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“Boehner public mocking of colleagues on immigration similar to what he’s done in private”

Color me shocked. But not orange. For the love of God.

CNN:

House Speaker John Boehner is mocking fellow House Republicans for saying that it’s too hard to tackle the controversial issue of immigration reform.

Speaking Thursday at a meeting of the Middletown Rotary Club in his home congressional district in southwestern Ohio, an animated Boehner, talking about his colleagues on Capitol Hill, said “here’s the attitude: ‘Ohhhh, don’t make me do this. Ohhhh, this is too hard.'”

According to CNN affiliate WKRC and other local reports, the speaker went on to say that “We get elected to make choices. We get elected to solve problems and it’s remarkable to me how many of my colleagues just don’t want to,” adding that “They’ll take the path of least resistance.”

Reminding the audience that he’s been working for more than a year to convince fellow House Republicans to try and hammer out something on immigration reform, adding that “I’ve had every brick and bat and arrow shot at me over this issue just because I wanted to deal with it. I didn’t say it was going to be easy.”

[…]

But a senior House Republican told CNN the speaker’s ribbing of his own members wasn’t new and is something House GOP members are used to hearing.

“If I had a nickel for every time John called me a name I’d be a millionaire,” Rep Peter King told CNN Friday in a phone interview. King said Boehner has used a mocking tone in closed door meetings to give members a hard time, but not just on immigration, and said “that’s just John.”

“He’ll kid you about everything – your haircut, a tie, guys changing their vote from one month to the next.”

Asked about possible blowback from conservatives who are offended the speaker is making fun of his own members, King said, “these guys should just lighten up and toughen up.”

Oh, we’ll toughen up alright, you bunch of entrenched, gerrymandering, entitled bootlickers.  Until we’re like callouses — the kinds of things hard work brings about.

King has been a vocal opponent of the TEA Party for some time now.  So he’s hardly a go-to guy on John Boehner’s notorious “ribbing” of his “colleagues.”  I mean, “get your asses in line” isn’t exactly the wittiest or waggish of sly and subtle digs.

The truth is, Boehner is an establishment autocrat constantly infuriated that too many non-professional politicians burst their way into DC and upset the Kabuki theater that is our supposed adversarial two party system.  And they did this merely by being able to observe it — and then refusing to join in on the racket (though far too many have).

More, Boehner is absolutely wrong about what his role is, leading me to believe his grasp of the Constitution is as limited as his tanning bed hours are not.  You don’t get elected to “solve problems” and “make choices” — though those may well be offshoots (with the latter being far more evident than the former).  Instead, you are elected as a representative of the people, both of your district (as a congressman) and the party as a whole (as the House Speaker).

The majority of Republicans — hell, the majority of Americans — are not screaming for comprehensive immigration reform, save for some end to the chaos on our borders and the lawlessness surrounding immigration policy.

Boehner is working not for us, but for business cronies.  He doesn’t care that comprehensive immigration reform will lead to Democrat electoral dominance and the overburdening of our already tenuous welfare system; because the truth is, all of the ruling class believe in big government and believe it to be their job to “solve problems,” even though it is government that more often than not created in the first place the problems they claim to have jurisdiction to solve.

The thinking in the establishment right, I suspect, is that eventually the left will drift too far left, and that they will regain power, situated at the place where the Democrat party used to be on the political spectrum.  Somewhere are JFK and LBJ.

And they’ll happily occupy that space.  Because it is one of power, and the rest is just labeling.

Meantime, kickbacks from those paying for corporate welfare are all part of the good life.  And if conservatives in Congress would only shut up about it and do as the party leadership demands — take one for the team and tell their constituencies to go blow — they’d be rewarded along with the rest of the DC club.

Fortunately, we have a few remaining men and women of principle, the very people responsible (in a gross irony) for thrusting Boehner into the role of House Speaker, who refuse to stay on script.   Their breaking through the third wall.  And by doing so, they’re allowing us to see the machinations that go on behind the scenes.

The establishment lives in a VHS world, where the magnetic tape wears thin over time and the narrative is the singular thing.  The TEA Party, alternately,  is all those extras you get when you buy Blu-Ray, from commentary tracks to behind-the-scenes documentaries about how scenes are put together and special effects used to fool the rational mind.

 

 

90 Replies to ““Boehner public mocking of colleagues on immigration similar to what he’s done in private””

  1. Ernst Schreiber says:

    What I said. With emphasis. Instead of hoping he dies on this hill, we should do our best to help him.

