It is something of a recurring trend that we, the people, never really get heard or listened to. At best, it feels sometimes like the decision-makers placate us average folk -- like, perhaps, one would soothe a crying baby.
The most recent example of this is with the closings of SCI Rockview and Quehanna Boot Camp, as the final decision came down Friday, barely a day after the thousand-page recommendation document from Dept. of Corrections was released.
It's almost like the decision was made months ago.
But we have been through this before. A quick connection can be made to Lock Haven University and its merger process a few years ago as it became absorbed into Commonwealth University.
Not to be overly cynical -- perhaps just the right amount of cynical? -- but, the feeling of our repeated, collective powerlessness can be draining and demeaning.
Rockview and Quehanna were a rare issue in our coverage area: one where seemingly everyone agreed. In this era of polarized opinions, opposition to these closings was truly bipartisan. People who agree on relatively little else were in agreement on this issue.
Maybe it's because this was a local matter, not an ideological one.
Or, maybe it's because leaving these facilities open was, simply put, the right thing to do.
Regardless, the support for these institutions was impossible to ignore.
Inmates sent more than 50 letters to The Express, each highlighting how the facility aided their rehabilitation, and hundreds of community members and staff packed the auditorium of Bald Eagle Area High School after the long workday to directly tell DOC Secretary Laurel Harry why the state should listen.
State Rep. Paul Takac (D-Centre), whose 82nd District includes SCI Rockview, held listening sessions around his district to convey the public's view that the decision was misguided, while State Sen. Cris Dush (R-Pa. 25) led a crusade in the state Senate for greater transparency in the process.
United in opposition, the bipartisan Centre County Board of Commissioners laid bare the disastrous consequences of the decision -- $118 million in lost economic activity -- yet the state seemed to value its purported savings over the resilience of our rural economy.
According to the Pew Research Center, public trust in the government is near historic lows. Only 22 percent of those surveyed said they trust the government to do what is right most of the time. Why?
We would call attention to a well-established pattern of our government, collectively, not heeding its constituents.
Americans' trust in government has been steadily eroding since the 1960s, amid the escalation of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and economic hardship. The government alleges to act in our best interest -- but when it sent young men to die in a distant, unwinnable war and hid misconduct at the highest levels -- public distrust was bound to follow.
Today, with the federal government mired in controversies and our state government struggling to fund basic services that millions of Pennsylvanians rely on, it's no wonder Americans still feel cynical.
Keeping Rockview and Quehanna open could have been an opportunity for the government to prove it hears the people. Instead, the public is -- yet again -- left questioning whom their government really serves.
It certainly doesn't feel like it serves us.