Brat Politics

 

I've been asking myself what word best characterizes the attitude of those making up the current regime and its acolytes. Clearly, they're cruel and their deeds for the most part reckless, corrupt and destructive.  But what word best describes the spirit behind their caprices?

I've decided that word is " bratty."  A "brat" (when not a bratwurst) is a spoiled, rude, annoying child or immature person.  A brat feels entitled and expects to get all that he/she desires.

Think of brats you've known and those portrayed in media.  The insufferable, cruel, whiney Joffrey Baretheon in Game of Thrones; the bullying, privileged crook Biff from Back to the Future; the contemptable, rude, malicious toady and sneak Eddie Haskell from Leave it to Beaver; the despicable, spoiled, shrill Draco Malfoy from the Harry Potter movies; the exceedingly pampered and endlessly demanding Veruca Salt from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Then consider the rogues gallery assembled by the one to be known here as Aging Orange to pursue the agenda formulated by the bastardized "conservatives" who authored Project 2025, which AO repeatedly claimed not to know. It's difficult to conceive of them as anything but brats.

Their self-regard and self-righteousness is remarkable. They're not only entirely convinced that what they say and do and desire to do is all that is right and good, they expect that everyone else should know that's the case and resent it when they don't.  Indeed, they assail the sanity, morality and patriotism of those who doubt them to any extent.

Though they act like annoying, blustering know-it-alls who expect their whims to be treated as commands to be followed without question, they lack the wit to recognize their bratty nature. In fact they lack wit altogether. If they possessed a sense of humor their conduct might be tolerable in some respects. But their humor is vulgar and crude and never rises above mere sarcasm.

As brats, they're childish in thought and action. They view the world and others as spoiled children would-- without empathy or subtlety.  They're essentially selfish.  They employ threats to get their way and throw tantrums when they're not treated as they think they should be.

I'm unable to think of any other instance in our sad history when a nation was ruled by brats.  Past brats were in most cases mere figureheads, manipulated by powers behind the throne.  But now the brats are in charge.

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?