Chautauqua

Think it not thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou are an an unknowable individual; know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like a Hercules!  That will be thy better plan.

(Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, 1843)

If Live! marked Leslie’s long-overdue coming out, Dodgin’ The Dirt marked his coming of age. This is vintage Leslie, harnessing the strengths of his youth with the assured self-confidence of hard-won adult maturity. With a steadfastness matched among his peers only by Eric Clapton and Robin Trower, Leslie has remained faithful to his sonic vision and his gifts, while accommodating the growing perspectives of age, the advantages of improved recording and instrumental technology, and the maturing of his song-craft. The print ads for this disc, and its liner notes, claimed this was Leslie’s best work (up to the time of its release). I’d been sure that was behind him. I didn’t thinks so after hearing Dodgin’ the Dirt.

Among the highlights of Dodgin’ The Dirt: First, the weakness of some of the vocal performances on Live! are redeemed here. This is the primal, cat-screaming Leslie of old – full, confident, tortured, and celebratory. Second, his song selection (those both covered and self-penned) showed a new and remarkable breadth and diversity. As an example, his cover of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” is a surprising take on a tune that Frank Sinatra once murdered, that I wouldn’t have cared to hear die at anyone else’s hands (or larynx). Leslie’s version is a singularly powerful treat.

But I don’t want to single anything out. This disc contains no ringers or filler. Among the highlights, “Sambuca” is a spirited run through Leslie’s riff-bag, featuring flights of melody, while joyously scraping the bottom of gut-bucket nasty. “One Last Lick” is an instrumental excursion over a standard (though menacing) blues progression – with some tasty surprises. “Cross Cut Saw” is a blues standard, given agile new treatment here. “Wasted Years”, by Van Morrison, is as much a biographical confession and a celebration of being alive as it is a beautiful cover of a touching song. In it – lyrically, vocally, and in his lead-guitar playing – Leslie acknowledges his own wasted years and touchingly celebrates his survival and arrival. And if “Wasted Years” is the pronouncement of that arrival, “Thunderbird” may be the proof.  This is as thoughtful and expressive as anything Leslie’s done post-Felix. He owns it; and he knows it. This just may be self-discovery as art.

Dodgin’ The Dirt’s final track, taped during the European tour from which Live! was compiled, is Leslie’s cover of Jimi Hendrix’s “Red House”, which begins as a seeming knock-off of Live’s “Third Degree”. But the inclusion of this tune here is no afterthought. Despite forgetting the lyrics (again), Leslie uses everything from squealing bends to symphonic volume swells – from hair-raising single-note runs to chorused harmonics – to show why he’s always been the heavyweight champ of electric guitar: Anybody can plug one in. Only Leslie West is capable of this.

If the wait for this kind of work from Leslie was any indication, it had been a long road down the Mountain. If these two discs are any indication, it was worth every mile. The master had returned; and he’d never been better. It appears true from Live! and Dodgin’ the Dirt, just as Leslie sang in “Thunderbird” – “I’m stickin’ to my plan/I’ll be a happy man/While I can” – that he’d finally figured out what he canst work at. It’s clear now that his happy plan is to bring us much more music.

Long live the champ.

Saturday’s post about Bill Chinnock got me thinking about my old guitar heroes. So, I trotted out two sort of comeback discs from the early ’90s by Leslie West, one of the three guitarists who helped shape my young life. B.B. King and Johnny Winter are the other two. The listening inspired these notes.

Leslie West is the Larry Holmes of rock guitar. The heavyweight king since his early days in Mountain, Leslie remained uncrowned for having reigned in the shadow of others (Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton in the blues/rock arena; Richie Blackmore [in Deep Purple's heyday] and Tony Iommi [with Black Sabbath] in early conceptions of “metal”). But with the release of two discs, more than ten years after the death of his Mountain bandmate and creative protagonist, Felix Pappalardi, the pretenders abdicated; and Leslie assumed his rightful place among rock’s guitar royalty.

Because of the power and sheer volume of his playing, Leslie’s artistry was seldom acknowledged, let alone heralded. And Mountain’s work is seldom weighed on the relative scale of rock’s accomplishments and milestones. But consider: The release of Climbing in 1970 marked, not only an inimitable achievement, but the realization of the talent hinted at on Leslie West: Mountain (a solo album, which preceded Climbing) and the creative potential of Leslie’s collaboration with Felix Pappalardi (which began with that earlier album).

