Meanwhile, Back in the Holy Homeland™

Dear Dr. Bones,

Scott Brown’s spokesman: Yeah, he might vote for Reid’s bill. Both sides now understand that the final bill will be a compromise between Reid and Boehner. If you’re a Republican, why hand Reid extra leverage in those negotiations by helping him to pass his own plan? The Democrats are going to knock down Boehner’s bill tonight; the GOP should turn around and knock Reid’s down too. That would preserve the Republican talking point that they’ve passed two bills in the House while the Democrats have passed nothing in the Senate and it’ll reduce some of Reid’s clout when he huddles with Boehner and McConnell. Instead, Brown sounds ready to give Reid bipartisan cover. Why? He can placate Massachusetts voters by voting for the final bill instead. He keeps daring conservatives to primary him and hand that Senate seat back to the Democrats. One step too far this time? (&c. &c.)

---

One is continually reduced to doubting that the up-market and H*rv*rd and _Juris Doctor_ (&c. &c.) Blue Blazers have much grasp of any U. S. politics much to the whight of their own. If they got out and read _The Boston Humbug_ a little more, their noses would soon toughen up enough to dispense with the training wheels, and, ¿who knows?, they might even find little gems like that one for themselves on occasion.

The obvious fun of the thing, admittedly, is that the neocomrade of America’s Otherparty who scribbled it has very inadequate notions -- fantastic ones, even -- about our Hill City Commonwealth. The late Marshall Stalin had about as much reason to worry about a primary challenger as does Senator Fratboy. ¡Imagine a tail torn by intestine strife between two different factions of dog-controller wannabes! Economic an’ cultural neoeactionaries in South Carolina [*] may have lots of leeway to indulge in such luxuries, but in these parts, if whightwingers don.t all flap together, they will soon drop off the ’scope altogether.

Less obviously, Party Neocomrade ‘ALLAHPUNDIT’ does seem to grasp the essence of the Fratboy Two-Step: first vote with Von Böhner an’ the boys to please his neocarpetbaggers an’ fundmongers, but then vote with Mr. Reid because reëlection in Massachusets with EXCLUSIVELY the votes of neoscalawags is not a promisin’ plan.

The first step has already been taken: Default fears worsen as US Senate blocks debt-ceiling bill. ¿Who can look at that 59-41 split and not rejoice that ’tis Fratboy of MA who consistutes that final ‘1’? (I believe somebooby around here recently spoke of cabooses . . ..)

Unfortunately for the Otherparty, as yet forty-one-percent supermajorities only work negatively. However I daresay the neocomrades are workin’ on it even as we keyboard, strivin’ both to reduce the subpercentage required an’ to make that new, improved subpercentage decisive in ALL matters of neolegislation. "¡Just Vote NO!" may cover most of the Otherparty’s publicly acknowledged requirements, but let’s face it, if one is successfully to run a railroad an’ meet a payroll, at least a little somethin’ more than naked _¡Nie pozwalam!_ is required once in a while. [**]

But that will be then, and now is only now.

Nevertheless, the court historians of Princess Posterity will be derelict in their duty, should they fail to celebrate our own Senator Fratboy in conjunction with the Spirit of Forty-One, or ‘neominoritarianism’, or whatever terminiology becomes standard.

Somebooby must always take the first step, an’ in this case, ¡Fratboy’s the one! [***]

Happy days.
--JHM


___
[*] A province not chosen at random. Even apart from that December 1860 business, which still rankles on rainy days, just yesterday every single Fedguv ("¡boooo!") representative from darkest Calhounestan voted ‘No’ on Johannes, Freiherr von Böhner’s little dogmatic exercise in its last-ditch form:

SOUTH CAROLINA Democrats — Clyburn, N. Republicans — Duncan, N; Gowdy, N; Mulvaney, N; Scott, N; Wilson, N.

Mr. J. E. (ahem) Clyburn is, I presume, clinically sane, and voted against _Böhnerismus_ from the near side, so to say.

His colleagues from the Otherparty, out of sight around the bend an’ whighter than a driven snowjob, are (I further presume) the sort of goodfolks who would run against Stalin, vile traitor to the neorevolution. Or possibly they are terrorized of bein’ primaried to death themselves by even-whighter-than-whights. Either way, they fit in with the over-all ethos of ideological extortion which Party Neocomrade ‘ALLAHPUNDIT’ takes for granted. But which becomes only a bad joke when injudiciously exported to Bluesachusetts.

_¡Fas est et ab hoste doceri_! It’s (just barely) worth learning from ‘ALLAHPUNDIT’ to have some degree of familiarity with local conditions before offering unsolicited advice to like-minded politicians far away. More useful is to observe that the Party neocomrade obviously approves of this ideological extortion --indeed, he practices it--an’ is not just describin’ what happens with that Murdochian fairembalance we have come to know and love. Inasmuch as our beloved MA does undeniably rather resemble Calhounestan in Her unipartisanship, worrying a little about whether what I have labeled "ideological extortion" could happen here would do no harm, though of course the Otherparty would scarcely be the focus of concern.

*

[**]


*

[***] If any future court historians read these words, allow me to suggest that the very blueness of Bloserchusetts may have helped inspired Fratboy’s gallant neominoritarian quest. In what was otherwise a very good year nationally, the Otherparty of MA elected less than twenty-three (22.5) percent of the General Court, an’ zero (0.00) percent of our Fedguv Representatives, ¡yet in the Senate of the United States . . . !

Life being unfair, South Carolina has yet to return the favor by elevatin’ Congressman Clyburn or the like to sit in the seat of J. C. Calhoun an’ J. S. Thurmond.

(( SC bein’ SC, I won’t hold my breath waiting for that particular instance of fairembalance. ))

More Claved Against Than Clavin’

Dear Dr. Bones,

This morning’s pajamaclad looser distinctly puts me in mind of Mr. Matthew Arnold and Mrs. Gooch’s Golden Rule, or the Divine Injunction ‘Be ye Perfect’ done into British [1]"

"Ever remember, my dear [Andy], that you should look forward to being some day [Imperial Klavan of the Kolorblind Kiddiecons]."

