The Voice of The Humbug is heard in the land

Dear Dr. Bones,

Naturally one has but to hear the title for one’s hormones go out to the Freelord "President of the Massachusetts Bankers Association." Chained down with all those chains an’ indignities heaped upon recognized members of the profiteriat Class all across our Divine Homeland™, Party Neocomrade (third class) K. X. Brennan must suffer over an’ above --twofold over an’ above, even. Firstly, his freelordship must suffer precisely here, here in reactionary-lieberal Palæochusetts, I mean, here, where H*rv*rd and the Muses and you and I are all in league with The Union Thugs Inc., where scarcely anybooby at all barks out boldly for Scrooge-Warbucks Family values even insincerely. "¡Oh, to be at Madison, now the springtime’s come!" Alas: his freelordship is no closer to the open-shop cheeses of Beulah Land than Newton. To be sure, Auburndale is a little closer than Nonantum would be, but still.

Secondly is the sad quality of such local agitproppin’ in the path of Party an’ AEIdeology as does linger in psocialistic MA here an’ there. I conclude from the fact of his freelordship havin’ been reduced to scribble his own scribbles, that the usual scrivener scabs, who would surely be only too happy to selfservice his freelordship at even lower rates than last time, [1] seem inadequate.

Things are so bad for our John Galt wannabes, Dr. Bones, especially after the last election failed to produce lots of Scott Fratboy look-alikes in the fedguv congressional delegation, that if they get only a little more so than they are already, why, the profiterian Class may have to abandon us oppressors to our own devices.[2] ¿Will we slackers all starve when we have to stroke our own plastic? Please stay tuned . . . .

Thirdly -- ¿did I *claim* to be able to count whight, sir? -- the freelordly anguish must, as I conjecture, be screwed up yet again by the fact that his freelordship is not merely an exponent of the profiteriat in general, but of (as it were) _die Finanzprofitäriat_, no dirty hands-on manufacturer of somethin’ crude an’ physical, but a kid-gloved manipulator of other people’s informations. ¡Of their ‘identities’ even!

(( "Does the freelord neocomrade swipe his own plastic, even?," one wonders; "Or does he hand it over to some _ancilla indocumentata_ from the freelordly harem or stables to perform so vile an office?" ))

But pseriously, the issue here is that the Powers That Bee here in Taxachusetts -- H*rv*rd, the literal (_sic_) Frankensteins of genetic modification and the e-Frankensteins of bit mod or so-called "computer science", and the Muses, and you yourself, sir, [3] -- are themselves quite as much clean-jeans _mentipulatores informationârum_ as is Kenneth, Freelord of Brennan Newton in the neopeerage of Foxcuckooland, not to mention "president of the Massachusetts Bankers Association." AND YET . . . !

And yet, ‘we’, or such of ‘us’ as remain unadorned with M.B.A. degrees from the H*rv*rd Victory School [4], never miss a chance to throw caltrops out in front of the chevaliers of _Finanzkapitalismus_, as if, in this year of religionism 1432/2011/5771, neobankers preside over dark Satanic mills rather than, say, The Village Bank / 307 Auburn St. / Auburndale MA 02466". [5]

_Quâ_ agitpropper, I betcha his freelordship sails whight over the heads of the dupes an’ marks he has targeted. His problem may be figured _modo dickensiensi_: ¿How shall the Cratchitt clan be induced to stop self-sorrowin’ narrowly for themselves, an’ self-sorrow for poor old Scrooge a little?

Ideally, the not-so-Bad Poor would weep for ScroogeBank NA institutionally rather than only Massa Ebenezer personally, but to expect that much is not so much "Whig pastoral" as flat-out neomalarkey quite incapable of realization in mankind’s present tale of veers. Doubtless in the world to come, full justice will at last be done to the sterlin’ merits of all our fine upstandin’ corporate citizens. Meanwhile, however, our corporate Betters will have to settle for what they can squeeze out of "Citizens United v. Federal Eelection Commission."

