The Government We Deserve, Part I (of 4)
It’s that time again: Election USA. As we enter the new election cycle, we can look forward to the customary effusions of democratic rhetoric. The socialists known as Democrats, while deploring the American past, will tell us, in language hallowed by the Clintons and Obamas, that we have moved beyond patriarchy, superstition, and the irrational preference for personal liberty—the prejudices of the poor savages who cling to their guns and religion. The fulfillment of democracy, they assure us, lies just over the horizon where no distinction between normal and abnormal, good and evil, will be tolerated. All we need, practically speaking, is to round up the small number of recalcitrant intolerables, who sometimes cloud the minds of ordinary Americans, and, for their own good, put them in reeducation camps.
The Liberal Capitalists known as Conservative Republicans will be equally loud in praise of the virtues of the American people who, although they have been temporarily seduced by 60’s radicals, are still the good-hearted slobs who created just about the best little old country that ever existed. Once in power, the Grand Old Party, carrying out the will of the wise Americans who voted for them, will redefine marriage and gender, control (but not limit much less halt) the invasion across our Southern border, and unleash a global crusade to establish democracy in the four corners of the world. I can already hear the honeyed voice of Senator John McCain, singing: Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran.
Both sides will assure us that existence of American democracy is threatened by the very existence of Joe Biden or Donald Trump or even, if we are RFK Jr, by both. To elect either would plunge us either into the Gulag or the Paleolithic Dark Age of 1950.
To anyone who either makes or agrees with such arguments, I have only one thing to say: Pfui!
What is wrong with America today is not the leaders but the people who elect them. The folly of voters is not some recent aberration: It is a reflection both of our system and of the people who support—and are supported by—that system. “The government you elect is the government we deserve,” suggested the Machiavellian Thomas Jefferson, though there are pundits on the internet who describe his unassailable logic as a “fallacy,” thus proving by their imbecility the truth of his assertion. Jefferson is often accused of naively trusting the people, while Hamilton is praised for his skeptical evaluation of the masses. In fact it is Hamilton—a man of considerable ability and prudence—who was naive in his belief that the infant republic could buy the loyalty of the rich. The people is, indeed (as Hamilton declared), a great beast, but the people (as Hamilton failed to understand) includes the wealthy who see no farther than their bulging portfolios. Jefferson, by contrast, trusted neither the masses nor the elite to rule the nation. For him, a republic was a regime in which responsible people were left to govern themselves within the small communities of family and neighborhood. Like Stalin, whom he resembled in other respects not at all, he understood that only terror could keep tyrannical politicians in order. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” It was one of George Garret’s favorite quotations, and George, beyond most political thinkers I have met, understood what Jefferson meant.
American conservatives have no trouble applying Jefferson’s insight to other countries. I remember my friend Joe Sobran, in a National Review article, declaring that the Russians are a naturally servile race who have always embraced despotism, and every Zionist I have met has told me how inferior Arabs are to other peoples of the earth. (Turks I have met say something similar and praise the Ottoman that knew how to keep the Arabs in line, even though in fact they did not.) Among conservatives who oppose unchecked immigration from Mexico, it is sometimes said (by the more candid) that the only trouble with Mexico is Mexican Indians, and if we let them come here in a mass invasion, we shall soon be run by drug cartels in collusion with corrupt officials in the police and military.
It has been many generations since the American people displayed any political sense or elected political leaders who were anything but ridiculous. Mark Twain’s famous characterization of American politics, that we have the best Congress money can buy, did not take inflation into account, and I am sure for a couple of billion dollars we could do better than Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Mike Johnson. A generation later H.L. Mencken observed correctly that “No one ever went broke underestimating the American people,” about the same time as the archetypical American hero, P.T. Barnum, declared “There’s a sucker born every minute,” a motto I long ago proposed as a substitute for In God We Trust.
We are a nation of TV watchers, sports fans, fast-food consumers, and pornography addicts. Our national character is on display in Walmarts across the country, but a snapshot image of our national character are the members of the Biden cabinet and the Maga-maniacs in congress—Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Green, and Lauren Boebert. During every election we are asked the same question bartenders used to pose: What’s your poison?
