12 June 2009

Reichstag, erwache!


At some point the legislative branch may want to wake from its slumber....

Reichstag, erwache!

’Tis not a bad slogan, Mr. Bones, considered in itself, neither in Old High Vaterländisch nor in neovernacular holy-Homelandic™.

Nevertheless, is this a slogan suitable to the time (06/12/2009 0615 EST) and place (the keyboard of Princess Neoterica and the dank crypts of Heritagitarianism) were we encounter it, sir?

These are the very same self-servers, I fear, who, a few human events back, used to keep barkin’ that what passed at that point for President Obama's economics was a mere congeries of old wish lists from Sen. Reid and Speaker Pelosi.

Still, I daresay that when studying weekly standardisers one must always be quite sure which week they were in when they vouchsafed each individual standardisation. Moreover, their Hate-’68 factionette bein’ but one humble (?) cog in the Vast Militant Extremist Conspiracy, "History is bunk!" and "That was THEN, this is NOW!" are two of the few fixed stars in the political firmament visible to the astrologers up at Castle Podhóretz.

Furthermore, aren’t these kiddies cute, sir, when they attempt political science in the lofty Hellenic spirit of ktêma eis aiei? Here’s the latest fortune cookie from Castle Bakeries LLC, an ideoproduct with a tacit sell-by date written all over its shrinkwrap, and yet what is inside the cellophane and pastry? "Legislative Supremacy forever!"

(( Do you suppose, that some Designer Providence or Invisible Hand™ might be staging this whole show primarily to make Hell hotter for the late MacLuhan, S. J.? "Behold, O vile sinner, what happened after your victims gave up hard Prod thinking and printing and relapsed into squishy-soft ‘empathetic’ Papish village-’n’-picture-think?" Mais je ne que m'amuse pas, Mr. Bones, when I start working the "But is it good for the [Irish]?" angle -- at least usually. Anyway, we agreed that nothing inside double parens really counts. ))

There is really quite a lot to be said in favor of "Legislative Supremacy forever!," which makes it a relief to reflect that Her Imperial Highness will have moved on to somethin’ even neo-er in about fifteen minutes or so. So that's all right!

Meanwhile, H. I. H. (and presumably Her heritagitarian flunky) are not actually occupyin’ the same square that you and I do, Mr. Bones. They're located three blocks down to your far right, sir, at a viewpoint from which they can only view one wing of

the Reichstagsgebäude. Oddly enough, it is not the wing where Herr Reid and Frau Pelosi hang out. Just a coincidence, I am quite sure *that* is!

In fact if you look close enough, you'll see that the Princess and Neocomrade R. C. Flunky are standin’ in separate squares themselves. I find it natural in such a case to concentrate on the Near Enemy (der Peretz-Podhoretzismus) rather than the Far Enemy (Heritagitarianism), but even at our safe distance one can make out that poor Flunky might not be too happy how his ordnance was shot off. Did Flunky ever say anythin’ reasonably to be paraphrased as "virtually no Congressional consent, funding, or oversight"? Quite likely he did, but not in what the Princess graciously condescends to borrow from him and throw at the head of the merely elected president of Her Imperial Highness’s country. If you go strictly by what Flunky is quoted as sayin’, Mr. Bones, you may safely conclude that he has not much use for czars. That he likes (even piously militant and extremist) Congresscritters (from the Party of Grant) any better than he likes Románovs is sheer speculation: the quoted Flunky says nothin’ to exclude that possibility, but also nothin’ to enforce it.

For all one positively knows from H. I. H., Neocomrade R. C. Flunky may take the line that "too many czars spoil the broth" -- his preferred broth bein’ (in that supposed case) the nifty neosystem evolved in the fertile brainpan of Neocomrade Viceroy R. B. Cheney. "Unitary executivitarianism" they call it, or somethin’ close. The foundational fortune cookie of Cheneyite U. E. might be expressed "One good Vice-President can lick seventeen czars any day of the week!"

