Kristol Minor Plays Campaign Manager

How are hundred-gated communities [1] like Señorito World and Neocriteria and Hyperzion connected with less ætherial entities such as "Wall Street" and "Main Street" and "the United States of America"? Bad times for the latter may accidentally cast some light on these dark corners of neotericism and self-preference. Whether they like it or not, the señoritos and signorini and Jungherren are forcibly reminded that buildin’ gates and walls and ‘fences’ -- even whole strategic defense systems, psychic and geistlich Bar Maginot Lines -- around themselves can never assure them of total independence and serenity. Somebody has to bring in their food and take away their excreme sewage. If the señoritos were ever to start doin’ plebeian stuff like that for themselves, they would soon stop bein’ señoritoly and turn into plebes themselves. [2]

The Kristol Minor specimen is no doubt perfectly safe itself. The guru of Rio Limbaugh assures us that the New York Times Company is going to collapse any day now -- "Fly at once. All is discovered!" -- but when it does, Master Billy will still have Rupert Baron Murdoch to pay its bills, so that’s all right. Indeed, if the 318th Endkrise der Spätkapitalismus is not swiftly allayed, Master Billy may even get a raise and a staff increase and some insider tips on -- whawuzzit? -- on "troubled assets" investment capers. [3]

Itself secure and well standardised for, the señorito offers its advice about less important problems, notably how to make quite sure that the Commanderissimo of AEI and GOP and EiB, as he already is, gets safely installed as Holy Homeland Commander-in-Chief (HHCC):

John McCain is on course to lose the presidential election to Barack Obama. Can he turn it around, and surge to victory? He has a chance. But only if he overrules those of his aides who are trapped by conventional wisdom, huddled in a defensive crouch and overcome by ideological timidity.

Alternatively, somethin’ may turn up just by accident . . . .

But seriously: L'audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace! (Seriously?)

One sees at a glance that J. Sidney McCain has a timidity problem nowadays, but (1) is it ‘ideological’? (2) Is it anythin’ that does not afflict B. Hussein Obáma as well? Aunt Nitsy's Crisis-of-Mammon scribbler describes this Monday morning’s correlation of farces rather well:

BOTH major presidential candidates, Senator John McCain of Arizona, the Republican nominee, and Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate, GAVE GUARDED ENDORSEMENTS of the bailout plan. Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama had dipped into the negotiations during a contentious White House meeting on Thursday. (...) The architects of the plan said they realized they were calling on Congress to cast a tough vote since lawmakers might not get credit for averting a financial crisis since some constituents will not believe one was looming. “Avoiding a catastrophe won’t be recognized,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd ... “This economy is not going to have a blossoming on Wednesday.” But he and others said the SUPPORT FROM THE TWO presidential contenders, Senators McCain and Obama, should provide some comfort to nervous lawmakers.

The Fabulous Flyboy and the Senatorino from Chicagoland are had to distinguish in that very recent snapshot, and it would not be utterly off the wall to speak of their "timidity." How on Gore’s green earth should THEY know whether they are for a thing or against it before they see whether it works?

This is definitely not l’audace. It ain’t even ‘leadership’. Where, however, does the señorito from Murdochville suppose that ideology comes in? If one or both had professed himself a born-again Pragmatist, he could maintain that his timidity is faith-based and therefore protected by Amendment I. But that cannot be what Master Billy means.

Not to keep up the intolerable suspense:

McCain’s impetuous decision to return to Washington was right. The agreement announced early Sunday morning is better than Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s original proposal, and better than the deal the Democrats claimed was close on Thursday. Assuming the legislation passes soon, and assuming it reassures financial markets, McCain will be able to take some credit.

The specimen has no gift for campaign management, obviously. It does not notice that the Obamanation of Desolation can (or could) "take some credit" too. It can not even pick up its own credit-grabbin’ shtyk by the right end. As the NYTC hireling points out, there is a serious question about whether Televisionland and the electorate will be disposed to grant credit to anybody at all for rescuing them from what amounts, from their ignorant lay sheep point of view, to an invisible dragon.

Plus of course credit-grabbin’ has nothing to do with ‘ideological’.

It turns out that Master Billy knows what it wants, but what it wants is not immediately campaign-related:

But the goal shouldn’t be to return to “a normal campaign.” For these aren’t normal times. We face a real financial crisis. Usually the candidate of the incumbent’s party minimizes the severity of the nation’s problems. McCain should break the mold and acknowledge, even emphasize the crisis. He can explain that dealing with it requires candor and leadership of the sort he’s shown in his career. McCain can tell voters we’re almost certainly in a recession, and things will likely get worse before they get better.

Ensconced inside its hundred self-gatings, Señorito World can become a little out of touch at times. Middle-class proles may not be able to recite correctly on the Leostraussian reality of the financial crisis, but when it comes to knowing what recessio means, they are far ahead of their wannabe preceptor here.

Would it benefit J. Sidney to hype the now recession rather than minimise it? Eh bien, au moins, il serait différent! One could maintain that the strategy worked for FDR against Dr. Hoover, though to cling to the analogy requires overlooking that thirty-seven (37) months elapsed between the Wall Street crash and the next choice of POTUS -- a long stretch of martyrdom for Main Street. J. Sidney has more like thirty-seven days, probably not enough time for the Dragon of Doom to become visible to many swing voters.

Naturally it would help the J-Sidneyan cause if nobody remembers that Americans have just endured ninety-two (92) months of executive incumbency starrin’ the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater and Bush and McCain. The Fabulous Flyboy himself attaches little or no importance to his formal Big Management credentials; what does one require a Straight Talk Express™ for, after all, if not in order to Rise Above Party™? And the present specimen of weekly standardisation certainly does not itself give a hoot about militant extremist Republicanism as such. It and its candidate are probably quite right about which way American politics is headed -- towards ‘ideology’ and away from mere contemptible old-fashioned Party -- but they should probably take Mr. Mark Penn’s unsolicited advice to Senatorino Obama and "Save it for 2050!" Kristol and Kristol’s Flyboy are too far ahead of the curve of national decline mentally to manipulate current human events to their own ends most efficaciously.

Meanwhile,

McCain can note that the financial crisis isn’t going to be solved by any one piece of legislation. There are serious economists, for example, who think we could be on the verge of a huge bank run. Congress may have to act to authorize the F.D.I.C. to provide far greater deposit insurance, and the secretary of the Treasury to protect money market funds. McCain can call for Congress to stand ready to pass such legislation. He can say more generally that in the tough times ahead, we’ll need a tough president willing to make tough decisions.

So the specimen really must think it feasible to terrorize Televisionland and the electorate into stampedin’ to starboard in a mere thirty-four (34) days. That proposition is so improbable that one is not surprised to find that even John Sidney McCain does not believe it.

If, by some fluke of his mugwump dumbness, JSM could be persuaded of the feasibility of the Kristol Kaper, he would be placed in a lovely position to show off his dumb mugwumpery, for it is thouroughly inconceivable that Cap’n M’Cain would ever steer the course called for by Ensign Billy of Murdochville. SCARE the good folks into electin’ him? Of course not!

I daresay J. Sidney would not mind engagin’ Master Billy in a contest to see who can wedge the word ‘tough’ into a single sentence most often. Flyboy ideas of toughness are not the same as señoritoly ideas, however, so as soon as they move beyond verbiage, the two of ’em would be bound to start divergin’. "To provide far greater deposit insurance" seems a strange kind of toughness for any wingnut or cowpoker whatsoever to advocate, though naturally JSM would do it in a flash if necessary, exactly as the fiend BHO would. Why, even the former Neohampshire believes in "Live free or pay for insurance!" nowadays. Or so I am told.

The specimen further thinks its Commanderissimo ought (A) "to liberate his running mate" and (B) to out the Obamanation of Desolation as a flamin’ l*b*r*l. Unlike the Chicken Little Plan, these are thoroughly conventional forms of skullduggery that lots of people at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh have thought of for themselves already without benefit of weekly standardisations. Comin’ from Neocomrade William Irvingovitch Kristol, they are of interest only as evidence about the señoritoly mentality.

Governess S. L. Heath-Putin (sp?) of Alaska is to be deployed as an offensive weapon:

In the debate, Palin has to dispatch quickly any queries about herself, and confidently assert that of course she’s qualified to be vice president. She should spend her time making the case for McCain and, MORE IMPORTANT, THE CASE AGAINST OBAMA. As one shrewd McCain supporter told me, “Every minute she spends not telling the American people something that makes them less well disposed to Obama is a minute wasted.” The core case against Obama is pretty simple: he’s too liberal.

I suspect it seems a pity to Señorito Kristol that the little lady cannot be a literal kamikaze and disappear herself as soon as she has injected somethin’ suitably toxic into the veins of B. Hussein. On the other hand, it is a genuine klutz about the practical politics of the holy Homeland, so it may fantasise that after the Fabulous Flyboy has been respectfully squirreled away in his post-apoplexy nursin’ home -- House Number Eight and Final! -- Baron Murdoch and Master Billy will be able to weekly-standardise the Heath-Putin administration ever after. (Do they remember Mr. John Tyler of Virginia and Mr. Henry Clay of Kentucky? Probably not.)

Silly stuff either way. More important is THE core CASE AGAINST OBAMA. More important, but alas! never actually set out. For what kind of a ‘core’ does the following baloney amount to?

On Saturday, Obama criticized McCain for never using in the debate Friday night the words “middle class.” The Obama campaign even released an advertisement trumpeting McCain’s omission. The McCain campaign might consider responding by calling attention to Chapter 14 of Obama’s eloquent memoir, Dreams From My Father. There Obama quotes from the brochure of Reverend Wright’s church — a passage entitled “A Disavowal of the Pursuit of Middleclassness.” So when Biden goes on about the middle class on Thursday, Palin might ask Biden when Obama flip-flopped on Middleclassness.

The Sewer-of-Romulus interpretation of that passage is probably correct: the neocomrade Governess is to remind everybody of the Rev. Mr. Wright, not in genuine connection with ‘middleclassness’ but in order to get "God damn America!" and the colour black into the record without ever expressly mentionin’ either. S. L. Heath-Putin could think of that for herself, and quite probably has. In conjunction with W. I. Kristol, the only remark required is literary rather than political. Observe how the señorito indirectly suggests the use of indirect suggestion. ‘Self-referentiality’ they call it in the Eng. Lit. Dept.