Even as the mutually affectionate, sympathetic spontaneity of Leslie’s concert performances with Felix were both emotionally touching and aurally breathtaking, Mountain’s subsequent albums continued to fulfill the potential of their first: As isolated examples (and at the risk of seeming to slight anything else), Leslie’s impassioned vocals and lyrical fills on “Flowers of Evil” (the title track from the album) have been perennially overlooked; and the narrative mastery of his solo in the live version of “Dreams of Milk and Honey” from that same album remains spellbindingly unmatched. Even Mountain’s post-West, Bruce, and Laing album, 1974’s Avalanche, is an under-valued gem, expanding, as it did, the sophistication of Mountain’s song craft (”Sister Justice” and “Last Of The Sunshine Days” are exemplary) and adding the interaction of David Perry’s rhythm guitar with Leslie’s, in place of Steve Knight’s keyboards.

In addition to the bewitching brew of power and poise Leslie’s playing always comprised, there’s evidence here that Leslie had finally stepped out of Felix’s shadow and filled the creative void left by Felix’s death (shot through the neck by his wife, graphic artist and Mountain album-cover illustrator, Gail Collins). The first of the discs, Live!, is culled from a series of European dates. Leslie’s band, Richie “The Bat” Scarlet on bass and “The Right Reverend” Paul Beretta on bass, serve as the immovable object for the irresistible force of Leslie’s singing and playing, providing ample room for his commanding improvisations. Live! lacks inspiration in some of its execution (ironically, the Mountain classics “Mississippi Queen” and “Nantucket Sleighride” satisfy least – probably because they’ve been done better elsewhere); and Leslie borders amnesia in his retention of lyrics (this has always been true of him). Nonetheless, this disc marked a return to unabashed form for the champ.

No one’s ever used an amp’s power any more fully than Leslie. There are ways in which he seems to use volume as an instrument, playing it with equal parts overwhelming abandon, deft touch, and poetic finesse. (When he digs into “Third Degree”, a grinding blues he also covered with West, Bruce, and Laing, the dizzying thrill of his bass-note harmonics and the visceral glide of his power chords suggest he alone knows how nasty and forbidding Eddie Boyd intended this song to be.) And no one has ever matched the economy of Leslie’s lead lines: no blazing runs or speed-metal tapping here. This is musical story-telling – mega-watt vignettes, in which Leslie never loses a sense of narrative to the seductions of flash and trickery.

Live! also began to manifest an interpretive conviction Leslie hadn’t shown before. That may be attributable to nothing more than age, maturity, and contemplation; but it’s a strength that carries through both discs. On Live!, Leslie’s poetic re-creation of “Theme For An Imaginary Western” is a fitting tribute to Felix, whose inimitable vocal interpretation of this song Leslie wisely refrains from imitating or suggesting. His alternating between the delicate picking of some chords (embellished by the artful dips and vibrato of his whammy-bar) and the brutal crashing of others adds to the dramatic majesty of his reading. Likewise, in Live!’s Hendrix/Beck tribute, Leslie does justice to vintage renditions of “Voodoo Chile” and “Goin’ Down” while making them unmistakably his own.

Notes on the second disc, Dodgin’ the Dirt, tomorrow.

A writer for The Hartford Courant, Helen Ubiñas, has attracted considerable feedback from readers about a recent column, questioning whether redemption (I suspect she meant atonement or forgiveness) was possible for two suspects in a horrific rape/murder/arson in Cheshire, Connecticut, two years ago. That column appears here. The column seemed largely misunderstood, chiefly because it seemed largely not to have a point. (Ms. Ubiñas muddied the waters by seeming to advocate an eye for an eye, while invoking the prospect of redemption and the “limits” of her God. Her God was unavailable for comment.) She followed that up by generating still more feedback with today’s column, a kind of apologia/backtracking/paean to peace for the victims families that appears to have gotten her deeper in the soup than Campbell’s.

But there is a point being lost in the all the emotion of this discussion. Yes, we all have personal reactions to capital punishment – the taking of a life by the law, under the law. But it’s not a personal decision. It’s a legal/societal one. Capital punishment, beyond the actual punishment, was intended to be a deterrent to capital crime. In countries in which it is enacted swiftly and decisively, it is. But it’s not an effective deterrent in the U.S. because perpetrators have more “rights” than victims. That’s not a judgment. It’s an observation of fact. Check our murder rates.

We’ve abandoned the purpose of capital punishment, just as we have so many other fundaments of our ostensible social “order”. It’s another conservative/liberal dichotomy. Conservatives believe our imperfections must be subject to the rule of law to keep the order and maintain equal opportunity. The logic and rule of law stand above all. Liberals believe our imperfections can be pandered to by inventing every individual “right” imaginable to monopolize power under the government through the promise of equality. The emotions and “rights” of the individual stand above all. Chaos be damned.

