¡Blame the Voters!

Now here is a pretty dingalingism for you, Dr. Bones:

It is the voters who do the electing.... Therefor[e], blame the voters for what their elected officials do, or do not do.

Have no fear of the AstroTurf™bagger Community, sir!

Possibly economic TopPercenters DO hand out bucks galore to their dupes and their marks and their squawk-radio artists, to candidates for office, and to candidates elected to office, to 14,309.6 different Tanks of Neothought, but none of these benefactions have any bearing on la démocratie en Amérique, because ... (ta-DAH) ... because AstroTurf™ doesn’t buy pols, only voters buy polss.[1]

His Daddy Warbucks and his Uncle Rupert ought to give the neocomrade a special medal just for thinking of such a nifty. Should it actually catch on, perhaps they could give him half of Connecticut or thereabouts.

To be sure, it is a tad extreme even by militant extremist G.O.P. standards, so it may not corner the market instantly. Or ever.

But it certainly deserves to! Johannianity offers all that the Secret Sector has ever required in the way of utter irresponsability and unaccountability, and it offers it without the superficial (?) appearance of selfishness that comes with the Rand-Nozick-Dilbert ‘libertarianism’ product. The neoëvangelist of Mammon does not risk his flock noticin’ that they do not themselves happen to be Warbucks or Scrooges or Murdochs or Soroses as they are called upon to celebrate a True Freedumb product that only a Big Manager can make proper use of. Au contraire, the sweet little puppies of the Right are flattered by bein’ told how remarkably incorruptible they are.

And what goes down better with the Big Management Party base and vile than flattery? [2]

In an ideal and logical world, Foxcuckooland would toss out its present agitation and propaganda at once and switch over to this one. But of course the neocomrades could not turn on a dime even if their Oberkommando issued the order. As thing stand, the TopPercenters are rather heavily invested in the notion that money CAN influence organic persons as well as corporate persons. Remember that "Louisiana purchase" swift-boatin’ job they did on Sen. Landrieu? Or Neocomrade Dr. R. Limbaugh barkin’ and’ bellowin’ against supposed "slush funds" disquised as ‘porkulus’? None of that noise would make sense if voters are radically unpurchasable.

More abstractly and less immediately, intramural problems might develop inside the Party of Grant and Hoover: once the rank-and-file base and vile become genuinely convinced that bucks cannot matter in politics, what, exactly, would inspire them with awe and affection (genuine or well simulated) when they look up at their G.O.P. geniuses, the good folks who run that show and almost always have run it? True, bucks that cannot be exchanged for Power could still buy lots and lots of brandy and cigars and real estate and motor carriages and flyin’ machines and . . . . But even my low estimate of the ideological heirs of Gen. Hamilton does not involve them carin’ for nothin’ beyond consumer goodies.

It seems clear enough that what the sweet puppies want from their Party’s Big Managers is not so much trickle-down from the gravy train, but Respectability, which is, in its way, a spiritual affair. Sort of. Johannianity may or may not be able to accommodate that demand, but I fear the ideoproduct will need a little work first. In the preliminary version vouchsafed here, there is the grave difficulty that (for all that explicitly appears to the contrary), NO voters can be bought, none at all. If simply bein’ unpurchasable makes one Respectable, than everybody and her brother-in-law is entitled to call herself so.

Unfortunately what is common to all is dirt cheap. From Gen. Hamilton of New York all the way down through Governess S. Heath-Paling of AK-49, it has always been understood over to starboard that one can fail to be Respectable. And many do fail.[3] (Fortunately there is a place to put them politically. But that is another donkey.)

Perhaps I was too enthusiastic above [4]. Viewed in light of the long-term difficulty just expounded, the Neogospel accordin’ to Johann could be dismissed as only another glimpse of Foxcuckooland’s never-endin’ Great Snipe Hunt, the quest to establish that kiddie selfservatives (as well as KSM kiddiemasters a fortiori) are simply not subject to Original Sin the same way demonocrats and lieberals and "the Democrat party" have the misfortune to be. [5]

(( There remains the obvious cheap shot: "blame the voters for what their elected officials do" ought to mean that Neocomrade Johann would never even dream of blamin’ President Summers and Mr. O’Bama for anythin’ about the existin’ régime that displeases him.

(( Perhaps we may make a memorandumb of his name and check how well he complies with his own oracles? ))

I wish you, sir,
Happy days through affordable healthcare.




___
[1] Comrade Labour Commissar Reich started out from Brits v. Yanks, so perhaps it is not off-topic to point out that the Johannine "We the People" seems to have been studying Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam: litigants may give Our Honour as many golden candlesticks and vicuña coats as they like -- ¡the more the merrier! -- but must understand that these are sheer unsolicited marks of respect for Our Wunnerfulness, and will have no influence whatever on how their cases get decided.

[2] Nothin’.


[3] The current Party-and-AEIdeology line would perhaps define these impossible-to-respect losers as that half of the adult populace that "pays no taxes." I usually just say "the Bad Poor" myself, leaving unspecified exactly what, if anythin’, is bad about them in the eyes of the neocomrades, over and above technical credit-rating problems.


[4] But, as the lady said, "How can I know what I think before I see what I keyboarded?"


[5] I trust, Dr. Bones, you recall prof. Fischer’s ‘fallacy’ that runs "It is a sad thing to be a frenchman, for all Frenchmen must die."?

Concerning True Poorblindness

Wingnutettes and wingnuts, the most desirable of demographics from Fox-on-15th-Street's point of view, are well known to suppose themselves personally to be colourblind, which condition, far from being any sort of defect, affords the unafflicted endless opportunities for self-gloatin’ that if, perchance, there are still some remnannts of a racial problem in the United States, all least that fact has nothin’ whatsoever to do with wunnerful them.

Since this ploy has worked -- and keeps tight on workin’! -- so well for the ploysters, Neocomrade R. J. Samuelson and other movers and shakers of Rio Limbaugh might want to consider extendin’ it to the problem discussed this fine holiday morning: why don't they just proclaim themselves ‘poorblind’ as well?

"Some folks," R. J. Samuelson might neo-orate, "can perhaps never see a stranger without instantly classifyin’ her economically. But, ¡thank Father Zeus!, I am not like that! Dives an’ Lazarus are all the same to me!"

