Wily winning: A manual of mutating political philosophy – September 29, 2008
By Joseph Randolph
web posted September 29, 2008
Dear M.
Yes, we must exercise caution in our handling of the financial crisis; we must present it for our gain, but prudence is required before we can do our plucking. If we speak of the crisis in a manner that avoids faulting our policies for this current unpleasantness, we can continue not just to live, but come out ahead—that means at the ballot box. In fact we can live high off the hog too. Why have you not invited me for that drink you owe after your last whining correspondence?
The fact of the matter—which we can with ease hide from view by saying opposite things to our voting public—is that much if not well nigh this entire financial tremor occurs under the weight of our socialist recklessness with money, which our minions advanced legislatively. This means that on occasion we get squeezed for having dispensed more money than this wretched and selfish capitalist economy will allow the poor to have. Of our charitable legislative effort to provide homes to the homeless—by opting out of an economy that loves dollars more than humans—we now witness a theft of our generosity by men of the opposition who love mammon more than men. The check of charity we extended to the needy is eventually shredded in the demand for more dollars than people on charity have. This is to say that our politics and capitalism are ill poised to work together, and we know which one has to go. So too our opponents and not us. Now is the time to trumpet that call, again, but with considerably more bravado now as election time draws exquisitely close. The people without the dollars to whom we have extended our charity with our dollars see that they have not been given enough to survive a hungry creditor. They are without a house and a home, again. They are your voters in waiting—for you! The insatiable hunger of voracious creditors demanding people live in the world of capitalist money has bankrupted these borrowers. Cast all the blame on the greed of the greedy, saving none of the blame for us and surely none for the grieving borrowers. We need not even go for the voter in such a time, for they will flock to us like sheep for the bounty we have to offer. Be ready.
We of course need not in the least look bad in any of this. In other words, we can simply continue bleating our mantras about the greediness of the rich continuing to milk the country until the rich have it all and the poor have even less than nothing. In other words, we can simply, though without using the word, sing praises to our socialist humanism by projecting this financial tremor as brought about not by us, but by people who care nothing for people in their greater love for money. We have laid down our money for our sheep, but now the capitalist wolf has again demanded more payment than we generous shepherds have extended to those weakened by poor credit. Therefore, the homeless should have been given even more cash than their poor credit allowed. The rich have simply tried to shake the trousers of the borrower empty by shaking too hard—for every last cent until they kill the flailed body. All our standard talking points are undented by this unpleasant financial meltdown, because we will make it the responsibility of our political opposition. They are about money, money, money; we are about people, people, and people. We raise people up; they raze people down. The people are now down; therefore our opponents are responsible for them being down and our voters looking done in by the whole affair. We shall raise them up.
Therefore, the current tremors are building blocks for us and the socialist house we must now prepare to move forward, amidst this havoc wrought by the capitalists among us.Remember what I have repeatedly said, our times are always the best of times in the worst of times. Grievance is our gateway into government; nobody in good health, financial or otherwise, will visit, much less call upon our social planners on a sunny day. We simply wait for the rainy day, or the tsunami, or the earthquake, or the drought, or the hurricane, or the blessing of financial unease. Our "help" in waiting now has takers created from the want ensuing upon such calamities as we cherish. Prudence can portend plenty for you if you can manipulate the want of the peoples to satisfy your want—political office. It is not difficult, though caution is necessary. It is all sliding board when done correctly, even when it looks as if the world is shaking forever downward around you, for our traction is best when the earth is shaking. The shaking gives us opportunity to shift the country toward us. So you can privately applaud every catastrophe known to humans, because then the opportunity for our nanny state gets some legs and then some arms and then a trunk, which will eventually give it some teeth. This will not be noticed, but better yet, not even objected to, for we will offer a world of caring underneath the soft word of compassion. In a brutal world that buries its dead as paupers because they are paupers and have been made paupers by their creditors—the capitalists—we will be welcomed as life givers.
When reality hits hardest, we have it easiest. We work when the world is down; the world takes no account of us when it is up. Therefore, when it is up, we must bring it down. This we just did—read my first paragraph again—but we can assign responsibility for it to our opponent and few will think anything to the contrary. Certainly not our adoring press, which is just as happy about this seismic shift for us as we are happy for them. Look at the polls—they are looking up.
Of course people will be flocking to their gods in such tumultuous times, but your job is to show them that we are the only god they need. This is why we detest other gods; they take from us the respect and allegiance which belongs only to us. Too, the other religious are always trying to take the government away from us by taking it upon themselves with their fiendish faith based outsourcing. We cannot allow any of it, and what we most cannot allow is any indication of success on the part of our competitors. This we do by refusing to acknowledge consequences, either their good ones or our failures. Intent is our hallowed icon: by it many a scurrilous program has been propped up and exalted in the trash heap of failure.
Yes, extraordinary opportunity is knocking at our door. The country most known in the modern world for bulging prosperity has been humbled and rebuked. Our chance extends beyond this current election, moreover, as we go about showing the voters that the market economy in time always implodes upon its citizens. Our Father Marx taught us it was inevitable and our victory unstoppable, but even some of our own had started to doubt of late, especially after our brethren to the east saw their socialist paradise fall to capitalist ruin some time ago. But just as Rome was not made in a day, nor will it fall in a day. So too our situation now. Be patient, but poised and prepared to act.
Many of the brethren thought our cause in the throes of death for the past couple decades, but out of the ashes we can rise again if we play this current crisis for our gain. Therefore, tell your voters, and then tell them again and loudly, that the money mongers created this mess, and that in the spirit of love, we shall provide for their material plenty that the money mongers stole for themselves. Out of this crisis it will become obvious for all to see what political ideology should be running the country. Help them to see it. 
Joseph Randolph is a writer and academic who lives in Wisconsin.