‘Imperial’, by the way, is at least a little more than pure spoof, for ¿Hath not Karl, Freelord Rove, laid it down that WE are an Empire now, and when WE act, WE create OUR OWN reality (&c. &c.)?

The visibility of the Rovan Empire, of its acts and its [destructivist] creations and its new-model Realities, may be a bit problematical at times, especially when his freelordship’s Party happen to be out of executive office, but the theory of Rovan imperialism is clear enough. Anyway, "Invisible Empire" has already been put under moral copywhight by a certain organization which you certainly won’t find *me* specifying in lurid detail. [2]

Perhaps we might coin and utter "the Transparent Empire of Tee Putty"? What the puttymoulders are up to is not impossible to see through, after all. [3]

Moving whight along from words to things, Kiddiemaster Klaving indeed claves [4] almost up to the "¡Be ye perfect!" mark in the path of his Party an’ Her AEIdeology. If his freelordship misses a knavish neotrick, I miss him missin’ it.

The exact arrangement of knavish neotricks is his freelordship’s only vulnerable point, I think, and naturally there may be different arrangements of them from scribble to scribble. Here everythin’ Evil in the Garden is made to revolve around "network news," which is bound to please Wally Wingnut an’ Cindy from Wasilla as they recline in slumberwear -- an’ in profoundest self-sorrow -- upon their potatoe couches of state [5]. It also, as I mentioned in the first note, makes good sense as a distraction from the spectacle of Firstlord Newscorp bein’ mobbed by Lilliputian Brit pols an’ paparazzis.

As a considered account of the correlation of farces, however, I don’t think mainstream mediacentricity is quight whight even by Wingnut City standards. Kiddiemaster Rove cannot have untended his Imperial manifesto to herald an ‘empire’ of mere entertainment. His freelordship definitely intended somethin’ a little more neoreal than that, though it serves his freelordship whight, in a way, to be so misunderstood or travestied after venturin’ on a partisan redefinition of so ordinary and vulgar a term as ‘real’. _Securus judicat orbis terrarum_: the Quackers never really got away with skyjacking ‘friends’ either, as St. Jack well points out somewhere.

Plainly, though, his freelordship original-intented the Rovan Empire to be a racket in which his freelordship himselt an’ other obviously predestinate Uppers --our old pals the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, L.L.C. -- dictate what is to be done, an’ then the forelock-tuggin’ classes go an’ do what is good for us. [6] If his freelordship did not mean that, he would presumably not have deployed the word ‘empire’ at all. The administration of the Rovan Empire is to be vaguely ‘postmodern’, no doubt, yet underneath all the superficial trendiness of methodology lies essential the same old "Me Tarzan, you Jane" substance as ever. Or make that "US Godzilla, you Bambi."

Nobooby can actually big-manage (the former ‘govern’) on the basis of foolish soundbarks like "We report, you decide." What Rovan imperialists require is far more like "We decide, and you report back when you have complied in full." This is not a new song. [7]

So, then: the Jungherr von Clavingck appears to the present keyboard to have taken the cliché notion of agitprop as "a fourth estate" for several times what it is worth. Mr. Walter Cronkite was never a Mussolini to the _Heimatland G*ttes_ and the chances of Kiddiemaster Ailes, or even the World’s Greatest Yaleodramatist himself, ever becomin’ one are too slight to be worth pooh-poohing. His freelordship is letter-perfect (as far as I can make out) in the twistifications an’ spins an’ miscellaneous clavin’s most likely to advance the Kiddiecon Kause. His freelordship’s failure is not to appreciate that such advancement can never amount to single-handed establishment.

Fraud is necessary, but not sufficient.

Happy days (through affordable health case)
--JHM


___
[1] I guess one ought to make that "done into Foxcuckoo."

Speaking of Foxcuckoos, can it really be pure coincidence that this factious drool should appear even as Rupert, Firstlord Newscorp in the neopeerage, must appear in the dock to be outrageously persecuted by a very inferior class of kangaroos, the Parliamentary?

¡How are the Whighty fallen! (Mr. Bulger too.) An’ fallen into such dreadful paws . . . .

***

[2] ’Tis not for you and me to put ideas into the dittopans of selfservative kiddies, sir.

(( Hmm. It occurs to me that, up to a point, the kiddies’ very wombschoolin’ an’ freedumbin’ down an’ pious allegiance to Their Ford’s ‘History is bunk’ may reduce the amount of wreckin’ their neocrew can wreak. Imagine, for example, if the Freiherren von Böhner und von Kantor were *deliberately* tryin’ to reproduce the constitution of Ancient Poland in Father Zeus’s green and entrepreneurial Homeland™.

(( Still, the traditional theoproduct was not labeled _peccatum ORIGINALE_ for nothing. Dogmatic mythographers of the former Christojudæandom have disagreed widely as to exactly what is so ‘original’ about their product, but not one ever suggested that P.O. requires to be independently neo-invented by each successive degeneration. _I.e._, the freelords an’ kiddiemasters an’ puttymongers of today need not have heard of _zlota wolnosc_ and _nie pozwalam_ to reproduce them. Or if ‘reproduce’ be ruled out as not strictly accurate in the case of the blissfully self-ignorant, then say "produce the effective equivalent of" or the like.

(( Furthermore, Neocomrade Fedguv Representative M. M. Amble-Bachmann’s recent troubles hearin’ shots supposedly heard ’round the world warns us what can go ’rong when kiddiecons an’ kiddie-conners think they do know a little bunkstory. Better ignorance and bliss, I’d vote, than flat out unwhighteousness about elementary matters of fact. ))

***

[3] A small world, sir: it appears that the Freiherr Kindermeister Andreas von Clavingck is a literary gent: "In 2008, he released a war-on-terror political novel, _Empire of Lies_."