A toney Republic-of-Plato interpretation will probably interest only close students of Cloudcuckooland and the Muses and Mr. Bones and me, but here goes: it sounds as if Señorito W. Kristol has been conferrin’ with his NYTC colleague Señorito D. Brooks. Little Davey is an amateur sociologue as well as a pro agitprop artist for Boy and Party and Ideology; it specialises, not in ‘middleclassness’ exactly, but in Outer Suburbia, which is close enough for governance purposes. How, then, is Outer Suburbia to be persuaded to despise and reject B. Hussein Obáma?

An interesting question, and not an easy one. Master Billy itself does not care to be rude to the Senatorino to his face, it even tosses a meanin’less little verbal bouquet his way, "ELOQUENT memoir." I think it is actually a little afraid of the man, although the subjectivity of señoritos is always questionable and almost always unimportant. Outer Suburbia is also a little afraid of BHO, partly in the gutter-of-Romulus way, but also partly in a quite different way, a way that might be expressed as "After all, he was editor of the Harvard Law Review! Can it be that behind that polite smile he thinks I am revealing myself as a nincompoop with every word I say to him?"

Unseñoritoly neocomrades make a hash of this matter by draggin’ in the word ‘elitist’ every chance they get. To label BHO an elitist allows ’em to win the game for Rio Limbaugh High without playin’ it: ex definitione Citizen Hussein is only pretending to be better and brighter than most folks. But what if he really were better and brighter?

Outer Suburbia worries about that a little, I think, and quite legitimately. Equally legitimately, neocomrade señoritos D. Brooks and W. Kristol huddle to plan how to turn vague worries about possible superiority into firm rejection of snotty elitism. So far, so good -- but then they drag Governess Heath-Putin in, and lose me. Ninety-nine percent of holy Homelanders will be quite clear that she is not superior to anybody worth mentioning -- but how does that help the neocomrades’ Commanderissimo and the Konservative Kause?

To conclude on a trivial note, Master Billy has a serious tin ear problem. If Sarah Louise was actually to ask "So when did Senator Obama flip-flop on Middleclassness?" in so many words, first of all, how would she get the capital letter across? Secondly, would there be ten persons on the planet who didn't realize that SLH-P was recitin’ somebody else’s words? Nobody talks about ‘middleclassness’ until she has been away from Wasilla for a long, long spell. Why, Señorito Kristol might as usefully propose that she defend Blessèd Capitalism under its own name!

Happy days.

___
[1] To speak of "fifty-two-gated communities" and not just sound foolish is probably possible in philosophical languages like Heidegger German or Attic Greek. In our own holy-homelandish palaver, forget it! Perhaps we can do without it in any case, since in fact the Weekly Standardisers erect fifty-two new gates annually without necessarily tearin’ any of last year’s crop down. Call ’em ‘polypylic’ loosely, then, and move on!


[2] Rather a Marxoid claim? Perhaps, but something similar is alleged to occur in Ibn Khaldún, who can sneak in through their gates by way of neocomrades L. Strauss and M. Mahdí.

Anyway, abusin’ other people’s claims as Marxist, accurately or not, reveals that one would prefer that the claims not be recognised. On the praxis front there is no doubt at all: up-market junior neocomrades have not the faintest wish to be proles themselves personally, and when they get stuck in a tight corner and obviously have to say somethin’ nice about proles, the insincerity of their niceness shrieks to Father Zeus on Olympus.


[3] Master Billy might as well ask for its emergency compensation enhancement at once, since the tip-off shtik is already in place and functional:

I've received phone calls in the last hour ... The huge European bank Fortis is apparently about to fail ... Congress should pass by Monday simple legislation doing two things: (1) ... (2) ....

To be sure, Baron Murdoch’s fingerprints and corporate DNA are not unmistakably present on that evidence. Viewing the holy Homeland from across the North Atlantic, any ignorant but well-intentioned Old Euro neorightists might fancy that Kristol Minor can dictate to Congress and set out to inspire it to do just that. (I omit the sordid details, but it does rather look as if the specimen is worried about its own "principal in money market funds." But God knows best.)

Not Asthma But Asmea

Western Sieve has so many holes in it that I should not care to undertake to defend it, yet one may shed a tear when it gets betrayed into the paws of Higher Wingnuts:

ASMEA is located squarely within the Western intellectual tradition. Bernard Lewis, chairman of the organization's academic council and, with Fouad Ajami, one of its co-founders, emphasized this connection in his keynote address to the inaugural conference in April. Drawing upon the insights of one of eighteenth-century England's finest writers, Samuel Johnson, he said: "I wish to situate our profession, the academic study of the Middle East, in a historical context. And I would like to begin with a quotation from the famous Dr. Johnson, from one of his conversations recorded by Boswell. He says, "A generous and elevated mind is distinguished by nothing more certainly than an eminent degree of curiosity. Nor is that curiosity ever more agreeably or usefully employed than in examining the laws and customs of foreign nations." A very interesting statement, I feel, and as I shall try to demonstrate, one uniquely Western, uniquely distinctive of this Western Civilization of which we are the heirs at the present time. And I use the word "we" in the widest sense. The members of ASMEA share Dr. Johnson's "eminent degree of curiosity" and Bernard Lewis's expansive definition of an academic community, especially in relation to the study of the Middle East and Africa. Due to their efforts, these two fields are being reformed and renewed. A new intellectual foundation is being constructed, not on the shifting sands of political correctness, but on the bedrock of free scholarly inquiry.

"Free scholarly inquiry" is good, in light of the large element of jihád careerism to be detected amongst Big Party birdmen junior to Herr von Lewis and M. d' ‘Ajamí. On the other hand, I daresay they could play ‘their’ Sam again on that point also, "There are few ways in which a man can be more innocently employed than in getting money."

Mustering up our own preëminently subeminent stock of curiosity, Mr. Bones, do thee suppose that Neorabbi Bernie and The Self-Hatin’ Arab™ and the rest Álbú Asmea would be interested in explaining ‘our’ uniquely distinctive examination of natives and locals and wops and WOG's and whatnot might have had something to do with a wish to sell trinkets profitably and thereby reward ‘our’ shareholders for their confidence in ‘us’?

For that matter, O Bones, do thee suppose something of that sort might be part of the historical truth of the matter?

Now, now, sir, "Sounds like Marx to me" is no adequate response! Anyway, I am more likely to be swiping if from William Apple Pie Appleman Williams than from some creepy Mitteleuropa type.

Well, yes, of course thee are quite right and we will talk about it some other time. Whatever ‘their’ Sam may have been commending in curiosity cannot have been its tendency to make one's discourse wander all over the map at random. Where was I?

Oh, yes, OK: "free scholarly inquiry" is an expression not quite suitable to the birdmen of ASMEA even overlooking the fact that most of these neosophists are happy to take money for their wares. I daresay their narcissism and omphaloscopy and Big Party spirit are well up to the challenge of fancyin’ themselves free of 11 September 2001 and all that. As independent of Mars and Bellona as they fail to are of Lord Mammon. Unfortunately for Wingnut City and all its Tanks of Thought, to fancy a thing does not cause the thing to be. Not usually or often.

There would be a Denkpanzer angle to WC's latest Tank of Thought even if Bernie and Fooey and the gang never discussed any human event more recent than 1 Rajab 505. [1] They propose no such self-limitation, as their draggin’ in Africa makes plain. The Middle East is going to remain lost to Western Sieve for the foreseeable future, no matter how braniac and forceful Dr. Gen. Petrolæus of Princeton and West Point may prove himself. In Africa, however, there would still remain an uncharred portion of the brand, provided it can be snatched from the burnin’ in the next century or so.

Yet one mustn’t be fussy: even venal and tendentious scholarly inquiry can come up with interesting trivia from time to time. Time will tell. God knows best.

Meanwhile, Neorabbi Bernie is to be examined as an object of (faint) curiosity about ‘us’ rather than as a practicin’ Orientaliser or utility-grade neosophist. Thee seeth, O Bones, how Bernie plays a game indistinguishable from that of the guru of Rio Limbaugh except that he selects toney middle-brow evidence like Dr. Johnson rather than rootin’ around lower down in the sewer of Romulus. The chief end of "free scholary inquiry" turns out to be trashy self-flattery: the wunnerfulness of Wunnerful US to consist in possession of "a generous and elevated mind"! Nobody amongst the ragin’ heathen would be interested in an up-market product like that, of course. Quelle idée! Curiosity is strictly a Sinn Féin shebang, like ‘we’ say in Neo-Psemitic, curiosity is a megillah for ourselves alone: "uniquely Western, uniquely distinctive of this Western Civilization of which we are the heirs at the present time."

Well, at least the neorabbi has the residual decency to stick in ‘heirs’ and not pretend that Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh and AEI-GOP-DoD have done Western Sieve all of and by and for themselves.

Back before communication with the Old Europe of Century XII/XVIII was broken off and ‘their’ Sam became radically unintelligible to them, it was understood that generosity and elevation of the sort commended consisted above all in the uselessness of curiosities:

Someone who had begin to read geometry with Euclid, when he had learned the first proposition, asked him "What shall I get by learning these things?" Euclid called his slave and said "Give this person a penny, since he must make a profit out of what he learns."

Bernie and Fooey and the junior birdmen of ASMEA do not receive on that wavelength any longer, and perhaps as empirical individuals they never did. Perhaps it was a pretty silly wavelength all along, perhaps the real point of it was snobbery or worse, to establish the upperness of Establishment Uppers: "We are so rich and powerful and secure that we do not need to care whether things are useful to us or not." Bernie and Fooey and the birdmen are chip-on-the-shoulder insecure, of course. they cannot walk three blocks in an inhabited district nowadays and not run into an "existential threat" of some sort.