Ah, well, "Life is unfair." Proverbially so, even.

Meanwhile, his freelordship aims lower than that. Still too high, though, as it seems to me. You might regard his freelordship as rather too neoclever for his own neogood, Dr. Bones. His freelordship grasps the scabbiness of the scabs so firmly that he is in serious danger of mistakin’ Scab Spirit for _The Key to All Whight-Wing Mythologies_. To all mythologies _simpliciter_, even.

Recurring to mythology myself, I’d say "The Freelord of Brennan Newton thinks he can take every agitation-propaganda trick in the rubber for Team Mammon by scatterin’ a few Apples of Discord™ about judiciously like Firstlord Paris of Troy or Ms. Atalanta." Apple of apples, in the freelordly eye, is the one that the headline angel at the _Herald_ actually detected whight, for once, _mirabile dictu_: _A Big-Box License to Swipe_ The freelordly (an’ wannabe-but-aingonnabe kiddiemagisterial) _ipsissima verba_ are located whight up against the bottom line, as follows:

The real beneficiaries, and the power behind the push against interchange fees by retailer lobbyists, are the big-box stores like Home Depot and Wal-Mart. They will save billions of dollars at the expense of consumers and local banks. If you are a small business that has been pushing for a cap on interchange fees, be careful what you wish for — as the Wal-Marts, Home Depots and Targets of the world become bigger and more profitable, they force more small merchants like yourselves out of business.

The appeal to Scab Spirit [6] ) could hardly be plainer, though I suppose really thoroughly wombschooled an’ freedumbed down kiddie selfservatives will manage to miss it, havin’ been rendered incapable of graspin’ that their own patrons an’ AstroTurf™baggers, traditional practitioners of scabbery, might become victims of it as well.

Anyway, his freelordship blatantly means to provoke a real cat fight between the "big box" Chambermaids of Commerce an’ the "mom-and-pop" Chambermaids of Commerce. That is a tolerably neoclever plan, considered in isolation: the fault line in the TopPercenter Class above which Freelord Ken explodes his dynamite charges certainly exists, and it exists close enough to where he does his demolition work that some sort of success might conceivably be attained. And I do not doubt that most kiddie selfservatism at the level of _The Boston Humbug_ will, as his freelordship anticipates, side with Family Values as against vulgar bigness of box.

Not all of ’em, though: I betcha a few one-eyed geniuses in the land of the colourblind will have taken to their hormones the long-standin’ agitprop campaign on behalf of the enemy that boils down to "Everythin’ is cheaper an’ better at BigBox. Only an idiot buys anythin’ but maybe lottery tickets at tiny holes in the wall."

To go all gooey about Mom ’n’ Pop logically befits us lieberals and demoncrats far better than whight-winged _Herald_ angels, after all. To the extent that logic enters into such a fray, that is: not far at all.

(( DIGRESSION _ad homunculum_.

(( Few BH consumers are so close to bein’ political grown-up that they will see the biggest problem with his freelordship’s here agitproppin’, namely, that ’twould all look a far more respectable an’ impressive effort on behalf of Mom ’n’ Pop, if only his freelordship, and the _Auburnthaler Dorfsbank_ -- probably the "Massachusetts Bankers Association" as well -- did not look so distressin’ly mommempoppish themselves. Were his freelordship a perfect scrooge, burnin’ with the hard gem-like flame of pure self-greed, unencumbered by duties to abstract ideology or former ideobuddies, he would have done better to have had recourse to the _Globe_ and petitioned Comrade Governor Paddy and the General Court to take proper cognizance of Banking in Massachusetts as only another desperately endangered species.

(( *Mommempoppish* Mass. bankin’ exclusively, that is, naturally. ¡Father Zeus knows, the good folks at Santandér, and at One Bryant Park NYC NY 10110, can take care of themselves!

