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Samizdata quote(s) of the day

By the end, we may see profligate politicians hanging from lampposts. But there’ll be a lot of bad stuff, too.

Instapundit

LATER:

But all joking aside, if the current profligacy continues, and America winds up in a Greece-style (or worse) collapse, politicians may not wind up hanging from lampposts (we don’t really do that here), but they will at the very least likely face the kind of investigations, prosecutions, and social opprobrium normally reserved for child molesters and Bernie Madoff types. I don’t think they fully appreciate that. If they did, they’d be acting differently.

17 comments to Samizdata quote(s) of the day

  • Kim du Toit

    That’s what happens when you’re not allowed to own guns: you have to go all mediaeval.

    When it happens, post pics, please. I need something to cheer me up.

  • There seems to be a considerable difference between this and the version currently on Google Reader.

  • veryretired

    It’s a nice throwaway line, but the really funny part is the prissy bozo who emails that it’s “over the line”.

    The utterly corrupt, incompetent, and insufferably arrogant power-crazed pols in this country, and in your neck of the woods as well, are playing big-shot while the ship of state drifts onto rocks that have been clearly visible for decades, and this little pud is worried about a joke being just too, too ishy and mean.

    The next several years, beginning with the current election cycle, are going to see pitched battles in the street between the occupier SA and the opponents of the progressive agenda.

    Hope our dear little aunty pitti-pat doesn’t get the vapors.

  • thefrollickingmole

    Well Im not cheered seeing Barny Frank sent off into retirement as a respected ex-pollie, instead of one of the prime movers in the home loans/credit crisis debacle.

    This is a partisan Repub video, but does capture the crap from pollie thet has got us in some of this mess.(Link)

  • Ed Snack

    Of course there won’t be, it’s a joke to even think of it. The politicians control the system. You might see some opposition politicians go up in extremis, but the politicians as a class will, as usual, benefit immensely from any disturbances.

    Unless there’s a full scale revolution, and does anyone seriously suggest that ? In Europe maybe, in Greece or Spain perhaps (or Portugal ?), but I doubt that’s there’s any desire for wide-scale blood letting in the USA, at least not this side of crazy.

  • thefrollickingmole

    Bugger Ive been smoted……smatted….smaten….. smited…

  • RRS

    Let me pose a question:

    Are not “politiciams” who are given or have any “political” power anything other than a reflection, however refracted, of the electorate?

  • Lan Di

    (Editor: Go away Gary, you occasionally say something cogent but usually you just troll, so get lost)

  • Richard Thomas

    RRS: No. Politicians are, for the most part, power crazed sociopaths for whom the political system has been devised as a diversion from their more traditional pass-time of having half the population attempt to turn the other half into worm-food (and vice versa).

    However, even for a well devised political system, just as with an escapologist in a straitjacket , there comes a point where the seemingly useless struggling has passed and it is clear that it is only a matter of time before the buckles are loosed and the jacket is thrown triumphantly to the ground. The politicians have got their arms over their heads and have the leather of the straps between their teeth.

    Meh, that metaphor was better in my head. Oh well. Point is, the jig’s up, it’s just a question of how far along we are and how much there’s left to go. This is one thing I’d really like to be wrong about.

  • RRS

    @ R Thomas
    In Western Civilizations, why do electorates passively allow, or actively transfer, power to “power crazed sociopaths?”

    You may have one answer to why some seek to become “politicians,” and another as to what kinds of individuals seek that role; but, it does not answer how they attain from electorates what they seek.

  • Somehow I suspect we’ll be seeing the same politicians who caused the problems leading enraged lynch mobs from scapegoat to scapegoat.

  • Eric Tavenner

    Politicians are sociopaths who don’t have the gumption to become serial killers.

    As for why the electorate gives them power.

    Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
    Robert Heinlein

  • RRS

    @Eric T.,

    Even so, is not most human conduct objective oriented, even if not “rational?”

  • persiflage

    I am sure, like the current crop of pols, Ceausescu was not expecting that things would get out of hand – they never had before, right?

    One needn’t invent scenarios – just read history.
    A “Ceausescu moment” awaits our pols, and it will occur when a critical mass of citizens realize what must be done if they intend to retain a semblance of liberty for themselves, their children and grandchildren.

  • Richard Thomas

    RRS: The simple answer is that most of us are just too busy doing our own thing. As long as we are mostly left to our own devices and the tributes demanded of us are not too excessive, it’s easier just to let these people do their own thing.

    With that said, there do seem to be many who actually like to be “lead”, who don’t trust their own or others’ judgement and who find comfort in accepting the legal as the moral. This is definitely assisted by the education (and other) system contributing to the production of an infantilised population.

  • Paul Marks

    Sadly why should the Instapundit post be true?

    Of course there will be an economic collapse (there I agree), but why should not the “mainstream” media and the education system (the schools and colleges) not manage to (in the minds of most people) divert the blame from those who are to blame (the wild spending politicans and the credit bubble financial system of the Federal Reserve) to those who are NOT to blame (such as the evil rich person, the Mr Burns type, who owns a big manufacturing or energy company – real business people such as the Koch brothers, or Jon Huntsman senior)?

    After all that is what the msm and the education system do all the time.

    Hatred of “the rich” (not the “Progressive” rich of course) and the “do nothing” Republicans (not the Progressive RINO’s or their Dem friends).

    The only true hope is (as I never tire of saying) in the following.

    The bankruptcy of the msm.

    And the reform of education.

    By “bankruptcy” de facto bankruptcy would do – i.e. the circulation and viewing figures of the msm going so low that it did not matter any more (like the Guardian newspaper in Britain – at least like the Guardian newspaper if the accursed BBC did not exist).

    And by the “reform” of education I, of course, mean reform with a chainsaw.

    The best way to deal with the entrenched leftist in the schools and colleges is cut the taxpayer subsidies.

    Cut them and keep on cutting them – for both the official state institutions and the notionally “private” ones.

    Cut, cut and cut – till they are dead.