It’s harder to serve the rule of law (social order) than it is to claim our individual “rights” (equality, rather than equal opportunity). So, we are where we are. If Ms. Ubiñas’s God is involved at all – or anyone elses’s for that matter – it’s clear he has an endless imagination and brutally keen senses of humor and irony.

If he’s waiting for us to help ourselves, it’s a good thing his calendar is eternity.

I’ve noticed an alarming narrowing in the gap between realism and alarmism. Or is that a realistic narrowing? It’s hard to tell. Given our increasing psychological perversity – and our increasingly indiscriminate senses of entitlement – we’re all but destroying our capacity for semantic nuance. For example, as a matter of engaging in discussion, you used to be able to tell people the truth, even if they didn’t like it. If you tell people a truth they don’t like today, they’ll say you’re being sarcastic. If you tell people a truth they really don’t like, they’ll say you’re being mean. If you tell people a truth that has to do with taking responsibility for themselves – or engaging in something constructive – they’ll say you’re being (forgive my language) conservative. You’re better off lying through your teeth, especially if you’re promising them something for nothing. (See Obama, Barack.)

Along with abdicating responsibility for any kind of semantic maturity, we’ve developed a corollary knack for overlooking empirical evidence and ignoring our senses. We used to think that if it looks, walks, swims, flies, and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. Likewise, if we saw something that had all the hallmarks of a disaster in the making, we’d brace for the ensuing disaster – or work to prevent it. But we don’t think that way anymore. We’re too enamored of our entitlements to be preoccupied by discernment. That’s how and why, in an effort to institute his own power-mongering agenda, Barack the Betrayer is attempting to railroad through as much specious legislation as possible. And to get that specious legislation enacted before we wake up, he’s resorting to strong-arm tactics in government extortion. What? You mean that handsome guy who makes all those pretty speeches? Yes. Him. An excerpted example:

After Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., declared the Obama administration’s stimulus spending plan ineffective and urged a halt to further stimulus spending, the White House dispatched four Cabinet secretaries – Transportation’s Ray LaHood, Agriculture’s Tom Vilsack, Housing and Urban Development’s Shaun Donovan, Interior’s Ken Salazar – to write letters to Republican Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer enumerating every dime of federal monies that would no longer flow to her state if Sen. Kyl had his way. As LaHood snarkily put it to Gov. Brewer, “If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know.” What did the White House expect the governor to do next? Make Sen. Kyl an offer he couldn’t refuse? Or, as Mark Steyn, detecting the whiff of extortion in the air, asked: “Why not just break his (Kyl’s) legs in the Senate parking lot?”

To put what follows in context, please find a copy of Stephen Fox’s book, Blood and Power: Organized Crime in Twentieth Century America, referenced here. Since it’s out of print, you’ll have to do some Internet digging – or some serious rummaging through used-book stores. While you’re looking, here are the kinds of naivete-shattering realities you’ll find teed up in the book. There are no accidents or coincidences. Politicians like Barack the Bandit are supported by unions. Politicians and unions are corrupted by organized crime. That’s why:

• Labor unions typically and historically foster violence. The Center for Union Facts compiles evidence about the political and criminal activities of the labor movement in the United States.
• The National Institute for Labor Relations Research has maintained a catalog of union violence since 1975.
• The Heritage Foundation conducted exhaustive research on the effect of unions on business, industry, and the economy.

Well, that’s all a bunch of exaggerated hooey, right? Wrong. It’s a duck. We need to call it one.

Speaking of fowl, while Barack the Banty was crowing about saving General Motors, he was handing the fox the keys to the chicken coop. As a result, GM will now be managing to UAW demands, not to market demands and certainly not to consumer demands. Because Barack the Brazen knows the effectiveness of strong-arm tactics (see Politics, Chicago), we’re now enjoying thuggish coercion on healthcare. We’re celebrating criminal misrepresentation of the stimulus. We’re a few short steps from bringing home the kind of organized violence that’s doing a world of good for this U.S. plant in France. And we’re so determined not to say this thing that looks, walks, swims, flies, and quacks like a duck is a duck that our prospective perils have to be pointed out to us by our friends north of the border.

If you don’t think you’re about to lose something valuable — and if you don’t think that loss will be all but irretrievable — ask yourself this: does the bully tell you what he’s going to do as he’s approaching — and before he swipes your ice cream cone? Here’s a hint: HELL NO!

Big Brother Barack’s keeping it real. But that’s not the same as keeping it realistic. And it’s definitely alarming.

We ignore it at our own peril.

