In this week’s column, Labash says this, as if we’re hanging on his every word:
Tea Partiers, do you really think food will taste better and Woodrow Wilson will burn in hotter hellfire because Marco Rubio won? You’re a sad, deluded person if you do. Not to mention that you’re evidencing the naivety of an Obamabot, circa 2007. I dislike big government, too. But if government is a flabby, slow-witted behemoth that should be a mere afterthought on our journeys as rugged individualists, why do you spend every last waking hour being consumed by who’s running it? The difference between, say, Sharron Angle and Harry Reid is not, I’m sorry to report, the difference between 5 and 10 percent unemployment rates. If government were actually any good at fixing that sort of intractable problem, then it might be worth losing sleep over. But it isn’t. And the realization that government is not the remedy for most ailments is why you’re supposedly a conservative in the first place.
As the architect of the Apathy Party – which I’ve never cared enough about to formally launch – I like to state our founding principle: it’s not cool not to care, but we don’t care enough to care if it’s uncool. Less cynically stated: it’s not that nothing matters, it’s just that most things matter a lot less than we pretend they do. And a good many of the things that actually do matter — our tottering financial system, our runaway debt, our fraying entitlements — nobody’s demonstrated the real political will to fix anyway. All of those catastrophes have enjoyed bipartisan support. If you really believe a few rookie Tea Partiers can un-wreck the train, good luck with that. You’re a lot more optimistic than I am.
He’s probably right about the election not meaning as much as we want it to, but I’m happy about it anyway. More and more I’m realizing that politics is merely the formalization of schadenfreude. And if you don’t like it: Aw, is diddums gonna cry?
Speaking of having a good laugh at the people who’ve insulted you and lied about you for 22 straight months, this item from Politico’s Maggie Halberman is a cool, refreshing swim in their tears:
Grief counseling after the wipeout
A staffer for a congressional Democrat who came up short on Tuesday reports that a team of about five people stopped by their offices this morning to talk about payroll, benefits, writing a résumé, and so forth, with staffers who are now job hunting.
But one of the staffers was described as a “counselor” to help with the emotional aspect of the loss — and a section in the packet each staffer was given dealt with the stages of grief (for instance, Stage One being anger, and so on).
“It was like it was about death,” the staffer said. “It was bizarre.”
But funny! As Allahpundit points out, stage one is actually denial. So I guess it’s fitting that Haberman glossed over it.
Also: