Quotulatiousness

February 29, 2024

Arizona GOP pushes to legalize hunting down suspected illegal immigrants with deadly force! Film at 11!

Filed under: Government, Law, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Chris Bray reports on this utterly abhorrent piece of proposed legislation that will literally condemn any brown person in the state of Arizona to be murdered out of hand by evil red-hatted Trump supporters … or will it?

Republicans in the Arizona legislature have advanced a bill that would allow anyone in the state to just casually gun down any migrant anytime they feel like that filthy brown person might be trespassing. You can trust that this is really happening, because it’s in the news.

Delightfully, Axios reporter April Rubin trained at the New York Times. Here’s how she starts this story:

    Arizona Republicans are advancing a bill that would allow people to legally kill someone accused of attempting to trespass or actively trespassing on their property.

    The big picture: The legislation, which is expected to be vetoed if it reaches the state’s Democratic governor, would legalize the murder of undocumented immigrants, who often have to cross ranches that sit on the state’s border with Mexico.

These monsters, they’re legalizing the murder of undocumented migrants.

So, as always, let’s read the actual bill:

A person in lawful possession of property can threaten deadly force, or potentially use deadly force, in response to an act of criminal trespassing: You can go out on your property with a gun and tell a trespasser to get lost.

But Subsection B is the key to the actual use of deadly force, and journalists aren’t saying anything about it (emphasis added): “A person may use deadly physical force under subsection A only in the defense of himself or third persons as described in sections 13-405 and 13-406,” existing sections of Arizona state law. The bill explicitly references an existing legal standard for the use of deadly force.

January 28, 2024

We had to destroy the democracy to save it

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Matt Taibi asks if there’s already an “electoral fix” in place, as we see more and more evidence that Joe Biden and the Democrats will stop at nothing to keep Trump — and would-be Democratic challengers — off the ballot completely:

The fix is in. To “protect democracy”, democracy is already being canceled. We just haven’t admitted the implications of this to ourselves yet.

On Sunday, January 14th, NBC News ran an eye-catching story: “Fears grow that Trump will use the military in ‘dictatorial ways’ if he returns to the White House”. It described “a loose-knit network of public interest groups and lawmakers” that is “quietly” making plans to “foil any efforts to expand presidential power” on the part of Donald Trump.

The piece quoted an array of former high-ranking officials, all insisting Trump will misuse the Department of Defense to execute civilian political aims. Since Joe Biden’s team “leaked” a strategy memo in late December listing “Trump is an existential threat to democracy” as Campaign 2024’s central talking point, surrogates have worked overtime to insert existential or democracy in quotes. This was no different:

“We’re about 30 seconds away from the Armageddon clock when it comes to democracy,” said Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, William Cohen, adding that Trump is “a clear and present danger to our democracy”. Skye Perryman of Democracy Forward, one of the advocacy groups organizing the “loose” coalition, said, “We believe this is an existential moment for American democracy”. Declared former CIA and defense chief Leon Panetta: “Like any good dictator, he’s going to try to use the military to basically perform his will”.

Former Acting Assistant Attorney General for National Security at the U.S. Department of Justice and current visiting Georgetown law professor Mary McCord was one of the few coalition participants quoted by name. She said:

    We’re already starting to put together a team to think through the most damaging types of things that he [Trump] might do so that we’re ready to bring lawsuits if we have to.

The group was formed by at least two organizations that have been hyperactive in filing lawsuits against Trump and Trump-related figures over the years: the aforementioned Democracy Forward, chaired by former Perkins Coie and Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Marc Elias, and Protect Democracy, a ubiquitous non-profit run by a phalanx of former Obama administration lawyers like Ian Bassin, and funded at least in part by LinkedIn magnate Reid Hoffman.

The article implied a future Trump presidency will necessitate new forms of external control over the military. It cited Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal’s bill to “clarify” the Insurrection Act, a 1792 law that empowers the president to deploy the military to quell domestic rebellion. Blumenthal’s act would add a requirement that Congress or courts ratify presidential decisions to deploy the military at home, seeking essentially to attach a congressional breathalyzer to the presidential steering wheel.

NBC’s quotes from former high-ranking defense and intelligence officials about possible preemptive mutiny were interesting on their own. However, the really striking twist was that we’d read the story before.

Summer, 2020. The TIP media blitz.

For over a year, the Biden administration and its surrogates have dropped hint after hint that the plan for winning in 2024 — against Donald Trump or anyone else — might involve something other than voting. Lawsuits in multiple states have been filed to remove Trump from the ballot; primaries have been canceled or invalidated; an ominous Washington Post editorial by Robert Kagan, husband to senior State official Victoria Nuland, read like an APB to assassins to head off an “inevitable” Trump dictatorship; and on January 11th of this year, leaders of a third party group called “No Labels” sent an amazing letter to the Department of Justice, complaining of a “conspiracy” to stop alternative votes.

January 27, 2024

Flashpoint: Texas

Filed under: Government, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Theophilus Chilton wonders if you’re ready for a full-blown Constitutional crisis:

I’m sure that by now, we’re all aware of what is continuing to take place down in Texas. Far from backing down in his standoff with FedGov over the seizure of Shelby Park in Eagle Pass and subsequent expulsion of federal agents, Gov. Abbott has directed the state’s National Guard to continue interdicting illegal immigrants. Indeed, in response to the recent SCOTUS decision allowing the Feds to dismantle the razor wire Texas installed, they’ve simply installed more, in direct defiance of the wishes of the Regime. The Regime has now responded by giving Abbott and Texas an ultimatum — restore control of the park to the Federal government by the afternoon of January 26, or … well … something. Whether the governor ultimately continues to tell the Feds to get bent remains to be seen, but so far the trend is looking pretty good.

Of course, it helps that — for once — Republicans across the country have actually found a little courage to support doing what’s right. As of writing this, the Republican governors of 25 other states have all issued statements of support for Texas’ position. Hence, there are now an outright majority of states whose executives (who control their various National and State Guards) are publicly backing Texan efforts to secure our border. Many of these governors have explicitly cited the Biden administration’s continued abandonment of the federal government’s constitutional duty to protect the several states from invasion and the constitutional right of the states to act in their own defence as sovereign entities in their own right.

