The Confederacy of Fools

There has been an article making the rounds of the internet claiming that it is attributable to a column in a Prague, Czech Republic newspaper. It really doesn’t make any difference whether that is true or not or who the author may turn out to be. It is in fact the inescapable conclusion of logic driven by our own observations.

“The danger to America is not Joseph Biden, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of a Biden presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Biden, who is a mere symptom of what ails America. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Biden, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who made him their president.”

That is a pretty harsh assessment of where we stand today.

But let’s forget about Mr. Biden and, for that matter, former President Donald Trump. The die is already cast by both sides and, short of the death or disability of either of them prior to the election there is nothing we can do about it.

The problem is that we, the electors, despite unparalleled demonstrations of incompetence, continue to return the same people – or clones of them – back to the same public offices in which they have already failed. For instance, take Portland/Multnomah County, Oregon. During the summer of 2020, street thugs – Black Lives Matter and Antifa – took over the streets of Portland. For one hundred days and nights they blocked the streets, destroyed and burned vehicles, attacked, looted and burned businesses and attacked and injured people. Not once did the mayor of Portland condemn the hundred days of rage or send the police to stop the carnage. In fact, the mayor – in a show of solidarity with the criminals – joined them in their activities while the fires burned brightly, stores were looted and people threatened. So cloying was the mayor that the rioters laughed at him and then proceeded to light fire to the building in which his condo was located. That would have been bad enough, but not a single member of the Portland City Council, or the Multnomah County Commission – or in fact the governor or the senior Democrat members of the state legislature sought to disagree – a city of sheep.

But the real capper came in the following election when the top two candidates in the primary were the cowardly mayor and a woman who embraced many of the elements of Antifa advocacy and never once condemned their violence. That’s right, the only person coming anywhere close to defeating the offending mayor was someone even more besotted by progressive fantasies than the mayor.. The mayor had proved his inability to perform his office and so the voters chose as his opponent someone even less qualified. The destruction of Portland/Multnomah County continues unabated because, while the mayor proved to be incompetent, the voters proved themselves to be even more so.

In Chicago, the voters were so dissatisfied with Mayor Laurie Lightfoot that they made here the first mayor in forty years to be defeated for re-election. Ms. Lightfoot’s Achilles heel proved to be the extraordinary rise in violent crime. But in inexplicable twist, these same voters turned away a “law and order” candidate in favor of another soft on crime progressive and the crime wave awaits the annual summer free-for-all. Chicago will remain mired in crime, corruption and filth because the voters proved themselves unable to discern the primary cause of their problems – themselves.

Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York City, Minneapolis/St. Paul likewise suffer from the fact that they will not hold public officials accountable for their failures. The “confederacy of fools” allow these incompetent people to continue and seem amazed at the common outcome – failure. Failure at every level. It isn’t just crime in the streets. It includes failure in simple things like delivering services such as welfare, unemployment, automobile titles, water and sewer services, billing for water and sewer services, passable roads, traffic congestion, administration of elections, and virtually every thing they touch. No one seems to demand a demonstration of competence – even after a term in which officials have demonstrated gross incompetence.

In the end, if you are looking to hold someone accountable for the mess in which we find ourselves – start with the man in the mirror. This has nothing to do with ideology, it has to do purely with competence.