Stop Me Before I Vote Again

My quondam companion, the dearly departed J Alva Scruggs, once wrote me on the subject of philosopher emperors. It thundered and it flashed, it filled the page with deep insight, and I was in awe and dazzled for days after.

I've misplaced it, and its perfected phrasing may be lost for all time, but I remember he was... agin' 'em.

There are no good emperors. They all turn into Nosferatu once the door's shut -- it goes with the office.

Here's another man from Illinois who struck a decidedly Aurelian pose while running for emperor of the open-market world. Similarly, he was up against a man of military distinction.

The purple prose egghead against the knuckle-mouthed general. Of course the egghead lost in a landslide. And Ike wasn't even a war hero like Johnny. Ike wasn't shot down on a daring raid into enemy territory. Ike wasn't tortured and twisted by his enemies. Nope, Ike stayed back and made his enemies surrender.

Old Marcus is supposed to have written his rather smug and self-congratulatory Meditations during short intervals of leisure from his day job, which was mostly spent on the battlefield, trying to shore up the Empire against "barbarians" in the East. The Romans seem to have used the word "barbarian" much the same way we use "terrorist", as a portmanteau term for anybody who doesn't enjoy our benign and civilized rule.

[Obama] said he did not find blogs to be reliable, citing the economy as one example. “Part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs,” he said, “is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully, then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another — well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine.”

Via Joe Weisenthal

If he's looking for ways to reinforce those false dichotomies, I'd think turning to the court intellectual wannabes is his best bet. He's made their job difficult, but it's not impossible. There are bound to be a few that are "reliable". I also think he protests too much. Narcissism and solipsism know no satiety. A million cheerleading blogs wouldn't be enough. Fortunately, there's a clean answer: resign. He should hand this off to Joe Biden (bear with me). In three months, his supporters would be begging him to come back.

Constructive criticism