Needless to say, this is a constitutional crisis that would not have been conceivable even twenty years ago (well, except for this one movie that seems to have been amazingly prescient). Since 1865, the doctrine of absolute federal supremacy has been in force and the balance of power between the state and national governments has inexorably trended in Washington, DC’s favour. Occasional spurts of opposition to the contrary, most of the previous incipient talk by states about “reining in the federal government” generally proved to be all words and no action. On a few things (e.g. marijuana legalisation), the Regime allowed states to “oppose” federal policy if these were policies that the Regime wanted to change anywise but couldn’t “officially” at the federal level. But on anything that was a true Regime priority, FedGov brooked no dissent. So it is now, but the calculus has changed. What would have been impossible in 2003 is now on the verge of happening in 2023.

This all highlights the fundamental illegitimacy of our current federal government. There is no moral or legal case to be made to justify the actions of the Biden administration. The federal Constitution both enjoins the federal government to protect the states from foreign invasion (which being overrun with millions of foreigners breaking our laws most certainly counts as) and also grants the states the right to protect their own borders and sovereignty. Instead of doing this, the Biden administration has been purposefully inviting hordes of migrants to enter this country. Indeed, this is being encouraged in contravention to statutory federal law as well. Further, if Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is correct (and he almost assuredly is), the administration has even been partnering with criminal cartels to smuggle illegals into this country. All in all, there is absolutely no justification to be credibly made for the Regime’s actions and anyone who supports them are in opposition to the Constitution, the laws, and the people of this land.

Despite the fevered ravings of various progressive “Christians” on social media, the moral argument for allowing the Regime to throw the gates open is nonsense. Indeed, the whole attempt to craft a “biblical” argument for open borders is simple-minded and ignorant of the relevant scriptural and historical context. Simply put, the Bible’s approach to “the stranger” falls into line with common ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean modes of hospitality that were meant to “tame” the foreigner and integrate him into a society, thus preventing him from causing disruption to that society. If that couldn’t be accomplished, then the “inhospitable foreigner” was either to be expelled or eliminated. Needless to say, this applied only to individuals or small family groups — large masses of foreigners attempting to enter an ancient country would have been rightly recognised as an invasion and dealt with accordingly.

However, the illegitimacy of the current Regime and its actions alone can’t explain why the Republicans have closed ranks so precipitously. After all, Republican politicians are not exactly known for their intestinal fortitude when faced with opposition of any kind. Yet, even Northeastern moderate squishes like New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu have signed onto supporting Texas in this. Something changed that has caused the GOP, almost as a whole, to support this, either openly or tacitly.

January 17, 2024

“The thing liberals don’t understand about the average Republican voter in 2024 is that they hate the Republican Party”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

In The Free Press, Batya Ungar-Sargon attempts to explain at least one aspect of the inexplicable-to-liberals Trump appeal for many Republican voters:

Donald Trump addresses a rally in Nashville, TN in March 2017.
Photo released by the Office of the President of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

To the surprise of no one and the dismay of the liberal commentariat class, former president Donald Trump has crushed the first GOP primary election.

Iowa, which voted twice for Barack Obama before flipping to Trump in 2016, gave Trump a decisive win Monday night. And in Iowa, as in the Republican Party and the country more generally, the class divide was the defining feature of the night.

According to MSNBC’s early entrance polls, Trump won voters without a college degree by 65 percent, to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s 17 percent and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s scant 8 percent. Trump won college grads, too, but by a much slimmer margin — just 35 percent caucused for Trump. Haley, meanwhile, got nearly as many — 33 percent, with DeSantis trailing at 23 percent. The AP had a similar breakdown.

That’s a 30-point gap in support for Trump — and a 25-point gap for Haley. It’s the gulf separating the college-educated from the working-class, who don’t just have different candidates of choice but different concerns, different struggles, and different priorities.

Working-class Americans are worried about the economy, immigration, our foreign entanglements, and the disappearing American Dream — all issues Donald Trump not only talks about but has a solid record on. Haley represents the GOP that Trump replaced — the free-market, chamber-of-commerce, nation-building version of the party that is dominated by a donor class whose interests are completely at odds with those of the working class.

Unfortunately for Haley, her party is now the party of the working class. In 2020, Bloomberg found that truckers, plumbers, machinists, painters, corrections officers, and maintenance employees were among the occupations most likely to donate to Trump (Biden got the lion’s share of writers and authors, editors, therapists, business analysts, HR department staff, and bankers.) As much as the Republican donor class wishes Haley were the party’s nominee, there’s no going back for your average corrections officer.

The thing liberals don’t understand about the average Republican voter in 2024 is that they hate the Republican Party. The average liberal feels well-represented by the Democratic Party because the Democrats’ base, like the party leadership, are college-educated elites. They share the same list of priorities. But the average Republican voter is working class and truly loathes the Bush-era version of the Republican Party, which meant tax cuts for the rich, failed wars, and an economic agenda that outsourced jobs to China.

Whether they realize it or not, this is why Democrats truly hate Trump. Without him, the left would soon have had a pretty permanent monopoly on power.

But if Iowa is any indication, not so soon after all.

Should Trump manage not to get thrown off the ballot (or sent to jail) by the time the election rolls around, he can’t count on Justin Trudeau for support:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says voters in the United States will face a choice later this year between optimism for the future or nostalgia for a past that never existed.

Trudeau made the comments in Montreal today to a business crowd in reference to Donald Trump’s victory Monday in the Iowa Republican caucuses, which gives the former president an early lead for the Republican nomination ahead of the November election.

The prime minister says a second Trump presidency would be difficult for the Canadian government, as there are many issues on which he and former president disagree.

On Monday, a majority of Iowa Republican supporters said they back Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

Though he didn’t mention Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre by name, Trudeau said Canadians will face a similar choice to American voters when they head to the polls.

October 16, 2023

In ?praise? of the “spoils system”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Government, History, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Glenn Reynolds on the way the US government’s structure changed from the “spoils system” of the early republic to the modern “professional” civil service of today:

Andrew Jackson sitting on a hog on top of a tomb with the inscription “To the victors belong the spoils”.
Political cartoon by Thomas Nast, Harper’s Weekly, 28 April, 1877.

