Memo to America: Drugs Might Help

I will soon be done with this immigration issue; sometime after our leaders have codified into law the principle that human beings can be viewed as units of labor, subject to strict cost analysis and valued entirely thereby. They bring nothing more with them; except perhaps a deep love of the ideals we are currently rendering hollow at home and abroad.

Culture, intelligence, group thought and resentment, human nature in toto; I'm relieved to learn from my betters that these things have been rendered meaningless by globalization and the conspicuous tolerance of our mandarins. Pay no attention to the angry mobs waving foreign flags; disregard the triumphant language of racial demagogues. Don't inquire what's to become of what's left of our republic. Comfort yourself with the knowledge that you haven't entertained thoughts that the nicely dressed people on television would find gauche. And don't forget: American Idol's finale is tonight!

Our political, media, and corporate classes have become the operative three branches of governance. Like the nominal triumvirate set forth in the constitution, they have their internal rifts, and sometimes struggle for power amongst themselves. But unlike the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government, (now comprising one foundation of the new order; the political element of our oligarchy), they can work together with remarkable cohesion and little overt direction. A template has been fashioned over the past generation, the result of years of pandering and demagoguery dressed up in lofty rhetoric (or not-so-lofty rhetoric), and each element knows intuitively how to behave in a remarkable variety of situations.

I still haven't figured out how that brought us Iraq; but in the run-up to war the notably symphonic sounds of our media and political leadership would have been something to behold if it hadn't been in service of the greatest imperial blunder in our nation's history. In only the first decade of the 2000s, the Iraq war's still a solid bet to make foreign policy disaster of the century. Just as Battlefield Earth is destined to become the worst film of our century, even though it was made in 2000 (if 2000 counts as this century; no matter, it's the worst movie of last century too). Both elicit the same response; what were they thinking?

The motivations behind immigration capitulation, on the other hand, are transparent. Corporate interests require plentiful cheap labor; check (and check-book). Major media is our clerical class, and the religion of our time is egalitarianism, so the dustier and duskier the protagonist the better; plain old Americans engaged in preserving their culture (as if!) just can't compete. We should be heartened and encouraged that the principled opposition comes from a heretical sect within the political class, I say with no irony. There is hope.

Looking around for the media's collusion in today's remarkable silencing of debate, one finds a target-rich field. The New York Times served today as mouthpiece for the great city's martinet-in-chief, taking a break from outlawing smoking and other pet concerns of the pursed lip set, whose status, he says, as a businessman and mayor makes his opinion a grand trump of yours, America. He's convinced that the American economy will be made into an empty shell if we should attempt to enforce immigration law, which he interprets as, all together now, mass deportations, showing that he too received the memo.

Mexico's president is touring the United States lobbying on behalf of capitulation; odd, he is employing the same words in his plodding accent: "comprehensive"; "mass deportations"; "cooperation." Local news here in Seattle was fawning. One broadcast began with, "We all know how much Washington depends on migrant labor..." Our governor, a political mediocrity advanced by the powers that be into the governorship after attaching the state to the last great shake-down of the tobacco industry (the vast proceeds of which long ago squandered) as our attorney general, toed the line enthusiastically. All very depressing.

The Christian Science Monitor, God bless them, sounded a discordant note. They're reporting that most senators haven't read the latest version of the immigration reform bill and don't know what's in it. Regarding the version of S.2611 advanced today:

The trouble is, no one is quite sure what's in it. The quickened pace in recent days has helped the Senate get to "yes" on the 614-page bill - a final vote is expected this week. And it's given senators a rare chance to actually legislate. But it's also produced several surprises that have caught members off guard.

What counted was maintaining a "fragile" coalition of senators committed to passing comprehensive reform, including a path to citizenship for many of the millions already in the country illegally. While those following the action on C-SPAN saw frequent lulls, the work behind the scenes to hold that core was unrelenting.
Keeping abreast of the bill's changes often overwhelmed members. The final hours of the Judiciary Committee's March 27 markup got so rushed that, at one point, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) of California asked: "Excuse me, but did we just vote to raise or lower the number of H-1B visas?" No one knew.

Reassuring.
One of my favorite moments today came from Wolf Blitzer, hunkered down in his version of a child's play-fort called The Situation Room, which is either supposed to suggest a state of perpetual crisis that Wolf is bravely managing or is wryly comedic along the lines of Dr. Strangelove's War Room; I opt for the latter. Just as the president famously says in that great dark comedy, "gentlemen, this is the War Room, you can't fight in here!", neither does Mr. Blitzer think a situation room is for assessing situations. Today Wolf interviewed Bay Buchanan and Donna Brazile (whose great achievement is that she managed a presidential campaign with the strength of a vibrant peacetime economy on its side, losing to a man who has trouble forming sentences), on the subject of immigration.
Bay Buchanan made the point about 66 million new residents as a result of the senate bill; Mr. Blitzer, either dangerously incompetent or dishonest (or both), expressed shock. He, apparently, doesn't know what's in the bill either.
"How do you get 66 million from ten million?"
Buchanan explained, Blitzer made no further inquiry into the subject and turned to Brazile, who comforted his aching little brain with the magic words: "comprehensive; bipartisan; compromise." Ahh. All better. Not a further significant word.

Some of the mid-level managers of our ruling conglomeration get to be hit men. Steve Sailer brings our attention to today's ugliest incident of a petty functionary publicly upbraiding a renegade, in this case Alabama senator Jeff Sessions, as The Washington Post's Dana Milbank gleefully took up the baton:

A short, wiry man with protruding ears, Sessions has become the Lou Dobbs of the Senate. He argues his points not with the courtly Southern tones of the late senator Howell Heflin (D), his predecessor, but with the harsh twang of a country tough -- which, in a sense, he is.

I'm well aware of the inherent evil of unsightly ears and an ectomorphic physique; but listening to Senator Sessions speak the other day I detected nothing of the "country tough" (which we're supposed to read as redneck cracker) in his speech. In fact, there's nothing "tough" in the senator's manner. I found myself wishing he had been a little more forceful. I suspect the author has lead a sufficiently cloistered life that he thinks Michael Jackson looked tough in the Bad video.
Sessions was very hard on the legislation. Perhaps it's the tender virtue of the senate bill itself Milbank is concerned about. Indeed, singling out Sessions for abuse suggests Milbank finds reading the proposals before the Senate abusive. The poor legislation.
Still, not a single word of refutation of the senator's complaints. Milbank's message: pay no attention to the jug-eared redneck, and let the nice people with the dull, soothing, ill-defined words determine the course of the country. And don't forget: Idol's on tonight!

My day of self-flagellation was bitterly concluded by watching the disturbingly un-sane looking possible future president, John McCain, interviewed by the world's most incurious interviewer, Larry King. McCain speaks with a affectedly calm, dull voice; this describes the content of his words as well. He recited the litany as to why the horror of Iraq: foreign elements, too few troops, etc. Nothing. He proffered the obfuscations regarding immigration: we can't just send 11 million people home. More nothing.
To me he always appears slightly sedated. Someone recently pointed out that with the injuries he sustained as a POW he may very well be on medication. I will soon be on medication as well. I'm relieved to know it won't be interdicted at the border.

One more lesson we'll have to learn painfully: heroism doesn't necessarily make one a good leader. McCain's forced verbal dullness can only mask a man with extremely limited patience. We are not led by the wise; I'm not sure we're even led by the sane. We are led by the ambitious.

As I contemplate McCain vs. Clinton in 2008 I examine the rafters overhead. That one looks strong enough to support a 180 pound man. Now, what have I done with that rope?