This is not their fault, naturally: Society has made them -- Society has made ‘us’ -- what they are. Oh, well, de nobis narrátur fabula!, the Original Sin rate remains steady at 100.0% and is not likely to come down much any time soon. Still, self-careerists who choose the tertiary education racket really ought to know better than to set up as outstandin’ly distinguished by Liberality and Curiosity. If Bernie and Fooey and their junior birdmen do not actually grasp what such substantives used to mean when it made good Sense to capitalise them, they ought at least to be aware that there was such a time. And that that time has now expired, entailing the minor consequence for themselves personally that they may easily get out of Boswell's Johnson what was never put into it.

Purveyors of Western Sieve would, in general, do better to declare themselves lovers of Tradition without claimin’ to be accurate annalists or wie-es-eigentlich-geschehen historians. It is not really a serious objection to Tradition that it was manufactured from whole cloth a week ago last Wednesday, whereas the same cheerful nonchalance counts as a technical foul when committed by dry-as-dust factmongers.


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[1] The former 3 January 1112 ABCE. Al Ghastly died at Tús the month before,

an occasion revered by a certain class of Orientaliser as the end of all -- well, of all "free scholarly inquiry," more or less, is what it comes to -- in Saracen Sieve. (Except that even the wingnuttiest of ’em always admit Ibn Khaldún to their covens and conventicles and seminar rooms, despite arriving WAY too late. No good rule without a probative exception.)

"Such a big appetite, such bad teeth!"

Today being the tenth day of the Nine Days’ Wonder, neocomrade J. Jacoby has finally obtained a copy of his crew’s talkin’ points, which he adorns with a few sprigs of ideoparsley peculiar to himself, mainly vituperation of Congressman Frank, and publishes for the edification of a caravan that has already moved on. The main body of bandits broke camp at 12:30 this morning, Beltway City time. Quoth the ‘Globe-Democrat’:

Congressional negotiators expect to announce a historic agreement today for a massive $700 billion bailout plan that lawmakers and the White House hope will calm jittery financial markets and ease the national credit crisis. After a grueling series of talks that went past midnight, "we're at a point where I think we can say something positive to the American people," said Senator Chris Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat and chairman of the Banking Committee. "This is an important moment."

Rip Van Jacoby just got out of bed, though, and he is in no mood for anythin’ positive at this point in his spin cycle. If he stays a constant distance behind the rest of US, he ought to mellow on or about a week from Wednesday, lemme see, 7 Shawwál 1429, the former 8 October 2008. Though naturally he need not mellow at all, he will remain forever free to align himself with his neocomrade R. C. Shelby, Solon of Alamaba:

Some lawmakers have made clear that they will not vote for the bailout plan under virtually any terms. “I didn’t want to be in the negotiations because I object to the basic principles of this,” said Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee, who would normally be his party’s point man. Pressed about his role, Mr. Shelby replied, “My position is ‘No.’ ”

That Dixielander is no J. Sidney McCain, he does fortify himself in Castle Negative merely to establish to himself how remarkably wunnerful "Senator Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Republican on the banking committee," happens to be. Not bein’ a two-hundred-proof narcissist like some folks I could name, neocomrade R. C. Shelby positions himself to pander to a constituency as well as to profile his self-courage. If neocomrade J. Jacoby of the Boston Globe-Democrat does not belong to the Shelbyan constituency, and lap up all Col. Shelby's basic principles, and admire the senior Republican on the bankin’ committee as the very model of a modern exemplum virtutis, well, who will belong and lap and admire? I ask you!

"The good ol’ boys over to the Court House," thee replieth, Mr. Bones? Perhaps they will, but then again, perhaps they won’t. I think gratification of the Colonel’s campaign contributors would be a better bet than yours is, though even that bet is not without risk. What bet isn’t, nowadays? O tempora, O mores! "None of this would have happened if Alan Greenspan were still alive."

I digress. It is Third Lieutenant Jacoby’s basic principles that belong to our announced topic, not Colonel Shelby’s or General Greenspan’s or even Miss Rand’s of Petrograd. Unfortunately the fishwrap neocomrade does not honour us with an exposition of his basic principles this mornin’, except insofar as inferences may be drawn from the axiom that Mr. Barney Frank is always wrong and fiendish. Barney's stuff goes like this, as per the militant extremist talkin’ points:

The roots of this crisis go back to the Carter administration. That was when government officials, egged on by left-wing activists, began accusing mortgage lenders of racism and "redlining" because urban blacks were being denied mortgages at a higher rate than suburban whites. The pressure to make more loans to minorities (read: to borrowers with weak credit histories) became relentless. Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, empowering regulators to punish banks that failed to "meet the credit needs" of "low-income, minority, and distressed neighborhoods." Lenders responded by loosening their underwriting standards and making increasingly shoddy loans. The two government-chartered mortgage finance firms, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, encouraged this "subprime" lending by authorizing ever more "flexible" criteria by which high-risk borrowers could be qualified for home loans, and then buying up the questionable mortgages that ensued. All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices. A manual issued by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston advised mortgage lenders to disregard financial common sense. "Lack of credit history should not be seen as a negative factor," the Fed's guidelines instructed. Lenders were directed to accept welfare payments and unemployment benefits as "valid income sources" to qualify for a mortgage. Failure to comply could mean a lawsuit. As long as housing prices kept rising, the illusion that all this was good public policy could be sustained.

It seems to me, O Bones, that the merits of that sort of ideoproduct depend heavily on how it is datestamped. Neocomrades who could crank it out within a few hours after Hindenburg and Ludendorff (and Barney and Dubya) made clear their intention to stage a socialist coup d'état against the Heimatland Gottes may be awarded a significant number of points for vigilance and promptness, if not, perhaps, for substantive politics and economics and law and religionism. Neocomrades who rehash the same material ten days later, however -- well, perhaps we may apply nil nisi bonum to the brain-dead white male community and pass on.

I draw thee’s attention, however, to one feature that may even be specifically Jeffy-Jacobean. Who’d ’a’ thunk (in advance) that a Big Management Party neocomrade might define the term ‘minorities’ as "borrowers with weak credit histories"? Si non è vero -- and it ain’t -- è ben trovato! The Political Capitalism subfaction of the militant extremist GOP ought to find that ploy comin’ in very handy, it seems to me, sir, if only they have brains enough to see how useful it is. Neocomrade J. Jacoby himself does not seem to, so perhaps it was not invented in the bowels of the Globe-Democrat after all. Perhaps it was neocomrade S. L. Heath-Putin (sp?), the Governess of Alaska, who thought of it first -- if not Her Excellency literally and individually, then somebody much like her sociologically and political-pathologically. Some neocomrade from the Political Capitalism [PC] subfaction of the Party of Grant and Hoover who puts Political Capitalism first, which neocomrade J. Jacoby plainly does not.

The fishwrap artist himself belongs, of course, to the Political Christojudæan [PC-j] subfaction of extremist Party militancy. He does not, in ordinary times, worry much about borrowers and credit histories and mortgages, he is too busy assistin’ at the solemn rituals of the Fœtus Cult and makin’ rude remarks about the pretended "affirmative action." [1] The polemical definition of ‘minorities’ that strikes thee and me as worth of Rabbi Ben Trovato himself is not likely to seem very strikin’ to a PC-j neocomrade like Jacoby.

Tantamne rem tam negligenter? Not if I can help it, Mr. Bones! The ineffable beauty of definin’ minorities as "borrowers with weak credit histories" is simple enough: in effect IT LETS BUCKS VOTE. That is to say, it amounts to part, at least, of the extremist GOP's Holy Grail, that elusive snipe that the core of the Big Management Party -- the economic conspiracy of OnePercenters -- have been huntin’ for ever since March 1869 at latest.

Now the problem arises at once that the peripheral hangers-on amongst the Elephant People have no special interest in lettin’ bucks vote in either sense of the word ‘interest’: (1) they do not think about stuff like that much, and (2) there is nothin’ much in it for themselves. Indeed, if the definition were pressed just a little, the peripherals could be cast into a condition of hopeless dhimmitudo forever by announcin’ that possession of a STRONG credit history is neither less nor more nor other than bein’ an economic OnePercenter. Even the Stupid Party will, I presume, not actually go that far in its own characteristic direction, when to do so would mean there will soon be no Stupid Party left. In fact the peripherals would not allow themselves to be dhimmifactured, they would just walk away, leavin’ the high-and-dry OnePercenters in more or less the position of Federalists after the Hartford Convention. As Col. Shelby of Dixie might phrase it, America's position on the Federalist position circa 1820 was ‘No’.

Like any powerful drug, "minorities are folks with weak credit histories" must be used accordin’ to the instructions on the label. An overdose could easily be fatal. But abusus non tollit usum, a moderate dose of the exact same Peruna could work wonders for the Party of Grant and Hoover and Goldwater and Atwater.

And the Big Management Party patient does seem in need of a pick-me-up at the moment. Col. Shelby’s bad (?) attitude is an indicator of the problems of militant extremism: has he entrenched himself in Castle Negative strictly because the Hindenburg-Ludendorff-Dodd-Frank-Bush-McCain-Obama bailout scheme is in contravention of the basic principles of Political Capitalism and/or injurious to Little Business? I think not. I fear the Colonel shows definite signs of a populistical taint, presumably contracted by way of angry telephone calls and e-mails from constituents who do not give a hoot about the theory of PC but would be happy enough to lynch an i-banker if they could lay their hands on one.

Third Lieutenant Jacoby would much prefer the peasantry clamoured to stick their pitchforks in the Honourable Barney Frank. How his sayin’ so in the Boston Globe-Democrat is supposed to make it happen, however, is more than I can guess. But possibly the neocomrade just wants to put on the record for Princess Posterity how very pitchfork-worthy the fat wiseass is? God knows best.

___
[1] How the neocomrade jumped his rails is plain from his own agitprop as already cited, "All this was justified as a means of increasing homeownership among minorities and the poor. Affirmative-action policies trumped sound business practices." J. Jacoby's independent interest in sound business practices is utterly eclipsed by his antecedent detestation of AA on other grounds, kulturkämpfisch and PC-j grounds. If AA could be abolished only by sackin’ Little Business and sowin’ the ground with salt afterwards, neocomrade Jacoby might hesitate a few seconds, maybe as many as fifteen, but the idea that he would endure the abomination to maintain good relations with the PC subfaction of his Party is visionary. Visionary in the sense of "ridiculously incredible."