America’s institutions need structural reform. We need it in academia, we need it in the corporate world, and we need it in government. In all of these fields, the structures, incentives, and institutions that have grown up over time have been destructive, and need to be fundamentally transformed.

I’ll be writing about all of these things down the line, but for now let’s start with government. Though you don’t hear a lot about it on the right, the left is all bent out of shape over the prospect that a Republican administration elected in 2024 might partially deconstruct the existing protected civil service. I, on the other hand, am excited about that prospect, and only wish they’d go farther.

Prior to the adoption of the Pendleton Act in 1883, government employment operated according to the “spoils system”, which meant that hiring in the executive branch was controlled by the Executive. When a new administration came in, everyone’s job was up for grabs, at least potentially. This “rotation in office” had several advantages, which were widely appreciated at the time, and propounded by presidents from Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln.

    Jackson argued that one serving in government for too long would inevitably lose sight of the public interest and come to use office for personal gain. He also maintained that government was or could be made simple enough for men of ordinary ability and experience, so ‘more is lost by the long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained by their experience’.1

Contrary to popular belief, though, the arrival of a new president didn’t mean that everyone left. Even Andrew Jackson, upon taking office, replaced only about 10% of the federal work force with his own people. Every president understood the value of continuity, and hiring new people is hard work.

But under the spoils system, the fact that the president could replace anyone mean that everyone worked for him. And that meant both that everyone was responsible to the president, and that the president was responsible for everyone in the government, and everything the government did. This is consistent with the Constitution’s vesting clause, which provides that “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” If the executive branch does it, it’s an executive power, and if it’s an executive power it should be controlled by the president.

Contrast this to a “professional” civil service, in which the president does neither the hiring nor the firing, except with regard to a comparatively small number of senior officials. The civil service doesn’t think of itself as working for the president, really, and will happily drag its feet when it doesn’t like the president’s priorities. And when the bureaucracy misbehaves, or fails to perform, the president can, at least to a degree, blame its recalcitrance for the trouble or lack of results that occurs.

Congress is also let off the hook, yet simultaneously weirdly empowered. Congress can blame “the bureaucracy” for bad things, even when those things result from laws that Congress has passed. Then it can turn around and “help” constituents by intervening with the bureaucracy it has rendered dysfunctional, earning gratitude that may be deserved in a narrow sense, but not in terms of the big picture.

Under a spoils system, on the other hand, nobody gets off the hook. If the bureaucracy misbehaves, the president can fire the misbehavers. If Congress is unhappy with what bureaucrats do, they can demand that the president fire them, and make an election issue out of it if they want.

So why did we wind up with a civil service? As is typical, the fantasy of a neutral, efficient, expert civil service was laid next to the reality of a messy functioning government. But, as is also typical, the fantasy in practice turned out to be considerably less appealing than as proposed.


    1. Robert Maranto, Thinking the Unthinkable in Public Administration: A Case for Spoils in the Federal Bureaucracy, Administration & Society, January 1998, 623,625.

October 8, 2023

Can we get back to de mortuis nil nisi bonum any time soon?

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The Latin phrase refers to speaking nothing but good of the (recently) deceased, but as partisan passions rise, the urge to wave the bloody shirt and denigrate the dead overwhelms decency and common sense:

Of all the vices that can contribute to the collapse of civil society, a special place of honor surely needs to be reserved for mocking the newly murdered.

I don’t mean mocking the newly dead. The somewhat mawkish view that no ill should be spoken of the recently departed has always seemed rather priggish to me. It would, in fact, be absurd if we decided that in the wake of, say, Mitch McConnell’s or Noam Chomsky’s death, we couldn’t criticize their lives, careers, and beliefs. “If they’d given him an enema, they could have buried him in a matchbox” was my old friend Christopher Hitchens’ comment on the passing of Jerry Falwell. Rude, surely. Too soon, sure. But a swipe, not a gloat. And on Fox News. To Ralph Reed.

What crosses the line of what Orwell prized as “common decency” is using the occasion of someone’s untimely death to say they deserved it. “The homosexuals have declared war on nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution” was Pat Buchanan’s charming response to the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic. In the same vein today, on the other side as it were, there’s a “Herman Cain Award” subreddit with half a million members, devoted to naming and mocking vaccine skeptics who subsequently died of Covid. A giant, unified chorus of “ha-ha”s across the decades.

Social media and CCTV cameras have made the schadenfreude more visceral. This past week, a young “social justice” activist, Ryan Carson, was knifed to death on the street by a deranged 18-year-old assailant, as Carson’s girlfriend, paralyzed with shock, looked on. We might once have just heard of or read about this attack. Now we see it as it happens. Its reach might once have been limited by media gatekeepers. Now it can reach millions in a matter of hours on social media. And if you’re Elon Musk and your strategy for Twitter is to make it a more visual, visceral, sticky site, it’s gold. Within hours of Carson’s death, his last, terrifying moments were accessible to millions: a snuff video in all but name, now available to be monetized by gawkers.

And indecent gawkers. “It’s good to make fun of people who support criminals when they get murdered by criminals,” commented one on Twitter. “Ryan Carson took the phrase ‘bleeding heart liberal’ way too literally,” said another. (Carson’s actual heart was pierced by the murder weapon.) Other virtual tricoteuses went after the traumatized bystander: “Ryan Carson’s girlfriend is the Douche of the Week. 1. Showed almost no concern as her guy was murdered. 2. Expressed zero concern as he lay on the ground dying. Didn’t even bend down. 3. Refused to give police the murderer’s description. Soulless Marxist.” Another: “WHAT??? Ryan Carson’s girlfriend … started a GoFundMe page to make money off his death. I would tell her to eat trash but that’s cannibalism.” Or this: “She didn’t react when he was stabbed but she sure didn’t hesitate to raise $50k on go fund me. Makes you wonder.”

Makes you wonder what exactly? Twitter reminds me of Trump: you can’t believe it can go lower — until it always does.

I should stipulate, I suppose, that I doubt I would have been one of Ryan Carson’s favorite writers. His views on crime and policing were, to my mind, hopelessly naive and deeply counter-productive for real social justice. He also once tweeted upon news of Rush Limbaugh’s death — “lmao hell yeah” — and called himself, presumably with a wink, “COO of Antifa.” But many of us have lost our moral bearings in this cold civil war. And Carson was a human being, son of a mother and father, murdered senselessly, traumatizing a whole host of others. In that context, nothing else matters but his humanity. Lambaste his views; but don’t delight in his death even as millions can see his final, deeply vulnerable moments of panic and fear.

