The self-destruction of the Democratic Party establishment is now even more risible than the Republicans’ second 40-year stint in the wilderness. Which must be manna from heaven for conservatives, who have surely grown weary of all the old jokes at their expense. But, salvation! Just as they are losing control over the party they’ve been associated with for years — lost to a nationalist opportunist with erratic tendencies — the centrists and faux-liberals in the Democratic Party have lost control of their old stronghold — which provided such a great stranglehold on our Land of Milk and Honey.
What do I mean? Ask Donna Brazille.
Or ask Ben Shapiro . . . about Donna Brazille:
It appears, as Ben Shapiro ably relates, that the Bernie-ites are taking over the Democracy. “Bernie Sanders lost the battle but won the war,” he says. Obama and Clinton have destroyed the old, corrupt insider base of the Democratic Party, leaving the party’s establishment open for a half-hostile takeover by the socialists manqué.
This is good for the conservatives in one sense: to have your opposition confess openly to socialism is not exactly a winning strategy in America, even among the under-educated Millennials.
Socialism is a huge Kick Me sign that the Democracy has placed on its ass, er, mascot.
Of course, with nationalism resurgent on “the right,” things could go haywire pretty fast.
America: bipartisan lunacy for a bitter tomorrow!
Which brings me to the Mencken quote of the day:
Mirth is necessary to wisdom, to comfort, above all to happiness. Well, here is the land of mirth, as Germany is the land of metaphysics and France is the land of fornication. Here the buffoonery never stops. What could be more delightful than the endless struggle of the Puritan to make the joy of the minority unlawful and impossible? The effort is itself a greater joy to one standing on the side-lines than any or all of the carnal joys it combats. Always, when I contemplate an uplifter at his hopeless business, I recall a scene in an old-time burlesque show, witnessed for hire in my days as a dramatic critic. A chorus girl executed a fall upon the stage, and Rudolph Krausemeyer, the Swiss comedian, rushed to her aid. As he stooped painfully to succor her, Irving Rabinovitz, the Zionist comedian, fetched him a fearful clout across the cofferdam with a slap-stick. So the uplifter, the soul-saver, the Americanizer, striving to make the Republic fit for Y.M.C.A. secretaries. He is the eternal American, ever moved by the best of intentions, ever running à la Krausemeyer to the rescue of virtue, and ever getting his pantaloons fanned by the Devil. I am naturally sinful, and such spectacles caress me. If the slap-stick were a sash-weight, the show would be cruel, and I’d probably complain to the Polizei. As it is, I know that the uplifter is not really hurt, but simply shocked. The blow, in fact, does him good, for it helps get him into Heaven, as exegetes prove from Matthew v, 11: Hereux serez-vous, lorsqu’on vous outragera, qu’on vous persecutera, and so on. As for me, it makes me a more contented man, and hence a better citizen. One man prefers the Republic because it pays better wages than Bulgaria. Another because it has laws to keep him sober and his daughter chaste. Another because the Woolworth Building is higher than the cathedral at Chartres. Another because, living here, he can read the New York Evening Journal. Another because there is a warrant out for him somewhere else. Me, I like it because it amuses me to my taste. I never get tired of the show. It is worth every cent it costs.
The uplifters of our day? The “Social Justice Warriors” of the far left. And their 
latest loopy obsession — indeed, the obsession of much of the center-left as well as further into the outer limits near the sinister pole — is the “Russians hacked our democracy!” inanity. Only a very few in their upper ranks have given any honest thought to the idea that Hillary Clinton was a horrible candidate and that Americans basically voted against her rather than for Trump. Until now, that is, with Brazille giving up Hillary after investing every last bit of her integrity to get the harridan elected.
I’ll leave to others the ins and outs, jots and tittles, of the Russia story. Most of us outside the Beltway just sit back in awe of the strangeness. Suffice it to say, the Facebook-Russia story is such a goofy, over-inflated outrage balloon that, had I any hope for Congress, the Twittersphere, or the commentariat I would be despairing right now.
But I’ve never placed much hope in Congress, the Twittersphere, or the commentariat. So I am just chortling.
twv
Illustration at top, taken from Wikisource: an 1837 lithograph published in New York by H.R. Robinson.
Wirkman Comment 