Doin’ the Cheney-Thing

R. B. Cheney and T. L. Friedman are undeniably two peas in the same onepercenterly pod, both located at the rich-out-of-sight end of the income and wealth distribution. Some speak of "the Herrnstein-Murray Curve," although they may be asking for litigation about patents and trademarks and the like when they do.

However the T. L. Friedman specimen, for purposes of this morning's fifteen-minute ideological zig--or, as the case may be, sentimental zag--sets up to be a traitor to its curve, as it were, a stance which is as curious as it is unimportant. By tomorrow morning, it (the TLF specimen) may be safely back inside Wingnut City with all that gated communitys many community gates securely bolted behind it. [1]

Anyhow, today it has chosen to stumble leftwards a little, possibly annoying Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney, though more probably not. His Omniexecutivity is far from bein’ Mr. Nice Guy, but he is also no dummy and has probably long since written the TLF thingee off as beneath adult attention. Or perhaps decided that it "knows in its heart", à la B. Goldwater, that neoreaction must necessarily be THE wave of the future.

In order to (even pretend to) be bratty, it has to work up some minimal sort of RBC/TLF compare-and-contrast exercise, some superficial distinction of icin’s externally laid onto the same basic cake-mix product. The specimen welcomes its opportunity, it seems to me, for it could well be sniggerin’ to itself about how elegantly its latest fifteen-minuteman shtyk about foreign and native-management policy fits into the rhetorical ploy du jour: the specimen quite agrees with Lord Undisclosure that relyin’ on one-percent probabilities can, on special occasions and under certain specific circumstances, be an admirable guide to speculation at the Grand Casino of Human Events.

It then goes on to rib His Omniexecutivity for not noticin’ that AGW, anthropogenic global warmin’, affords one of these occasions. It does not expressly mention that (for about the last thirteen-and-a-half minutes straight) it has considered that Viceroy Cheney and his Boy and his Dynasty and his Party and his AEIdeology were, after all, quite right to agress their way into the Brave New Afghanistan and the future former al-‘Iráq on the basis of onepercenterly speculations. [2] "Better safe than sorry," don't you see?

Herr Prof. Dr. C. von Sunstein--who, incidentally, looks very like a recent TLF lunchmate and plunderee--tarts that preowned old saw and trite apophthegm up as (ta-DAH!) a "Precautionary Principle." The grown-up reasons to have reservations about that up-tartin’ could probably be discussed with Prof. Sunnstein, who may not even endorse the Afghan and Iraqi neo-aggressions. Almost certainly, the distinguished shyster and tertiary educationaliser will be a serious environmentalist, and therefore not really on either the TLF or the RBC wavelength. TLF is utterly unserioius, and RBC utterly ungreen. Antigreen, even, is Lord Undisclosure.

Our Warholian jackdaw picks up the professor's gaudy bead and then . . . well, why be surprised that what happens then is far more jackadawsical than perfesserly? The TLF specimen is not actually gamblin’ about global temperatures and climatic disasters here. Close examination will reveal that it is chiefly bettin’ that maybe those overzealous subordinates at East Anglia U. were guilty much as Foxcuckooland and Rio Limbaugh charge: Master Friedman’s effective 99 percent probability is not that AGW will produce consequences not altogether intolerable, which must be what C. Sunnstein originally meant, but rather that AGW ain’t happenin’ at all -- just like Citizen Rush says!

And just like Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney can be very easily conjectured to agree!!

So the jackdaw is a sort of unexpected twofer or daily double for Lord Undisclosure: not only does the silly NYTC bird tacitly agree with Cheney (and with Cheney's Boy / Dynasty / Party / Ideology) about the good guys aggressin’, it tacitly agrees about the bad guys hoaxin’ as well!!!

Compared with these substantive Wonders of Wingnuttism, it must seem very small potatoes to Lord Undisclosure that little Tommy Wobble, and for that matter, Prof. Dr. Sunstein, agree with his lordship (and with B-D-P-I) about the soundness of selected one-precenterly speculations in lotteries and at casinos.

Croaks the jackdaw, on the formal side[3]:

When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is “irreversible” and potentially “catastrophic,” I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.

It might be fun to look at Master Tommy Wobble’s real-life insurance portfolio: it has such an inflat such an exalted notion of its own self-wunnerfulness that it probably ought to have taken out several billion dollars of term life insurance with its Uncle Sam the beneficiary, "in case somethin’ happens." But I betcha it hasn't actually.

Healthy days.

___
[1] The nifty Friedmanite wobbles and ficklenesses seem to depend on exactly whom it ate lunch with most recently, although perhaps its dinner companions matter sometimes as well.


[2] Did the specimen perhaps even call up His Omniexecutivity to assure him that it is all in fun, really, so don't get made and cancel that next lunch appointment? Father Zeus knows best!


[3] Big Management Party Neocomrade R. B. Cheney and jackdaw Th. L. Friedman are, of course, mistaken to superordinate Matter over Form, in this case or in any other. Not bein’ bright enough to be sound Aristotelians, naturally ‘formal’ and ‘formalism’ are perjoratives for them, as for all holy-Homelanders™ beneath a rather high plateau of semi-demi-education. And Father Zeus knows best.

