Self-Governance in an Unreasonable Age

Part IV: A Conclave of Reptiles

Once again, the country descends into the fetid morass of double-talk, obfuscation, and contemptible cacophony known as election season. Right on cue, every slithering incumbent and mucilaginous political rookie is crisscrossing his/her/its respective area of operations in the hope of bamboozling the required number of dolts into scratching an “X” in their favor. It is a perfectly ridiculous exercise, founded in fanciful expectations, false hopes, and dreams of remembered greatness.

This biennial exercise in national self-delusion will take place across a vast, arid political landscape bereft of any cooling breeze of intelligent debate and denied even the barest sprinkling of intellectual honesty to settle the duplicitous dust of what passes for political discourse in this ghost of a country. Instead, the voting populace will get its usual entrée of verbal offal dressed up with the emotional condiments of their choice. Then, the farce will come to its emotional apogee on election day (oh, blessed day) when the electorate will once again squeeze out a collective turd that looks pretty much identical to the deuce they dropped two and four years earlier. The product of this national bowel movement will smell the same and you wouldn’t want to step in it, but at least it’s out of the system for a few months. At least until the sibilant whisperings of our reptilian ruling class begin to tickle our ears once again…, and again…, and again. Welcome to scatological Ground Hog Day on the Potomac.

The Definition of Insanity

As usual, the voters will return some ridiculous percentage of Senators and Representatives back to the very Congress, which they ostensibly hold in utter contempt. Every election cycle, the ruling class sinks lower into the primordial ooze of public opinion, yet every two years a phalanx of incumbents return once again to interfere in our lives with an intensity that would be admirable if it were not so destructive of liberty. The astonishing disconnect between the general opinion of congress on the part of the public versus the actions of voters in specific districts and states would be a puzzlement to me if I didn’t already know its cause. To wit, every voter thinks that everyone else is the problem.

But…but…but…the average American knucklehead sputters, “Your guy certainly is a worthless, useless, nutless, gutless, meatsack, but my guy is a paragon of patriotic virtue whose sole purpose in seeking or holding office is to look after my best interests.” “I know because he told me.” Cue the cancerous visage of John McCain.

Or, if you prefer, “Your gal is obviously a screeching, grasping third wave feminist termagant with withered dugs and a dusty vagina, but my gal is the soul of charity and tolerance who only wants to suckle the nation at her ample breasts. Now imagine Maxine Waters’ craggy mug slapped onto a voluptuous feminine form. That’s a photo shop of horrors right there.

This schizophrenic break between what one believes regionally and what is true nationally is a clear illustration of intellectual dishonesty in action. Then again, dishonesty of every conceivable variety is the nation’s stock in trade these days.

The Barnhardt Axiom

Heartfelt thanks to Ann Barnhardt for the following cuttingly clear indictment of national office holders:

“The fact that a given person is holding or seeking high-level public office is, in and of itself, proof that said person is morally and/or psychologically UNFIT to hold public office.”

Corollary to the Axiom, also courtesy of Ms. Barnhardt:

“Remember, the only thing that actually WANTS to be in a cesspit is a PIECE OF SHIT.”

Our ruling class has become anathema to any hope of a return to healthy self-governance. Common sense would indicate that the Founders predicated our experiment in self-government on the idea that those so inclined would suffer themselves to serve as legislators for a term or two and then go home to live under the laws they themselves promulgated.

It bears repeating. Elected officials were to serve for a term or two and then go f***ing home and do something productive. Now these jack-a-napes hold on to power with the intensity of an alcoholic looking for an open tavern at 8:00 AM on a Sunday morning. I see no material difference between a Senator or Representative who spends a lifetime sucking on the government teat while making the laws and a generational welfare queen living under those same laws with lips firmly affixed to the next nipple down the line.

Finally, when one of these busybodies retires after a lifetime of peering in everybody else’s windows, they are feted as some kind of munificent benefactor who “sacrificed” so much to public service. With absolutely no due respect, spending your working years sticking your nose into other people’s business and then going home with pensions and perks paid for by those same people is not an honorable life. It should not be a source of personal pride for them or national pride for us. It’s like giving lifetime achievement awards to a gaggle of Gladys Kravitz’s clones. It is evidence of fundamental failure. Even the ones who don’t stay long enough to wind up pissing themselves in committee stick around far too long for our good. It’s the rare one who is so good (or so bad) that they go home after a single term or two. Apparently, the system selects for medium megalomania only.

Words cannot adequately express the visceral contempt I feel for those who presume to set the rules that I should live by. The current state of the nation should speak volumes to the voting public about the general “accomplishments” of our ruling class versus the parochial “achievements” of any of its constituent members.

They have bankrupted the country. In twin orgies of profligate paternalism and military mindlessness, they have fostered dependency at home and sown chaos abroad. They have tolerated, then supported, and now celebrate levels of deviancy unimaginable even twenty years ago. They accept the lunatic notion that “diversity is our strength” with alacrity but without regard for its destructive outcomes. They deny the reality they themselves have created. They foist upon the productive the burdensome cost of the dependent. They are dogmatic, self-serving, and narcissistic. They rule without integrity, legislate without knowledge, and pontificate without end. They blather on from the bastions of their respective orthodoxies while the nervous breakdown of the country continues apace. When they’ve done enough damage, the scum retire on our dime. The only thing more disturbing than the state of the governing class is the inescapable fact that we put them there.

The Road Ahead

In the hiatus after part III of this series, I thought a lot about what should come next. There are so many things malfunctioning in this country that finding a way to end this series of rants on a positive note has been impossible. I believe in my gut two things: First, that significant portions of the people of this nation have collectively reached levels of corrosive stupidity, mental instability, and invincible ignorance so utterly astonishing in breadth and depth that they would be hard-pressed to spell self-governance, let alone practice it. Second, that the ophidian denizens of D.C. are an accurate reflection of the mindset of those who place them in power.

It can come as no surprise to any reasonable person that the putrefaction of the American body politic is matched only by the decay of its ruling class. Governance on the national level is no longer beneficial to the productive segment of the population. Self-governance at that level may no longer even be possible. The venal lead the corrupt in a Pied Piper’s parade toward national suicide. The former convinced of their indispensability and the latter convinced that more of the same every two years is surely the answer. I believe the debilitating effects of such a near universal desire to avoid the truth are terminal to the United States as a nation-state. Further, I am convinced that its continuance is certain death to the idea of ordered liberty as a way of organizing human society in general. A population of nitwits ruled over by a cadre of sociopaths is not a recipe for anything approaching rational self-governance.

The American experiment is failing spectacularly and we as a people can only await the disposition of the damned. A Hobbesian maelstrom of epic intensity awaits us and in it, the American ship of state will founder. If there is any hope, it lies with those states that may choose to fight to regain the sovereignty they have relinquished to the federal leviathan. Only the destruction of the whole holds any hope for the salvation of its parts.

“… I believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people … are the safeguard to the continuance of a free government … whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”
― General Robert E. Lee

Click to visit the TBP Store for Great TBP Merchandise