Focus

I keep trying to understand what is going on with our government on the world stage. I have several simple theories like incompetence, stupidity and greed. There is a chance that all this mayhem is part of some well thought out strategy, but if this strategy is to crush, or at least deflate Russia, well, I think the first three theories can be applied here as well.

Since I'm still not sure whether there is some master plan or not, I guess I'm falling back on psychology. So now I'm working on brain detection. A person may be able to spout a lot of information, but that doesn't make them smart. If they're smart they start piecing that information together and they're going to start seeing connections.

What makes these jackasses act like jackasses? What the heck is it? Is it a disease, a genetic upbringing, a lax upbringing, a harsh unbringing?

JMSmith lights the way:

When Hypocrites are Put to the Test, They are Exposed, Found Wanting, and Fail

“The long-awaited Texas House report into the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde  . . . noted a massive but inept response from heavily armed local, state and federal law enforcement.”

Jim Vertuno “Uvalde Report: Huge Response, Little Action,” Associated Press (July 19, 2022)

“Some have considered the larger part of mankind in the light of actors, as personating characters no more their own, and to which in fact they have no better title, than the player hath to be earnest thought the king or emperor whom he represents.  Thus the hypocrite many be said to be a player; and indeed the Greeks called them both by one and the same name.” 

Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling (1747)

The words “massive” and “inept” seem to fit just about everything Americans do nowadays.  Our response to covid was certainly massive, and it was mostly inept; much of it amounting to hugely expensive “covid theater.”  Our response to radical Islam was massive, and if not always inept, it was very far from deft or dexterous.  Out response to the Ukraine War has so far been very costly and a complete failure.  The bungled response to the Uvalde shooter is of a piece with this melancholy pattern.  The Keystone cops who dithered and fretted outside the deadly classroom lacked nothing in the way of weaponry; but they lacked—egregiously lacked—the requisite virtues of courage, intelligence and resolution. 

Weaponry without these virtues is just costly tinsel and toys.

Money does not make clowns into cops.  Gear does not make wimps into warriors.  Books do not make simpletons into scholars.  Stained glass and surplices do not make mediocrities into men of God.  But extravagant expenditures can disguise the clowns, the wimps, the simpletons, and the mediocrities—disguise them until they are put to the test.

And when such impostors are put to the test, they are exposed, found wanting, and fail.

* * * * *

Hypocrisy is as old as humanity, the first hypocrite being Cain when he acted as if he did not know the whereabouts of his brother Able.  When Jesus excoriated the scribes and pharisees for hypocrisy, he meant they were actors who were playing the parts of pious men.  The priests in the temple were likewise pretending to be priests.  Herod’s children were pretending to be kings and queens.  Scripture does not tell us if Jerusalem cops of were pretending to be cops, but I suspect they may have been when I read:

“Again they tried to arrest him, but he escaped from their hands” ( John 10: 39).

Clowns! It seems that everyone in ancient Judea was a hypocrite, a phony, a fraud.  Cashing paychecks was the only thing they did in earnest and for real.

Well, it seems that modern America has picked up where ancient Judea left off.  Who knows how many Americans are only pretending to do their jobs?  And the illusion of industry is everywhere sustained by a surfeit of costly gear.  This is not just the weaponry that we see everywhere toted by clowns that are pretending to be cops.  It is all the stage props and stage sets with which professional posers create their illusions of industry and their simulacra of skill.

Until, that is, they are put to the test, found wanting, and fail.