Clubs R Trumps

If Bush ever foresaw how TARP would be used — as a club to cudgel its beneficiaries into complying with government plans and dictates — it would be the blackest mark on his legacy.

I supposed one ought to be pleased, Mr. Bones, when a member of the señoritoly element comes as close as that to recognizin’ the Goose-Gander Principle.

On the other hand, it ain’t all that close. Neocomrade J. G. Thayer says nothin’ to cast doubt on the future infallibility of his factionette (and his Party and his AEIdeology). Humanum est errare is applied retrospectively to 1LT Bush of the TX Air National Guard now that there can be no practical consequences. Or indeed, now that there are (very slight, but noticable) positive consequences for Hooverville and Wingnut City: havin’ once orated like that, the neo-orators can go on to "put Bush behind US," and blame anythin’ they like (and the opposite too) on Comrade POTUS.

Ah, well, 'tis not as if they wouldn't anyway!

The Muses and you and I may linger, Mr. Bones, on the improbable scenario of George XLIII actually forseein’ somethin’. We may find ourselves lingering in a parallel universe rather than this one, but I believe that will be acceptable as long as we agree to draw only moral conclusions about noble ganders and silly geese and make no attempt to derive specific policies for or about wingnutettes and wingnuts.

"Moralise global, act local!", don't you know?

Bein’ in a Move-On mood, the señorito du jour does not speculate what their Dynasty Boy was up to with TARP if he was not interested in

"a club to cudgel ... beneficiaries into complying with ... plans and dictates."

Fortunately the obvious contrary is probably more or less accurate: the August House of Kennebunkport-Crawford originally intended to hand out seven hundred billion dollars to its retainers and cronies and then allow the latter to spend it any way they pleased. Field Marshall Paulson von Hindenburg and First Quartermaster-General Bernanke von Ludendorff will no doubt have had a rough idea what the retainers and cronies--persons indistinguishable from themselves for this sort of discussion, after all--would do with their windfall, but there is no reason to suppose that the Imperial Brat had any better idea of what his gruesome twosome were doin’ than William II had of military strategy in 1918.

You and I, Mr. Bones, have a tendency to be excessively cynical whenever their GOP geniuses start goin’ on about ‘freedom’ in the course of their self-servicin’. Here, at any rate, was a case of the real thing: the Goldman-Saxons were to be given all those scrumptious bucks with no strings attached:

"The only TRUE freedom is the freedom to big-manage!"

As under Ethelred II, so under George XLIII: it would be ‘unseemly’ to worry out loud in public about what the Danes are going to do with their Danegeld after receipt of it. Naturally one crosses one's fingers and cherishes certain hopes of relief, but to write New York Times Company editorials offering advice on how to spend every last silver penny of it would have been fort mauvais in 1108, and was not particularly helpful in 2008 either. Think if the Sassenachs of 1108 had gone on to deplore how the Danes allotted bonus money intramurally to the noble scions of Thor and Odin, Mr. Bones! [1]

As it happens, neocomrades of the strict observance (roughly speaking, those who dwell in the immediate shadows and penumbræ and emanationes of Common Terror and Weekly Standard magazines) bring up Danegeld from time themselves, though invariably, I think, in connection with their overseas escapades, on-goin’ or proposed. In the realm of foreign and invasion policy, they would never dream of speakin’ disrespectfully of clubs and cudgels! Thus it appears to me, Mr. Bones, that weekly standardmongers and common terrorisers would still have goose-’n’-gander problems even if all decent political grown-ups were suddenly annihilated by magic. Payin’ Danegeld would be flatly out of the question with natives and non-Zionist locals, but here in the metropolitan Homeland™ amongst ‘ourselves’ it would seem an outrage to the neocomradely community to deal with the Goldman-Saxons on those lines.

Indeed, my impression is that the stricter neocomrades cannot imagine any serious alternative to domestic Danegeldism. If their Uncle Sam is not to lavish largesse on the economic OnePercenters and humbly hope for some payback and trickle-down (without ever rudely insisting on anything at all), our common terrorisers revert at once to their alleged ancestral Trotskyism -- except that the second time around it is a farce starrin’ themselves as gamekeepers rather than poachers.

Of course you must bear in mind Mr. Bones that in ordinary times the neogentry do not think about banausic Trade much at all. Up until the latter days of George XLIII, they did a magnificent job of never thinkin’ for an instant how to pay for their foreign capers, and almost as magnificent a job of not worryin’ about how to muster political support for ditto. This befits the señoritoly element well enough, for what señorito can imagine a world in which its Daddy is only a formerly important personage who now has to worry about plebeian matters personally instead of leavin’ them to the servants?

Deprived of their hereditary silver spoons, the neogentry may turn into somethin’ different and perhaps even somethin’ better eventually, but this cannot happen in an instant. Meanwhile you and I are perhaps in some danger of being unfair to them, Mr. Bones, especially if we insist on scrutiny of their Economics report card. It is, to be sure, their weakest subject, and one can watch them cribbin’ pretty shamelessly from The Wall Street Jingo and thereabouts. This feeble performance does not reflect their innate ideological aptitude, however. Perhaps we can come back in a couple of years when they have been compelled to think about the icky subject for a reasonable length of time and assess them more accurately. Though of course if the Crawford Crash Depression goes away before then, they'll no doubt be back to their blithe invasionisin’ in a flash.

Flesh and blood can only endure a limited amount of balance and fairness, however, so it is fortunate that I can conclude quâ Pascalian moralist with an unqualified rejection of the neogentry’s wish to be blithe invasionisers who need never count their costs or diddle dupes and marks into bearin’ their burdens for them. An Eighty-Years Depression would probably not cure Peretzo-Podhoretzites of their underlyin’ brain disease, just as it would not cure you and me of wanting to have our cake and eat it too. Still, if they could advance as far as not expectin’ to get everythin’ they wish for . . . .

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Turning to neocomrades in the looser sense, to run-of-the-mill GOP geniuses and the Big Management Party base-’n’-vile, I find that the señorito’s rhetoric about a "blackest mark" on Master Dubya's "legacy" leads me to the reflection that Hooverville and Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh take for granted that it is red ink that leaves the blackest marks.

Red ink as opposed to blood, that is. [2]


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[1] Though great fun to think of, that bit is no doubt over the boundary of Moralistán and well into the province of Æsthetica Minor. I beg your pardon, sir.


[2] Do I want to go on to specify "Red ink for ‘us’ as opposed to the blood of lesser breeds without"?

Probably not at this time, Mr. Bones, but only probably. Happy days, sir!