De Adumbratione Epistola

Dear Dr. Bones,

America is not alone ... [t]he rot is deep and widespread; it is civilizational. The entitlement promises made by national and local governments of the West are so vast that they can never be kept. When people finally and fully realize this, the capitals of the world will shake with the rage of masses which have come to expect everything, and will accept nothing less. Indeed, it is already happening. The recent unrest in Greece, France, Britain, and elsewhere *adumbrate* our future rather nicely. The reckoning is coming. It will be swift, and it will be terrible.

‘Adumbrate’ is good, and especially as coming from a freedumbdownee.

On the other hand, it looks as if St. Dilbert Antistate College [1] did not teach this particular sweet puppy of Redarkenment any mammonology at all. Not even of the Chicagonomic or Vienna-Sausage type.[0]

Meanwhile, back at ‘adumbrate’, does not the dingalingism

The government’s debt is our debt, and when our creditors at last demand their due, that heretofore unseen $45,300 per person in debt will suddenly surge to the surface and sweep all before it in a terrible deluge. Not one person in America will be unaffected . . . .

stand in what might be termed "an adumbatory relationship" [2] to one of our own favourite gold-standard oldies?

There was a jolly miller once
Lived on the River Dee;
He work’d and sang from morn till night,
No lark more blithe than he.
And this the burden of his song
Forever used to be;
I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

The reason why he was so blithe,
He once did thus unfold;
The bread I eat my hands have earn’d;
I covet no man’s gold;
I DO NOT FEAR NEXT QUARTER-DAY [*] ;
In debt to none I be.
I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

A coin or two I’ve in my purse,
To help a needy friend;
A little I can give the poor,
And still have some to spend.
THOUGH I MAY FAIL, YET I REJOICE,
ANOTHER’S GOOD HAP TO SEE [**] .
I care for nobody, no, not I,
If nobody cares for me.

So let us his example take,
And be from malice free;
Let every one his neighbour serve,
As served he’d like to be.
And merrily push the can about
And drink and sing with glee;
If nobody cares a doit for us,
Why not a doit care we.

This version was discovered in 1857 written on a flyleaf of a 1716 collection of John Dryden’s poems.

[*] A great fearer of quarter-days is Party Neocomrade (seventh class) M. X. Patterson. (His freelordship's autoterrorization serves as my chief pivot of adumbration, don’t you see?)

[**] About 98.6% of the original-intented function of all Whig Pastoral is to induce the Bad Poor to take the attitude nicely captured here in only a dozen words. And captured at least a century and a half ago! A closer dating would be welcome: do you know anybody in the Eng. Lit. Department, O Bones?

A preferrer might prefer to anachronize a little, though, --dulce desipere in loco--and imagine Yeoperson D. Miller going about her daily grind wearing one of Freedame Patricia Nixon’s second-hand, yet thoroughly respectable, cloth coats.

---

There is also a platinum-standard version available, with notes by Mynheer van Beethove’.

¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM


_____
[1] Or Wingsdale, or George Peppermason , or wherever. I doubt this neospecimen could have been admitted to Wombschool Normal University , salve magna pestiferens, for, if it had been, they would have invigilated at least a little worldly wisdom into it. Not about *this* world, naturally, but still . . . .


[2] Part of my own blitheness at the moment , I betcha, is to reflect subliminally that Wally Wingnut an’ Cinda from Wasilla don't know ‘adumbrate’ well enough to bring out the dumb in it. But Freud knows best.

(( Golly, I just noticed it's a twofer: why, with both ‘dumb’ and ‘brat’ built in, this one word is virtually the CliffsNotes version of Neocomradology 101! ))


[0] As you know, sir, I don't like the ad homunculum manner much: as Mommy said, gossip is for proles, we of The True Middle ©lass (Pat. Pend.) would much rather talk phænomenology or ætiology. Maybe in a pinch, we sink as low as Political Arithmetic. But definitely never to mere tattle about Master Wally an’ Mizz Cindy an’ Kiddiemistress S. L. Heath-Paling of AK-49.

On the other hand, is it not just what one expected that a PNC7 M. X. Patterson should prove to "be a senior editor at the Capital Research Center"?

Oops. It appears that the Party neocomrade does NOT, as I guessed from the name of his coven, spend many hours a day breakin’ individual brokees under the guise of providing financial consultancy. No Neocomrade Th. X. Bloomer of Mason OH is MXP! Instead, he is a tank-thinker, a bush-league Heritagitarian or AEIdeologue: "Capital Research Center (CRC) was established in 1984 to study non-profit organizations, with a special focus on reviving the American traditions of charity, philanthropy, and voluntarism.

From what follows, I gather that the single greatest failin’ of our holy Homeland™'s unprofitable sector is . . . in CRC eyes . . . not to despise the Wicked State sufficiently. ¡Quelle surprise!

For gossip purposes, though, my mistake is immaterial: whether ponzificatin’ retail or wholesale, the advantages of not knowin’ much ’bout ickynomics are about the same.

Given MXP's institutional settin’, I wonder whether the CRC inmates might not be applyin’ St. Adam of Edinburgh's "division of labour" scheme with rigour. I mean, do other CRooCs concoct the cake, an’ then Neocomrade Patterson slathers some prose-style icin’ on the top an’ down the sides before they ship finalized neoproduct out to Hooverville an’ Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie? That way, his freelordship would need to know no more of Chicagonomics than some heathen Chinee shrink-wrapper knows about the circuitry of the electronic gizmos he packages.

In the same institutional light, wan and flickerin’ and compact-fluorescent and generally crumby all through, it seems a pity that today’s Pscenario of Doom should include not a single word that is unmistakably the fruit of any focusin’ whatsoever of the study of non-profit organizations. ’Twould not have been difficult to include a few, would it? I mean, it took me miserable slightly under 7.1035 seconds to think of feigning that "John D. and Catherine T." -- sc. the Foundation of Geniuses, rhymes with "breakfast of champions" -- have undermined, and worse than undermined, all the sterlin’ accomplishments that the Freelord of MacArthur wreaked in person before his promotion to a Higher Sphere of Service.

And M. le baron György du Soros-Schwartz is still around for kickin’ purposes, ¿no es verdad? Though possibly the Foxcuckooland GHQ has awarded a monopoly on Soros-bashin’ to Don Glenito de Beck y Coughlin. There are lots of alternatives, though.