August 25, 1997
Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr has finally released his report on the Vincent Foster affair. In his judgement, Vincent Foster committed suicide, as reported earlier. At the same time, Starr also revealed his conclusions that Mary had a little lamb, and the cow jumped over the Moon, also as earlier reported.
The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or unlimited sovereignty, or absolute power, is the same in a majority of a popular assembly, an aristocratic council, an oligarchical junta, and a single emperor.
... John Adams
Whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people, who are thereupon absolved from any further obedience, and are left to the common refuge which God hath provided for all men against force and violence.
... John Locke, Treatises on Government
The Republicans, the more aristocratic of our two political parties, promised in the most glowing terms to remove the onerous burden of government regulation, to streamline government and make it smaller, and in particular, to simplify the tax code, to rid us of the income tax system and the IRS "as we know it." What happened, of course, is that they behaved like Republicans, as we know them, and thickened the already interminable tax code by another two volumes, while doling out their tax cuts like kings favoring their faithful retainers.
Will no one rid us of this turbulent Congress?
Popular American culture, already polluted with a swarm of lying newspapers, fortune-tellers, hawkers, and mayors, has in recent years added to this festooned crowd a new array of silly and fanciful liars: the alien crowd. Alien astronauts, alien invasions, alien abductions: why does it all seem so familiar, even pedestrian, these recreational lies? This year, it has a new twist: the government has knowingly contributed to the lie.
Of all the tools of despots, the Lie is the subtlest and best. Its record, its effectiveness throughout the centuries, is unquestionable and unmatched. The deliberate lie, couched in gently persuasive terms, engineered for verisimilitude, intended to deceive, is the masterwork of those whose power rests on the manipulation of public opinion. So why do the public so readily embrace the preposterous stories about black helicopters, aliens, etc.? Because their own government has lied to them.
The U.S. Government is on the record lying to them about the most important subjects imaginable. It lied to them about the POWs not all returning from the Viet Nam War. It lied to them about Ruby Ridge and Waco. It lied to them about fallout from nuclear testing, exposure of Gulf war veterans to chemical warfare agents, and on, and on. There was something that we were not supposed to find out about the Kennedy assassination. It even appears now, incredibly, that there is something that the government does not want to tell us about the Oklahoma City bombing. Now it is on record having lied about UFO sightings in the 1950's and '60's, using the UFO stories to cover up sightings of test aircraft (the U-2, the SR-71, and goodness knows what else).
Why should the government be believed when it states a proposition? Why should not the conspiracy theory industry flourish? Why should people not be suspicious of the Starr coverup? What slightest hint do we ever have that the government ever tells the truth to its people? And so, the alien crowd flourishes.
The only reason I can think of to deny the conspiracy theorists, in cases where it is not clear that they are correct, is this: (Barbry's razor) Do not attribute to conspiracy that which can be adequately explained by greed, vanity, and stupidity. Tiresome, I know.
Of course, we are dumbfounded. The American people have, in the clearest possible terms, demanded for serious and radical tax reform, meaningful welfare reform, and the shrinking of government, with all its intrusions and petty tyrannies, not to mention expense. Having demanded a square meal, the American people were once again presented with a mud pie.
The system that confronts a new congressman upon taking office automatically corrupts them. In order to get what they were elected to provide, they must trade votes with people who love neither justice nor democracy nor any form of good government. If they do not so trade, they will be left out in the cold, accomplishing nothing. So it seems to them that it is better to do something rather than nothing. And if they cannot achieve their national goals, at least they can do something for their constituents, thus yielding to the institutionalized corruption that governs the legislative process, and undoing the zeal of the congressional freshmen of three years ago.
The much-trumpeted spending bills, which "balance the budget by 2002," are, of course, complete swindles. We may not know until that year how thorough the swindle is, but the entire plan is full of funny money, bogus projections, accounting tricks, and outright theft. But rest assured that, when the time rolls around, the government will be borrowing money hand over fist, printing it by the bale, and taxing it away from the people at a record pace.
