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Soliloquy
When You Wish Upon a Czar
by Norman Ball
Even a Big Brother needs someone to look up to.
America's ruling class wants it both ways. Those in its ranks guard their power jealously, having no desire to lose the perks it gives them, but they nonetheless proffer a cavalcade of czars in hopes of shirking heavy lifting. Drug Czar, Education Czar, now an Intelligence Czar. The ruling class needn't bear the responsibility of ruling — give it to the czars! This autocratic fantasy betrays a subliminal recognition of the intractable morass American democracy has become. As it turns out, all the ruling class wants to do is dance at Inaugural Balls.
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Norman Ball isn't an effete intellectual, but he plays one on TV.
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We tend to ascribe self-certitude to those in power, when in truth our Maximum Leaders are controlled mostly by their towering insecurities. Secretly, they yearn for the Übermensch, a Bigger Daddy who tells them what to do, administering sound spankings followed by prolonged house arrest with no VIP privileges. At least the trains would run on time.
Rarely, however, is the self-doubt of the ruling class so vividly evidenced as in "The 9/11 Commission Report." An eerily impuissant tone echoes throughout the massive tome, something like: "We, your leaders, are largely powerless to protect you." The report warns plaintively that 85% of the nation's infrastructure lies in private-sector hands. Read: "Our hands are full with the Statue of Liberty. Guard your own stuff." Yes, we're over the Rubicon without a Caesar. Next stop? Amtrak Czar.
Rumsfeld had it tragically reversed. The shock and awe is mostly ours. The world's only remaining superpower is discovering itself horribly vulnerable to flight-bound nail clippers. Though the report largely skirts the elephant in the living room (Iraq), there are the obligatory Beltway bromides about improving the "unity of effort" across disparate organizations, etc. But once again, the self-exploratory waltz of the well-connected (so euphemistically embodied — and entombed — in the "commission" format) converges on the same hackneyed prescription: "We'll appoint a cabinet-level strongman, 'cause he'll make us take our medicine."
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| Americans are thoroughly fed up with their cache of personal liberties; in increasing numbers, they'd happily swap freedom for enhanced security.
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The grass roots are equally parched. Americans are thoroughly fed up with their cache of personal liberties. In increasing numbers, they'd happily swap freedom for enhanced security. Funny how anthrax spores and suitcase nukes can shift the tenor of a debate. Breathing is, after all, the inalienable right, so who can blame people for thumbing their noses at the genteel postulations of a bygone Age of Enlightenment? According to Ben Franklin, those who relinquish liberty for a modicum of security deserve neither. But then, Franklin flew kites during thunderstorms.
Many Americans today would embrace Mussolini if it meant a copious supply of the first-run movies they've come to enjoy. What, too cynical? There is a move afoot in some circles to make Blockbuster Video the fourth branch of government. Strict constructionists, though strictly opposed, are treading lightly. Hassling America's largest dispenser of opiates would precipitate an uprising of massively obese proportions. It's thanks to Blockbuster that Americans have made permanent peace with the reclined, prone position. In this sense, Blockbuster is to Big Brother what John the Baptist was to Jesus: the Great Preparer. But what form will our new Messiah take, and will he generate sufficient box-office receipts? I don't know, but effete intellectuals would do well to sit down, grab some popcorn, and accept the inevitable. And no talking during the movie!
Grassy knoll paranoiacs get it wrong most of the time. I envy Michael Moore's childlike belief that someone in power has the world's problems completely in hand. If ending terrorism were as simple as disbanding Skull and Bones and the House of Saud, I'd relinquish my Yale decoder ring in a New Haven minute!
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| If ending terrorism were as simple as disbanding Skull and Bones and the House of Saud, I'd relinquish my Yale decoder ring in a New Haven minute!
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I miss the days when the seeming inoperability of our system didn't have such dire implications. The quaint term we used was "gridlock." Hearing it, our teeth would clench, each of us conjuring images of our own private purgatories. Rush hour was my personal demon. These days, sitting in interminable traffic, stewing over a continued lack of dictatorial prerogative, I reflect on the United States' utter lack of exceptional people in positions of authority. But then, that is what a generation of telegenic leadership can do. Mind you, good looks are not an entirely bad thing. As first lady in waiting Teresa Heinz Kerry bubbled recently, John Edwards is a babe magnet.
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So who's our daddy? I can only tell you whom I would fearlessly follow up a hill in a battle for America's lost love of freedom. Trouble is, that fearless leader mounted his (or her) last charge leading a group of fellow passengers to wrestle a plane into a Pennsylvania field. So who was that masked man? The greatest irony of all is that United Flight 93 had the belly of our beast in its sights. There, beneath a luminous white dome of indecision, that beast dithers even now.
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