Though the U. E. scheme does not appeal to me, it does, if one can swallow its accompanyin’ neomythology, have one immense advantage over czardom and polyczardom when it comes to undermining the dangerously obsolete work of Mr. Madison and the Gang of 87: all those horribles that R. C. Flunky musters and parades -- "Pay Czar, Border Czar, Energy Czar, Urban Czar" &c. &c. -- are unambiguously agents of the Executive Branch. A good Vice-President, on the other hand, does not belong to any branch at all. She moves serene above all the clatter and clashin’ of triune coëqual branches,

m’raḥépeth ‘al-p’nê ham-máyyim, as it were. [1]

Setting Neocomrade R. C. Flunky and the broad sweep of heritagitarianism aside, and attributing every word of this contention to the Princess Herself, I must still find a little fault with it. Havin’ only the aforesaid fifteen minutes, She no doubt does not care to invest too much cogitation in any one ideoproduct. If H. I. H. had thought Her latest neostuff through to the bloody end, one would not be puzzled by exactly how Her GOP-only Congress relates to "the opportunity for public opinion to register."

I suppose it would be only an (in context) worthless objection from the liberal-democratic-Democratic side of the aisle to claim that the 101st Congress of the United States of America, simply as such, constitutes an authoritative registration of public opinion. The illiberals and antidemocrats of America’s Otherparty have never thought that way and are most assuredly not go’n’ta start doin’ so at a time when they are but a pitiful helpless minority on Capitol Hill. If Their Ford's maxim about bunk be political Holy Writ unto them, why, it is no more so than the late Mr. Calhoun of SC’s ever-immortal soundbite, "Who knows not that to save the people one must often oppose them?"

Thinkin’ fifteen-minutely, the Princess appears to have inadvertely put Herself at odds with another of the very few fixed pillars of the Big Management Party and the AEIdeology. Tusk, tusk!

Neither separately nor combined can Congress and "public opinion," registered or unregistered, satisfactorily perform the rôle that H. I. H. envisions them performin’. Loyal Party lemmin’s and, above all, the exclusive neolemmin’s up at Castle Podhóretz, cannot seriously propose to relinquish their own demented views on right and wrong either to Senator Foghorn in the Chamber or to Ms. Jane Sixpax out in the Naked Public Square (Pat. Pend.).

What’s rightist is rightist, and ought to be done solely because of the rightism of it! Period. Full stop.

It may be nice for the neocomrades to have Senators and Representatives and Neocomrade Dr. Rasmussen’s pollin’ results -- even, on occasion, popular opinion proper and election outcomes -- be in agreement with their rightism, yet these things are only icin’ on the cake of Party ’n’ Ideology.

Keep your eye on the ball, Mr. Bones! When you find a common terroriser like Princess Neoterica here seemin’ to say that Congress or vox populi can cause a position or policy to be rightist, the chances are godzillions to one that there has been a slip-up somewhere. Either we humble have misunderstood, or the gentlebein’ in question has expressed itself hastily and injudiciously. If the gentlebein’ really believes in such stuff, it will change its party registration. Otherwise, give it the benefit of a charitable doubt, sir!

Even that demanding shibboleth may not, I suspect, be perfectly adequate: how much confidence does that "(D-PA)" after the name of Citizen Arlen Specter inspire in you, sir? (But Father Zeus knows best.)

Happy days.


___
[1] How you say in holy-Homelandic™? "standing above the country, above – above the world ... a sort of God" -- was that it?

We are safe enough, I trust, from Mr. Biden of Delaware attempting this trick at home, and our safety is unfortunate only from a strictly Fedguv-constitutional point of view. The failed impeachment of a Cheneyiser is the only mechanism that can definitively establish that "Legislative Supremacy forever!" has finally and become as Utopian a fortune cookie as (say) "Fifty-four forty or fight!"