Needless to say, once poorblindness has become the prefered self-saucin’ for Neocomrade R. J. Samuelson and the F-15 crew and all their ideobuddies, it follows ineluctably that all the neocomradely community’s Uncle Sam must be poorblind as well. Anythin’ else would be unconstitutional. Obviously.

Not quite so obvious, perhaps, are the policy implications. I may be wrong here, but I believe on the whole they would be just what Neocomrade Dr. P. G. Peterson, Freelord and Kiddiemaster Concord, might have ordered: the Fedguv must be conducted on a strict fee-for-service basis.

PROOF: Sam can set prices for his services because to do so requires knowing only his own expenses. But even flat-taxers err against poorblindness insofar as they must demand to know what Neocomrade R. J. Samuelson’s income is in order to charge X.Y% of it for services (supposedly) rendered.

Hence a really strict "don't ask, don't tell" attitude towards wealth and poverty, that is to say, True Poorblindness, forbids anythin’ so un-American as taxation, in the sense ordinarily given to that word.

Q.E.D.

This plan may be rather too good to flourish in the real world, yet anybody who considers that a significant objection to it ought to find the True Colourblindness of Wingnut City and the G.O.P. almost equally problematical.

Such lieberals and demoncrats as doubt the latter to begin with should notice that in neither case do the neocomrades have to be *literally* blind to anythin’ at all. OF COURSE our Betters will know very well who is rich and white as opposed to poor an’ black-or-tan. The ‘blindness’ consists only in Their promisin’ never to make decisions, outside the secret sector [*], on such invidious bases as pigmentation and credit rating.

And who would venture to disbelieve promises made by Betters?

Healthy days.

___
[*] Delineating the boundaries of the secret sector is itself a well-known can of worms.

In conjunction with the True Poorblindness Plan (Pat. Pend.), the immediate point is first to rehabilitate Neocomrade R. Paul of KY and then to comply with his unfashionable oracles. Individual entrepreneurs who waive their Zeus-granted secrecy rights to the point of operating, for example, a greasy spoon into which anybody may walk and maybe even sit down, cannot decently be required to pay no attention to whether they are dealing with Lord Dives and Kiddiemaster Peterson (not to mention well-salaried agitprop neocomrades from Fox-on-15th), or only with lazy Lazzy and Joe the Hobo and the occasional Mother Teresa.

The Panera Intergalactic Trust LLC seems to be attempting, misguidedly, to apply poorblindness in a secret-sector context, but I anticipate that the attempt will break down sooner rather than later. In a way, that attempt broke down even before it started: the Baní Panera feel obliged to suggest sandwich prices to the unimaginative.

That breakdown may point to the general solution, however. Let every customer exhibit her proposed payment to obtain admission to the sanctums of commercial secrecy. A twenty dollar banknote in hand ought to do the trick at Panera, and even Mother Teresa might accidently happen to have such a thing as that from time to time. In any case, there need be no *general* inquisition into anybody’s poverty or unpoverty: Dives and Peterson would not get in on the basis of how expensive their suits look or what their chauffeurs drive; they, too, would have to have the cash in hand. Should they find that prospect humiliating, well, they can always have lunch at the Union League Club or the Burnin’ Tree Club, refugia magnatum conducted in full compliance with the Randpauline regs.

(But Mammon knows best.)

"I don't play golf."

Dear Dr. Bones,

Hidden here amidst the weekly (daily, hourly, minutely, ... ) neo-re-standardizin’ for purposes of Party and AEIdeology lurks an Eternal Truth: "I don’t play golf."

A golfless Neocomrade & Kiddiemaster Prof. Dr. Rear-Colonel Victor D. H. Blimp? Egad!

’Tis easy to see how His Serenity may find it difficult to get out to the links much lately, for, obviously from this neosabbath morning’s sermonette alone, he must spend many hours aloft workin’ away at the paradigm that goes ego - mei - mihi - me - me. [1] Pluggin’ things into holes on the ground (or out at sea) would only be a distraction from more geistlich concerns, after all. [2] [3].

Nothing is more suitable, surely, than that V. D. H. Blimp should abstain from golf. After all, he has not properly earned the right to it. The gold stand of such right, politically considered, must of course be Dwight David XXXIV, who was a real militarist before he became a real golfer. Blimp bein’ only a virtual militarist [4], let His Serenity autowaft no farther afield than virtual golf; seemliness demands it.

Though Blimp does not do (what I believe the gamesters in question call) ‘slice,’ he is a dab hand at ‘spin’. Thorougly wrapped up in his own neoself [5], His Serenity does not mention the Great Game as mere gossip. Naturally not! He mentions it because "in the spirit of live and let live, I also never cared much for deconstructing the game in terms of culture and sociology."

Far more interesting than golf is that little self-exuberance. Prescinding straightaway from the part that features the good rear-colonel pattin’ himself on His Serenity’s own back [6], I rush to suggest that probably he does not much care for the deconstruction products generally available, which run, more or less, to the tune of malefactors of great wealth accompanied by cigars (possibly even by Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh -- talk about "a great way to wreck a walk"! ) as they make their conspicuously consumptive rounds. All that is largely out of date, to be sure.

On the other hand, it is by no means completely out of date. At a time when the War against the Wetbacks rages furiously, golf will still do as being an example of the sort of activity that one does not, with some confidence, expect to find the Bad Poor engaged in. Or that José and Juanita violate the sacred perimeter of the holy Homeland™ in desperate quest of opportunity to pursue.

Perhaps a year ago, as General Motors was succumbing to the impact of the Crawford Crash in particular and the vast sweep of G.O.P. economic genius more broadly, I recall certain wingnutettes and wingnuts raisin’ a howl about certain Union thugs™ setting up a country club for their members. One may take for granted that, had the shameless boondoggle been a bowling alley, not even the most militant and extreme of Republican Party class warriors would have bothered about it.

And the moral of that is, I guess, that there is still some mileage to be gotten out of golf as culture and deconstruction and sociology, perhaps especially if deployed on behalf of TopPercenterdom and the Blimpoid Classes rather than against them as hitherto.