Should you have any pots at home that require boiling, Bones, half an ounce of "Jason must confront the buried fear that he’s inherited his mother’s insanity and can’t control his own dark urges" ought to take care of them _pronto_.

***

[4] Verb intransitive: I clave / thou clavest OR clav’st / she claves / we clave / ye clave / they clave \\ clavin’ is us \ more claved against than clavin’

As to the semantic side, no doubt you can work that out for yourself empirically. "¡Don’t ever let even Foxnews tell you what is in _The Critique of Pure Reason_!

(( _Dixit_ Schopenhauer, more or less ))

***

[5] _Cf._ _kichô_ in Waleynese.

***

[6] What happens to be even better for our Betters than for us humble. But that plan makes excellent sense, ¿does it not?

***

[7] A couple of variant versions cross my mind. General Washington is quoted _chez_ Mencken as having vouchsafed that "Government is not eloquence, it is not reason -- it is force." The learned glossator elaborates

Bad government is that which is weak, irresolute, and lacking in constabulary enterprise; when one has defined it, one has also defined a bad bishop, cavalry captain or policeman. Good government is that which delivers the citizen from the risk of being done out of his life and property too arbitrarily . . . .

HLM pussyfoots, probably quite deliberately, through Church and violence profession around the most pertinent illustration of all, the bigmanagement of a secret-sector business corporation. To put the emphasis in the whight place, then, I prefer to recur to those ever-immortal last words of Charles I Stuart, "An EMPLOYER and an employee are clean different things."

"(oh-so-magnanimously)"

Dear Dr. Bones,

Don Rossito de Doúthat y Podhòretz, whom you know, has made the mistake of ¡really lettin’ itself go, just for once!

On the occasion, as I guess, of the first full moon of the Silly Season. [1]

Usually this NYTC _señorito_ is distinctly less so than its wombmate Don Davidito de B. y P. , but today I am willing to make an exception. Unwittin’ly -- surely -- Don Rossito has lapsed into the "self-referentiality" of the Eng. Lit. Dept., inasmuch as the topic it is bratty about happens to be the brattiness of its own Party neocomrades:

It’s not that Republicans needed to tug their forelock and go along with whatever grand bargain the White House whipped up. But to win the endgame, they needed something they were willing to concede, something they could tout in public as an example of meeting the Democrats partway. Their inability to make even symbolic concessions has turned a winning hand into a losing one. A majority of Americans want to close the deficit primarily with spending cuts — which is to say, they’re primed to side with conservatives in the debt-ceiling debate. But in trying to turn that “primarily” into a “completely,” the right has squandered this advantage. By 48 percent to 34 percent, a Quinnipiac poll found last week, Americans will blame Republicans if debt-ceiling gridlock precipitates an economic crisis. In the end, the threat of such a backlash will probably impel Republicans to make some kind of concession anyway, if they don’t admit that’s what they’re doing.

(( Read the whole neosilliness, please, sir. Swiping gets to be a bore quick. ))

I asume you will share my impression that what we have here is a doctrinal nine-year-old lecturin’ a seven-year-old ditto on the need to be very grown-up. An’ sly an’ Machiavellian.

To maximize your mocking pleasure, sir, imagine what the reaction to such neodrivel will be out at Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie. The Junior Birdpersons of Reaction are guaranteed to loathe it, havin’ been AstroTurf™bagged over the head into wantin’ it ALL -- an’ WANTIN’ IT ALL *N*O*W*. "¡Scrooge you an’ your ‘symbolic concessions’!" must inevitably be the unanimous soundbark from the Tee Putty.

The only thing ‘symbolized’ to kiddiecons by ‘concessions’ will be that we Lieberal an’ Demoncratic enemies of the Whight Civilisation of the Western Race™ have not been extirpated altogether. Bein’ a nine-year-old itself, Don Rossito can see through that one. But not clearly enough not to want what it realizes it cannot get:

... the public relations battle becomes crucial and the goal is to make the other side seem unreasonable, intransigent and even a little bit insane. Winning the later phase doesn’t require making enormous compromises, or giving up the ground you’ve gained. But it requires at least the appearance of conciliation, and a few examples of concessions that you’re willing to (oh-so-magnanimously) make to those unreasonable ideologues in the other party.

Our hero overestimates the seven-year-old ideomentality: most of the kiddies of Party an’ AEIdeology have not yet acquired a taste for nine-year-old puerilities in the "oh-so-magnanimous" line. Should Don Rossito ever make it to the ripe ol’ ideoäge of eleven, it will, as I conjecture, outgrow this fatuous fake magnanimity too. At that point it will be far more intellectually an’ ethically presentable, yet also a lot less fun. It -- perhaps one might even say ‘he’ at that point -- will then be not much more than your run-of-the-mill R.I.N.O., a Hoovervillain loyally servin’ the Hoovervillainous Class, willin’ enough to moderately take nine-tenths of a loaf rather than swipe no bread -- an’ not rub salt in by smirkin’ whight in our faces ’bout its own alleged greatness of soul.

That however will be then, if ever, and this is only now. For the moment, Age Nine is clearly much more engaged on its Age Seven front than against Age Eleven:

By backing into a compromise and shrouding it in procedural gimmickry, Republican legislators may hope to throw the Tea Party’s watchdogs off the scent. But both the politics and the substance of such a deal would probably be worse for conservatives than the kind of bargain that might have been available otherwise — if more Republicans had only recognized that sometimes a well-chosen concession can be the better part of valor.

Undoubtedly Don Rossito de Doúthat y Podhòretz could do with some -- with a LOT of -- practice in gimmickry shroudin’ before it attempts to diddle the entire holy Homeland™ from sea to whinin’ sea. Unfortunately it is in no good position to start by diddlin’ the Tee Putty, who have long been on to its little tricks. Havin’ figured the _novoseñorito_ out personally was not even necessary, however: the New York Times Company affiliation by itself would make Don Rossito a stench in the nostrils of Rio Limbaugh.

