By Michael J. Smith on Sunday September 5 07:41 PM
What a rush this must have been, don't you think? You aim the truck at the flimsy
siding, you stomp on the accelerator. The wall leaps out of the middle distance into the foreground. Maybe you'll survive the crash, maybe you won't. But in that euphoric
millisecond before impact, perhaps you sense, without having the time to form it into words, that you've set one of your masters upon the other?
* * * * *
I'm back from my bucolic -- or rather, riparian -- Maine holiday. Still can't afford a cottage in the very nice place where Better Half and I usually go, so naturally I'm rooting for a major drop in real estate "values". Perhaps I'll get it, or so the Gray Lady of 43d Street seems to think:
Grim Housing Choice: Help Today’s Owners or Future Ones
The unexpectedly deep plunge in home sales this summer is likely to force the Obama administration to choose between future homeowners and current ones, a predicament officials had been eager to avoid.
It's all downhill from here, of course; in spite of the sensational headline and lede,
the story goes on to make it crystal-clear that Obie & Co. will continue to prop up
the fictitious "equity" of "owners" to the extent possible, and the hell with non-owners
(or, as the Times humorously refers to them, "future owners"). The "grim choice" was made long ago, and made quite blithely; and as with a number of other previous grim choices, Obie and the rest of the Donkery are right down with it.
The silver lining is that whatever the Obienauts can do may not be enough. My delight in a further plunge of real-estate prices, should that occur, will be greatly enhanced to the extent that it knocks the Democratic Party into a cocked hat, or rather, knocks it farther into an even more cocked hat. How much can prices fall in the two months before the midterms? Here's hoping we set a record.
One of my lefty mailing list colleagues wrote recently, in response to a thread
entitled "Ciao, Dems":
Of course the subject line, "Ciao, Dems," needs, for the sake of
accuracy, to add something like "for the next few years." Over the last
50 years there have been several predictions of the permanent
disappearance of one or the other of the parties after some landslide
election, but of course the loser always ended up the winner in 4 to 12
years.
It's always astute to observe that the future is likely to resemble the past. Still, there are occasions when the car finally runs out of gas (though let's hope it gets through the siding and the balloon-frame first).
This is not your father's Democratic Party any more. What committed constituency does it still have left? Liberals -- a tiny and inconsequential social formation. Union bureaucrats, ditto.
Of course, there may be a kind of oxygen-tent effect: Perhaps there are elite interests who derive some advantage from having an A team and a B team of flunkies. Play 'em against each other. Every officeholding sycophant serves at pleasure, and there's always some lean-and-hungry B-teamer waiting in the wings if the incumbent doesn't give satisfaction.
* * * * *
What I really want, of course, is for the precarious house-of-cards occupation regime of bribery and subornation in Iraq to break down spectacularly. If I were a truly conscientious person, I would add, the sooner the better. But in fact, I hope it happens in October 2012. Or no, that's unimaginative. I hope it happens on September 11, 2012.
Wouldn't it be exciting to witness the actual disappearance of one of the duopoly parties? We haven't had that pleasure in this country for quite a long time -- even I am not old enough to remember when the Whigs evaporated, and the extinction of liberal Republicans, while gratifying, wasn't quite so tectonic.
I desperately need some excitement; don't we all? This is turning out to be a very boring Administration and Congress. There is a certain arid pleasure in having been right, but nothing to compare with the wild ride Clio can give you when she decides to kick up her heels and surprise you.
Ms Clio! Paging Clio!
