ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious

publius ( hamitlon, jay, and madison ) loathed a demagogue …populists like daniel shays scared the wits out of them and they were determined to form a government that would be composed of men “more temperate and cool” and less inclined to radical expressions of “liberty” like the unsettling unicameral legislature of the wholly leftist pennsylvanians and that would exclude men who, in the words of john jay, “wisdom would have left in obscurity”…the necessity not “ to forget that men are ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious” [federalist VI ] was seriously undermined by their continued confusion of wealth with wisdom which led to a native born aristocracy…they may have loathed english aristocrats but they were born of an aristocratic culture…hamilton wanted Washington to be king, not president and he ended up being the first probably not so much for his generalship as his wealth and critics like sam adams and richard hennery lee were not shy about pointing that out…in response hamilton wrote, “but it is alleged that it ( the constitution ) might be employed in such a manner as to promote the election of some favorite class of men in exclusion of others by confining the places of election to particular districts and rendering it impracticable to the citizens at large to partake in the choice. of all the chimerical suppositions , this seems to be the most chimerical .” [federalist LX] and yet elbridge gerry…a delegate to the constitutional convention, a member of the first house of representatives, and a governor of massachucetts…clearly one of jay’s superior “collectors of political intelligence “…leant his name to a process of “rendering impracticable to the citizens at large to partake in the choice.” or, at least, ”partake” in it in a fair manner…their confusion of wealth and wisdom created the preconditions for the subverting of “the people’s will” by the forces of wealth and reaction leading to the reeking political sump we are immersed in at the moment where there are multiple millionaires in congress who are doubtlessly less than “temperate and cool” when legislation impacting that wealth arise ( single payer health insurance and the green new deal are political pipe dreams )…there have been rapacious presidents before the orange haired clown and there will be more to come…politics is rife with ways to turn a buck and there is no shortage of people eager to make theirs…congress is corrupt and it corrupts or ejects the newcomer…recent events in congress should underline this…high school civics ( indoctrination, propaganda, bright and shiny lie ) get in the way of perception...i have to ask, is the impeachment process dragging on because it is a constitutionally mandated slow and deliberate process or are the players keeping a weather eye on opinion polls because there are elections coming up and taking a stand here may jeopardize re-election and the money pipeline a seat provides? you should be able to intuit my views on this which are the framers were a deceitful bunch who were the founders and purveyors of the current stench...they were interested in securing their own positions of advantage over the herd that could be swayed by people like shays who might actually be acting in the interest of “the people”…hamilton, jay , and madison were easily as “ambitious, vindictive, and rapacious” as anyone since.

hypocrisy is a common weapon of power

after i got home from working in the world of retail ( one of the most egregious misallocations of resources imaginable ) the puking buddha and i sat down to peruse the sunday new york times...the self-proclaimed bastion of truth and trump bashing ( the latter of which i am inclined to agree with )...their rather sharp criticisms of the president at large are somewhat blunted by both their arrogance in claiming the "truth" and the shameless merchandising surrounding it...

burdened by the relentless existential hum of the "truth" puke and i turned to the "T the new york times style magazine" travel issue which came with today's paper hoping for some numbing escapism as the contributors related their tales of island life...this hope too was blunted by the fact that well over half the magazines pages were glossy advertisements ( orwell's "stick in a bucket of pig swill" ) for louis vuitton, yves saint laurent, cartier, et alia that detracted from the need to escape the miasma of late stage capitalism and its relentless existential hum of consumption...

this page is what got the magazine tossed across the room ( until i retrieved it to scan the offense ) $26550 worth of haute couture on a "model" ( and that does not include the "price on request" louis vuitton hat )...one wonders how i am to give their editorial stance any credibility when they are cut from the same cloth as the avaricious president...the disconnect between the alleged life these pages portray and the reality that most face is incredible...the constantly iterated and reiterated lesson that all media is a cesspit of biased, subjective opinion is what keeps me on as a subscriber...fuck these people.

