This month the administrative state and its allies — the major media most prominently, but also the left in general and the Democratic Party in particular — moved from dippy, loopy and creepy to fully lunatic, evil, and creepazoid.
We learned about the origin of the official investigation into the Russia Collusion scandal: it was after a cadre of Deep State operatives unsuccesfully plotted to leverage the 25th Amendment against an elected president, and undertaken on the flimsiest of pretenses (none criminal on Trump’s part).
We saw a series of elected Democratic officials in Virginia get caught up in uncomfortable ideological scandals, touchy subjects including infanticide, rape and blackface tomfoolery. With only the 30-year-old blackface photo really bothering journalists or Democrats in general.
A major “hate crime” scandal erupted with major Democrat pols coming out pushing additional (and quite unnecessary) lynch laws in response — only to discover the alleged crime was a hoax.
And, for the pièce de résistance, a new congresswoman made waves by offering something she calls a Green New Deal. This preposterous program, if enacted, would inflict upon these benighted states a wide array of social and environmental “reforms”: a universal basic income, a bizarre goal of reconfiguring every building in the United States up to a strict energy efficiency standard, and, within ten years, getting the country off of fossil fuels completely. When pressed, that congresswoman admitted that many homes would have to be torn down, that the airline industry would be permanently grounded, that flatulent bovines had to go, and that this all needed to be done so quickly because in twelve years, otherwise, human civilization would be over. This whole plan is radical hubris of an almost old-fashioned communist sort, and the doomsday cries were environmentalists’ typically paranoid catastrophism, offered without evidence — just assertions from “scientists” and “experts.” Reckless beyond any rational standard — crazy talk. Nevertheless, most of the declared Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential race heartily endorsed it.
We might have thought that the Republicans, in electing Trump, had proven the old Millian charge about conservatives constituting the Stupid Party. But no. By electing Trump, Republicans have driven Democrats quite mad. And Trump may be well on his way to re-election.
Modern politics now reads like a Tom Sharpe satirical farce. I have been hankering, recently, to re-read Wilt, Blott on the Landscape, and Riotous Assembly, but it just really isn’t necessary.
Who needs satire when we have political reality?
I know it is cliché to say that, these days. My excuse? Each of the three terrific Sharpe comedies I mentioned sports the same sort of climax: an outrageous police siege with bloodshed, guns blazing, and plenty of explosions. Sharpe’s may seem as if mere cap gun pops compared to what we would witness were the Green Ten-Year Plan actually be implemented.
twv
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