Alexandria looks at the libertarian and says, “Do you think he’ll jump?”
The libertarian says, “I bet he will.”
Alexandria says, “Well, I bet he won’t.”
The libertarian puts $20 on the bar and says, “You’re on.”
Just as Alexandria puts her own money on the bar the man on the TV screen jumps off the ledge and falls to his death. Alexandria is very upset but she hands her $20 to the libertarian, saying, “Okay, here’s your money.”
The libertarian says, “I can’t take your money. I saw this earlier on the five o’clock news, and I knew he would jump.”
Alexandria says, “I saw it too. But I didn’t think he’d do it again.”
But Thank You Anyway, Partisan Politicans
There is an oft-cited apothegm credited to the Spanish mystic and Carmelite nun St. Teresa of Avila (1515–82): “There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.”
Likewise—let us hope to heaven—there are more smiles spread by things that we had prayed would never happen.
And certainly, if we’re people of conscience and faith, we prayed that American politics wouldn’t become as bad as they are at the moment.
But bad politics do have a few good aspects. (Or such is my fervent wish in this otherwise bleak political season.)
First, let us be thankful that, in our domestic politics, we are a bitterly divided nation. This sounds like an oxymoronic kind of gratitude, but highly polarized partisanship about internal political issues is, in fact, a sort of luxury. It shows that America is blessed with not being under grave external threat.
When America is under grave external threat, Americans unite in a jiffy—the way we did after Pearl Harbor or 9/11. This unity is an awesome thing to behold. Also it’s a “shock and awesome” thing to behold if you’re an enemy of America. If you’re someone who’s caused the grave external threat we’re going to come and get you whether you’re in Berlin, Tokyo, Abbottabad, or a hole in the ground in Idlib, Syria.
But when America is not under grave external threat, we Americans can go back to our tradition of indulging ourselves in a wild extravagance of bickering with each other, the way we’ve been doing since 1776.
Of course these internal political contretemps can get out of hand. The Civil War comes to mind. However, as heated as America’s arguments may be at the moment, 2020 is not 1861. Fort Sumter is not taking any incoming. Our political battles are all smoke and no lethal fire.
(Except from a few fringe lunatics, of course. But we’ve always had those. President James A. Garfield, a chief executive who was unpolarizing to the point of complete obscurity, was assassinated by one. The killer was Charles Guiteau, who must have been some kind of nut even to have known that James A. Garfield was president.)
These days our weapons are just TV shows and other such media pie fights and the cannonballs don’t land with lethal effect, they land with stupid splats like Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow.
A second thing to be thankful for is how bad politics are a healthy reminder that politics are bad. Being a “good” politician actually, specifically, requires committing every single one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Pride foremost, naturally. What kind of too-big-for-your-britches swell-headed grandstander has the flash-the-brass conceit to come right out and claim that he or she ought to be president of the United States? Let alone is capable of the task? It’s a nearly impossible job, and anyone who doesn’t admit this is unqualified for the position. The only kind of people we should want to be president are the kind of people we’d have to drag, cursing and kicking, into the Oval Office. (Anyone know Clint Eastwood’s current whereabouts?)
Envy is pride’s inevitable twin. Even the most successful politician is always envious of someone whose britches are more widely split at the seams, whose head has a more pronounced case of mumps above the ears, whose bleachers are jammed with a larger crowd of ripe sucks. Hillary Clinton’s green glow of envy still shines so brightly that you can use it to read newspaper stories about Donald Trump at midnight across the street from her house in Chappaqua.
Wrath is the defining emotion of politics today. All the participants, elected and electorate alike, are furiously shouting at each other.
It’s like the time that a bunch of Boston Irish, down in Southie, decided to start a rowing club to compete with the Ivy League.
The Irishmen were big, strong men, and they practiced hard every day, but they kept losing. They lost to Yale. They lost to Princeton. They lost to Dartmouth. Finally the Irish team captain says, “Sure and the Harvard rowing team’s been winning all year. Seamus, you go sneak over to Cambridge there and hide in the bushes by the Harvard boathouse and see how it is that they’re doing it.”
So Seamus sneaks over to Cambridge and hides in the bushes by the Harvard boathouse and watches the Harvard crew team.
And Seamus comes back and he says, “Begorrah, but I think I know where we’re going wrong. We’re supposed to have one fellow screaming and yelling and the other eight are supposed to be rowing.”
Greed, Gluttony, and Lust play vital roles in politics. And I’m not referring to money, food, and romps between the sheets. Although what with corruption, $1,000-a-plate campaign fund-raising dinners, and #MeToo stalking the halls of power, those transgressions do abound. But the true mortal sin of politics is greed, gluttony, and lust for power. The avaricious, the voracious, and the horny may be forgiven, but people whose deepest desire is to lord it over others go to hell.
And let us not forget Sloth. Politics might seem to be a busy and active profession with laziness rare among politicians. But politicians can be indolent, idle do-nothings
