In an Era of Immodesty

It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this once great capital, or travel this once great country, when they see the Starbucks, Uber s, and happy hours crowded with bureaucrats of indeterminate gender affiliation, tablets in hand as they write out more and more regulations designed to strangle the last breath of freedom from our grand experiment. Our troubles are myriad. Bloated government hated by all. An ever-increasing debt threatening to have our children all speaking Chinese. With the price of bread quadrupling between 1990 and 2010, youd think we would not have been able to grow so fat. Yet, fat we did grow.

Fortunately, I have a solution. I cannot claim credit for it alone. For I am, alas, a Democrat, and not versed in the ways of claiming credit for anything good that has ever happened. I am far better at issuing apologies about what I got wrong. And so I will herewith apologize to Jonathan Swift and his descendants for borrowing nay, adapting nay, stealing outright the modest proposal he made back in oh, it was a long time ago and what good would do me to look up the exact date. That would qualify as a fact.

Swift suggested that the smart solution to Irelands poverty and starvation problem, was to simply eat the babies of the poor. But his idea proved to be a non-starter, and I think we can all agree why. How many hungry people could a baby actually feed?

But a fat bureaucrat? The type that on a normal day rolls into the office at Education around about 11ish, puts the finishing touches on a new set of rules requiring 3rd graders in Kansas to have gay sex, before heading out for lunch with the K Street crowd? With a bit of culinary creativity, he might last a family of four halfway through a cold February.

And theres no need to restrict ourselves to the career office grunts. The last I checked, favorability ratings for Congress hovered around absolute zero. We have 535 of those suckers clogging up our beautiful Capitol Building. They make about 175K, and thats before graft, bribe, and kickback. If we just excise a couple hundred of them, thats a savings of about 35 million a year. Surely, 335 reps can fuck up the country just as well as the 535 have been able to. (Forget eating them though, at least not until we run some tests. I wouldnt count on them being healthy.)

I have to take a moment here to thank the Republicans for this idea. Theyve been extolling the virtues of gutted government for as long as there have been Republicans. But never had they offered such a cogent example as last year when they proved beyond any reasonable doubt that we dont need nine Supreme Court justices. I cant quite understand why they seem so eager now to confirm the new guy and restore the court to nine. You need nine guys to cover a baseball field, but have you seen the Supreme Court, or the bench as we Beltway insiders like to call it? Its a modest sized bench. Five guys, tops, is all you need. Maybe three. Come to think of it, Im not so sure we need the court at all. Let Breitbart and Daily Kos each choose a champion and battle out the legal issues GoT style. Besides, I hear Supreme Court justices pair very nicely with a good merlot.

(Curses I have just been reminded that with most of the government grant whores or scientists, as you might like to call them sent off to the chopping block, testing of the nutritional safety of members of congress may be indefinitely delayed. All right, proceed at your own risk here, but should you wish to indulge, do thoroughly wash and cook to a minimum of 165 degrees.)

That takes care of the federal bureaucracy, the legislative branch, and the judiciary, or as we like to call them, the so-called government. Im afraid we wont get much of value out of the Executive branch, as they seem intent on devouring each other in short order.

Thus do I propose that we solve the vexing problems of national debt, unpopular government, and hunger in one fell swoop. And perhaps most happily of all, think of the programming opportunities. Duck Dynasty grows long in the tooth and we cannot expect Stranger Things to grow much stranger in upcoming seasons. But with a savvy producer and a catchy title, this could provide hours of entertainment for the whole family. I am not good with titles Eat the Government is the best I can do and I admit its not very good. But I do know just the man to produce the whole shebang.

And just in case you dont know to whom I am referring, please consider the homophonic hint contained in the word shebang. I feel confident that Jonathan Swift would approve.