"Aphoristic Granularity, or Perhaps
Granular Aphoristity. It’s Hard To Tell"
by Fred Reed
"The Column Racket Explained: A political columnist should choose a place on the Left-Right spectrum. It doesn’t matter which. He needn’t believe it but should never deviate from it. Readers do not want intelligence or original thought. They want affirmation, to be told what they already think, over and over.
Editors want predictability, not thought or insight. An editor’s nightmare is to wake up every morning and think, “Oh God, what the hell has Reed said now, and how much will the lawyers cost?” Consequently they want slot-columnists: The tame white conservative male, the black female mildly racist woman, the white liberal male, and so on. Predictability, predictability, predictability.
Politics compressed: At their purest, conservatives are heartless and liberals, goofy. Conservatives don’t want to pay for anything for anybody else, and liberals want to pay for everything for everybody else. Conservatives see enemies where there are none; liberals don’t see enemies where there are. Countries deserve what they tolerate (may God preserve us). Left and Right are twin halves of a national lobotomy serving to forestall governance. I need a drink.
America begins its wars by overestimating itself, underestimating the enemy, and misunderstanding the kind of war it is entering. This explains a lot.
More on the public prints: In political discourse, avoid the highbrow. Americans resent intelligence. They are unlikely, if under thirty, to know anything they didn’t learn from Tiktok. Don’t confuse them.
More on journalism: A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. A reporter should know the difference.
On Liberal Politics: There is no more satisfying display of one’s virtue than public repentance for one’s sins. It is not necessary actually to have committed the sins.
When a politician says, “the American people,” or, worse, "the American Dream", put your hand on your wallet and send for a rope. There is no greater sign of contempt for the populace.
Dictionary: “Unacceptable.” Acceptable. Said to indicate something that is being accepted. It implies moral firmness on the part of the speaker while presaging nothing.
Defense: Offense. Indicates capacity for armed attack on another country to get its natural resources ,or a transfer of money to the arms industry mediated by bribes. These transfers bear no relation to defense of anything. The last time the armed forces defended America was in 1945 or, arguably, 1812.
Supreme Court: An auxiliary legislature of last resort. Sometimes regarded as having to do with constitutionality, though there is little evidence for this.
United Nations: An international organization having no discernible purpose. It serves as a venue for laudable speeches to which no one listens by countries which have no power.
War crime: Military behavior as usual when discovered by a reporter.
International law: A phrase invoked to indicate the speaker’s piety without requiring action. Law if not enforced means nothing. By tradition, it isn’t.
Religion clarified: A Methodist is a Baptist with shoes. A Presbyterian is a Methodist with a Buick. An Anglican is a Presbyterian with a stock portfolio. A Unitarian is a Democrat who believes that God is a force for community betterment.
Politics: People know when they are cold, wet, hungry, or scared. Most know little else. Polls reveal that large majorities cannot name the branches of government, can barely read, and even think that the sun revolves around the earth. Politicians competitively shoo them in desired directions as if herding hamsters, which is how they view the electorate.
Fear is the best incitement, so tell the electorate that something bad is coming to get them, the Russians or Chinese or almost anything frightening. Then increase the budget.
Women are realists pretending to be romantics. Men are romantics pretending to be realists, especially true of military men, who resemble Boy Scouts with scary hormones. It shows.
Democracy: First control what people know and then give them all the democracy they want.
Ignorance: The normal state of humanity. Washington is a conspiracy to conceal ignorance. Knowing things requires time and effort better spent in running for reelection and soliciting bribes. Reporters ask a senator, “What should be our policy on Afghanistan,” not “Do you have the slightest idea where Afghanistan is?” The Senator replies, “Well, i think we need to support the Afghan freedom fighters in their struggle for democracy and to overcome the communist threat.” This disguises the fact that he doesn’t know where Afghanistan is and does not remind the public that they don’t know either.
The public will is often determined by the idiotic question, “Do you think the country is headed in the right direction?” To know the direction in which the country is headed requires familiarity with the behavior of tectonic plates, a familiarity few have. There is no hope. But, with tectonic plates, neither is there much hurry.
A working democracy depends on limitation of choice. Ask the electorate whether it would prefer universal medical care or an intercontinental nuclear bomber; decent schools or a goiterous military empire in countries nobody has heard of; or affordable houses for the young or tax breaks for billionaires, and they will tell you. Consequently these questions are kept off ballots.
Political thought consists ninety percent of emotion and ten percent of misinformation. In fairness, in some cases the reverse is true.
Abraham Lincoln said that “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” Being a politician, he did not add that you can fool enough of the people enough of the time, and that is enough.” This is the bedrock of democratic governance.
Military stupidity comes in three varieties: normally stupid; really, really stupid; and invading Russia. We should keep this in mind.
No government wants democracy. Thus they expend immense resources to convince the public that they already have it. This prevents attempts to get it. Willy Bill selling fan belts at the NAPA outlet in East Needle, Nebraska is easy prey for infinitely computerized social media run by smart people who spend their lives at manipulation. What passes for electoral democracy is political ping pong between two parties equal in their contempt for a public they regard as equivalent to gerbils.
Donald Trump is the first President to combine fascism with daffiness.
American foreign policy fails because it is made by people who have no idea what they are doing. A friend, a former senator, once estimated to me that ninety percent of the Senate don’t know where Myan Mar is. On the House China committee there is no one who reads, writes, or speaks Chinese, or has an academic degree in East Asia studies. The forty members of the House Science committee include one real scientist, a particle physicist out of Harvard, and two medical doctors. The Current President confuses Azerbaijan with Albania. Ask the Senate, charged with making foreign policy, what countries border on Iran, which they want to bomb.
Most people derive their ideology from the world. Zealots derive the world from their ideology. The ideology is static, so they never learn anything they don’t want to know.
Democracy selects as leaders those least fit to lead. To be elected one must lie, cozen, and swindle, the degree of mastery of these arts increasing with progress to higher office. Thus we are ruled by unprincipled provincial lawyers selected in popularity contests. We could do better by choosing men sleeping under park benches. If they remained asleep, this would be even better.
There you have it, everything worth knowing about the workings of the country. There is no more to be learned. I expect that across America whole university departments of poly-sci will close in despair, and most sociologists will take poison. At least we can hope."
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