Essays in Idleness

Well that’s it then, the last Super Tuesday for which I’ll stir myself to check the news. We’ve lost, as we usually lose. More precisely, we’re down ten goals with minutes to go, and I feel confident in my prediction. Trump has won. The current practice is to find someone to blame for this, other than ourselves; but really the whole team stinks, and their fans were just watching. To persist in the hockey metaphor, they should have been throwing their octopuses on the ice from the end of the first period.

I refer, of course, to Team Conservative, which took the battering from this glitzy goon, who didn’t need a “ground game” for his strategy was viral. The great majority of Americans, like a larger majority of Canadians, will actually vote for a Clinton or a Trump; even for a Trudeau. Who cares which huckster they choose? A gentleman like Cruz, who employs reason, and tries to complete his passes (ice hockey again) has no chance with such opponents. They aren’t playing the same game. They are playing instead some game in which winning (let’s switch to American football) is not the most important thing. It is the only thing.

No advice to Ted Cruz this morning. I have it on good induction that he does not read these Idleposts, and that will be my retaliation.

Guvmints come and go, not only in “democracies.” Replacing them by violence instead of elections appeals to me at this moment, but in the longer view, legitimate inheritance is best.

There is a photograph of our Queen, taken by Annie Leibovitz for her ninetieth birthday last week, showing her serene, and surrounded by a selection of her great-grandchildren, all properly washed. (Try here.) It broadcasts civilization, right down to the Hogarth touches (the one on her lap has Her Majesty’s spectacles, and the one to the left has her purse).

Now, I mention this to a constitutional purpose, but not the usual Loyalist one from up here in the Monarchy of the Far North — that the United Statists were wrong to rebel. (As my ancestors explained: “I choose one tyrant three thousand miles away, over three thousand tyrants one mile away.”)

Rather, I should like to advertise that our Canadian sovereign — for Elizabeth is she — has just the right amount of power, over me. It is limited by the fact that she does not know me (another non-reader, I’m afraid), and does not care if I live or die, provided that she isn’t obliged to endure the funeral. Better, she has no need to bother me with paperwork, in the meantime. I therefore hold her up as an example of good government: the very best.

Rather than ask if we continue to be worthy of her — the Jamaicans, for instance, like to flirt with republicanism, but a recent poll showed the great majority there would rather return to colonial status — we should give our attention to the rest of the executive. Are they necessary?

We need a military, to be sure, given the ways of this world; and police and prisons for the most obnoxious; but any competent caudillo can supply that, and the best caudillo is force of habit. (“Unalterable custom.”) I’m sure the Queen can appoint generals and admirals of a higher grade than any prime minister, wet behind the ears; could choose able and superbly-dressed men, to sit in her Star Chamber; and plumed servants to perfect her ceremonial. It is the rest of the bureaucracy we could do without.

So now the Yankees will get Trumpcare or Clintoncare on top of Obamacare, and a phalanx of other new jackboot “good intentions” by which to prove they can’t govern themselves. The common man will get farther and farther from taking responsibility for his own acts. Ridiculous suggestions will be put interminably to the vote.

I used to sign off, “bring back Franco,” but am reliably informed the man is dead. So let us instead restore the Queen to her proper office, or rather strip the ugly accretions from around it; say adieu to the tyranny of relativist politicians; continue to suffer their impositions, of course; but wherever life still happens to be permitted, get on with it.