But first, it is time to take stock of the inanity which has prevailed before us, of the Debt-to-GDP ratio hitting 1-to1, of the thousand manifold bottles of snake-oil that the New Class has sold us. Walter Russel Meade has a fine dissertation on "The Progressive Crisis" (h/t: Ace), which the usual suspects of the droit-osphere have linked approvingly to. He correctly points out what Ayn Rand pointed out 60 years ago: that there is an unspoken will-to-power in the Progressive Movement. Our Saviors are as corrupt and wicked as the rest of us, and the people know it.
Barack Obama is full of shit. Harry Reid is full of shit. Nancy Pelosi is so full of shit she could fertilize Death Valley. Now, as it happens, being full of shit goes with the territory of politics, because politics is shit. Hunter Thompson, who had a Ph.D in Being Full of Shit, nevertheless once wrote something in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about the profession of journalism that I quote approvingly:
Agnew was right. The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits -- a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo cage.But a few shifts in nomenclature and metaphor would suffice to make this an utterly apt description of politics. Politics is a bunch of glad-handling buffoons, flannel-mouthed ward bosses, and dipshit crusaders. There's but a few of any rank anywhere in the City of Washington that the country would miss if they all spontaneously combusted tomorrow.
This is not a matter of replacing one group of swine with another. I still haven't decided whether John Boehner is full of shit yet (odds are, yes). The nature of the activity is inherently corruptive. To rule others, one can adopt one of two strategies: letting the traditions of your people guide your every action, or attacking every vested interest not on board with your self-aggrandizing agenda. The first is mere office-holding, the second is tyranny. Progressives of every stripe keep declaiming that they have found the Third Way, and more bodies have been littered in that fruitless Grail-Quest than frozen ships seeking the Northwest Passage. It is a fantasy: nothing more than tyranny in a velvet glove. Politics is shit. Inhale deeply.
And that is why I could never muster the anger at someone like Charlie Rangel or Robert Byrd. Rangel is a thief, and a racist thief at that. But I suspect that, in some deep-down, cameras-off world that neither you nor I will ever see, the son of a bitch knows he's a thief, and justifies his thievery on the same grounds that I have offered: he must swim in the same seas as everyone else. That he's a fat little fishy in a sea of shit does not change the odeur of the water one jot.
So sure, catch the fat little fishy if you wish, mount him to the wall. Send his ample ass to jail: why not? That oily bastard lives by our sufferance, which we the people, in our limited wisdom but unlimited sovereignty, can withdraw at any time we see fit. Just you remember: there are plenty of fish in the shitty sea.
No, I have no animus for the Rangles and Byrds of the world of politics. Thieves are thieves, and eventually they end up robbing themselves. I reserve my true hate for the ones who claim not to hunger for graft or power but for a Square Deal for all Americans, the ones who claim that it is time to put politics aside and do the People's Will. Proggies have been shilling that line for a century, and it's the biggest pile of dinosaur shit there is.
The People don't have One Will; that Rousseauist fantasy builds nothing but guillotines. The People are a multiverse of conflicting dreams, desires, and ideology. They have no Main Line from which silken-voiced princes with first-rate temperaments can eternally suckle. 40% of them hate Democrats, 40% hate Republicans, and the rest would rather everyone just play nice. You cannot claim a Mandate to do whatever the hell you please on the basis of winning 51% of such an electorate. It is a house built on quicksand.
The People's Will is a fantasy, and I hope that Obama knows it. Bill Clinton did. That man was as gifted a liar as politics has seen in a while, but he was a better whore. And whores know that it doesn't matter what the john wants if you get extra for the service. So if the john wanted to hear that The Era of Big Government was Over, then Billi would make that sound pretty coming out of his mouth. He knew the tricks; he knew the game; the People (or 60% of them) loved him.
Right now, 50% of the People are fucking sick of Obama, of his fecklessness, his emptiness, his inability to handle one thing with anything approaching success. What the Sam Hell are we doing in Libya? Who the hell knows? Who's in charge? What the hominy fuck happened with ObamaCare? Did Obama even read an executive summary of it? And precisely what about trillion-dollar deficits does this simple bastard love so much?
The worst of all politicians, worse than Thieves, Liars, Whores, or other Associated Swine, are the Gilded Fools: the Bobble-heads, the ra-ra true-believing priests of the Progressive Leviathan. Fools there are aplenty in Washington, and every state house and city hall for that matter. Dennis Kucinich is one such, as is John Edwards (Sarah Palin might be, as well). But these are more or less harmless, as they quickly up-jump their place and show their true motely colors. But sometimes, press or party takes a Fool and Gilds him, makes him shine brighter than the Sunne in Splendour, and the 20% that just wants everyone to play nice will swoon like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert (In Edwards' case, the gilding did not work, perhaps because a gelding was more in need). By such precise means did a junior senator with no executive experience and a middling legislative experience parlay a MLK-timbered voice into the highest office in the land. The story was too good. We just had to believe that he knew what the hell he was doing.
And now we sit, with a government broke and broken, about to fundamentally disprove Hamilton's postulate that a national debt could be a national treasure (or for those who know the context of that remark, fundamentally prove it). And we are shocked, shocked I say, that the warring tribes cannot negotiate with one another. We can't believe that there's actually a dimes worth of difference between the two.
Well, there is. The GOP has no shortage of Thieves, Liars, Whores, and Swine. Duke Cunningham was a Thief; Gingrich was a Liar, and the Maine Sisters (Snowe and Dukakis) consistently sell their virtue to whatever trawler comes by. But the GOP doesn't get to Gild many Fools, because the gang of fuckoffs and misfits don't usually let them. The rest may or may not actually mean what they say about shrinking the size of government.
Yet even Swine can find a truffle, and the gang of elephants has stumbled upon the reality that eludes the current Gilded Fool: We cannot afford the size of the government we currently have. Not even if we expropriate the wealth of the nation can we afford it. You can only loot Microsoft once. It won't be there to feed the current services baseline next year.
Robert Stacy McCain has a succinct phase for this reality: The State is not God. Get over it. The State can't do everything or satisfy everything. It has limits intrinsic to its nature, which are thievery, force, and lies. You can accomplish much with thievery, force, and lies. But you cannot uplift the human spirit with them. They do not nurture the true and good. They will not succor the middle class, or any other class. They will work only until there is nothing left to steal, no force left untried, and no lie still believed.
And on that note, I take my leave. I will leave Revolutionary Nonsense fallow for a few weeks, but will return by Labor Day at the latest. Enjoy the the Dog-Days.
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