It follows, I think, that if Don Rossito were really serious about this drool, it would have found somebooby else to recommend it to the Tee Putty. Some booby not discredited in advance _chez Limbaugh_.

¿Perhaps that lesson does not occur until the sixth ideograde or higher?

And Machiavelli knows best.

Happy days.
--JHM

_
[1] If the race of vulgar Marxists had not gone extinct, I would ask one to explain why the Silly Season persists under Even-Later Capitalism. Given its Class advantages, a little neo- like Don Rossito can hardly lack for air conditionin’, that it should wax bratty *directly* from the air temperature outside the neodynastic _hacienda_.

The puzzle, really, is that nowadays even faithful peons an’ prole thugs an’ scabs can (mostly) keep cool enough in July and August. Indeed, my own researches with the Essex County Land Whale Watch and the Middlesex County Flightless Blimp Spotters strongly suggest that hardly anybooby except patent _indocumetadas y indocumentados_ spends more than twenty-three (22.954) seconds continuously without A.C. Darwinian selection would soon thin the herd, if the dash from comfy murder vehicle to equally comfy domicile (or emporium or whatever) were much longer than that.

Not being myself much of a Pscientific Psocialist, I can only note hesitantly that there may be a real parallel with Full Moon Syndrome, for now that the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced , Lady Cynthia cannot strike down many victims in the old-fashioned _literaliter_ way. Safely ensconced in their artificial neouteruses, Master Wally an’ Cindy from Wasilla -- an’ even Don Rossito de Doúthat y Podhòretz -- manage to be abstractly or vicariously afraid of the dark an’, similarly, neobratty from the heat, though both light an’ coolth, _Lux et Frigor_, prevail in their immediate vicinity.

As to *explaining* this phænomenon, assuming it really is one, far over the head of this coarse and illiterate keyboard is that grave task. We might ask Don Davidito de Brooks y Podhòretz whether its homebrew social-scientisin’ affords any clue.

Alternatively, if you can be satisfied with a merely literary ‘explanation’, I think it may suffice to mumble something vague about "memes in our cultural DNA" or the like. With a few well-chosen hand-wavings, that ought to do the trick well enough for Fedguv work. A little more specifically: ¿perhaps you remember that natural scientiser who suggested that sleeping seven or eight hours out of every twenty-four is just a habit we happen to have retained from several neological epochs back, when there was actually some physiological or Nat. Sel. point to it.

But Endymion knows best.

(( All of the above recommends the orthography "Psilly Season," which hints at phoniness as well as silliness. BEKB. ))

In No Mood for D-Fault

Zandi does not factor in the one plausible escape route from this debacle, . . . to raise marginal income taxes on the upper income levels

Mr. Poster is plainly on the better or anti-Zandi side of the _Klassenkampf_, yet it would not hurt to grasp the viewpoint of the _Finanzkapital_ community, if one can do so without making unwarrantable concessions.

To wonder whether that community in general, plus Moody’s and Party Neocomrade M. X. Zandi in particular, consider it ‘plausible’ that (their own and perhaps especially their corporations’) income taxes should be increased may not be the best way to approach this factor. ‘Professional’ duty to their patients or customers would seem to require them to point out that tax rates in the USA could be -- have been -- much higher than they are now without the roof falling in. However, since it is their Class’s own pocketbooks and piggie banks of which we speak . . . .

Well, I find it plausible enough that the neocomrade and his employers would prefer to lay that particular factor aside. Perhaps Moody’s and Moody’s ‘clients’ might volunteer a little something, sacrificewise, if firmly and repeatedly asked, but it is asking too much of fallen humanity to expect them to bring up such a displeasing subject unilaterally.

In any case, at the moment M. X. Zandi is worried -- presumably on behalf of his employers and his employers’ ‘clients’ and, indeed, in the interests of his Class as a whole -- about the implications of a failure by the United States of America to meet our financial commitments. The neocomrade’s handy-dandy "How to cut the deficit --" is too vague to be taken very seriously, but perhaps no more is required when his attention is so fixed on "-- and what happens if we don’t." [*] My guess is that M. X. Zandi set out to agitate and propagandize that deficit cuttin’ is so easy a business that our hack pols and statespersons would have to be quite exceptionally incompetent to manage not to do it. [**]

From this standpoint, the interesting thing is that the man from Moody’s seems to be seriously concerned they actually might not.

More interesting than that, and a far better topic for the neocomrade analyst’s special expertise, would be to have told us what measures he has recommended to the clients of Moody’s and to his Class in case Obamageddon does come to pass. Presumably they take their yen and their Euros out of Uncle Sam’s treasury notes at once -- any fool of an uninstructed lay sheep can guess that much -- but ¿then where do they go with them?

Needless to say, however, the neocomrade can not be expected to give away to all and sundry _gratis_ what his employers’ clients are billed to the gills for. Furthermore, if there do in fact exist nifty strategies for financial self-protection in the event of a ‘default’ by poor Sam, almost certainly the fewer folks know about them, the better they will work. The patients or customers of Moody’s would be *doubly* betrayed, if what they have forked over their semi-good Bernanke bucks for were not only handed out as a freebie via Fox-on-15th but rendered more or less inoperative in the process. [***]

Happy days.

___
[*] Some editor at Fox-on-Fifteenth-Street may be responsible for the header, but, for once, it does correspond tolerably well to the contents of the article.

[**] If deficit cuttin’ be in fact extremely easy, then anybody can draw the inference that there are probably lots of different ways of doin’ it. That, in turn, means that M. X. Zandi need not ask for trouble by draggin’ in "taxes on the upper income levels." I mean, ¿Why put ideas in their heads?