Why Do THEY Hate ‘Us’? (Chapter MXCVI)

Major S. of the NSDP, Neusemitische D*nkpolizei, [1] naturally has occasion to concern himself with the Extreme West as well as with ultrasuezian [2] phaenomena. Not a whole lot of occasion, presumably, but nevertheless, once in a while. And what could be extreme-westerner than Paddy and me? I ask thee, Dr. Bones! Paddy and me and the fiend Alistair Crooke?

Alastair Crooke has always lived between worlds. He was born in Ireland, [3] and from age 12, his parents let him attend an experimental school in Switzerland run by an Englishman named John Collette. While he chose the school for its proximity to the ski slopes, he also picked up some of Collette's antipathy toward conventional Western thought. Crooke eschewed religious services, but "instead of being sort of sent off to watch television or something like that, they made you sit down with either an Imam or a Hindu scholar, or some visiting person, to challenge you," he recalls. Collette "was explicit in saying, 'Well, the effort is to break the hold of Western thinking on you.'"

Notice how the good Neocomrade Major begins by tacitly equatin’ "conventional Western thought" or "Western thinking" with "religious services." Having noticed, reflect that he is beginnin’ a Party-’n’-Ideology scribble that must come--ostensibly and backhandedly, at least--to the defence of M. Descartes. I shall subtract seven (7) points from the candidate’s score (on a scale of one thousand) for that minor-to-minimal boo-boo. How about thee?

Such a slip as that is no big deal in itself, obviously, yet it does misdirect the attention of actual dupes and potential marks the wrong way to make WS, Western Sieve™[alisation], out a matter of overt self-religionatin’. I speak of that particular class of dupes and marks that Neocomrade Major S. is takin’ aim at here, a comparatively advanced class whose entrance requirement, so to speak, must include havin’ some inklin’ who M. Descartes was and why most tertiary educationisers of the former Christojudæandom consider M. Descartes to have been quite important in the development of the Western Sieve™ product. [4]

With no-’count trailer-trash dupes ’n’ marks, that pretended affection for religionism does no harm, though it is so patently insincere in most cases that I wonder the top-drawer neocomrades up at Castle Podhóretz persist in it so stubbornly. If EmperorJohn and Princess Neoterica and the whole Neukaiserhof, even down the totem pole as far as Major S. here, do not understand that the neoservants are well aware that their neomasters consider religionism a matter best left to servants as far as actually practicin’ any of it -- well, maybe "top-drawer" isn’t as far from the mudsills as it used to be.

Still, to figure out what Massa really thinks about what Cuffee really thinks of Massa is not as easy as it looks. Allow me to recommend Mr. Freehling, sir, on this problem in its 1776-1861 Dixieland form if I have not done so already. Plus ça change . . . .

Healthy days!

---

[1] Thee may call it "Holy Hasbara" for short if thee please, Dr. Bones.

Spoofing the manner of the more narcisisistic breed of Hebrew-Christojudaean religionists is only a secondary function of the McAsterisk du jour. Much more important is that one definitely means Dankpolizei as well as Denkpolizei. Rather more so, in fact, for the whole purpose of this nifty and first-rate slice of agitprop is to reprehend Die Undankbarkeit des Westens: the sheer ingratitude of all those silly dhimmí muddleheads too blind to see, or too perverse to admit, that the cause of Jewish Statism is the cause of us all.

Nay, make that "The Cause of US ALL!" please, sir, if thee would!




[2] "Cissuezian" ("Cis-suezian"? "CisSuezian"? "cissuezite"?) in Telavîvestán, that would be, of course. Come to think of it, though, I betcha Major S. doesn't go near T.A. and P.A. himself personally, except conceivably for vacation purposes.

Meanwhile I really wish there were some standard Dead Latin form of Suez, remote enough to be toney and upmarket and fake-neoreactionary, yet not blankly unintelligible like "Complutensian" for "pertaining to Alcalá de Henares," which latter is the sort of monnicker that a knower would have to really know some serious knowledges about Old Europe to feel comfortable with.

Far more than a Major S. can ask of his dupes, or reasonably anticipate from his marks, would another "Complutensian" be! But Father Zeus knows best.


[3] A full stop right there replacing the rest of the paragraph would have a good deal to say for itself, I think. To be sure, it would have comparatively little to say about the fiend Crooke.


[4] More properly put, in "the intellectual history of Europe," for the language of congenital subalterns, lingua dhimmitudinis, lishôn haggoyîm, better befits fans of M. Descartes, than our neobetters’ peculiar Parteichinesisch. For us backward and miserable, Cartesianism was never "a product" in anything much like the the neogentry’s chicagonomische Weltanschauung. It was, though, and still remains, at least a visible object to us, unlike Western Sieve™.

The latter neopartisanism reminds me, Dr. Bones, of an occasion I have mentioned to thee before. The present keyboard was standing in front of Apley Court gazing up (perhaps) at the ever-memorable neo-architecture of Holyoke Saunter . . . and then some earnest tourist wanted to know, "Where’s H*rv*rd?"

Unfortunately I had not the presence of mind to reply as one of the alumnuses of the fiend Colette presumably would have, "H*rv*rd, sir, is a state of mind rather than anything crude and material. Why, H*rv*rd is all around you even as we speak!"

. . . Well, I do see thee's point, Bones. The really existin’ H*rv*rd undeniably bears a good deal of resemblance to a chicagonomical/Hyperzionistical ‘product’ -- lots and lots of Vice Presidents for Development, for example. And that relentless determination to monopolise the profits of one’s self-brandin’.

BFZKB.