The same should be said to the online trolls who went after Josh Kruger, a lefty Philly journalist (and Dish reader) killed in his home this week, and Pava LaPere, a BLM-touting entrepreneur in Baltimore murdered brutally the week before. (I’ll spare you the Twitter comments.) The impulse to use anything to advance a narrative: this is how far we’ve sunk into bitter, vicious tribalism.

And is it me or is Musk’s Twitter obviously making all this worse, putting out more and more videos of street crime, bar fights, robberies, and brawls, often with racial tension fueling them? In our collective psyche there is the problem of mentally ill people committing crimes on the streets, and there is also the problem of everyone constantly seeing videos of mentally ill people committing crimes on the streets. It distorts our judgment; it privileges the vivid and violent over the lucid and peaceful. It normalizes and numbs us to violence and can incentivize it. And this emotive tribal priming makes us more likely to react to the deaths of our political opponents with glee.

September 9, 2023

The Republican race – “There don’t seem to be a lot of takers for ‘pretending this is normal'”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Mark Steyn on the establishment GOP’s attempt to run the 2024 campaign as though nothing has changed other than the calendar:

I mentioned on Monday that on his long-running Radio Derb John Derbyshire drew his listeners’ attention to an observation of yours truly:

    I can’t improve on Steyn — nobody can — so I’ll just quote him from that piece.

I always feel Derb thinks I’m a bit of a pantywaist on the hardcore issues, but in today’s America even a reasonably sentient pantywaist should be able to get to the nub of the issue. Here’s the bit Derb quoted:

    So two years later the American Right still talks about the justice system and the election campaign as if either term means what it does in functioning societies. As I said above, I don’t intend to comment on this week’s Trump indictment either, nor do I wish to talk about who would make the best president, who has the best platform, who has the skill-set to implement the platform … That would be all well and good if we were in, say, France, but, when the dirty stinking rotten corrupt U.S. justice system is criminalizing political opposition, there’s no point pretending this is a normal situation, right?

“There’s no point pretending this is a normal situation, right?” And yet at least three-quarters of the candidates in that Republican debate insisted on doing just that: This is just a normal quadrennial election in the greatest country in the history of countries where we’re renowned around the planet for our uniquely peaceful “peaceful transfer of power”, etc, etc.

Sorry, I don’t buy that — and evidently nor does the GOP base. Which is why Trump has a forty-point lead over his nearest rival, and Nikki Haley’s alleged triumph on stage in that debate has seen her numbers soar to — stand well back!6.1 per cent. The avowedly normal vice-president, senator and three governors nipping at her heels can barely muster ten percent between them. There don’t seem to be a lot of takers for “pretending this is normal”.

John Derbyshire quoted me in the context of the latest sentences on the January 6th “insurrectionists”. Dominic Pezzola broke a window at the Capitol and was given ten years; the government had asked for twenty. Joseph Biggs moved a crowd-control barrier and was sentenced to seventeen years; the government had wanted him banged up for thirty-three.

So the prosecutors and the judges seem to have reached a cozy understanding that, whatever sentence the former demand, the Court will be totally reasonable and cut in half. You want another? The feds demanded thirty years for Zachary Rehl; the judge gave him fifteen. And this is after two-and-a-half years in gaol awaiting their “constitutional right” (don’t wave that constitution at me!) to a speedy trial.

Oops, wait, I spoke too soon. The US Attorney wanted thirty-three years for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, but this time the judge decided to up it to two-thirds of the feds’ demand: twenty-two years. For a guy who wasn’t in Washington on January 6th.

All this of course in an ugly and violent land where actual career criminals who like to beat up disabled women with their own canes have the run of the playground. And with the connivance and support of the Democrat Party, even when very occasionally it all goes wrong for one of their own.

Oh, well. Mr Tarrio is a Proud Boy. I’m not really a Proud Boys type, if only because their founder, Gavin McInnes, has been a bit of an arse about me re Cockwombling Cary Katz and the CRTV cases. Still, I’m all about first principles — and a decade for breaking a window is not, even by lousy American standards, the verdict of a “justice” system.

September 6, 2023

Some key planks from Scott Alexander’s presidential platform

Filed under: Education, Military, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I was a bit surprised to find that Scott Alexander has decided to toss his hat into not one, but two party primaries for the 2024 presidential nomination:

The American people deserve a choice. They deserve a candidate who will reject the failed policies of the past and embrace the failed policies of the future. It is my honor to announce I am throwing my hat into both the Democratic and Republican primaries (to double my chances), with the following platform:

Ensure Naval Supremacy And Reduce Wealth Inequality By Bringing Back The Liturgy

The liturgy was a custom of ancient Athens. When the state needed something (usually a new warship) it would ask for volunteers among its richest citizens. Usually one would step up to gain glory or avoid scorn; if nobody did, the courts were allowed to choose the richest person who hadn’t helped out recently. The liturgist would fund the warship and command it as captain for two years, after which his debt to the state was considered discharged and he was given a golden crown. Historians treat the liturgy as a gray area between voluntary service and compulsory taxation; most rich Athenians were eager to serve and gain the relevant honor, but they also knew that if they didn’t, they could be compelled to perform the same service with less benefit to their personal reputation.

Defense analysts warn that America’s naval dominance is declining:

    Only 25 per cent of America’s 114 commissioned surface combatants (cruisers, destroyers, and littoral combat ships) are less than a decade old. By comparison more than 80 per cent of China’s 141 destroyers, frigates, and corvettes have been commissioned in the past decade. In the same time period, the United States commissioned 30 surface combatants … The nearly 600-ship Navy of the late 1980s deployed only 15 per cent of the fleet on average. Today, with fewer than 300 ships, the US Navy deploys more than 35 per cent to service its global missions, contributing to a material death spiral.

So America is short on warships. But it is very long on rich people with big egos. An aircraft carrier would cost the richest American billionaires about the same fraction of their wealth as a trireme cost the richest Athenian aristocrats. So I say: bring back the liturgy!