(( ))

Happy days.
--JHM

___
[1] Take dictionary definition of SCAB (n.) and then add that a really consistent neoexample of the product would aspire to break solidarity even with herself, which is precisely what never askin’ for as big a gratuity from one’s toff next time can achieve. To be sure, if this plan were to be really piously maintained, the only good scab would turn out to be a dead scab, an emaciated scabbess who has starved herself to death by a long process of continuous self-discountin’. ¡Talk about "hormone-touching"!

But let us not be silly, sir: even the _Herald_ angels themselves are not so angelic as all that.

_Pari passu_, I notice that his freelordship did not volunteer to give his journalistic (?) bravos an’ valets an’ seconds an’ bottle-washers a small break by insinuatin’ these words of freelordly wisdom into the Party-an’-Ideology fishwrap as a generously overpaid-for advertisement rather than the sort of op-ed freebie that even you or I might aspire to obtain, were the B’nôt Purcell unaware of our psocialism an’ other assorted bad attitudes _vis-à-vis_ greater Rio Limbaugh.


[2] ¡It may be startin’ already! At any rate, the e-scabs at [ http://nerej.com/pdf/46191 ] do not return my clicks.


[3] Please feel free to include this coarse and illiterate keyboard out, if you’d like. Or in, if you’d like that better. No big deal either way.


[4] Being the former Allston (Taxachusetts) College of Chirurgy and Barber Science.


[5] The pet g@@gle failed to find an exterior snapshot of the _Auburnthaler Dorfshypothek_right off. Sorry ’bout that.

I fear that surveyance camera *does* give off at least a faint whiff of the Benthamite Panopticon, if not exactly of the Blakeo-Diabolic Mill.

Even more fearsomely, the photograph confirms my antecedent suspicion that there may not be a great deal of strictly Mass. banking left to preside over.

Naturally-- inevitably -- the freelordly freebie does not inform us students of neocomradology whether or not, say, Grupo Santander is a proud member of the M.B.A.. Or at least eligible to become a humble associate, should the _señora corporacíón_ graciously condescend to apply an’ remit the customary tribute.

Though the Freelord of Brennan Newton be no great shakes as an agitpropper, he does manage not to babble out any such secrets of the blessèd Secret Sector as that in a public fishprint where hostile ears like yours or mine might pick them up and then probably use them against.


[6] The Polish _niesolidarnosc_. (( ¿Perhaps we might coin ‘dissolidarity’ in Homeland™ic? ))

Through the Lookin' Glass

Dear Dr. Bones,

¡Hark! the Herald wingnuts sing . . . .

The trouble is, though, that their songs almost always leave out the verses about EXACTLY how they do all these things far better in Foxcuckooland. One is reduced to guessing, as for instance,

"Roused in the Executive yurt at four in the mornin’ last Wednesday by an urgent call from Otherparty operatives about the Fidelity crisis, Neocomrade Governor Ch. X. Baker made an urgent pilgrimage, on foot in sackcloth, to corporate headquarters at Canossa Junction NY. Arrivin’ about 1030 Friday, his neoexcellency spent eighty-seven minutes an’ forty-one seconds on his knees in an exceptionally filthy snowbank before bein’ admitted to the inner sanctum. Emergin’ on a stretcher headed for an ambulance, his neoexcellency declined comment. Aides revealed, however, that Frank, Freelord Fidelity in the neopeerage, had consented to continue the Massachusetts fiefdom as is, in exchange for the grant of Dorchester Bay as site for a new castle-cum-labóratory, the bay to be filled solid with certified genuine Boston tee putty to a height ten feet above the high-tide line. Neochusetts an’ the Serene House of Fidelity (¡ogklf!) will share the landfill expenses in a proportion of ninety-eight to two. Neocomrade Lt. Gov. Ladislas von Hoodaque (sp?) announced at the end of the day shift Friday that "to celebrate this happy agreement, henceforth all wombschools an’ institutes of freedumbin' down in the Neowealth will anually celebrate February 30 as "Fidelity Forever Day." In response to inquiry from a neocomrade journalist, his subexcellency said the new holiday would continue in perpetuity, "Even if his freelordship changes his mind again" -- that is, withdraws his gracious beneficence from unworthy Neochusetts. "Fidelty is more than just a corporation, you know!" intoned Neocomrade von Hoodaque with that viscous unction that has won his freelordship so many hearts an’ hormones on election day. ---33---

Happy days.

