| The impression created this week was not one of a unified America going bravely into the future that Mr Obama talked about: it was one divided on rudimentary levels on class grounds, in which (as used to be the case in the old Labour party) the working man and woman are there to be revered and looked after and the rich (which most Democrats seem to agree is anyone on a salary of more than $250,000, or £135,000 a year) are there to pay for it. Mr Obama’s good ol’ boy running mate, Joe Biden, unwittingly emphasised these divisions in his speech accepting the vice-presidential nomination, and again in his impromptu appearance before the Obama speech. Mr Biden seems to be occupying the constitutional position in American politics that used to be filled in Britain by John Prescott: he is designed to be at the right hand of an elitist, slightly effete head of government and to be charged with mentioning, in every speech he makes, how wonderful blue-collar workers are. The inference that all other Americans are there to pay taxes for these people’s benefit is something the Republicans need to get after next week, and continually until the election. |
Master Mudd, who uses the nom de guerre "Simon Heffer," is far-fetched and torygraphic and Sassenach-parochial indeed, and accordingly difficult of access for those of us who have not a clue about who John Prescott has (had?) the dishonour to be. Still, Mudd does sort of gloss his hard words for us, does he not, Mr. Bones. At any rate, it is tolerably clear what axe he grinds against the Demosthenes of Delaware even without a footnote about Mr. (Lord?) Prescott.
Speaking of impressions, Master Mudd wishes to be mistaken for St. George Orwell, or perhaps, less improbably, he wishes to create an impression of being the great man’s ideological great-grandnephew. Unlike Senator Biden and Prescott Who, Master Mudd knows where the TRUE best interests of the toiling masses are located. [1] Furthermore, he, too, is credentialled to discuss the ins and outs of class warfare at levels far above the rudimentary.
Unlike Mr. Orwell, however, Master Mudd is distinctly IQ-challenged. How else account for his shocked complaint that the Obama-’n’-Biden Show did not resemble "a unified America going bravely into the future"? An explicitly partisan event somehow failed to create an impression of nonpartisan unity upon Master Mudd: Quelle surprise! And "What is the world coming to? I ask you!" Maybe this little laddie will amount to something when he grows up mentally, but I fear we shall have to wait a while. He has a long way to grow.
As a reflective medium for the recording of impressions, this exotic mud is not totally defective, to be sure. BHO and JRB reaffirmed the traditional values and interests of the American Democracy, which La Contradémocratie en Amérique began detestin’ and denouncin’ as imported-from-France "class warfare" even before the contra gentry first congealed in party-political opposition to General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. After eighteen decades of it, to speak of "an old song" seems pretty warrantable to me. Were it not for the wombschoolin’ and Niederdümmung that have prevailed in the holy Homeland since August 1968 or perhaps January 1969, we natives and locals might find the song so old as to be tedious. Fortunately, from the entertainment perspective, the empowered and emboldened contrademocrats have more or less had they way with their Big Management Party maxims "History is bunk" and "That was THEN, this is NOW!" The Big Party’s wombscholars and downdumbees have only a vague notion who Andrew Jackson was, and as to knowledge of his thoughts and actions -- surely you jest? Thus the BHO/JRB/LBJ/JFK/FDR fight song renews its youth. For those who never heard it sung till last Thursday evening, it might -- almost -- as well have been composed last Thursday morning as way back in the 1820's.
Master Mudd is not unfamiliar with the tune of "Yank Class Warfare," but he prefers a markedly contrademocratic verson of the lyrics: "All other Americans are there to pay taxes for these people’s benefit." THAT tripe and baloney does not date back to the 1820’s, obviously. How could it, when the Big Managers were not crushed by taxation until a far more recent date, more or less 8 December 1941? [2] Prior to that, they had lots of reasons to be contrademocratic, but immediate peril to their investment portfolios was not among them. (Who knows, perhaps if Airstrip One had been callously abandoned to its fate seventy years ago, Daddy Warbucks would still not have to place the Internal Revenue Service at the top of his enemies list? But God knows best about contrafactual history!)
In addition to being neoteric and right-wingnutty, Master Mudd’s version of the lyrics to the "Yank Class Warfare" melody seems to be inaccurate. Contrademocrats who actually have to live in the holy Homeland do not moan and whine about "pay taxes for these people’s benefit" in the sense according to which Mudd takes "these people." The main offense is that really obnoxious class of persons that the Bidens and Obamas and Clintons and Carters and Johnsons and Kennedies and Trumans and Roosevelts insist on handing their taxation loot over to once they have stolen it. The received hieroglyph or stereotype here used to be "welfare queens," and that soundbite should still convey the contrademocratic notion clearly enough, although perhaps Big Management’s hired spinsters have moved on to some different cliché. ("Union thugs" seems to me to be making a come-back lately; any fool can see why Big Managers would not care for them! ) If the Demoncratic uppers would be content with brandy and cigars -- and yachts and limousines and châteaus at Kennebunkport ME and ranches at Crawford TX and ‘educations’ at Yale and . . . -- strictly for themselves alone, vastly less tax loot would be required. [3]
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[1] For Yank toiling masses in particular, the best interests are located in Minneapolis-St. Paul startin’ Monday, don’t you know? Literaliter, in the Party of Grant and Hoover and Atwater.
I hope Master Mudd will be able attend the Grant Party’s big quadrennial human event also and get himself an additional impression created when the other boot drops. I shouldn’t dream of whining about torygraphic attitudes or Airstrip One ignorances, if Master Mudd hates Yank donkeys, why, he hates us, and that is that. He should certainly be encouraged to explain why, though, since we might possibly learn something from even such a señorito as this one.
The present specimen of Muddly politics criticism should have been pruned by some kind friend less unfamiliar with the colourful folkways of the holy Homeland, because to blame donkeys in particular for things that all Americans do when in convention assembled is of no value as instruction or reproof. Making mistakes of that nature merely encourages less thoughtful donkeys to write Master Mudd off as a Brit ignoramus whose impressions could never be of any importance. Under that rubric, his editor ought to have included everything Mudd scribbled in the vein of
| I have wondered whether, instead of watching a crucial meeting of the main opposition party of the world’s leading power, I had wandered in on a soap opera, a poor Hollywood film, or a dire reality TV show. |
To abuse my poor long-suffering Uncle Sam as proprietor of the United States of Bad Taste is an admissible parlour game too, naturally, and one with a long and venerable history. But it is not the same parlour game as Bash-the-Demoncrats. When Master Mudd confuses the two recreations, he is open to the objection once made to M. Prokofiev that "he steps on the throat of his own song." He also violates Herr von Kirkegaard’s canon about Purity of Heart™.
Half or more than half of this nastygram to B. Hussein Obáma and J. Robinette Biden and to us humble dupes and marks thereof establishes only that Master Mudd does not much enthuse for the Heimatland Gottes or for Modern Times. One has no problem with that, but one detects no salience in it either. Considered as political journalism reported from an undisguisedly partisan event, Expugnetur! is the chief impression it creates on me.
[2] Talk about "a day that will live in infamy!"
[3] I am not discussing how the holy Homeland actually works, only how it is alleged to work in partisan agitprop.
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