Told, for no discernible reason other than that it pleases me to do so, in the overly parenthetical manner and supercilious tone of a Boorish Ass. To wit:


After devoting much thought to the administration’s grand vision of an “ownership” society. I must say I wish them luck. As I intend to make a killing in the market on stupidity if and when it becomes possible to own someone else’s.

I arrived at the scheme, the "concept" if you will, thus:

Just after the election a friend and I were discussing the possibilities and implications of Bush Unbound, sharp turn of phrase that, no pun intended, and he mentioned that one of the heartening aspects of this apparently unfortunate result was that at least now Bush would have to “own” his mistakes. I considered the logic of the claim and dispensed with it immediately. It was a tricky business, but in order to demonstrate that his attempt --to derive a rationale for hope by resorting to some absurd notion of historical dialectic or the now equally absurd notion of the requirements of basic honesty--was futile, and to spare myself the valuable time that I would have to spend making arguments, I chose as my weapon the quick and decisively dismissive jest. The blow proved more devastating than even I myself had expected.

“Ha! You think so?” Realizing that the conversation itself, much less my interlocutor, wouldn’t recover from the coming strike, I savored the moment, not unmercifully I might add, then spoke, “Well I believe you can expect to see politicians on the Right begin to blame the mess of the Iraq War on Bill Clinton before Christmas!”

There was a taut silence. My victory was Pyrrhic. The point was taken, but the jape unamusing; whether due to content, timing or tone I cannot say. We both looked down briefly at our pint glasses, and then gazed without focus through the window as Winter approached and darkness fell.

So you can imagine my delight upon learning in the paper the other day that my penetrating insight into the nature of things had proved prescient when I read this:

U.S. Sen. James M. Inhofe said Thursday that cutbacks during the Clinton administration resulted in the lack of armor and other material faced by U.S. troops in Iraq.

Inhofe, you may recall, is the Senator from Oklahoma whose meta-outrage at the outrage of others during the Committee hearings concerning the incidents at Abu Ghraib was broadly and briefly flatulated across the nation’s broadsheets.


Dismay however, followed quickly on the heels of delight, as it occurred to me that if I had patented that prediction, I’d have turned a good penny in royalties from right wing Senators. Certainly a prediction is a piece of intellectual property as much as is any other written history. Predictions, when accurate, are simply the history of the future. And just as certainly if a future part of my genome can be owned, a genome that was spontaneously and unprofitably developed in the past, I could reap wealth from the future elements of History which also formerly occurred spontaneously, but now can be predicted and manipulated within certain limits and the usual caveats. And what, in the end, is History to the journals , other than what the powerful say about what they think and do? And why, in the final analysis, shouldn’t some of that corporate money that gets lavished on the Senators not trickle down to the man on the street?

It was thus that I imagined a flood of wealth filling my coffers, simply by documenting and certifying my predictions about which asinine nonsense will spew forth from the mouths of our rulers next.

My next prediction, although lacking in originality and not substantially different in kind to the first, will be that the “looming Social Securtiy Crisis” will also proclaimed to be the fault of Bill Clinton. As will discomfort, death, and inconvenience.

I am currently seeking “startup” capital in this venture to more fully devote time to predicting the future. Investment inquiries may be posted in the comments section.