So, what do you do if you fancy yourself He-Man, and the universe just isn’t paying attention? Well, you could bluff and bluster. Fortunately for Barack the Beguiling, those are the two talents that got him where he is today. (Shame on us.) It may, however, also be his undoing. On the domestic front, it has to be a sign of trouble for Barack the Bulldozer that even freshman legislators, particularly from his own party, aren’t buying his mumbo jumbo. Representative Jared Polis, freshman Democrat from Colorado, said this: “The way we are paying for health reform would put a lot of strain on small business, which is particularly dangerous during a recession.”

Mr. Polis understands the arbitary and unjust duress that “health reform” would place on entrepreneurs and job creators, even though it’s unlikely he has enough knowledge of or interest in our own history to know it was the federal government that mandated businesses to pay for health insurance in the first place. Before that, health insurance was an employee benefit. Remember benefits? Those were the things employers gave us of their own volition – in order to attract and retain the good employees that would help make employers’ companies competitive within their own industries – before the government told us that benefits were rights. First, we believed it. Then, we took it a step further and decided we were entitled to those rights. With sound, responsible thinking like his, Mr. Polis is going to make a lot of friends among logicians. But he’s going to have a short shelf-life in the Pelosi Party.

On the foreign front, it’s Barack the Bloviator’s own ignorance of history that will get him (us) in the soup. Whatever. As long as it sounds good, that’s all that matters.

But in anointing Barack the Brilliant to lead us, we seemed to have overlooked the fact that He-Man’s story lines gave us little about his education. You have to think he must have had a few classes in swordplay. I’m thinking he must have worked in a little bodybuilding, too. But when and where did he study ecomonics, insurance, corporate management, world affairs, and the other inconsequential aspects of his job as Master of the Universe? College? Not likely. Law school? I think not. Shilling for unions? Nah, not even in the Senate. So, where do we get the presumption that he knows what he’s doing, let alone that he’s capable of creating a plan to go with his grandiose, rhetorical visions?

He’s never been a governor or the head of a government agency, so he couldn’t be expected to think through the implications of his promissory blitherings and their consequences. Otherwise, he’d think more along the lines of this piece, from Michael O. Leavitt, published in Investors Business Daily. Why in the world would Barack the Bandit need to think about investment? He’s going to crib our wealth. He doesn’t need to create his own. And if Barack the Bankrupter had ever worked a real job, let alone created one, he might think more along the lines of entrepreneur J.C. Watts. After taking the public’s money for seven years as a U.S. Senator, Mr. Watts decided he’d rather create business than tax it. Wow, that puts a whole new spin on his being a member of a minority, doesn’t it?

The only thing Barack the Brash has in common with He-Man is that they both derive their powers from sources other than themselves. Skeletor is craftier, of a more cunning intellect, and probably better educated than He-Man. (But as Barack the Boastful would be quick to point out, Skeletor loses points for handsome.) And Skeletor always gets the upper hand because he always has a plan. He-Man never has a plan. He’s a liberal. The only way he ever triumphs over his arch nemesis is by holding his sword aloft, putting on his ultra-masculine voice, and loudly intoning, “By the power of Grayskull!” thereby drawing his might from the mystical energy of his mythical refuge. Then, after the obligatory, apocalyptic, thunder and lightning, he’s transformed from the unnervingly effeminate Prince Adam into the mighty He-Man.

Likewise, when Barack the Blundering finds his derriere in a dangle, he raises his finger, adopts his most authoritative tone, and tells us what’s good for us, whether we know it or not – thereby deriving his power from those who work for a living. Well, in case you hadn’t noticed, that pedantic finger Barack the Bothersome is always wagging in our faces isn’t exactly He-Man’s sword. And I daresay, despite all of Barack the Boundless’s pretenses to the contrary, it wields nowhere near the power. Maybe it would humble him a bit to remember that’s the very same digit with which he picks the Presidential Proboscis.

Beyond that, Barack the Bereft doesn’t have the kind of back-up He-Man does. Harry Reid ain’t no Man-at-Arms by a long shot. And Nancy Pelosi certainly ain’t no She-Ra, even though she, too, wields the Power of the Finger and insists that members of the House call her the Princess of Power.

When the smoke blows away and the mirrors are shattered, we’ll know Barack was no He-Man. But for right now, it doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t matter if he doesn’t have a sword. He and his Masters of the Universe are giving all of us the finger.