The President nauseated everyone, save his sycophants and hangers-on, with his exercise of the newly-minted "line-item veto" power, having identified three separate pieces of "pork" in these bills. While stabbing the congressional conferees in the back, he managed to pose as a "cost-cutter" and budget ax-man. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. While the bills are mostly pork, which surely made the job of finding some pork embarrassingly easy, I notice that all his pork stayed in. His performance raises Washington hypocrisy to a new low.
Even after the recent spending bills passed into history, the press was still lapping up the slime in their trail, praising the Congress and the President for "putting aside partisan politics," something the press has certainly never done, to do "the people's business." The notion that members of Congress might have been elected, not to cozy up to the President and inhale his vaporous pronouncements as gospel, but to stand up to the President, to insist on certain principles, to achieve their announced goals despite the President's opposition, never occurs to the press. The Republican majority was elected to go a particular direction, not all directions at once.
Of all the trees on the national political plain, none bears worse fruit than Compromise.
ARIES (Mar. 21 - Apr. l9) You served time during Watergate.
A book tour is not in the cards for you at this time.
TAURUS (Apr. 20 - May 20) Do not advertise the fact the you
worked for Lippo. Hire Bob Bennett.
GEMINI (May 21 - June 20) Try to keep your libido in line.
The last time you stepped out on your wife, it made
national TV.
CANCER (June 21 - July 22) Someone will try to sell you a
bridge today. You know what to do.
LEO (July 23 - Aug. 22) Do not accept calls from anyone
named Mochtar.
VIRGO (Aug. 23 - Sept. 22) Your calculations may be faulty.
Do not try to remove Janet Reno today. Do not mention
the other 3000 FBI files.
LIBRA (Sept. 23 - Oct. 22) Insist on full immunity.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23 - Nov. 21) Mixed. Today could be a good
day for business deals worth more than a billion
dollars. On the other hand, there is also a good chance
you could be murdered by your rivals.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22 - Dec. 21) If you a White House aide,
you need to get out of there. If you are not yet a
White House aide, this could be your lucky day.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22 - Jan. 19) Keep waiting. They are bound
to put two and two together. If they don't, sell the
tapes.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20 - Feb. 19) Congressional aides are
reading your secret testimony aloud at parties.
PISCES (Feb. 20 - Mar. 20) You may have been wiretapped
(see Capricorn). You were not born under the sign of the
fish for nothing.
Aspen provided fit amusement once again, this summer, at the annual Music Festival. I heard a good performance of the Barber Violin Concerto, played by Robert McDuffie, under a bad conductor. McDuffie, a perennial favorite of mine, is not always on the top of his game. but he was in good form for the Barber, a handful if there ever was one. But the conductor, who shall remain nameless, had so violently different an idea of the tempos and moods of the work that he might as well never have met with the soloist before the performance. Stiff and wooden, he passed up every one of the copious opportunities to shape a phrase. Then he messed up the ending. Ah, well, he will probably occupy one of the major orchestral conducting posts for the next several decades; so, I had better shut up.
The Festival's new music director designate is, by his own admission, a mad person, David Zinman, music director at Baltimore. That's fine, of course, especially when he conducts Mahler, who was also mad. Mahler, in his penultimate year, when advised to take a long rest, promptly agreed to the principal conducting posts at both the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera. This probably contributed to his death. Whatever the cause, his death interfered with his opportunity to hear his 9th Symphony. Had he heard it, he would probably have revised it extensively. As it is, we get to hear the unvarnished Mahler, and it is not an entirely enjoyable experience, nothing like Das Lied von der Erde, written the same year. Zinman, in his own mad way, lent some organization and depth to this unpolished work, despite the lack of adequate rehearsal time for the student orchestra on this gigantic, complex, and demanding score. All the same, he would have been better advised to stick to goals that were more achievable.
Heaven goes by favor: if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.
... Mark Twain
All contents © Copyright 1995, 1996 by Redmon Barbry ¶ 11:00 PM