  2. cranky-d says:

    Tyranny knows no party.

  3. Squid says:

    “Knock knock!”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Boehner.”
    “Boehner who?”
    “Knock knock!”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Boehner.”
    “Boehner who?”
    “Knock knock!”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Boehner.”
    “Boehner who?”
    “Knock knock!”
    “Who’s there?”
    “Orange.”
    “Orange who?”
    “Orange is just another way of saying Boehner.”

  4. happyfeet says:

    Peter King looks more like a child molester than just about anyone I can think of including that guy what directed the X-Men

  5. newrouter says:

    more than harry reid?

  6. happyfeet says:

    I’m pondering

  7. Drumwaster says:

    How about this idea for immigration reform? START ENFORCING THE LAWS WE ALREADY HAVE.

    Another? BUILD THE FENCE.

    Another? PROSECUTE THE BUSINESSES HIRING THE ILLEGALS.

    Those three alone will solve 95% of the problem, without requiring a single new law or regulation be voted on. Which is exactly why it will never happen.

    If you want to get the Left all up in a tizzy, insist that our immigration laws mirror those of Mexico.

  8. eCurmudgeon says:

    King has been a vocal opponent of the TEA Party for some time now. So he’s hardly a go-to guy on John Boehner’s notorious “ribbing” of his “colleagues.” I mean, “get your asses in line” isn’t exactly the wittiest or waggish of sly and subtle digs.

    Congress needs less Peter King and more Steve King.

  9. McGehee says:

    If he only had a broehn.

  10. happyfeet says:

    Peter King is a finger-bangin’ good time charlie.

    “Tickle tickle where’s the pickle!” says Peter, his face flushed with merriment.

    and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies and it’s spring

  11. newrouter says:

    peter king is more of a “pull my finger” guy.

  12. happyfeet says:

    yeah well don’t do it

  13. BigBangHunter says:

    – Bundy absolutely must be destroyed. He had the temerity to ask a pointed question that shines the cold spotlight on the indentured servitude trade of your liberty and vote for nanny state security, the idea thats at the very core of the Progressive Communist party doctrine. Off with his head!

  14. newrouter says:

    if whitey talks about blackie that be raycist, if blackie talks about whitey that be social justice.

  15. serr8d says:

    If not for the Democratic Party, I’d loathe the GOP with the fury of a thousand suns. Perhaps there’s no need to have that distinction, because the Democrats have at last moved far enough left so as to no longer need to lie hard to disguise their intentions.

    Jeff, you said as result of the Democrats moving so far-Left that Republicans will happily take their old roles and keep up the pretense that there’s a difference between the two parties. But the two parties are de facto one Party, and thus our Republic is already no more. We’ve become as an oligarchy, ruled by a massive bureaucracy that answers to those that control the flow of capital, goods and services, internationally. Which means our individual efforts to restore our Constitution’s true meaning will not succeed, or only succeed in smallish true-local venues. Unless somehow the ties that now bind our Party Rulers to worldwide influences are broken.

    Technological advances have all but killed our local (read: USA’s) system of governance. “All politics is local” should’ve been taken as a warning…”All politics are local as long as local keeps real economic and physical borders.”

  16. sdferr says:

    We might say the Democrats are in no way democrats (they don’t actually propose to follow the determinations of the demos, but rather the determinations of their progressive political pseudo-science — which rather more resembles tyranny than aught else) and the Republicans are in no way republican (they don’t actually propose to follow the intentions of the republican Constitution, but rather the determinations of their temporary grasp on power, such as it is — which resembles a fraught opportunism, unprincipled, panicky and indeterminate, no way obviously strategic or guided by some holistic reasoning, so we deem them “pragmatists”). The people have become more ignorant or stupid than in former times, due to the ‘determinded’ machinations of the “system” of education having so long been in the control of the political left (education!, ha! what a joke that is!), so the people more frequently follow the determinations of their whims, their bellies, their sexual reproductive organs, etc., than of their considered deliberations upon policy.

    What a stew. And then we have the bureaucracies and their top-end bureaucrats, the “experts”, with vast armies below those top tiers of policy determination not generally self-determined, but mere paper shuffling “implementers” of other-determined policy, so to that extent resemble the people superficially, albeit with now highly vested interests in maintaining their “jobs”.

