If it ain’t broke
Fixing...
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was a popular saying just a few years ago.
The premise was simple; if something is working, don’t mess with it.
This proverbial statement is as true with vehicles as it is with economic systems and political processes.
We in the USA have been in the throes of a political system that seems to believe in, and have respect for, essentially nothing – and that operates under one unrelenting principle; take something that is working, as in NATO, Congress, global supply lines, the Strait of Hormuz, an election system with essentially no measurable election fraud, and a dozen other components of a once dominant world economic and military power, take every aspect and “fix” it until it is a barely recognizable shadow of its productive self.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” has an opposite and equal corollary; “If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is”.
From public schools to local elections, from grocery stores to gas stations, from Social Security and Medicare, and from the US dollar to the US penny, nothing is as it was just a year or two ago.
It takes a master “fixer” to do all of this. And of course, none of this “fixing” is possible at the hands of just one person.
Only I can fix it
He may not have been able to do it alone, but he has a virtual army of advocates, enablers and passive fellow-travelers. “Fixers” and apprentice “fixers” have emerged and have been at work – no government agency is safe. No law or tradition is sacred. No Constitutional right or principle, from a free press to voting rights for all is safe from this “fixing”.
Early in 2025, a frenzied attempt at “efficiency” “fixed” agency after agency.
Who needed competence, “institutional memory” and experience anyway?
With a few bots, AI and ChatGPT at the controls of governance, who needs humans to administer anything?
In June of 2026, the Pentagon’s artificial intelligence chief claimed that Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot “enabled U.S. forces to deploy over 2,000 munitions to 2,000 distinct targets within 96 hours during Operation Epic Fury.” Did that include the missile strikes that killed more than 160 girls at school on the first day of the war?
Look at how much money we must be “saving” by having algorithms help us kill people.
Why have humans kill other humans when AI and bots can do it so much more efficiently?
With many agencies cut, essential maintenance being deferred, in many cases, permanently, not only are the agencies – and their services – being “fixed”, their budgets are being “fixed” as well.
This is called “saving” money. When warehouses full of food are thrown out or even burned in massive bonfires, (instead of going to literally starving people at home or abroad) “saving” money and “fixing” a problem are synonymous.
And look at all the money being “saved” by slashing vaccination funding!
Up until recently, vaccinations have been, by far, the most cost-efficient health measure ever developed.
The return of deadly (and highly contagious) diseases, like smallpox, Ebola, polio and measles are small prices to pay. You can see details on the global impact of vaccines here.
Fully preventable (and prevented) diseases don’t make the news – but lethal outbreaks do.
It turns out that we all need what our dear leader has always had; a fixer.
A fixer, of course, is more than a “get out of jail” card. A real fixer is in fact a whole retinue of fixers in every category. From reputation repair and rehab to legal protection to “knowing a guy” who “takes care” of problems, these fixers are insurance that those who make their way in the world will always need.
And like all evangelical materialists, he is convinced that he is what he has, that his protections – and protectors – are extensions of himself. And of course, that those who expect him to live by any rules – even his own – are, by definition, enemies of everything he identifies with.
Nothing is ever fully and finally “fixed” in his – or any world.
“If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is”
In a world full of people whose first principle is “If it ain’t broke, fix it until it is” life is never boring.
We would not have invasions, assaults, wars, spies, betrayals and a million other devious – and sometimes borderline ingenious developments that would defy any fiction writer.
Truth is in fact, by a long shot, stranger than fiction. Fiction, it has been said, needs to be believable. Reality doesn’t need to be believable. It only needs to be possible.
But many of us have seen, encountered, or barely survived, events, situations and relationships that, by any definition, would be considered, even by an imaginative sci-fi writer, to be not be even remotely possible.
Who needs aliens, leprechauns or demons when we have human being who, deliberately or not, go where they shouldn’t, do what everyone tells them not to and refuse to contribute to the most basic components of friendship, parenting or community existence.
We humans, for better or worse, love to “break” things – or to see what happens when they fracture and spill across our lives.
“If it ain’t broke, it should be” is another life principle many leaders, public figures and influencers seem to have embraced.
Rampaging through life, marriages, bankruptcies and legal complications must be the ultimate power infusion.
It must be exhilarating to blow past cultural and social assumptions, to break and violate every expectation and, to some degree, live out the fantasies that at least one culture, or a strand of one culture, holds as the ideal of freedom and self-expression – and, of course, accumulation of wealth and power.
Every culture rewards what it values. In the 21st Century, for whatever reason, many countries and cultures around the world value, even praise, deconstruction and demolition. This could be in the name of any reigning, but mostly unspoken ideals. These could be vague phrases and terms like progress, destiny, efficiency or “replacement”.
Every culture decides, often without specifying or being deliberate, to build up or demolish, to join or scatter, to gather or fragment.
Who we are, as societies, perhaps even as individuals, is what we build – and what we leave behind.
A simple rule of every enduring society is very simple; don’t break it.