> It’s of course ridiculous to expect the city bus driver to take a public opinion poll before they do their job.

"Their job" is to shut up and drive the bus, according to the routes selected by the duly elected government. They don't get to use their position to push back on the government because they think they should be driving somewhere else. And they should be fired if they do so.

> People have a problem with this because they expect that when they elect radicals, the entire state apparatus immediately becomes as radical as the demagogue they managed to get in office. The fact it doesn’t work this way is a feature, not a bug.

That is exactly what it should mean. If the people elect someone who promises radical change, a functioning democracy should be responsive to that! Resisting the policy agenda of the elected government is not a legitimate function of the bureaucracy. And it's absolutely a "bug," not a "feature." I can't think of any constitutional system that envisions the bureaucracy serving as a check on the policy choices of the elected branches of government. Certainly, there is no such concept in the U.S. Constitution, which lays out a comprehensive system of checks-and-balances.

What you're saying is exactly the anti-democratic power grab I'm talking about. It's experts thinking that their education somehow validates their policy preferences, and that the point of elections is simply to provide some sort of signal to the permanent bureaucracy to evaluate according to their independent judgment and discretion.

I can’t remember at the moment precisely which old British Lord said this in the context of Indian independence but the quote goes something along the lines of democracy is only going to last if the program voted in isn’t a complete revolution, there has to be some continuity reflecting the demos, and expecting a complete overturning and revolution by votes is going to destroy the system.

Of course Government of India Act was not a great system at any rate and you’re probably not a fan of the UK one either.

I mean the belief that it was best for educated British people to run India and impose their superior morals on India is a pretty good analogy for how the Ivy League educated bureaucratic class views the rest of America.

Indeed, I think it’s no coincidence that all those Brahmin elites that did well for themselves under colonial rule come over here and become natural Democrats.

You should probably read Stewart Alsop on the decline of the WASP Elite

> "Their job" is to shut up and drive the bus, according to the routes selected by the duly elected government.

Ye… You have never seen an incompetent manager that will draw a route of a bus through a brick wall, and yell over the phone ‘why haven’t you driven through it?’

More broadly, do you hate the idea of employees having opinions and their own initiative? Is your boss tells you to set the company building on fire, will you do it? If you are told to drive over a child, will you do it?

I feel like you are being an ideologue and you like how things work in your head, without realising that if everyone did exactly what their boss tells them, society would collapse within a week

> More broadly, do you hate the idea of employees having opinions and their own initiative?

I hate the idea of people working for the federal government resisting the policies it’s their job to implement, because they have policy disagreements with the duly-elected leaders.

There are ample policies and procedures for dealing with insubordination. Was there something in particular with the “resistance” you can point out? I never heard of any it amounting to anything other than some occasional clickbait.