Sunday 20 Apr 2025 09:40:02 PM CDT
Our president and the Republic are for the time being blessed with such enemies as we didn't dare hope for. Some are even predicting that
one of the two parties may be gone within ten years - I won't go that far (or dare to hope that the bad one does) but certainly the Democrats
are not looking at a bright future. It seems that the old guard is aging itself out of existence and what is left is what one of my friends
described as a bunch of seventh-graders playing goverment and it isn't the TAG class.
I didn't even know who Ken Martin was before the party elected him chair (that he was the chair of the Minnesota party tells you all you need
to know) but I sure knew who David Hogg is and they must have been nuts to let him anywhere near a position of influence. I didn't watch the
proceedings so have no idea what the age distribution is but it seems as if the younger ones took over. I try to think of a smart Democrat and
I believe the last one died a couple of days before the end of last year. He actually worked on nuclear submarines, specifically the nuclear
part, and was apparently a successful farmer. Not a very good president but being smart isn't enough. I believe President Trump is smarter and
may be the smartest since someone back around WWII.
But before Hogg we got the artist known to some of us here as Occasional Cortex or just Ocrazio. I don't go in much for nicknames but as a friend
says some people are so contemptible that even saying their name is more respect than they deserve. Anyway Ocasio-Cortez and that old fossil
Sanders are on an anti-oligarchic tour - flying on private jets and crowds that are pretty obviously from Acme Crowds or something similar. No
word on who's paying for it but the DNC doesn't seem to be doing so well as to throw around that kind of money. One of the best descriptions was
on Fox News:
"Champagne socialists Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez demand Americans surrender their pick-up trucks, air conditioning and meat from the
luxe leather seats of their private jets that cost more per hour than most Americans earn in months. Their hypocrisy is staggering," National Republican
Congressional Committee (NRCC) spokesperson Ben Petersen said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
Foxnews.com
Pretty much. Is this Cortez and Sanders trying to hijack the party for their own plans? Testing to see if it's likely to fly? She's probably the
de facto leader of the young set. If any of them had the intelligence I might suspect it's an attempt to maintain unity by pairing the young and
old but they don't. They had some fairly smart strategists twenty years ago but they're not saying much except to say how stupid they're being.
And Cortez seems to be eager to take Schumer down and take his place. In this climate it could happen.
Hogg is making noises about taking out senior Democrats who aren't radical enough for him. He has been told to shut up and sit down but getting rid
of him would be a better idea. But how many of those who voted for him have buyer's remorse? Things look good for the Republicans to maintain and
possibly improve their position in both houses next year. That would be nice and President Trump would have a chance to make some serious progress.
And seeing what the Democrats do if that happens should be very interesting. Or entertaining. Or both.
If that does happen I could see the party fracturing and leaving an even weaker Democrat party and something with about the market share of Perot's
Reform Party but it would be even further to the left of the remains of the Democrats and wouldn't siphon votes from a Republican. What rebellion
is occurring on the Republican side is mostly in the form of primarying members of Congress who aren't conservative enough and that is unlikely to
hurt them - McConnell is on the way out and Graham is well-behaved enough when it counts.
When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men
who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not
in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull
than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them
against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a
self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
It's the social counterpart of natural selection. Those groups within
society that craved power at the expense of everything else's morality,
self-respect, honest friendship -- they achieved dominance long ago. The
mass of the public no longer has any contact with government; all they
know is that if they step out of line they'll be trodden on.
--- John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider
