Essays in Idleness

Forty trillion dollars — the amount the U.S. national debt now exceeds — would not have struck me as a plausible number in the days when one lousy million would have been enough for an extravagant couple to retire on. To call it sustainable may be a fond little accountant’s irony. Bankers, and insurance adjusters, are notorious for telling jokes about bankruptcies, but this amount, in trillions — now rapidly ballooning with compound interest and fresh, reckless spending — seldom rises to the amusing. For no one is terribly concerned, as they might be by fouls in women’s basketball.

The Democrats, Republicans, and others among the unambiguously deranged, are incapable of grasping the concept that even government debts are potentially important, and must be repaid, to avoid the real costs of a default, which will not be just a number.

We don’t make jokes about mass murder, either, or not unless we are progressively left. But a single generation after 9/11, when Muslim-hijacked aeroplanes were flown directly into New York City skyscrapers, the New York municipal government is in the hands of a freely-elected, and provocatively Muslim, administration. Believe this if you dare.

To be fair, all of the American Founding Fathers agreed that democracy could never work, as a form of government, and shouldn’t be tried; for “the people” are just too crazy. True, one may find some sane voters, but they are always too small a minority.