Politics

P.J. O'Rourke explains at The Weekly Standard,

Politics is a way to gain power over people without justification for having that power.

...Politicians gain power by means of empty promises or threats, or both when they’re on their game. Should you vote for people who are good at politics? No. You should vote for Republicans. We’re lousy.

Believe me, I know why you don’t vote for Republicans. You see the Republican candidates and they look so .  .  . Bush-League, Dog Walker, Rubio Rube, Get-Outta-the-Carson, Hucka-Upchuck, Ap-Paul-ling, Cruz Control, Fat-Fried Christie Crispy, Son-of-a-Kasich, Dingleberry Perry, Flee the Fiorina, Sancta-Santorum, Graham Cracker, and Nervous 7/11 Night Shift Manager Jindal.

And never mind the busted flush Trump Card who should be spray-painted with Rust-Oleum primer, have a squirt gun super-glued to his hand, and kicked through the front door of the Ferguson, Mo., police station.

Republican politicians stink. This is because real Republicans don’t go into politics. We have a life. We have families, jobs, responsibilities, and it takes all our time and energy to avoid them and go play golf. We leave politics to our halt, our lame, and our feeble-minded. Republican candidacies are sinecures for members of the GOP who are otherwise useless and/or retired.

Democrats, on the other hand, are brilliant politicians. And I mean that as a vicious slur. Think how we use the word “politics.” Are “office politics” ever a good thing? When somebody “plays politics” to get a promotion, does he or she deserve it? When we call a coworker “a real politician,” is that a compliment?

Democrats pay a lot of attention to you. They offer you all sorts of trick-or-treat giveaways.

Benefits are the way government is expanded. The more government expansion, the more opportunities for politicians to get power. (Beware of razor blades in the candy apples.)

Democrats offer you regulations to make your life safer from razor blades in candy apples. Regulations expand government with unelected regulatory bodies so that politicians can get power without bothering about your vote.

...Democrats adore your demographic groups. Democrats are pro-woman, pro-black, pro-Latino, pro-immigrant, pro-LGBT, pro-AFL/CIO, pro-differently abled, pro-unemployed, pro-poor. (And by pro I mean whore.)

Besides prostituting themselves to your demographic groups, Democrats are adhering to the first principle of political elites: Divide and conquer.

...The Democratic party is one big family. This means—as those of us from big families know—all of you detest each other. Or you will by the time Democratic matriarchs and patriarchs get done parceling out too little to one group, too much to another, and none to most.

Democrats are particularly infatuated with the demographic group of voters who are poor. Democrats provide many social programs for the poor. If you happen to be poor, you know what these social programs do. They pay you to stay poor.

Democrats favor a higher minimum wage. And they’ll make sure you get a minimum wage. Forever.

Democrats want to give you health care that’s free—and worth it.

Democrats will provide you with more opportunities to get an education and buy a house. A couple hundred thousand dollars of student loan debt and a huge mortgage that’s underwater will keep you poor for sure.

And then Democrats tax the hell out of your beer and cigarettes—two of the few small pleasures available to the poor.

Democrats are tough on business. After all, you might get into business. And make money. And
vote Republican.

And even if we don’t care about you—because of our inability to care or your inability to be cared for—at least we’ll leave you alone.

Democrats will herd you into a group. Democrats like groups because they loathe individuals. Any given group can be made dependent on political power. Any given individual is a different matter.

Democrats are in favor of abortion and against the death penalty. How could anyone possibly arrive at that pair of moral judgments? Republicans can, sometimes, understand the majesty of death—abortion as a matter of private conscience and evil paying the ultimate price. Republicans can, sometimes, understand the sacredness of life—each fetus as a being and how we must not take what we cannot give from any person, however bad. But no Republican understands the virtue of killing a baby too innocent to be born while sheltering and feeding a murderer until he gets fed up and tunnels out of Dannemora.

Democrats hate you. And your family. Sixty-nine percent of America’s abortions are performed on women who are poor. More than half of the people in prison report pre-arrest annual incomes of less than $10,000.

A fetus is an individual who might grow up to be anything, even a Republican. Meanwhile convicts are a group that is fully dependent on government. (And in Vermont, felons in prison can vote by absentee ballot, which may explain Bernie Sanders.) “Wait!” you say. “Republicans are just as bad! Look at the Republican candidates trying to attract votes from segregationists, male chauvinists, gun nuts, religious lunatics, transgender-bashers, Nazis, climate-change-deniers, union-busters, flagrant emitters of greenhouse gases, and Wall Street malefactors of great wealth.”

Yep. There our candidates are, trolling through the gutters of the electorate. That’s what politics does to people. It sullies even the most well-bred fellow and gal. Especially if they happen to be halt, lame, feeble-minded, or otherwise useless and/or retired and have therefore taken up politics.

Stay away from politics. And vote Republican. As it says in Forrest Gump (the book’s author, Winston Groom, is a Republican), “Stupid is as stupid does.” And you can count on us Republicans to not do much.

Read more here.