On Douthian Neodizziness

Dear Dr. Bones,

If we broaden our notion of "serious discussion of economics" to include a purely qualitative scribbler in the path of Party and Ideology like Prof. Dr. Douthat of the New York Time Company, won't the eventual mess be at least a little bit our fault too?

Meanwhile, I cannot believe in "Douthat Makes it Up" -- that Don Rossito concocted this morning’s tripe and bologna all by himself. From the internal evidence it looks as if some scamster who actually understood her scam handed the little laddie a set of talkin’ points in favor of it that was beyond him. Still, ¿maybe I am the dunce? Let's see:

The crux of the underlying racket must, I think, be located in the sentence that reads

"By 2035, under the C.B.O. projection, payroll and income taxes would claim 25 percent of that family’s paycheck."

I don't think Don Rossito stopped to ask himself what the CBO was projecting when it projected that. I do ask myself, and then answer "price inflation" or call it "what a 2011 dollar will be worth two dozen years from now." If you think that is radically wrong, Dr. Bones, please disregard the following.

My conjectural neoconperson will have understood that what we have here is so-called "bracket creep," a technical business easy to index against. So easy that I suspect the CBO probably *did* make the adjustment, but the scamster preferred not to notice. Left completely in the dark, the NYTC customer could easily guess that real tax-rate increases are involved -- which just goes to prove what relentless thieves we Democrats are, don't you know?

By Heritagitarian and AEIdeological standards, that is a straightforward snow job. Most persons able to profit from "Beat the Press" could probably write it up reasonably misleadin'ly, assuming they believed in the Selfservative Cause -- or were funded vigotrously enough to make lying attractive. But the way Señorito de Doúthat writes it up, it does not mislead, it just sits there and sogs, apart from the laughable phrase "such unprecedented levels of taxation," which may have been in whatever document he was handed to work from.

Instead of adding literary polish and agitation-propaganda pizazz to his talkin’ points, Don Rossito swallows them whole himself, it looks like, and then works them into the fabric of his own pet castle in the air, which is enough like the late M. de Disraëli's "Tory Democracy" to allow me to label it so. The trouble is, I fear, that very few whightists other than the señorito itself are interested in that product line.[*]

Happy days.
--JHM




___
[*] Also unfortunate is that few of the proposed beneficiaries of Douthatian Neodizziiness read _The New York Times_ much even before the gates recently went up around that e-community. All those Blacks and Tans who -- as Don Rossito sincerely believes -- wouldabeen, shouldabeen full-fledged members of The Middle Class (Pat. Pend.) by 2035 but won't be if Keynes and Krugman and Baker prevail are never going to learn that Dr. Douthat champions their cause. They may even never learn that such a neocause once existed.

Not only do I find myself disagreeing with his employers about Douthat's intellectual merit, I do not think he can be pronounced entirely serious about his own most characteristic stuff. Doubtless he *believes* in Douthatian Neodizziness with perfect subjective sincerity, but, for all that, it is rather a good game for him to talk than one to actually buckle down and play.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the laddie’s Party and Ideology are full of good folks who do not themselves entertain any such sentimentality, but can work out that lettin’ him go on in that vein could be profitable for their own private schemes of neoglory. The real movers and shakers at Hooverville and Wingnut City have every reason, it seems to me, to welcome Douthatian Neodizziness on a strict "jam tomorrow" basis -- a "Free Enterprise System" that is always goin’ta blossom out into full-fledged Tory Democracy twenty years in the future is whight up their alley.

If that alley were suddenly to fill up with Bad Poor who have heard this good talk and might do something rash with their pitchforks if too many vicennalia pass with no sign of the _Novus Ordo Sæclorum_, mainstream Hoovervillains could find themselves in something like the difficulties of the Sorcerer's Apprentice. With Don Rossito de Doúthat, though, I daresay they are safe enough: the ’prentice lad is not actually *utterin’* any broomstick spells, he is only, as it were, muttering them to himself _sotto voce_.

Unless you alarm very easily, nothing the least bit alarming is likely to come of that.

Flim-Flammin’ the Stupid Party

Dear Dr. Bones,

A large number of persons, not all of them politically decent or intellectually respectable, have trouble grasping that the core of the Party of Grant-Hoover-Goldwater-Atwater is a top-down economic conspiracy. Always has been, and one might say "Always will be" in the sense that, if the periphery ever does take over, then the Rovan Empire [1] will in fact have fallen, no matter how much traditional Republicaniac apparatus an’ ‘conservative’ agitprop is brandished by the Odoacers and Theodorics of 1443/2022/5790. [2]

As I keep saying to you, sir, this overturnin’ is not at all likely any time soon. "The Sorcerer’s Apprentice" is a fine tale, but let us not go hog wild and start imagining ScroogeBank an’ Daddy Warbucks sandtrapped by their own Tee Putty -- unless we know for sure we are but spoofing.

We ‘spoof’. Occasionally.

