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The Mountebanks Congregate

In the early-mid 2000s there existed an essential and amazing weblog called The Poorman. Its disappearance in the early teens was completely understandable, as these things go. But what happened to The Poorman? Who is and where is Andrew? I’m sure there are people who know. Yours is not one of those people.

However, among their truly too-numerous-to-count hilariously poignant bits of writing about the complete and utter moral corruption of the Bush II administration and the media super-structure that served as its lifeline at each and every turn was a very insightful post about the founding of this great nation and especially the writing of its constitution. I wish I could find it for you dear people, but alas the wayback machine does not provide all. And so, I will attempt to re-create its fundamental point here.

So, back in ye olden revolutionary and post-revolutionary times, about July to September 1787, committees of the Constitutional Convention hashed out drafts of said document in grand strokes and fine detail, style and arrangements by Hamilton, Madison et al. Per the Poorman’s apt telling, near the end of this period, say around the middle of August, the entire crew of slave-owning inspired statesmen reached a point where they were sure the document was finished. What needed to be codified in order for the young country to function and treat itself justly had been put down in as clear a language as possible, easy and simple for all to parse. They had done it. In a humbling, electric moment, tired yet buzzed with destiny, they gathered up their finished draft and went out from Independence Hall in Philadelphia to get some fresh air and ponder the reach of their elegant treatise.

In the glare of late morning, the exhausted but exhilarated committee members poured out onto the streets of Philadelphia. But when they saw their fellow countrymen on the streets, began talking to a few and listening to more and realized the depths of a flimflammery and skallywaggery already afoot in the young country, the collection of mountebanks, the depraved and ignorant if eloquent tip of the hateful and begrudging masses for whom their toil was meant to soigner, they turned heel and headed back inside. There was yet more work needed on the document of their dreams and duty, to assure the perpetual longevity of the country of people it was designed to protect from themselves.

So as an update to the mysterious and direly missed Poorman, the descendants of those people that ran the writers back into the Hall to perfect their document are now in charge of everything.

And re: Harvard – pour encourager les autres works both ways, MFs.

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Untoward Digression into the Politics

As though a more graceful straying was at all an option. This little tidbit stuck out in an argument on the optimal number of Americans, which sounds loaded enough, but then:

Without more of a focus on the implications of immigration policy for population, there could be 600 million Americans by 2100, he writes. Depending on whom you talk to, that is a boon or a disaster. Mr. Chamie notes that the relatively enormous thirst for energy, food and other resources from Americans, when compared with that of the average world citizen, gives outsize importance to issues like global warming and to American trends.

Emphasis mine. Isn’t that the whole point of green, cloaking our climbdown in euphemism as though we want to curb our appetites for resources and are not doing it because of shame or peak stupid related to the “while supplies last” ironicality? Next up, discovered deep in the programmer sub-species of the Amazonian Huarani, startling new emoticons for “shrug.”

Then, just for kicks and speaking of idiotic discussions, extend the logical implications of the resistance to big-government takeovers to firefighting:

Yet if we had to have the “conversation” about the firefighting industry today, we’d have socialism-phobic South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint on the TV every chance he could get saying things like, “Do you want a government bureaucrat between you and the safety of your home?”

Rep. John Boehner of Ohio would hold press conferences and ask, “Do you want your firefighting to be like going to the DMV? Do you want Uncle Sam to come breaking down your door every time some Washington fat cat says there’s a fire?”

Oh the pain. via.

And then there’s the sedition network. It’s becoming increasingly difficult, if you were so inclined, to argue that Fox News was not created to destroy the Republican Party, and hence the two-party system. I guess we should always wonder whether we are and could be sufficiently virtuous to resist what seems like help but is actually designed to quicken our demise. Oh, maybe that’s what… Rrrgh. Hate. Lessons.