House of Eratosthenes

Unlike what you might call a “left-wing-tocracy,” an ineptocracy is to be criticized not quite so much for being lefty, as for putting all persons & classes in roles that are polar-opposite from where they belong. The mediocre are examples of excellence, the undecided & apathetic are examples of great leadership, children are examples of wisdom and the indigent are examples of desirable, productive living. But left-wing-ocracies mutate into ineptocracies, or vice-versa, so they could be regarded as synonymous. Of all American cities that are home to five million people or more, perhaps 4 out of 5 could be fairly characterized as both. Ineptocracies are governed by left-wing pukes. Left-wing pukes create ineptocracies.

It is all sustained by higher taxes on the “rich,” which means the producers…who inevitably must decline in number, causing the same angst and grief over and over again wherever the ineptocracy thrives. Naturally, the solution to the angst and grief is more taxes on the rich.

None of this has a thing to do with pregnant mothers being able to murder their own unborn children on a whim. It is disconnected from the notion that we live in a godless universe. Or that humans are screwing up an ecosystem in which Bambi’s Mom & all the other adorable creatures are cohabitating beautifully, renewably and peacefully. But there must be a connection amongst those four — ineptocracy, abortion, secularism, humans-are-bastards — because if you can pick out for me a hundred people who put their faith in any one of those things, I will be able to show you ninety-nine adherents, probably more than that, to the other three. The ideas cherished, affect how they are communicated; all those ninety-nine make a good show of “sitting down to talk out our differences” with the opposition, using science, reason, logic and common sense as the guardrails on such an avenue toward conciliation — but a few points & counterpoints down such an avenue, all will be reduced to snotty, dismissive comments, hurling third-grade playground insults in a new, utterly futile game of “never mind who’s right for look how much better of a person I am than you are.” Reliable as a season. So there must be a connection amongst all these items, what is it?

I think it is a hungering for significance. If God put us here and is looking after us, there must be a purpose involved; even the “deists,” as the Revolution-era theologians would define that word, fall into this camp since God must have had a purpose in mind with our creation, never mind whether He can bother Himself to continue paying attention — the sense of purpose remains. But if we just grew as a natural phenomenon, like bread mold, the hole that is left in our lives is game-changing and devastating. When you think on it, anyway. The unasked question is “What, then, is significant about me?” How in the world can the “me” bread mold be meaningfully distinguished from any other kind of bread mold?

Events within time is my current operating theory. The ineptocrat hungers for a current event that upsets the apple cart of all that came before. How did His Holy Eminence put it during His inauguration?

Because if we are willing to work for it, and fight for it, and believe in it, then I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth. This was the moment—this was the time—when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves and our highest ideals.

I think this captures the hunger elegantly. “This was the moment.” It’s a bunch of nonsense, of course, there’s nothing momentary about it. These are people who live out their entire lives on a hairpin turn. It’s always dawn, just as the first ray of sunshine peeks over the hilltop to the East. Before this moment there was darkness, from this moment onward there is enlightenment. And just think, we’re here to see it all go down.

It’s always twilight, too. Apocalypse is just around the corner. We’re going to see that happen, too. And whether it is sunrise or sunset, the ineptocrat is on the right side of the history that is being made, and everybody else is on the wrong side. That is the point. The ineptocrat is living at the right time and has the right ideas.

Of course! Who wants to be any ol’ piece of bread mold, at any ol’ time of the day with just any ol’ ideas in its moldy little brain? The hungering for significance must be satisfied, so we’re living at a new renaissance and we’re also teetering on the brink of Ragnarok. Without any deities, though. Just good humans saving the planet from bad humans. It’s all just drama…high-spiked, highly desirable, sanity-saving drama. Sunrise drama and sunset drama.

Still not entirely sure how this “wealth inequality” ties in to it. The ineptocrat gets hold of some statistic about one percent of the people having ninety-nine percent of the stuff, and parrots it endlessly as if anyone should care. On this issue, the disregard for specifics is rather stunning, they care nothing for whether their statistics are accurate, and can’t even keep track of whether they’re talking about assets or income. I have a current operating theory about this, too: It’s simply part of the “sunrise drama.” Up to this moment, all has been in darkness because we had these peasants toiling away barely trying to make ends meet, but now, me and my friends are going to start up this giant movement and liberate the goodies from the iron-fisted grip of those “robber barons.” Again with the hungering for personal significance.