Congressman Frank is another lesser point of derailment, being insufferable to PC-j subfactional fanatics for reasons too familiar to rehearse and also "House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat and a key negotiator," credentials guaranteed to drive the PC subfactional fanatics up the wall as well. The overlap is as logically accidental as an overlap could be, and neocomrade J. Jacoby could have scribbled against the Hindenburg-Ludendorff economic power grab without mentionin’ poor Barney’s name. But that would be a very artificial exercise in self-restraint, especially for a PC-j hormone-baser like neocomrade J. Jacoby of the Boston Globe-Democrat. What would be the point of the señorito havin’ an op-ed playpen all his own and then refusin’ to have any fun in it?

Blimp on Greed

Rear-Colonel V. D. H. Blimp ought, in principle, to be able to make a killin’ in the momentary state of the notion market. Lord Mammon’s extremity has got to be a major opportunity for Lord Mars and Lady Bellona, and thus for Victor Dave.

Unfortunately Blimp has been consortin’ with Third Estate extremists at the American Ideological Enterprise. As we have previously noted in conjunction with his and others’ bilge and Party cries, AEI rots the brain. Miss Opportunity comes knocking at the Blimp’s barracks door; how does it rise to the occasion? Like this:

No one dares to ask what really drove the wheeler-dealer portfolio managers. Who re-elected these shady politicians of both parties? Who fostered the cash-in culture in which both Wall Street profit mongering and Washington lobbying are nourished and thrive? We citizens did -- red-state conservatives and blue-state liberals, Republicans and Democrats, alike. We may be victims of Wall Street greed -- but not quite innocent victims.

Tired bloody stuff, Wingnut City bilge mixed with Geritol! And nothing is more tiresome about it than that the customer is so plainly expected to mutter to herself, "Ah, not quite true, for the Blimp itself dares to ask!"

So the Blimp does. Why, the Blimp even dares to answer that ‘we’ are responsible for ‘our’ own misfortunes! (Amazing that nobody ever thought of that ploy before, innit? Three thosand years of Western Sieve and nobody ever . . . !)

Before consigning this specimen to the Museum of Obsolete Claptrap, however, we might bring it to the attention of the philological arm. Which ‘we’ is it that VDHB is deployin’ here: inclusive, exclusive, or Pharasaical? Does ‘we’ mean "Blimp and its customers" or "Blimp and somebody other than its customers" or "neither Blimp nor its customers"? When sectarian AEIdeologues start preachin’ to the choir, whitewashed sepulchres are usually not far off. But of course it is by no means imposible that Blimp’s personal portfolio is sufferin’ too.

Another way of jazzing up this neobanality would be to fancy the Blimp addressin’ its fellow Americans in the confessional first person singular: "Yes, alas, it is true! I drove the wheeler-dealer portfolio managers. I have re-elected shady politicians [?of both parties?]. Nobody on Gore’s green earth fostered the cash-in culture more than I did. Get out the handcuffs, please, officer: I have come to turn myself in."

That is pretty silly, though the generic silliness of it does indicate why Blimp and its ideobuddies are so fond of the first person plural Pharasaical. As regards the individual specimen, the silliness is even sillier. Everybody knows that little Victor Davey belongs to Miss Bellona and Lord Mars: for a geistliche Militärist to pretend to be Babbit of Zenith is as if George XLIII Bush set up as Einstein or Clausewitz or Julia Child, so implausible as to be a joke, to be ‘camp’.

It is also rather steep for a reactionary ideologue with whose eccentric shade of reaction about one American in 132,409 is genuinely in sympathy to avail itself of that special ‘we’ that includes neither speakers nor auditors. VDHB has much less use for any sort of ‘we’ than most folks -- except the kaiserlich-und-königlich brand, naturally. [1]

The Blimp gradually -- majestically! -- swells to a climax of preowned bloviation:

In a larger sense, this zeal for quick profits and easy money reflected an oblivious too-good-to-be-true culture in which we drove larger cars but demanded more oil drilling from everyone except ourselves. We expected both expanded government entitlements and lower taxes.

The AEI brain rot problem is becoming serious, I fear. The gasbag inspiration process could have been presented far more impressively if VDHB had chosen to dilate upon the beauties of Mars and Bellona that Americans have deprived themselves of rather than reheat the same old mess of Lord Mammon’s pottage for the twenty thousandth time. The Blimp’s performance leaves one waiting for the other shoe (or jackboot) to drop, but it never does. What can you call it but "brain rot" when a not unclever neosophist refuses to do what he is good at -- and has no competition in worthy of mention -- and insists on doin’ stuff that any idiot niece of a Big Manager pol could do as well?

Indeed, Governess Putin (sp?) of Alaska, virtual niece to Commanderissimo McCain, could probably crank out this baloney even better than Blimp can. If Mizz Sarah ever started usin’ the word ‘we’ like that, few customers would have any difficulty imagining it to comprehend the oratrix herself. [2] When it comes from Victor Dave, though, anybody who happens to have a little background information and a little dead language cannot avoid recalling the expression asinus ad lyram.

___
[1] Possibly there is a special violence-professional ‘we’ that is not identical with the K-und-K pronoun? Militarists, spiritual and otherwise, invariably emerge from the ranks of the officer classes. Victor Davey is no exception to that generality. So when a Rear-Colonel spouts off, one really ought to mentally supply a whole rear-regiment to go along with the parade. When ‘one’ happens to be oneself the Rear-Colonel prancin’ on the white horse in the vanguard, what could be more natural than to lapse into a ‘we’ and ‘us’ and ‘ours’ that pedantic grammarians may disrelish?

Even less senior officers are entitled to this We Militant. Take for example, 2LT Burke with his famous "little platoon": usually I rhetoricise him a chickenhawk and speak of "The Friends of Eddie Burke," modo Higginsiense, yet the military figure was Eddie’s own, after all. Accordingly, the Demosthenes of his age is fully entitled to the same pronominal allowances as authorised for Victor Davis Hanson Blimp.


[2] Governess Putin runs with a different ideopack, to be sure, namely the "Greed is good!" one -- Planet Dilbert. So no ‘we’ of hers is ever gonna be caught talkin’ like Blimp talks!

The Strange Death of Planet Dilbert

A breakthrough agreement to create a giant US government-sponsored vehicle to take on toxic assets in the financial system looked possible on Thursday night as Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and top lawmakers convened a dramatic meeting to discuss the financial crisis. The US Treasury said the meeting discussed a "comprehensive approach to address the illiquid assets on bank balance sheets that are at the underlying source of the current stresses in our financial institutions and financial markets." The Treasury added that Mr Paulson and Mr Bernanke were “exploring all options, legislative and administrative, and expect to work through the weekend with Congressional leaders to finalise a way forward”. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said the administration had not yet presented a detailed proposal but congressional leaders looked forward to receiving one “in a matter of hours not days”.

Thus the Financial Times , an organisation that undoubtedly still has a future. So, in all probability, do "our financial institutions and financial markets" more broadly, although when you meet such cowpokers-first-class for Lord Mammon as these talkin’ that kind of talk, you spontaneously begin to worry about your wallet just a little. (Don’t you?)

That is if you still live in the former Real World. If you have emigrated to Planet Dilbert, however, you react more militantly and extremely and along the following lines:

In extending a last-minute $85 billion lifeline to American International Group, the troubled insurer, Washington has not only turned away from decades of rhetoric about the virtues of the free market and the dangers of government intervention, but it has also probably undercut future American efforts to promote such policies abroad. “I fear the government has passed the point of no return,” said Ron Chernow, a leading American financial historian. “We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams.” (...) “For opponents of free markets in Europe and elsewhere, this is a wonderful opportunity to invoke the American example,” said Mario Monti, the former antitrust chief at the European Commission. “They will say that even the standard-bearer of the market economy, the United States, negates its fundamental principles in its behavior.” Mr. Monti said that past financial crises in Asia, Russia and Mexico brought government to the fore, “but this is the first time it’s in the heart of capitalism, which is enormously more damaging in terms of the credibility of the market economy.”

Aunt Nitsy is no shallow dilbertarian, of course, but unfortunately the Nostradamus of WTKK-FM 96.9 Boston does not do transcripts. He has not even updated his blog since the morning after Commanderissimo J. Sidney McCain addressed the Party of Big Management in convention assembled, Friday 5 September 2008. Nostradamo dei Severini is by no means unavailable for comment, he still spouts off on the air like Old Faithful, but ever since the 319th final crisis of late capitalism got under weigh, he has apparently avoided puttin’ anythin’ in writin’. A sound and prudent course, possibly.

On Wednesday afternoon, 17 September 2008, the signorino expounded and denounced essentially the Paulson-Bernanke scheme as set forth above, attributin’ it, however, above all to Congressman Frank of the Massachusetts Fourth. That morning the NYTC had reported that

[a]s the Bush administration has lurched from pillar to post in the financial crisis, some lawmakers and experts were considering a longer-term legislative solution that would create a new agency to dispose of the mortgage-related assets at the core of Wall Street’s woes. (...) In Congress, the idea that is gaining traction centers on the creation of a new agency that would buy troubled assets from hobbled companies. The idea was floated on Tuesday by Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, who heads the House Financial Services Committee. Among those signaling that it merited serious consideration were Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.

The signorini and señoritos do not accord ideas floated by persons of that description serious consideration, they just point their e-fingers and hoot. But even as long ago as Wednesday morning there were signs of darker things to come, since my ellipsis conceals the names of neocomrades P. A. Volker and A. Greenspan. ‘Doctor’ Greenspan, as every nonwombschoolboy knows, was a card-carryin’ Dilbertarian at one time, a member of the late Miss Rand of Petrograd’s very select conventicle. Perhaps we had better have the omitted sentence in full, however, to avoid unfairness to the accused:

Proponents of a more systematic government role to help relieve financial institutions of their toxic securities range from Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary under President Clinton, to former Federal Reserve chairmen Paul A. Volcker and Alan Greenspan.

