When my daughter was little, she believed in magic and wanted to be a princess. Most of us outgrow the belief that we can live in a fantasy world,
but for those who don’t, there’s always the magical land of Congress. It’s an amazing place where money grows on trees, or in chimerical spreadsheets and it can be spent forever without anyone worrying whether it will run out.
People who live in the real world have to work to earn money and if they spend more than they earn, their possessions are taken away. But those who live in the fantastical world of Congress never have to work for their money. All they have to do is blame.
Blaming magically erases the need to accomplish anything. People in Congress are very good at it – they have to be, since they are required to take a blaming test to get into government in the first place. The test is called an election. In an election, a person who wants to be a member of the ruling class is matched up against other people who want to be members of that class, and they have a contest to see who can cast blame in the most comprehensive way. Our most successful members of Congress learn how to blame not only their opponents, but a wide host of others including corporations, unions, religions, racial and ethnic groups, large rodents, the phase of the moon, global warming and anyone else who did not pay $2500 a plate to sit at their fundraising dinners.
But don’t worry – being a member of Congress is not really as hard as it sounds. Government is not all blame. There are lots of dress up days where members put on fancy clothes and let people take them out to dinners and parties. There are trips, and lots of vacation days. Members have a staff of servants to figure out what they should think and say and write. They even get a title, just like a duke or a princess in the land of make-believe.
I think any preschooler would love being a member of Congress. Anyone older than that should be ashamed to be living in a fantasy world at the public’s expense.