[***] In theory, at least, it might be the case that no nifty options exist, or none that Moody’s Analytics knows about. M. X. Zandi could not be expected to admit it, were that the case, but it would certainly inspire him to true urgency about "-- and what happens if we don’t."

The Unrounded Well Is Not Worth Drinking From

Dear Dr. Bones,

¡Happy New Month! (( ¡¡Twenty more NYTC freebies per browser!! ¡¡¡Alleluia!!!! )

To get the _Kaisermonat_ started with a rousin’ whimper, sir:

Don Davidito de Brooks has divined , presumably by skillful deployment of his freelordship’s customary homebrew social-scientisin’, that our (not his) _Schulführer und Schulführerinnen_ are to be blamed for the sad lack of that _geistige Eifer_ with which all young skulls full of mush obviously ought to be inflamed. [1]

What the Bolshevik Ravitch makes of this toplofty, though factious, drool it will be interesting to learn.

Meanwhile Thersites and I have agreed privately that what we have here smells a lot more like _Klassengeist_ in Old High Prussian than "school spirit" in our own vernaculars.

The French, however, might want to recycle _¡Qu’ ils mangeant des brioches!_, should they find this particular _señorito derechíssimo_ worth attending to. Don Davidito is quite as oblivious as was Her Austrian Majesty to what educational pastries cost nowadays. I wonder if his freelordship knows about those supermarket scanner gizmos that ao amazed George XLI Bush.

There is, I suppose, the possibility that Don Davidito understands the fundin’ side thoroughly, but thinks it dreadfully ungentlemanlike to gossip about Trade. Also a darker possibility: ¿How if his freelordship were deliberately tryin’ to distract our attention from the fact that _geistige Eifer_ only *looks* like being a a freebie? [2][3]

Happy days.

__
[1] Plus please don’t forget the _belebende Sittlichkeit_ ("invigorating moral culture"): _sine quâ non_, *that* ingredient is.

**

[2] Suspicion can darken fast if one abandons one’s mind to it. It would be positively nasty of his freelordship, for example, to despise all those unsatisfactory Leaders of Schools for their tacky greed an’ ‘materialism’ (in the vulgar pseudethical sense) as if every last individual spiritual slacker an’ cultural lazybones among them were a card-carryin’ Unionthug. Better skip the Trade angle altogether, I guess, than ever get started off in that direction.

Not quite so nasty, but pretty bad, would be if his freelordship wants us not to remember that residential segregation has a good deal to do with these things. _Klassensegregation_ first and foremost, but the other kind too.

Perhaps Don Davidito has some personal excuse for dodgin’ that one, though: if his freelordship expressly announced that he wants uniform (an’ uniformly high, an’ seriously enforced) standards of _belebende Sittlichkeit und geistige Eifer_ nationwide, his own Party neocomrades at Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie an’ thereabouts would go ballistic at once. I mean, ¿what did they move to the ’burbs for in the first place, if not to get away from that sort of scheme? The sort of scheme that picks the pockets of decent, clean-cut, redstate-blooded selfservatives who "obey the law an’ play by the rules" (&c. &c. -- you must know the full lyrics to that one) in order to throw money at the Bad Poor.

To throw money at ’em by way of ... lemme see ... of "the subjects that don’t show up on the exams but that help students become fully rounded individuals — like history, poetry, art and sports." Setting aside the kiddie games at the end, perhaps, that is blatantly a proposal to sell the Party base an’ vile a product they do not want at a price they would think outrageous if they did. A ‘conservative’ ‘intellectual’ like his freelordship may sincerely care to almost any extent about that thoroughly elitist brand of well roundin’, but, over on the far side of the abandoned railroad tracks, Wingnut City is not often ashamed of their wells bein’ square. Of bein’ square themselves, too. It is very questionable if trailer-trash wingnutettes an’ wingnuts want much "history, poetry, art" for their own kids, and about as certain as anything Soc. Sci. can ever be that they will not be volunteerin’ to help finance such idle frills an’ frippery for the brats of the Bad Poor.

Even more fun than how Comrade Ravitch reacts will be the rebuttal barked out boldly by Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh, who has dumped on poor little R.I.N.O. Davey Boy often enough in the past to make it likely that this, too, will not pass unbellowed at. As I said--as you can see for yourself--this morning’s Brooksian drool is so exquisitely toplofty that Himself would need the self-discipline of a Regulus not to mock it before the dittobrains.

***

[3] I will be amazed if the kiddiecons notice, but in a way the Brooksian ideoproduct is just what they oughtabe wantin’ over in Rio Limbaugh. To make Spiritual Toploftinesses the core of _Bildung_ an’ simultaneously leave it to be easily (though not quight whightly) inferred that they must hardly cost anythin’ at all makes the Bad Poors responsible for their own miseducation. If the B.P. only cared enough about "history, poetry, art and sports," teaches Don Davidito de Brooks y Podhòretz, they would see to it that these goodies get universally inculcated down in their slums. ’Tis not, insinuates his freelordship, as if they simply could not afford it. Were there but a will, there would be a way.

You don’t really need that Leo-Strauss-Brand Secret De©oder ®ing we found in the CrackerJack box once to work that much out. A critic might criticise that for whight-wingers like little Davey Brooks to look down on the dependent underclass for not valuin’ toney up-market cultural things that most whightists hardly value all that much themselves reeks of ... well, of ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘inconsistency’ or the like.

This argument, however, is of no use against rank-an’-file kiddiecons, who have no trouble at all esteemin’ themselves for belongin’ to that same ever-immortal Whight Civilisation of the Western Race™ that produced Giorgione an’ Rembrandt an’ Washington Allston (&c. &c.) whilst never themselves personally darkenin’ the door of a museum or lookin’ at the pictures in a coffee-table book. Though deeply interested in the FACT of their own collective self-wunnerfulness, the neokiddies hardly care exactly what it is based on.