Former President Summers has acquired a large followin’ at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, though considering that his fan clubs have never emitted a peep that I recall about his economics, there is no need to drag his name and Alma Mater’s through this particular mud. Neocomrade Volker has not touched the dilbertarian pitch to be defiled, and may therefore serve as a sort of mineshaft canary from the dei Severini perspective: if the abominable Barney can persuade even samfundets støtter like P. Volker to turn Bolshie, then the End is not just Nigh, it has actually arrived!

But maybe there is hope? The Democrat Party fiends wanted "a new agency to dispose of mortgage-related assets," where the respectables and the Randlord only wanted "a more systematic government role to help relieve financial institutions of their toxic securities." That, however, was forty-eight hours ago; perhaps the ideological dike that separates a ‘rôle’ (which sounds temporary) from an ‘agency’ (which doesn’t) has eroded in the interim? Now that Big Party neocomrades H. Paulson and B. Bernancke are panickin’ too, it appears that the unum necessarium is "a giant US government-sponsored VEHICLE." [1]

Whether that V-word was carefully ‘crafted’ compromise language or only some no-’count journalist’s random stab at the thesaurus does not appear. Vehicles are permanent structures, usually, yet one does not often abide in them 24/7, making them in a certain sense temporary also. So ‘vehicle’ could have been a deliberate artefact of committee, though Father Zeus alone knows whether it actually was.

Still, "a stinkfruit by any other name would smell...." Planet Dilbert and its signorini and its señoritos are not, by and large, to be fooled by mere nomenclature. Though patrons of wombschoolin’ for the lower orders, they just happen to have been educated at Eton and Harrow themselves. Or anyway, they have been instructed at Vassar College.

Nitsy adds, in her Black Friday story, not the Gray Wednesday one, that

Congressional leaders had initially appeared unclear about what role they would play in the rapid-fire decisions being made. Leaders of both parties had complained about a lack of hard information flowing from the administration. House Republicans even canceled a closed-door party session Thursday morning after the administration refused to provide an official to brief them on the administration’s emerging policies. (...) But whether a legislative consensus could be found remained an open question, and members of Mr. Bush’s own party were among those who were most critical of the increasing federal intervention in private markets.

The tail end there is a bit of a curiosity, as if one had expected the Party of Grant and Hoover to enthuse about increasing federal intervention in private markets. What colour is the sky at noon on a cloudless day where Mr. Edmund L. Andrews lives?

More important is the bigmanagerial technique of George XLIII, who doesn’t want even his best friends and ideobuddies to take a peek at his hand or qibbits about emergent tactics and operationals and strategies. Viceroy Richard Bruce Cheney could easily be a key figure at this jucture: if RBC can manage either (1) to show that the present crisis is somehow a matter of foreign and aggression policy, or (2) to transfer "increasing federal intervention in private markets" to the Office of the Viceroy, then Big Management need never let anybody have a peek at its cards at all. [2] Like the apostles of GOP self-servicin’ always say, every crisis is an opportunity. Master Dubya is no doubt merely behavin’ like that proverbial deer caught in the headlights -- the 566/640 Yalie lad has nothin’ to hide but the absence of anythin’ to hide, especially in that space between his ears -- but this is no reason why the adults of Dynasty and Party and Ideology cannot take action in the name of their Boy.

My point du jour, then, Mr. Bones, is that any action taken will almost certainly be regarded as fort mauvais by the denizens of Planet Dilbert. Even a mere ‘rôle’ would be no more welcome to them than a garlic frappe to Count Dracula. If we do the exponents of Political Capitalism the favor of assuming that they actually believe their own tripe and baloney, we can only expect them to bark and bellow ¡Fiat libertas, ruat cœlum! The sky is safe enough, however, since Political Capitalists can number no more than ten or fifteen percent of the militant extremist Republican Party, and the latter itself is somewhat less than half of half of the Heimatland Gottes ingesamt. And even the fifteen percent figure needs a certain amount of deflating, because Political Capitalism includes the cupboard loves of Little Management ("small business") as well as the ideological attitudinizin’s of the Friends of Freddy Von Hayek.

Little Management may well emerge as the worst screwees of all. As Nostradamo dei Severini has pointed out, the deadbeats that borrowed all that home mortgage money they can never pay back have us fiends of the Democrat Party to look to, whilst the Big Managers proper, the GOP geniuses who made the bad loans, are, as usual, firmly in the saddle of the Party of Grant and Hoover. Whatever rôle or vehicle or agency emerges is bound to "preserve, protect and defend" those two groups, the chief clients of the patrons (or, in the Grant-Hoover case, the chief patrons of the clients) who will be the principals at the compromise table. But who will speak up for the petty commercial interests of Myra Babbit from Zenith TX? Probably nobody effective. Nobody effective, plus or minus Governess S. Putin (sp?) of Alaska.

The AEIdeologues can speak up for themselves, of course, and won’t their caterwaulin’ be a pleasure to listen to! Especially when one can find a transcript, and peruse it quickly and silently.

Planet Dilbert is not really gonnta ‘die’ of this seizure, though. In one sense, Dilbert is deathless: no amount of discrepancy with Plane Earth can ever shut the real faith-crazies up. And the mere hangers-on and weaker sistern are mostly fallen by the wayside already, havin’ dropped off the Nozick-Rand-Friedman-Hayek bandwagon on or about 11 September 2001, when it suddenly became not just possible, but easy and convenient, to get the same -- or better! -- hormone satisfactions from Kiddie Krusadin’.


___
[1] Hmm. Would thee say, Mr. Bones, that Noah's Ark was a ‘vehicle’?


[2] More exactly: RBC's attack attorneys could maintain that the Fedguv Constitution does not require any such disclosures, foreign affairs bein’ strictly the prerogative of the Executive branch, and viceregal jurisdiction extraconstitutional and unaccountable altogether.

Yoo Tube Watch

Cheney Unchained The best details from Barton Gellman's new book on the vice president. By Juliet Lapidos (...) Torture Guidelines Page 177: John Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 until 2003, rejected only one proposed investigation technique on legal grounds. He said that "the CIA could not bury a subject alive, even if it planned to dig him back up in time."

Problems of Aggression-Based Democracy (#34,672)

There are major issues that have yet to be resolved, though. The most glaring is the treatment of prisoners. Iraq and Afghanistan show the new face of war. Our enemies do not wear uniforms because the war would be over in a few months if they did. We are now treating captured enemy as possible criminals – entitled to Miranda rights, with our soldiers signing arrest sheets and bagging evidence for presentation to local judges who are corrupt. There’s no sure way of knowing who is innocent, who is a small-time offender and who is a major threat. In past wars, we kept prisoners of war until the war was over. The average jail sentence in Iraq for an enemy soldier has been 300 days. That is not a smart way to fight a war. This problem is festering. Guantanamo was simple in that the numbers – perhaps 200 – granted habeas corpus and the best pro bono lawyers from Ivy League law schools are manageable. But consider – in Iraq and Afghanistan the US holds about 5,000 extremely dangerous jihadists that cannot be turned over to local judges because they might be let go. As the combat increases in Afghanistan, so will the number of prisoners. We have not as a nation – the Executive Branch, the military, the Supreme Court and the Congress – reached agreement and codified how we fight when the enemy does not wear a uniform.

(( Neocomrade General B. West ))

Problems of Aggression-Based Democracy (#34,671)

Here’s what happened today: the Iraqi Parliament unanimously voted to lift parliamentary immunity from Mithal Alusi (liberal and secular Sunni MP for Baghdad, head of the Iraqi Nation Party) over his attendance at last week’s Counter-Terrorism Conference in Hezliyah, Israel. (...) I can’t help but chuckle as I write this: Alusi is a bad-ass, and these folks, especially the Islamists, don’t realize that they are falling into his trap. The Minister of State for National Security, Abdel-Karim al-‘Anizi, made the mistake of calling Alusi an Israeli agent today, only to get Alusi to retort that al-‘Anizi is an Iranian spy; Alusi then proceeded to beat-up al-‘Anizi.

The blogghista is a proudly wingnutty fan of Team Aggression, naturally. But there are hundreds or thousands of thousands of those, no big deal. What stands out with Neocomrade I. Chuckle here is that he should think it progress when the ‘parliament’ of the International Zone neorégime starts behaving like the Habsburg Reichsrat in the 1890’s:

To say that the Badeni Ordinances were fought tooth and nail in the Reichsrat is almost literally true: sometimes punches were thrown, sometimes inkpots.

’Tis a pity that inkpots have gone the way of all flesh: M. al-Alúsí, that stout Little Friend of Hyperzion, could, no doubt, clobber insensitive locals and natives with a keyboard or notebook computer, or hurl an iPod at them, but it is not the same thing.

What one’s inner barbarian really longs for is vast expanses of spotless cotton broadcloth drippin’ with Rorschachian black. A scheme of local colour that might well be dubbed Manichæan! (Did you know, Mr. Bones, that the Rev. Mani started out a barefoot boy from -- more or less -- Baghdád? Kinda emblematic, that is!)

After that swell beginnin’ the crude fun begins to fall off, admittedly. I. Chuckle pretends to be personally acquanted with M. Alúsí, for whom he supplies a considerable oration after the manner of Thucydides. This ventriloquised passage is funny-peculiar throughout, but funny-haha only rather subtly, apart from one passage where Charlie McCarthy sounds like B. Hussein Obáma on the occasion of taking a wrong turn into an opium den:

I am not honored to be in such company in the parliament. Half of them are working for the Iranians or the terrorists, and the other half is distracted by money. (...) There are tens of ex-ministers and officials who stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the Iraqi state, and parliament passes a law to give them amnesty because they are all from the same political parties. I have to serve the voters who elected me, but really I am uncomfortable being in the company of many of these parliamentarians.

Unhonoured and discomfortable he may feel, yet Charlie is runnin’ for reëlection. What do personal revulsions matter, when one has a former ‘Iráq to save? Charlie proposes to hold his nose and lecture his constituents along the following lines:

America doesn’t have the confidence to deter Iran from building a nuclear weapon. The Americans are even preventing Israel from saving itself. Iraqis and Israelis are the two nations that will suffer the most from a radical Iranian leadership that can threaten us with nuclear weapons. Thus, Iraq and Israel must find a strategy to counter this threat. Time is running out.

