Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Congress, that Incredible Pigsty
A friend writes that my post of earlier this week–the despairing item in which I admitted I was roundly sick of of politics–reminded him of a passage in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1922 novel, The Beautiful and Damned:
[He] tried to imagine himself in Congress rooting around in the litter of that incredible pigsty with the narrow and porcine brows he saw pictured sometimes in the rotogravure sections of the Sunday newspapers, those glorified proletarians babbling blandly to the nation the ideas of high school seniors! Little men with copy-book ambitions who by mediocrity had thought to emerge from mediocrity into the lusterless and unromantic heaven of a government by the people — and the best, the dozen shrewd men at the top, egotistic and cynical, were content to lead this choir of white ties and wire collar-buttons in a discordant and amazing hymn, compounded of a vague confusion between wealth as a reward of virtue and wealth as a proof of vice, and continued cheers for God, the Constitution, and the Rocky Mountains!
“I don’t endorse every sentiment there,” my friend notes, “but wow. What a piece of writing!”What a piece of writing indeed. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Cather, Faulkner–the prose this country has produced seems argument enough for our mess of a democracy.
Published in General
Take out the references to rotogravure and wire collar-buttons and you’re left with an accurate picture of Congress today.
Although “rotogravure” is a wonderful word and should be revived.
I seem to recall that Hunter Thompson once prefaced a brief passage from Gatsby with “OK, now stand back and see how the big boys write.”
Odin Gray Although “rotogravure” is a wonderful word and should be revived.
Thanks, Odin: now I’ve got “Easter Parade” stuck in my head!
May I relate a (somewhat-related) pet peeve?
During the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard a steady stream of … well … condescension about the participants. I’ve heard a lot of descriptions that they were “just being children,” unable to get along. Obama was chief among the condescenders, portraying Congress as unruly and spoiled children who were merely throwing a tantrum.
These are the same people who brought us $17 trillion in debt, wondering how “irresponsible” it is to refuse to subsidize more debt.
I don’t know about you, but as soon as I hear some news or political celebrity complain that his opponents are “just being children,” I know where the children are.
Fitzgerald’s passage would improve with the addition of a editor’s red pen (Hemingway) and the absence of a thesaurus (Faulkner). Otherwise, wonderful.
During the last couple of weeks, I’ve heard a steady stream of … well … condescension about the participants. I’ve heard a lot of descriptions that they were “just being children,” unable to get along. Obama was chief among the condescenders, portraying Congress as unruly and spoiled children who were merely throwing a tantrum.
These are the same people who brought us $17 trillion in debt, wondering how “irresponsible” it is to refuse to subsidize more debt.
I don’t know about you, but as soon as I hear some news or political celebrity complain that his opponents are “just being children,” I know where the children are.
Yes.
I’ve never been a great fan of Fitzgerald, or the others Peter mentions, lost and cynical precurors of post-modernity. All were third tier writers and fourth or fifth or sixth tier intellects.
And although it is a common mistake always to atribute to an author the sentiments of one of his characters , if Fitzgerald himself did believe those words, then the soul of his little world more was rotted out than I had thought.
Judging by the opinion polls, most people would agree with most of the sentiments Fitzgerald expressed there. Yet, the public has an endless appetite for new government programs that hand more and more control over our lives to this parliament of whores. It’s a conundrum, innit?
What’s wrong with the Rocky Mountains? And what are “wire collar-buttons”?
Some things never change. Unfortunately, others – like the size and reach of the federal government over which these nobodies preside – change utterly.
I’ve never been a great fan of Fitzgerald, or the others Peter mentions, lost and cynical precurors of post-modernity. All were third tier writers and fourth or fifth or sixth tier intellects.
Then who do you like?
Then you can count me among the rotted souls, because this sounded a lot like what Congress looks like from here.
Obama hasn’t spent all these trillions on himself. (Some of) We the People are getting exactly what they want from him and his party.
The title of this post alone deserves some kind of hall of fame award. Because it’s perfect. Best description of the place since P.J. O’Rourke wrote Parliament of Whores.
Consider that Fitzgerald’s contemptuous allusion to “government by the people” comes less than three score after Gettysburg.
“…what a piece of writing” indeed.
But for once I must disagree with your conclusion…I think you are grasping at straws in your justified despair.
You could as easily have said “…Tolstoy, Gogol, Pushkin, Chekhov….argument enough for our mess of Absolutism”.