Update

All that Neocomrade R. C. Flunky in fact had to say for himself turns out to be not much :


Rory Cooper, Dir., Strategic Communications, Heritage Foundation:

We are living in scary times, when a few people with oligarchic intentions can so easily take control over the fundamentals of capitalism

The wheels are off the wagon. I was going to sensibly advocate against this outrageous growth in government and its control over the free enterprise of America. But then I saw some commentators say it didn't go far enough, and throw around words like ‘accountability.’ We are living in scary times, when a few people with oligarchic intentions can so easily take control over the fundamentals of capitalism, freedom and enterprise. And they deliver these big government measures and czars with promises of “restraint.” Have you ever trusted the federal government to show “restraint.”

President Obama has a Pay Czar, Border Czar, Energy Czar, Urban Czar, Tech Czar, Faith Based Czar, Health Reform Czar, TARP Czar, Drug Czar, Stimulus Accountability Czar, Non-Proliferation Czar, Terrorism Czar, Regulatory Czar, Guantanamo Closure Czar, AIDS Czar, Weather Czar, Intelligence Czar, Economic Czar, Green Jobs Czar and Cybersecurity Czar. I’m not making any of that up! All of these people report directly to the President, and most of the new positions expand government’s reach into the American daily life to a troubling extent. Up until the 1950’s the President had nine cabinet officers. Now we have nearly 50 (fifty!) people directing their own corners of government. As John McCain said, even the Romanovs who ruled Russia for 3 centuries only had 17 czars. This is madness.

That performance is so OnePercenterly that it's a wonder this neocomrade has not made it to the really big league and been snapped up by the AEIdeologues!

As you can see for yourself, Mr. Bones, R. C. Flunky is much concerned to rescue Finanzkapitalismus from its own doo-doo. The substance of the neocomrade's moan was anticipated by Parkinson, him of the Law, many years ago: when a committee gets larger than twelve members, you can be sure the real work is going on somewhere else. That is just the sort of point on which your run-of-the-mill Harvard Victory School MBA mentality might have been expected to fix.

If this gentlecreature is also a fan of Congressional Government, you must admit that he manages to hide it admirably. BGKB.

08 June 2009

"Gee — with these guys on board"


Where do the pajamatarians dig up these vest-pocket gurus of theirs?

No, I take it back: clearly there can be no need to go dig for a Neocomrade C. E. Clayton when there are so many examples of him scattered across the landscape that can be picked up without any need for dynamite or pick-ax. Without any heavy liftin’, even, since Claytonite, the political mineral, corresponds to the pumice [1] of geologists.

Alternatively, think of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton as one of those "first four hundred names in the Boston telephone directory" that Buckley Minor yearned to be governed by. No need to dig for them when the Neanderthal Administration needs to be staffed, the numbers are right there in the book!

His late Excellency's little flower of pseudopopulist rhetoric is not often pressed into the service of Party ’n’ Ideology except by mere quotation, but anybody wishin’ to extract a whole sermonette from that text might do worse than to point out with what praeternatural prudence and wisdom WJB2 excluded all Bostonians with unlisted numbers. They would, of course, prove to be icky and snotty élitists in almost every single case.

So one might think of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton as Boston Dingaling #318 at the time when His late Excellency made the little funny. Our holy Homeland™ bein’ the place where everybody runs away from home, not just to get here the first time but again and again ever after, what could better befit a Neocomrade C. E. Clayton than to be at present listed (presumably) in the telephone directory of Horseshoe Bend ID? [2] [3] Still, the buckleyism is far from fresh, so perhaps it was this neocomrade’s father or grandfather who used to be Dingaling #318 back at the Hub? And God knows best about Claytons!


Though much less fun than gossip, substance has claims to make also. Since McSnarkey gets to big-manage his own scribbles, though nothing else, it should come as no surprise that he takes what might be called a Buckley-’phonebook’s-eye of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton’s here scheme to bail out the Party of Goldwater and Atwater. In the absence of a consolidated national database -- which of course we dare not compile because to do so would be Psocialism! [4] -- public opinion polls are, I suppose, the next best thing. Anyway, the neocomrade leans on them pretty heavily.