"Where dost thou run off to, O song?"

"I have a very bad feeling. I sense that if Barack Obama gets his way, backed by the most corrupt political party in living memory and reinforced by a seditious and cheerleading media, America will have been transformed beyond recognition as it limps into the sunset of its days."

(( Thee will not mind, I hope, Dr. Bones, if I park this vehicle here? In the abbreviated form I posted at the pajamatarians, it is scarcely intelligible. ))

Why on G-re’s green earth should a "Canadian poet and essayist" get misty-eyed if the Heimatland Gottes *does* have to sing a few verses of St. Rudyard’s "Recessional" for a change? That "Hope N. Glory" ditty of St. Edward the Less gets dreadfully tiresome when one must listen to it and nothin’ else almost every wakin’ minute of every day.[0]

Kennebunkport-Crawford’s extremity ought to be Hyperborea’s opportunity! [1] Exsurge, Ottawa!!

And, speakin’ of cheerleadin’, 

"Two, four, six, eight
 Whom do we appreciate?
    Solway!
      SOLWAY!!
         sol-WAAAAAAAAAAY!!!"

Flavour with "soulway" and "sole way" to taste -- and remember to shake well before slurpin’ it down!

Healthy days.

__
[0] One writes merrily, but nevertheless their endless wallowin’ in self-congratulation and self-exceptionalism and self-exceptionality and . . . really IS the worst single fault of wingnutettes and wingnuts and wombscholars and downdumbees. And even Kiddie Konservative ‘intellectual’ señoritos like this one


[1] ’Tis also a possible fresh start for Hyperzion, which we low-minded are bound to suspect is probably rather more to the point when far-fetched neocomrades like D. S. start hectorin’ New Yanks and Old Euros about "the West per se."

In any case, if the Neocomrade D. Solway product were really what it is labelled as, echt Qannádisch, ought it not be lamentin’ the Suicide of the South rather than keep harpin’ away at that previously owned lyre of Dr. Spengler? Ozzies’s OK, maybe, but alas! he can get quite as taedious as Lord Elgar.

A change of tune (or wind direction) might cheer us all up, and the DS product can almost certainly find itself a template to versify from somewhere in the Hispaniolated and countrereformed provinces of Italy in Century XI/XVII or XII/XVIII or XIII/XIX. "What life, what culture, now that Torquato Tasso is gone? Will the Muses ever return to Capua and Giudecca like the swallows to Capistrano CA and the buzzards to Hinckley OH?"

Indeed, why not spare Mr. McCloskey’s silly prosings and let’s smoke a little of the real thing? ’Tis a cinch to have the pet google go fetch such stichs nowadays:

    "O credenti in Christe,
Voi che d’Europa il fren tenete, aiuto,
Aiuto e pace a quelle sacre rive
Donde l’arte gentili il mondo ha tratte;
Non sien dagli empì [*] fatte
Vasta tomba d’eroi,
E più nobile in terra, e giusto e santo!

    "Canzon, dove trascorri?
Ahi!  da funesti errori
O da vani timori
Pietà prende consiglio, e indugia, e langue:
Intanto piove l’innocente sangue."

   --Marchetti, G., URL cit.,  p. 17.

[*] I believe that one would be impii (with paenultimate stress) in slightly earlier Late Latin. But Father Zeus knows best.

Sounds kinda like just yesterday in the neo-Levant, nicht wahr?

Yet the titleswipe is dated [A.D.] 1857 (== 1273 == 5618) -- and why would anybody want to forge it?

Though the poor fellow’s rime lamentabili survive, just barely, yet my little Gugghi has trouble finding his natal or obituary date, which suggests that his coprovincials don’t find the Rime e Prose del Conte Giovanni Marchetti a serious threat to the ditto of D. Aligheri.

How sua excellenza compares to the D. Solway product, on the other hand, I suppose one could ascertain if one absolutely had to.

Should some pajamatarian suffer from a really trashy taste in Dhimmí Lit., she will probably enjoy how the googlecyclists render the above gemma preziosa di Parnasso into New High HolyHomelandic.

La question de l’existence de la postérité

Let's have something pretentious, for a change, Dr. Bones, shall we?

Almost any passage in Senator Kerry's native lingo ought to do the trick, and this one happens to fit in with a couple of recent schoolboly scribbles in the holy Homeland's Fishwrap of Record :

À Diderot pour qui l’artiste est mû par l’amour de la postérité, s’oppose un Falconet pour qui la postérité n’existe pas. Et si l’on considère que la postérité d’une œuvre d’art commence avec sa réception, alors pour Diderot la création artistique est un acte d’amour pour le public des lecteurs spectateurs ou auditeurs, alors que pour Falconet l’artiste est seul et ne crée pour personne. En définitive, à travers la question de l’existence de la postérité c’est celle de la réception des œuvres qui est posée : pour Falconet l’œuvre d’art est sans réception.

