Back when I was a young-un growing up in Limeyland in the 1950s, there was a Thing called "a blithering idiot." You readers, having been socialized to "lived experience" America, may shy away from such direct talk, such violation of the eternal culture of "safe spaces," especially if you have internalized the CIO Council culture at Stanford.

But, in our present past in the good old USA, nearly two years since the start of what experts agree is the Biden "bomb cyclone" administration, I think that the only way to make sense of today's America is to say that we are governed by "blithering idiots."

When we say "blithering idiots" we are saying that the problem is not so much the malevolence our rulers demonstrate as just ordinary human stupidity, of the type immortalized by the Keystone Kops.

I think that the present annual event of an annual one-size-fits-all omnibus spending package is not a sign of evil intent on the Pelosi and Schumer front, but a sign that we are governed by blithering idiots.

Because, you see, if the Pelosis and Schumers were really in control of things, they wouldn't need to fund the government by gussying up an annual government-shutdown emergency, and finalizing all their dirty deals with special interests high and low in the dark of 4,000 pages. Every year. Their spending plans would be gloriously broadcast in the light of day.

If our liberal friends were really confidently in charge, they wouldn't need to be oppressing us with their cancel culture. You don't need cancel culture when you already own the future. Cancel culture, like Reigns of Terror and Great Purges, is a backhand admission of failure.

If our Democrat friends really felt that they owned the future they wouldn't need to bother about chasing Trump around and stigmatizing his followers as "armed insurrectionists," and going to enormous effort to prosecute January 6 rioters. They would just know that they would win at the next election.

If our Bidenoid friends were really in the saddle they would not be passing fake-arama Inflation Reduction Acts, no fact-checkers need apply.

If university liberals were really confident and secure they would not need to exclude racist-sexist-homophobe conservatives from faculty appointments, because since their ideas were better, they would be bound to win the future, no matter how many bigoted conservatives were trying to pollute innocent student minds.

If political liberalism were the answer to life, the universe, everything, it wouldn't be necessary to have the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency run web pages detailing misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation and their relation to foreign and domestic "threat actors."

If our national "intelligence community" were on the up and up it wouldn't be necessary for the FBI to respond to the publication of the Twitter Files by issuing whining complaints about "conspiracy theorists and others are feeding the American public misinformation with the sole purpose of attempting to discredit the agency." Hey, nobody beats the FBI at discrediting the FBI.

Here’s sci-fi author Sarah Hoyt listing a few Things that are broken, that our rulers are Making Worse. Sez she:

• Our education system is broken. We really don’t teach much of anything.
• Our distribution is broken. As in just-in-time and outsource production to slave states.
• Our production is broken. Our people need a purpose: making things.
• Our commerce and service industry is broken.
• Our thinking jobs are broken.

Hoyt mentions the problem of “that our ‘governing’ classes are mentally damaged morons trying to run this according to the always idiotic philosophy of a guy who died at the edge of mass industrialization.” Do you think she is just being too polite about government by blithering idiots?

I have an idea. My idea is that government is not really good for too much in this world, unless the Nazis are marching or the Commies are coming. Most of the things of this world are best done by humans learning to trust each other and working together in the little platoons of life: families, churches, mutual aid associations, businesses supplying products and services. Because the basis of successful human endeavor is humans working together and learning to trust each other.

You think that Inflation Reduction Acts or annual omnibus spending bills or cancel culture at universities or FBIs gnawing on the bones of suspected domestic threat actors or social media shadow-banning conservative actors is going to do any good?

If you think that you are moving the arc of history towards justice with your politics then, as the Brits would say, you are probably a blithering idiot. And it is probably time for you to take your arthritic fingers off the levers of political power.

Or, as I would say:

Big government and lefty politics is the royal road to injustice.

Not to mention a good way of building a mountain of skulls.

Christopher Chantrill @chrischantrill runs the go-to site on US government finances, usgovernmentspending.com. Also get his American Manifesto and his Road to the Middle Class.

Image: Ralf Smallkaa