Indeed, his whole screed is an attempted exegesis of poll numbers: "If you look only at labels, it appears that" X. "But when asked [the leadin’ question preferred by Neocomrade C. E. Clayton, fortunately] "an astonishing 75 percent of Americans believe" not-X.

So why do not three Homelanders™ in four rush to the polls as often as is permitted to exalt the horn of the militant extremist Republican Party? Perhaps the pajamatarian guru cherishes some secret-sector theory about why not, but if so, he is not exactly willin’ to festoon the Naked Public Square™ with it at this point in time.

But maybe that objection is a tad unfair and imbalanced, for Neocomrade C. E. Clayton is not chiefly engaged in tryin’ to help the Party of Grant and Hoover do better electorally in 2010 or 2012 or 2016, but in purgin’ it of its dross so that it becomes worthy to do better: "'Tis not in mortals to command success; / But we'll do more, Sempronius, we'll deserve it." [5]

Neocomrade C. E. Clayton expects the Party of Big Management to deserve success in future by cementin’ a solid "anti-choice" (his expression) coalition on the followin’ platform: "Gee — with these guys on board, we can’t stop all elective abortions, but we can work on trying to stop at least half of the hundreds of thousands of abortions each year." "These guys" were identified as "the '[abortion to be permitted under] certain circumstances' crowd."

Though not among the Big Management Party’s best and brightest by a long shot, Neocomrade C. E. Clayton is at any rate pretty representative of the BMP's "Political Christojudæan" subfaction. [6] And there really is a sort of low cunnin’ in the attempt to pretend that counterabortion is the whole of social / cultural / faith-crazed counterrevolution. No other single issue will unite even half so many folks with the single-issue type of mindset. (To attempt the Claytonian rhetoric: "No other single-issue club will require so big a tent for their Annual Jamboree.")

I trust other peanuts in the peanut gallery will have made the obvious point that this narrow neocomradely Club for Fœtuphilia falls a long distance short of bein’ a holy-Homelandic™ political party of any sort, let alone of bein’ effectively identical with America’s Otherparty in particular, the Party of J. Sidney McCain.

A bit less obvious is the failure of Neocomrade C. E. Clayton to acknowledge that "social conservatism" is not even the dominant subfaction inside the militant extremist GOP. It never has been dominant, it isn't now, and, should it ever become so, why, my name shall become Marie of Roumania!

Rather than whistlin’ past that inevitable graveyard of his hopes, Neocomrade C. E. Clayton prefers to tiptoe past it. If he doesn't mention who is actually in charge of the Party of Big Management, why, perhaps the inhabitants of Outer Pajamastán won't think of it independently.

And indeed, perhaps by and large they won't. The Party of Goldwater and Atwater is more like a split-level ‘ranchhome’ than like any sort of tent, and the Pajama People are clearly not in possession of keys to the Executive Penthouse, or call it "the Goldwater level." Located down with the garage and the rumpus room (and the Lee Atwater Memorial Kulturzentrum) are the Pajama People. They are permitted and even encouraged to vote for the Big Management Party, but when it comes to runnin’ it -- well, let us attempt to be serious, please, ladies and gentlemen! It takes a credentialled Big Manager to big-manage properly, and that is that. Period. Full stop. [7]

In sum, attemptin’ to ignore what ought to be obvious leaves Neocomrade C. E. Clayton lookin’ a little silly when viewed from off the reservation. One thinks of the tail declining to mention any connection with its dog.

Mais que sçay-je from militant extremist Republicans and "social conservatism"? It's not as if I mind them losin’ elections.

Happy days.

[1] The textbook definition needs minimal adjustment: "A solidified frothy lava typically created when super-heated, highly pressurized [factionalism] is violently ejected from [Wingnut City]."


[2] All sorts of spoof fodder in that toponym! Where to begin? Can there exist a real place so predestined for allegory and polemic? So obviously designed by a Supervenient I.Q. to facilitate Mr. McSnarkey's jokes against Buckley Minor? "At HB-ID, there were only 317 names in the whole book before the Clayton clan moved in." "A poll conducted at HB-ID has revealed that 114.73% of the natives and locals believe that the only True Freedom™ is freedom to win the lottery." "What profession more quintessentially GOP than to be a bender of horseshoes?" "Where better to decry "identity politics" from than ID?" &c. &c.