Out of the mouths of babes and analphabetics

A little neoliteracy from The Neo Republic

But [Republicaniac] elites don’t always control the process. Sometimes they can get together and virtually determine the winner in advance (i.e., George W. Bush in 1999-2000), but, often, they can’t pick candidates without THE ASCENT OF THE BASE, which is capable of winnowing out elite-approved candidates. Think John Connally, Phil Gramm, or others for examples of candidates who made it through the elite primary but were nixed by the voters.

Party Palæocomrade H. X. Adams diagnosed "ascent of the base" [*] on the occasion of Comrade General U. S. Grant’s appointin’ his first cabinet officers in the year of religionism 1285/1869/5628 -- an’ it's been all uphill ever since for the gran’ ol’ Partybase an’ Partyvile ever since.

Happy days.

[*]

With this thought in his mind, he went to the Capitol to hear the names announced which should reveal the carefully guarded secret of Grant's Cabinet. To the end of his life, he wondered at the suddenness of the revolution which actually, within five minutes, changed his intended future into an absurdity so laughable as to make him ashamed of it. He was to hear a long list of Cabinet announcements not much weaker or more futile than that of Grant, and none of them made him blush, while Grant's nominations had the singular effect of making the hearer ashamed, not so much of Grant, as of himself. He had made another total misconception of life — another inconceivable false start.

"...a political tendency that denies...."

Dear Dr. Bones,

These peanut-gallery peanuts I find interesting, though Perfesser Doctor Paulus von Krugman may not. [0] Still, no stimulus from Above would presumably have meant no response from below.

A mob of persons rushing to pat ourselves on the virtual back like this ought to alarm anybooby lucky enough to have been expensively semieducated. More so, when making fun of mental cripples is the mobsters’ chief M.O. -- "The conservative mind requires bias to sustain" &c. Or how about, "Studying new ideas can change your ideology."?

The perfesserial stimulus was similar enough to be under that cloud too, or at least under a pretty eminent paenumbra: "the tendency of people who actually know science to reject a political tendency that denies climate change and is broadly hostile to the theory of evolution."

A new customer / patient / victim of the NYTC might guess that K. does not often try to park this brand of conceptual bicycle: if he did, one would not encounter a mere ‘tendency’ mythologically inflated into an accountable agent, nay, swollen up, like Mr. Toad of Toad Hall, even unto a Personage of Denial! ’Tis like what happens to poor Ms. Natura Selectrix in even some of the best-Ph.D.'ed accounts of the monkey business. [1]

What "denies climate change" is plain enough: the interests of a few secret-sector business corporations and the vociferations of their hired-hand lobbyists. The late Miss Rand of Petersburg proved, quite amazingly, that one can make neomythology even out of that unpromising raw material. Not, however, a very *good* neomythology.

What "is [broadly] hostile to the theory of evolution" involves a far more complicated chain of human events, one there are several godzillion books about already and no doubt as many more to come. Here at the lower end of the chain, it is difficult to imagine how anybooby now alive can gain or lose in the pocketbook from one particular History of Organisms being the case.

On the other hand, the first time we got the run around this track, the CCUSA comrades of the day, who seem to have been smarter than their successors, ‘tended’ -- there's that word! -- to like the Gospel according to St. Charles, which let them make themselves out well-pruned American Beauty roses and maybe even foreshadowed the Bad Poor eventually goin’ the way of all trilobites, sing "¡Glory! ¡¡Hallelujah!!"

