29 December 2010

De Imperio Ridicularum Ridiculorumque


Paul Ryan requires that his staffers read Atlas Shrugged. I mean, I [Paul Krugman] was inspired by Isaac Asimov, but I don’t think I’m Hari Seldon — whereas Ryan, it seems, really does think he’s John Galt. (...) Future historians will giggle at our expense.

After that improbable and thoroughly ‘unprofessional’ giggle fit, though, the court historians to Princess Posterity scrambled right back up on their stilts and pointed out how this, too, is only what one should have expected all along:

"The Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater was never a genuinely political Party, never an inferior facsimile of the good ship ’Andrew Jackson,’ though it was compelled all its life to simulate that paradigm in order to gather votes. Krugman wrote as if Neocomrade Fedguv Representative P. D. Ryan, Jr., (as he then was) were an Ajax or Achilles, a protagonist of the forces of selfservatism, a prime mover in the path of Party an’ AEIdeology. The professor only fell to giggling when he started to exaggerate his mistake, fancying the Intellectual Archpontiff of Janesville to be so *extremely* protagonistic as to resemble the fictional Freelord of Galt. More exactly, to fancy that His Eminence fancied himself in some such rôle.

"Perhaps His Eminence did indeed do so, self-criticism and self-knowledge being about the only self-entities frowned on in U.S. Republicanian circles of 1854-2090. Nevertheless H. E. will not have required his coadjutors and sacristans and altar boys to pour over the Evangel of Ayn in hopes that they would confuse their boss with a comic-book action figure -- an’ then His Eminence would enjoy the exquisite self-pleasure of shruggin’ "Aw, shucks!" &c. &c.

"Not at all. ’Tis a pretty scenario, Dr. Krugman, but you must not call it Ronpaul Ryan I.

"In practice, though possibly not in consciousness, Neocom. Fedrep. Ryan knew his own place in the Hire-archy well enough, understood that he was but a lowly merc in the eyes of his Party Paymasters, the alone prime movers and protagonists of Selfservatism. Accordingly, the true original intent of havin’ his subhirelin’s read Atlas Shrugged was that they should, hopefully, become imbued with Miss Rand of Petersburg’s inimitable romantic swoon for the Titans of Commerce & Industry, whereupon they would, hopefully, confuse John, Freelord of Galt, -- not with their immediate boss, ¡G*re forbid! -- but rather with their boss’s crucial contacts amongst the Campaign Contributin’ Classes. Or at least divine that the boss wished they would treat CCC nobility an’ gentry with Randian awe an’ reverence, whether real or undetectably simulated."


But Clio knows best.

Happy days.

(( I omit a footnote to the 2nd edition of 2317 that rather frivolously pointed out that "to cast Tex, Freelord of Exxonmobil (say), or Rupert of Murdoch, or Neohengist Lloyd of the Goldman-Saxon hordes, as ’John Galt’ might be worth a giggle or two in its own right."

(( Besides being frivolous, the remark was out of place: it is for the specifically literary historian to point out that Miss Rand, like her coæval Master Ernest Hemingway, has always been quite unreadable by anybody over the cultural age of fourteen in the absence of a firm antecedent resolution, perpetually renewed, not to laugh. ))

24 December 2010

O'Bama meets O'Beese



Q. "Can fat white guys like me ... show up and get free care ... too?"


A. But of course! All you have to do, Neocomrade O’Beese, is select the right doorstep to show up on.

That scribble in the Boston Humbug to which you refer gives the mistaken impression that you might be wantin’ a doorstep outside "the highest illlegal aliens still swarm[in’] the emergency rooms and pay[in’] nothin[’]." [1]

I am sure the Freelord an’ Kiddiemaster of Carr (whom I shall take for argument’s sake to be your Cousin Howie and my own) was not thinkin’ for an instant of puttin’ a hard-workin’ family-valuer like *you* in any such zoo as that! Why, not even fit to die in [2] is that company!

First thing to do, then, once you have boldly resolved to become sick, is to stay as far away from High Illegal Aliens as possible. "Policy begins at home," the proverb sings, and "Be it ever so humble," chimes in its mate. So always _shtyk_ to Our own, sir, as much as possible. "Neither a borrower nor a deficit spender be!"

(( Insert further neofolk wisdom here _______________________ quant. suff.. ))

But that is mere negative advice. On the neoproäctive side, what I think you ought to do, sir, is appeal to Daddy Warbucks or Uncle Scrooge. Maybe somebody a little younger over in that branch of Our Family would be a little less intimidatin’, but it definitely has to be somebody from that branch and no other. [3] Aunt Patty with her respectable Republicanian cloth coat is bound to be mooey simpática, but she probably won’t let you pawn her coat to buy your pills with, or even to reimburse your PCP. (Unless maybe he is in the Family too?)