Golf is doubtless not the best such weapon of Party and AEIdeology. Neocomrade R. H. Limbaugh, who after all is no mere idiot, brandishes the Sports Utility Vehicle for essentially the same polemical and symbolic purpose, and (from outside the monkey house, of course) I think the Doctor of Demoplutocracy is wise to prefer it to golf. Though the Bad Poor do not actually possess, as I conjecture, more SUV's than mashies and niblicks, it is far, far easier to imagine them wishing to possess the former. An angry mob of B.P. breaking into an automobile dealership and helping themselves is a topos that a Kiddiemaster V. D. H. Blimp could work up rhetorically and present to readers and cruisemates in a fashion so plausible as to be heart-chillin’ and even wallet-threatenin’.

The idea of José and Juanita, and the Revs Wright and Sharpeton, and the superintendant ghost of Mr. Saul Alinsky, summoning Roxbury and Dorchester and Everett and Framingham [7] to sack THE Country Club is a good deal less plausible.

At the opposite extreme from SUV’s (and much remoter from them than golf) stand artefacts of culture and deconstruction and sociology like Attic Greek and classical music. Blimp is known to retain traces of his Greek, at least, but it has been a long time since that attainment made him (or anybody else) gentry eo ipso. The likener who likened it to lace was right on, for if His Serenity were to dress up like this tomorrow, his kiddies and his kruisemates would only wonder if their neoguru supposes Memorial Day to be identical with Halloween. [8] Mobile vulgars demolishing (or perhaps squatting on, sitting in at) THE County Club is conceivable, though hardly likely. The Loeb Library, by contrast, may be pronounced perfectly safe.

Josquin and Boccherini and Dvorak would make an even better example, since a taste for such antiques is much easier to simulate than a reading knowledge of Thucydides and Pindar. Unfortunately, our good rear-colonel and Coriolanus wannabe has not yet exhibited that particular war (?) wound in the Forum: I have no idea whether he cares, or professes to care, for so-called classical music.

In any case, the chances that any particular specimen of the Bad Poor cares can be estimated at zero, despite the product being vastly easier to get at than Greek. If, however, the specimen should happen to found Microsoft (or win some other similar lottery), it would be odd, almost an impropriety, if it did not feel obligated to start faking an enjoyment of Mozart. [9]

***

To generalize, perhaps idiotically, Dr. Bones: it looks as if Neocomrade Rear-Col. Blimp has managed to dumb himself down into a tolerable facsimile of the pre-1929 North American college professor, the sort of "genteel" target Mr. Mencken and Prof. Veblen loved to bang away at.

Healthy days.

___
[1] The vernacular body count is EYE (‘I’) 26, ME 8, MY 1 in appoximately 1,265 words of autoblimpification.


[2] Furthermore, that magisterial Serenity one always admires as Blimp drifts by overhead, borne on the Winds (wings? wingnuts? windnuts?) of Faction, may take a bit of a beatin’ when this or that particular hole fails to get plugged. But Ike knows best, golfwise.


[3] As you know, Bones, this coarse and illiterate keyboard tries to stay as far away from idols and icons and cartoons and Planet MacL@@han as possible. That means that its judgments about the visual may be worthless. Nevertheless: would not a literal blimp, weapon of War and Hucksterism , trying to emulate Charles I Stuart or Mr. Woods of Tigergate defeat almost any crayon or pencil?

The notion reminds one of a certain bicycle-mad fish, nicht wahr?


[4] And a former virtual militarist as well, for practical purposes. But hush! Mr. McCloskey’s general theory of V. D. H. Blimp has already been expounded rather too frequently. Let us take it for granted and attempt to move on.


[5] The eyeball-locked-on-omphalus business that His Serenity is so good at may explain why the kiddies and neokiddies and Conservative Tours pseudogentry put up with Blimp so readily.


[6] Also a bit tricky to picture this scene with a literal blimp. (( Remember Mr. Scarisbrick’s "exquisite anatomical tautology," sir? ))


[7] Pardon my Boston, sir, but in pscenariomongering one should stick to the concrete and avoid flabbinesses about nameless ghettoes and barrios and other dark corners of the realm where the B.P. hang out.


[8] I should myself assume that VDHB had just encountered the expression "Decoration Day" and made a very natural mistake about hermeneutics. (( The Goodyear blimp decked in lace makes another good unpicture, no? ))


[9] The culture / deconstruction / sociology gets a little complicated at this point, however. A lottery winner like Mr. Warren Buffet can cash in backhandedly by NOT pretending any fancy pretence about Wolfgangus & Co.

Possibly His Serenity’s "I don't play golf" was aimin’ at thet sort of effect?

Veblen knows best.

Apologizin’ for Bee Pee

Dear Dr. Bones,

This morning you may watch a cub agitpropper flounderin’ , sir.

Its intended patients or victims are NOT to think ill of Party Paymasters and the AstroTurf™bagger classes -- that general proposition goes almost without sayin’ inside the well-gated neocomradely community.

No system of gatin’ can ever be absolutely perfect, however. "Things leak," one might idiotically generalize, and such leakage can produce neoideologically unsatisfactory situations like "76 percent of respondents disapprove of the way BP has handled the spill." Not to mention a holy Homeland™ awash with crimmigrants and criminaliens leaning ever inwards.

The cub fears that this dreadful three-misguided-citizens-in-four mob may include a few upstandin’ kiddie selfservatives and Party base an’ vile who really ought to know better. Not even Foxcuckooland -- not even National Review itself! -- is 100% gleichschaltet as yet, and indeed, they presumably never will be, given the perfluctus originalis, the inherent Original Leakage of all mortal things. Father Zeus alone can keep a really tight pipe.

Some of the weaker siblin’s, then, of Party and Ideology seem to the cub, or, much more likely, to its cubmasters, to be likely to deviate from GOPT®F, the Republican Party brand (®) True Freedumb product. The success of P&I wombschoolin’ has brought with it the problems of success [1], one of which is that wombscholars and downdumbees cannot be relied on to handle hard or marginal cases well. Wally Wingnut and Cindy from Wasilla have never been allowed to look upon GOPT®F bare, after all. They are quite clear that they ought to cheer for GOPT®F, and doubtless they wish to cheer for it even harder in this oil-black hour of apparent need. But what are the kiddies to cheer, exactly?

The correct textbook answer is easy enough to accomodate to the meanest intelligence of kiddie selfservatism, say,

Bee Pee! Bee Pee! / Leakin’ Oil is Liberty!! / RAAAAH!!!

