{"id":1058,"date":"2008-12-12T00:21:07","date_gmt":"2008-12-12T06:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2008-12-12T00:23:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-12T06:23:54","slug":"npsm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=1058","title":{"rendered":"NPSM"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nick Gillespie goes non-linear<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This never was a “helluva good country,” at least when it came to politicians. We just pretended it was. Certainly, after a decade or more of NPSMs up the ying-yang (apologies, but we are talking about politics, which driveth all decent men and women mad), it’s impossible to have any illusions. We are a nation of Depends wearers, even those of us who are half the age of John McCain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m feeling this a lot these days. Over at Right-Thinking, it seems that 90% of my posts are whining about something stupid and massively expensive that the government is doing — from wars to bailouts. I look to Washington and am reminded of the words of Johnathan Swift:<\/p>\n

I desired that the senate of Rome might appear before me, in one large chamber, and an assembly of somewhat a later age in counterview, in another. The first seemed to be an assembly of heroes and demigods; the other, a knot of pedlars, pick-pockets, highwayman, and bullies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But I think things have got to turn around soon. Bill James once observed that progress comes in the guise of failure. Watergate wasn’t about politicians being corrupt — they always had been. Watergate was about the American ceasing to put up with it. Racial tension wasn’t created in the 1960’s. It just exploded into the national consciousness when we decided we wouldn’t put up with it anymore.<\/p>\n

Thanks to the internet, our politicians no longer have a lap-dog media to cover up their nonsense. It may take a while. But I think a lot of the cynicism and anger now is because the American people are refusing to tolerate this kind of garbage anymore. A revolution is going to come (not the violent type; the ballot box type).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Gillespie goes non-linear: This never was a “helluva good country,” at least when it came to politicians. We just pretended it was. Certainly, after a decade or more of NPSMs up the ying-yang (apologies, but we are talking about politics, which driveth all decent men and women mad), it’s impossible to have any illusions. … Continue reading NPSM<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2BzKF-npsm","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}