How To Become An Elephant Second Class

The announced topic needs first to be disentangled from other grave Problems of Republican Party Extremism that it might be confused with. In the first place, we speak only of becomin' an Elephant Second-Class, of some voluntary act that an Elephant First Class might deliberately commit to get herself demoted -- not expelled or expunged or excommunicated, you understand, Mr. Bones, but only booted out of the Officers Club. Secondly, we shall discuss the Elephant People only in their secondary public role as a wannabe public political party after the original manner of our own Mr. Jefferson and Gen. Jackson. With the elephants' primary rôle as a private-sectorian economic conspiracy of OnePercenters we concern ourselves only to say that it seems pretty obvious how one becomes an economic Elephant Second Class: either one loses enough bucks to drop out of the OnePercent, or else one follows Julius Caesar and FDR and the abominable M. György Soros by keeping the OnePercenter bucks but becoming a "traitor to one's class." 'Nuff said!

As to what we do mean rather than don't, perhaps we may start with the illustration rather than than the principle illustrated? Textbook generalities are often rendered less inscrutable that way, at least in my experience. I take citizen Patrick J. Buchanan to be the very model of an Elephant Second Class. Professional pachydermatophobes at MoveOnDotOrg or wherever may profess to see no difference whatsoever between PJB and the more respectable and salute-worthy statespersons of Grant's Old Party, but I suspect that they are just trying to cheat and tar all the rest of the wrong side of the aisle by association with PJB if they possibly can. That's a very silly game, and I wish you'd stop it at once, guys! Whenever many more than two or three are gathered together to Support a Cause, it is easy enough for the eye of hostility to discern that one of them is an insufferable flaming jerk and then for the lips of hostility to announce that THEY are ALL as bad as Mr. Jerk, or pretty nearly. Fun it may be, but political analysis it ain't, so leave that kiddie toy to the New Criterion crowd, would you please, good guys?

PJB is not without his moments of flagrant jerkery from a good-guy perspective, but that is nothing to the present point, since it is the bad-guy or militant GOP perspective that we speak of. PJB is not typical of -- he has simply nothin' to do with, he exists in a parallel universe beside -- the officially avowed policies of Grant's Old Party as declared or obfuscated by the Elephants First Class solemnly assembled in their Officer Clubs at Château Kennebunkport and Rancho Crawford and Castle Cheney and many other waterin' holes, both disclosed and undisclosed. Citizen Buchanan simply ain't officer material, is what it comes down to, as I diagnose.

But Citizen Buchanan was not predestinately excluded by birth or breedin' from belongin' to the GOP officer class. Twenty or thirty years ago, Citizen Buchanan was pretty much indistinguishable from Princess Piggy Noonan (as she now is) who soars ever higher and higher in the firmament of militant Party extremism. Twenty or thirty years ago, Citizen Buchanan and Princess Piggy were scarcely to be distinguished from thee and me, Mr. Bones, apart from them bein' already celebrities, of course. We all came out from under one and the same overcoat, an overcoat labelled "Reagan Democrats," and yet Princesss Piggy of WSJ (as she now is) has become the toast of all their Officers Clubs, and Citizen Buchanan has been relegated to Elelphant Second Class, and thou and I have yet even to pervert to the GOP at all. With such a diversity of trajectories from much the same starting point, Mr. Bones, I put it to you that mere birth and breedin' can't possibly have much to do with it. Excluding ourselves out, as rigorous and dispassionate analysis demands, perhaps the reason why Miss Piggy soars as if wingèd and PJB sogs like corn flakes might have something to do with their different opinions?

Such is my opinion, anyway, sir. PJB holds rather a lot of different opinions that might hinder his promotion, or ensure his eventual demotion, in the ranks of the militant extremist GOP, but I conjecture that the worst obstacle was his "protectionism," his makin' it absolutely unmistakable that he does not believe in Absolute Free Trade and is not inclined to pretend otherwise even for his neo-Party's sake. Princess Piggy of WSJ (as she now is) may go it whole-hog (as she now does) for "creative destruction" and "outsourcing" and Globalismus and for all the cheapjack trashy pro-capitalisms of little Tommy Wobble (a.k.a Thomas L. Friedman, a higher employé of the New York Times Company), but PJB remembers Auld Lange Syne and where he came from still, and wants to shelter certain sheep from the stormy blasts of Universal Piggyism just because they used to be his flock too.

In the real world, an Elephant Second Class like PJB can extend no "protection" worth mentionin', but still, the mere thought of "protection" still ought to count for a little bit with those of us it still gets occasionally thunk about for Auld Lange Syne's sake. PJB can't materially assist us political non-perverts, but still, it is nice to know that PJB would "protect" us if he could, is it not, Mr. Bones? That sort of happy thought really counts, sir! Even when, nay, ESPECIALLY when! it seems most utterly toothless and ineffectual, like for example right now -- it at least shows that the catholic or "global" Apotheosis of WSJ Piggyism has not altogether extirpated all thoughts of a more humble and parochial happiness.

When the pendulum of human events eventually swings back the other way, Bones, I trust we shall come out counter-swinging from the first, well briefed in advance to point out exactly what "a more humble and parochial happiness" looks only too likely to degenerate into. But that will be then, and now is but only now -- as usual. At the moment, the ideologues al-Qá‘ida and of Rancho Crawford are locked in a zero-sum Tweedledumb-Tweedledee struggle for some boundless immensurate catholic-tawhídí mastery, and ""a more humble and parochial happiness" is not at all the rattle at stake. So "Hasten the Black Crow!" say I: let them all run home from the storm and learn what the word "protect" really means when somebody they really care about is maybe really at risk!

BGKB.