    Where oligarchy enters in is, for me, still a mystery. Not to say that it doesn’t enter in, just to say I don’t have my hands on it.

  17. sdferr says:

    So plutocracy, then. Which I think makes a bit more sense in the particular. Lose your hold on wealth, lose your seat at the table. Your family name isn’t good for a whit.

  18. Mike G. says:

    Just got back from listening to one of the ‘thorns’ in the side of John ” Orange Face” Boehner, our third district representative Jeff Duncan. Hope to video at “11:00”, or whenever you tube finishes the upload.

  19. McGehee says:

    Which would be worse, Oboehner’s plutocracy or Biden’s goofy-ocracy?

  20. McGehee says:

    Trick question. The answer is Hillary’s Cruella-ocracy.

  21. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Then it’s a good thing that it’s Elizabeth Warren’s faux-ocracy that’s destined to prevail.

    I guess.

  22. sdferr says:

    Does it stand to reason that a self-consciously created commercial republic would degenerate into a plutocracy? It’s at least worth mulling over, I guess.

  23. McGehee says:

    There would have to be a strong central government to ensure that no single commercial entity got too much market share, lest it become monopolistic.

    And since regulators always seem to wind up protecting the interests of the TBTF among the regulated, I’d say the answer is yes, it does stand to reason.

    I think economic globalization poses fewer challenges than is generally feared. It isn’t multinational commerce that’s put us in this leaky boat, but 19th-century (in some cases 18th-century) politics trying to deal with 21st-century realities.

  24. geoffb says:

    A judge for the Pulaski County Circuit Court for the 6th Division on Thursday struck down an Arkansas voter ID law, finding that it violates the state constitution.
    […]
    Debate over voter ID laws has sparked controversy leading up to presidential and congressional elections in November 2012 and beyond. Rights groups argue that voter ID legislation is an attempt by conservatives to preserve their political power through voter suppression of minorities.

    There is no “debate” in the old meaning of the word, only accusations/assertations/pounding the table by so called “rights” groups. Debate on this is only in the sense of the term we saw in those CEDA videos. Lie, make things up, and scream racism over and over.

  25. geoffb says:

    The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Betsy Hodges unanimously approved a resolution Friday that will recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day in Minneapolis, beginning this year.

  26. palaeomerus says:

    Comic Books: Hail Hydra! Cut off one head and two more shall take it’s place!

    Conservative politics: Hail GOP! Cut off one mole or toenail or knock off a scab, and we will all swear that it was never here in the first place and move left a little to regain the trust of the independents! Please like us! Colin Powell!

  27. palaeomerus says:

    it’s -> its

  28. happyfeet says:

    Colin Powell is a cocksucking piece of shit coward whore i think

    not unlike Meghan’s coward daddy

    and I think someday that will be the consensus

    and that will be a good day

  29. newrouter says:

    ancestor worship is baal next

  30. newrouter says:

    the consensus: statist of every variety are fatty fat fatties

  31. happyfeet says:

    everyone should stop being so racist

    and I mean now

    done and done

  32. newrouter says:

    everyone should stop being so racist ready to say what they truly believe

  33. geoffb says:

    The so provincial left.

    I’m not up to date on J-Pop and so would likely have gone to Kodomo No Omocha original intro and/or the Gainax Eva version. href=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NspDZyIIFv4″>Excel Saga would work too.

  34. geoffb says:

    Farked that link good I did.

  35. serr8d says:

    Seems the Bills’ cheerleaders could use some Clippers..
    http://www.tmz.com/2014/04/25/nfl-cheerleader-buffalo-bills-vagina-guide-makes-sense/

  36. newrouter says:

    vox was going to explain the news. too bad they’re in the reality based communists. industrial grade stupid.

  37. newrouter says:

    who knew that a body’s orifice releases liquids, solids, slime and gas

  38. serr8d says:

    ‘feets, if a Leftist says you’re racist then you’re raciss. There’s never any need to argue, just start mewling and blubber an apology.

    See: Glenn Beck on that raciss rancher guy who is raciss (NYT tells us for certain!) and hates turtlez.

    http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/04/24/youve-got-to-distance-yourself-bundy-under-fire-for-racist-negro-comments/

  39. palaeomerus says:

    Yah. We don’t want the government to send paramilitary to point guns at people in the desert but if those people are kind racist then it’s fine. Carry on. What’s the worst that could happen? That’s just what you get for being kind of racist right?