But of course you'll be wanting to make up your own. I beg your pardon.


[3] Dr. Bones, McSnarkey's straight man, has dispatched the pet google to dig up the followin’ bare factual bones:

"Horseshoe Bend Idaho...Gateway to the World Famous Payette River

"Horseshoe Bend, Idaho is situated on a bend on the Scenic Payette River. Our small but growing community offers an up-to-date Library, Senior Center, Pre-School through 12 Grade school system, Community Health Clinic, Volunteer EMT's and Fire Department, serving both the city and the surrounding rural development. Four Churches, 770 population with an elevation of 2614, Horseshoe Bend experiences blue skies and fresh air year round."

Plus, till now, at least, an absence of discouragin’ words.

One of those gifts that never stops givin’ is HB-ID! Not only does that parochial stronghold of AEIdeology, the Chamber of Commerce, lead the googlehit parade, there is a "PAYette River" available for both Casino-of-Human-Events jokes and Party-of-Grant jokes: BINGO!!

[4] It would also (seem to) be in flagrant violation of Holy Writ:


"A difficulty arises in the story, however. What was it that David actually did wrong in commissioning the census? As was the case with the desire to build the Temple, we do not really find out in the Samuel narratives what it was God thought precluded the possibility of David building the temple. In I Kings, we find out part of the reason, and in I Chronicles, we find out the rest of it. Here, all we are told is "and again the anger of the LORD burned against Israel and He ... incited David against them to say, 'Go number Israel and Judah' (2 Sam. 24:1). Okay. Why was God angry? How does this square with the account in I Chronicles?" &c. &c.

Vreeland, G. D., The Darker Side of Samuel, Saul and David: Narrative Artistry and the Depiction of Flawed Leadership (Volume 2: Second Samuel), Xulon[sic] :2008, p. 290 of the googleswipe.

[5] Palæocomrade Sempronius is a little less unsatisfactory for us liberals and democrats and Demoncrats. After Palæocomrade Cato has delivered the famous tirade and stalked off, Sempy says "Curse on the stripling! how he apes his sire! / Ambitiously sententious!"

That is pretty much the present keyboard’s estimate of the señoritoly element at Wingnut City, assuming certain fairly obvious mutantis mutandis related to the quality of the respective sires.

[6] That's only my private-sectorian neocliché for the Baní Clayton, obviously. The drive-by fiends usually say "the Christian Right" or "cultural conservatives." The señorito itself speaks of "social conservatism" in the second paragraph, though I am not sure that all the Political Christojudæan wingnutettes and wingnuts would care to label themselves exactly that.

Still, we all know who it is talkin’ about. If we didn't, we could not have any desire to read such a piece at all. The only important terminological issue is that nobody accept Neocomrade C. E. Clayton's tacit suggestion that the PCj crew might as well be called "anti-choicers" as anythin’ else. That won’t do at all, because neither Society nor Culture--nor even the former Christojudæanity itself--can be sanely reduced to merely the membership rolls of the Little Friends of the Fœtus Association.

[7] Well, perhaps not 100% full. There must be at least a few Atwateroids who could get themselves admitted to the H*rv*rd Victory School (or some inferior imitation) and earn an MBA degree and thus become capable of Big Management. Such self-improvement does not seem to happen very often, but it is not in principle impossible.

Come to think of it, was not Neocomrade 1LT G. W. Bush of the TX Air National Guard pretty much still an Atwateroid even after graduatin’ from Lord Mammon's very finest seminary? This example proves, I think, that an Atwateroid can get into HVS, though of course in most cases there would be little point in that unless one came out different. (Master Dubya belonged, of course, to the hereditarily rich, who are indeed different from Mr. Fitzgerald and thee and me.)