Of course you must see how that won’t quite do the trick, Dr. Bones. But let us be clear about why not. Or rather, about the various levels of reasons why not.

(0) Master Wally and Mizz Cindy won’t be cheerin’ that cheer or anythin’ equivalent because they really and truly do not grasp that GOPT®F entails it. For reasons too obvious to discuss at length, wombschoolers and invigilators at the various hatcheries deliberately inculcate the notion that GOPT®F has somethin’ nontrivial to do with the rank-and-file Party base and vile. To expect Wally and Cindy to fall on their wallets for the Hayward classes with full awareness of what is actually goin’ on would be absurd. The ideological neowomb must spare them THAT awful realization, perhaps more than any other single glimpse of the former Real World.

Hath not Comrade Frank of Kansas explained all these things?

The Frank explanations are necessarily general, however, and do not of themselves indicate what the Party of Grant & Hoover operative is to incite Wally and Cindy to holler just at present. That is where a Neocomrade (j. g.) M. X. Patterson ought to come in. As you can see, the cub gives it a college try, so to speak, but loses a couple of yards on the play.

(1) MXP is a doubtful juvenile neospecimen, but we can assume that most full-grown PG&H agitators and propagandists more or less know what they are doin’. Accordingly, they find themselves temporarily in basically the same plight that their Party Neocomrade Rand Minor of KY is in all the time: honesty is by no means the best policy when it comes to defendin’ Freelord Hayward and Bee Pee (or the Planet Dilbert theory of public accomodations and the Wicked State).

If all the world were Foxcuckooland and everybody in it sincerely addicted to GOPT®F taken straight up, no defense would be necessary. The divine right of Big Management to bigmanage would not be questioned merely because of a little perfluctus originalis from time to time. Kiddies and weaker siblin’s might grumble against GOPT®F from time to time, the same way Wally and Cindy might grumble against a thunderstorm when they happen to want to have a picnic, with a very tame grumblin’ that certainly does not mean that the kiddies have started thinkin’ unorthodox thoughts about the Omnipotence™ and All-Benevolence™ of Father Zeus, Compeller of Clouds.

I daresay life would be far easier for the Party-an’-AEIdeology apologist if kiddie selfservatism could just be converted into old-fashioned Enthusiasm and Superstition wholesale. That little trick once accomplishes, Freelord Hayward and the crew at BP would qualify for all (or at least most) of the special allowances and double-thinkin’s and special pleadin’s presently accorded Dr. Ratzinger and the VC crowd without anybody batting an eye. M. de Rome is not Father Zeus in person, but rumours about a special relationship between the two of them are quite sufficient to check and balance pretty well everybody this side of Party Neocomrade Ch. X. Hitchens.

Alas, the AEIdeology radically does not lend itself to vaticanisation. The whole P&I m’gillâ" would have to be rewritten, from the Gospel of St. Adam all the way down through the Cocktail Napkin Apocalypse, to accomodate the (now) utterly heretical neodogma that particular persons can enjoy a Zeus-Ratzinger-like special relationship with Mlle. de la Main Invisible.

Of course in one sense those who win the lottery are Her favorites and Freelord Mammon’s. Verbally, one could call lottery-winnin’ a "special relationship" with Their Freelordships Above. Even, maybe, speak of the "divine election and predestination" of lottery winners. But such borrowed verbiage and plumage signally fails to smoothe over the crack in the ontotheological [2] wallpaper. If the words really meant the same thing in the AEIdeology as in the former Christojudæanity -- that is, if Mme. de la Main Invisible be reconceived as havin’ individual pets as opposed to a generic class of pets -- then obviously the fix would be in and one could speak of a ‘lottery’ or ‘market’ only out of courtesy, genuine or sarcastic.[3]

When Her Freeladyship Above’s apologists and seconds and bottle-washers have happier narratives than the Bee Pee Saga to chant, they can and do appeal to this radical secularism and un- or anti-religionism of the AEIdeology. Master Wally and Mizz Cindy are extremely unlikely ever to win big at Le Grand Casino des Événements Humaines, yet it is not absolutely impossible that they might. Such has ever been the burden of Schlesinger Minor’s Whig pastoral. That is what Mr. Arnold was making sport of when he spoofed -- spoofed just a bit too much, as usual -- about “Ever remember, my dear Dan, that you should look forward to being some day manager of that concern!"

But what avails that thoroughly traditional snake oil now? Imagine Wally Wingnut checkin’ the number on his bettin’ slip and discoverin’ that he has just won a license to pollute the Gulf of Mexico without stint or limit! Unless the prize is transferable and he can sell it to somebody like Freelord Hayward, I doubt poor Wally would think he had won anythin’ much to brag about.

Pari passu, the trouble for Party-an’-Ideology spinsters like Neocomrade (j.g.) M. X. Patterson is that Wally and Cindy will not much care whether Bee Pee and Freelord Hayward possesses such a license or not. Such concern of that sort as they can muster (for I assume their wombschoolin’ will have wired in at least some tendency towards a disinterested pity for poor little rich corporations and the Big Managers thereof) may not manage compete successfully against a deluge of pictures of oilslicked birds &c. &c.

Our junior birdman for GOP & AEI does not expressly notice the oilslicked bird menace, an omission that I incline to attribute to incompetence rather than the reverse. Had the cub thought of that angle, he would have tossed in some steel-claptrap-minded boilerplate against bleedin’-heart environmentalist whackos. ’Tis a mere accident that a past master of the Goebbels School curriculum would probably not mention it either, havin’ calculated that it would be better the dupes and marks thought about concrete and picturesque details of perfluctus originalis as little as possible. [4]

However the great difference between somebody competent and Neocomrade (j. g.) M. X. Patterson is unquestionably that the former would not have offered Cindy and Wally two completely different distractions from what Party and AEIdeology want theor base and vile distracted from. The kiddies should be set to thinkin’ EITHER ’bout "the dangers and complexities ... [required] to bring forth the lubricant that greases the gears of our civilization" OR ’bout the Bartlettisms that cluster around that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler returns

Neocomrade M. X. Patterson, the neosorcerer’s apprentice, as it were, wants to work both these spells at once. That is overreachin’, and ’twill serve the cub right if he gets no results at all.