Indeed, Dr. Bones, I ask you, "¿Hath not Their Ford proclaimed that History is bunk?"

"The Republicans have narratives"

Dear Dr. Bones,

The choice of words, though, is secondary to having a narrative. The Republicans have narratives: 1. The recession was caused by over-regulation. Over-regulation, per the GOP, is always messing up the economy so of course it caused the recession. 2. Housing policies favoring the less well-off caused the economic collapse. Whenever we give stuff to people who don’t deserve it bad things happen. 3. The soaring national debt caused by spendthrift Democrats caused the recession and Democrats are just trying to make it worse. Those are their stories. Yes, they are wrong and stupid. But they have traction. Lots of it. Simply yelling “reckless! reckless!” doesn’t undermine these Republican stories — especially when there’s a whole bunch of Fox commentators, er, candidates pushing them. kbusch @ June 21, 2011 at 11:01 pm

_¡Qu’ ils mangeant des ‘narrations’!_

Let THEM, not us, climb up on verbal stilts to eat ‘narrative’!

If the Daughters of Virtue & Sons of Wisdom, LLC, could be persuaded to behave like utter stiltheads, they would lose their "respectable Republican cloth coat" Pat Nixons and that would be the end of them.

The said Freedame of the Otherparty, complete with her dog an’ her whole WalMart-equivalent wardrobe, did not add up to even a crumby _conte_, let alone a proper _narratio_. At best, ’twas only a table of Dramatis Personæ or list of ingredients. When his Freelordship of Nixon brought his mildly personal flotsam an’ jetsam to public notice, he afforded Televisionland and the electorate a chance to wag their -- ‘our’ -- own tales.

Thus has it ever been. In 1840, General the Freelord of Harrison an’ the log cabin an’ the hard cider (¡plus the Freelord of Tyler at no extra charge!) were all very well in their way, but that way was not much like _Madame Bovary_. Or like "The Devil and Daniel Webster" either.

Ms. Poster, evidently one of our team’s Beautiful People [1], likes to have her ‘narratives’ preassembled by the servants, rather than fumble around with bits and pieces herself. Up to a point Madame’s druthers are pure _de gustibus_, but they could become an impediment to effective agitation and propaganda if swallowed uncritically. The trouble I foresee is that for every consumer of ‘narratives’ who likes the pieces put together Madame’s way, there are perhaps nineteen others who would prefer some other configuration. Though it is theoretically possible that other ‘narrative’ consumers would first disassemble [2] the work of the hired hands and then put their own paws to work creating a more congenial Narrative Object, in practice one should assume that few denizens of Televisionland will actually get up off their potatoe couches to do anything so strenuous. Almost certainly, Harry and Louise MacLuhantube will simply feel bored, deciding subliminally that Madame’s Political Action Committee does not know how to natter a good narrative -- and then maybe click their way over to Fox.

Now Madame herself takes for granted that they do these things better in Foxcuckooland. She even condescends to provide three examples, although these have been CliffsNote™d down so austerely that most of their _narratio inflata_ charm is lost. A blow-up of Exhibit B in particular can be lots of fun, with the Three Weird Sisters, Fanny Mae an’ Freddy Mac an’ Barney Frank, conspirin’ to destroy the U. S. housin’ market for ends of their own.

Exhibit C, I observe, also runs to the "for end of their own" _topos_ and, come to think of it, so does Exhibit A. Evidently _narratio foxcucuensis_ is, in a manner, pure ‘narration’ -- all story and never any plot. Rarely do the minions of Rupert explain WHY we donkeys want to cause recessions an’ housin’ busts an’ then make ’em worse once we got ’em. Though it is extremely unlikely that Firstlord of Murdoch an’ Kiddiemaster Ailes (&c. &c.) have consciously adopted what might be termed the "Erector set" view of the _ars narrativa_ just set forth, yet their reluctance to dabble in motives gives their freelordships most of its advantages. After exposure to some tolerably fleshed-out version of one of the above ‘narratives’, Harry an’ Louise retain the freedumb to fill in any motivations they like, an arrangement that is convenient indeed for the Party of Big Management and of the AEIdeology.

And not just the motivations can be filled in by the patient / victim / customer, but also a good deal of significant local colour by the way. ‘Recession’ and "economic collapse" and "soaring national debt" are very general expressions, so general as to be almost Blakean idiocies. Out amongst the couchpotatoes, these portentous cloudinesses can be cashed in for how Louise got fired, an’ Harry can’t seem to get along with his credit-card corporation these days, an’ nobody wants to buy their house at a non-joke price. Those blanks are filled in first, I presume; only afterwards do the MacLuhantubes fill in the motives of their oppressors.

Naturally the Joneses across the tracks, who, let us say, got *their* shanty as a free gift from the Three Weird Sisters, would fill in the blanks quite differently. What with Human Nature (Pat. Pend.) and _peccatum originale_ and a’ that jazz, it is quite possible that the MacLuhantubes will conclude, in effect, that the Joneses wanting to stay dry when it rains (without ever properly earning and deserving their dryness) is the root cause of recessions and housing busts and economic collapses.

At least as regards the upmarket side of the railroad tracks [3], which votes a lot more regularly, this situation ought to suit their freelordships of Newscorp to a ‘T’. Or make that "to a ‘GOP’."

At the moment, though, we are concerned with literature / rhetoric / agitprop rather than with political substance, and my chief point is that the upshot would not be anywhere near so satisfactory if the Whight-Wing Persuaders had themselves supplied the concreteness of this keyboard’s feigned Joneses and MacLuhantubes. Had they done so, the resultin’ product would have borne a much closer resemblance to the Eng. Lit. or Comp. Lit. Dept. type of ‘narrative’, but at the same time it would inevitably (I think) be a product that is easily dismissed out of hand as "merely anecdotal evidence" by those who do not like the doctrinal drift.