  40. palaeomerus says:

    Glenn can be a real idiot sometimes. Five slow courageous steps forward and then seven rapid panic filled ed steps back. He’s well trained. He hears the bell and acts without thinking.

  41. Ernst Schreiber says:

    “The Minneapolis City Council and Mayor Betsy Hodges unanimously approved a resolution Friday that will recognize the second Monday in October as Indigenous Peoples Day in Minneapolis, beginning this year.”

    Who knew Minneapolis was so anti-Italian?

  42. palaeomerus says:

    Shooting squatter grazers is excessive, unless they sound racist. Then have at it. Allons-y! Maybe they’ll point guns at Ted Nugent or Charlie Daniels next.

  43. newrouter says:

    the glenn and hannity mea culpas for using the spanish word for black is funny. proggtards trained them well.

  44. serr8d says:

    ESPN Radio is telling me the Clippers are playing a game on Sunday. I haven’t watched an NBA game in 20 years, but I might make an exception for this one.

  45. serr8d says:

    Wow. This Sterling fellow is utterly doomed. And that’s from the NBA Commissioner hisself

    Marge Schott had an extended and delicately-handled time of it, comparably.

  46. geoffb says:

    And he’s a Dem donor too.

  47. newrouter says:

    race dislike is not available? always h8te

  48. newrouter says:

    i dislike english food – i be h8ter.

    thanx jeff g for this blog

  49. sdferr says:

    And he’s a Dem donor too.

    Well sure he is . . . since after all, he’s an NAACP award winner too.

  50. dicentra says:

    There would have to be a strong central government to ensure that no single commercial entity got too much market share, lest it become monopolistic.

    I contest that. The problem with biz getting too big is that it uses its bigness to regulate the little guys out of existence. Like a black walnut tree that drops herbicide-laden leaves to suppress growth beneath it.

    A small gubmint has no favors to grant, so there’s no way to use the law to drop the poison leaves.

    Also all Big Biz inevitably becomes as bureaucratic and sclerotic as a gubmint entity, and if there’s nothing to stop their more nimble competitors, they eventually will eat away at the edges of the behemoth until it falls.

    Or is at least brought down to size.

  51. newrouter says:

    tonite on me tv

    And the Children Shall Lead

  52. dicentra says:

    If you’ve ever wondered which of @taklamakanuigur’s tweets has been the most retweeted, you can stop wondering.

  53. newrouter says:

    >And the Children Shall Lead<

    bill ayers tv too

  54. newrouter says:

    >The problem with biz getting too big is that it uses its bigness to <

    drive down prices. when big gov't gets involved big biz buys pols.

  55. dicentra says:

    Big biz does indeed drive down prizes until they’re the only gig in town, then they can raise them again, because who’s the competitor?

    Of course, they can only raise them high enough that a small gig can’t compete. So there’s a natural limit there.

  56. palaeomerus says:

    I propose that we evacuate all jews from Israel and give them the state of California as their new country. They couldn’t possibly screw the place up as badly as we have. On the other hand why should the Jews have to clean up our mess? Man foreign policy is tough!

  57. palaeomerus says:

    And yes internet, the above is a joke.

  58. newrouter says:

    >drive down prizes until they’re the only gig in town <

    let's do rockefeller – his competition was coal(railroads) and cars/light(electric/steamer, electric=coal). usable energy is fluid. stupid energy is gov't.

  59. palaeomerus says:

    “There would have to be a strong central government to ensure that no single commercial entity got too much market share, lest it become monopolistic.”

    Unless it’s pro sports, publishing, movies, tv…

  60. newrouter says:

    >then they can raise them again, because who’s the competitor? <

    being in marcellus gas country, i'm contemplating doing coal to gasoline experiments in my garage.

  61. newrouter says:

    liquid fuels have the mobility factor – btu/lb, btu/cu ft

  62. newrouter says:

    i heard larry “the rino” kudlow talk about liquid methane today on his show. the stupid it hurts.

  63. happyfeet says:

    coal is a lovely feedstock

  64. newrouter says:

    >
    Coal to Liquids http://www.worldcoal.org/coal/uses-of-coal/coal-to-liquids/&lt;

    hey negro peeps- no ddt or energy for you

  65. newrouter says:

    oh my ch4 has hydrogen

  66. dicentra says:

    Mia Love?

    Lead-pipe cinch. She rox.