¡Healthy days!


___
[1] Perfluctus originalis at work before our very eyes, Dr. Bones, is everything implied by that little phrase "problems of success."!

(( You’ll have to bear with me this morning, sir, if I seem a lot more interested in my own stuff than in the shoddy wares of Neocomrade (j. g.) M. X. Patterson. Trying to work out how a competent alumnus of the Joseph Goebbels School of Agitation, Propaganda and Public Diplomacy would set to work on behalf of Hayward et al. is vastly more fun (and at least a littl more valuable) than wading though M. X. P.’s sophomore blue book with a redstate pencil.


[2] That unnecessary coinage is so silly and so unnecessary that I wish I had thought of it myself.


[3] The only objection I can think of to myself off-hand is that famous apology or self-panegyric of Freelord Rockefeller Major, "The Good Lord gave me my money."

Sed respondeo that his freelordship did not even begin to speculate WHY the grant in question was made. Furthermore, had somebody from the lamestream media of 1929 asked whether his freelordship would agree that all lottery winners were entitled to say the same, I betcha he would have acknowledged that they are.

But Mammon knows best.


[4] Perhaps the comrades over at Media Matters will examine RupertNews contra mundum as regards pictorial representation of what Bee Pee hath wrought in the way of oilslicked flora and fauna? I detest Planet MacL@@han and the Y@@ T@@B far to heartily to do it myself, but somebody ought to.

Fugiat Impius, et Nemine Persequente

Dear Dr. Bones,

Time to head for the hills, sir! -- the green hills of Venezuela , I guess.

After ninescore years, the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom (LLC) -- whom I shall here refer to as "the hicks" in honour of this morning’s honourable and gallant (and ever-so-neolearnèd!) specimen of yalodrama -- have finally figured out what makes us Demonocrat Party fiends tick.

Some ratfink must have whispered our whole agenda to the hicks:

• (1) Expand the Wicked State!
  
  
• (2) Hand the expanded Wicked State over to Nà-Ní, the Manchurirsupial Candidate [1] !
  
  
• (3) Smash the Violence Profession, as not being sufficiently wicked and statist!
  
  
• (4) Never give a Colourblind an even break!
  
  
• (5) Do nothing except through Union thugs, not even in the former C.S.A.!
  
  

  

  
  
• (6) Ask all the Blacks and Tans of the world to drop by and visit for a few centuries!
  
  
• (7) Snatch corruptible youth out of DVSW (LLC) wombschools and downdumberies and hand them over to the Big Sisters of St. John Dewey!

But perhaps I had better not summatorialize in my own words.

According to the report that espionage most sneaky made available to Daughters of Wisdom and Sons of Virtute, incorporated or not, we tick like this, verbatim:

The nation’s ultra-liberals and leftists have made Arizona the focus of their anger. Why? Let’s examine this. Beyond advocating [1] an ever-expanding [2] nanny state, working to [3] undermine the nation’s military, [4] defending racial preferences, and [5] maintaining Big Labor as the Democrats’ political machine, only two other issues are seen by leftists as issues worth waging nationwide battles over. [6] Immigration and [7] indoctrination (through identity-based high school and college classes) are these two other causes. Arizona has just thrown down the gauntlet against these two pet causes of the left.

Before you rush to the airport, though, you might wish to compare the above with your copy of the Elderly Protocol dated 13 ’Irháb al-’Awwal 1492, the one containing the famous Ibn ‘Alinskí "Secret Speech." I believe you will notice that the hicksy (¿hixy?) spy has missed quite a few tricks, presumably out of an Arizonacentricity that may be in need of clinical attention. The hicksy spymasters may, in some cases, be señoritos of neocompetence in their chosen path of Party an’ AEIdeology, but when it comes to sneakin’ around closed doors listenin’ through keyholes, well, of course even Hicksians must take what they can get, even a ’Zona zany.

I need scarcely point out to you, Dr. Bones, that it was decided at the Shúrá of Elders, 9 Dhú l-Fitna 1542, that if we Union thugs must dispense temporarily with selected parts of the Union, the LIFO, "last in, first out" principle is to apply. Hence HI-50 would be first to get the boot -- though Hawai’i we have well in paw at the moment so the question should not be arising -- and then come AK-49 and AZ-48, two very dark corners of the realm indeed. But also thoroughly peripheral and, in a pinch, thoroughly dispensable dark corners.

In any case, the low tool of Hicksianity appears to have been uninterested in swipin’ secrets with no obvious AZ connection. Not a word about plans to holocaust Hyperzion, for instance, though Ibn ‘Alinskí droned on about that topic almost endlessly, cf. B(2) §13.5 in the 9.XIV.42 protocol and its 23 (!) addendumbs. [2] You were fortunate to have been sick that day, sir. Ibn ‘Alinskí was a great hero, a Guide to all humanitarian progressivity, but even Guides and heroes might photocopy their stuff and hand it out for ten minutes of silent reading by the Learnèd Elders instead of an hour and a half of sitting there like stones whilst being read at. (I‘A even insisted on reciting a couple dozen assorted addendumbs from his draft!)

Apart from her omissions, the Hicksian spy’s arrangement of her neobooty is peculiar. Even apart from the great 5-2 divide marked above that I shall get to in a moment. Naturally we fiends prioritize Education first rather than last, and Lady Logic demands that any group of statespersons whatsoever address the violence profession issue before founding (or neodemolishin’) any particular instantiation of The Wicked State. "War is the health of the damn thing, after all," said L.E. Randolph Ibn Bourne as long ago as 1336.

The 5-2 scheme itself eludes me: first time throigh, I thought the scribbler meant that we fiends had supposedly achieved the first five objectives and now have only two more to accomplish before the Daughters of Virtue and Sons of Wisdom (LLC) are bound down forever in a worse-than-Freddy-von-Hayekian serfdom. But that makes so little sense that even a complete Party-an’-Ideology dingaling can scarcely be accused of believin’ it. At Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh the DV an’ SW (most of ’em) chuckle with glee at how clean a neosweep kiddie selfservatism will make next November. IQ-challenged though the kiddies undoubtedly are, they must grasp that winners are winners and that losers are not: sweet puppies of Redarkenment who cannot get that far must find all their own yalodramas and other Foxcuckoo entertainments unintelligible, whereupon they no doubt go extinct rapidly from sheer boredom.

