Channeling Mencken

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

From the Hill:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) blasted “half-baked, spurious nationalism” in the United States in an emotional speech Monday night after receiving the National Constitution Center’s Liberty Medal.

“To fear the world we have organized and led for three-quarters of a century, to abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership and our duty to remain 'the last best hope of earth' for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history,” McCain said in the speech.

The Arizona senator said “we live in a land made of ideals, not blood and soil” and said Americans “are the custodians of those ideals at home, and their champion abroad.”

“We have done great good in the world. That leadership has had its costs, but we have become incomparably powerful and wealthy as we did,” McCain said.

“We have a moral obligation to continue in our just cause, and we would bring more than shame on ourselves if we don’t. We will not thrive in a world where our leadership and ideals are absent.”

There are several curious remarks in the above passage, but the one most worth commenting on is people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems. Although these words were doubtlessly written by an aide, it none the less serves as a tell, a passable reconstruction of what John McCain sees when he looks in the mirror.

I solve problems.

In another era John McCain would have been an unimpressive middle manager. Alas, today, he is an unimpressive Senator. It's funny, not ha ha funny but gallows humor funny, that this man and his peers regard themselves as problem solvers.

The post-World War II order saw to it that the citizens of the West be rewarded with an expanding set of entitlement programs. The first-level flaw with our model of entitlements is that there must be a larger pool of payers-in to recipients, such that social security, to quote Rick Perry, is a ponzi scheme. So long as the ratio of payers to receivers is maintained, everyone is happy. Unfortunately the birthrate of the West declined and the ratio of payers to receivers skewed wildly, and the whole house of cards began to groan under the weight of the Baby Boomers.

Enter Mr. McCain, et. al. Instead of looking at the conundrum and asking the basest of questions - why did the ratio of payers to receivers change? - our democratic overlords simply said "We'll just add new people" and rewarded themselves with raises and accolades and fancy parties. A whole new categories of problems emerged from the importation of new tribes, and to smooth over the turbulence an ex post rationale called a proposition nation crept into the education of young Westerners. Now only those who actively seek the truth discover how heinous the lies they were taught are, and worse still those actively resisting lies almost always face some sort of social sanction from ostensible members of their own tribe. What an incredible mess, though you who read this are doubtlessly well aware of the scale of this whole catastrophe.

So why point it out?

Because the hubris of John McCain is a worthy example of how not to lead and how not to solve problems. It's easy to look up to a Caesar, a Napoleon, an Alexander. The greatest men that ever lived get their due recognition, but even when the bad and the failed become a cultural byword for treachery or loss, like Benedict Arnold or Pyrrhus of Epirus, we seldom stop to pause and wonder where exactly they went so wrong. In the case of McCain, whatever his personal failings are (and I have no desire to recount all that I have heard about Mr. McCain), there is an argument to be made that it is not McCain's failures per se that we should focus on, but rather that there exists a system that allows men like McCain to take power beyond their measure.

In a sane era, John McCain would have been an unimpressive middle manager.