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. Bank managers are notorious for telling jokes about public bankruptcies, and central bank governors for amusing themselves with their own barking madness. This amount, in trillions — now rapidly ballooning with compound interest and fresh, reckless spending — is not a political issue, however. No one seems as terribly concerned, as they are by women’s basketball fouls.

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 at least, not unless we are progressively left. But a single generation after 9/11, when Muslim-hijacked aeroplanes were flown directly into New York skyscrapers, the New York municipal government is in the hands of a freely-elected, and provocatively Muslim, administration. (American schoolchildren voted them in.) Believe this if you dare.

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