Maybe--I’m just guessing-- the Hicksite spy supposed that until she brought the present memorandumb to their attention, her superiors at Foxcuckoo GHQ supposed only five of the Seven Great Abominations of Demonocracy and Lieberalism seemed to be at stake in AZ? Whereas their neoöperative and Jane Bondess, has now discovered in the nick of time that "Immigration and indoctrination (through identity-based high school and college classes)" are important too?

No, that is ridiculous: even Señorito Jonás de Goldberg-Steinberg [3] itself must have noticed that the AZ fuss has at least a little somethin’ to do with "immigration and"!

I give it up.

As for the rest of this scribble, although enough has been discovered to make sure that I am off for the Mountains of Orinoco by Monday at the latest -- and I again urge you to join me -- Jane Bondess seems to have padded her report with a mere haphazard series of anecdotes suited to neocomradely tastes of the less exclusive sort. [4]

’Tis a pity, though, not to have been provided with an actual example of "Aztec math." Plus, ideally, a compare-and-contrast with Rio Limbaugh math, the kind where 41% is greater than 59%.

And I wish you, Dr. Bones,
Happy days through affordable healthcare (somewhere down around Atabapo)

___
[1] The hicks’ chosen instrument may have been a little hard of hearin’.


[2] One of Foxcuckooland’s ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’ is bound to work out a nifty parallelism of Tucson and Tel ’Avîv sooner or later. (You heard it here first!) There is G*re’s plenty of agitprop fodder ready to hand, no? Lots of very dry land in both; Blacks and Tans as the obvious enemy in both; issues about the efficacy of erectin’ Bar Maginot Lines; Natives knocked on the head and then the autoëlect get to ‘inherit’ ; ....

I daresay I could think of more points easily enough, did not my conscience already torment me for blatant digression.


[3] Or whichever Wingnut City celeb you account dumbest of all.

[4] (( I see I posted to the pajamatarians with this note omitted. Tusk, tusk! ))

Bein’, as I said, IQ-challenged, many kiddies and even some neokiddies do have a definite tendency to fancy they are provin’ somethin’ somehow when they are in fact only spinnin' anecdotes and ‘narrative’. This, however, is no fit objection to be brought against the report of a secret agentess.

Wally Wombschool for Congress!

Dear Dr. Bones,

Wally Wombschool can probably coast through life easily enough by becomin’ a Dan Quayle brand Coach Potatoe (®) and reposin’ all his faith--what’s left after he’s laid aside a very safe store for future believin’ in himself--in the balance and fairness of the Foxcuckooland Ministry of Customer Management.

Such outstandin’ qualifications do not suffice to make Wally a plausible pol, however. Not a mainstream Party-of-Grant pol, anyway. Perhaps if the R. Paul dingalingism catches on, weekly neostandards will be even lower in a few years, but that time is not yet.

Meanwhile, if Wally, here spotted doin’ business as "Party Neocomrade (j.g.) A. X. David," seriously wants to move to Washin’ton City and get whipped into line by Eric Ivan, Freiherr und Kindermeister von Cantor[1] et al., he will have to unlearn what he learned at the knee of Karl, Reichskindermeister von Rove, WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality!

Whatever the RKM may have original-intented to convey to Mr. Suskind, it can not have been that every rank-an’-file Wally an’ Cindy should go build themselves a Rovan Empire out back behind the garage of their McMansionette in beautiful neoëxurban Rio Limbaugh. Lesser neobein’s like A. X. David have to make certain concessions, rovanempirewise.

"Concessions to reality," we say outside the monkey house, in a language unintelligible to the inmates. But that unintelligibility does not matter, sir, because I should never dream of telling Master Wally and Cindy from Wasilla and all their freelords and all their kiddiemasters what to do. I am only discussing with you what it might be advisable for the monkey-house crew to do with themselves, individually or collectively. Since we do not give a hoot what becomes of them, collectively or individually, we cannot be said in idiomatic English to be ‘advising’ them. (Can we?)

But to the point: the particular reality on which the particular monkey A. X. David has stubbed its factious toe happens to be one of those happy days for Terry Gaudens and us when kiddie selfservatism gets hoisted by its own petard. The august and ever-immortal Five of Nine have recently vouchsafed an oracle very much in favor of the kiddies’ Party an’ Ideology by most accounts. It proclaims that the secret-sector business corporation is to possess free speech rights under Amendment I comparable to those of a lowly zoölogical organism. No doubt the militant extremism of the G.O.P. will soon be demandin’ that the intriniscally superior entity should have far more and much better rights, but they ought to be happy enough for the moment.

But not Wally Wannabe! No sooner was this franchise granted (or re-recognized and restored) to Citizeness Apple of Cupertino CA, then she, the secret-sector business corporation, turned Liberty into License by deploying it against poor feckless Wally! Under the circumstances, Ms. Apple can hardly have been unaware that little Wally was proposin’ to become a Republicanian hack pol, and therefore by definition a stalwart defender of secret-sectorianism all down the line. Hence it would not be crazy to headline this yaleodrama something like

APPLE TO HOOVERVILLE: DROP DEAD!

Ms. Apple has her detractors for other reasons, some of whom surface as peanut-gallery peanuts here. Open-source software is not entirely irrelevant to Wally Wannabe’s personal comeuppance, but to elucidate that connection is more than any of the peanuts attempt.[2] Insofar as they think it open-sourcin’ a Jeffersonian self-evidence, they are fodder just waitin’ for some Paulista Party or AstroTurf™Bag Bloc to come along and chomp ’em down. (Hopefully they will have a very long wait indeed. Time to grow up and get over their physics envy problems &c.)

Meanwhile, no regular Republicanian with any empathy for the spirit of her Party as exemplified by Gen. Grant and Col. McKinley and Dr. Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater and ... and her now contemporaries, can fail to be tempted to Just Bark ¡NO! at open-source notions. I daresay one can unearth a couple of ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ señoritos at the kiddie selfservatives’ Tanks of Thought who have performed some strenuous AEIdeological calisthenics allegedly showin’ that the GNU is not that bad an animal after all. But they are utterly unrepresentative: 99.527% of G.O.P. geniuses would side with Citizeness Apple on this one, were they unaware of the factional background. "I know Miss Apple, and she is no public utility!," might they bark an’ bellow.

