(H. T Webster drew this rendering of the Republican leadership in the 1920’s, never knowing it was them he was drawing.)
As part of my New Year’s Resolution (which I’ll reveal more fully on New Years…hence the name), I won’t be spending any of the precious time I have left on this earth worrying about silly things such as fiscal cliffs or congressional hearing and other un-newsworthy items going on underneath the federal flagpole in Washington.
Oh, they’ll be interesting all right for we live in interesting times, but on the larger human issues, such as integrity and virtue, transcendental things, and not whether China will foreclose on the mortgage they hold over our national economy. (I sort of hope they do. Maybe finally we’ll get angry at the right people.)
But who doesn’t like a prize fight, especially a rematch, especially a rematch in which in the first bout one fighter knocked the other down twice, but in the 15th came out of his corner with his gloves held high, mysteriously saying “No mas! No Mas!”?
Yes, a Republican. Who else?
There are always lessons to be learned in these sorts of face-offs, lessons that transcend politics and go right to the core of history…and why events, often events 100 years in the future, turn out the way they do. That’s how Homer says a face launched a thousand ships and Mediterranean history became forever garbled, since no one could tell the bad guys from the good guys until the Brits came along 1000 years later and told us which was which. Only they probably got it wrong, for while history and the English lauded the Greeks for their clever engineering skills, I was rooting for Hector.
So it is when two great fighters meet on the field of battle and the more noble one is fighting for the wrong side. The same was often said of Saladin in the Third Crusade. When this occurs we often don’t recognize it for many years, and face some difficult choices, choices many people are ill-equipped to sort out.
Remember the Stars and Stripes reporter in “Saving Private Ryan”? He was so cowed in fear as his friends were killed in hand-to-hand combat the German who killed them decided to let this sniveling coward go. But then, once he got back on the Allied side of the line, picked up an M-1 and shot the German from 150 yards. And the audience stood up and cheered. Remember? Yeah, that kind of garbled history. Our side won. Only we didn’t, and the behavior of the audience that opening week proved mixed messages were received.
Similarly, I recall going to see “Platoon” years before with a Vietnam vet in a rural central Kentucky town. He was a newspaper editor, so he took notes. And what he noted was that men in their 20’s hooted and cheered at the battle scenes while men our age, all veterans, he identified five farmers, three factory workers, a banker and a lawyer, all sitting alone, sobbed quietly. I don’t think this was the message Oliver Stone had in mind.
So at the other end of the battle spectrum, who do you root for when one is a back alley, shiv in the back, Mack the Knife and the other a Caspar Milquetoast? Coward v coward?
As Lady Penguin has told me more than once, we all want to see casualties. But we all would like, (I submit, pray for) the signs of real virtue as the price paid for those casualties. As Leonidas’ wife suggested, I’d much rather see John Boehner come back from a “negotiation” with Barack Obama on his shield, if he cannot carry it.
Barack Obama is a coward. He had to be drug, kicking and screaming, from the golf course to okay (some say he didn’t even do that) then witness the killing of Osama bin Laden, and then within hours, begin a series of end zone dances that lasted all the way into the Democrat Party convention, all the while cavalierly releasing the names of the people who did it…many of who are not alive today because of this deadly “slip of the tongue.”
Later, he authorized the murder/assassination (by a drone) of an American citizen abroad, contrary to all that is holy in the Constitution, then ordered his Attorney General to issue a Finding justifying this clearly extra-constitutional act.
But Obama was not the first among Democrats to boast of cowardice as a third generation Roman emperor might, for in the Serbian (Kosovo) War Bill Clinton managed to fight it from above 50,000 feet, destroying cardboard tanks, hundreds of women and children, and virtually no soldiers, plus ruining the economies of the entire region (I was there). This reminded me of Johnny Cash’s famous lyrics about Custer,
“With victories he was swimming, he killed children, dogs and womem…”
It seems the Democrats as a whole are a race of cowards. But as you know from history cowards can still be very powerful, especially if they can manage a Praetorian Guard or league of Janissaries. In America, these are called the AFL-CIO. Physical cowards like Clinton and Obama still can move armies of thugs to shove, intimidate, even push the occasional wheelchair down a flight of stairs to make a point…while they themselves are fast asleep counting sheep, or, in Clinton’s case, feeling up an intern. This is what emperors and gangsters alike do.
Cowards who use thugs to enforce their will are usually spiteful and mean. The sort who drown puppy dogs. The sort who live vicariously through the pain they cause to be inflicted by surrogates..but also can’t take a punch. (This separates the politician from the Sicilian, about whom I have respect, also, because they have more class.
Still, he is a common sort. I know him well, and know how to go about beating him with body blows. But so do you, if you stop to think about it. He is a type. History is filled with them. So are films. Men who are small but use circumstances and cunning (in Obama’s case, luck) to puff themselves up. Fiction, mythic tales, even poetry is filled with them as well, and no doubt, Walter Scott can give you a taste in each genre. And Kipling also.
If you know this type, then you also know the antidote; a constant thumb to the rib, a mean look in the eye, a quick riposte for every insult or overreach (as Obama does daily). Forget the media, these punches always land. And they sting. And then events become unraveled.
Only a certain kind of man can confront this kind of coward. In neither the Senate nor the House can that man be found.
It is for the Republicans to say “To hell with the cliff, Thelma” then proceed to elect new leadership in the coming term that will convey quickly that mean look in the eye and that gravel in the gut Mssrs Obama and & Company will immediately recognize as their worst nightmares.
Then, become prepared and be willing to come back on your shield, but with a fist full of scalp in your dead cold fingers…
…for then others will follow.
Laisser le bons temps rouller!
This is how we reverse the model.