Furthermore, merely anecdotal evidence is dismissed merrily by dismissers who do not deny that every word of it is G*re’s Own Truth, which nobooby expensively educated demands that ‘narrative’ should be.

"Merely anecdotal evidence we just made up from scratch" is a pretty useless category of wares for the agitpropper, despite being a not very friendly but technically accurate account of what M. Flaubert and Mr. Benet and the gang were up to. Not all ‘narrative’ is MAEWJMUFS, to be sure, but some is. And not just any ‘some’ but the very _crème de la crème du genre narratif_.

Such things considered, then, I’d say ‘narrative’ is mostly spinach. [4]

Happy days.
--JHM



__
[1] "Beautiful People" _es una ma®©a registrada de_ Howard Lawrence, zeroth Freelord Carr in the peerage of Wingnut City. Used here by gracious impermission of his freelordship.

[2] Notice, Dr. Bones, how easy it would be to erect a _pons asinorum_ at this ford and turn back all wayfarers who suppose that ‘deconstruction’ -- which I take to be a sort of Stiltword to end all stiltwords -- means disassembly.

[3] In accordance with the announced Erector-set principles, it is left to the student as an exercise to cross the figurative tracks and spell out how the Joneses might come to suppose that recessions and housing busts and economic collapses largely result from the MacLuhantubes (d.b.a. "the Middle Class") specuvestin’ a little too exuberantly with their real-estate equity.

Or alternatively, from the MacLuhantubes’ pig-headed insistence on makin’ sure that the Bad Poor stay poor--assumin’, that is, they can’t just be deported.

Or whatever.

[4] "¿But what shall we eat if spinach be austerely renounced?" Well, ¿how about argument?

Another Picture from The Institution

Dear Dr. Bones,

Sort of a cartoon, actually:

The Department of Education Cracks Down on For-Profit Colleges Should Washington scale back its huge college subsidies instead?

The neolearned an’ postgallant perfesser seems to have been outside strugglin’ with his two-wheeler when he should have been attendin’ the AEIdeological orientation part of the course offered by Wombschool Normal U. or St. Dilbert’s Antistate College or George Peppermason or wherever. I guess "There is nothing improper about the idea of a for-profit educational institution" was not original-intented as damnation by faint praise; all the same, if the Cramerite flame of zeal for Mammon flickered much lower, it would stop existin’.

And ¿what -- ¡I ask you! -- are the pajamaclad kiddies to make of "I really believe in the merits of a traditional liberal arts education" ? For that matter, ¿what do the Crameroid golfin’ buddies make of it?

To be sure, his Cramerian freelordship’s devotion to Lieberal Education is not unqualified -- "it needs to be done in high school, where we used to do it." Usually I flatly don’t believe the word ‘historian’ when it comes from the hired e-hands of Roger, Freelord of Simon Pajama in the neopeerage [1], but with Parteineukamerad Herr Professor Doktor C. E. von Kramer, an exception must be made: run-of-the-mill whight-wing bunksters would not be caught dead alludin’ to any bunk that far back towards the abyss. For it has been a long, long time indeed since "we used to do" Lie. Ed. at the secondary level rather than the tertiary. St. John Dewey, you’ll remember, used to complain of that situation all the time, starting in perhaps 1880. By the time he died in 195X, however, the situation had long since been rectified.

This qualification is, I fear, makes me a little suspicious. No doubt his freelordship sincerely craves to get all that useless unprofitable lumber -- "medieval French literature" -- removed from our institutions of tertiary educationalism, but, once it is safely out the door, I suspect M. le baron de Cramer would not much mind if it were just laid by the side of the road in a garbage bag for some fine, upstandin’ waste-disposal privateer to deal with quietly over night. Should it never make it sixteen blocks up the pike to Gated Hills Latin School, probably his freelordship’s grief would not be inconsolable.

But my suspicions pale besides those that his freelordship’s Party neocomrades ought to be entertainin’ of him. Especially if they, too, should happen to live in Gated Hills, that garden spot of South Central Foxcuckooland. For if GHLS does take the rubbish in, ’twill be their property-taxes pay for its upkeep. Whereas, had it been left where it was, at the tertiary level, at least part of the cost would be covered by misguided volunteers from the Secret Sector. The kiddie selfservatives are not, in general, sufficiently bestembright to entertain the idea that his freelordship of Cramer may be winkwinknodnoddin’ at ’em a little here. Neocomrade Dr. R. H. Limbaugh, for example, who likes to bark ’bout how he, at least, proudly lives in ‘Literal[s]ville’, will certainly conclude that M. le baron really wants to see compulsory Old French at GHLS. ¡What Rush, who happens to be _universitätsrein_ himself, will bark ’bout his freelordship in conjunction with *that* nifty scheme, I leave to your imagination, O Bones!

Probably M. le baron is just muddled, but it is just possible he is a stern _Klassenkämpfer_ unafraid to stand up for his own country-clubbers even against nominal Party neocomrades from the "respectable Republican cloth coat" mob.. That is to say, the Gated Hills Latin School is not for the neoproles down in Rio Limbaugh, who retain perfect freedumb to dispose of their local property-taxes for instruction in matters a little less upmarket-ornamental than _Le Roman de la Rose_.

