I'd always heard that politics was dirty, or more accurately put, "How dirty 'the game' of politics!" This jingles with an "It's 'the love' of money that's the root of all evil" quality.
So the dirty game is a given - a tare on the Scale of Consideration against the weight of some overwhelmingly not-unacceptable qualities - when one is to cast a vote for the Greatest Doer of Democracy.
But how should you go about reading the scale when you don't know the weight of the tare? And is it really fair that when you take off the nice square of cellophane and eat up the first layer of strawberries, what remains is rotten fruit making the cardboard underneath all soggy and wet? (At least you didn't have to pay for the container. There is that tare.)
_____________________
Watching Frost Gets Nixon (Yippee, a video at the bottom of the page!), what I read in the face of Richard the Lyin'hearted is catharses coming from two resolutions:
One, that he's beat. Just like in 1960 and just like in 1974, he's being defeated by the foe he loathes so well. Just knowing that his political opponents were corrupt too, he restates again and again his belief that the opposition should not have been allowed to use his misdeeds to their political advantage, that is, he claims the Tare Consideration Rule. It's as if he wants to say, "Let's not let this dirty game of politics play politics with our dirty politics." (I'd say that I couldn't have said it any better, but I just did.)
So he realizes his defeat and decides to redefine the game so that it's only a loss, and certainly not anything worse than a pardonable offense. (If the electorate knows anything, it's which is worse: "this" or "that".)
That brings me to his second purgation, which is that- as he's spinning this web-of-a-yarn, he's starting to feel good! This is '77 and he's gettin' down & feelin' pretty groovy. Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four is ancient history, baby!
Don't believe me? Just analyze the six minute mark of the Embedded-Tube below for some particularly snazzy moves, peaking at 6:40 when he's just ducked into the can to do some blow.
"Friggin' Democrats an'th' press ain't got nuttin' on me!" is the glow I recognize in his eyes for one glorious moment.
It's not exactly like we're dealing with "Fat" Tony or Tony Manero here. That'd've been the turf belonging to bullet-riddled Kennedy Bones of the Wing on the Left. Heirs to The Governmental Aristocracy of the Right-Order have more successfully recovered over the course of time- and more consistently. Maybe it's because they got Tony Montana working their side, until it's time to take him out.
Maybe it's because their sole opposition is married to the wrong "family"; maybe the Governmental Aristocracy of the Left-Order's dabbling with the devil has tainted their soul to the extent that they aren't permitted by The Keepers of the Tree House to ascend to the Branches of Absolute Power, whereas the Right-Order simply shits in their own nest; they can pay somebody else to clean it up. Probably Carter. Or one of the Clintons. (I'll be damned if it's gonna be one them Kennedy sons of bitches!) Maybe Lieberman. No? How 'bout Biden, then? Now that's real Joooe--mentum!
The Leftership don't really wanna do what they're doing, but they have to- to maintain/win back the majority; to get (re)elected; and (most ironically) to be considered. (That'd be the Tare Consideration Rule cutting the other way and forcing one to be dirty in order to be respectable.)
The Leftistocracy don't want to raise the body count but they have to because, well- this one is necessary. Really. You still read the news, don't you? Well this time, thank goodness, they're doing their jobs!
How do The Journalists react to the game being played with the likes of Giancana and Genovese? Netanyahu and Noriega? Well, if their good standing affords them a place at the table with The Council on Fucking Up Foreign Relations, then "with a measure of reason".
"But we do nuance!" protest the Leftlings, "We are the Party of Roosevelt!"
Well you got me there. And I guess those'd be Halas' Bears, too. They had some pretty good teams, but as my dad used to say, "The Bears are The Bears are The Bears." Add to that a couple of assassinations and coups, surgical strikes and collateral damage, and monetary aid and arms shipments - which "When we're sending them, it has nothing to do with the profit from the manufacture & sale of weapons!" - and ya got yourself a real ballgame. Soldier Field indeed. Ah, yes, where would the Kennedys be without Chicago! Which reminds me of the point...
The Rightership are allowed to lie; they're shameless, so they've earned extra tare weight. They aren't lying to me, or you, or any one-or-more of their Rightlings. They're just lying.
But when The Left-Order lie, they commit a sin of betrayal. They betray themselves by removing any opportunity to operate from the moral high ground that the Leftlings would so much like for them to exploit- which they don't (or "can't") have the guts to do.
They betray the citizenry by removing honesty from the debate and thereby foisting upon The Pedestal O' Liberty the unavoidable paradox that "it could be worse" and "this is the best we can do" become interchangeable concepts. (At least we have the best system of government in the world!)
It's at regular intervals confessed by the Dominant Elements of the Left-Class that Their Candidate has to run to the right in the summer - and if that doesn't work - sprint to The Right, right through to the fall.
Nary is it acknowledged, however, that the ones who make it to the top of the Political Class of the Righteous Leftership have so governed. Exceptions are allotted, of course, when (re)elections are at issue, which - in the cases of the Members Meandering the Hallowed Halls of the Houses, on down to every state-, city-, county-, precinct-, ward-, and prison ward-level Post Holder - is seemingly always.
Ya know an'that must have hurt DJ TrickyDick more than anything: that he wasn't even gonna be up for reelection. He'd snagged his second term, and was supposed to've been in the clear. He'd won big-time, dammit, and (Tare Rule Alert) as fair & square as is to be expected. Or not, as the case may be. (Somebody must've put his finger on The Scale and taken it off when they were fleeing the scene.)
Here we see his chance at redemption. But not for himself: If JFK died because some secrets are better left kept, then DaNixta went down so that one day the GOP could live to lie with impunity. And the secrets will remain sealed.
++Just in:
The Senators Crusty Dusk and Golden Dawn have agreed that establishing a new front in Pakistan (++mission accomplished) is desirable in order to confront the escalating threat.