You have to wonder if the politicians about which so much is being written every day read their own press. They surely read their own press releases. Those are the only media missives in which they’re likely to appear in any kind of favorable light. Even the Barack-beatifying mainstream media makes Obama the Overreaching look ridiculous, simply by its relentless, unmitigated adulation. In its haste to sanctify his every move, the MSM provides enough incongruent pieces that even those of us who aren’t allergic to jigsaw puzzles get hives trying to figure out what – if anything other than destroying the economy, transforming the United States into the planet’s pushover, and self-aggrandizement – the poor fellow is up to. Nevertheless, despite the fact that most politicians must get the same willies from the news that they get from looking in the mirror (”I did WHAT?!”), methinks Madame Hillary’s at least been sneaking a peek at Soap Opera Digest.

In last Thursday’s episode of the increasingly popular daytime drama, As The Power Turns, our indefatigable protagonist – the unctuously charming Barack the Beguiling – was discovered taking trips abroad without a broad, namely his Secretary of State. (Viewers of the photo in the embedded hyperlink are sworn not to tell the producers of As the Power Turns that Hillary is about to re-create the Elsa Lanchester roles in the soon-to-be-announced re-make of The Bride of Frankenstein.) While sympathizers of Hillary the High and Dry were scandalized over the jilting, ratings went through the roof. (Rule #1 for drawing a crowd: if you want to attract sharks, put some blood in the water.) The producers were flooded with calls, e-mails, text messages, and Gripe-o-Grams demanding to know why Hillary the Humiliated had been taken down so many pegs after all she’s been through. She stayed married to Willie the Womanizer long enough to ride his coattails right up to the point at which she scared a good many of us into thinking she might have a shot at Willie’s White House. Talk about close shaves!  The only thing worse than Obama the Omnipotent on Pennsylvania Avenue would have been Clinton the Conceited: Part Deux. Whew!

Returning to our story: Hillary the Helpless was so emboldened by the public outcry at Obama the Oily’s double-dealing that she conducted a clandestine meeting with the show’s scriptwriters, resulting in the insertion of a nearly heretical plot twist. (Drama, thy name is Hillary.) As a result, in yesterday’s episode, Hillary the Hermetic – seemingly impervious to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – let it be known that she will re-claim her position as the rightful heir to The Power of Bubba. (The plot convolution was revealed by the same source that published this photo of Barack the Bulwark steering Hillary the Hapless clear of an “accident” dropped by the White House pooch, Bo. Said accident was so malevolent it was referred to by the White House Press Corps as “an atomic pile”.)

In the speech to the Council on Foreign Relations that was written into Wednesday’s episode, Hillary the Hopeful expanded on Obama the Oligarch’s policy of talking in circles and vague platitudinous generalities long enough to convince global audiences they’re saying exactly what anyone and everyone wants to hear. She re-introduced her tried and trite notion that it takes a village in an effort to convince the Council that foreign relations can be conducted like government-run social programs for children (the idea was enthusiastically embraced) – and to bolster flagging sales of the tenth-anniversary edition of her book. And a scriptwriter who asked not to be identified until after he wins the Understatement of the Year Award said there was one more, relatively minor agenda item for the speech: “Beating back a persistent perception that Clinton has been kept in the administration’s shadows.” Note to Hillary: especially under the reign of Obama the Occultist, perception is reality. If you’re being kept in the administration’s shadows, that’s not an interpretation: it’s a fact.

Given the predilection of soap operas to protract story lines over weeks and months, don’t expect radical changes to occur on As the Power Turns this week, or even next. Chances are there will be much back-room finagling, to which the scriptwriters may or may not make us privy. And odds are that Hillary’s star turn in The Bride of Frankenstein will hit the theaters before she assumes any significant juice in Obama the Omnipotent’s adminstration. We suggest she keep her eye on Soap Opera Digest to see how her speech sat with audiences. If she’s not going to be a player, she and Wayward Willie can do what the Buchanans did in The Great Gatsby:

They were careless people, Tom and Daisy – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back to their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made ….

P.S. Hillary neglected to acknowledge this comment from Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations: “The United States is declining as a nation and a world power with mostly sighs and shrugs to mark this seismic event. Astonishingly, some people do not appear to realize that the situation is all that serious.” Gee. I hope that doesn’t hurt ratings for As the Power Turns.

Of course truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction, after all, has to make sense. (Mark Twain)

A hypothetical situation: You’re addressing a body of elected representatives, most of whom you assume (rightly or wrongly) are not jabbering, drooling lunatics. You tell them to select from the assemblage someone who hasn’t held a job in his adult life; who has no skill other than political pandering; has a completely unfounded sense of self-righteousness; has no experience in the housing, financial-services, or banking industries; and has never solved a mathematical equation more complicated than adding up the lint-balls he pulls from his navel during his more contemplative moments. Then you tell those assembled to appoint that person Chairman of the group’s Financial Services Committee.

