Why "Donny the Weasel" could be a chronic offender after he's dead, and how to prevent that.
King George III (former British sovreign of the 13 American colonies which won independence in a 1775-1783 war) said that if George Washington (the first President under the U.S. Constitution) left his new office voluntarily at end of term, he’d be the “greatest man in the world.”
That was generous of George, especially after all those nasty things America’s patriots said about him in their divorce Declaration. But after two centuries of Presidents made “greatest” common., we finally found a personality so weak he couldn’t match the accomplishment of James Buchanan, much less Edgar.
Overthrowing the U.S. Constitution was his choice over admitting he’d lost an election. That makes him the Worst Of All Time (WOAT), and deserving of derision down through the centuries to come, regardless how sternly he’s punished by law while still exchanging gas
WHY IT MATTERS EVEN AFTER DONNY’S DEAD
Humans are notoriously social animals, and individuals’ personalities are in some measure borrowed from the examples of others.
That’s especially tru in the spaces between the words of controlling documeents.
Witness the behaviors of drivers in Los Angeles. Many decades ago nearly all travelled slowly enough to give themselves at least the chance to reach the next traffic light in a green phase. Today a quarter to half the drivers race frantically to the next red light as if they were afraid to miss it. They needlessly waste fuel and maintenance costs and turn a potentially calm routine into a stressful street race.
Nowhere in the California Vehicle Code is anyone commanded to do so, nor is this behavior taught by driving instructors. It’s unconscious herd behavior.
Those inclined toward more damaging misbehavior to win negative attention take keener notice of disruption by others than do more balanced persons. Where emotionally healthy persons are mildly bemused, they’re trigered.
A persistent troublemaker whose childhood was his parents’ ordeal might even keep a collection of Adolf Hitler’s speeches on his bedstead, for instance.
Persistence is a virtue when applied to laudable goals, a vice when turned to tyranny. We might not be putting too bright a shine on the gloss to note WOAT’s own lawyer called him a “pestilence,” or “pest” for short.
One of the globe’s most popular broadcasts in the months leading up to WorldWar II was “It’s That Man Again,”” a B.B.C. topical tour de farce parodying that European politician with the funny moustache who kept coming back with new demands for bits of someone else’s country.
SOME MYTHOLOGY IS JUST TOO HEAVY FOR A LIFEBOAT
It’s been asserted that various forms of sharing are essential for individuals’to partake of nationhoood, including the retelling of stories.
Some such tales may seem suspect on first glance, and suitable for discard in a later, less credulous age, viz Chairman Mao’s natatorial feats or Parson Weems’s tale of young Washington and the cherry tree massacre.`
America’s psyche has an old, formative chip on its shoulder. It never was able in colonial or postrevolutionary days to compete with Europe in terms of population, wealth or intellectual accomplishment.
Europeans were more European, after all. Well into the 20th Century American musicians needed to make their names on European stages first to get top billing in the U.S.
As for native peoples, early American literary attemts to make them a cornerstone of national culture offered at best fodder for Mark Twain’s satire.
To compensate, Yankee Doodle assumed extraordinary pride in America’s political prowess in framing a Constitution that was justly famous through the world as a bulwark of representation against tyranny.
Alas, some of our insecurity got in the way of a proper appreciation of the rights of British citizens the Continental Congress had endeavored to secure for the Colonies. This led to such modern silliness as cclaims that there was (and is) no such thing as a British Constitution, as it wasn’t agreed in a few months in muggy Philadelphia before the invention of air conditioning, then printed entire in a week.
One can only wonder what John Adams was referrring to when he wrote in 1760, “There can be no Act against the Constitution.”
Adams may have had his moments of prescience, but it’s not in the range of belief that he was criticizing the U.S. Constitution three decades before it existed.
If you’re an American who harbored this erroneous view, don’t feel bad about it. Even some Brits are capable of such ridiculous notions as “The British Constitution isn’t written.”
If that’s so, how was Magna Carta transcribed in triplicate?
Yes, Virginia, there is a British Constitution, and it lives wherever a rat decides he’s digested enough parchment for one serving, or a prime minister in some Commonwealth nation decides “That would be going too far.”
