Dear Dr. Bones,
Thinking it over, Paddy and Eye decided that we should write up the sublime parochialism and self-provinciality of the ’GBH nobility and gentry as a separate Ding an sich rather than mix it up with factious Fehrnstromiana.
Meanwhile we shall park this one also chez vous:
| What one might call the Lovecraft Country squabbles (( fold here )) between Senator Fratboy and Professor Warren have actually drawn a little attention down in one of the big cities of Brightlightia: Posted at 12:32 PM ET, 07/23/2012 And so on and so forth. Other E-provincials can read the piece through for themselves and then, if they like, attempt to guess whether Mr. Sargent has been in contact with performances by the Blue Class Group, or is simply a Great Mind thinking alike independently. This citizen of the lesser metropolis strikes Paddy McTammany, at least, as having definite pretensions to Great Mindedness. "To generalise is to be an idiot," said the late William Blake. Mr. Sargent picks up his cue and runs with it boldly: This gives me an occasion to make another point. The whole ”didn’t build that” dust-up is important, because the larger falsehood on display here — that Obama demeans success — is absolutely central to the Republican case against Obama. The Republican argument — Romney’s argument — is partly [2] that Obama’s active ill will towards business owners and entrepreneurs is helping stall the recovery, so you should replace him with a president who wants people to succeed. (. . .) Republicans have decided the policy difference isn’t enough. They also need to sow doubts about Obama’s alleged intentions and hostility towards private enterprise and individual initiative, to give voters a narrative about the Obama presidency and an explanation for the sluggish recovery that will make them more receptive to GOP tax and deregulatory policies they might otherwise greet with skepticism. The claim that Obama demeans success is central to that narrative.It is impossible to judge with certainty from the boondocks of Lovecraft Country whether the major-league Republicanines with whom Mr. Sargent and "Fox-on-15th-Street" [3] are in contact down at Potomac River City warrant thus bein’ called liars flat out. Antecedently, however, and on the basis of our own off-and-on scrutiny of Massachusetts persons of state [4], we are certain that the vast majority of Otherpartisans below the very tippy-top of the iceberg really an’ truly believe that Barák Husâyn O’Bàma (¡ugh! ¡¡Ugh!! ¡¡¡UGH!!!) really and truly hates Business. Dr. Limbaugh has told the dittobrains so three (zillion) times, so ¿How could it possibly not be whight? Happy days. ___ [1] One does not, it appears, need to be a backwoodsperson to think and scribble in tired-blood media clichés. [2] ’Twas a wise move for Mr. Sargent to stick that ‘partly’ in. Even from remotest 02139 one can hardly miss that the marketin’ volks who flog the Governor Romney product line sincerely believe that His Excellency’s native flair, and dynastic breedin’, and especially, perhaps, his M. B. A. ’75 from the H*rv*rd Victory School, fit His Excellency to do much more than passively sympathize with the sad plight of Petty Business. Exactly what this "much more" may be could hardly be vaguer, but all the same, His Excellency would be a completely different sort of whight-wing pol if H. E. were continually oratin’, say, that one scarcely requires two pricey graduate degrees to be a competent practitioner of "¡Hands off the Secret Sector!" Mr. Sargent writes, too exuberantly for my taste, of "the Big Lie" and "lying relentlessly" and "larger falsehood" in conjunction with the recent doin’s of America’s Otherparty. Still, the Romney candidacy does involve a certain incongruity, let us call it, inasmuch as what the consensus of G.O.P. Geniuses sincerely know in their hearts and knavishly feel in their minds is very like "¡Hands off the Secret Sector!," that is to say, ’tis an unpolicy or antipolicy that Bozo the Clown could conduct successfully, were Bozo willin’ to huddle at once with Grover Freelord Norquist whenever anythin’ the least bit tricky-lookin’ turns up. I suppose it is possible to fancy that His Excellency knows and would implement special H*rv*rd or "case method" techniques of nonintervention and inaction and "¡Whatever is, is right!" King Log may have his special procedures of which King Stork knows nothing. Unfortunately, Paddy and Eye cannot imagine that pscenario in any detail, perhaps for the same reason we have never been able to grok the dogmatic mythology of Zen Buddhism. Be that as it may, there is no doubt at all that His Excellency is bein’ marketed as a special-techniques kind of guy, as somebooby who will think of ways and means of panderin’ to Big Management--maybe even to Pettybiz, at least a little--that ignorant lay sheeps like us would never think of in a million moons. Now if *we* was Eric Freelord of Fehrnstrom, this would be the Apotheosis of Cynicism: for complex reasons of Otherparty strategy an’ extremist AEIdeology, we would really and "in principle" prefer to elect the Bozo & Grover ticket, but find it expedient to back Governor Romney officially. Our primary self-justification would be that King Stork certainly *could* behave like King Log if His Majesty could be converted to Zen Whightism before the gold-standard days of good Willard XLV really get started. As a fall-back or "Plan B," we would console ourselves that even if His Ciconian Majesty gets in and then never does quight see the do-nothin’ whight, we can pretty well count on Congressional goodvolks like Johannes Freiherr von Böhner, and Erich Freiherr von Kantor, and Addison Mitchell Freiherr von McConnell (&c. &c.) to make sure that King Stork does not wreak much damage on the true long-term interests of the Sacred Secret Sector. All this would, as I said, be sheer cynicism on our part, cynicism of almost D. P. Moynihanian proportions. With the really existin’ Freiherr von Fehrnstrom, it is almost certainly not that at all, though admittedly Paddy and Eye cannot vividly imagine what it is that his freelordship believes in with total subjective sincerity. It could, perhaps, be no more that anybooby whom E. X. Fehrnstrom helps fund to the top of the greasy pole cannot possibly be all bad. [3] The expression is used by gracious nonpermission of Dr. Pressbeater and the all-prestigious Seeper Institution. [4] Since the now distant day when Comrade Governor Dukakis, running for President in his toy tank, declared that he would raise taxes "only as a last resort" and the Ailes / Atwater / Poppy Bush / Willie Horton crew promptly barked back that that was one resort H. E. would undoubtedly be checkin’ into, Paddy and Eye have taken a fitful interest in whether hack pols can seriously be accused of lying when they emit such noises. We decided then, and have never yet met anything to cause us to repent our decision, that in about 99.9% of the cases the dread Hellword is NOT strictly applicable. The other 00.1% pretty much consists of the late Neocomrade Senator D. P. Moynihan of NY, a "host in himself" in many senses, of which, however, the statistical or representative sense is not one. Since Dan Paddy’s ‘passing’, no one like unto him, clear-cold-cynicismwise, has arisen in Israël. Nobooby that we know of, that is, naturally. We have mentioned Grover Freelord Norquist. Not bein’ as exposed to mob view as hack pols proper are, his freelordship may perhaps qualify. Indeed, there would be a sort of poetic fitness if his freelordship did, in that the Bozo-Grover gruesome twosome we just invented or discovered would put America’s Otherparty in parentheses, as it were, between them, Bozo at the very bottom of the Party base an’ vile, his freelordship the very spiffiest of G.O.P. Geniuses, the only hound in the whole Republicanine pack bestembright enough to be a genuine cynic. This, however, is but daydreaming on our part. Much the better guess would be that his freelordship of Norquist, too, believes ever word that he barks with some sort of subjective sincerity, even though no decent political adult can make out what weird sort of neosincerity that would be. |
Happy days.
--JHM
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