Pajamatarian Peanut #4, though almost certainly a spoofster, is to be commended for noticin’ this aspect of the matter, which is surely the most important aspect, short of tertiary-educationalist Pol. Phil. discussions about the really fundamental differences between Planet Dilbert [3] and the Party of Grant.

***

The NCj AXD neoünit’s autoblurb is of some interest. The unit’s great qualification for replacin’ Mr. Waxman appears to be simply its not bein’ Mr. Waxman, which seems a bit skimpy to the present keyboard.

Mais que sçay-je?

Less controversially or de gustibus, the AXD unit is definitely no lawyer, as I had guessed from its throwin’ around great chunks ripped out of a reference book for the shyster community Nonwombscholars invoke dictionaries rarely, and would never do so in a case like this one, where it is plain to the meanest intelligence that Citizenness Apple is not bound by any such tin-foil legal chains as Party Neocomrade A. X. David would like to shackle her corporationship with.

Miss Appy may turn down Wally Wannabe without giving any reason at all, or alternatively, WITH giving any-reason-at-all. "It is defamation to claim that (Henry Waxman believes that) the earth is round" would make an admirable example of an any-reason-at-all, though some of Master Wally’s are admittedly not bad either. The only trouble is they have no more to do with the case than the wingnuts that bloom in the spring, tra-la.

Healthy days!

___
[1] His freelordship’s parents had a really wicked sense of humour -- unless ‘Erich’ is just ‘Ari’ in mufti, that is. That question I cannot resolve at the moment because I seem to have mislaid the Crackerjack box that contanins my LeoStrauss brand Secret Decoder ®ing.


[2] About the verb "to advise," Dr. Bones: peanuts who offer detailed suggestions for the NCj AXD unit like "make the app for the Google Android open source operating system" are primâ facie on the Party-an’-AEIdeology side politically and sincerely want to obtrude the said unit into the Fedguv Congress. They are therefore ADVISIN’ their neoguy when they talk like that. (As I am not.)

It is possible, though unlikely, that the point of the scrap quoted was rather to drum up market share for G@@GLE than to benefit Party Neoomrade A. X. David. Even so, the peanut would be at least pretendin’ to advise his dupe. (And that is not me either.)


[3] "Dear Rio Limbaugh, / "Planet Dilbert" is H*rv*rd Élitist for what you good folx call ‘libertarianism’ in Greater Texan. / As ever, / JHM

As to the deep-structure differences, dilbertarians tend to find find the GOPT®UF™ product -- Republicanian brand (®) True Freedumb -- unsatisfactory because the G.O.P. geniuses seem so transparently insincere about it. If they really believed in their own GOPT®UF, they would not bat an eye when Miss Apple big-manages her own affairs her own way rather than the way Massa Tom Donohue of the CCUSA prefers.

As usual, decent political grown-ups have a parallel problem, rhe old clash between the Form of Democracy (hurrah!) and the merely material fact (boo!) that most of the population does not want what theoretical democrats wish they wanted. As sound Aristotelians, the Muses and you and I, Dr. Bones, must of course take the formal side, which implies, I guess, that we ought to like dilbertarians better than regular Republicanians. My own spontaneous reactions are not in line with that particular ‘ought’, as it happens, but please let’s nor talk about me.

"... abstract knowledge ... and imaginative methods ...."

Dear Dr. Bones,

Another day, another dolourous (and dollarous) kiddiemaster wannabe! [1]

(( Though I believe this particular neofish has floated downstream past us once before. How often does one get stumped by a John Hancock [1] like "Arnit Ghate' that obscures the gender of a neospecimen and its ethnicity simultaneously? Strictly, one should speak of "its former ethnicity," the racial or tribal quiddity of a neospecimen prior to its presumed recent removal to Arizona Major, where all us albino dhimmies, at least, are déracinés alike. ))

However bad this renewed affliction may prove considerrd in isolation, nobody can sensibly complain that it wastes our time or its own neotime addressin’ peripheral topics. Nothin’ could be more central to life at Rio Limbaugh as we know it than the topic of which AG burbles, for consider: if "unearned income" ain’t real income, why, then probably "life after death" will prove not to be real life, and ... and so on down the slippery slope from there. Father Zeus forbid that the Muses and you and I take a single unnecessary step in that direction, sir! Far be it from!!

So far, so good, but you must have noticed that things never (well, hardly ever) stay good for long with kiddie selfservatives in the back seat hollerin' "Why the R**g*n aren’t we THERE yet?"

One should bear in mind, Dr. Bones, that right down until September 2008 when the Crawford Crash became undeniable, and even G.O.P. geniuses like the late Bennett of UT felt called upon to wrap themselves into a TARP about it, the KSM kiddies more or less thought the WERE there yet. True, the Social Ponzi Administration could not be put out of its misery, yet if kiddies and neokiddies even half-believed in the numerical tripe and baloney that Party paymasters and AEIdeological AstroTurf™baggers slung at them, its doom could not be far off. [2] The good ship ‘Wingnutette’ had almost arrived in the safe harbour of The Speculation Society (also known in the Language of Gods as "The INVESTMENT Society") , when suddenly, lo!, a cloud no large than a man’s hand swelled and swelled and ....

Oh, dear, What Went Wrong? , Neorabbi Bernie?

Well of course Freelord Kiddiemaster Lewis is no economist. More to the point would be to consult that other neo-Bernie, Citizen Madoff, but at the moment it is difficult to communicate with him.

In any case, Neocomrade (Fifth Class) A. X. Ghote is stuck with neodefendin’ a proposition that is under a bit of a shadow just at the moment. Despite the headline on top of his scribble, this proposition is not exactly that bucks and doits and sh'qálîm and euros procured by the speculative sweat of one’s brow constitute "earned income." The banner around which the Kiddie Selfserative Movement must now urgently rally is better conceived as bearin’ the inscription "She also serves who only sits and e-speculates." [3]

NC5 AXGh suffers from a slight (?) case of swollen brainpan, bein’ neobound an’ determined to fight things out mano a mano with the late Dr. Marx:

Certainly physical labor is often required to convert the raw material of nature into the specific forms we need to live. Yet increasingly, productivity stems from our abstract knowledge of the world (science) and our imaginative methods of putting this knowledge to use (technology). The value of inventing a transistor or discovering a polio vaccine simply cannot be measured in labor units. But this doesn’t mean that the years of dedication and the unyielding independence of spirit that such accomplishments demand should somehow be discounted. On the contrary: doing so is patently unjust.

