Friday Flow Charts: The State™

When in the Course a Human Invents

He called America a nation born out of protests, and said that he had no interest in reducing productive civic dialogue.

“This is about holding our country together and having these debates,” he said. “The Republicans will have their chance in November.”

-Il Clinton

There is a certain rubbernecking pleasure in watching the various keepers of America's normative civic narrative try to square the idea that "antigovernment violence" is a unique evil while celebrating "a nation born out of protests." Yea, fondly do I recall learning about General Washington leading his ragtag band in the American Protest.

HONK IF YOU WANT UK OUT OF US!

TAXASHUN WITHOUT REPRISENTATIN IS TEERANY!

While sure, it's true that the Jeffersonian conception of the right of The People, whomever they are, to overthrow and alter their government counsels that they not do so lightly, indeed, suggests great forebearance of ills and grievances prior to any revolt, nevertheless Les Founders embraced the theory and practice of violent revolution. After spending many hours poring over the dusty archives of this land is your land this land is my land, I believe I have finally found proof of this proposition. It appears, and here I am going to make a radical historical conjecture, so hold onto your hats and keep your buttcheeks clenched, it appears that America was forged in the crucible of violent revolution. In fact, I have even come up with a name for this event. I am going to call it the "Revolutionary War."

This in turn seems to have some, ya know, implications for those who would militate against militancy. The problem is not in condemning particular acts, but it making so-called antigovernment violence categorically un-American, to say, in effect, that no circumstance permits taking up arms against the government. Of course, my own personal philosophy precludes my taking up arms against anything that I cannot subsequently consume, and while William Jefferson looks pretty well marbled, The Obama appears to me to be all bone and gristle, suitable for braising, perhaps, but probably rangy and tough. That disclaimer aside, I can only echo the question:

which has been more of a problem: anti-government violence, or government violence?

Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov!

Who are the men and women of the IRS? They are the people who collect the revenue that allows the government to finance our troops who are in harm's way, help our wounded warriors, pay Grandma's Medicare bills, cover the costs of keeping our food and drugs safe, and do so many of the other things the vast majority of us want our government to accomplish.

Yes, if you support our troops, you have to support the work of the Internal Revenue Service.

-E.J. Dionne

The last graf wrks for me. I don't support our troops, ergo . . .

Doctor J was wrong. Patriotism is the first refuge of the scoundrel. It seems there is, literally, Joe Biden, nothing in America than cannot be hitched to the rear bumper of the American military and made unquestionably just. Although Dionne is himself a typically timorous liberal who in their Friday colloquys manages to make even His Milquetoastest David Brooks look like Bill Burroughs, even Dionne has managed several modica of outrage over what used to be called "George W. Bush's illegal war"--called such, that is, until The Obama inherited it, at which point it became but one more tragic necessity. So now this liberal's principle defense of the tax code and the organ of tax collection is that without it we could not invade and occupy foreign countries? Gracious, can I request a bump up to a higher bracket? Will it get me a better listing in the playbill?

I suspect Dionne and his liberal counterparts would scoff if I constructed a vulgar libertarian defense of the credit industry on the grounds that it provides a public service and has employees whose job it is to help indebted consumers pay off their obligations, and they would be right to scoff. That the IRS allows people with immediately unpayable burdens to amortize them (with interest, by the fucking way) doesn't make it somehow uniquely forgiving and civic-minded; it makes it a typical accounts receivable department. And while I do not think we should go about killing staff accountants and what have you, because, you know, killing is bad and it will not stop the tax man anyhow, let's not forget that failure to remit timely payment to the IRS doesn't result in a bad report to the credit rating agency; it results in serious legal sanctions, fines, wage garnishment, imprisonment. In other words, coercion. As Professor Sartwell is fond of noting, let the government actually forswear violence, declare itself pacifistic, and then try to collect.

