“There! You see?  I was right!  I was only thirty years too soon.  What was treason in me thirty years ago, is patriotism now.”

                — Aaron Burr, upon hearing of the Texas Revolt, 1836

Perhaps someday, if the neocon plan works out and America does manage to establish itself as the master of a global hegemony of subject nations and enslaved peoples, the 9% of our fellow citizens who don’t think Dick Cheney sucks will be able to point to some future event and try to use it to vindicate not impeaching the current veep now – but I rather doubt it.  History is not kind to fools and poor leaders – and only occasionally rewards the schemers and the scammers – yet it has always been notoriously difficult to pry such men from perches of power, since the people with the ability to do so often lack the chutzpah of their intended target.  

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll meet a veep whose poor decision-making skills (and chutzpah) may have actually eclipsed those of Fourthbranch.  We’ll also contemplate the scary truth that it wasn’t until after he’d left office that our first Treasonous Veep engaged in his zaniest schemes of usurpation.

Part One of a collaborative two-diary, cross-curricular series – look for pico‘s diary on Gilgamesh in Tuesday’s Literature for Kossacks.

One of the moonbatisms that least endears me to the faculty of my school’s Language Arts department is my relatively frequent assertion that all English teachers are, in fact, wannabe Social Studies teachers.  It’s really only a joke – in truth, I recognize that the one can hardly exist without the other.  Without history, literature has no context; without storytelling, history becomes a dry pile of dates, names, and un-understood, colorless societies.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight your resident historiorantologist will attempt to avoid the latter fate in setting the stage for pico‘s upcoming piece on that Sumerian par excellance, Gilgamesh the Wrestler.  Our tale begins, appropriately enough, at the very dawn of civilization itself…

From the 16th century to the dawn of the 20th, a special choir sang at the pontiff’s pleasure, grown men with the voices of angels and the range of female sopranos.  There was a simple reason for their abilities: each had had his gonads surgically removed prior to achieving puberty.

I don’t know why, but the other day, while pondering the castrati (It., “castrated ones”), I started thinking about the 110th Congress.  Could it be, I wondered, that we are witnessing the political equivalent of a choir of the ball-less pandering to the whims of a theological autocrat? 

Naw, I thought, not our Dems – our guys are descended from the tradition of FDR and “The Buck Stops Here” Harry!  We have a heritage of Massive Brass – New Deals and Great Societies that had to be shoved down the throats of backward-looking Republicans.  There’s no way that folks of such stock could ever be compared to emasculated servants performing at the whim of a king, nor to the haunting voice of the very last castrati, the only one whose voice was ever recorded.

Or could they?

One of the things that always troubled me about the application of the term “Machiavellian” to the zany antics of the Bush misadministration is the extent to which Rovian Math – and even Cheneyian Cloak & Daggerism – ignores the master manipulator’s precepts.  Indeed, like a conservative Christian who cherry-picks Leviticus, the architects of the failed philosophy of neoconservatism ignored some of the Prince’s very clear warnings about things like rulers relying on hired soldiers to look out for their interests – and look at the quagmire of black water it’s gotten us into.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight we’ll look into another occasion in which the use of mercenaries has bitten an empire in the ass.  As usual, we Americans are by no means the first to experience the sort of happening-since-at-least-the-time-of-Rome setback that so shocks (shocks!) the neocons every time one of them so predictably comes to pass.

Hey, it happens.  History is replete with stories where the good guys don’t win in the end, where horrific acts go unavenged and unpunished, where leaders of nations descend into madness, dragging their countrymen down with them.  At many various times and in many various places, peoples have found themselves saddled with rule by psychopaths, paranoids, and delusional megalomaniacs of all stripes – and simply being alive now, in the “modern” age, is no guarantee that it can’t, won’t, or hasn’t happened again.

Far be it from me to try to psychoanalyze any contemporary political figures, but it recently occurred to your resident historiorantologist that, given the proverbial insanity of American policymaking over the past few years, a look at a couple of the less-balanced monarchs who have walked the tightrope of power in the past might be in order.  Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight the tortuous paths of logic will take us from Rome to a fairy-tale castle in the Bavarian Alps…with absolutely no implied connection to anything happening in Washington today.  😉

Throughout the long ages, the proponents of societal reform have traditionally found themselves with the fuzzy end of the lollipop when it came to battling the entrenched Powers That Be’d, at least in terms of military strength.  In dozens of eras and in hundreds of contexts, however, those who would change society have learned that the force of numbers is where the power of the people lies, and from this they derived and perfected several ways of exerting considerable (sometimes government-changing) pressure upon the oligarchs, tyrants, and unprincipled politicians of their day.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight your resident historiorantologist will offer for progressive consideration a look at a handful of the means our side has traditionally employed when all appeared lost and the aristocrats were running amok.  As we begin, please direct your gaze toward the Eternal City on the Seven Hills, and one of the first successful general strikes…

It was a third party that captured 22 electoral votes and 4 states in a presidential race, elected governors in 7 states, sent dozens of legislators to Congress, and controlled all or part of numerous state Houses and Senates – yet it was only prominent on the national scene for a decade or so.  The People’s (a/k/a Populist) Party was born of anger and frustration at the failure of either major party to look after the concerns of a large segment of their ostensible constituency, and in the course of their stampede across the American political landscape, they shifted Overtons, crashed gates, and exerted their forceful, righteous will upon the craven Democrats and sold-out Republicans of their day.

It’s a good thing we’re safely removed from that sort of (way) pre-9/11 thinking – it allows us to historiorant in peace about a time when conflicts of class, pretense, and presumptuousness rent asunder the House of Donkey, and ushered onto the stage a cast of characters straight out of The Wizard of Oz.

The little guy, whether he lived in a tenement in the city or in a ramshackle house on the plains, was getting trampled by the money trust and the captains of industry.  Disgust with both major parties was growing as pandering pols refused to take a decisive stand on the major issues of the day, and the White House seemed incapable and/or unwilling to change things.  Money and cynicism were inseparable from the political process, and tabloid journalism ruled the media, fanning the flames of America’s basest passions and prodding the nation toward an imperialist horizon.

No, this isn’t another story from the Cave’s BREAKING!!! desk – but it could have been, a little over 100 years ago.  Join me, if you will, for a look at how turn-of-the-century Progressives dealt with issues not all that dissimilar from the ones currently being bungled and shied away from in Washington…