Meanwhile, back at the NYTC, this morning's schoolboy, call him (Tweedle) ‘Dee’, is all agog to worm his way into Princess Posterity's good opinion. Master Dee's plan to that end goes like this

The Wrong Side of History Critics storm that health care reform is “a cruel hoax and a delusion.” Ads in 100 newspapers thunder that reform would mean “the beginning of socialized medicine.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page predicts that the legislation will lead to “deteriorating service.” Business groups warn that Washington bureaucrats will invade “the privacy of the examination room,” that we are on the road to rationed care and that patients will lose the “freedom to choose their own doctor.” All dire — but . . . . . . . John Taber, a Republican representative from New York, went further and said of Social Security: “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed as to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers.” In hindsight, it seems a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it? ... Similar[ly], ferocious hyperbole was unleashed on the proposal for Medicare. President John Kennedy and later President Lyndon Johnson pushed for a government health program for the elderly, but conservatives bitterly denounced the proposal as socialism, as a plan for bureaucrats to make medical decisions, as a means to ration health care.

That's enough to indicate in which direction Master Dee’s crystal ball considers the Absolute, bless Its heart!, to be self-developing just at the moment. But we had better have the laddie's peroration, whwewrin it turns out that he does not insist that Princess Posterity admire ALL of us:

It’s now broadly apparent that those who opposed Social Security in 1935 and Medicare in 1965 were wrong in their fears and tried to obstruct a historical tide. This year, the fate of health care will come down to a handful of members of Congress, including Senators Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu. If they flinch and health reform fails, they’ll be letting down their country at a crucial juncture. They’ll be on the wrong side of history.

The Muses and thee and me must already be in like Flynn, then, for *we* are most assuredly neither blue dogs nor egomaniac Hyperzionisers! And it sure looks as if Master Dee abandons the red-state goats to Her Highness's displeasure not only tout court but also en masse. Why, there is not even the briefest ejaculation for the salvation of Neocomrade Senatrix O. Snow of ME!

It is unguessable exactly what scraps of Homelandic lore a jackdaw like Master Dee may have picked up, but pretty clearly "We’ll ALL [emph. add.] go to Glory when we go" is not likely to catch his roaming eye. Indeed, an absence (or severe shortage) of militant extremist Republican partisans could easily be part of Master Dee’s undisclosed criteria for ascertaining which side of History is to be labeled ‘right’.

Which leads to the greatest deficiency of the effusion at hand, which its not its uncharitableness, but its cocksureness about what Princess Posterity wants from us humble who are now active in the world. When it comes to knowing for sure what Her Highness wanted from ‘us’ fifty years ago, Master Dee has but to look in his heart and write. For of course Master Dee is somebody's posterity himself -- I trust the poor clueless critters honoured their Judex Venturus properly in advance! But when it comes to la postérité considered as what the bozos of Chicagonomics might call "a demand-side commodity," well, who knows? Why on Gores's green earth should anybody suppose that Master Dee knows?

I presume those in the reactionary community too near senility to have been properly wombschooled and neo-downdumbed and chicagoficated will point out with glee that the Lenin-Gorbachev Racket, R.I.P., was very fond of defending itself in Dee-like terms. To be sure, the Bolsheviki had inherited a vast epic of historiosophy to that effect on a silver platter, high-quality mitteleuropäische Romantik, good stuff that a crude and practical Slavic mob of workers and peasants would never in a dozen centuries have made up for themselves, but which they never could bring themselves to part with voluntarily. Palaeocomrade I. Suslov and Neocomrade F. Fukuyama need hardly be distinguished by those who consider it vain to anticipate Her Highness's privy judgments.

Which brings us to schoolboy number two, (Tweedle) Dumb. Master Dumb is, of all things, an avowed flat-earther! Also a shameless charlatan, as one glance at the facial hair establishes. But like his colleague kiddie, Master Dumb scribbles as if he has received a pre-publication copy of The Secret History of Times To Come. Especially fun is that the gruesome twosome do not often seem to be talking about the same book.[1]


Healthy days!

___
[1] It would offend against the very Zeitgeist of the NYTC parlour game if I were to pay more attention to yesterday's neomasterwork than today's. Nevertheless, it should be pointed out that none of Master Dumb's opinions are his own, they all come from somebody celebrated or self-celebritorious with whom Dumb had lunch a couple of days ago.

Master Dee is, I presume, a jackdaw by nature and by inadequate education: the poor lad just can't help himself. Master Dumb, though, jackdaws it on purpose. "With malice aforethought," even, he jackdaws it. (Yuck!)

But watch thee's step, Dr. Bones, hereabouts. Though yuckworthy, would it be at all amazing if the authentic Secret History of Times to Come turns out rather like an abandoned outhouse full of faded fishwrap cuttings from some long-forgotten "Thomas L. Friedman"? As St. Jack said somewhere, we would all wish Life to be tragic if it can't be what we really want.

Yet with ruthless disregard of what we want, Life the Unfair is perfectly capable of being an indecorous mess. Who knows, sir? By 2059, Princess Posterity may have been, as it were, altzheimerated into the spittin’ image of Little Tommy Wobble with the big moustache. Her Highness's Court annalists will, accordingly, keep comin’ up with ten new and completely contradictory secret histories of How We Got to Where We Are annually, not counting the bonus selections. My latest health insurance coverage will be good from 1430 to 1700 hours on alternate Thursdays. As long as there is nothing seriously wrong with me, naturally . . . .

"but a child when he reflects" (Part XLII)

What all this [1] shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

That’s the latest Paul Krugman Byronism, Dr. Bones, and it strikes me as well below the usual standard of departmental infantility. If he were talking about economics, I betcha he could think of at least forty-seven intermediate stages between toney Von Kantor Herrenfolk exploitin’ wonbschooled plebeian Limbaughs in one direction and, looking the other way, the loony proles havin' "taken over" the Party of Grant and Hoover from their betters lock, stock ’n’ bazooka.