Not very neo- is that ideoproduct, I fear: you can let AEIdeologues and Heritagitarians and Catoholics run until the tub overflows with such stuff, should it happen to be your preferred wallow.

To be sure, this is the first slave of Lord Mammon I ever came across who expects a pension for his "unyielding independence of spirit." Unfortunately, the reason why the rest of His Lordship’s apostles and visionaries and seconds and bottlewashers never talk like that is that it is flagrantly inconsistent with the Mammonite system as a whole. I believe I might invest, say, 28.12½ USD to back my guess that NC5 AXGh is not just a wannabe but a notgonnabe in addition.[4]

You have heard of "vulgar Marxism," no doubt. Neocomrade A. X. Ghote may conceivably be out to flog a new ideoproduct that aspires to be worthy of the monnicker "Vulgar Antimarxism." Which strikes me as much like that proposal to patent a gizmo that turns clean knives into dirty ones -- but never mind me, sir!

At the moment the thing is to see if we can’t help the poor little rich lad out of the sandtrap he has dug himself into. Look at the peroration, or "bottom line" in the language of Gods. Evidently the spirit of his shtyk was original-intented to be somethin’ like "Mind is to matter as Viagra Falls is to that stupendous cataract at Crawford TX.

Now in that conjunction, is not the obvious plan to point out that nowadays very little that can be badmouthed and swiftboated as ‘material’ or ‘physical’ happens this side of China. Here in the holy Homeland™ have we -- ¿‘we’? -- not become so thoroughly neodevoted to Ghotean "abstract knowledge ... and imaginative methods" that all of Arizona Major looks like a resort spa?

Wherefore we mun alle singen, "Better fifty op-eds of Rio Limbaugh than a ’cycle from Cathay!"

And I wish you, Dr. Bones,
Happy days through health-care affordability!

___
[1] Our common friend Paddy is keening in the fœtal position behind me as I keyboard. Perhaps I was unduly blunt when I explained to him why one cannot replace the generic "John Doe" and "Richard Roe" and "John Hancock" with something more misty and Pseltic like (his suggestions) Andy O’Sullivan or Piggy McNoonan.


[2] ’Tis tempting to suggest that Wally Wombschool and Cindy from Wasilla take SSA checks for the TRUE "unearned income." Though true in a general way, I think, one must qualify the proposition a little to achieve better accuracy. Wallies and Cindies younger than (approximately) thirty-four years five months, those hatched in the year of religionism 1395/1975/5735 or before, can mostly be classified as proposed.

Their older siblin’s and neosiblin’s, however, have been robbed at bayonet point of enough FICA funds to start reflectin’ that after all it is their own money that Uncle Sam Ponzi has swiped, and so they’d like to have it back, preferably at once and with thirteen percent interest patriotically compounded on a lunar-monthly basis.


[3] The Gods would say "invests on line" or the like. That unpleasant S-word on which I keep harping is scarcely to be found in the neovocabulary of the Godly -- except when They fall out intramurally. In that case the verb is irregularly conjugated as follows:

We invest You speculate They [*] *&^%$# [*] E.g., Ch. Ponzi and B. Madoff. Plus naturally The Wicked State most of all!

Very incidentally, I was tempted to formulate the Ghote Neodogma (Pat. Pend.) as "She also serves who only sits and clips coupons," which wording would involve the sliderule-and-buggywhip type of anachronism, even withou a ‘neo-’ around to make things even worse (as neos generally do).

Similarly, over at Fox-on-15th’s Slate.com, prose-challenged patients or victims of Prof. MacL@@han are expected to take their idols and icons for Finanzkapitalismus from the board game Monopoly, first consigned to the tender mercies of Mlle. de la Main Invisible "some years after" "1903." Before top hats went out, obviously. Long before.

I doubt NC5 AXGh stands high in the inner councils of Hooverville, but those Gods who do are to be commended on Their neocleverness at first swipin’ the iconography in question from Lefty, and then stickin’ with it whole decades and generations after the "use by" date came and went. This is not quite as good a trick as that of H. R. H. the Prince of Darkness -- "La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas." -- yet to convey a false impression that one’s own species of predator must have gone extinct long ago is bound to put one’s mark-and-dupe species at a considerable disadvantage. Pretty nifty!

It follows that if NC5 AXGh is anythin’ like reasonably bright and better, he will never let any of his brokees catch him more than semidressed. I mean, how could a guy with ugly legs who insists on wearin’ shorts and flipflops and that flashy-trashy Hawaiian shirt possibly be out to con you? He does not look the least bit like the Parker Brothers idea of Daddy Warbucks and William Howard Taft.


[4] Really makin’ it in the agitprop line requires (he speculated) that the maker not fall for his own spin as soon as he spins it. Presumably the minor pajamatarian neocomrade has noticed how his Party-an’-Ideology betters prefer almost infinitely to talk about the GOP Brand True Freedumb (®) product -- ¡GOPT®UF! -- rather than about Finanzkapitalismus. Obviously NC5 AXGh is attemptin’ to imitate them, but the trouble is, he does not fully grasp what he apes.

Miss Stein thought It is so flattering to have a pupil [E. M. Hemin’way] who does it without understanding it, but I believe she was pretty nearly all alone in so thinking. At any rate, I am not with her.

Notice, moreover, how if one reckons this infelicitous amateur’s neoïnnovation in conjunction with the rest of his stuff, the part of the Ghote Neodogma (Pat. Pend.) mainstream Mammonites and Hoovervillains do in fact bark an’ bellow all the time, it makes itself look even worse. One can imagine the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in the fable wanting, once the spillage had been capped and mopped up, to be commended at least for his "unyielding independence of spirit." (It would take a lot of that just to ask Merlin for a report card, under the circumstances!)

But for the little laddie to expect any bonus points for "abstract knowledge of the world and imaginative methods of putting this knowledge to use" would be laughable.