That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this clip.
So the dirty game is a given - a tare on the Scale of Consideration against the weight of some overwhelmingly not-unacceptable qualities - when one is to cast a vote for the Greatest Doer of Democracy.
But how should you go about reading the scale when you don't know the weight of the tare? And is it really fair that when you take off the nice square of cellophane and eat up the first layer of strawberries, what remains is rotten fruit making the cardboard underneath all soggy and wet? (At least you didn't have to pay for the container. There is that tare.)
Watching Frost Gets Nixon (Yippee, a video at the bottom of the page!), what I read in the face of Richard the Lyin'hearted is catharses coming from two resolutions:
One, that he's beat. Just like in 1960 and just like in 1974, he's being defeated by the foe he loathes so well. Just knowing that his political opponents were corrupt too, he restates again and again his belief that the opposition should not have been allowed to use his misdeeds to their political advantage, that is, he claims the Tare Consideration Rule. It's as if he wants to say, "Let's not let this dirty game of politics play politics with our dirty politics." (I'd say that I couldn't have said it any better, but I just did.)
So he realizes his defeat and decides to redefine the game so that it's only a loss, and certainly not anything worse than a pardonable offense. (If the electorate knows anything, it's which is worse: "this" or "that".)
That brings me to his second purgation, which is that- as he's spinning this web-of-a-yarn, he's starting to feel good! This is '77 and he's gettin' down & feelin' pretty groovy. Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Four is ancient history, baby!
Don't believe me? Just analyze the six minute mark of the Embedded-Tube below for some particularly snazzy moves, peaking at 6:40 when he's just ducked into the can to do some blow.
"Friggin' Democrats an'th' press ain't got nuttin' on me!" is the glow I recognize in his eyes for one glorious moment.
It's not exactly like we're dealing with "Fat" Tony or Tony Manero here. That'd've been the turf belonging to bullet-riddled Kennedy Bones of the Wing on the Left. Heirs to The Governmental Aristocracy of the Right-Order have more successfully recovered over the course of time- and more consistently. Maybe it's because they got Tony Montana working their side, until it's time to take him out.
Maybe it's because their sole opposition is married to the wrong "family"; maybe the Governmental Aristocracy of the Left-Order's dabbling with the devil has tainted their soul to the extent that they aren't permitted by The Keepers of the Tree House to ascend to the Branches of Absolute Power, whereas the Right-Order simply shits in their own nest; they can pay somebody else to clean it up. Probably Carter. Or one of the Clintons. (I'll be damned if it's gonna be one them Kennedy sons of bitches!) Maybe Lieberman. No? How 'bout Biden, then? Now that's real Joooe--mentum!
The Leftership don't really wanna do what they're doing, but they have to- to maintain/win back the majority; to get (re)elected; and (most ironically) to be considered. (That'd be the Tare Consideration Rule cutting the other way and forcing one to be dirty in order to be respectable.)
The Leftistocracy don't want to raise the body count but they have to because, well- this one is necessary. Really. You still read the news, don't you? Well this time, thank goodness, they're doing their jobs!
How do The Journalists react to the game being played with the likes of Giancana and Genovese? Netanyahu and Noriega? Well, if their good standing affords them a place at the table with The Council on Fucking Up Foreign Relations, then "with a measure of reason".
"But we do nuance!" protest the Leftlings, "We are the Party of Roosevelt!"
Well you got me there. And I guess those'd be Halas' Bears, too. They had some pretty good teams, but as my dad used to say, "The Bears are The Bears are The Bears." Add to that a couple of assassinations and coups, surgical strikes and collateral damage, and monetary aid and arms shipments - which "When we're sending them, it has nothing to do with the profit from the manufacture & sale of weapons!" - and ya got yourself a real ballgame. Soldier Field indeed. Ah, yes, where would the Kennedys be without Chicago! Which reminds me of the point...
The Rightership are allowed to lie; they're shameless, so they've earned extra tare weight. They aren't lying to me, or you, or any one-or-more of their Rightlings. They're just lying.
But when The Left-Order lie, they commit a sin of betrayal. They betray themselves by removing any opportunity to operate from the moral high ground that the Leftlings would so much like for them to exploit- which they don't (or "can't") have the guts to do.
They betray the citizenry by removing honesty from the debate and thereby foisting upon The Pedestal O' Liberty the unavoidable paradox that "it could be worse" and "this is the best we can do" become interchangeable concepts. (At least we have the best system of government in the world!)
It's at regular intervals confessed by the Dominant Elements of the Left-Class that Their Candidate has to run to the right in the summer - and if that doesn't work - sprint to The Right, right through to the fall.
Nary is it acknowledged, however, that the ones who make it to the top of the Political Class of the Righteous Leftership have so governed. Exceptions are allotted, of course, when (re)elections are at issue, which - in the cases of the Members Meandering the Hallowed Halls of the Houses, on down to every state-, city-, county-, precinct-, ward-, and prison ward-level Post Holder - is seemingly always.
Ya know an'that must have hurt DJ TrickyDick more than anything: that he wasn't even gonna be up for reelection. He'd snagged his second term, and was supposed to've been in the clear. He'd won big-time, dammit, and (Tare Rule Alert) as fair & square as is to be expected. Or not, as the case may be. (Somebody must've put his finger on The Scale and taken it off when they were fleeing the scene.)
Here we see his chance at redemption. But not for himself: If JFK died because some secrets are better left kept, then DaNixta went down so that one day the GOP could live to lie with impunity. And the secrets will remain sealed.
++Just in:
The Senators Crusty Dusk and Golden Dawn have agreed that establishing a new front in Pakistan (++mission accomplished) is desirable in order to confront the escalating threat.
That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy this clip.
