Abandon all Thought Ye Who Enter Here

 

If there was something along the lines of a gate or portal by which people entered the service of the regime now infesting the government of our Glorious Union, I imagine that the words appearing in the title to this post would be emblazoned on it.  With the substitution of a single word, they of course are inscribed on the Gate into Hell in Dante's Inferno.

Some might say the word substituted, "hope," should be returned to the wording and made part of an inscription to be placed over an entrance into the USA itself.

We know that the titular head of the regime believes personal loyalty to him to be a condition of participation in it.  There is nothing less conducive to intelligence and critical thinking. What it requires is unthinking obedience to commands.  Questioning them, or even considering their appropriateness is disloyal.  Allegiance is owed to a single person, rightness is determined using a single standard.

As a mechanism to discourage thinking, inquiry and the application of intelligence to problem solving, the requirement of unquestioned loyalty is more effective than dogmatism.  Dogmatism is the absolute acceptance and arrogant application of particular ideas and positions. Thought may come into play in deciding which ideas one accepts.  Loyalty, however, is an emotional attachment, sometimes combined with hero-worship.

To an extent, dogmatism has played a part in most administrations.  In the past, the two political parties have not been radically different in certain matters, but have disagreed on questions of social policy.  The social policies favored by the party in power have dictated executive actions in many instances, which has meant that those actions have been undertaken mostly because dogmatism demanded it.

But in the current case, dogmatism is combined with personal loyalty of a kind typically granted to the leader of a cult.  The result is the implementation of policies consistent with both directed to ends espoused by the leader without regard to consequences.  Why consider consequences of sweeping actions when they are self-evidently appropriate because they're taken in pursuit of the desires of the leader?  No other considerations are significant.

So, for example, in the haste to terminate government employees in accordance with cult and dogma, mistakes are made.  Essential personnel are fired.  Then efforts are made to rehire them.

This unthinking compliance with the demands of cult and dogma is especially dangerous given the efforts made to extend presidential authority.

This is what our system has brought about, apparently. It may be corrupt, or we may be corrupted.

 

Of the Wealthy, by the Wealthy, for the Wealthy

 

It becomes clearer by the day that the primary purpose of the frenetic actions of the current regime is to benefit those who require no benefit, but seek more nonetheless.  This hunger after more money and assets is to be expected in the addicted.  Like the gluttons and hoarders they emulate, they consume and acquire merely to do so.  But the very wealthy are more wretched than their fellow addicts, as their mania for acquisition is at the expense of those struggling for even a small part of available resources.

Tellingly, the actions taken to reduce the size of government impact those departments which police corruption and conflicts of interest, enforce taxation or otherwise those areas which aren't important to the wealthy, such as education and healthcare.  They cut foreign aid, which is also without benefit to the wealthy. But the regime has ends in view beyond pandering to the rich.

For example, it's determined to stop the "persecution" of Christians it somehow believes is taking place within government.  It's devoted to the eradication of diversity initiatives, thus protecting the rights of mistreated Caucasians through a kind of process of elimination. Weirdly, the regime engages in a kind of crusade against transgenders and others whose sexual orientation differs from the norm (an extension of America's peculiar obsession with sex).

All this is secondary, though. I think most of these initiatives are stunts, intended to assuage the concerns of social conservatives making up the regime's base (there are no more political conservatives--civil rights are impediments to autocrats and plutocrats).

History teaches us that the wealthy prefer autocracy to democracy.  It's far easier to control a single person or small group than playing political parties against one another.  From the perspective of the wealthy, it would be ideal that all countries of the world be governed by autocrats who are at the beck and call of the rich. It's unsurprising, then, that our chubby-cheeked and obedient vice-president is urging European countries to give the far-right more of a say and that we cater to the Kremlin.

The efforts to expand Executive authority can't reasonably be characterized as preserving a democratic form of government or defense of the Constitution.  Those seeking to transform the government are violating their oaths to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, which should come as no surprise.

The Evil Twin of Richie Rich

 

To the extent one can be a contemporary of a comic book/strip character, it seems I'm a contemporary of Richie Rich.  Richie was the richest person--a boy I suppose I should say--in the world.  He was so rich his middle initial was a dollar sign.

Unlike most incredibly wealthy people, he was eager to make friends and spent his money helping those less well off. He was, in other words, entirely imaginary; the product of an imagination so vast as to entertain the charming belief that the exceedingly rich care about and care for the poor and unfortunate.

The actual person who is currently the richest person in the world bears no physical resemblance to Richie Rich. The child he insists on brandishing and parading before his friends and others, and before the cameras, looks a bit like Richie, though.  We must hope the child lives a normal and happy life despite his father's relentless efforts to put him on display.

So, Mr. Musk isn't Richie's identical twin. But in his arrogance, his disregard for those whose careers he's so eager to ruin, his blatant efforts to acquire power and more wealth to the injury of others, and eagerness to take advantage of the president who seems to have something of a crush on him, he qualifies as evil.