The American rich already enjoy spending their money on exciting vehicles — yachts for the normies, rockets for the more ambitious, Titanic submersibles for the suicidal. Why not redirect this impulse towards public service? Imagine the fear it would strike into the hearts of the Chinese when the USS Musk enters Ludicrous Mode in the waters off the Taiwan Strait, with Elon himself at the wheel. Imagine how efficiently the USS Jeff Bezos will deliver its payloads! And does anyone doubt that billionaires – usually careful to avoid taxes — will jump at the chance to do this?

The Athenians had a parallel liturgy for rich people who would select and sponsor theater productions, but I think we can skip this one for now.

[…]

Legalize Lying About Your College On Resumes

Colleges trap Americans in a cycle of burdensome loans and act to reinforce class privilege. I have previously advocated making college degree a protected characteristic which it is illegal to ask people about on job applications. But this would be hard to enforce, and people would come up with other ways to communicate their education level.

So let’s think different: let’s make it legal to lie about your college on resumes (it is already not technically illegal to lie on a resume, but companies can ask for slightly different forms of corroboration which it is illegal to lie on). Everyone can just say “Harvard”, and nobody will have any unfair advantage over anyone else.

Start An Internet-Pop-Up Trade War With The European Union

For too long, Americans have groaned under the weight of foreign cookie-related-pop-ups which they and their elected representatives have no control over. It’s time to fight back.

When I am elected, I will mandate that all American websites serve popups to European Union residents explaining why the GDPR is annoying and why it affects even Americans who have no say in it. If the Europeans want to be able to access Google, Facebook, Twitter, or any other US-based site without clicking “I understand” every time they reload it, they’ll have to pressure their government to do something about GDPR.

Appoint Donald Trump Constitutional Monarch

This would require a constitutional amendment, but I’m sure I could convince enough people.

The British experience suggests that the role of a constitutional monarch is to flaunt how rich they are, get 24-7 news coverage regardless of whether or not they do anything interesting, and have scandals. Donald Trump is the best person in the world at all three of these things

Trump wants to be on top, but is not that interested in governing. Meanwhile, American liberals (by revealed preference) want to continue thinking about him every hour of every day forever, but also don’t want him to govern. Constitutional monarchy would satisfy everyone’s preferences. If Trump is destined to destroy democracy — and everyone agrees that he is — let’s make it happen as gently and non-destructively as possible.

Obviously the royal family can’t participate in regular electoral politics, which means no Trump would ever be able to run for office ever again. This is the only way we are ever getting rid of them, you know this is true, please don’t throw away this chance.

I would support reverse primogeniture-based inheritance — ie the youngest son takes the throne — just so we can have a “King Barron”.

August 17, 2023

Lawfare as politics by other means

Filed under: Law, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Bray explains why getting rid of the Donald Trump candidacy wouldn’t even begin to solve the real problems in US politics today:

Donald Trump has been charged with crimes, so the Republican Party should drop him as a candidate and move on to someone else who hasn’t been indicted. That’ll solve the problem!

It won’t. The problem is lawfare. The Republican governor of Wisconsin defeated a recall effort, so Democratic district attorneys launched a long series of predawn raids on his supporters — until the courts made them stop. The Republican governor of Texas won four terms, but then was indicted by the office of a Democratic district attorney — for a budget veto, an action within his constitutional authority. Again, the courts intervened, and the legally absurd charges were dismissed.

Today, scumbag California Assemblyman Evan Low, a uniquely craven publicity chaser even by the local standards, proudly announces that he’s just introduced a legislative resolution calling for the federal government to open a criminal investigation into Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

So. Get rid of Trump and nominate DeSan— oh, wait. Okay, name someone, anyone: Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, a utility nominee to be named later in exchange for three rookie infielders. Oh no, it turns out that the new nominee is under criminal investigation for [TBD]! As of, uh, tomorrow.

I have mixed feelings about Donald Trump, who supported pandemic lockdowns and school closures and the rushed development of mRNA injections with limited testing. Dumping him as a candidate because he’s been indicted misses the point. No Republican candidate will run for the presidency without being indicted, unless he’s a court-eunuch Mitt Romney figure, too safe to bother attacking.

August 4, 2023

Vivek Ramaswamy as “Trump 2.0”

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Bari Weiss considers Vivek Ramaswamy as an improved version of Donald Trump, appealing to a similar audience but with less obvious baggage. Here are some excerpts from her recent interview with Ramaswamy:

Vivek Ramaswamy and his family.
Detail of a photo from his campaign website, https://www.vivekramaswamy.com/

BW: Politics is all about storytelling, and the winning candidate — or the candidate that catches fire — is almost always the one with the best story. What is your story, and why is it the story that Americans are craving right now?

VR: Whether Americans are craving it or not, that’ll be for them to decide. But I’ll tell you what my story is. I’m the embodiment of the American dream. My parents came to this country over 40 years ago with almost no money. I’ve gone on to found multibillion-dollar companies that created value by doing valuable things for other people, developing five medicines that are FDA approved today. One of them is a life-saving therapy for kids, another one for prostate cancer. I did it while getting married, while bringing two sons into this world, while following my faith in God, while growing up with the ultimate privilege in this country. And I think the thing that’s extraordinary about that story is that it isn’t extraordinary. It is the story of this country. And I don’t think we’re in decline. I think we are still a nation in our ascent, in the early stages of our ascent actually, a nation whose best days are still ahead. I think it takes someone in my shoes to see our nation that way, too. That’s truly what pulled me into the race.

BW: There’s a lot of people running on a reformist platform. You’re running on a radical or a revolutionary one. You say America needs a second revolution. Many people hear revolution, and they think bloodshed and violence. What do you mean by that, and what does that revolution look like?

VR: To me, it does not mean bloodshed and violence, but it means a revival of the ideals that set this nation into motion in 1776. I do think we live in a 1776 moment. I think that the American bargain was built on the idea that we, the people, determine how we settle our political differences through free speech and open debate in the public square where every person’s voice and vote counts equally. That is self-governance. And I think that there is the Old World vision now rearing its head in multiple forms that says, no, we the people cannot be trusted. The citizens of a nation cannot be trusted to determine what’s actually good for them — so we, the intelligentsia, must make that determination centrally at large. I stand on the side of the American Revolution, the ideals that birthed this nation. I think we live in a moment where we have to confront those radical ideals. I think that the American ideals are very fundamentally radical ideals: self-governance, free speech, like absolute free speech, the idea that you get ahead through unbridled meritocracy, the unbridled pursuit of excellence, the steadfast commitment to the rule of law rather than the whims of men. These are radical ideals, because for most of human history, it was done the other way. I think it is the radicalism of the American Revolution and those ideals that are our last best chance for national unity, because that is what actually binds us together across our diverse attributes. And without embracing that radicalism, I think we’re nothing.

