Celebrate!

venezuelan exuberance, the cultural style of the american governing class

I smoked a ton of meth and broke all the windows and shat all over the living room and cut my ears off, but then I borrowed a bunch of money to clean the floor and fix the windows, and a surgeon made me some new ears from pig tendons and donor skin. I am deeply proud of my excellent work on this issue. Like I said to the surgeon, we are stronger when we stand together! This is a success that we share!

Federal, state, and local officials are throwing themselves a party for the re-opening of the burned-up portion of the I-10 freeway in Los Angeles, standing on the thing to posture for the cameras, and note especially the proud smile on the face of the idiot mayor:

The governor’s office proudly posts video of cars streaming over the re-opened freeway to commemorate the AMAZING VICTORY! Watch the video carefully, because here’s a screenshot of the thing they’re celebrating as a success:

The governor of California posted this image to show you how successful he is. Imagine standing on top of that and swaggering around with a smile on your face to tell everyone how proud you are. And yes, they keep using the word “celebrate”:

To my great surprise, a generally supine California news media is reporting the hell out of the fact that the state knew about the many fire hazards clustered together under the freeway. Sample headline:

From the story:

So state inspectors warned and warned and warned and warned that there was a fire waiting to happen under the freeway, and no one ever did anything about it, and then it burned in a catastrophic way, and so state contractors slapdashed a quick repair with federal cash, and so it’s a HUGE SUCCESS.

As I’ve said before, every crisis is the same crisis. Create failure, then brag about the fact that you’ve funded what you hope will be a solution. The thing burned, but we put the ruins back together, sort of, with a temporary support structure that we hope will last for a long time. We funded that gain-of-function research, and it got a little out of hand, but then we rushed those wonderful mRNA vaccines into use, so the…problem is solved? We’re very proud of our success!

Scroll back up and look at that screenshot of the wonderfully successful freeway repair that elected officials are proudly celebrating. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a metaphor. This is the cycle of the contemporary American governing class, and we all know it.

Doing family stuff for the holiday break, so I’ll be offline more than not for a few days. Responses will be slow, and my inbox is a disaster. Will catch up after Thanksgiving.