Can you imagine that? Would you expect to get away with it? Of course, not. It couldn’t and wouldn’t happen in real life. That’s why it’s hypothetical. The only places in which it can happen are fiction, imagination, nightmares, and government. And happen it has. How can we find out where? Since no such fictitious stories have been written, since none of has imaginations that good, and since we can only hope to have no such nightmares, let’s look at government. We won’t have to look far.

Last week, the United States House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a report called, The Role of Government Housing Policy in Creating the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. This article about the reports is accompanied by a photograph of the Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee trying to grasp a profoundly intricate economic/philosophic concept, referred to in texts and academic journals as living beyond one’s means. The report states, among many other preposterous things, this:

The housing bubble that burst in 2007 and led to a financial crisis can be traced back to federal government intervention in the U.S. housing market intended to help provide homeownership opportunities for more Americans. This intervention began with two government-backed corporations, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which privatized their profits but socialized their risks, creating powerful incentives for them to act recklessly and exposing taxpayers to tremendous losses … “affordable” but dangerous lending policies which encouraged lower down payments, looser underwriting standards and higher leverage … [and] a nexus of vested interests – politicians, lenders and lobbyists – who profited from the “affordable” housing market and acted to kill reforms. In the short run, this government intervention was successful in its stated goal – raising the national homeownership rate. However, the ultimate effect was to create a mortgage tsunami that wrought devastation on the American people and economy.

Another situation: You’re the head of a private corporation (other than GM, Chrysler, or a bank). A report is presented to you detailing the responsibility of some of your employees in making decisions so short-sighted and so self-serving they created a set of circumstances destructively pernicious enough to severely damage your company and its reputation. At the same time, those decisions  destroyed one of your markets almost entirely. Chances are you’d clean house, repair whatever public-relations and organizational damage you could, and rehabilitate the market to the best of your ability. But not in this situation. This one’s hypothetical, too. The reason it’s hypothetical is, once again, we’re talking about government.

In a government comprising career politicians – in a nation in which the electorate pays little or no attention to the elected – there is no housecleaning. There is no chastisement. There is no damage control. There is no rehabilitation. And there is no restraint, restriction, or rescinding of power. As evidence, Blitzkrieg Barney learned nothing from the consequences of his actions, received not even so much as a “Dude! What the hell were you thinking?” from the Spendthrift-in-Chief, and hastened to inflict the same disaster on one particular segment of the market (condominium sales) that happened to survive the first wave of his assault unscathed.

It’s hard to know whether we should give Bumbling Barney credit for his ignorance, or for his audacity. If most of us had managed to wreak havoc on a huge segment of the national housing market – if we’d managed to precipitate a worldwide financial crisis and force hundreds of thousands of American citizens into foreclosure and bankruptcy – we’d skip town and be happy to make our getaways without tar and feathers. Not Barney. He’s ready to do it again. Let’s not feign surprise when he gets away with it … again. We’re the ones who’ll let him.

While there’s no morality to this story, there is a moral: You get what you pay for.

Time is a funny thing. A lot can happen in 13 years. Or absolutely nothing can happen in 13 years. There’s no way to tell. Sometimes you just have to look back to see how far we have or haven’t come.

I was reminded of that because of some recent news. It made me go back to a report I recalled seeing some time ago. I didn’t remember it had been 13 years since I saw it. But with some digging, I did manage to turn it up. The report, published here, turns out to have been a cautionary note to our legislators and us about the declining reading levels in the United States. It was published in April of 1996. Its message went unheeded for three reasons: (1) Some people ignored it because it was published by the Heritage Foundation. In 1996, the Heritage Foundation was disained almost as much as it is today because of its reputation for being conservative. That means the information it presents doesn’t come packaged with promises to remedy the problems identified therin with no work, no responsibility, and no cost to anyone, especially taxpayers. (2) Some people ignored it because it was considered academic. In 1996, we had an attorney in the White House, not an intellectual, you know, like we have today. That means the report was perceived then in the same way in which economic reports are perceived now. That is, they must make sense to someone. They might even contain some truth. But attention doesn’t have to paid to them because they’re some kind of exercise that has no bearing on our lives. Our intellectual President has that whole money thing covered anyway. He said so. And when it comes to learning to read, our kids are the responsibility of public schools. Isn’t that why God invented them? Let them take care of it. (3) The rest of us ignored it because we couldn’t read it.

Then, those 13 years elapsed. Those of us who were wondering if that report might have had any real consequences are trying to figure out where to look for them. Our kids seemed to grow up okay. We heard stories now and then of college students here and there who couldn’t read proficiently at high-school levels. We heard about high-school students who couldn’t read at middle-school levels. But that’s more academic stuff, right? I mean, those kinds of skill studies are based on bars that always get set too high because they’re based on average students – and nobody’s really average. Come on. Isn’t that right? And the public schools passed those kids we heard about to the next grades, didn’t they?  So, where’s the fallout?