  67. newrouter says:

    >Everyone, however, is in fact involved and enslaved, not only the
    greengrocers but also the prime ministers. Differing positions in the
    hierarchy merely establish differing degrees of involvement: the
    greengrocer is involved only to a minor extent, but he also has very
    little power. The prime minister, naturally, has greater power, but in
    return he is far more deeply involved. Both, however, are unfree,
    each merely in a somewhat different way. The real accomplice in this
    involvement, therefore, is not another person, but the system itself.
    Position in the power hierarchy determines the degree of responsibility
    and guilt, but it gives no one unlimited responsibility and
    guilt, nor does it completely absolve anyone. Thus the conflict
    between the aims of life and the aims of the system is not a conflict
    between two socially defined and separate communities; and only a
    very generalized view (and even that only approximative) permits us
    to divide society into the rulers and the ruled. Here, by the way, is
    one of the most important differences between the post-totalitarian
    system and classical dictatorships, in which this line of conflict can
    still be drawn according to social class. In the post-totalitarian
    system, this line runs de/acto through each person, for everyone in
    his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.
    What we understand by the system is not, therefore, a social order
    imposed by one group upon another, but rather something which
    permeates the entire society and is a factor in shaping it, something
    which may seem impossible to grasp or define (for it is in the nature
    of a mere principle), but which is expressed by the entire society as
    an important feature of its life.<

    havel @ '77

  68. newrouter says:

    >A SPECTER is haunting Eastern Europe: the specter of what in the West is called “dissent” This specter has not appeared out of thin air. It is a natural and inevitable consequence of the present historical phase of the system it is haunting. It was born at a time when this system, for a thousand reasons, can no longer base itself on the unadulterated, brutal, and arbitrary application of power, eliminating all expressions of nonconformity. What is more, the system has become so ossified politically that there is practically no way for such nonconformity to be implemented within its official structures. . . .

    {2}Our system is most frequently characterized as a dictatorship or, more precisely, as the dictatorship of a political bureaucracy over a society which has undergone economic and social leveling. I am afraid that the term “dictatorship,” regardless of how intelligible it may otherwise be, tends to obscure rather than clarify the real nature of power in this system. . . Even though our dictatorship has long since alienated itself completely from the social movements that give birth to it, the authenticity of these movements (and I am thinking of the proletarian and socialist movements of the nineteenth century) gives it undeniable historicity. These origins provided a solid foundation of sorts on which it could build until it became the utterly new social and political reality it is today, which has become so inextricably a part of the structure of the modern world. . . . It commands an incomparably more precise, logically structured, generally comprehensible and, in essence, extremely flexible ideology that, in its elaborateness and completeness, is almost a secularized religion. It offers a ready answer to any question whatsoever; it can scarcely be accepted only in part, and accepting it has profound implications for human life. In an era when metaphysical and existential certainties are in a state of crisis, when people are being uprooted and alienated and are losing their sense of what this world means, this ideology inevitably has a certain hypnotic charm. . . .

    {3}The profound difference between our system-in terms of the nature of power-and what we traditionally understand by dictatorship, a difference I hope is clear even from this quite superficial comparison, has caused me to search for some term appropriate for our system, purely for the purposes of this essay. If I refer to it henceforth as a “post-totalitarian” system, I am fully aware that this is perhaps not the most precise term, but I am unable to think of a better one. I do not wish to imply by the prefix “post” that the system is no longer totalitarian; on the contrary, I mean that it is totalitarian in a way fundamentally different from classical dictatorships, different from totalitarianism as we usually understand it. <
    link

  69. newrouter says:

    >}The post-totalitarian system touches people at every step, but it does so with its ideological gloves on. This is why life in the system is so thoroughly permeated with hypocrisy and lies: government by bureaucracy is called popular government; the working class is enslaved in the name of the working class; the complete degradation of the individual is presented as his ultimate liberation; depriving people of information is called making it available; the use of power to manipulate is called the public control of power, and the arbitrary abuse of power is called observing the legal code; the repression of culture is called its development; the expansion of imperial influence is presented as support for the oppressed; the lack of free expression becomes the highest form of freedom; farcical elections become the highest form of democracy; banning independent thought becomes the most scientific of world views; military occupation becomes fraternal assistance. Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to persecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.

    {10}Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must at least tolerate them in silence, or get along well with those who work with them. For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.

    . . . .