To judge from noises emitted by the Three Weird Sisters of Boston [2], every neoprole takes for granted that education was decreed by Father Zeus to insinuate Dr. Limbaugh’s "young skulls full of mush" into well-remunerated employment in the Secret Sector as quickly as possible. There are serious reasons for doubting that everythin’ inculcated at the Rio Limbaugh/Port Ste. Lucie Regional High School in fact works towards that end, but, as far as I can make no, no disagreement worth mentionin’ that that is what RL-PSLRHS *ought* to be doin’, apart from a comparatively minor fringe of cultural studies designed to make sure that the neoprole kiddies know exactly which athletic an’ ideological teams they are required to cheer for. [3]

But probably M. le baron is just muddled. Examine his last paragraph, sir: plainly his freelordship does not want to see ‘his’ taxes wasted on the Bad Poor, marchin’ in lockstep with the whole phalanx of Party neocomrades on this, the most crucial, point. However the freelordly an’ kiddiemagisterial Class cannot make it on its own, She [4] requires a continual supply of scabs to keep down the Union thugs an’ Tee Putty to turn out on election days. This continuin’ supply of fresh neoblood has to come out of the arteries an’ veins of the holy Homeland™’s educational system somehow. Wombschoolin’ in the narrowest sense -- homeschoolin’ -- is not a viable option on the scale required. Even at Gated Hills, to be "privately educated" like a (probably) non-phony aristo from two or three centuries ago is so expensive as to be insignificant for the _Klassenkampf_. Dick an’ Jane (and Spot) will certainly have to be sent out somewhere to acquire their booklearnin’. Given the inertia of social constructions, it is not likely that they will soon be sent anywhere radically different from the sort of institutions currently available. [5]

The freelordly bottom line

Stacked up against this grim reality, the abuses on display at America’s for-profit colleges virtually pale in comparison

is a pretty example of a kissin’ cousin to "‘¡Shut up!’, she explained." His freelordship would much prefer to discuss the neofact that far too many Bad Poors waste their time an’ his freelordship’s Class’s money hanging around in schools, a preference that has almost nothin’ to do with the displayed abuses. Here the figurative freedame does not explain that we ought to fall silent altogether, only that we ought to allow her freeladyship to know best what to talk about.

Still spinach, though, ¿is it not?

Happy days (through affordable healthcare)
--JHM



____
[1] An’ ¡¡World’s Greatest Yaleodrama™ist!! ¡Never forget that, sir!

[2] WRKO AM 680; WXKS AM 1200; WTKK-FM 96.9.

[3] I presume it would not be fairembalanced to complain that this sort of icin’ on the cake is ‘useless’ or ‘unproductive’. After all, when -- nowadays, if -- Master Wally Wingnut gets admitted for a job interview, provin’ to the Personnel Department that he is a thoroughly orthodox kiddie selfservative may well be of the highest utility.

If Wally were tryin’ to get in the door at ScroogeBank or enlist with the Goldman-Saxon hordes, that sort of thing would not much help and might even hurt, but we all know, Dr. Bones, that the alumnuses of Gated Hills Latin hold a near-total monopoly on the juiciest secret-sectorian plums. Not (I think) so much thanks to their mastery of Old French, as to their parents’ ability to shell out for the archaic kind of pædagogy that stars Old French and the like.

(( Though off-topic here, ‘archaic’ is interesting and important. ¿Did I ever mention that study of Secret Sectoria back in the heydey of glass-and-steel-box architecture? It was the corporate proles who got all the benefits of Modern Times. For themselves, the Big Managers preferred wood panels and upholstered furniture and Century XVIII all across the boardroom. Plus naturally when one has made it really big up at Gated Hills, one immediately pretends to go into agriculture an’ pastoralism -- horses especially. Polo is even better than Old French, statussymbolwise. ))

[4] As it happens, _classis -is_ really was feminine in very early Old French. I think, though, that this particular She would ought to be a Her in any case.

The same applies to _La civilisation occidentale_, the Western Sieve ideoproduct of the Ziocomrades an’ of a few scattereed dummies an’ _dhimmís, set up as hopefully an object of love an’ devotion an’ rallyin’ ’round generally. When one only means to refer to the intellectual history of Western Europe _wie es eigentlich gewesen_, ‘it’ will do nicely, but when when spoofin’ those wunnerful neofolks who seriously expect one to cross one’s heart an’ hope to die for themselves under the WC label, only ‘She’ will do.

[5] If the kiddies’ Destructive ©®ea™ionism product worked half as well as advertised, I daresay we could start over at once with what the Freiherr von Kramer an’ other neocomrades seem to require ideally, namely a revival of the apprentice system. ScroogeBank and WalMart and the Goldman-Saxons and the Warbucks Widget Trust Intergalactic LLC would train an’ indoctrinate all their hired hands in house from kindergarten through graduate school, ignorin’ the vast wasteland of American Educationalism as if it did not exist. Dick an’ Jane could get a far, far better education from the Serene House of Warbucks, after all, than they could ever hope for at the house of their own Mom an’ Pop. (Spot I dunno about.)

As regards tertiary educationalism specifically, surely this would be a far more sensible way for Daddy Warbucks an’ Uncle Scrooge y Tio Ruperto and all the rest of that branch of the family than to set up subsidiaries to specuvest an’ investulate in "for-profit colleges" that probably won’t be so very profitable in the long run. His freelordship of Cramer -- clearly no œconomist -- speaks blithely of "tens of thousands of dollars in student loans that will eventually be cleared only when they die of old age," which would be lovely for Scrooge & Co. if they could get it. But of course they cannot get it: well before middle age, Dick an’ Jane, the shameless ratfinks, will have defaulted on their freelordly creditors-- and there will go most of those "for-profit college" profits, in all likelihood.

One scarcely needs an M.B.A. from the H*rv*rd Victory School to notice *that* locomotive racing down the track at one. Those from the freelordly Class who do actually dabble in such specuvestments certainly appear to have noticed -- that is why they want Uncle Sam to co-sign the notes with our nieces and nephews.

There exist Party neocomrades at the Tanks of Thought, Catoholics an’ Heritagitarians an’ brand-name AEIdeologues, who (pretend to) think that Sam’s signature on a note is not worth much more than Spot’s would be, but this idle chatter of hired hands is contradicted by the behavior of authentic Freelords of Finance, who take for granted that Sam will pay as promised. At least pay our obligations to themselves -- if they can think of a way to welsh only on what Sam owes to the heathen Chinee and/or the Ponzi Security Administration, I think they might go for it. But it is not easy to imagine what that way would be.