That self-backpattin’ had nothing to do with Dame Science, as almost all the godzillion books point out, usually pretty sternly. Possibly the bookies protest the so-called "Social Darwinism" just a little too much, however? After all, the upmarket apologizers for Rockefeller and Gould and Carneìgie and Morgan &c. &c. *did* want to be on Dame Science's side, comprehendin’ or miscomprehendin’ or uncomprehendin’. [2]

I don't say such a thought should count for very much, but ¿must it count for utterly nothing?

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

___
[0] Golly, though, there are an AWFUL lotta them: 301 and counting -- for a sidescribble and not the mainring!


[1] "Broadly hostile" tends to suggest that the mental cripples in question have received a certain degree of professional attention. Dame Science has recently ascertained ¿don't you know? that the hypothesis of a precise and narrowly focused antipathy to Darwinism out there in Televisionland cannot be . . . sustained.

I'll beg pardon if I am wrong, but meanwhile, I think K. is bluffing to cover up the fact that he scarcely ever thinks about such unpleasant stuff.

A lot of this particular self-backpatting shtyk paints itself into the same corner: having once set up to play Sir Launcelot to Guinevere the Science Queen, the apprentice paladin feels obliged to pretend that her every syllable reflects years and years of labóratorious white-coatèd research, whereas in fact there is not much to distinguish her from a common foxcuckoo lyin’ back on its potatoecouch for an injection of rupertnews.

(( However, my ’tis-the-thought-that-counts appeal further on above is good enough for us silly lieberal-demoncrat geese as well as for the virile ganders of Rio Limbaugh: unlike foxcuckoos an’ couchpotatoes, Krugman groupies have managed to grasp how well it looks to at least *look* earnest and labóratorious in the path of Verity. Naturally permissible exuberance must be checked well short of "We hereby officially thank Father Zeus that He did not create *us* dittobrains." ))


[2] Talk about ‘appeasement’! I am happy to report that these wannabe Slaves of Science eventually got a suitable comeuppance. Or at least I think they did. I mean, ¿did all that fellow-travelin’ with Darwin ever rake a single undeniable dime into the Coffers of Great Wealth that would not have come in without it?

Though the CCUSA classes under the now banner of Neocomrade Th. J. Donohue be distinctly less bestembright than were their sires of yore, I don't believe that their abandonin’ the attempt to recruit Ms. Natura Selectrix to help prop up "free enterprise" and the AEIdeology is an evidence of the brain rot at Hooverville. To ditch the neomythological damsel was a straightforward matter of sellin’ off an unprofitable sideline, neither especially clever nor especially foolish, just "business as usual."

But Mammon knows best.

"I am ... a prize-winnin’ historian"

Dear Dr. Bones,

One trait that makes the neocomrades so interesting for us _Geisteswissenschaftler_ is the way they push ordinary human deficiencies to militant neoëxtremes. Take the Wolnomozny Pan Radoszcz here -- take him an’ his selfocentricity.

Few roses blow down the pike from Foxcuckooland to us humble altogeher without a silver linin’, however. It seems plain [1] that whilst the Muses and thou and I are attending to such freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial self-sorrowin’s as the present _radoshschína smútna_ nay afford us, we cannot possibly look to others the way Master Narcissus Dexter --an’ his Party an’ his AEIdeology -- look to us. At any rate, such is my latest theory of the matter. [2]

But let us get straight to work:

(A) Once past the alleged poorness of the poor devil, we observe His Freemightiness workin’ a really nifty (il)logical contraption: anybooby sufferin’ under "a torrent of verbal abuse and _ad hominem_ attacks" must be in the whight, argumentwise, an’ her adversary rong.

’Tis not worth the waste of powder and shot to blow *that* bologna straight back to H[ooverville] where it comes from, because there is no more than about a 0.000347% chance that the Wolnomozhny Pan would recur to this particular First Principle on the occasion of encounterin’ a Party neocomradess -- say, the Freedame of Coulter -- similarly belaborin’ some hapless Lieberal or Demoncrat. Fortunately, HFM possesses a plethora of First Principles, three or more to suit every occasion. ¡Never to be caught at a loss is Party Neocomrade R. X. Radosh!

