Ron Collins
Jul 24, 2017 · 3 min read

the beneficiaries of this largesse and government extravagance won’t let go of it so easily

The reason I seized on a single sentence-fragment of yours and built a whole post around it, was that it is such a powerful observation on your part. Sadly, also an exercise in having to state and re-state the obvious.

I’m no political analyst in any formal sense, but I have lived a life that began in Ike’s final weeks in office, and one might say “I’ve seen them come, and I’ve seen them go.”

I watched JFK’s funeral, I watched LBJ’s infamous “I shall not seek and I will not accept” speech, I watched Tricky Dick giving his resignation. I marched in two bicentennial parades in Philly and DC, while a president and vice-president no one had voted for sat occupying their respective offices. I saw Jimmy Carter taken down by a Gye-Reen with a “neat idea” and I saw a half-baked B-movie actor get away with setting up the plot by saying “mistakes were made” and leaving it at that. I saw a former CIA chief take his place then start a stupid war for no good reason that doesn’t seem like it’ll end any time soon, then I saw a rapist and serial philanderer hold the high office for most of a decade while his wife did the dirty work of discrediting his female conquests for him. I saw the CIA’s son be appointed by the Supreme Court on an inside tip from a Florida bimbo-gangster in tight pants pretending to be its secretary of state, and I saw a black man get elected for sounding a bit like Dr King in a speech or two then try and build a Stalinist super-state with the immunity his skin tone afforded him.

In other words, not a one of them has done much to impress me. Their parties and their pretense of an agenda had little to do with any of it.

So with all that for context, the one form of political analysis that ever spoke to me, was Arthur Schlesinger’s book “Cycles of American Politics.” It’s been years now, but what I remember is that he, like me, pretty well tossed ideologies and talking points right out the window as irrelevant, and went on to observe that we the people tend to go round and round between poles he describes as “private interest” and “public purpose.”

Myself, I find even both these to be rather fraudulent. Private interest has no problem getting bailed out when its shenanigans become too big to fail. Public purpose has put a lot of dollars in a lot of private pockets, always has and always will.

But what explains for me who gets elected and who doesn’t, at any level and in any era, is that the one democratic prerogative that even exists in the hands of we the people, is to stop factions from assembling absolute power for themselves.

In this sense, the news back in November was not about any GOP “wins” from Dogcatcher to Chief Executive, but rather about the Democrats being served notice that their proximity to absolute power had come close enough, and now it was time for the lot of them to pack up their desks and leave the building, as in right now.

They got fired, these Jack-asses. Whatever the underlying politics that brought this about, what I don’t get, about these assholes just not getting it is: what part of “you’re fired” don’t they understand?

    Ron Collins

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    Recognizing that women have no need of any special status granted them by men is as respectful of women’s abilities as it is protective of men’s