Colonel Blimp’s New Rhetoric

Have you noticed how the neocomrades have reacted on the rhetorical front to things finally not goin’ altogether their way?

All of a sudden their stern self-indignation takes the form of apostrophe and ventriloquism; they can scarcely diatribe for more than a couple of minutes before draggin’ in Imaginary Enemies to bark and bellow at, or, as with our old acquaintance Rear-Colonel V. D. H. Blimp

in the scribble at hand, Imaginary Friends on whose behalf they profess to emit pretty much the same noises they used to emit for themselves alone.

This keyboard must infer that the motor-mouth neocomrades feel that their scope would be too limited if they spoke only for themselves and only to the actual audience. That, however, is only supply-side neorhetoric. What, if anythin’ thing, do the rank-and-file base and vile get out of listenin’ to Dr. Limbaugh address General Holder as if he, Holder, were already in the dock at the Rio Limbaugh Kangaroo Court? Or from listenin’ to Col. Blimp set forth the supposed grievances of "Mr. Battered American," a Charlie McCarthy that could scarcely resemble its Edgar Bergen less?

Blimp is (or was) of great interest insofar as scarcely anybody else in all the holy Homeland™ chants the liturgy of Mars and Bellona with that fervently sincere geistlicher Militärismus of his. On the other hand, now that AEI has rotted his brain, most of his scribbles, this one not excluded, could be cranked out by any extremist GOP niece or nephew with time on her hands and factional spirit bubblin’ up from her spleen. A great waste of a rare and precious commodity, is it not? (Yes, it is!)

No cloud without a silver linin’, though: the California pastoral element is new, at least to this keyboard. Previous allusions to the good colonel’s log-cabin background were few and far between and usually targeted the Wetback Menace. Now we get the mus pelosiensis menace. Au moins il est différent, though Blimp stickin’ his new-found antigreen thumb in here and now is a bit odd when there is, after all, Mortgagegate 2008 and the Crawford Crash still remainin’ to talk about. (Later on there is that curious detour to kick Gov. Richardson, which I suppose must also have a CA pastoral sort of explanation.)

But Blimp gets where he’s really headed at last, by way of the Sacramento Menace, so to call it. The æsthetic preferences of a cultivated despiser of the neocomradely community do not count for anythin’ worth mentionin’, obviously, but for what it’s worth, this keyboard would have enjoyed the scribble more if Col. Blimp had taken a leaf out of Dr. Limbaugh’s book and made the whole thing an imaginary speech for the prosecution at the Neopeople’s Court in the case of "Homeland v. Schwartzenegger." His Excellency will have much to answer for, come the Counterrevolution, no doubt about it!

Now of course even before the AEI viruses broke in to wreak havoc between his earphones, V. D. H. Blimp was no economist. It would have been very strange -- impossibly strange, even -- if he were, for who can truly adore and worship Mars and Bellona in the high-and-dry Old Prussian fashion without blaming Lord Mammon and his devotees for a long list of sins and softnesses? Mr. James of Harvard was, at the end of the day, a wimp and a chickenhawk, yet for chronological reasons he could still write up the afterglow of the Blimpian Vision rather well:

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war’s irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

’Plunder’ of course gives away that the morally-equivalent William James was not 100.0% sound on the AEIdeological side. (Oh, well, nobody’s perfect!)

In his peroration, Blimp piles apostrophe upon ventriloquism and asks the customer to fantasize Mr. Battered America addressin’ his POTUS. Though anythin’ but an economist, Blimp must (?) understand the traditional importance of "the bottom line" for purposes of oratory and sophistry. Blimp’s own B.L. bears repeatin’:

[N]o more of your team’s lecturing me about being patriotic in paying my taxes, and unpatriotic in not wanting to borrow more trillions that my kids’ kids will have to pay back.

The fiend Keynes must speak for himself, because this keyboard is not qualified to defend him or even to attack, but when it comes to lectures on Homelandic patriotism, why, any Homelander may play, nicht wahr? (Ja, richtig!)

There seems a gross disproportion here between stimulus (in the pathologist’s sense, not the economist’s) and response: the MonsterStreamMedia, though doubtless "in the tank" for B. Husáyn XLIV Obáma, do not in fact spend much time preaching that nonresistance to the Internal Revenue Service is right up there with emulation of Nathan Hale and Oliver North. Blimp’s ideological hide must be particularly thin at this point, no? To be sure, VDHB has, or used to have, his own patriotic snake oil to monger, the Spiritual Militarism shtyk. This product, however, was suitable only for a very narrow market niche, and, for that matter, Blimp had pretty well given up floggin’ it even before the Crawford Crash came along.

In these times even an ex- or para- or crypto-Prussian needs an economic gospel to hawk, does she not? (Of course she does!) Blimp does not announce any new product line of his own, but the plain implication of his bottom line is that "fiscal responsibility" constitues the New Patriotism™. "Away with Colonel North! Let’s hear it for the Concord Coalition! Yaaaay!!"

One cannot be certain from the evidence that "fiscal responsibility" is exactly what Rear-Colonel V. D. H. Blimp is up to at the moment, but it would be remarkable if it should turn out that he prefers some completely different brand of snake oil. If so, his most recent neopatriotism at least resembles the old-fashioned sort in callin’ for a certain measure of self-abnegation. If "fiscal responsibility" be where the neocomradely action is at nowadays, Col. Blimp cannot expect to be a major player, not ‘major’ in the way such a bozo as Neocomrade Dr. L. Kudlow is positioned to be major.

It is so rare to find an expensively educated person who does not think that the world secretly revolves around his own professional stuff that one hesitates to look this gift horse in the mouth. Nevertheless, magic amica veritas, and the present keyboard cannot help noticing that Blimp had self-abnegated already, because obviously geistlicher Militärismus has not been the axis of anythin’ in the holy Homeland™ in livin’ memory, not even if memory of 1910, when Mr. James of Harvard passed on, be accounted still alive. Indeed, militarism was traditionally un-Homelandic even then, else James would never have written the famous essay the way he wrote it.

So it becomes a nice problem in ethical adjudication to decide how much credit VDHB deserves for switchin’ from one form of acknowledged self-marginality to another. Off-hand, I’d say the thing to do is award the honourable and gallant no new points, but at the same time to recall with approbation the points formerly earned.

A strict objector might object that switchin’ to "fiscal responsibility" from the Bellona Cult is only more evidence of AEI-induced brain rot, since Blimp is now self-marginalized with thousands and tens of thousands of factional neocomrades instead of bein’ self-marginalized in a pigeon hole all his own. Yet the question is not quite that simple, when it can be taken as a humility on Blimp’s part to be only one small ancillary lemmin’ in the grand march of Fiscal Responsibility.

On the third tentacle, though, how ‘humble’, really, is a rhetor and neosophist who, himself unbattered, pretends to give expression to th inmost thoughts and druthers of "Mr. Battered American"?

But God knows best.