On the other hoof, though, the poor devil’s conception of ‘lunacy’ needs some work: wingnutettes an’ wingnuts may, in the path of Party an’ Ideology, believe many of the same dotty things that l@@nies an’ M@@Nies do. However the causes or reasons are quite different in the two cases.

(B) Then comes _das Pivenepos_, which I guess we shall have to take the freemighty word for, or maybe Comrade Cloward’s word, not knowing a piven from a pimiento ourselves. Or even from a pivot.

Look at the dates, though, Dr. Bones. I betcha Neocomrade Radosh got into Piven back when he was still a paleo- with the Seventh (?) International. Nothin’ is more obnoxious to a neoteric than its own immediate yesterteric. Everybooby knows that! Think "Gloomy Gus of Hippo and the brand-name Manichees!"! [3]

(C) Next is a short oracular response which I have trouble grasping. Can you, sir, explain the following sentence?

I have no objection to debating Peter Dreier or anyone else on the issues, BUT I believe he is being disingenuous (&c. &c.)

The puzzle is that high-an’-freemighty ‘but’. To thunder "but I cannot be bothered to argue with liars" would make excellent sense, though not without a certain huffity-puffity of manner more acceptable to pajamatarian palates than to mine. That, however, is not what gets thundered. As the neobark stands, it might as well be "Roses are red, BUT violets are blue." I mean, only Father Zeus an’ His Freemight of Radosh can know for sure what the adversative conjunction is militatin’ against. It cannot mean that HFM refuses to argue, because if it did, the scribble would have to end right here.

Furthermore, after a thunder of my sort, there should follow a deluge or drizzle of examples of deliberate Drierite (or possibly Clowardly) misrepresentations. His Freemight rains down nothin’ of the sort upon us, instead, He just inconsequently wanders off to "[not] dealing with the serious conservative critique," -- a misdemeanour which will no doubt sound very naughty in the ears of Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie, but is scarcely what expensively educated speakers of New High Homeland™ic understand by the term ‘disingenuous’.

So I say again, "What is goin’ on here, exactly?"

(D) Best left to neospeak for itself is

I am hardly an “ultra-right wing propagandist” but a prize-winning historian who respects the truth and takes it where it leads me (...) Dreier ... writes that my article on Piven “would have had little impact outside the right-wing blogosphere,” a claim he makes because the opposite is the case.

Moving whight along, [4]

(E) "[T]he only reason I [get] up in the morning [is] so I [can] go shopping in Wal-Mart to exploit the poor" is so entertaining that I suspect it just a little. His Freemightiness gives a paraphrase rather than cite the actual e-words of Comrade Dreier, but even if we could subpoena the original ("What original?") it might be difficult or impossible to decide whether this exuberance was original-intented as a joke.

Assuming it was not, Comrade Dreier evidently entertains off-beat ideas about ideological perversion. He wrote as if His Freemightiness (as he now is) had abandoned only the notion that it is a rong and unwhight thing for the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC, to exploit the Bad Poor, while retainin’ the factual or ‘factual’ belief that such exploitation happens all the time almost everywhere you look under _Spätkapitalismo_. Surely the odds are overwhelming that HFM(ahni) ditched both the supposed fact and the negative evaluation of it simultaneousl?

If that analysis be not quite sure, ’tis only because it seems so unlikley that many ideoperverts distinguish anywhere near as nicely as all that. Very likely HFM(ahni) has never thought about the whole business beyond that he used to be a foe to _le Oualmartisme en Amérique_ whereas now he is become a neobuddy thereof. _¡Et voilà tout!_

For practical purposes -- an’ for as long as the Wolnomozhny Pan Doktor Profesor abstains from scribblin’ us a prizeworthy History of Wal-Mart "in three volumes boxed, suitable for throwing purposes" [5] -- that really *is* toot. Or close ’nuf.