much alarm

current politics are alive with distortions, dissembling, evasions, and outright lies…the denizen of the white house is attempting to stonewall congress…and there are bitter divisions in a polity balkanized along ideological lines that extend well beyond democrat/republican and range from pro choice/pro life ( to grossly simplify a debate and debase the subtlety of some of the arguments to political buzz words…framing the debate goes well beyond “fake news” and “alternate facts” ) to pepsi/coke…trumpy is not the cause of this, he is an effect, amplified by personality and the above balkanization, of constitutional dissembling over who actually runs the country…examples of past political misbehavior are manifold and varied in content…i am inclined to think trumpy is obstructing justice…probably suborning perjury from administration and staff members as well…nothing new in that…nixon leaps to mind…there were earlier instances however…when dan sickles shot barton key dead in broad daylight in Washington d.c. on february twenty-seventh 1859 ( and subsequently successfully pioneered the “temporary insanity” defense ) the event was witnessed by a white house page who went back and told president james buchanan what he had seen…sickles was aligned with tammany hall ( and here we touch on the storied history of corruption in government which is turbo-charged in the trumpy era but nothing new ) and a ranking buchanan supporter…the presiden, thinking the page might have been the only witness, gave him a razor, some cash, and put him on a train out of town to avert the page being questioned on what he saw…obstructing justice…precedents for presidents…trumpy isn’t the first to be called “unfit” for the job…daniel webster had this to say; “I feel much alarm at the prospect of seeing general Jackson president. he is one of the most unfit men I know of for such a place.” jackson’s reputation as a boozed and brawler ( at his inauguration the white house was so overfilled with well-wishers and office seekers the new president relieved the pressure by having the whiskey barrels taken out onto the lawn ) preceded him and, one imagines, have trailed after as well…wealth controls congress…through campaign contributions…at least that’s what’s on the books…one suspects bribery and kickbacks and, again, past practice shows the way...credit mobilier was mostly a fraud perpetrated on the union pacific..however some of the cash they hijacked went to congress in return for favorable legislation concerning railroads and in the aftermath of teapot dome fall led the way to prison for subsequent cabinet members and staffers and highlighted the unending influence of wealthy elites in how the nation is administered…politicians lie and never more so than when campaigning…the “rail splitter” may indeed have been born in a log cabin but when the call came he was a prosperous attorney doing yeoman service for the illinois central railroad in obtaining rights of way and unloading the onus of fencing those rights of way to keep livestock off the rails onto the farmers who had just lost land to the railroad…sounds like a republican to me…Indiana has produced only one exceedingly short term president ( and recently some mostly sub-standard vice presidents who, fortunately, seem to vanish from public view after their terms )…wiliam henry Harrison triumphed over van buren in the “log cabin and hard cider campaign” which portrayed his as a homespun frontiersman…that he was born on a virgina estate and that his father had both signed the declaration of independence and been governor of Virginia were quietly covered up by his handlers…the polity seemingly ate it up…for sheer visciousness the 1800 campaign has few rivals…hamilton basically said, “ john adams is bald, toothless, and insane but would still be a better president than Jefferson” prompting Jefferson to unleash james thompson callender who exposed hamiton’s affair with mrs. reynolds and setting a series of events in motion that would end in the destruction of political power and influence in weehawken in 1804…in the end there is nothing much new going on here today…if jackson wasn’t a racist fuck I’ll eat my hat with no salt...and if wealthy elites will not continue to expend some of that wealth in efforts to protect and broaden their prerogatives in the halls of congress then we will know the system has finally collapsed after humming along since 1789..we can and should dump trumpy…don’t expect business as usual to change much if that happens…and if there is a second term the true basis of the system will be illuminated that even those still buried under the propaganda of high school civics will have to notice.

assessment from a year out

the puking buddha and i have been hashing over the political landscape that is unfolding around the nation and we have reached a tentative consensus on possibilities ( we are not prognosticating...we have no answers...mostly we have questions and are making something of an effort to confront reality as it is not as it is distorted by the media or our desires...a risky, thankless, bitter business )...we can begin with the incumbent who is faced with the agonizingly deliberate process of impeachment which may or may not happen...given the deeply partisan nature of congress it seems likely to happen...a conviction is far from guaranteed however and i would have to give a trumpy who survives a trial a better than even chance of a second term...it would empower the yahoo vote and one wonders how energized the opposition might be in the face of acquittal...the bottom line here is that he has survived to this point because the wealthy are becoming wealthier under his administration ( the current "strong economy" would seem to have passed the working people of the nation by...wealth is aggrandized...my paycheck is somewhat stagnant )...he may be a bozo but he is a greedy bozo and those on his coat tails are not losing money here...and they will take anything in their brazen fashion...even medicare and social security...they want it all...contrary to the shiny constitution, wealth controls the government, not "the people" ( and here i would recommend "the federalist papers" and beard's "an economic interpretation of the constitution of the united states" and if that hasn't blunted your interest bill maclay's journal of the first congress is illuminating )...congress is owned by one donor or another and the handlers are there to make sure they toe the line...a well behaved congressperson is gong to retire well off and enlightened self interest, not public interest, is the guiding principle here...the governmental zeitgeist since at least 1789...radical change is frowned on and the institutions created by that shiny constitution are profoundly conservative and resistant...cosmetic, much less substantive, change is not easy to come by...what, one wonders, became of the "green new deal"? dead in committee someplace...unlikely to see the light of day any time soon...liz warren has unveiled a "tax the rich" plan to redo healthcare that will never even be introduced, much less reach a committee that can kill it...and the 2020 monkey see monkey do democratic take on the 2016 republican circus grinds on with the certainty of making the next election again a negative choice...the only prospective candidate i could have reasonably supported has left the "race"...i may be voting green again because frankly the stench of voting mainstream is becoming far too much to bear...whatever the circumstances in 2020 the ending will not be sweetness and light and a wonderful new life...business as usual...wealth aggrandizing itself...mired in a consumerist based hegemonic culture that insists "growth" is the panacea not the ill...and a slow extinction...unless the data sets are flawed and it shows up much faster