I was listening to Doug Casey and Matt Smith this morning and Smith played a video of some congresswoman who was out somewhere giving a speech connected to the eclipse. It was so bizarrely stupid it was beyond belief. I couldn’t quite make any sense of it. Then there was another one, I think a Democrat from Georgia, who was asking an admiral whether he thought the large numbers of people stationed on Guam would cause the Island to capsize. They thought he might have been high but that he was probably that stupid and ignorant anyway.
A nephew, the same one who still hasn’t made me a Neapolitan pizza nor any Quiche Lorraine, sent a video of some young black punk in CA stealing cell phones out of a store and walking out the door past a parked cop car and driving off unchallenged by anyone. The point of the video was to ask why companies are leaving California. For the same reason as everyone else.
We are now dealing with creatures somewhat below the level of the average sucker. We need to invent a new word to use as a name for that creature. The reason why you can’t go broke underestimating the American people is because there are negative numbers which allow you to go way down below zero. The potential is limitless.
Despite the very serious issues such as the border invasion, Ukraine and Gaza, I’m having a hard time taking the election seriously. I guess I will vote for Trump but I’m not sure if it will make any important difference. I would say that the current administration is as evil and destructive as it can get but we always think so, and then worse one will always appear.
I might suggest that if we don’t run Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho for president, then we run Afroman. We could use as our campaign song his lewd, vulgar, and foul mouthed song “Because I got High”. It probably should be our national anthem.
Wonderful, but there is one minor mistake: President Camacho was stupid but well-intentioned. He could even learn from his mistakes and applaud the success of an assistant who was superior to him. Show me a member of the political class worthy to be compared with the rassler!
This just in. The schoolteacher who was caught nekkid in a car with a student the same age as her daughter is married to a second-tier member of the ruling elite: William Douglas ‘Doug’ Ward, 53, was appointed Deputy Director of the Commander’s Action Group and Senior Nuclear Deterrence Advisor at the United States Strategic Command in February.
Thanks for introducing me to my new political hero, Afroman. OK he is beatinfg the drums for an issue they have already won–legalization of dope–but he has announced he wants to fix inflation, the housing market, law enforcement corruption. Now if we can straighten him out on immigration and imperialism, we have a candidate we can believe in!
“The Austrian thinker Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn… argues that the main problems of democracy are inherent in popular government itself: Majority rule must lead to lower political standards and a general erosion of civilization.”
~ Claes G. Ryn, Introduction to “The Myth of Democracy “, by Tage Lindbom (1996)
I knew Kuehnelt-Leddihn fairly well. He was among the best-read people I have ever met, and his recall was amazing. There were a few things he did not understand, and one of them was the American experience, I’m not sure Ryn, with his narrow focus on democratism, fully understood him. K-L was a Classical Liberal monarchist. He opposed democracy on the standard Liberal view that it undermines human liberty and lowers standards. It is a perfectly good argument, but it is not an entirely logical deduction from the Liberalism that undermines not just liberty but everything of value in human life. That is one thing Marx and Engels got right in their famous Manifesto.
2 quotations came to mind reading Dr. Flemings’ essay:
H. L. Mencken’s definition of “democracy”:
“The worship of jackals by jackasses.”
Kaiser Franz-Josef the next-to-the-last emperor of Austria-Hungary:
“The problem with democracy is that it requires extraordinary things of ordinary people.”
[This last quotation on the rare occasion that it is mentioned to an American is interpreted by the fools to mean that democracy is so wonderful that it elevated ordinary people to a new level of virtue and wisdom. This is not what Franz-Josef meant when he said it. He meant it to mean exactly what it says. Ordinary people do not have the ability to make decisions on issues that only extraordinary people can understand. In America election “issues” and “debates” are dumbed down to the level of the ordinary people. That’s why issues like the deficit, deindustrialization, war-mongering foreign policy and so on don’t really catch on with the voters. They much prefer issues such as the one that monopolized public discourse for many months a few years back: Did Bill Clinton get oral sex from Monica Lewinsky?” This was an issue the average voter could really get his mind around and on which he could express a thoughtful opinon. “Bubba, I think he did!” “No, Leroy, I don’t think so.”
Sam, as another Austrian–Prince Metternich–once quipped: The hearts of the German people were sound; it was only their heads that were confused. Alas, he was speaking of 19th century Germans and not 21st century North Americans.
Dang it. Now I have to go look up who this Afroman guy is . . .