And I wish you, sir, as ever,
¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM
.

__
[1] The "it seems plain" sort of throw-away is a potential problem, a big one. Doubtless every whimper that His Freemightiness (_wolnomoznosc_ -- context makes clear that ‘slowmightiness’ cannot be the whight translation) emits strikes HFM Radošch himself as better grounded than "2 + 2 = 4."

And there, but for the favour of Father Zeus, . . . !

Oh, well! On the practical side, call me up Thursday or Friday and we will consult M. Pascal via the E-dja board and ask him to weigh this brainwave on the _Bien Penser_ Scale..

Meanwhile, I think tolerably _bien_ of oneself already for having just now discovered that the "There, but for the grace of [Chemosh, or such fabled deities]" formula is a (not very) subtle form of verbal self-stimulation. There is a large, probably on most occasions a preponderant, element of "Don’t let’s talk about her, let’s talk about ME!" in the TB4TGOG soundbark.

Once a noticer has noticed that, she will not find it puzzling, or even especially sarky by Rio Limbaugh standards, that His Freemight should buckle down to his self-whimperin’ with the words "Poor Peter Dreier." Whoever P. D. may be.
(As if HFM were about to whimper for somebody else!)

But I beg your pardon: the point is precisely that it does not much matter to anybooby, His Freemight preëminently included, who P. D. is. One might as well expand the initials "Poor Devil" in the sure and certain hope that the Kindermeister von Radoschtsch will incidentally explain enough about the deviltry in question to avoid unintelligibilty in the course of the self-censin’ process. Which indeed he does.

[2] As usual, a rash or premature generalisation risks making oneself look rather like Billy Blake, so I shall mention, but not positively recommend, the conjecture that all public exhibitions by Master Narky are _eo ipso_ occasions for the rest of us to polish up our altruism skills.

[3] (3a) The ‘immediate’ is required to cover a case like Gloomy Gus eventually discovering that Mizz Monnica had been whight all along.

(3b) Exactly what the neocriterion may be for the _argumentum ad homunculum_ is not a topic I can recite on with any confidence. So probably I had better play safe and assume that Pajama Junction NJ would be displeased to hear me wondering out loud whether any wild oats sown by the _na tym punkcie czasu Wolnomozhny Pan Radoszcz might have included such doo-doo and boo-boo as a subjectively sincere wish to "bring the system down."


[4] All contents of the freemighty trophy case notwithstandin’, there may be a middle-school-level misunderstandin’ here. I cannot tell with certainty, but it looks _primâ facie_ as if the Wolnomozhny Pan assumes that Truth, _prawda_, is an adequate defense against imputations of ‘propaganda’ the same way it is with libel and slander in the Holyhomeland™ic legal system.

One glance at where the dread P-word came from historically stops that clock in its silly tracks: The Protoratzingerites of A. R. 1031/1622/5383 were by no means implictly announcing that their own stuff "ain’t necessarily so"!

His Freemightiness, bein’ a congenital member of The Greatest Demographic™, may have been reared in such a way as to render most references to specifically Christian Christojudæanity almost as obscure to him as if they had been about Mahayana or Mormonism. ( I assume you remember Joel Whatzamovitch, the learnèd Turcologue, who seemed genuinely flabbergasted to run across "_Sic enim dilexit D*us mundum" &c., Ev. Joh._ III:16? )

From his own palæocomradely youth, however, the Wolnomozhny Pan (as he now is) might be expected to remember that the agitprop artists of International III were not shaking things up verbally because they disbelieved in _Bolschewismus_. Considered in that light, indeed, it is more a kindergarten mistake that we are discussing than anything that had to wait for Little Ronnie Rad. to reach seventh grade.

(( But St. John Dewey knows best about levels of educationalism. ))


[5] Can you name that tune, Dr. Bones?

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.

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

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


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[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.

Sobie spiewam a Muzom

Dear Dr. Bones,



¡Happy days! (through affordable healthcare)

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