It seems plain enough that Freiherr von Kantor and the other officially billed Parteiführer present for Thursday's entertainment were only panderin’ to their internal proletariat. And the bigwigs were panderin' on a thoroughly voluntary basis: nobody from amongst the GOP base ’n’ vile was holdin’ a Kalashnikov to the heads of the country-club gentry -- or even threatenin’ ’em very plausibly with nonreëlection. All those apoplectic-lookin’ jowls in business suits could have spent the afternoon clippin’ coupons over at the Union League Club [2] and not be detectably the worse off for it back in their districts.

Assistance at such an event indicates an extreme deficiency of good taste, the sort of bad taste that one might expect of militant extremist Republicaniacs. But after all, these neo-aristos are militant extremist Republicaniacs. So that's all right.

Though it better fun to ridicule the jowl-challenged, it is rather Prof. Krugman that I want to discuss at the moment, Dr. Bones. How can he manage to be so totally a child about politics as to fancy that the comparatively respectable organised forces of TopPercenterdom (a.k.a. "Big Management") have just been defeated by their own Kiddie Konservative pond scum, when it would be far less peculiar to claim the contrary? The only scoundrel-party pol whom P.K. mentions politically is Neukamerad Herr Prof. Dr. Speaker N. Gingrich

At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York’s special Congressional election.

Thee will be noticing, though, Dr. Bones, that the advice of N. Gingrich was good advice, not to mention that the victorious reactionaries in New Jersey and Virginia were not exactly representatives of the Weinstein-Savage wing of Kiddie Konservatism. I have no idea what Big Party Neocomrade N. Gingrich is thinkin’ at the moment, but it would not be a miracle if he thought he had done pretty well.

As I said, only the Newtster gets dragged into Dr. Krugman's potage du jour really politically. Neukamerad Freiherr E. von Kantor is mentioned, but only because of his implication in the Z-Street Demographic (Pat. Pend.), good folks amongst whom the LeoStraussian argumentum ad Hitlerum is, or at any rate ought to be, deployed with extreme prudence and careful targeting.

Of course a Hitler-Hyperzion nexus, whether sincerely imaginary or maliciously obtruded, is ‘political’ in a vague and general sense, but it is not grossparteipolitisch in the provinces of central North America, still less kleinparteipolitisch inside the ranks of Goldwaterites and Atwaterites and Gingrichoids and dittoloons.

At this point Prof. Krugman does, perhaps, come close to thinking politically a little, but alas! what he approximates to is the very bottom of the neocomradely barrel. He appears to be pretending in this piece that decerebrated Kiddie Konservatives "are all like that," i.e., all bigoted enemies of specifically Hebrew Christojudaeanity. Unlike the bejowled country-clubbers, that is, for they are surely (?) the Tel Avîv statelet's last and best (and whitest) hope.

Cuius contrarium est verum is the main trouble with that bologna. Big Management country-clubbers won't be caught dead usin’ the blessèd and mysterious word Shô’â in vain, but when it comes to ad rem, they are no more reliable, from a chauvinist Telavîvestání point view, than the Big Management Party base ’n’ vile are. The country-clubbers may even be less reliable, insofar as the dittoloons are most unlikely ever to have a chance to profit financially from sellin’ Jewish Statism down the river. Whereas . . . .

But I beg thee's pardon, Dr. Bones! I should not be going on at that level of neo-Levantine analysis because Prof. Krugman is nowhere near it. He just wants to have his Dachau (their Dachau?) to tar the dark pullulatin’ mass of wingnutettes and wingnuts with -- like 99.44% of the wombscholars and Niedergedümmte whom Krugman has in mind to besmirch, "anti-Semitism" is the worst (the least respectable) no-no that he can think of off-hand. (And if he thought for thirty minutes, maybe he still wouldn't find anything less toney or more obnoxious.)

"Anti-Semitism" is so convenient a stinkfruit to lob that few of the lobbers pay much attention to whether they are strictly speaking justified in deploying such sentimental-ideological weaponry. In the long run, this insouciance is bound to reduce the efficacy of this all but nuke-you-larry rhetorical weapon, but unfortunately the long run has not quite arrived yet.

Meanwhile, one can more or less say "Krugman is acting no better than militant extremist Republicaniacs act." I grant that Dachau abuse and bad Adolf analogies are entirely political in every sense here in our holy Homeland™ -- so thee sees, Dr. Bones, that the Sage of Mammon can do what everybody in these parts can only call ‘politics’.

Yet a grumbler may grumble, "How one wishes that Comrade Krugman were able to do good politics as well as bad! That he could do all politics well, even!"

It may be a silver lining to the cloud, or only an inadvertance, that our analyst overlooked the signbearer or signbearers at Freiherr von Kantor's Party's little human event who skipped the NSDAP and went straight for the economic jugular:

That was the main difference between the 9/12 protests and Thursday's rally. While congressional Republicans largely responded to the September event, they spearheaded this one. Boehner stood alongside Jon Voight as he called Obama a liar and propagandist. (There were no calls for a Joe Wilson-style apology.) Cantor stood there while protesters raised signs suggesting that Obama "takes his orders from the Rothschilds," the family that was once central to theories of Jewish world dominance.

