Usually, Mr. Bones, Paul Krugman becomes a child rather than a Nobelist as soon as he reflects half a metre away from his technical specialty. But there may be something to this morning's quickie vision of how the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater ran off the rails. "I repeat, thee decide!"
| For California, where the Republicans began their transformation from the party of Eisenhower to the party of Reagan, is also the place where they began their next transformation, into the party of Rush Limbaugh. As the political tide has turned against California Republicans, the party’s remaining members have become ever more extreme, ever less interested in the actual business of governing. And while the party’s growing extremism condemns it to seemingly permanent minority status — Mr. Schwarzenegger was and is sui generis — the Republican rump retains enough seats in the Legislature to block any responsible action in the face of the fiscal crisis. Will the same thing happen to the nation as a whole? |
That is about as much fun as a political adult can decently have in one hundred twenty-five words or less, is it not? One could gloss so pregnant a text forever! Or at any rate, the present keyboard thinks it could say lots and lots and lots about it.
In honor of the Master of Them That Know, let us begin with the Form of the thing, rather than its matter. Anything of this general type with three distinct parts looks vaguely Hegelian. I trust Herr Krug is laughin’ in his pen about this parasyllogism of the militant extremist GOP: "Thesis! Antithesis!! Dick Cheney!!! Let the Swabian sophist damn well ‘deduce’ that one!"
Notice, Bones, how admirably Neuparteikamerad A. von Schwartzenegger comes in on the nondeductibility side of the ledger. Prof. Hegel, and even the immortal Herr Krug himself, could never have seen Arnold coming. And, sure enough, Dr. Krugman cannot account for Arnold now that he has arrived. I wonder, though, that leaving Arnold out simply because he does not fit into anybody's system may be the sort of ploy that gets comeuppanced by the alleged Real World. True, Freiherr von Schwartzenegger can never hope to become Bundespräsident des Heimatlands Gottes personally. But perhaps some other and comparably unique specimen might.
How about, for example, Neocomrade Doctor General D. H. Petræus of Princeton and West Point? Though ethographically and (as I presume) mythologically correct enough to fit into the Grant-Hoover-Goldwater-Atwater Big Tent™, the ever-victorious Dr. Gen. does not look much like the GHGABT Dr. Limbaugh or the GHGABT Judge Baker. Indeed, Master Dubya’s ol’ buddy ‘David’ looks at least a little bit like St. Ike, a second comin’ of whom would not fit into the Krugman Paradigm at all. Still, maybe the ever-victorious Dr. Gen. is a Douglas McArthur rathen than a Dwight Eisenhower? If so, the Muses and Dr. Krugman and thee and I would be embarrassed not at all.
That is enough philosophy and enough Prussia for now. Before turning to matters more likely to have crossed Dr. Krugman’s mind, let us hear him elaborate his ingenious paradigm a little:
| To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. The few remaining moderates have been defeated, have fled, or are being driven out. What’s left is a party whose national committee has just passed a resolution solemnly declaring that Democrats are “dedicated to restructuring American society along socialist ideals,” and released a video comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to Pussy Galore. And that party still has 40 senators. So will America follow California into ungovernability? Well, California has some special weaknesses that aren’t shared by the federal government. In particular, tax increases at the federal level don’t require a two-thirds majority, and can in some cases bypass the filibuster. So acting responsibly should be easier in Washington than in Sacramento. But the California precedent still has me rattled. Who would have thought that America’s largest state, a state whose economy is larger than that of all but a few nations, could so easily become a banana republic? |
That is quite as entertaining as the first snippet, but somewhat more open to the criticism of critics. To begin with, can anybody impartial and informed say with a straight face that the Party of Big Management was not showin’ certain signs of madness even before its paws were forcibly wrenched off the Homelandic steerin’ wheel? The Byronic infant may be signalling that it is still around: taken seriously, that analysis would make Neocomrade Mikey, the Chaire of Steele™, a more significant figure than Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney -- which is absurd. Neocomrade M. Steele is a national treasure, no doubt, and especially a treasure for us over here in America’s party, and ‘mad’ is pretty much the mot juste for him. Nevertheless, M. Steele does not possess the true gravitas levitatis, so to express it. Though shrinkin’ fast, the Grant-Hoover-Goldwater-Atwater Big Tent™ still has a little space for sideshows, and the Madness of Mikey is one of them.
Indeed, one might speculate without actually lapsing into conspiratorialism that little Mikey is a sideshow deliberately staged to distract attention from the militant extremism that matters, a kind of black herrin’ dragged across the trail of the core GOP in order to throw us hostile bloodhounds off the scent whilst the neocomradely community retreats and regroups and plots their bloody revenge. I do not insist on this point, Mr. Bones, but I do recommend it to thee as the sort of point that Dr. Krugman's inner political kiddie is likely to miss. Little Mikey has no very obvious chicagonomic side to him, which means that the strong side of Krugmanite analysis has scant opportunity to shine. [1] [2]
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[1] If Mad Mikey really is a black herrin’, then of course he must look aneconomic from a distance: there has never been any mystery about what the Owners of America would most prefer to have American political attention distracted from.
[2] Ms. Pussy Galore may have been dragged in to give the impression that Dr. Krugman is au courant with a world beyond chicagonomics. That is to say, he knows enough about MacLuhanstán to be aware that P. G. is right up there with the death of Queen Anne, popcultwise, so that resort to her makes the Agitprop Arm of militant extremism look fuddy-duddy and dinosauric in the extreme. Which I dare say it actually is.
The trouble is that this fact is of no practical significance, or maybe even of the opposite significance to that which Dr. Krugman assigns it. The Party of Big Management does, in general, not wish to appear popculturally with it. That sort of slummin’ was admissible in their late Neocomrade L. Atwater, but only because the señorito in question was assigned to intelligence and counterintelligence tasks that required it to Know-The-Foe. Run-of-the-mill GOP geniuses have no such task and therefore no such requirement to meet. Their now Neocomrade R. B. Cheney does not succeed well in lookin’ grandfatherly, but there can be no doubt that that is how His Excellency is tryin’ to look, or that His Excellency would be a fool to attempt to look LeeAtwateroid rather than GeorgeWashin’tonian.
A Party of Big Management must strive ever to appear bigmanagerial, and knowin’ all the latest gossip from the entertainment industries contributes nothin’ at all to that end.
Would thee, Mr. Bones, be more likely to hand thee's life savings over to a Citizen B. L. Madoff or to a Neocomrade P. G. Peterson because the secret-sector or Big Party shark was demonstrably well versed in popcult? Folks who play con games successfully have to inspire confidence, sir! Everybody knows that.
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