When Anti-Semitism Is Both Patriotic and Just

The United States is, and always has been, a plutocracy. Legislators and the Executive are elected, but they take election campaign funds and, in most cases, personal benefits (the use of corporate-owned executive jets, fishing lodges, plus after-office directorships, consultancies, book deals, etc.) from the moneyed interests. These payoffs are absolutely guaranteed, not because the paymasters are honest or inherently trustworthy, but because they have to convince the next lot of office-holders that they will get theirs. Moreover, the same interests fund both parties. Thus, when a Money-Power-controlled Republican or Democrat gets the boot from the House, the Senate, or the Oval Office, they are replaced in the House, the Senate, or the Oval Office by a Money-Power-controlled representatives of the other party.

This system of government is not necessarily all bad. It insures that the ship of state does not veer crazily from one direction to another with every turn in the electoral fortunes of the ruling political parties. Moreover, the legislators and the President are elected and thus do no doubt endeavor to do good to their constituents, or at least to appear to do good to their constituents, so far as that is consistent with loyalty to their financial backers.

Freedom versus Bureaucracy: EU Political Morons Think They Can Impose Their Rules on the UK After Brexit: UK Political Morons Agree

I made an investment the other day in the Mainstream Media, and I use the term "investment" advisedly. I bought a day-old copy of the Sunday Telegraph, which the clerk rang up at "ten dollars and 24 cents." Wow, I'd been thinking about two bucks fifty, which tells you how rarely I  buy a newspaper.

But the investment, as it turned out was worth it. First, I got to find out something about Caroline Aherne, a British entertainer of Irish extraction who died last week at the age of 52, and who, to quote the Telegraph, "bestrode Nineties television like a colossus."

Turns out she invented a comedy series for TV-watching morons all about a family of TV-watching morons, the patriarch of which family spoke endlessly of "my arse." Given that Aherne is said to have had an IQ of 176, a level matched by no more than about one person in five million, the level of her accomplishments in the cultural sphere suggests that something has gone seriously wrong with British civilization. Which is not to deny that Caroline Aherne was genuinely funny (the joke in that clip is in the very last line), but her work, compared with that of say Shakespeare, seems disappointingly limited in range.

But what I learned from the Telegraph that was truly amazing was in the Business section, where the lead story was headed: Britain hit by Brexit negotiator crisis. "The Government," the story begins, "may have to look as far afield as India and America to find the legion of negotiators it needs for post-Brexit trade talks ..." Then under the heading "Bank of England hires legion of advisers to prepare for looming economic challenges" the Telegraph reports that the B of E "has hired more than 300 new staff as it beefed up teams including its economic forecasting unit and its bank monitoring squads in the lead up to the Brexit vote," thus raising the bank's staff to almost four thousand.