Imagine that such topics were cheerfully debated in newspapers or on Facebook. Indignant viewers of the blockbuster “The Coolest Blockbuster” demand the director’s resignation and the dismissal of the actors. Activists intend to shut down bakery number three, which bakes unappetizing buns. Passengers of the “Flight” airline have declared a hunger strike, demanding the opening of a route to Honduras.
Or, suppose a dialogue between businessmen goes like this:
— Yesterday dentists attacked me. They drilled two teeth—I barely managed to bribe them off.
— That’s nothing. A tiler has been hunting me. The other day, when I wasn’t home, he broke into the apartment and managed to tile half the bathroom!
— You don’t say! A nightmare!
— Yeah. And I don’t know how to bribe him. Do you have any connections to tilers?
— No. Tilers are a serious organization…
In reality, such discussions and dialogues are not absurd, not a product of my imagination. This is what our progressive public life consists of. What is wrong with the examples I gave? What creates a sense of absurdity? The issue is that in these examples, we are talking about relations between parties, one of which provides a service to the other under contract. And such relations are quite transparent and simple. If we didn’t like the blockbuster, that’s our problem. Bad luck. We simply don’t buy unappetizing buns from bakery number three. And if we need to go to Honduras, we find a company that flies to this wonderful country, rather than staging a hunger strike. And in all cases, if the contract terms allow it, we can demand our money back.
In the most general sense, such a situation is called “we hired them to do a job.” And now, interestingly, this—forgive the expression—“meme” is currently popular among the progressive public regarding… officials. The public is convinced that it somehow “hires them for a job.” At the same time, the public constantly calls out to each other with pleas to make separate and quite serious efforts to compel officials to perform the work they were supposedly hired for. Moreover, many people in our country bend over backwards to ensure that the officials they supposedly hired do not do what they were supposedly hired to do. Dentists and tilers appear in our lives when we need them. Officials appear when they need us. And our public considers both cases “hiring for a job.”
I understand that it’s very hard to part with illusions rooted in kindergarten and school. Because in reality, if you inquire whether there was ever a contract by which these people rule us, it turns out that there never was. So no “hiring” exists in the world around us. On the other hand, I still remember those times when the question itself about the origin of officials’ power simply could not arise. And not because it could be repressed, although that also happened, but because this power was perceived as natural, like the change of day and night. Now, at least, such questions do arise. The answers are still unsatisfactory, but let’s hope this is a matter of time.