He comes from a wealthy family.  The very wealthy are very self-righteous as they've never had any reason to doubt their worth.  So they tend to believe that what they think is self-evidently true and those who oppose them are not merely wrong, but must be chastized if not "deleted" as he's suggested in his ominous way.  I can picture him saying his critics should be "corrected" in the way the ghostly caretaker of the Overlook Hotel told Jack Nicholson's character he had "corrected" his family in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Some of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age became philanthropists as they aged.  Perhaps they hoped thereby to buy absolution for their sins and into heaven as they bought so much else.  It seems Richie's evil twin is buying a goverment; perhaps more than one. Perhaps he thinks he can buy heaven as well.

Sentimentality and the Super Bowl

 

Watching this year's version of the spectacle called the Super Bowl, I was struck by how sentimental it's become.  It has been for some time, I think, but this year was the first time I felt that it was so self-consciously sentimental as to seem contrived.  Indeed, even silly.

As I listened while the Battle of Iwo Jima, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the first landing on the moon, the first flight of a manned aircraft, the march on Washington led by Martin Luther King and other great events were solemnly invoked, I couldn't help but reflect on the fact they were being invoked in connection with nothing more than a football game.  

It's preposterous to compare a football game to such events. It's absurd to claim that those who play in or watch that game are in any respect comparable to those who participated in those great events or achieve anything as significant as what they achieved. I don't care how well the game is played or how much money it cost to watch it in person.

The game and the seemingly endless pregame and halftime performances and football related musings of former players make up a spectacle, of course.  But even when the game takes place in a stadium bearing the name Caesar it doesn't compare with the spectacles which took place when real Caesars ruled and gladiatorial contests, beast fights and chariot races took place over many days, and not just a few hours, to mark a triumph or death or event. From a historical perspective, the Super Bowl isn't even that great of a spectacle let alone an event of the kind reverently noted before it was played.

Why, then, do we proclaim it's significance and greatness in such a histrionic manner as to become ridiculous? We don't seem to understand that by doing so we appear pathetic.  It's true that we live in an age where superlatives are regularly employed to describe anything, no matter how insignificant it may be, as the best or the worst thing in history.  Few may notice how amusing a propensity this is; there are indeed suckers born every minute.  Suckers are maudlin as well as gullible.

I enjoy watching the Super Bowl, typically.  That's because I enjoy watching football, though.  I don't think it has anything to do with great deeds performed by Americans in the past.  I don't think there's anything particularly laudable about extremely well paid athletes playing a game which can sometimes result in injury.  I understand we have a tendency to glorify great athletes.  We've always done this.  We are inclined in these sad times to misuse the word "hero"; I think because there are far fewer of them, just as there are far fewer great events taking place in a world where making money is the only perceived purpose of life.

But invoking the courage and sacrifice of those who fought in Iwo Jima in connection with the Super Bowl?  Really?

The Fools on the Hill

 

Benjamin Disraeli, the brilliant Prime Minister of England, once said:  "There is no act of treachery or meanness of which a political party is not capable; for in politics there is no honour."  This observation seems particularly applicable at this time, especially regarding the Republican Party.  But we must add to it the observation that while there is no honour in politics, nor is there courage or even intelligence as to that party in particular as the best evidence is it is for the most part made up of individuals so craven, so corrupt, so entirely spineless as to seem incredible.

How do we explain, otherwise, the fact that the Republicans making up the Senate and the House have become mere slaves to the grotesque creature who leads their party?  They cringe and obey him whatever he does and says.  If they had any intelligence or sense of history, they would understand that it's against their interests as members of the Legislative Branch to allow him and his lackeys to emasculate them and the government.  They've become political castrati singing his tune in high, piping voices.  They mince about the stage on which his bizarre opera is being played out, as if flaunting their servility.

Some of them gave lip service to the sanctity of our Constitution and the insurrection attempt in the past.  But they've changed their tune.  Now they parrot the claims he makes that January 6th was a lovefest.  They sanction pardons of those who threatened and injured members of law enforcement who strove to save their sorry asses on that day, which marked the end of American exceptionalism.  They fall over themselves in competition to praise his most fantastic claims and proposals.  They nod approvingly as he wrecks havoc.  The struggle to defend his caprices.

They shamelessly prostitute themselves in his service, as if he is their pimp.  We hear that some of his acolytes have joyfully said that "Daddy's home" as he took office.  There's something odd, indeed disturbing, when grown men bleat such a claim in their excitement.  How long have they eagerly awaited their Daddy's return, poor fellows?  They cherish their Daddy's approval.  They pander to those he panders to, simpering in their passion to please him.

What they do makes so little sense, and is such an extreme abandonment and surrender of their dignity and authority, that an argument can be made that they're victims of the psychological condition of infantilism--the retention of childish physical, mental and emotional characteristics in adult life.  How is it possible for them to have any self-respect?

We can only hope that they recover themselves somehow, and remember that they're supposed to be representatives of the people with obligations under the Constitution they've sworn to preserve, protect and defend.  Before it's too late.