07 June 2009

Who Wrecked the Holy Homeland™?


I don't think you'd guess the name, Mr. Bones, If I gave you a hundred tries:

Historically, Americans generally held campaign promises sacred. We understood that republican democracy makes us rely on pledges of future action as the metric for choosing representatives; we knew that politicians reneging on pledges without adequate reason were desecrating that democracy; and we therefore often punished promise-breakers accordingly. I'm not idealizing halcyon days that never were -- just ask George H.W. Bush, who lost re-election in 1992 after trampling his "no new taxes" guarantee. Indeed, breaking campaign pledges was one of the surest ways for politicians to hurt themselves -- until 2006. That year's highest-profile campaign was Connecticut's U.S. Senate race between incumbent JOSEPH LIEBERMAN and challenger Ned Lamont -- a race signaling a tectonic shift. Lieberman had broken two key promises: 1) He was violating an explicit term-limits pledge and 2) He vowed to "help end the war in Iraq" while working to continue it. And yet, he was re-elected without ever explaining his reversals.

Happy days.

06 June 2009

Sabbath Morning with Dr. Virtue


[T]he sources of malicious nonsense [about race and racists] ought to be assessed for who and what they are, in historical context – and dismissed as relics of a past that America at long last left behind on Election Day 2008."

One of the peanut’gallery peanuts at Salon complains of the Rev. Dr. Virtue, a.k.a "Joe Conason," that it is

kind of easy pandering to your own base; how about more heavy lifting, dude?"

Dr. Peanut may or may not offer the correct diagnosis of Conason's Disease: it depends on exactly how one understands what he says. The most alarming way of misunderstanding would be to take it as if some peanut in June 1944 had accused Gen. Eisenhower of "pandering to his base" when he spent all that time and effort invading Occupied Europe. Why couldn't poor dumb Ike see that History had already contextualized the then government of Germany and dismiss it as a relic rather than get bogged down in an unnecessary crusade?

By that point or a bit later, the Berlin régime itself did not find that sort of thing too insulting to be discussable. It seems they did make a few efforts at persuading Wunnerful US (and Airstrip One also) that it was time for everybody to move on and let by’gones be by’gone: let Western Sieve™ unite to put down the alien and evil Bolsheviks, the True Existential Threat™ to all goodness and decency and wunnerful-us-ness!

I don't think many holy’Homelanders actually took that line in 1944, but I have a vague notion, one I suspect the Rev. Dr. Virtue may share, that GOP Neocomrade P. Buchanan’s parents and uncles and aunts were the sort of folks who might have bought that product. Anyway, purchasers of the product would have been under a certain cloud of suspicion as to whose side they were on, exactly. Especially if critics were to accuse nonpurchasers of "pandering to YOUR base," as if their own base was located somewhere else -- not necessarily in Rome or Salò or Tokyo or Berlin, of course, but clearly not at Washington City or Westminster either.

If Dr. Peanut ("wjamesau") actually lives at Rio Limbaugh, there is not much to do but laugh at him. It would be swell for the wingnutettes and wingnuts if they could actually get lots of dupes and marks to believe that all attacks on reaction and neo’reaction and the glorious accomplishments of Rancho Crawford are just so much internal wranglin’ inside "the Democrat Party" ... that would be swell, but it is so impossible that what's to do but laugh at any bozos so wombschooled as to seriously expect to make that plan work?

And even if it could be made to work, nothing would be easier than to throw the same grenade right back at bozodom and wombscholarship: "Of course when they bark and bellow against their President and announce they "want him to fail," all they are really doin’ is pander to their own Party base ’n’ vile. Everybody knows that!"