Exactly which of the spear-won neosubjects of AEI and GOP and DoD and EiB and . . . are going to rally to that banner I cannot tell thee, Mr. Bones. Perhaps I. Chuckle wants us to suppose that the neosubjects will disagree with every word Charlie McCarthy utters, but admire his positively McCainiac mugwumpery in venturin’ to say such things to a hostile mob. Or maybe the hostile mob is supposed to send "M. Alúsí" back to ‘Parliament’ to keep him away from the neighborhood -- in defense of property values, as it were. The prudent village keeps its idiot well out of sight.

The Anti-Safavid Pact of Steel™ is not Master Charlie’s sole campaign plank, though. It appears that he is also against corruption and incompetence:

I want to tell the Iraqi voter: don’t vote for me if you don’t find me convincing. But use your vote as a protest against all these parties in parliament and government. Tell them that they are fired. Fired for failing at every level in managing this country. They are trying to distract the voter with issues such as Israel and Kirkuk. They are terrified by elections because they know that the Iraqi people will punish them for failure.

That tripe and baloney is so similar to everyday fare here in the holy Homeland that one feels a little embarrassed. Like Obama-Biden, like Commanderissimo J. Sidney McCain and Governess Harry S. Palindrome, Charlie McCarthy and "M. al-Alúsí" and Neocomrade I. Chuckle are all for CHANGE: "Just vote NO!" (Much good that is likely to do!)

The idea of AEI-GOP-DoD neosubjects punishing their politicians for failure is funny-haha in the extreme, actually, but one requires a little familiarity with the attested course of human events to enjoy the fun.

But let us join in the fun too, Mr. Bones! Suppose that theeself had the misfortune to live under the Yoke of Crawford, with the Yoke of Sedona loomin’ large on the horizon. Charlie McCarthy is caused to say that he does not want thee to vote for him unless thee find him convincing, which obviously no decent political grown-up could do. Falling back on Plan B, then, thee are to "use [thee’s] vote as a protest against all these parties in parliament and government."

Easier said than done, is it not? Or no, that’s wrong. It is easy enough: we could place ourselves in technical compliance by pulling the lever for any native pol whatsoever who is affiliated with None Of The Above. Since Charlie does not say that it matters which native pol we pick (if we don’t pick himself), we should try to act fully in the ventriloquist’s dummy’s spirit by choosing our preferred native pol in consultation with a table of random numbers. Perhaps sortes Vergilianae or fál-e Háfez would do as well, although on the other hand, perhaps they would not, since das Unbewusste might know something about ex-Iraqi politics that we don’t and sneak it past us when the oracle gets interpreted. Some strictly random procedure would be best, no doubt.

OK, so it is possible to give "M. al-Alúsí" and Neocomrade I. Chuckle what they asks for. Whether it is advisable to do so is a different question. If we madly suppose that everybody else complies fully with the Alusian Spirit of Tripe and Baloney, what do we get? Presumably something like the late Neocomrade Buckley Minor’s government of "the first two hundred names in the Manhattan telephone diectory."

Why on Gore’s green earth Chuckle and "al-Alúsí" should suppose that we would want that, who can say? But then, why should Cap’n M’Cain and Governess Nilap suppose that the holy Homeland wants the Buckley Plan? Something funny-peculiar is goin’ on over at Wingnut City and Rio Limbaugh, no doubt about it! Neocomrade I. Chuckle is determined to export ‘tychocracy’ to the GOP’s semiconquered provinces of the former ‘Iráq, and that strikes me as a splendid idea -- provided that its being over there means an absence of it closer to home.

===

The sternly unfunny side of Neocomrade I. Chuckle emerges only in his UPDATE:

It is interesting to look through the comments section on Al-Arabiya TV's web coverage on the Alusi story. One would think that it would be cram full of Arab nationalists denouncing Mithal as a Zionist spy; on the contrary, the response is predominately supportive. The catch line [sic] is that Alusi was punished for speaking out against Iran, not for visiting Israel.

Governess Putin: Blinkless Amidst The Blizzard

GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government? PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option. GIBSON: But, Governor, I'm asking you: [do w]e have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government[?] PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target. GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area? PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.

Well, thee tell me, Mr. Bones: does, or does not, Governess Sarah consider that the militant extremist GOP has a right to make cross-border attacks without requesting permission from any Lesser Breeds Without?

The Wasilla Wunderkind does not obfuscate too badly, considering that she has had only a week of tuition from the Big Management Party agitprop whizkids. But obviously she does not obfuscate perfectly either. Should she ever attain the highest level of proficiency, her dupes and marks will not, like poor Mr. Gibson of ABC, be found noticing that they have been obfuscated at.

It may seem remarkable that the Governess plainly has no clue what the words "Bush Doctrine" mean to political grown-ups. The whizkid Pygmalions should probably lose a few points for not lettin’ their Galatea in on that little secret. Though to be scrupulously fair, O Bones, thee must remember that the Pakistan Addendumb to the Bush Doctrine only surfaced yesterday morning. Perhaps one may commend Mr. Gibson for being so au courant without reflecting adversely on the Pygmalionisation processes.

In any event, I find it more remarkable still that Princess Galatea seems unable to distinguish exercisin’ all her options from havin’ em out there on the table. Neocomrades K. Rove and H. Kissinger and their lessers will not, I suspect, have anticipated that their patient did not know that. Being only a scrap of common everyday knowledge, not particularly connected with either foreign and invasion policy or with the bamboozlement of the wicked MSM, the point was not likely to arise in the course of her Party’s emergency briefin’s.

Her Highness may have a track record of incomprehension in this semantic zone:

Palin, in speaking to ABC, chose her words carefully, saying that "some of man's activities" could be "potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now."

I suppose it must be a landmark for the Wombscholarship Movement to have produced a pupil who says ‘potentially’ when she means ‘actually.’ If that much Niederdümmung is possible -- nay, achieved already! -- why not a final solution to the traditional ‘black’-equals-‘white’ challenge within our lifetimes? Meanwhile, Princess Galatea’s two little boo-boos are at bottom the same, for what is "on the table" but a kiddie-talk synonym of ‘potential’? [1]

Was it nice, though, for Aunt Nitsy to sneer at an underinstructed young lady from the provinces who is only tryin’ to better herself in the world a little, after all? There was no call to rub Salt of Sarcasm into the Governess’s self-inflicted wound in the form of "chose her words CAREFULLY." Not to be catty, girls!

Mr. Gibson’s exasperated appreciation of what may prove to be the characteristic Galataean rhetoric is preferable as literary criticism to the New York Times Company product. "... [S]ome of ... could be ... potentially ... some of ..." has nothing to do with care, but it really is a bit blizzard-like, is it not? [2] At least four inches of snow job separate Her Highness of Wasilla from takin’ the pretended Global Warmin’ so seriously that eyebrows would be raised at Rio Limbaugh. [3] If Neocomrade K. Rove taught her how to do that stunt from scratch in the short time available for a crash program of Big Party briefin’s, he is even more gifted than I thought him.

But we were discussing the obfuscation angle. Mr. Gibson was reduced to putting the word YES into Princess Galatea’s well-lipsticked mouth: "Yes, Charlie, let there be no doubt about it! We militant extremist Republicans DO have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government." My guess is materially the same as good ol’ Charlie's guess, but I am more interested than Charlie is in why Her Highness should hesitate to be frank and verbally unblinkin’ about it. The Big Management Party’s substantive position on invasionism and Preëmptive Retaliation as such hasnot been news for years, and even if it were, one would scarcely go to the Governess of Alaska in quest of a detailed account. Why on Gore’s green earth didn’t she simply say "Yes, of course" and move on to the next question?

It is easy to understand why Galatea should blink about the pretended Global Warmin’: J. Sidney Pygmalion disagrees with his own critter about that matter, and JSM remains, after all, technically the Head of the Big Management Party ticket. But when it comes to the dogma of Preëmptive Retaliation, there are no reasons I know of to assume that the monster disagrees with Dr. Frankenstein, or that the two of them together disagree with George XLIII. Bein’ as he’s a dumb and vainglorious mugwump, Dr. Frankenstein, taken individually and without the Galatea critter, may vaguely resent that Preëmptive Retaliation should be referred to as the "Bush Doctrine," and equally vaguely hope that there will shortly be a "McCain Doctrine" to accelerate the pulses of the Powe®Point community. I guess there probably will be, but I am unable to guess that Preëmptive Retaliation will be significantly modified, let alone repudiated. The Big Managers all believe that self-baloney nowadays, and a great many of them have believed it in some form or another ever since Hiroshima Day or shortly afterwards. [4]

Did Princess Galatea blink and blizzard about Preëmptive Retaliation because she suspects that Televisionland and the electorate do not support that particular Big Managerial dogma with zeal and vigour? It would be pleasant to think so, but it would also almost certainly be mistaken, wishful thinking. Main Street does not in fact support Preëmptive Retaliation as rabidly as Weekly Standardisers and Wall Street Jingos do. Even Main Street in beautiful downtown Rio Limbaugh is not yet 100% gleichschaltet. Perhaps the Party base and vile do not dare avow such subversive sentiments as "Live and let live" out loud, but the jihád careerists certainly do not have everythin’ their way either. (They certainly whine and moan about popular and even Party neglect of the Islamophalangitarian Menace often enough!)

But the central truth of the matter emerges, as I conjecture, from Mr. Gibson’s exasperation. Galatea was wastin’ a lot of precious ABC air time with her blinkin’ and her blizzardin’. ‘Charlie’ understood that most of his corporation’s customers do not much care to hear exotic questions like that one either asked or answered or deliberately not-answered à la Governess Sarah. My guess about the critter itself is that its pygmalionisation had not yet taught it how to handle questions that nobody much cares about -- nobody in the social strata that she is expected to rally to the banners of Big Management. Princess Galatea did not realize that it would be wiser to say almost anythin’ at random as long as she cut it very short than to waffle protractedly. Perhaps Her Highness was tryin’ to figure out what to say as she waffled, what she ought to say so as to benefit Big Management best. But that was to misconceive the situation, since nothin’ she could have said about Pakistan and international law and all that can of worms would have been specially advantageous. The correct answer was to move on as rapidly as possible, not to emit this or that formula of words. "Just say YES" was the obvious plan, so obvious that Mr. Gibson of ABC charitably suggested it to her, unfair and unbalanced though that act was.

