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H.L. Mencken, the world-renowned student of the English language, writer, thinker, reporter and hard-hearted curmudgeon, has as many quotes useful in illustrating some of my own bitter and more contemptuous views than I have hairs on my head.
Of these, his most stinging lines were often reserved for the political sect, that most universally reviled segment of our society that we somehow cannot keep from putting into periodic popularity contests.
Case in point: “The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.”
Too wordy for you? Try this: “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
Or this: “Politics is show business for ugly people.”
The point is, politicians are liars, con artists, scammers.
And ugly.
It’s not an opinion, it’s not a belief. It is a fact. They are paid to lie. We pay them to lie. To us, to each other; to everyone. The best of them can even lie effectively to themselves.
The funny thing is that every two or four years we all line up to decide which of these professional liars will “represent” us in Washington — or their slightly less polished kin in Harrisburg.
Now bear in mind that I’m not talking about your township supervisor or borough councilman here, who handle the thankless business of getting the roads plowed and keeping the street lights on.
I’m talking about the two-faced tricksters that hustle their way into the shiny suits and $800 haircuts on our dime, but whose votes go to their big campaign contributors regardless of what it may do to us.
For now we’ll leave aside discussion of the trustworthiness of a person taking money from both sides of a particular issue. (Boy, I can’t wait to come back to that one.) What I’m interested in here is how we allow ourselves to drink the Kool-Aid these self-interested bloodsuckers and their legions of minions serve us every day while blatantly flaunting the law they swear to uphold and obey to line their pockets and those of their cronies.
Worse than this is the fact that now, when information about these creatures and their exploits — as well as anything else you can think of — is available instantly at anyone’s fingertips for the first time in human history, your “representatives” want to cut off your right to have access to that information.
H.L. Mencken, the world-renowned student of the English language, writer, thinker, reporter and hard-hearted curmudgeon, has as many quotes useful in illustrating some of my own bitter and more contemptuous views than I have hairs on my head.
Of these, his most stinging lines were often reserved for the political sect, that most universally reviled segment of our society that we somehow cannot keep from putting into periodic popularity contests.
Case in point: “The United States has never developed an aristocracy really disinterested or an intelligentsia really intelligent. Its history is simply a record of vacillations between two gangs of frauds.”
Too wordy for you? Try this: “Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
Or this: “Politics is show business for ugly people.”
The point is, politicians are liars, con artists, scammers.
And ugly.
It’s not an opinion, it’s not a belief. It is a fact. They are paid to lie. We pay them to lie. To us, to each other; to everyone. The best of them can even lie effectively to themselves.
The funny thing is that every two or four years we all line up to decide which of these professional liars will “represent” us in Washington — or their slightly less polished kin in Harrisburg.
Now bear in mind that I’m not talking about your township supervisor or borough councilman here, who handle the thankless business of getting the roads plowed and keeping the street lights on.
I’m talking about the two-faced tricksters that hustle their way into the shiny suits and $800 haircuts on our dime, but whose votes go to their big campaign contributors regardless of what it may do to us.
For now we’ll leave aside discussion of the trustworthiness of a person taking money from both sides of a particular issue. (Boy, I can’t wait to come back to that one.) What I’m interested in here is how we allow ourselves to drink the Kool-Aid these self-interested bloodsuckers and their legions of minions serve us every day while blatantly flaunting the law they swear to uphold and obey to line their pockets and those of their cronies.
Worse than this is the fact that now, when information about these creatures and their exploits — as well as anything else you can think of — is available instantly at anyone’s fingertips for the first time in human history, your “representatives” want to cut off your right to have access to that information.
Proponents of the so-called Stop Internet Piracy Act (SOPA for short) and its evil twin in the U.S. Senate say they want to protect copyrighted materials like movies, books and music from being stolen by international pirates that rob some of the biggest companies in the world of vast sums each year via the internet.
Unfortunately, in typical federale fashion, what your congress critters don’t tell you is that both of these bills contain provisions that would allow some unaccountable beaurocrat to kill any website that contains copyrighted material by forcing search engines and other sites to stop linking to it.
Think this through for a minute.
Sure, maybe I don’t want someone to be able to steal my copyrighted rants and put them on Youtube in front of a copyrighted background score. (This is NOT the case, by the way. Why any artist would have a problem with that is beyond me.) But what about a news aggregator site like the Drudge Report or Salon.com?
What if the next Watergate or Teapot Dome scandal breaks and the White House or FEMA or the ministry of perpetual lunacy wants the story killed to save face?
If what used to be known as “public servants” were to have this kind of control over the free flow of information, we in America will have gone one giant step closer to dictatorship on par with that of China.
Free, uncensored, unabridged information — and lots of it — is critical to a functioning society. To allow the slippery suckers in Congress, in the White House, or anywhere else to limit access to it for any reason would be treason.
Rest assured, even if such bills were offered with the noblest intent they would eventually be used for ignoble ends. That’s why such wide-open provisions are written into them.
For now, SOPA is on the ropes thanks to widespread protests against it, but it will be back, just like the bank bailouts the people didn’t want but had shoved down our throats anyway.
Why? Because those with the money (and hence, money to lose) want it. Like any other prostitute, politicians must do the bidding of the highest bidder. Unless, of course, the voters force a different system into being.
Josh Wengler is a staff writer for The Wayne Independent and can be reached at jwengler@wayneindependent.com.