The fallout, it turns out, is in the places in which some of those non-reading kids who were passed through school landed. The ones who took employment in the private sector endured the myriad travails of performance appraisals, proficiency tests, productivity metrics, and the other means of measure in the workaday world. You cut it, or you don’t. If you don’t, you move on, by your choice or your employer’s. Dog eat dog. Life goes on. It’s the way of the world. Well … not the whole world.

Some of those non-readers took employment in the public sector. And some of them were lucky enough to land in legislative positions in which they don’t have to read. They’re members of Congress. They have bills to pass, promises to make, costs to ignore, and consequences to overlook. Read? Even if they could, when do we think they’d have time for that? The whole reason we condoned the creation of the career politician is to take some of the  pressure off. These people don’t have time to contemplate or comprehend the nature or substance of the legislation they’re passing. They have to worry about getting re-elected after every term. Do you think their schedules allow for anything other than promising voters what they want to hear during those terms? Read the bills they’re passing? Consider the implications? That’s just silly. And it gets dangerously close to work.

In fairness, we shouldn’t be too hard on our esteemed legislators. Reading requires study, practice, and refinement. It requires cognition and acuity. It requires critical faculties for interpretation, comprehension, and retention. Most important, it requires a particular kind of intelligence. So, let’s cut our Congressional leaders some slack if they don’t read the bills they sign. We expect them to be intelligent enough to learn governing. We can’t expect them to be intelligent enough to learn grammar, too.

It’s almost impossible to keep up with all of the evidence flying at us indicating that we’re headed down the tubes. And the extent to which we’re falling for political rhetoric – instead of dissecting it and making the rhetoricians answer for it – is becoming overwhelming. Today’s case in point: because it’s no longer acceptable to teach what used to be referred to as American History in our union-controlled public schools, we’ve put things like popularity, political correctness, and self-defeating revisionism in place of other, less important things like constitutional fundaments, underlying principles, and … oh, yeah … history. That’s how and why we’re not terribly concerned with remembering that the liberty we used to enjoy in the very same United States we now find so disdainful and politically incorrect was bought and paid for with the blood and bone of those who thought they’d rather die in a war for independence than live under a government that imposed taxation without representation. Wow. Those guys had some screwy ideas, didn’t they?

If they’d been a little more clever or clear-headed – and if they just hadn’t been so darned idealistic – they might have thought of short-cuts like the prestidigitation Barack the Beguling is performing with healthcare. Right? It’s beautiful. Not only does Obama the Omnipotent not have to deal with that pesky and dilatory Congress, he doesn’t have to bother getting any elected officials to agree with him. He hires his lackeys. They do what he wants. If they don’t, he fires them. Nice and clean.

Well, no, those folks aren’t our elected representatives. No, they don’t have any responsibility other than to do what the boss wants them to do. And, no, Barack the Beginner doesn’t have any experience with healthcare, with running a business, or with governing even one of the 50 States with which he’s now playing fast and loose. But we elected him because [insert favorite promise here]. He’s cool. And talk about efficiency. Barack the Businesslike clearly is not a guy who would have wasted eight years fussing about self-government (he’s already self-governing), squawking about independence (he’s completely independent, especially from the legislative branch; we’re the dependent ones), and getting his shorts in a bunch about some aristocratic muckety-muck like George III. Given the way they operate, those two probably would have been buds. If they’d lived at the same time, it would have saved the National Education Association a lot of time and trouble tossing and re-writing all those misbegotten history books, wouldn’t it? Time and trouble is all that would have mattered. Neither of the kings – Barack or George – would have cared about the money involved.

Why or how does any of that matter? Like this: hot on the heels of Barack the Brilliant’s decision to side-step the federal legislature (what are rules to a guy like him?), we (remember us? those the elected representatives are supposed to serve?) welcome another stooge into the Senate; although, this one happens to be a professional stooge. And what does this stooge have to say? He tells us he’s going to assume the solemn responsibilities of his office by acting as the people’s proxy. And among the first of those solemn responsibilities? He’s going to participate in the confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor’s appointment to the Supreme Court.

It’s entirely possible this particular stooge is so sharp, his proxy comment is a gag so incisive, that it went right over our heads. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say it is. What a cut-up, huh? But for what people was he talking about acting as proxy? He wasn’t exactly specific on the subject. Just this much is clear: he can’t be a proxy for the people who aren’t being represented in Barack the Bold’s healthcare plans. In case you’re curious, that too would be us – all of us.