Oh, well, no doubt she’ll learn. ¡Crescat eundo!


___
[1] Any metaphysician respectfully unwilling to suppose Her Highness could be guilty of a vulgar linguistic boo-boo could easily get tied up in knots working out the deeper implications of a "potential cause."


[2] That curious microblizzard of potentialisation in particular leads to some additional Philosophy Department fun. Fancy Princess Galatea -- or, indeed, why not let’s fancy Empress Galatea, J. Sidney Pygmalion havin’ suffered a stroke or somethin’? -- seated at the negotiatin’ table with all the options spread out on the table in front of Her Highness to play solitaire with. Could some of the options potentially be that some of the options are not actually there, or otherwise not actually what they seem to be? Might not Galatea really be a butterfly at home in bed only dreamin’ that she is (Actin’) Führerin der freien Welt about to give us the Munich to end all Munichs?


[3] And what does J. Sidney Pygmalion think of his Galatea’s position on the pretended GW? Frankly, Mr. Bones, I doubt he gives a damn what the little woman thinks. (Though of course God knows best!)


[4] Before 6 August 1945, Big Management believed in Preëmptive Retaliation mostly only as applied to their James Monroe Co-Prosperity Sphere south of the border. Their abstract or theoretical attitude of Wingnut City to the Rechtfrage involved has perhaps not changed significantly since the Big Managers first decided they needed a Party at all, sometime in the 1830's. However, considered as a Machtfrage, the dogma of Preëmptive Retaliation can be of scant practical importance where Macht is radically lackin’.

Problems of Invasionism MDCCLXXVII

A slave of Murdoch notes in today's Wall Street Jingo

... one truly original take offered by Mr. Woodward. This is his curious assertion that it's not the surge that has produced the great reduction in violence in Iraq. The reduced violence, he says, is the result of the increased lethality of covert operations against terrorist leaders and operatives. Which brings up two interesting points. First, we are led to find fault with a president allegedly obsessed with a "kill the bastards" approach to Iraq. But then we are asked to accept that the reason we're now seeing success in Iraq because we're . . . killing the bastards. Second, the surge was a shift in mission, not simply an addition of five brigades. Until the surge, we had pursued a political solution, hoping that the answer to Iraq was the rise of a democratic government that would persuade Iraqis to come together for their future. The surge, by contrast, finally recognized the obvious: [u]ntil Iraqis started feeling safe in their own homes and neighborhoods, there would be no compromise or rebuilding. Sophisticates have never liked Mr. Bush for his preference for words like "win" and "victory" to describe what America is trying to do in Iraq. And if Mr. Woodward's latest contribution is any clue, they'll never forgive him for doing something even worse: proving it can be done.

Poor Mr. Woodward gets seriously twistified here, since he cited three gimmicks other than (1) the Ever-Victorious SurGe of ’07™ that are responsible for ‘our’ now ever-victory: not merely (2) JSOC murder whizbangs, but (3) the Bribe-a-Tribe™ scheme and (4) the sidlinin’ of the Rev. Señorito Sadr as well. Presumably Neocomrade W. McGurn is not much interested in the last two items because they do not fit into his pigeon hole labeled "Kill the bastards!"

It goes without saying that a Jingo journalist would not be interested in discussin’ yet a fifth factor behind the famous ever-victory, namely (5) native-on-native delation. Mr. Woodword does not mention it very explicitly either, in the Washington Post extracts at least, but nothing that he does mention makes much sense without delation.

Neocomrade W. McGurn simply analyzes incorrectly: the true key to all ex-Iraqi mythologies is not "Kill the bastards!" at all, it is "Get the bastards to drop a dime on one another!"

Though a lousy military analyst and evidently incapable of summarizing anybody else's views correctly, the neocomrade is a noble specimen of AEI-GOP-DOD-USIP-EIB-WSJ (&c. &c.) triumphalism: he passionately longs to rehabilitate "Kill the bastards!" He is even willin’ to say out loud that rehabilitation had become necessary, which most of his pack are not:

Every night for years, Americans tuning into the evening news were greeted by the same image from Iraq: a burning car or Humvee, accompanied by a fresh report about soldiers or Marines who'd been blown up by an improvised explosive device or suicide bomb.

A better scholar in the school of Marshall MacLuhan than in that of Carl von Clausewitz, W. McGurn correctly points out the "imbalance of explosions," so to call it, that was formerly presented to Televisionland and the electorate. However, when he addresses the "What went right?" question, he becomes a child again, about media matters and about violence profession matters alike. It is not mentioned that the former Iraq is not mentioned much on TV lately, that is, that the imbalance of explosions has now been replaced by fairness and balance at the level of zero. Naturally that arrangement does not much help with forwardin’ "Kill the bastards!" by the direct route.

Bastard killin’ fans are reduced to claimin’ in the columns of Rupert that KTB! has worked wonders, without bein’ able to point to his wonders actually happenin’ on the tube. The customers of Baron Murdoch are few in number, and of the few, scarcely any are open at this point to new opinions about the aggression of March 2003. This neocomrade will not be makin’ many fresh converts to the Gospel of KTB no matter how bloody he scribbles for the Wall Street Jingo.

Meanwhile, out in the holy Homeland at large, where rarely is heard a discouragin’ word from ‘sophisticates’, I take it that the KTB! thesis has already attained market saturation. So Neocomrade W. McGurn would not have much impact there even if he found himself a more plausible delivery vehicle than the WSJ, Readers’ Digest or the like.

It is possible, though, that Team Aggression does not really care about enlargin’ their popular support. The vast majority of AEI-GOP-DOD marks and dupes are not going to read Mr. Woodward’s book, let alone be corrupted by such political pornography. The neocomrade pooh-poohs such a target in vain except insofar as he pooh-poohs it to sophisticates. I do not think W. McGurn is very good at pooh-poohin’, not even from a strict Boy-Dynasty-Party-Ideology standpoint. To pronounce Mr. Woodward no worse than ‘curious’ -- or "truly original"! -- for not agreeing that the Ever-Victorious SurGe™ has been solely responsible for all things grand and glorious out in the colonies is not exactly the polemical equivalent of mustard gas or nukes.

Twistification itself is a further mark of weakness. If jingoism and Murdoch Family Values were really in the saddle the way they ought to be, Neocomrade W. McGurn and his ilk could quote Mr. Woodward accurately and at length, givin’ him lots of rope to hang himself with. Instead of doin’ that, though, the agitprop artists for Team Aggression paraphrase tendentiously and pretend to be able to read their enemies’ minds. Feeble stuff. Makes one wonder why they bother at all.

Problems of Invasionism MDCCLXXVI

"[Generals] Pace, Schoomaker and Casey found themselves badly out of sync with the White House in the fall of 2006, finally losing control of the war strategy altogether after the midterm elections. Schoomaker was outraged when he saw news coverage that retired Gen. Jack Keane, the former Army vice chief of staff, had briefed the president Dec. 11 about a new Iraq strategy being proposed by the American Enterprise Institute, the conservative think tank. "When does AEI start trumping the Joint Chiefs of Staff on this stuff?" Schoomaker asked at the next chiefs' meeting.

Of course GOP, not AEI, is trumps.

Mere hired-hand violence pros DO come in a distant third, however, in the Coalition of the Willful™, well in back of fat Freddy K.

Fear of Cleanliness ...

... comes right after Fear of Godliness. Everybody knows that.

And nobody fears godliness more than your rigidly nonsectarian zealot for the TwentyPercenters of ex-Iraq and the Sunni International:

Behind the Supreme Council concerns about a coup: Baath-phobia (...) Lest we dismiss this writer, with his phobia of the Baathists, as an outlier in the Supreme Council milieu, recall (...) [Supreme Hakeem fiend] Saghir sees the hand of the Baathists ready to exploit voter discontent with the government; similarly ... [Supreme Hakeem fiend] Mahdi sees the hand of Baathists behind the militarization that he warns could conceivably lead to a military coup.

Miss Lynx and Mr. Badger and the erudite Dr. Cartoonoclastes seem perfectly willing to believe in ‘militarisation’ -- at least if they get to explain it and decide whom to point a finger at [1] about it. But only children believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy and the ‘Aflaqí Ba‘th.

Given that there is no such thing to be afraid of, the fearmongers are in like Flynn. Ba‘thophobia can be turned off and on like ... well, like a bathtub tap, actually:

[‘Iraqologist’] says the reports of Mahdi's remarks on this have been overwrought ... be that as it may, and whatever the underlying possibilities may or may not be, it is at least worth the effort to try and understand the mind-set of the Supreme Council people who are obviously concerned about this. But when he says "This media speculation is about 1% substance and 99% hype," it sounds a little as if [he] knows as well or perhaps better than the people in the Supreme Council milieu when it will be time to actually worry. Hopefully when he thinks the ratio of substance to hype changes he will let everyone know.

Rumours that the United States Institute of ‘Peace’ is run by Supreme Hakeem fiends, or vice versa, may be a tad overwrought as well. Yet Goofville would not be Goofville without a consistent pattern of overwreaking. Be that as it may, the student ought to ask herself whether USIP is really the most convenient mechanism available to Fiendishness on Earth. [2] That Orwellian monnicker is bound to make USIP seem more important to Parmenidean appearance-despisers than it really is. Most likely the Supreme Hakeem fiends are really run out of an obscure basement in the Department of Agriculture. [3] Everybody knows that is how you are supposed to do it.