While we are picking on our own good-guy analyst Krugman, Dr. Bones, we may spare a drop of vinegar or two for Mr. Christopher Beam at Slate, who evidently can't see the nose in front of his face. It sure sounds from what her writes himself as if the Rothschilds are as central as ever over in the Charles Marie Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy Square district of Wingnut City. That old-fashioned quarter is losin’ population as a whole, no doubt, as young loons and neoloons of all ages move out to suburbs like Rio Limbaugh and Port St. Lucie, or maybe to beautiful downtown Hooverville. Yet as long as the district continues to be inhabited at all, that splendiferous equestrian statue of St. George slayin’ Baron James de R. must stand at its very saunter.

Anybody who scribbles for a living the way Mr. Beam presumably does ought to be able to appreciate that signwavers eccentrically affiliated to the Party of Wisdom and Virtue (LLC) can speak of "Rothschilds" figuratively or generically, without knowin' or carin' whether Meyer Amstel's DNA has gone extinct, or whether, if it survives, those afflicted by it still own anythin’ worth dhimmí wignutettes and wingnuts moanin’ about.

To be sure, the wombscholars in question would have done better, probably, to pick on M. de Soros or the like, some rootless cosmoplutocrat still alive and well and rakin’ in the shekels. But Father Zeus knows best about wombscholars.

Healthy days.


___
[1]

... a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation ... large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare" ... grotesque ...ominous ... wasn’t a fringe event ... billed as a G.O.P. press conference .... [Partei-Neukamerad E. von K]antor criticism after the fact: the signs were 'inappropriate' and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as ... conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful."

[2] My notions of what our apoplectically complected and well-bejowled classes like to do for fun and profit are probably a few decades out of date. For instance, is there a Union League Club at Washin’ton City?

Yet it is great fun to guess about such things from outside the barbed wire strung around the elephant graveyard! What can the Big-Managerial neocomrades be up to, deep inside their Gated Community?

Maybe, for instance, Von Kantor and his ideobuddies shoulda been at a prayer luncheon with Neocomrade Th. J. Donohue of The White Chamber ? Political Capitalism of the traditional TopPercenterly sort could sure do with a little boost from Father Zeus and Aunt Astarte at the moment, results from VA and NJ notwithstanding.

Mais que sçay-je?

"O.K., folks, this is it"

Prof. Krugman reflects like a child when he gets away from economics, Dr. Bones. The Muses and thee and I have long agreed about that.

On the other hand, some human events are so obvious that even Nobel Prize kiddies can scarcely avoid noticing them:

O.K., folks, this is it. It’s the defining moment for health care reform. Past efforts to give Americans what citizens of every other advanced nation already have — guaranteed access to essential care — have ended not with a bang, but with a whimper, usually dying in committee without ever making it to a vote. But this time, ....

... and so forth, and so on down to

... each player has to decide whether he or she is going to help it across the finish line or stand in its way.

At that point, P.K. has to start talking about the players a little to analyze the state of play, and quality lapses accordingly.

Is it acceptable that Krugmanite analysis should treat the Party of ¡JUST VOTE NO! as if they were invaders from neo-Mars, extraterrestrial critters with secret-sectorian motivations of Endarkenment inscrutable to merely human(e) criticism and philosophy. There exists no a priori political reason why our neo-Martian factions should want earthie scum to be particularly healthy, after all. Economically considered, however, I should think there is quite a strong case for guessing in advance that they'd much prefer their earthies poor and sick -- less competition for the lottery-winnin’ classes, don't you know?

Well, of course thee knows, Dr. Bones, the question du jour is what Prof. Krugman knoweth about militant extremist Republicaniacs. And there is no telling how much that may be when he has no more to say than this:

For conservatives, of course, it’s an easy decision: they don’t want Americans to have universal coverage, and they don’t want President Obama to succeed.

That oracle is especially remarkable insofar as its Sybil plainly agrees with us about the neo-Martians wantin’ to keep the unwashed earthie hordes at a permanent medical disadvantage if they possibly can. Not ,many pundits are willing to be that rude about Foxcuckooland, after all.

But that is just the trouble with it, considered as political exegesis. The fact that scarcely anybody else says such nasty things about the Party of Wisdom and Virtue and Goldwater and Atwater by itself brings a sort of obligation, I should think, to explain why such harsh sayings are necessary. But Prof. K. does not think like that, obviously! He feels that he can toss out "conservatives ... don’t want Americans to have universal coverage" as if this were one of Miss Austen's truths universally acknowledged, as uncontroversial as Natural Selection or twice two being four.

Anyway, there it is: Prof. Krugman certainly does have the Republicaniacs’ number down right, even if there is no clue how he calculated it.

As he moves away from America's Otherparty, he becomes more reflective, or at any rate longer-winded. Part of the wind is wasted, as I account it, on a pretty much imaginary Threat from the Left:

There are still some reform advocates who won’t accept anything short of a full transition to Medicare for all as opposed to a hybrid, compromise system that relies heavily on private insurers. And even those who have reconciled themselves to the political realities are disappointed that the bill doesn’t include a “strong” public option, with payment rates linked to those set by Medicare.

Thee will see, Dr. Bones, that Prof. Krugman is here in violation of the Kirkegaardian Imperative: is he attempting to describe these purist comrades’ position, or is he prescribing for their supposed ‘disappointment’? Plainly both -- and neither gets done very well.

Plus Paul Krugman pointing to "political realities" remains eternally on a par with Lord Byron doing metaphysics and rocket science. [1] Caveat emptor.

