Involved with what's happening around here

Of late very familiar things have been greeting me over the airwaves upon my arising in the morning with the radio alarm clock.

Each morning at precisely a certain time, my clock radio activates alerting me to the fact that I must arise from bed, in order to prepare myself for work and leave home in time to reach work by the start of the business day. (It's called discipline, for those of you on the welfare dole who haven't mastered this.) I have left the dial permanently (more or less) at the news radio channel. At the time which I rise, the announcer is giving short summaries of the top local news stories for the day. Many of these stories, as can be expected in this State-dominated age, have to do with the workings of local government.

In a position of public trust such as where I work, you are exposed to much of the 'background' and goings-on of public decision-making in this community. So you become intimately familiar over time with the mechanics of what goes on behind often-closed bureaucratic doors, which only now and then makes its way forth in the guise of public pronouncements and some such (which in their own right have been reviewed a dozen times so as to be precisely and carefully worded in true propaganda fashion).

Just the other morning a challenge to the most recent Federally-estimated population numbers for a local parish was issued by that parish's governing officials. This was inevitably one of the day's top stories, and was being relayed as I arose from slumber. I will not be too specific, but suffice it to say that certain things mentioned in the executive office's official statement were items in which I had a direct hand.

I mention this not to brag, but to simply shake my head in wonder: How did a nobody like myself get caught up in all this?

I am actually far removed from the real decision halls of power. My position in the bureaucracy is analogous to the hands of the operation, as opposed to the heads at the top (or "the third floor" which is a euphemism for the offices of the local Executive) who make the major decisions that trickle on down to us grunts in the form
of policies, requests, and procedures.

But it is close enough to occasionally be included in the major moves on high if events so require. Such is the relatively close knit operation of a local bureaucracy, even for a major urban area.

So count me as somewhat involved with what's happening around here. The power, however slight, is admittedly addictive. I thus witness and experience firsthand how monsters such as BO are made.