    {11}Why in fact did our greengrocer have to put his loyalty on display in the shop window? Had he not already displayed it sufficiently in various internal or semipublic ways? At trade union meetings, after all, he had always voted as he should. He had always taken part in various competitions. He voted in elections like a good citizen. He had even signed the “antiCharter.” Why, on top of all that, should he have to declare his loyalty publicly? After all, the people who walk past his window will certainly not stop to read that, in the greengrocer’s opinion, the workers of the world ought to unite. The fact of the matter is, they don’t read the slogan at all, and it can be fairly assumed they don’t even see it. If you were to ask a woman who had stopped in front of his shop what she saw in the window, she could certainly tell whether or not they had tomatoes today, but it is highly unlikely that she noticed the slogan at all, let alone what it said.

    {12}It seems senseless to require the greengrocer to declare his loyalty publicly. But it makes sense nevertheless. People ignore his slogan, but they do so because such slogans are also found in other shop windows, on lampposts, bulletin boards, in apartment windows, and on buildings; they are everywhere, in fact. They form part of the panorama of everyday life. Of course, while they ignore the details, people are very aware of that panorama as a whole. And what else is the greengrocer’s slogan but a small component in that huge backdrop to daily life?

    {13}The greengrocer had to put the slogan in his window, therefore, not in the hope that someone might read it or be persuaded by it, but to contribute, along with thousands of other slogans, to the panorama that everyone is very much aware of. This panorama, of course, has a subliminal meaning as well: it reminds people where they are living and what is expected of them. It tells them what everyone else is doing, and indicates to them what they must do as well, if they don’t want to be excluded, to fall into isolation, alienate themselves from society, break the rules of the game, and risk the loss of their peace and tranquility and security. . . .

    {14}Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth. . . .

    {15}The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children’s access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

    {16}Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence in people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety. . . .

    {17}The original and most important sphere of activity, one that predetermines all the others, is simply an attempt to create and support the independent life of society as an articulated expression of living within the truth. In other words, serving truth consistently, purposefully, and articulately, and organizing this service. This is only natural, after all: if living within the truth is an elementary starting point for every attempt made by people to oppose the alienating pressure of the system, if it is the only meaningful basis of any independent act of political import, and if, ultimately, it is also the most intrinsic existential source of the “dissident” attitude, then it is difficult to imagine that even manifest “dissent” could have any other basis than the service of truth, the truthful life, and the attempt to make room for the genuine aims of life. <

    havel 77

  70. newrouter says:

  71. geoffb says:

    Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. gave a powerful speech at the NRA convention Wednesday, receiving a standing ovation when he told the crowd the seven words he’d add to the Second Amendment if he could: “Keep your hands off our guns, dammit.”

    Just to juxtapose with Minneapolis City Council @5:44 pm.

  72. McGehee says:

    A small gubmint has no favors to grant, so there’s no way to use the law to drop the poison leaves.

    Small governments never stay that way. Jefferson, IIRC, understood this and said something about periodically nourishing the tree of liberty.

  73. McGehee says:

    There is no utopia. There is only constant work and the need for eternal vigilance.

  74. Mueller says:

    That’s the thing about monopolies Di. They get so big they can’t keep track of all their parts. Little cracks appear. Small businesses then exploit those cracks. IBM used to dominate computers. NCR used to dominate cash registers. Big businesses use the government to try to keep their monopoly. Pan Am and TWA invented the FAA. Where are Pan Am and TWA today?

  75. sdferr says:

    Seems to be a heap of mocking (if not public stoning) going on these days.

    I see in the media that IWonPenPhone weighed in on his State Dept. hashtag tom-foolery with this:

    “When people — when ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance you don’t really have to do anything, you just let them talk. And that’s what happened here.”

    So, is this a sign that IWonPenPhone has finally gotten himself a clue?

  76. geoffb says:

    So, is this a sign that IWonPenPhone has finally gotten himself a clue?

    No more of one than these non-selfaware people have. Link h/t serr8d.

  77. sdferr says:

    Keith Whittington: Remembering Why Hayek Mattered

    A decent article, it seems to me, though spoiled nearly fatally by its final sentence: “And why Hayek was not just a propagandist for the rich.”

    Not just? But a little bit “a propagandist for the rich” at any rate, eh? Faugh.

  78. sdferr says:

    Heh, I ought perhaps to have asked whether Pres. IWonPenPhone has circled back to consume his own tail Ourobouros style?

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