Since none of this is what an adult analyst would call ‘analysis’ with a straight face, there is no reason to be surprised when it degenerates into a two-pronged _ad hominem_ offensive against Neocomrade Senator J. Lieberman (I-CT) and Neocomrade F. Hiatt (R-Fox on 15th Street). Such a diatribe is far too narrow to prove anything, but at least this one is fun to read -- and no worse than the twin self-servicers have comin’ to ’em.

The trouble is that before getting down to the fun part the professor solemnly suggests that these two swallows or buzzards represent some sort of organized summer, a "group ... that, while its members are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of passing health care reform, the’re having a hard time explaining exactly what their problem is." [2]

If one were to start with the child's ‘group’ rather than with its gruesome twosome, one might make something of that as political analysis. Unfortunately neocomrades of, and fellow-travellers with, the Party of Big management, specimens like J. Lieberman and F. Hiatt, would not belong to the analytically plausible group. Good typical folks who "are clearly uncomfortable with the idea of passing health care reform" simply say nothin’ about it, as why on earth should they say anythin’? If they luck out, the Wingnutticans will manage to defeat it, and yet they themselves, the good typicals, won't be on record as actually havin' said anythin’ rude about their socio-economico-educationalistico inferiors. And obviously they will also better placed that way if perchance the repulsive obamanation does somehow slip through the neo-Martian mesh and get enacted. [3]

Holy Joe of Hartford and NeoEditor Freddie of F-15 come trailin' long paper chains behind ’em, as by their respective professions they necessarily must. To make those two neocomrades poster boys for the Buzzards of Silence crew is absurd analytically.













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[1] To specify the puerility: our wannabe analyst has overlooked the pretty obvious point that this doctrinaire factionette does not exist in the Senate or the House of Representatives, and thus can scarcely affect the outcome at this late stage of the match.

But it's possible, I guess, that the child is really just apologizing to a person or persons unnamed who (very unreasonably) expected it to adopt an attitude like "I am disappointed! This bill is utterly unacceptable!! Harrrrrrrrrrrr-UMPH!!!"


[2] There is no way to save the grammatical appearances there, I think, with or without recasting it for use in Mr. McCloskey's sentence rather than in Dr. Krugman's. Oh, well: transit [sic] gloria mundi . . . .


[3] Though not very useful as is, the kiddie account does have the peripheral merit of directing one's attention to what comes next -- at least, it directed my attention that way. Though to be sure I was out looking for deficiencies in the P. Krugman product line at the time.

Among the things the child has overlooked is how the Party of Grant and Hoover (and Wisdom and Virtue) will have placed itself permanently at odds with ‘America’ if the damn thing does pass. Especially if ‘America’ were to decide -- Father Zeus forfend so awful an outcome! -- "passing health care reform" has been quite a success and are happy that ‘we’ did it back in '09.

Under the circumstances, the neo-Martians will have not a prayer of grabbin’ credit for it themselves. They have made their bad attitude perfectly clear to everybody except possibly Neocomradess Senator O. Snowe of ME. (Why, even Prof. Krugman got it right!)

It follows that all the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom, the whole Party pack of Goldwaterites and Atwateroids, cannot possibly leave it alone afterwards. They must do everythin’ they possibly can to sabotage it. "In mere self-defense," they would say.

One cannot fairly say that Foxcuckooland and the Wall Street Jingo "will go nuts," for of course that has happened already. But doubtless whole new vistas of militant extremist wingnuttiness will open before us on a regular basis until the neo-Martians either manage to discredit and nullify the whole affair or else arrive at a point where ‘America’ despises them for continuin’ to try to take it away, thus making further perseverance in preachin’ vicarious rugged individualism an absolutely unmistakable route to the elephant graveyard.

The closest thing to it in the annals of the holy Homeland™ is, I take it, the so-called Civil-Rights Movement, and that is not very close. The Foxies and the Jingos have no trouble stealin’ a lot of the anti-segregation credit for their Party of Big Management. And it is not even all stealin', since St. Ike and Mr. Chief Justice Warren and the rest of the "l*b*r*l Republicans" that have been subsequently flushed out of the Big Party like so many used contraceptives to make more elbow-room for Goldwaterites and Atwateroids were authentically anti-segregationist.

But the biggest difference is not that on this occasion the ranks of the neo-Martians are monolithic, but rather the identity of the beneficiaries. Very few of those who have personally benefited from "civil rights" have ever felt strongly tempted to vote for Republicaniac candidates. But if "the idea of passing health care reform" were ever to achieve the general respectability that still attaches--despite all the heroic efforts of Foxcuckooland!--to Medicare and Social Security, why, neo-Martian politics would at once become almost impossible.

The GOP geniuses and certain layers of their Party base ’n’ vile could still wish that their own voters died young and thus got out of the way of their predestined betters, but they could not possibly say so out loud. Unless democracy and liberalism and the party of America are destroyed by some extraneous force not yet visible at all, that will be no more a possible politics in 2028 than it was in 1828, when the League of Lottery Winners first ran into General Jackson of New Orleans and Mr. Van Buren of New York.

"They just aren't smart enough to recognize it"

(( Once again, Dr. Bones, I have decided to store my supposed pearls here rather than cast them before possibly unappreciative swine over yonder )).