And it lives in the U.S. Constitution, if you’re willing to pay the emotional toll of admitting it wasn’t all made in the U.S.A.; that the authors of Independence began life as proud Britons who considered their homes their Constitutional castles.
TAKING ANOTHER CUE from the MOTHER COUNTRY
If you’d had the occasion to fly over Britain on the first Saturday in November of 2022, you’d have seen football stadia lighted for night matches, with fireworks exploding overhead.
The fireworks were there to celebrate the most dramatic triumph of constitutional development over foreign intrigue and subversion since the defeat of the Spanish armada in 1588.
Seventeen years later an English-born former soldier in the army of Spain was caught in the act of trying to destroy the British Constitution and all its officers in a plot of mass murder by the highest explosive available at the time, gunpowder.
THE CURIOUS CASE of JAMES the THREE and a HALFTH
Throughout the reigns of the Tudor monarchs England had been rent by the Reformation, with Protestants and Roman Catholics earnestly burning one another at the stake for the benefits of the souls of the flammably departed.
Religion did play a role in these executions, but perhaps a stronger factor was power politics, and the demand of those in power to be unquestioned in their exercise of it.
The Church of Rome, which lent legitimacy to the French and Spanish governments, had been eyeing the English crown with considerable interest since the passing of Catholic QueenMary Tudor decades earlier.
Her half sister and successor, Queen Elizabeth 1, passed to the next life a non-Roman Catholic virgin in 1605, and the suitable successor was the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, James.
The Vatican held great hopes for James. He was the Sixth James .of Scotland and the First of England, for a combined score of 7 divided by 2 Kingdoms, totalling a sum of 3 1/2.
More to the point, he’d benefitted from a royal-level Catholic education, which, as it soon was learned, had rendered him a raving Protestant. And not just Protestant by halves, mind you, but byThree and a Halves.
JAMES GETS A WRITING CREDIT FOR THE BIBLE
Before James had even figured out where all the toilets were in Whitehall he ordered translation of the Bible into English for wide distribution. Though he got no royalties for this deal, it gave hime half credit for creating the English language with Shakespeare.
That bit with the Bible was an “In your face!” ‘ to the Vatican, who considered unforgivable sins a tiny category but worthy consideration when someone prints the Good Book in any language that needs no local distribution franchise.
We could go on and on about the Bill of Rights, and whether it was from 1688 or 1689, and other constitutional matters, but we’ll just note that the gunpowder plot’s leader was arrested, Commons and Lords and Royals and Lord High Chancellor did not blow sky high, and that this outcome seems to have agreed with the wishes of a majority of Britons.
And so it is that each Fifth of November fireworks light the skies of Britain to celebrate her independence from foreign superpower coercion.
WHY WE DON’T NEED MORE BURNING
If survival of the human race interests you, you already know the answer. But while the ooriginal Gunpowder Plot celebration involved bonfires which consumed effigies of Guido Fawkes, a more appropriate celebration of Donny the Weasle’s failure to overthrow the Constitution by force could include inflated effigies.
An overfilled beach ball already resembles Donny’s physiognomy bryond denial. And when we’re depicting someone so full of himself he’s likely to explode, what would suit the cause of derision better than that?
WHY “DONNY the WEASEL?
1. The W.O.A.T. (Worst Of All Time) in America’s history rhymes nicely with”stoat,” a creature with which a weasel sometimes is confused.
2. Definitions for weasel include “deceitful or treacherous person” and “ambiguous and intentionally misleading” (O.E.D.) .
3. Our WOAT is reputed to fancy himself a crime boss-like figure like Carmine the Snake or Tony Ducks. ‘Donny the weasel” fits.
TRYING to OVERTHROW the CONSTITUTION YOU’VE SWORN to DEFEND IS SHAMEFUL. LET”S SHAME THE PERP. WHO CALLED OUR CONSTITUTION “PHONY,” THEN TRIED TO OVERTURN IT.
ASK YOUR REPRESENTATIVES MAKE JAN. 6 AN ANNUAL CELEBRATION of CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT!
(This is not an organized group, just a single suggestion f. Parum Ventus will vent in future only when he finds a popular lie or unrecognized error too painful to suffer in silence.)