Prime Minister Boehner

Suppose that we were a parliamentary democracy. In such a system the chief executive would be the person who controls the House of Representatives. Now it so happens that our current House, in the 113th Congress, as of September of last year, was composed of three parties: the Tea Party, with 48 members, the Republican Party, with 184, and the Democrats, with 200. Looked at in this way, the Democrats are in the majority. After the elections, which produced this result, Nancy Pelosi would have had to form a coalition government. She would have opted for what in Europe they call a Grand Coalition, thus one formed of the two largest parties. Moderate and mainstream Republicans would have been much more acceptable to Pelosi than a lash-up with tea drinkers. The government would have been generally moderate, but in such a situation as prevails today, shutdown and fiscal cliff, the outcome would have been sensible, let us say.

Our current “prime minister” opted for a coalition that isn’t working well at all, thanks to the Hastert Rule under which no legislation is offered for a vote unless the majority of the majority, in this case the Republicans and Tea Party combined, are certain to win the vote. With the Tea Party adamantly opposed to a sensible solution, namely let’s have an operating government and funding for it before we tackle issues of a lesser magnitude, doing the sensible thing threatens Boehner’s role as the de facto PM. If he allows a vote, the sensible solution will pass—but Boehner may not be able to hold on to his job.

Is one man holding up the show? Looks like it to me. The Senate laboring valiantly on a deal suggests an odd situation. I have a terrible case of indigestion—and Brigitte is doing her best to help by taking Alka-Seltzer.

So-So Stats on Tea Party

Back before the Chicago Mercantile Exchange discontinued futures trading in pork bellies in 2011, one could get reliable statistics on the number of such cuts of pork likely to be consumed in the United States. The GDP still counts. And data on total employment are still collected. Stats on politics, however, are difficult to get. Neither the Bureau of the Census nor the Bureau of Labor Statics collects them. An ordinary member of the public can’t get such data—unless he forks over some serious dollars. So how big, exactly, is the minority that supports the Tea Party?

I bring up this subject because it’s—re-run time. End of the World is being rerun by our infotainment media in two episodes. The first is called “Government Shutdown,” the second  “Fiscal Cliff.” Pretty much the same characters are playing the same parts as last time.

Let’s see if we can dress the Tea Party in some so-so numbers. EofW comes to us sponsored by the House of Representatives. That body had some 433 voting members as of August 2, 2013. Two seats were vacant then. Of those seats the GOP held 233, Democrats 200. The GOP count included 48 representatives who were also members of the Tea Party Caucus. In effect it is Tea Party members who really give the GOP its House Majority—and then some. Let’s now extend these facts to the electorate as a whole.

In the 2012 elections, 118 million people cast votes. Let’s assume that each voter voted for

every federal office—thus that 118 people all voted for congressional representatives. The 48 Tea Party representatives are 11 percent of the seats in the House now. This means that 13 million votes are bringing us the current entertainment. A lot of spoil-sports are trying to tell us the end of each episode before it actually arrives—but CNN, Fox, and MSNBC are doing their best to keep the suspense going right up to the edge of that cliff.

A happy end, indeed, may be in the offing. But Brigitte and I, experts at watching splendid series that are much, much better written than End of the World (e.g. The X-Files), know how the producers ensure a continuation of the series. Each season must end with things a little bit resolved but still up in the air. Therefore the Fiscal Cliff, if avoided, will only be avoided for about a year. Meanwhile preparations for the 2014 season will have begun as we start thinking about Christmas.

Wikipedia provides a handy map showing the congressional districts held by Tea Party members in the 113th Congress (link). Interesting picture. It reminds me of an apple we recently cut open.

A Tea Party in Flatland

The chief marker of a secular era is its worldly and temporal character—this in contrast to a religious era in which the spiritual and eternal aspects of reality are emphasized. Let’s ignore the debate about the claims of either era and proceed. In secular times the spiritual and eternal are simply denied all standing but are tolerated as life-style choices. In religious times the world is still recognized as real, but its importance is minimized. If we express the secular in geometrical terms as a flat surface and the religious as a vertical, it turns out that the religious conception of reality is the more complex of the two. It has a third dimension that the secular times lack. So far, so good. In a flat cosmology time itself is a function of matter with its threefold divisions into past, present, and future.

When troubles erupt in secular ages, two ways of coping with the problem tend always to surface—and only two. Only two because a transcending movement into the vertical, as it were, isn’t thought to be possible. Part of the public embraces the future which, still unknown and not yet realized, may be envisioned to hold the sought-after relief. The others, especially those in a better economic shape—who tend to remember better times—envision the solution to lie in a return to an earlier and happier period. Living memories are short; hence the real past is largely forgotten or only selectively recalled. Thus the past’s as good a canvas on which to paint a golden age as is the future.

Futurism and archaism. These labels were framed by Arnold Toynbee, the cyclic historian. In effect, of course, both are futuristic in the sense that any new order much desired will be achieved, if achieved at all, in the future. The labels therefore refer to strategies. Futurists wish to achieve the new order by ridding themselves of current restraints; archaists hope to bring back into the present what they imagine has been lost.

The French Revolution serves as a classical and large-scale example of a real try at futurism. Its henchmen even changed the names of the months on the calendar. The current Tea Party movement serves as a minor example of an archaist reaction to the initiatives of the Obama administration. That administration is wrongly seen as futurist in its intentions. Alas, it’s merely rational—but unfortunately also inept. Its futurist coloration is a very pale shade of pink and derives from the illusion that change can be made almost entirely by magical PR gestures intended to influence public opinion.

Secularism see-saws this way, back and forth. These dreary rounds remind me of Hell’s fourth circle where, on a flat piece of territory, hoarders and squanderers roll gigantic rocks against each other, crash, separate, and do it all again. Here is the scene in Dante’s words in Dorothy Sayers’ translation (Inferno, Canto VII, 22-36):

         As waves against encountering waves advance
             Above Charybdis, clashing with toppling crest,
             So must the folk here dance and counter-dance.

         More than elsewhere, I saw them thronged and pressed
             This side and that, yelling with all their might,
             And shoving each a great weight with his chest.

         They bump together, and where they bump, wheel right
             Round, and return, trundling their loads again,
             Shouting: “Why chuck away?” “Why grab so tight?”

         Then round the dismal ring they pant and strain
             Back on both sides to where they first began
             Still as they go bawling their rude refrain;

         And when they meet, then each re-treads his span,
             Half round the ring to joust in the other list;
             I felt quite shocked, and like a stricken man.

But you don’t have to go to hell to see it. CNN will bring it to you live.
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For more on “Charybdis,” see the previous post.