BW: You’re incredibly entertaining. You have a view on everything. You’re a phenomenal talker, which will take you far. And remarkably, as of the latest polls, you’re third behind Trump and DeSantis. But many commentators say that ultimately, you have no shot at the nomination. Why is that conventional wisdom wrong about you?

VR: Everyone seems to be shocked where I am right now. I’m not surprised. This is exactly where we expected to be. The reality is, I think people are hungry for the unfiltered truth. I would rather speak the truth about my own beliefs at every step and lose the election than to play some political Snakes and Ladders. And I believe that our voters across this country have a good sixth sense for being able to tell the difference for somebody who’s actually sharing their true beliefs versus somebody who’s giving them carefully constructed, poll-tested slogans. And that is the competitive advantage. My gut instinct is we’re going to win this election. We’re going to win it in a landslide of a margin similar to what Reagan delivered in 1980.

BW: So you’re going to be the Obama of this race, not the Andrew Yang?

VR: I’m going to be the Vivek Ramaswamy of this race, and that’s what I’m committed to being.

At 7% in the polls at the moment, Ramaswamy is a long-shot to win the Republican nomination, but you’ll know if his chances are improving when the media slow-walks the Bad Orange Man stories and starts criticizing Ramaswamy (or “Bad Curry Man” as some online wits have dubbed him).

May 9, 2023

The Republicans’ moment in the sun rain

Filed under: Britain — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

I joked on Coronation Day that the only people not trying to have a good experience there were the British republicans, but they did get a bit more attention due to their proximity to the Royal Procession than they normally manage:

I mentioned before that it was a happy crowd, with high spirits. The crowd didn’t strike me as remarkable, which is to say, there wasn’t anything particularly notable about it. It was mixed. You’d find every age group and colour there, as well as a smattering of obvious tourists. Lots of people had little Union Jacks they would wave or tuck into the brims of hats or under backpack straps. Some wore full-sized flags as capes. A few young men, who’d obviously been drinking either since early that morning or perhaps the night before, were there in cheap royalty costumes — robes and plastic crowns. The way they were going, I had doubts they’d last much longer. One in particular seemed a bit wobbly on his feet.

One young woman with them had somehow attached a frisbee to her head, in delightfully mockery of the absurd hats women seem to love wearing to royal events. It made me laugh. So begins and ends The Line‘s coronation-related hat commentary.

One of a collection of photos from Kim du Toit’s post-coronation post showing many (perhaps most) of the Republican protestors along the parade route.
https://www.kimdutoit.com/2023/05/08/monday-funnies-post-coronation-edition/

Quite near to the front of the viewing area, just off to the left of Nelson’s Column, was a group of a few dozen republican protesters. I have to remind my North American readers — I don’t mean U.S. Republicans, the of-late MAGA-infused husk of the once Grand Old Party. These are British republicans, an arguably even more baffling breed: these are the people that want Britain to be a republic. They too were a mixed group, but as I wandered over to join them, I did note something interesting. I had expected them to be younger and more ethnically diverse than the rest of the crowd. They weren’t. I don’t know if I’d go as far as saying that they were less diverse, but my sense was that, at least in terms of the age of the crowd of protesters, maybe they were a touch older than the rest? In any case, it would have been a near-run thing, but that was one of the only things that really jumped out at me about the protest. My assumption that they’d be younger, more diverse, more obviously progressive was wrong. If they’d dropped their yellow flags and banners and quit their chanting of “NOT MY KING!”, they’d have blended in with the rest.

It started to rain around this time. It’s England, of course it was raining. I’d come prepared with a rain jacket so wasn’t deterred, but the rain did have one admittedly lousy impact. Umbrellas. I’d been gradually able to work my way up quite close to the front of the crowd — I’d stuck close to the republicans and it seems that many people tried to give them a wide berth, and I’d been able to shuffle my way gradually forward. Nelson’s Column was to the right, behind me. To my right and front was Admiralty Arch. And off in the distance, but not too far, was Westminster Abbey itself. It was a pretty perfect place to view the procession.

But for the umbrellas. Once they opened up, all one could see was umbrellas.

And that’s how it stayed, to be honest. Troops began to march past in perfect ranks. Bands struck up patriotic songs. The crowd cheered and more than a few sang. One loud female voice — a surprisingly lovely one — struck up The Star Spangled Banner — which was either some kind of deliberate prank or just a very historically confused soul getting caught up in the moment. I heard the clopping of hooves and the crowd went absolutely wild, and suddenly, thousands of arms shot up into the air holding smartphones, every person present seeking a better angle for their videos. The arms and the umbrellas made it virtually impossible to see a damn thing. (See this video by a New York Times team: they must have been standing within 50 feet of where I was, a bit off to my left. You’ll see what I mean.)

That was from Matt Gurney’s sleep-deprived view of the procession from The Line (that’s not editorializing on my part — he hadn’t slept on the plane from Toronto and got to London at 7am on Coronation Day). In what seemed like a useful break in the public celebrations, he snuck away to get some sustenance and be out of the rain for a bit. When he returned it was lowlight time for the Republicans:

After I’d polished off the pint, I headed back out, back to the square, and that’s where things got interesting. I figured I’d get back to my former spot near the chanting republicans, and did so, no problem. But I noticed there suddenly seemed to be an awful lot of cops around … all heading that way. As in: right toward me, and the chanting people I was standing near. Oops. I left, working my way around the crowd, heading back the way I came from my hotel, and found myself actually facing a rank of advancing cops. Oops again. One had a badge that said inspector, and I walked right up and told him I was a Canadian journalist just watching things. He grinned at me and said, “Alright, mate, come this way,” and had a security guard walk me through the police. I thus ended up missing what has proven to be a controversial event and perhaps the only unhappy moment I know of during the coronation, at least in my area: a bunch of the chanting republicans were arrested just moments after I got out of dodge, and then large metal screen barriers were thrown up, closing off the square due to, apparently, overcrowding. People could leave but no one new could enter.

