Primal Screed
AUGURIES OF THE INAUGURAL
by James McCarty Yeager
Originally published in PROGRESSIVE POPULIST for Feb. 1, 2001
at www.populist.com
WASHINGTON DC: Thanks to the Dred Gore decision, the long national
nightmare has begun. Just in case you were wondering, it?s all your
fault. Mine too, but yours, don?t forget. For not believing enough
in the Republican dream of a country where meat-gorging, beer-
swilling, child-beating, church-going, tax-escaping, freely-gunned,
mass-execution-causing, voucher-paid privately-educated white
suburban citizens make money together, they had to take the
election away from us.
Now they?re supposed to have achieved the allegiance of the doubting
majority on Electoral Disgrace Day, I mean, January 20th. It was
being said by certain establishment journalists that Snippy had a
good inaugural address because it was written by Michael Gerson, the
ex-US Snooze reporter who wrote his convention acceptance speech.
Somehow this was supposed to translate into a new dawn in the White
House, etc.
Pardon while I puke. The Republicans have a long history of writing
good speeches to be delivered by talking dummies, e.g. Eisenhower,
Reagan, Poppy, and now Snippy. I'd prefer to be surprised by Snippy
turning out better than his antecedents, practices, and method of
ascension give us any right to expect, rather than by any puffs of
breath he might have managed to mouth.
We have here an administration of all the talents, as it used to be
called in Europe whenever the King was weak. The weakest of all
Kings were boys whose natural immature tendency to govern according
to personal whim had to be restrained by more experienced hands.
The Kingdom would be run by a Regent, or Council of Regents. They
were usually uncles or brothers-in-law, as who should say, mentors.
They acted in the King?s name. Made war, or peace, or levied taxes,
or regulated trade, or put down citizen uprisings. Or caused them,
as the case may be. As the nobles fought for the ear of the Regent,
the incapable King himself became merely a body over the possession
of which conflicting powers struggled.
The Republicans have already had a Regency in the House for two
years, where Speaker Dennis (Invertebrate) Hastert is a figurehead
manipulated by Majority Whip "DDTom" Delay. Now Snippy, who seems
proud of keeping to the supine working schedule he established in
Austin, has so many mentors that you wonder how he?ll have time to
learn from any of them.
Shakespeare?s sense of order led him to excoriate Regencies as
being an inherently unstable form of government. Four of his plays
especially illustrate these evils: Measure for Measure and the
three parts of Henry VI. In Henry VI Parts I, II and III the evil
facing the state, which neither King nor Regents are strong enough
to handle, is loss of foreign empire and infighting that leads to
civil war and rebellion. In Measure for Measure the Duke deputizes
his favorite courtier to run the state while the real Duke leaves
for awhile. Power immediately goes to the courtier?s head and he
capriciously uses his official status to satisfy personal
preferences. The state is thrown into turmoil because the Duke
wouldn?t, and the Regent couldn?t, do his job. Shakespeare always
favored the discipline of consequences, a rigor that might well
soon be contemplated by His Disreputability, the Inferior Justice
of the Inferior Court, and others in his debt.
This administration?s attempts at disaster avoidance will, I trust,
prove amusing, though they cannot prove successful. The fatally
weakened Presidency the Republicans wanted to achieve with Clinton
has finally arrived with Snippy. Meantime, it is too soon to tell
where disaster will strike. As Hobbes said of Calvin, we can?t
question his integrity until we have some evidence of it. But
certain fault lines may prove predictive.
First, it is probable-to-certain that US troops will be killing
foreign civilians and troops within eighteen months. The only
question is, where? It could be in Colombia, where the population
has been sufficiently demonized as narco-terrorists that US media
would not notice until tens of thousands of natives, or one
American soldier, had been killed. It may be in Afghanistan, where
the anti-Muslim propaganda machine (see media, above) has
identified Osama bin Laden as a worthwhile target for US bullets
or, failing him, anybody that gets in the way. Or will it be Iraq,
where Saddam Hussein is the heir to Muhammar Qadaffi and the
Ayatollah Khomeini as the US Cartoon Villain Figure Numero Uno?
Which war first? Or will it be more than one? I?m sure they?ll let
Snippy know just as soon as they tell the rest of us.
Second, despite their haste to declare, and even cause, a recession
in order to restore growth by reelection time, the Republicans?
favored tax cut medicine will only make the disease worse. This
won?t stop them, but the Democrats just might, more out of
contrariness than any economic understanding of the necessity for
infrastructural spending in time of recession.
Third, some point during the statutory 96 months of this
administration is likely to witness the replacement of either
Snippy or Cheney. The probable causes are heart attack, hunting
accident, impeachment, or addiction. Snippy and Cheney have 5 DWI
arrests between them, though they are safe from that since they
will be Secret Service driven from now on.
PUBLIC DISGUST DEPARTMENT
A spate of new terms has greeted Snippy's well-documented habit of
diminishing newsmen by giving them nicknames. We, the people, have
started returning the favor with such vigor that there are already
more popularly-generated names for Snippy ad his inauguration than
there were for Clinton at the end of his first term. Snippy may
well turn out to have more nicknames than he has personality to go
with them:
President-Select
Connecticut Thief
AWOL Boy
Little George
Butsch
George II
Commander-in-Thief
Executioner-in-Chief
--James McCarty Yeager is Washington correspondent for the
Progressive Populist and can be reached in email at
jamie.yeager@i... |