The "Flim-flammin’" of my superscription refers to when somebooby like Party Neocomrade (fifth class) R. X. Douthat [3] infringes our monopoly. As for example:

As Republicans refine their proposals, though, they need to focus more on economic mobility than the Ryan budget does. Public policy is going to be made from inside a fiscal straitjacket for the foreseeable future. But within that straitjacket, Washington can favor policies that enhance working-class opportunity, while ruthlessly paring back those that subsidize the affluent. The goal shouldn’t just be small government, but ... “small-government egalitarianism.” There are elements of this vision woven into the Ryan budget — cuts to farm subsidies, means-testing for Medicare, and promises to go after tax expenditures that primarily benefit the rich. But at least in its initial draft, too much of the budget’s austerity is borne by downscale Americans.

The historical background of so comparatively elegant a _señoritismo_ as this is plain as the jowls on their daddies’ faces. Don Rossito de Doüthat y Podhòretz is, you see, amongst those lucky whight-wingers vouchsafed a vision of what Father Chesterbelloc admirably baptised as the Cross of Dizzy [4] If you were alive at the time and attracted by D’Israëli Minor’s nifty an’ all-but Douthatoid ideoproduct, I believe you were expected to call it "Tory Democracy." Though I cannot help wondering offtopically how Mr. Gladstone would have reacted to being unmasked as a windbag enemy of "small-government egalitarianism." [5]




___
[1] Never forget the semi-official neocatechism of the Kiddie Selfservative Movement, Dr. Bones:

[Q] "... something about [E]nlightenment principles and empiricism." [A] "That is not the way the world really works anymore. WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality. And while you’re studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- WE will act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. WE are history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what WE do.’’

There you have the presidin’ Genius of the _Imperium Rouanum_, Kiddiemaster Karl himself, explainin’ exactly how the racket is supposed to work. Naturally there is a certain amount of discrepancy between that lofty neoïdealism an’ how most of the operatives of Party an’ AEIdeology are likely to be found operatin’ in practice on any particular Thursday afternoon.


[2] Predictions about the future are notoriously risky, but please blame His Holeyness Ronpaulryan I, Arch Hire-arch of Janesville _in partibus supervolandis_, should 2022 prove a bust, rosydawnwise.


[3] The PC5 RXD mechanism is, as I conjecture, "Don Rossito" to the señoritoly or ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ community.


[4]

In the lands where Christians were, F.E. Smith, In the little lands laid bare, Smith, O Smith! Where the Turkish bands are busy And the Tory name is blessed Since they hailed the Cross of Dizzy On the banners from the West! Men don’t think it half so hard if Islam burns their kin and kith, Since a curate lives in Cardiff Saved by Smith.

(( You don’t need to remember Welsh Antidisestablishmentarianism or care who poor Psmith was to enjoy the fun, sir, but do bear in mind that the bard to whom this High Thought was given considered "the Tory name" nothing to do with his own politics, a point not exactly obvious from across the Atlantic nearly a century later. ))


[5] The CliffsNotes™ version of SGE is easy to guess without looking at the book: we shall have arrived in Beulah Land when the Wicked State does nothin’ at all for anybooby. (( 0 + 0 = 0. Q. E. D. ))

Of course since Don Rossito is by no means pathfindin’ an’ roadmappin’ for Party an’ Ideology caravan, he only barks for ’em, so wherever the Wreckin’ Crew may wash up eventually, it sure won’t be there. Kansas is a possibility, Glaeserstan is not.

(( E. Ludwig von Gläser seems to be a sort of stereotypical H*rv*rd: Big LEW cites him as having discovered that "Americans have become more obese over the past 25 years because they have been consuming more calories."

(( Of course that is worth a Nobel prize, but ¿which one? ¡Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Medicine and Peace all alike clamour to dignify the good perfesser! ))

The End of the World, or, Everbooby's D-fault but yours and mine!

Dear Dr. Bones,

One word of default, and ¡the entire teacup is tossed into tempest!

So much so, that ¡Himself has to make a personal appearance in the peanut gallery!

Once the cocktail-napking schemes of His Holeyness Ronpaulryan I, Arch Hire-arch of Janesville _in partibus transvolandis_, go into the blow, however, I feel a contrarian desire to relax and repeat that old wheeze about the little lady from Kenosha, or maybe Racine, who was told the world would end next week and replied with a smile, "WEll, I am sure we will all get along nicely without it."

Comrade Baker may have been misunderstood by the fool’s son and other peanuts, me not excluded, so take a look for yourself, sir, and let me know whether you think Himself really wants (A) to stiff ALL of Uncle Sam’s creditors, and (B) to do this primarily as a way of dodging SmirkCare, sometimes known as ... lemme see ... as the Roadmap for Foxcuckooland’s Future Act of 20??.

In reverse order, then:

(B) I seem to have laboured in vain the other day to get the teacup to notice that SmirkCare will not even begin for eleven, I believe it is, years. Until then, the Great Medicare Ponzi will still be safe enough to drive a truck through, accordin’ to His Eminence the Roadmaster (and/or "Budget Committee Staff" -- ¡let’s not forget the small people, please!).