Could we take a few minutes out from all the rights we’re always inventing – from all the things to which we think we’re entitled, for which we used to expect we’d have to work – to defend this right? Yes, kids. It’s true: we still have the constitutional right to have our legislative decisions made by elected representatives. But we’re so busy crying about all the things that haven’t been handed to us yet – all the things we’ve been promised that haven’t been delivered and won’t be – that we’ve abdicated one of the few things to which we’re legitimately and uniformly entitled by law (at least for the time being). Why? What are we doing?

If we still had any of those horrible history books around, we might be able to find out why we thought elected representation was a good idea. But they’re gone now. At the rate we’re going, our right to elected representation will be right behind it. When that happens, let’s at least not be hypocritical enough to act like victims. That right will not have been stolen from us. We will have given it away in favor of a new form of government: adication by proxy. Shame on us.

This story – and this one – came out the same day. The former story is important because it suggests the electorate that didn’t do its reading before November 4, 2008, is catching up now. That means the house of cards is crumbling even before its architects imagined it would. And those of us who are trying to live affordably in that house are trying to figure out why the price keeps going up, even though the place is caving in.

The latter story is important because it suggests how desperate the architects are becoming. Shanghaiing a Senatorial election in attempt to bring comic relief to disaster is intriguing enough. The possibility that the clown’s butt will hit the 60th seat too late to stop the tsunami that’s heading for the house of cards is even more engrossing. The cult of celebrity might be disastrous in its political consequences. But as a form of entertainment, it would be tough to beat if the price weren’t so devastatingly high.

Here’s the problem for the Delirious Democrats, as Professor Zelizer reminds us:

With 60 votes, a united Democratic Party can obtain cloture and end attempted Republican filibusters. But the problem is that 60 votes does not make the Senate “filibuster-proof.” That would require 60 votes, plus Democrats sticking together.

Aye, there’s the rub. Sticking together would require the Democrats to have plans to correspond with their promises. To extend the earlier analogy: if any of the various subcontractors involved in the construction of a house are unfamiliar with the direction the house is intended to take, or what it’s supposed to look like, they consult the blueprints that all of the subcontractors share. Blueprints, to state the obvious, would be the renderings drawn by the architects to unite the subcontractors in fulfillment of the common plan. You sense where this is headed, right? Good.

The term, architect, derives from the Latin architectus, as well as from the Greek arkhitektōn, meaning builder or craftsman. Architects evolved from being builders and craftsman to being planners and renderers when prospective occupants of the houses they were building stopped falling for promises like this: “We’ll take care of everything. The place will keep you dry when it rains and warm in the winter. It’ll keep you naturally cool in the summer. It’ll be the envy of the neighborhood. And no wolves will be able to huff and puff and blow it down. Really. We promise. Cost? Don’t worry.”

Ironically, the term, democrat, also derives from the Greek, dēmokratikós; although, our derivation of it comes more directly from the French démocrate. In the form of a common noun, democrat is defined as an adherent or advocate of government by the people. In the form of a proper noun, however, Democrat means an adherent or advocate of government inflicted on the people. That’s why Democrats believe they don’t need plans – and why they’re too short-sightedly power-hungry to know the house will crumble without them. That’s also why, taking their cues from Barack the Builder (no architect he), plans for the new American house were dispensed with in favor of promises, all manner of promises.

Banking on the probability that we – the ever more gullible and complacent occupants of said house – would ask no questions about the absence of plans or the proliferation of cards passing for construction materials, the Democrats promised to make it ever more grand, as beautiful as any one and every one of us could want it to be, all-sheltering, and all paid for by … well … they haven’t quite gotten there yet. Big talk. Bigger promises. Lovely vision. No plan. And now, in an attempt to preclude debate on the construction of the new American house of cards and its flimsy fallibility, we have the guy in the white pants in the Senate – ready, willing, prepared, and eminently qualified to cast his vote with his fellow Democrats.

It can’t be any wonder, then, that three of the top five best-selling nonfiction books on Amazon.com last week were Glenn Beck’s Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, Mike Levin’s Liberty & Tyranny, and Dick Morris’s Catastrophe. Houses of cards can’t stand. They can be disguised. They can be hidden. They can be called other things. They can have things attributed to them that we might not choose to examine, at least initially. But they cannot and will not stand.

Another charasmatic leader, Malcolm X, said: “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.” And so we shall … maybe. Last week’s book sales are promising. A comedian in the Senate is not. The outcome is up to us. Construction materials dealt from the bottom of the deck do not a house make. We need not buy it if we don’t want to live in it.