My sense, as I walked away, was that there was no reason to arrest anyone. (And as I said, this is proving controversial.) I hadn’t seen anything getting out of hand. There had been some chanting and counter-chanting and even some heckling back and forth, but it had all seemed in good enough spirits. Even some of the boos sent at the republicans — two young men with flags had been hamming it up in the main crowd, apart from the main blob of republicans — had seemed in good humour. I don’t know what the police saw or knew. But I couldn’t tell you why they’d moved then and not before, or later. As for overcrowding, I don’t think so. The square really wasn’t all that full. It seemed less full at that moment than it had been when the procession had passed on the way to the abbey. But the barriers seemed to go up quickly, everywhere. Literally everywhere.

And though I was glad to have avoided getting caught up in the Cops vs. Chanting Republicans, I was now on the wrong side of the barriers.

In The Critic, Kittie Helmick recounts finding herself in the vicinity of the “NOT MY KING!” group:

“You seem to find this whole thing rather amusing,” snapped a short angry man with a Not My King sign, about half an hour into the Republic protest against the coronation of King Charles III. I must admit I did. Kettled into a small enclave just off Trafalgar Square, an angry swell of old school socialists, Twitter anarchists, Lib Dem mums, eccentric vicars, boomer hippies, blue haired students and Covid conspiracists had somehow found themselves part of the coronation spectacle. Before the bells of St Martin in the Fields, the full shouty brunt of British republicanism was aimed at a bewildered stream of Chinese tourists and young families out for a day in London.

The survival of the British monarchy is one of the great wonders of modern history. Spending the morning of the coronation with Republic, it began to seem less mysterious. Despite everything in recent years, the Monarchy is still liked more than most of our institutions and probably every one of our elected politicians. No one gathered there could really explain why. The arguments were articulated in between the shouty chanting: things about “modern Democracy” and a “family of Lizards”, none of which quite landed the blow as the day unfolded around us.

Somewhere beyond the crowds, towards Westminster Abbey, an ageing, eccentric dandyish farmer, who secretly wants to be King of Transylvania, was being anointed in holy oil and crowned by an Archbishop wearing hearing aids in a seven hundred year old chair vandalised by 18th century schoolboys. All the while this ceremony was being fawned over across the world by everyone from Kay Burley to one of the world’s most remote tribes. None of it made sense, and that is precisely the point.

Earlier that morning, the CEO of Republic Graham Smith, a man not even the protestors could name, achieved the greatest success of his kind since Cromwell, by being arrested at the hands of the jobsworth Met. For a brief moment, a shiver of excitement spread through the protest. Whilst the country was entranced by a fugue of sombre ritual and Zadok the Priest, Republic were experiencing their own desired reality unfold on the streets of London. Here was a police state enforcing the will of a “politically illiterate” nation brainwashed by bunting and tabloid journalism. The mask was finally off. The incoherent gaggle of shouty slogans and reddit thread arguments made sense. The fight was here and now.

Except that was all a fantasy too. As stupid as the arrests were, nothing could disguise the fact this was a fringe event for a movement that just can’t seem to take off — a Coronation curio to gawp at. “They’re a bunch of wronguns, aren’t they?” said one bored steward to me as we watched a man larping Les Miserables as he chanted Not My King at a trio of giggling Chinese students. The deeper I dug into the many arguments and protestations offered as an alternative to the “fairytale” of monarchy, the more the core transgressive energy of British republicanism revealed itself. It is itself strangely twee and fantastical. Rid us of the Royals, and everything will become better. Gone will be the “psychological baggage” of Britain’s past holding us back. Democracy will triumph. The crown jewels will be sold off and spent on food banks. The plebs will not worship hereditary blood, but NHS rainbows. Britain will become less racist, elitist and classist. The left might even win an election. We could have a poet president like Ireland, a Lineker or a Stormzy shaking hands with the American president.

February 18, 2023

Nikki Haley’s presidential bid is clearly doomed because … she uses her middle name? Let me read that again.

Filed under: India, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Jim Treacher (whose name I should now probably put in scare quotes because it’s a nom-de-plume) explains why Nikki Haley is a no-hoper in the next Republican presidential primaries:

As I revealed over a decade ago, “Jim Treacher” isn’t my real name. This is just a message-board pseudonym that got way out of hand, and now I guess I’m stuck with it. My government name is Robert Sean Medlock, but my parents have always called me Sean. I don’t know why they didn’t just name me Sean Robert Medlock, but I was in no position to argue my case at the time because I couldn’t talk yet.

So now, every time I need to fill out paperwork somewhere, I have to explain that I go by my middle name. Doctors, dentists, car repairs, insurance, what have you. The routine is kind of annoying, but at this point I’m used to it.

I’m not deceiving anybody by using my middle name. It’s just my name, man. Lots of people go by their middle name.

In other news: This week Nikki Haley announced she’s running for president. I don’t know if she has a shot, but the libs sure seem to think so. They’re already attacking her for … going by her middle name.

Check out this idiot:

She didn’t. Her birth name was Nimarata Nikki Randhawa. Not “Nimrata”, as it’s commonly misspelled by supposedly sophisticated libs:

My goodness. Guess it runs in the family, huh?

The Randhawa family referred to their daughter as Nikki, which is Punjabi for “little one”. And she changed her last name to Haley when she married a man named Michael Haley.

Y’know, like Hillary Rodham did when she married Bill Clinton.

Here’s another dummy, who of course works for CNN:

Yeah. Wait. What?

And if that scandal wasn’t enough to sink Nikki Haley’s chances utterly, CNN’s Don Lemon helpfully points out that she’s way, way, way past her peak:

Now, you know I’m not one to cry sexism often. Frankly, when I found out a hot college professor of mine had been fired for doing a #MeToo, I was offended for not being involved. I’d gone to office hours, for godsakes. But there is sexism this week we have to call out. Nikki Haley announced she is running for president. She’s a reasonable Republican candidate who is, of course, a long shot against Trump. There are plenty of ways to criticize her politics, but for some reason a bunch of people we are meant to respect tried to say that the real problem is that she’s a woman, that she’s not young, and that she’s Indian.