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It is not helpful for analytical purposes, I think, to take so peculiar a specimen as little Tommy Wobble with the big moustache [1] as the representative of a class, as typical of anything or anybody much beyond the specimen itself.

To be sure, as an outrageous instance of what it *means* to be grossly overrewarded for being decidedly undertalented, TLF will do nicely. But I think we all have an adequate notion of that syndrome in advance and do not absolutely require invidious particular examples. Fun though they always are.

Considered as a class, economic or moralistic, protected "movers and shakers with real initiative" are not likely to recognize themselves in a creature that seems to have no initiative of its own, but merely rehashes the views of whomever it last had lunch with at the Union League Club or the Chamber of Protectionism. (Or the local equivalent thereof at whatever capital city of capita..., of globalism, I mean, Tommy jetted to last.)

Often the jackdaw makes plain who he is swiping the ideas in ‘his’ New York Times Company column this morning -- hi there, Mister Lawrence Katz of H*rv*rd! -- but quite often he doesn't.

It would be handy for Dean Baker's argument (Prosecutor Baker’s indictment?) if it could be shown that little Tommy F. always drops the names of the seven-to-twenty-digit Manhattanite or Ivy League overcompensateds when they are allowed to do his thinking for him, but hushes up mere five-and-six digiteers from, say, Bangalore or Xiamen. Although I suspect this is more or less the case, and although it is probably a sort of case widespread out there in overcompensated-mover-and-shakerdom, Mr. Friedman can always fall back with some plausibility on a ‘journalistic’ excuse about not troubling his corporation's customers with too many names that they never heard of before.

Run-of-the-mill protecteds and overcompensateds have no need to make any sort of public disclosures at all, at least not before they take to it on their defense attorneys’ advice. Whereas if we humble did not hear from T. L. Friedman fairly regularly, why, even the _Times_ might begin to wonder about that salary of his.



Moving on to the gloomy Dean's general conclusion,

"Th[is fairy] story of the elites doing well in the global economy is not one about their education and savvy, it's about protectionism. They just aren't smart enough to recognize it,"

I wonder if ‘protectionism’ is the exact right word for what is going on. For what has _always_ been going on in the world. The good folks who are OnePercenters already much prefer that that the OnePercenters of tomorrow should look more or less like themselves. To call such commonplace human self-preferencing ‘protectionism’ instead of, say, _peccatum originale_ makes it out a good deal more specifically economic and legal and indeed, conscious and deliberate, than it really is.

I don't think it is altogether accidental that our preacher wanders off into an unsatisfactory by-way in which he admits that the ascendancy of our own local OnePercenterdom is not primarily a matter of laws and law enforcement: "Maybe no one enforces the [‘prevailing wage’] law today, but there is no guarantee that it won't be enforced tomorrow."

No *guarantee* against enforcement, to be sure, yet few things are less likely to actually happen. If the likes of T. L. Friedman were, collectively, in any serious danger of law enforcement they would already have lost their ascendancy. They would then be in the position of the French First- and Second-Estaters of about 1788, their doom irrevocably decreed even if not yet executed upon them.

But that is a fantastic idea, or looks fantastic to me at least. Surely Friedman, Rove, Cheney & Associates. are quite as securely _legibus solutus_ as ever? Not each one of them individually, of course, but the whole crew of gentry and neogentry taken together?

I certainly *wish* that the OnePercenters of 2009 were a little more afraid of their financial and social and educationalistic/credentialistic [2] inferiors then they act, but that is far from the same thing as supposing that they have any serious need to worry about preservation of their exalted status. Plainly they do not. [3]

Healthy days.


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[1] Tommy's wobble side I shall leave alone. Also the facial hair, although the former would be the most important point about the specimen if considered in isolation. The appearance of infinite zig-zagging results naturally enough from Master Tommy's rarely stealing from the same data bank twice.


[2] ‘Credentialistic’ is important. In a country as large as ours, it is out of the question to expect all incumbent OnePercenters to know one another personally even at second or third hand. So there has to be some impersonal or ‘objective’ mechanism to help them recognize one another reliably and not admit somebody from the scheduled castes by mistake.

In fact, there are scads and scads of such mechanisms available. However one should bear two points in mind: (1) none of them are backed by the force of law, and (2) the gentry and neogentry will short-circuit these devices as much as possible when they can, as for instance with that off-the-record (hopefully!) phone call or e-mail that makes quite clear what the formal letter of recommendation REALLY meant to imply about the candidate.

That is to say, our Friedman-Rove-Cheney-H*rv*rd-NYTC classes do not really depend on "wink, wink; nod, nod" much more than they depend on formal legislation, despite the way their characteristic operations tend to look from the outside. Their true _modus operandi_ lies somewhere in between.


[3] This is our fault, not theirs, obviously. If we were less tame, our betters would be less insufferable and more immune from Dean Baker zingers. No doubt about it!

Considered as a pure moralist (which is the way I myself consider him, even though I understand that it is not quite what he intends), the Dean runs off the rails at the very end of his sermonette with "They just aren't smart enough to recognize it."

That won't do, because not wishing to know anything against oneself has little to do with ‘smart’ unless the word is twisted like a pretzel. Worse -- from a purely moralistical standpoint -- is that this formulation tends to suggest that we good guys ARE "smart enough."

Like everything else that tends towards self-flattery and self-exceptionalizing, that product is to be avoided.

Let's leave the whole self-wunnerfulness _shtyk_ to Rio Limbaugh, shall we?