Governments by their nature aren't non-violent, obviously, and taxes being one of Franklin's two lifetime certainties, and the coming homosexual anarchomutualist utopia being somewhere other than in the offing, my prescription come tax time is defeat and crass accomodationism. Take as many cheap deductions as you can and try desperately to fly under the radar so that you can get on to more important things, like fucking, good novels, smoking weed. But I still get angry at these cheap, dutiful, edifices to good citizenship, especially in America, where the first thing anyone can think of when defending the necessary imposition of the income tax is that without it America would be less capable of going around the world to kill.

Home Economics

Some of our favorite progressive interlocutors in the comments section of this-a-here blurgh have lately taken to accusing Monsieur IOZ of Gross Highfalutinness for his cuisine bourgeoise. Mais c'est pas vrai mes potes! Now, I do not publish the following, uh, study to somehow prove that I am not a Child of Privilege™--reader, I am--but rather to prove on an understandable, day-to-day, domestic scale that progressives and liberals are, to the man and woman, innumerate morons whose horrible chubby fingers bash against the face of their solar calculators with impotent, uncomprehending rage as time moves on and the universe expands, cold and implacable, inexorable and uncaring.



And this is one of my more expensive recipes, which costs per person less than what you'd pay for a 6-inch sandwich at Subway.

Most of the food I cook and recommend is cheap. It's peasant food, refined only by a bit of technique. For, although The Son of a Hospital Executive™, friends, I long since blew my trust fund on whores and cocaine, and must make do with the meager salary of a bored middle manager in a vast urban bureaucracy. And yet it is possible to live very well. To eat and drink well.

I appreciate the perception that I am a mere nihilist. Politically, I am. Yet I find myself, generally, much happier than my more politically earnest acquaintances, for whom the vast, inhuman movement of history and their own insignificance in the face of it necessitate a life-skein of endless disappointments and let-downs. Me, instead of contributing to some asshole's brand-name political campaign, I'll spend a hundred bucks on booze. A good Beaune-Village is worth a thousand Obamas. The smell of baking bread is better than the vote.

One for the Thumb

Apparently, "he needs to use better judgment" has metamorphosed into "he needs to grow up." But I am with Jim Henley (first link): what Ben Roethlisberger needs to do is stop raping.

I guess some people believe that this actually is an issue of emotional maturity. After all, one learns not to hit before one learns not to commit wire fraud. Some moral behaviors are simple, others more complex; some are proximate, some are contingent. But Do Not Force Sex on Others is pretty much on the don't hit, don't steal lunch money level. It is not a complicated moral transaction, requires no careful weighing of countervailing factors, no consideration of greater good or lesser evil. It is not a fraught ethical dilemma in which doing what may be an immediate wrong is necessary to catalyse an ultimate right. It is perfectly straightforward. Whether she's a nun or a drunken sorority girl, do not force her to have sex with you. Don't try to force her to have sex with you. Don't think about forcing her to have sex with you. Don't rape!

In other words, it isn't an exhibition of poor judgment or immaturity when a hulking Ohioan rape yeti drags your tipsy ass off to a dank, mildewed, Georgia pissoir in order to violate you in every terrible way that his carbombed, primitive brain can conceive through its perpetual haze of alcohol, penis-size insecurity, and brutally repressed evaluation of its own lousy yeti looks. It is rape. Don't rape!

Tacks

Of course, the anarchist retorts, no, you shouldn't have to pay for wars, and Mike Pence shouldn't have to pay for abortions. No one should have to pay for anything they find so deeply objectionable. All theories of conseunsual government go out the window when you understand that there are, literally, Joe Biden, no circumstances in which so-called tax protest is legal. Voluntary participation is, uh, mandatory. In the absence of a right to refuse or abstain, there can be no consent.

On the other hand, I am tickled pinker by the sorry reduction of the Plogosphere to sniping that George Dubya started "useless wars." Inheritance is a bitch, isn't she?

Always Fill Out a Police Report

Oh, our bad.