You may think I’m exaggerating.

Here is Don Lemon on CNN: “Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry”, he says, looking to camera, a little smile on his face. “When a woman is considered to be in her prime in 20s and 30s and maybe 40s …” His co-hosts, both women, balk. (“Prime for what?”) But Lemon keeps going. Watch the extremely stressful video here, where he goes on … and on … about how Nikki Haley, who is 51, cannot criticize Biden’s age. Because women peak in their 20s, and she’s long past that.

Or here’s progressive hero Mary Trump, Donald’s niece, who disavowed him and became a star of the intelligentsia. She decided that the best way to insult Nikki Haley this week was by highlighting that she’s Indian, because Nikki is her middle name. Again, this is a real statement Mary Trump released on Twitter: “First of all, fuck you Nimrata Haley.” Sorry, I’m slow: If you’re a white person trying to insult someone who’s not white and you do it by highlighting their race, what’s that called again? I’m sure there’s a Robin DiAngelo chapter on this somewhere.

February 3, 2023

QotD: Democracy

Filed under: History, Politics, Quotations, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

They’re all, Democrats and Republicans alike, playing Washington Bingo, which is the Glass Bead Game for retards — nobody really knows what it is or why anyone bothers, but it keeps them occupied in nice cushy offices, with weekends in the Hamptons.

Democracy always devolves into ochlocracy, as some Dead White Male said, but since the last Dead White Male died centuries before Twitter, he didn’t realize that ochlocracy was just a pit stop on the way to kakistocracy.

“Democracy” only works — if, in fact, it does work, which is a very fucking open question — in a stakeholder society. When Madison and the boys pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to each other, they meant all of that literally — Washington could well have died a pauper, Alexander Hamilton ordered his cannon to fire on his own house, and so on. They had skin in the game, which is why they were so public-spirited — if they screwed up, they personally would have to live with the consequences. These days, of course, getting “elected” — or even selected to run for “election” — is a free pass to Easy Street. The rules apply only to the plebs, and only so long — and, insh’allah, the day is soon coming — as we have to pretend to let them “vote” on stuff.

Severian, “The Stakeholder State”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-01-22.

January 12, 2023

How the New York Times describes the Congressional Republican dissidents

Filed under: Media, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

It’s not the news, it’s the substitution of opinion for reporting:

Here’s the political journalist Mara Gay — currently of the New York Times, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic — explaining what the twenty Republican holdouts were up to in their maneuvering over the selection of a Speaker of the House:

It’s leftie Twitter in human form, with all of the slogans. Angry, hateful voters, disturbed by “diversity”, sent some dumb atavists to represent them in D.C., because they hate government and want to “burn it to the ground”. (“And really, that’s what these people were sent to do.”)

Time magazine, which apparently still exists, comes to much the same conclusion, in a piece that I tragically can’t read in full without creating an account, which I wouldn’t do for a free steak dinner or a blanket future pardon from the governor of my choice:

So the twenty GOP holdouts hate government and want to sow chaos and burn democratic norms to the ground, mainstream political journalists calmly explain. Now, via RedState, here’s a letter from seven of the holdouts listing their actual demands as conditions for their vote. Sample demand:

So the monsters who hate government and want to burn it all down were demanding clearly written legislation that every legislator has time to read and fully debate before casting their vote on it.

    Subject of Journalism: We want bills that are focused and readable

    Journalist: They want to destroy all government because of racism

It’s not even sort of an interpretation or an argument about the thing being discussed — it’s just a wholesale invention, completely severed from the thing that’s allegedly being analyzed. It’s like you ordered a tuna melt, so the waitress broke into your house and mailed your couch to Finland. “There’s your tuna melt,” she says, handing you the receipt from the post office. It’s so aggressive a non-sequitur that it would usually suggest the need for a neurology consult. Have you recently suffered a serious fall, Ms. Gay? Have you experienced dizziness or unexplained nause— oh, wait, I see from your chart that you’re just a political journalist.

December 11, 2022

QotD: Democracy

Filed under: Football, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

… “democracy” seems to generate a unique kind of idiocy. This too is no unique insight — William F. Buckley meant the same thing when he said he’d rather be ruled by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard — but like all obvious things about human nature it’s lethally easy to forget. A politician in a “democracy” is an unholy mix of circus performer and whore. Somehow convinced that the audience’s applause comes from its appreciation of her own superior virtue, not rude biology, she slips further and further into narcissism, never bothering to wonder why, if the house is packed to the rafters every night, she’s still sleeping three to a room while the circus owner has a mansion and rides around in a limo.

Democracy’s founding fictions reinforce this. It’s easy to see yourself as the People’s Tribune, I imagine, if you just look at the numbers. All those people voted for you, which confirms how wonderful you are!

A better analogy is the professional sports team. Lots of people wear the team apparel of the Los Angeles Chargers. You can find lots of online forums passionately devoted to them. Lots of L.A.-area bars are festooned with Chargers’ stuff. The bobbleheads at ESPN talk about the Chargers several times a day. And yet, come game time, the Chargers only get about 32,000 fans at the stadium. Those are the actual voters — the rest is just social media noise. And it’s worse than that, actually. We all know that the vast majority of people who picked up a Chargers’ shirt because it was in the clearance bin, or ordered a drink at a bar with Chargers’ memorabilia on the shelf, would never bother to attend a game. So even people who think of themselves as “Democrats” or “Republicans” barely bother to vote, much less follow “their” team in office. Even the groups that get pandered to the most — old people, veterans, union goofs — don’t turn out in proportionate numbers.

Come election day, the People’s Tribunes are decided by old cranks on loan from the home, a few office drones on their lunch break with nothing better to do, and homeless people lured in with a promise of a short dog and some change.

But since no one without a vast, yawning chasm in her soul would ever submit herself to the indignities of “democracy” in the first place, these newly “elected” fools hie themselves to Washington, where the money boys feed their self-delusion. They read about themselves in the newspapers, see their names on internal party polls, and since none of their “constituents” could pick them out of a police lineup, they learn that the only way to keep the applause coming is by doing what the newspapers and the money boys say.

Severian, “Impeachment Thoughts”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-12-19.

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