This is only too true. But most of the time the effect is incremental and/or indirect. And it’s not just legislative acts. Every regulation imposes taxes on us that are so indirect as to be invisible to all but the astute.

Another part of the problem is that government has become such a sprawling beast that the average citizen simply doesn’t have the time or capacity to keep an eye on everything it does. In other words, big government begets increasingly bigger government due to lack of oversight. And the bigger it gets, the less oversight citizens can muster.

The apathy you note stems largely from this inability to grasp the extent of government action and from the utter sense of disenfranchisement when contemplating one’s capacity to do anything about it. Every government action that treats individuals as faceless numbers is like a single drop in the Chinese water torture — the combined effect is to keep us in our places and to engender apathy.

But there is a silver lining. When the economy was fairly good, the only thing people responded to was that ‘culture war’ rubbish. Remember Quayle and Murphy Brown? Family values, so-called? Outrage over homo art at the NEA? I could go on.

Thank goodness that seems to be over. Now that the stakes are bigger, people don’t seem to care so much about the artificial controversies that Republicans love to throw up. So much the better. If it takes a real emergency to focus the public attention span and (perhaps) elevate the public discourse, then let’s have it.