What it all gets down to is something that anybody who’s been an adult for more than about fifteen minutes can readily observe:  that bureaucracy has gotten out of hand—sending us eternally from Window A to Window B;  rendering employees nincompoops by dint of its sheer vastness and arcanity;  spewing forth products of a quality that is only to be expected, when nobody is really responsible for them;  and ultimately, not only exasperating, but sometimes even crushing the spirits of the people it subsumes.

The question isn’t whether or not bureaucracy is a problem.  The question is what we should do about it.

The politicians and the oil companies are offering us an easy option.  They’re offering to cheerlead us in a little ceremony of burning a figure in effigy.

I’ll admit, if you want an effigy, the government bureaucracy makes an absolutely dandy one.

But is this the sort of behavior that’s more appropriate to 20th-century Americans—or to those peoples of the world whose customs include placing a dead chicken on the doorstep of an enemy?