Use of Force

The Duke of Medinaceli, who succeeded Don Juan as the principal adviser of Charles II, was an indolent, affable minister, popular with his peers because he lacked the firmness to resist their appeals for subsidies. – R. M. Smith, Spain

In a politics presumed to be available to everyone, ideas and ideals play a great part.  [But] there is a direct connection between their power and another kind of power, the old, unabashed, cynical power of force. – Lionel Trilling, “Introduction” to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia.

David Koch, clubbing in the '80s.

As you can see, I have been reading
about Spain, under the hapless Habsburgs and the fascist Franco.  As always, I read with half an eye on the words on the page and half on my roiling gut.  It doesn’t matter whose or how far away in time or space, politics always gets my gut roiling.  What in my relatively happy and uneventful childhood stirred up so much hate for power? Was it that even in my small town, it was never used except either arbitrarily or to benefit the one that had it, and that it therefore seemed inevitably to be corrupting?  Power isn’t like a hammer; it isn’t a neutral tool, one you can unhand after you’ve pounded in a few nails, put in your toolbox, and walk away from.  It sticks like the tar sticks to your hands after you’ve been picking tobacco.

Money is power.  It was in 17th century Spain; it is (even more so) in 21st America.  I propose:

1. That the use of capital to appropriate things that rightly belong to someone else is plunder;
2. That it is no matter that buying elections is now legal - it is still an abhorrent use of force to take for “special interests” what belongs to “the people.”
3. That doing so is not as gentle as the term “buying” an election suggests; it is an arbitrary use of force, a brutal usurpation of others’ rights; plunder! 

All this is simple and straightforward.  It requires no lengthy explanation; there is no need for nuance.  “Free and fair elections”?  If elections but can be coerced, they aren’t free and cannot be fair.

Suits

Roger Owl and Art the Cat

How does your favorite non-profit spend its money?  According to the Huffington Post, the National Football League balanced its books last year by paying its chief executive officer $35 million.  Actually you don’t have to take Huff Post’s word for it; as a non-profit, the league has to disclose its executive compensation. But, CEO Roger Goodell’s compensation is only “fair,” according to Atlanta Falcon’s owner Arthur Blank, chair of the compensation committee.  After all, it only exceeds Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein’s by $12 million; it translates to barely $47 more than $5000 per hour, assuming Goodell sleeps five hours a night and works the other nineteen every day of the year – and surely he does: the charitable work of the League, providing Roman-Forum-style entertainment for the screaming masses, demands no less.

In other news, the rumor that Showtime, whose CEO is Matthew C. Blank (no relation), will apply for non-profit status in 2015 cannot be confirmed.

Thanks to Maxwell Strachan, whose Huff post may be found here.

Disclaimer: Goldman Sachs is not a non-profit.  In fact, in 2008, it profited by receiving $10 billiion of tax-payer money. 

Roger Owl and Art Pussy-Cat went to sea

      In a beautiful lucre-green boat:

They took some money and then more money

      In the form of ten-thousand buck notes.

Roger looked up to the stars above,

      And toasted to a small guitar,

“O lovely Moolah, O Plunder my love,

  What beautiful Swag you are,

                              You are,

                              You are!

 What a beautiful Hornswoggle you are.”

The day omniscience died. See today's  “The Ambiguities.”

Walker-Talker

David Farenthold’s piece in today’s Washington Post (Click here.) wonders what happened that Scott Walker – “the [Marquette] campus’s suit-wearing, Reagan-loving politico – who enjoyed the place so much that he had run for student body president” – what happened that that guy “had left without graduating. To most of the Class of 1990 – and later, to Wisconsin’s political establishment – Walker’s decision to quit college has been a lingering mystery.”
       Farenthold investigates; but if he sets out to solve the mystery, he doesn’t succeed. Nor should he.  Walker’s political legacy at Marquette is a matter of record. As a freshman he was elected to the student senate. He also ran for a higher student government office that same year and lost to a write-in candidate. Undeterred, as a sophomore he ran for student government president and lost again.
       His academic record is also a matter of record.After four years at Marquette, he was still a year’s worth of credits short of graduating.
       But no one really knows why he left, perhaps Walker least of all.

