In these torrid times there is little cause for celebration, a modicum of peace of mind, or any contemplation of rosy futures. Our kakistocratic, transmogrified, psychotic, self‑aggrandizing idiots known as the political classes bounce from one idiotic behavior to another — yes, excessive verbosity is a good way to vent one’s anger; I highly recommend it. Reading and writing poetry is another.
If you haven’t figured it out by now, the reason we suffer such beastly, gutterized barbarians as politicians is because they lost their way long ago. It has to do with the presence of empire and their blind allegiance to it — the endless criminality, inhumane corruption, and contemptuous lawlessness. They do not speak for the peoples they are supposed to represent. They speak for the rotted vested interests to whom they have sold their souls.
When I call my doctor, lawyer, or plumber, I do so with trust and confidence that they are well trained and know what they are doing. Too often politicians are mummified whack jobs in a fart‑worn business suit. It never occurs to them that they might not be qualified to make the decisions they do, and they are too stupid and arrogant to listen to their advisors in the know. But of course, for too long in the West we have endured the stinko tradition of paranoiac anti‑intellectualism, the absence of diplomatic process, consensus building, and genuine statecraft. The band plays on, and the charlatans do their goose‑step in the men’s room with the hushed flush.
We might conclude that Western political classes are simply not up to the job in the Year of Our Nihilism, 2026. We might reference Archibald Lampman’s 1896 poem The Modern Politician
What manner of soul is his to whom high truth
Is but the plaything of a feverish hour,
A dangling ladder to the ghost of power!
Gone are the grandeurs of the world's iron youth,
When kings were mighty, being made by swords.
Now comes the transit age, the age of brass,
When clowns into the vacant empires pass,
Blinding the multitude with specious words.
To them faith, kinship, truth and verity,
Man's sacred rights and very holiest thing,
Are but the counters at a desperate play,
Flippant and reckless what the end may be,
So that they glitter, each his little day,
The little mimic of a vanished king.Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Yes, maybe — but it is drifting further and further away and the dead canaries are getting harder than ever to count.
In the meantime we must rely on our intrepid dissidents — the writers, the journalists, the commentators who insist on telling the truth in times of collapse. In normal times they exist on the margins; now they have center stage as they sort through the ruins, determined to sustain the truth so thoroughly trashed in these times. Suddenly YouTube becomes essential sourcing, and the worldwide web of intrepid journalists becomes the sea anchor of our existence. George Galloway channels Orwell, Jeffrey Sachs serves as the emissary of long‑gone civility, and Colonel Macgregor rivals the wisdom of Mark Twain… and the list goes on — to you and me and the demands of restoring our foreclosed citizenship.
In times of collapse, our intrepid dissidents are the scaffolding — the bridgework for crossing the chasm of endless human folly.
It is a matter of acute urgency the healing begins.
Those who botch the public’s business earn the public’s contempt.
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Next blog will be posted Monday, August 10th
And those who turn the public business into personal gain...
Or weaponize it against imagined enemies...