest to you then there is plenty to be found out there. Pope was born in London to a Catholic family became a famous poet of the age and happened to write the quotation above. That is really all I feel qualified to say about him. I have read a few of his other writings and translations (he was a talented polyglot as well) and am not particularly enamoured with any of it...

But as I already indicated, none of this really has anything to do with what I meant to write about this time. The actual subject is likely to appear about as dry and mundane to the majority of you... the DMV. For those of you not familiar with this formidable institution: The Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is the governmental organization that is charged with every aspect of an American citizen's use of a car from licensing to registration to revoking all of these when they are caught driving under the influence of what ever narcotic may be in vogue at the time. To those of you more familiar with the DMV you will probably be more familiar with is as one of Satan's residences on earth.

Before I go full swing into my rant about the ineptitude about the various US Governmental organizations, the DMV in general and their specific influence on my political leanings... a brief disclaimer:

1. I am not (yet) entitled to vote in the United States of America and whilst this post may be deemed a ringing endorsement of everything (or at least one small part of) what the Republican party stands for... it is mostly satire... if you are a Republican... firstly, I'm sorry and secondly, you can find the meaning of satire here.

2. America is a big place... it has five times to population of the UK and that is without accounting for the illegal residents that make up a significant portion of many areas of the US, and more than 37 times the size of the UK... This makes any kind of logistics/bureaucracy/organization a complete nightmare (for reference see: Pretty Much the Entire History of Imperial China). That America has over come these challenges to become the world's most powerful nation is a testament to either a lot of tolerance or sheer bloody mindedness (I have yet to figure out which).

Ok disclaimers dealt with, on to offending pretty much everybody:

I am one of life's pedestrians... I like walking, I like public transport (although experience of buses here have convinced me that Sheldon had a point about bus pants) and I get positively excited about the prospect of a long train journey! (Total non sequitur this is awesome). Sadly being willing to walk for an hour to get some place is not sufficient in this country (see population size vs area above) and frankly there are a lot of places where there is no bus/light rail/train. The net result is that no matter how much I like walking, I have to bow to the inevitable and get a car (and a driving license).

So what does all this have to do with turning me into a gun toting, red necked republican? Well one of the less objectionable things that the Republican party stands for is an end to 'Big Government' an ideal that largely seems to endorse independence of the states to run themselves without the interference of an overriding national government. The underlying premise is that when bureaucracy gets 'too' big ('too' being a variable dependant on whatever currently most helps the speaker), things become unwieldy, inefficient and worst of all - expensive.

The DMV is really the best possible example of the evils of Big Government. It operates across the country, causes huge amounts of misery and unhappiness has staff who seemingly have no motivation to work fast or efficiently, internal structures and processes that are not only archaic but totally ineffectual. I am not convinced anything in the process have changed from the 70s... nor has the capacity seemingly coping for 50% more people than it was designed for.

For my own experience... I arrive early and spend an hour queuing lining up outside before the place even opens (and I was by no means the first to arrive with the queue already half way around the building by my arrival and fully wrapping it prior to opening). Once inside I wait another hour before finally making it to a window where I am told in a blunt and obnoxious manner that they won't accept an electronic version of the I-94 (catch form names abound in this country). This came as something of a revelation to me after I had been explained explicitly and in no uncertain terms that this form was never to be printed out, a printed version is not required by any government agency and that a print out would not be sufficient evidence of my immigration status... I got about two words into asking about this before I summarily cut off as the teller called "NEXT" and the woman behind me shunted me to one side. So back to the office, print out something I was pretty sure was a worthless piece of paper to now wait 3 hours to go through the process again... to wait another hour to sit the written (sit is metaphorical here as you are not in fact able to sit down while taking the test)... then another thirty minute wait to return the form... so the vaguely socialist 'everyone is equal' tech worker that woke up that morning with the intention of getting a provisional driving permit left the office some eight hours later looking to sign up to the RNC in the hopes of getting this red tape machine reduced to something that might work without costing the country what must add up to millions of wasted man hours every year and the corresponding economic impact.

Of course next time I could offset that cost using the other great American principle: Buying your way out of inconvenience

Weird information: I am currently living in the town where H.P. Lovecraft's wife spent her final years, passing away in 1972 at the age of 89. More on Lovecraft in a future blog post.