Though of course the Konservative Kiddies are always in fact doin’ that inter alia, usually it is the alia that are uppermost in the neobarbarian mind and probably ought to come first in the minds of us civilised political grown’ups as well. If we dispute about the alia, there is always at least a slight chance of impressing some swing voter out there in Televisionland and thus snatching another soul out of the paws of Hell. Whereas even a correct diagnosis that the Side of the Devils operates largely by panderin’ to one another does not point to any concrete practical steps anybody can take to improve the situation from outside the asylum. And there is symmetry around that point as well, for as soon as the barkers and bellowers make quite clear that Hooverville and Wingmut City think everythin’ they hear liberals and democrats and Democrats say is a symptom of brain disease that only pretends to be argumentation, we might as well break off negotiations at once and concentrate on clobbering ’em at the polls. [1]

Setting aside Dr. Peanut, then, as being of dubious affiliation, we can talk about the real error of the Rev. Dr. Virtue, which can sensibly be labeled ‘pandering’ only if that term is inflated to fill half the political universe. The chief objection to the Rev. Virtue’s sermonette is that it invites us to complacency when vigilance is required. On Planet Conason, racism and racists have been defeated and all that is rneeded is a bit of mopping up of "relics of a past at long last left behind." Down here on Terra, though, the situation is not quite altogether like that. To procede on the assumption that neobarbarism and bozodom and wombscholarship will never win an important election again is so unrealistic as to border on dottiness.

I suppose the Sotomayor appointment offers a little bit of explanation for the Rev.'s mistake: it is hard to imagine that the GOP geniuses will be able to defeat the nomination, and then, after they try to and fail, hard to imagine that they will not have made the Party of Goldwater and Atwater an even worse stench in the nostrils of Latinos and Hispanics (and rootless cosmopolitan friends of rectitude) than it already is. Though still a bird in the bush rather than in the hand, that prospect is firm enough that we may award ourselves a few points provisionally. Unfortunately, the Rev. Dr. Virtue thinks we should award ourselves fifty points instead of five, which is (in the judgment of the present keyboard) poppycock and Pollyanna. Such advice can do us no good if we are fools enough to take it.

Worse, a good many of those forty-five points that the Rev. would award us and I would prefer to withhold are, so to say, virtue points rather than politics points. "O nos admirabiles! Wunnerful US who have seen that racism is wrong! Miserable THEM who still have not!" The negative side of that is probably mostly, though not entirely, OK. The positive side, though, this and all other cheapjack self-flattery and self-esteemism, is not OK at all, it is political Abomination of Desolation, a sky-high pile of excrement. [2] If we do not leave that [exp. del.] to the neobarbarians and bozos and wombscholars of the militant extremist GOP, we are as bad as they, who lap it up with gusto.

We are arguably worse than the selfocentric vomit-lappers [3] of Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, for we know that we ought to know better, whereas we can only suspect from outside the monkey-house that monkeys ought to know better. They may have been told to by the same authorities who told us, yet they may have applied their nifty magic potion of Destructive Creationism (Pat. Pend.) to the old-fashioned moralists’ denunciation of superbia and self-exceptionalizin’ and self-indispensabilitatin’ in such a way as to make these things acceptable to up-to-date monkeys and wingnuttetes and wingnuts.

Mere liberals and democrats and Democrats like us possess no such trendy justifications or excuses, so we had better do as we were authoritatively told until such time as superior authority authorizes something different and better. If the Rev. Dr. Virtue seriously wants to turn fas est et ab hoste doceri into "Monkey see, monkey do," let him do it alone. And let the remnant congregation of postmonkeys ask him on his way out, Tu quis es, qui iudices alienum servum? [4]

Happy days.

___
[1] "The only language they understand is votes" crosses my mind, but it will not do: to judge from the last six months, neobarbarians can have a good deal of trouble understandin’ votes. Even the original soundbite could be improved by rewording it as "The only language they SPEAK is force," removing the implication that they understand the force (or votes) of us civilised. But God knows best about neobarbarians.


[2] Abominatio desolationis is shiqqûts shomem, don't you know? Lib. Dan. IX:27. As with the epithet shiqq’sâ for a dhimmiyya, Christojudæan correctness has made sure that the expression is rarely, if ever, translated ad litteram.


[3] Ep. Pet. Prim. V:8


[4] Ep. ad Rom. XIV:4.