I’ve always thought Scott Walker was a pinhead and now I know how much he thrashed about

Walker talking.

academically – at Marquette, which lists among 

its most famous alumni, another noted pinhead, Joe McCarthy[1] - I’m convinced of it. So, as Farenthold’s article points out, he was interested in other things; so was I – far more important 

than campus politics, not to mention sweeter smelling (for the most part); but I graduated,

from a school with a somewhat better academic reputation than Marquette, and I’m hardly the sharpest knife in the drawer.[2] College is just 

not that hard if you can read and write when you get there – and know your times tables.
       But acucapution aside, does Walker, “a spokeswoman for [whose] political committee declined to comment” for Farenthold, owe any 

of us an explanation? I don’t see it. I’m not revealing what or who smelled sweeter than academic success to me. Nor would I be, if I 

were a candidate.  It’s not so much the embarrassment – not to me but to who (especially considering the what). What is the relevance?
       What we do in our late teens and early twenties is of no weight, if we weren’t a child prodigy or tried as an adult.[3]  It doesn’t explain us, even if we – by some odd stretch of imagination or reason and the truth – can explain it. I’m not even sure, looking at my own crooked career path, I’m interested in what a political candidate in his fifties did in his thirties (or hers).[4]
       On the other hand, given Walker’s experience – what we know of it – at Marquette, we may begin to understand his wanting to defund the University of Wisconsin – that is, to piss off its smart-ass alumni; because it is the smart-asses that will be particularly offended.
       And in the dish best served cold, the odor of others’ offense is the sweetest smell of success.

---

[1] But also, in an entirely other head category, Chris Farley, who was leaving just as Walker was arriving.
[2] Farenthold, incidentally, is another matter – a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard, a school with a somewhat better academic reputation than mine.
[3] Or a figure skater or a gymnast, in which case we’ll likely do nothing of weight again.
[4] And I mean this to be read either way: “I don’t care what a political candidate in her fifties did in her thirties.”  Or, “I’m not interested in what a political candidate in his fifties did in her thirties.”

Not Funny

Why I will not, assuming I live, vote for Hillary Clinton.

Uncle Albert, but not his tie.
This is from a recent letter from him
to me. By permission.

How many have I read just this week? – dozens of articles on Hillary: What are her chances against M, against R, against TC, or the clever JB? (Good, good, and good. Yes. So smart money says.) How much money (smart, stupid, and in between) can she command when she announces? When will she announce? But especially, what is she doing in the meantime?  If the articles are correct, and they are by writers that clearly want her to succeed, absolutely nothing of substance.

There is not a word in any of them about policy; everything is about strategy. There is absolutely no interest by the writers or by Hillary in what should we (as a people) do but only in how can we (as a candidate) get people to do what we want them to – that is, to like us, or failing that (because we are not always very likeable), to vote for us nonetheless.

All is about being the nominee, nothing about any stand the nominee might take; all about being elected president, nothing at all about being president, much less doing president, presiding over the republic.  All about how we make this happen for us, nothing about the nation or the world (both "them"!).

Moreover, (I wish I weren't but) I’m convinced: she has never in her life laughed at herself except to make the point that she could if she wanted, or needed, to – to get you to do what she wanted you to .

 

Bowling Them Over

According to Reuters, one Israeli ambassador and two other Israeli diplomats “face possible dismissal for publishing posts on Twitter critical of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”  The tweets come in the midst of Netanyahu’s campaign for a fourth term in office, which includes a stop in Washington, DC on March 3.

Reuters identified the three as Yigal Caspi, envoy to Switzerland, who “retweeted remarks by journalists accusing Netanyahu of endangering already shaky relations with Washington,” Assaf Moran, a political officer at the embassy in India, and Yaron Gamburg, staffer at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

“Deputy Foreign Minister Tzachi Hanegbi described the tweets as ‘outrageous,’” adding that “‘These people must identify with all of the state’s positions, regardless of politics, and by the state I mean Bibi.’”

The Reuters article was written by Dan Williams with editing by Luke Baker and Mark Trevelyan, and additions by me.  The original may be found here: http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/02/05/israel-election-diplomats-idINL6N0VF2YR20150205.

I mean Bibi, because létat, c’est lui.  Just ask him.

In related news, two University of Southern California at Rancho Cucamonga social scientists, James Willoughby and Wilfred Patterne, have come up with a standardized test to measure E.Q. (egoism quotient).  The test will measure egoism according to the Willoughby-Patterne scale, whose scores will correlate roughly with the I.Q. measurements.  Thus, 100 will be average, and in this case, healthy; 130 inflated; and anything over150 will be, if left unchecked, insufferable.

Beta testing will soon begin in California, Nevada, and Washington, D.C.  In the meantime, Willoughby and Patterne have recommended to the Arthur Mack Foundation (AMF)* for Ego Genius awards, former president Bill Clinton, Vladimir Putin, and Netanyahu.

“We’re not talking about I.Q.,” Patterne told Go Around Back.  “We’re not talking about ח.Q. (Chutzpah Quotient),” Willoughby added: “This is just about good old fashioned Louis XIV narcissism.”

______________________

*Applications for Ego Grants available at pinsetters.com.