This brings us straight to Cousin Mitty an’ Cousin Howie. To understand what you read in the Humbug correctly requires appreciatin’ that the latter was conductin’ a holiday strike against the former rather than offerin’ anybody practical advice about doorsteps or emergency rooms. Howie would obviously like to neoëxcommunicate Mitty from Our Family altogether, but I betcha he understands well enough that that plan won’t fly. Not that Howie the Joker was only jokin’, either, but . . . . Well, YOU know! [4]

Was you to turn up on Cousin Mitty’s doorstep, which I fear I have forgotten where it is, you may have to pretend not to mind bein’ strapped to the top of his murder vehicle for the trip to a swarmfree secret-sector emergency room. Just one of Cousin Mitty’s little ways, that strappin’ is -- the good Man does it for all of his Best Friends. Still, you might do well to wait until the weather is warmer. Don’t say I did not warn you.

An’ then there is Cousin Howie’s own doorstep, which, by the way, is rather alarmin’ly easy to locate. ’Tis a wonder poor Howie does not have Union thugs encamped there year ’round as if the joint were Gettysburg or Appomatox. [5]

’Tis a little uncertain, I fear, whether Cousin Howie really an’ truly belongs to the Warbucks-Scrooge side of Our Family. He always barks an’ bellows on the radio as if there could be no question about it, but down here in the shanty many of us think he is only bluffin’. To be sure, sayin’ "The most expensive Carr on OUR lot" around here does not exactly commit one to a Rolls-Royce! Suppose Our relations back Home had had the gumption to set up a murder-vehicle industry back when the goin’ was good and they could get those Alzheimer’s-challenged Old Euros proper to fund damn near anydamnthin’ Highburnian. Suppose further a low-end economy model called the "Pseltic Tiger" or thereabouts, a sort of Yugo on stilts. Like unto that is Cousin Howie, car-on-lotwise. IMHO.

Be that as it may, do not let yourself be suckered in by Howie’s "grinch with a heart of gold" _shtyk_. Strictly showbiz, *that* is. In all probability Cousin Howie really DOES has the heart of a grinch, even if he says so himself, and accordin’ly won’t let you anywhere near his pots of gold, no matter how few or many of ’em there may be. No matter how heart-rendin’ a tale of pills you tell when you turn up blockin’ his driveway.

There are lots of other driveways in Our Family, after all. Even if you exclude Our rich-out-of-sight relatives at Castle Scrooge an’ Château Warbucks an’ so on., the superfancy lace-curtain places where one can’t glimpse even a doorstep of the Stately McMansion itself from a public-sectorian highway, there are plenty of Family doorsteps to choose from.

BUT . . .

. . . but you really do oughta make reservations well in advance. Especially if your are, as I conjecture is the case, only an umpteenth cousin three times removed from the O’Doorstep in question. [6]

Happy days.

___
[1] A tad ungrammatical in English, maybe, but in the Gaelic, ’tis Eloquence Herself,. I assure you.


[2] (Goak here.) (( Two goaks, if the Time Style golden oldie still counts. ))


[3] Hath not siblin’-in-law Willie Sutton -- no relation to Willie HORTON,¡thank G*re! -- explained this point in full?


[4] Hammabîn yabîn," saith the Gael.

If, after thinkin’ about it a little, you decide that you do NOT know, please accept my profoundest apologies for supposin’ you so far down the Great Scale of Bein’ as to belong to OUR Family. "Policy begins at home" may or may not work with your own fôx: WE are, ¡O Wunnerful US!, outstandin’ly self-exceptional over all, but not necessarily exceptional on each an’ every single particular point.

Should you happen to have roots in Outer Kangarústán, you might apply to Tio Ruperto. When you do, please make sure to tell his firstlordship that McCloskey sent you. Then simply fill in the blank look his firstlordship gives you, an’ you will already be halfway through the Foxcuckooland freebie application process. ((( Third goak, shamelessly swiped )))


[5] The Family ought to get Aunt Jason to tell everybody who does her freegrace’s security arrangements. Short of a gated community that actually has some gates in place -- plus naturally locks an’ bars an’ moats an’ stormtroopers an’ rotweilers an’ all that good, but fearfully pricey, stuff -- Castle Sanseverino-Taxis up in L@@nchester-by-the-Sea is a model of modern self-preservation.

Howie’s Wellesley is nice enough to visit, but far too accessible by the Bad Poor to be deemed safe for when the Crunch comes.


[6] If overtaken out of the blue, probably almost any genuine Family doorstop will do. The average Kevin-an’-Mary-Finnegan chosen completely at random may be reluctant to take you in: after all, anybooby could *pretend* to be an O’Beese!

But once you remind them that at least they will enjoy your wake, why, in like Flynn will you be. (((( Goak fourth and final ))))