But this does not save sanity. It erodes it. Here, I’ll prove it: Walk up to an Occupy Wall Street protester and ask if this current protest is more significant than the civil rights marches of the 1960’s. See, that’s the prototype; there’s an event where people really did live with fewer rights, or “softer” rights, before the event than they were able to enjoy afterward. An event that involved real personal sacrifice so others could live better lives. The OWS protester won’t know how to answer. Maybe he’ll stammer out some gibberish about “building on top of” or working in stages or something. But as to which one is more challenging, which one is more meaningful, you won’t get a coherent answer. That’s because the OWS movement is a parade for all the feelings that go into an ineptocracy, and as such, it is a structure whose foundation lies on a fault. It lives in an inherent contradiction and your question pierces the center of that contradiction. These current protests are more significant than everything that came before, but it knows it is right because it’s modeled on something that came before — which is free of flaws and more significant than anything imaginable. Logically, all of these things cannot be true. You have trudged up the Escher Staircase.

Now ask one of the ideological opponents an equivalent question — he’s likely not holding a revolution or protest, just going about his life doing whatever productive work he thinks maximizes his effectiveness in the marketplace. So ask him “Are your challenges in life greater than the challenges of those who came before?” and you’ll get back a negative. There’s no contradiction in it. It is from this idea that he draws his strength, his ability to cope. He tells himself, this is nothing compared to what Grandpa had to do when he got off that boat at Ellis Island and had to learn English. He tells himself: My challenges lack significance, and that’s a good thing because they do not define me, they oppose me, and because they are tiny, I know I will win if I keep my head on straight. So to the truly rational human, the simple thought “this isn’t all that tough” is what keeps life worth living. To the ineptocrat, and the OWS protester, that same thought is the most frightening thing imaginable.

If God did not exist, mankind would have had to invent Him for sanity’s sake. Perhaps all the biblical stories of divine manifestation are exaggerated, embellished, or metaphorical, and that’s exactly what happened: We — depending on your faith system — invented, or recognized, God, sanity could not be retained over an indefinite stretch of time by any other means. Humans, taking full charge of the task of generating their own significance, tend toward building ineptocracies. They create revolutionary movements that, with the benefit of hindsight, are revealed in subsequent generations to be quite silly. By which I mean polyester-suit-lambchop-sideburn silly. And then, tragically, they weld their identities to these silly movements. It ends up entailing a good amount of implied disrespect toward the real movements that came before, usually without the new-revolutionary’s conscious knowledge. But more tragic than that, is the loss of human potential which is voluminous and profound.

Ineptocracies are inept because they can’t be anything but. When they end, they end not with a bang, but a whimper. The significance that is sought throughout the ineptocracy’s entire existence, is denied to the very end, and beyond.

No true revolution identified itself as revolutionary while it was going on. That’s what irks me about a lot of the liberal swooning over pet causes these days. No, gay marriage is NOT equivalent to civil rights. And these OWS loons are even worse; they don’t know what would make them happy! At least they’re more honest than most liberals, who, as you point out, are always one revolution away from satisfied.
- Daniel | 10/21/2011 @ 16:59
The ideas cherished, affect how they are communicated; all those ninety-nine make a good show of “sitting down to talk out our differences” with the opposition, using science, reason, logic and common sense as the guardrails on such an avenue toward conciliation — but a few points & counterpoints down such an avenue, all will be reduced to snotty, dismissive comments, hurling third-grade playground insults…

This right there is pure gold, and whether you’ve realized it or not, I think you’re on to something.

The ones who decry conservatives as racists, Tea-baggers, homophobes, sexists, haters, gun nuts, paranoid freaks, Bible-thumpers, science-deniers, and assorted backwoods hicks – aren’t they the same people who swear up and down that “war isn’t the answer” and that it is possible to “sit down and talk” with the likes of Al Queda, the government of Iran, Hezbollah, and others hell-bent on destruction of the West in general and the US in particular?

They can’t go five minutes without insulting their countrymen, and yet we are to believe they (and the politicians they’ve elected) are to bring about world peace by negotiating with intractable, uncompromising enemies…people who hate us for no reason other than our refusal to bow to their false gods.

Unbelievable, isn’t it?

And this was my reaction even BEFORE I got to the rest of your post.
- cylarz | 10/22/2011 @ 01:40
[…] had to be done. Because while this is fantastic… Ineptocracy: (n.) a system of government where the least capable to lead are […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/15/2011 @ 06:31

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