As might be expected, the announcement about "at least worth the effort to try and understand the mind-set of the Supreme Council people" leads to exactly zero (0.00) follow-through and/or follow-up. Shying away from one’s own ingenuities the way Cartoono does here could give a hostile observer the impression that the Sunninterní Lobby suffers from a certain sort of Ba‘thophobia of its own: once admit that 1958 and All That is maybe a little better grounded than the Tooth Fairy narratives are, and who knows? A Pandora’s box might open under one’s feet at every step! Zero follow-through may not be very gallant, but the prudence of it is impeccable. Better History should continue to begin in March or April of A. D. 2003 -- no doubt about it! [4]

Like Kennebunkport and Crawford, Goofville continues to think that its team is fated to ‘win’ definitively in the former Iraq, and win very soon. Though this outcome is not likely, one may wonder exactly what would become of the Supreme Hakeem fiends if it happened. Would they gnash their teeth in internal exile and obscurity forever? Would Sunní Ascendancy Redux make some effort to be reconciled with its former victims? Would the neovictims rush off to the evil Qommies and thus run us Greater Euros through another Cycle of Cathay™, returning in a dozen or twenty years to take a second stab at dhimmifacture [5] of the Natural Masters of Mesopotamia? Would Domino Democracy™ and Iraq-the-Model™ suddenly break out all over?

But lo! spoofery overcomes me. I had better desist.


____
[1] No prize for guessing who gets the conspiratorialisin’ gentry’s finger:

[I]f you are wondering what could possible keep alive this kind of phobia in the military/intelligence area, consider the following piece this morning's Al-Hayat. It's headed: "American source to Al-Hayat: Director of the De-Baathification Agency provided information that helped 'special groups' kill Iraqis", and it quotes an anonymous American official to the effect that Ali al-Lami, director of the De-Baathification Commission, arrested recently (Aug 28) by the Americans, used his position to feed specific information on Baathists to Shiite death squads.

[2] Al-’ifsád fi l-‘ard.


[3] Q. "It is 0515 hours. Does anybody know where Ollie North is?"
A. "You might try over at the Casino of Human Events ."


[4] The Supreme Hakeem fiends have written up their own martyrology quite elaborately -- five big volumes of martyrs from only the First Family of Najaf proper. So the world does not exactly need any follow-through from Cartoono the Magnificent as regards the general outline of events. Cartoono feels much more comfy going on about "Shiite death squads" and one may as well leave him to it since one has no better way of interfering with him than to poke fun and detect fallacy, measures which have rarely impeded ideobigots.

It remains a bit distressing that the Mu’ámara Junction gentry will probably credit themselves with having profoundly sympathised with the absurd phobias of the Supreme Hakeem fiends before detecting the absurdity, whereas in fact they have only mentioned the abstract possibility of "effort to try and understand the mind-set."

Oh, well, "Life is unfair"!


[5] Anythin’ Mme. Bint Yeor can do, we can do as well!

"an act of secular XXXXXXXXXX condescension"

I ask thee, Mr. Bones: if Mme. Speaker Pelosi be allowed the pleasure of explaining the mind and embryology of Gloomy Gus [1], what right have we to flinch when a neogodless señorito like Podhóretz Minor wants to start playin’ the same game?

To cut straight to the specimen’s theologia odiosica:

She [2] believes in the power of prayer! Imagine that! What a Yahoo! What does it matter if prayer and its efficacy stand at the center of all religious practice and belief? Every Sabbath, in synagogues worldwide, a prayer for the sick is spoken. It’s called a “mishabeirach,” [3] and it is the custom either for congregants to stand up and speak the name of the ill person they wish to pray for or to speak the name in the rabbi’s ear and have him recite it. Do we do this because we don’t believe in the power of prayer? There should be nothing exceptional to anyone in this country at this date about a politician who is also a believing Christian and who therefore thinks she owes her ascension to office to the role of the divine. What Palin said wasn’t even notable; it was what might be called Christian boilerplate.

To go about in the world rattlin’ other folks’ boiler plates for ’em is impeccably in accord with Amendment I, let us get that clear first, Mr. Bones. Politique d’abord!

Having established that much beyond cavil or contradiction, then, let us go on to note that although boilerplate rattlin’ cannot ordinarily lead to one’s arrest or prosecution, self-shame and self-idiocy are not to be ruled out automatically. The Podhóretz specimen seems to have run into a little nonlethal flak at that altitude:

UPDATE: After a day’s consideration, I think many commenters were right; the Times piece was not really an act of aggression, more an embarrassingly earnest effort to “understand” Sarah Palin, as though she were a native of a strange new world it had only recently discovered. I’ve amended the two words where I think I went too far. The rest of the piece can stand without qualification.

Accordin’ly, the señorito invites its customers to strike ‘aggression’ and read ‘condescension’ at one point, thus givin’ rise to the slightly peculiar title of this morning’s sermonette. [3] And in a second retraction/amelioration, it replaces ‘contempt’ with, once again, ‘condescension.’ [4] There’s a whole lot of condescendin’ goin’ on over chez Podhóretz, it sure looks like! Why, one might even speak of ‘NEOcondescension'!

Who are these poor elitists that get the Podhorétzian chamber-pot emptied out on their heads? If thee knoweth "Kirk Johnson and Kim Severson" from Adam and Eve, respectively, thee knoweth more about them than I do, O Bones! And probably thee knoweth more than Podhóretz Minor does itself, although personal acquaintance with the hæretici should never be allowed to interfere with one’s detestation of their hærêsis, neither to augment a just detestation nor to diminish it.

It is a bit "over my paygrade" to explain exactly why prayer is useful even though Providence is immutable. Fortunately that product is widely available elsewhere. (Rather too widely available, perhaps, but never mind that.) Let us try to confine ourselves to the Podhorétzian sophisms and self-betterin’s without leaping into the deep end of the theopool.

Particularly sophistical and in need of self-betterment is the señorito’s use of the words ‘notable’ and ‘exceptional’. In fact, it skates right over what is really exceptional and notable about Mme. Putin despite actually mentionin’ the point itself. Play it again, Sam, and let us have a touch of emphasis, please!

There should be nothing exceptional to anyone in this country at this date about a politician who is also a believing Christian and WHO THEREFORE THINKS SHE OWES HER ASCENSION TO OFFICE TO THE ROLE OF THE DIVINE. What Palin said wasn’t even notable; it was what might be called Christian boilerplate.

From the technical standpoint of the former Christojudæan divinity, the important question must be whether or not the Governess thinks her ascension to office is more, or less, or otherwise providential than, say, her safe arrival at the supermarket six years ago last Wednesday afternoon. What did Johnson and Severson actually write that Master Podhóretz paraphrases from?

“Just be amazed at the umbrella of this church here, where God is going to send you from this church,” Ms. Palin told the gathering in June of young graduates of a ministry program at the Assembly of God Church, a video of which has been posted on YouTube. “Believe me,” she said, “I know what I am saying — where God has sent me, from underneath the umbrella of this church, throughout the state.”

Sigh. That evidence is perfectly useless to determine the point. Her Excellency may have meant that the apprentice Torquemadas and Savonarolas are to be amazed by grace when they finally wash up at the Fishhook Foodmart [6]. That would be impeccably orthodox and edifyin’. On the other hand, she may have been insinuatin’ that Father Zeus will eventually furnish them with a plum job much like her own, which is by way of being mythologically heretical as well as factually improbable. J&S must want us to suppose the latter, but that is not the same thing as reporting what Mme. S. Putin was thinkin’ when she thus orated.

In strictly political discussion, the speaker’s subjective niyya can ordinarily be left unexplored. The present, though, is what Benedictus de Spinôsis would have called a discursus theologico-politicus to which slightly different rules and regulations appertain.

J&S appear not to know the difference, or not to care if they know, and a few points should therefore be subtracted from their score, no doubt about it. But let us not get carried away, Mr. Bones. Bilge and Big Party cries like "an article intended to frighten rather than enlighten its readership" are mere señorito fodder. [7] The customers of the New York Times Company are not so completely out of contact with their own holy Homeland as not to have a reasonably accurate idea of where Rio Limbaugh and Wingnut City stand on the question of petitionary prayer. Had J&S taken it upon themselves to supply some unsolicited éclaircissement on that topic, your typical snotty Manhattanite or Manhattanoid elitist would have felt that her intelligence was getting insulted.

The gross cartoon of out-of-touchness that Signorino Giovanni degli Poddórezzi would like to fob off on the Big Party’s marks and dupes can actually be found if one searches in the right places, Mr. Bones. The right place is abroad, and especially in Old Europe. Of course those folks really are out of touch with the Heimatland Gottes. [8]

___
[1] Cf. inter multis an e-scribble called "Pelosi and Augustine" .


[2] Mme. Sarah Putin (sp?), the militant extremist Republican Governess of Alaska.


[3] Mî sheb-bárak, "He (or she) who hath blessed . . . ." is the incipit of a petition in the liturgy of specifically Israëlite Christojudæanity.


[4] After in-flight political correction, the full sentence runs

Today, the New York Times published an article that, should it receive wide circulation (and it might, on the web), will do a great deal to harden evangelical attitudes against the supposed leftward swing — because it is an act of secular aggression condescension against a believing Christian.

[5] This other passage is the señorito’s peroration, its BottomLine™, as I believe our friends in the Harvard Victory School MBA class like to call such things:

The point here is that by treating the views of such people as though they are exotically fascinating at best and terrifyingly Other at worst, and by highlighting the views of a prominent Christian in an article intended to frighten rather than enlighten its readership, the New York Times (and those organizations sure to follow it down this path) only makes it likely that any ideological journey evangelicals might take this year will not be to the left, but back into the bosom of the Right. After all, who wants to be friends with someone who treats you with such XXXXXXXX condescension?

[6] "189 E Nelson Ave, Wasilla, AK - (907) 373-5450." Dixit Googlemaps.


[7] More exactly, that is the fodder that Master Podhóretz proposes to feed his good ol’ ideobuddies from amongst the Great Unwashed. I take for granted that he does not eat at Dunkin’ Donuts much, himself personally.


[8] To evaluate poor old Aunt Nitsy on the basis of how well she communicates the suchness of God’s Country to persons entirely without first-hand experience would be preposterous if set up as the sole criterion. If it is to be criterion 113 of 1424, however, we may once again subtract a couple of points from the score and move on.