March 14, 2025- I am watching a limited series, called “Long Bright River”. It’s a Philadelphia show, following the life of a police officer, a single mother whose son’s father is a deadbeat and whose sister is a troubled streetwalker. There seem to be a lot of independent, limited series about police these days. Most show their subjects as complex characters, who nonetheless approach their tasks with a measure of self-discipline and their lives a bit more recklessly.

Watching this series and reflecting on the country as it is in the midst of a spiral of indeterminate direction, I thought of the roles that discipline and its opposite are playing in the roll-out. Those who are engaged in the present downsizing are accomplishing success by happenstance, as if Jackson Pollack were to have created a few coherent works of art, in the midst of his series of what I would name “Splotch Art”, but is more commonly and politely known as Abstract Impressionism.

We are in a state of social flux, in which the seeming flood tide of cutbacks and closures looks to be a carefully crafted assault on the Administrative State. There is a certain discipline in the actions of those in the Executive Branch, even as it outwardly appears to be indisciplined and chaotic. Project 2025, as loathsome as several parts of it are, is carefully laid out. It is the speed and scope of the layoffs and cutbacks that give the appearance of recklessness.

Nonetheless, there was, for a good many years, a creeping indiscipline overtaking bureaucracy, indeed overtaking society, at all levels. With that came the somnabulism that accompanies all too many pet projects foisted by individuals in Legislatures and Councils at the local, state and Federal levels. Money was being misspent, wasted-maybe not across the board, but frequently enough that some measure of rollback would have been in order. When that rollback was resisted, it became a cyst on the Body Politic,and the wages of indiscipline were bound to be paid out.

Any time a person decides to rebuild a sense of order and discipline in own life, there are a variety of options available. Gradual adjustments in eating habits and changes in exercise routines, even in sleeping habits, have been the path that has worked for me, over the past five years, building on the use of supplements since 2014. Others use a Boot Camp approach, with Cross Fit memberships, Iron Man training, and so on. Still others lean on fad diets.

Our society has relied on instant gratification, moral license and an ethic of nonjudgmentality,to the point where confusion has set in on a wide scale, leading those on one end of the spectrum to view democracy as outmoded and those on the other end to see Fascism in every attempt to get some sense of fiscal responsibility established. Thus, the lumbering financial behemoth is being bound at the ankles, and is in danger of toppling.

Discipline is needed, both in the conduct of governmental affairs AND in the practice of restoring a culture of responsibility to both government and society. Everything can’t happen everywhere, all at once. Mass layoffs do more harm than good, and save little or nothing. Careful examination of each line item of the Federal budget, by forensic accountants, may be dull as dust, but it is the only way that the deficit is going to be meaningfully brought down-and kept from roaring back as a result of overkill on the part of the current group of clear-cutters.

I’ve said it before- a scalpel, not a hatchet.