Maybe I put the wrong spin on that point when I suggested that some of those who pay for the existence of Roadmaps an’ Roadmasters might be displeased at this unaccountable delay, wonderin’ whether Smirk himself could really be devoted to the core principles of the Party of Grant & Hoover an’ nevertheless miss this golden neoöpportunity to afford them winderful new paths to self-enrichment through the creative financin’ of medicine-related matters, "kidney default swaps," perhaps. Or how about . . . .

But I digress. The thing is, the R4AF neoracket won’t start from anybody till it starts, which means (¿doesn’t it?) that Comrade Baker wants to act today against a Martian invasion fleet that isn’t scheduled to arrive for a decade.

Given that "a week is a long time in poitics," the chances are very high that whatever is done defensively that long in advance may not be much help when THEY finally do land. "Sufficient unto the day is" . . . et cetera.

***

(A) Both Himself and the peanuts take for granted that _Le défaut est indivisible_, which is about as ridiculous an idea as this noneconomist keyboard can imagine. _Au contraire_, once we -- that is to say, once Poor Sam -- decides that he cannot simply pay all his bills, he may be in sad economics straits, but there is a faint silver lining on the moral side, in that now he is in a position to exercise some creative-destructive selectivity, repaying only those creditors who really DESERVE to be repaid.

Congressperson Smirk of the Wisconsin First may be admitted to this discussion as well. Whatever the legalities, an’ whatever the staff smirklings actually included in the current appropriations bill, the general tendence of the Roadmap Crew is plain enough: it is chiefly the Bad Poor who should not get repaid, and that, in turn, translates as "¡Smash Social Security!" and/or "The End of the Social-Democratic Model: ¿Will the Left Respond by Acceptin’ Reality?"

That last is a scribble by a pervert from Trotskyism or thereabouts. M. du Radoszcz has changed sides, but he has not abandoned the _Klassenkampf_ or started pretending to believe the absurd superstition that all contracts are equally sacrosanct. _¿Kto kogo?_ remains firmly in place for Neocomrade R. X. Roadosh, an’ presumably would apply to default too -- "¿Who gets repaid by whom?" is not a question with any general or one-size-fits-all answer.

Most of the G. O. P. Geniuses -- to say nothin’ of their Party base an’ vile -- would not know Social Democracy from a Holeyness from Janesville WI 53545, but that will not interfere with their insistin’ that Sam pay in full -- with interest an’ penalties an’ a generous tip to insure future promptness in the matter of campaign contributions -- when it comes to their own repayment. ScroogeBank once properly taken care of, however, what happens to Cratchit is, of course, Cratchit’s problem an’ nobody else’s: "Thou shalt not create a Moral Hazard."

Though you and I, Dr. Bones, like Comrade Dr. Baker and probably most of the teacuppers, are more with Cratchit and O’Bama than with Uncle Scrooge an’ M. du Radoszcz, nevertheless even the latter do not, if I conjecture rightly, very seriously believe in contractual omnisacrosanctity. I doubt the Geniuses often ask themselves in so many words how much they can get away with when it comes to scroogin’ Citizen Cratchitt an’ the Bad Poor generically. Still, they might as well. Certainly one can predict which way they’ll jump better by assuming they think "What is ours is ours. Only what is yours is defaultable."

This being the case over on the bad side of the aisle, it would be self-defeating for us lieberals and demoncrats to abandon our traditional devotion to "[a] rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project" that comes down the pike. [1]

Happy days.
--JHM

_____
[1] Mr. Madison was not, at least not in 1787-88, one of us, and accordingly lays a little too much emphasis in that famous passage on the supposed equality component of our wickedness and impropriety. In fact, most of us do not altogether mind associating with that former comradess of M. du Radoscz who, serving as a charwoman under the _ancien régime_ once informed her boss, "After the revolution, Mme. la Princesse, everybody will be equal. I’ll go to balls in Paris gowns, and you will scrub floors."

As I have hinted, ‘selectivity’ is a better word to deploy than ‘equality’. Indeed, stick it into the mouth of Publius, and ask yourself whether "a selective division of property" be not an elegant way of referring to graduated income taxes -- and to the dread Death Tax.

Strictly on the Hist. Dept. side: I have no wish to appropriate the Bones of Jemmy and brandish them for the Donkey Cause, that was too far back in the primordial bunk to matter much now. Nevertheless, Madison was probably basking a little too much in emanations from the Hamiltonian pænumbra when he wrote that. It does not hurt to recall that all so-called "Antifederalists" plus presumably quite a lot of the victorious faction as well did not see anything dreadfully improper in the idea that Sam should exercise a little selectivity about paying back the war debt of 1775-1783, much of which had fallen into hands that only Col. Hamilton, Esq., could be altogether proud and happy to shake.

But Clio knows best.

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.