It’s time to quote André Gide again: “Toutes choses sont dites déjà, mais comme personne n’écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.” “All things are said already, but since no one is listening, it is always necessary to start again.”
You already know everything I am going to talk about today: our two-tier, double-standard society, exemplified by the very different ways Donald Trump and Joe Biden are treated by the media and our Staatspolizei (a.k.a. the FBI) for “mishandling” and/or possessing classified documents; the minatory surrealism of Davos, where our would-be masters congregate to impress themselves and consort with prostitutes; the on-going January 6 “insurrection” fiasco which continues to sweep up and ruin the lives of ordinary Americans.
Regular readers know I was not optimistic about House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his little band of Republicans who now run the House. How often have we had Republicans take office promising to cut spending, limit government overreach, and root out corruption and self-dealing, only to deliver . . . why, the same old thing! More spending, more government in your life, more, if sometimes newly diverted, corruption. It’s what politicians do.
All that is inscribed in the DNA of those who seek, and therefore usually do not deserve, political power. It’s why James Madison and other founders went to such lengths to limit the size and the power of government. They understood that men are not “angels,” as Madison wrote, and therefore need to be constrained, as does government. It is also why politicians of both parties are happy to quote Madison just so long as his message is studiously neglected.
Did you know that the federal debt now tops $31 trillion? You probably heard that while you were scrambling eggs ($8 a dozen where I live) on your gas stove (enjoy that while you can). Like me, you probably shrug your shoulders at such an incomprehensibly large number. As it happens, the last time the federal debt was under $1 trillion was in 1981, when Ronald Reagan was president. It’s gone up every single year since then. As the economist Herbert Stein famously remarked, “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
Can this fiscal incontinence go on forever? Why don’t the people we elect to represent our interests, you know, represent our interests? Asking for a friend.
Will McCarthy and his Republican colleagues change things for the better? Maybe. Possibly.
Probably not.
Yet, in these first weeks of the new House dispensation, there have been some agreeable noises. Of course, it is just theater when the Republicans pass legislation to reverse enormities such as the Democrats’ decision to give billions upon billions to the IRS to hire tens of thousands of new agents to harass Americans. The Republican bill was just theater because it will never pass the Democrat-controlled Senate or be signed by the big-rig driver, top-of-his-law-school-class, Cornpop-nemesis Joe Biden, the George Santos of presidents.
Still, it sounds nice. It warms the cockles of one’s heart momentarily. But like the proposal to abolish the IRS and the income tax—proposals I wholeheartedly support, by the way—it is just sound and fury, sweet talk signifying, as Macbeth said, nothing.
Is there anything to all the movement in the House? Well, maybe. I am not too sanguine about finances. Not until we institute term limits and abolish Washington as the seat of government will anything like responsible stewardship of the economy return, though the recession that every economist worth his MBA says is right around the corner may act as a salutary purgative.
But I at least am heartened by Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-Ohio) early performance as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. He is, at any rate, sending all the right letters to malevolent parasites like Christopher Wray, head of the Stasi, Attorney Genereal Merrick Garland, and Alejandro Mayorkas, head of the comically named Department of Homeland Security. Jordan also sent a little billet doux to Ron Klain, Joe Biden’s brain and puppet master. (Klain has said he will leave his job as Joe Biden’s pulse after the State of the Union address in February. Who will do Joe’s thinking then?)
The letters are good. But they are not the first inquiries the Republicans have made of the creeps. Hitherto, these deep state apparatchiks have just blown off GOP inquiries. Will it be different now that Republicans control the House? You’ll know if subpoenas start emanating from the various committees and, more, if they are followed up with meaningful enforcement action when the Democrats ignore the summons or obfuscate in their answers. I do not expect much to happen. But hope, that last evil in Pandora’s jar, springs eternal.
Like Falstaff’s dishonesty, the malfeasance of the deep state in its handling of the Biden classified documents case is “gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Jordan summed up the situation in a tweet on January 17: “Nov. 2022: Classified documents found at Biden Center. Dec. 2022: Classified documents found at Biden’s house. White House says NOTHING. Jan. 2023: News media reports that classified documents were found at Biden Center. White House still says NOTHING about docs found at house.” That’s the way they are, Jim. The question is, what are you going to do about it?
What about the January 6 star chamber and kangaroo court? Thank God Liz Cheney is back in Georgetown muttering about Donald Trump. But the injustice of the operation continues apace. More than 900 people have been incarcerated in a Washington gulag set aside for political prisoners. As I write, the Biden’s Gestapo has just arrested three active duty Marines for various misdemeanors: “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol Building” and such. Julie Kelly, who has acted as the Recording Angel in documenting this insane and partisan abuse of the coercive power of the state, has minuted this latest abuse. Will Congress do anything—anything—to redress this profound miscarriage of justice? U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and others have demanded that the 14,000 hours of video footage be released. That would be a start.
In the Gorgias, Plato (well, Socrates) says that it is better to suffer injustice than to perpetrate it. Possibly. It’s pretty clear, though, that the Justice Department never got that memo. Perhaps they feel Machiavelli is a more reliable guide. I note, however, that Socrates said nothing about retribution, i.e., condign punishment meted out for wrongdoing. Those repellent bureaucrats have devoted themselves to visiting injustice upon ordinary citizens. It is not too much to hope that fit retribution is even now being organized for these bitchy, beige, and bland totalitarians.