The question of "who governs", full stop, has been a question in focus for sociologists and, in the realm of political science, for those truly seeking to commit (to) contribution. In its aptly more comical version (or am I indulging the politics of the present day?), Goofy answers the question of "who's driving" the car - and more importantly to them, the eponymous trailer - up the precipice with a resounding, if not too reassuring, answer that he - after all - is the man behind the steering wheel. One quick glance, and the accompanying and more infinitely important internal observation that this cannot be the case, and the social convention that lies at the core of the plot of Mickey's Trailer, is all in tatters, and all that is left is the long and painful plummet back to the restoration of normalcy, post-crisis. (Spoiler: The mouse and duck survive unblemished, although other res within the trailer unimportant to the next instalment does not.)
Goofy's short reign as führer of the trailer and all within, as the viewers even of the ultra-cut edition airing Christmas Eve on Sweden's Channel 1 (still, or should I say without further cuts) would know, is soon re-established and lost yet again despite his desperate efforts, meaning because of them, and
Who, then, governs this collection of city-states (New York, Rhode Island, frankly Massachusetts) and peasant republics in the Jeffersonian mold, add latifundia dominated by wealthy landowners, and from whence doth this authority, once vested in the federal (as opposed to a confederal, a notion later resurrected) government? Well, apart from the congress disliked to the point of a sixty-percent turnout (during "presidential" Novembers) seeming unfathomable, and betraying a no small amount of disdain and ick going into the ballot box, and the court once revered... mayhaps... but going through a period of liberal excess, into a broadly libertarian guardrail - advancing varying conservative and liberal causes past the velvet rope of said ballot box - into a conservative resurgence either purveying the process of said ballot against judicial overhaul, or the gavel-enforced long-term, but never sufficiently close desire of a Gilead from sea to shining sea (although sparing Catholics, Jews, gays with knots tied, Kanye and Tim and Larry and many others, under the aegis of a seeming non-believer twice divorced and unable to quote scripture, as compared to Atwood's autocratic, genocidal, puritanical, seemingly both collegial and austere Calvinist dysoutopia of New England Talibanism), the presidency has been unhealthily in the focus of the dreams, desires and above all disdains of critics and lovers within this fifth, or sixth party system, with increasing desire for the excesses of power exercised within, and to capture, this office in a most tribal fashion. This trend, and strife, began perhaps - and ignoring the very special and sordid case of Mr. Johnson, and his usually hapless successors - with the impeachment procedure against the liar and cheat Clinton ("president", lest I offend someone else) partly as an attempt to rein in the powers of an office understandably, if not necessarily, expanded to meet the demands of an ever-expanding empire, from the days of firing at Spaniards in order for the talons to embrace Cuba to Trump promising, in phlegm if not in substance, to turn bullets against hapless immigrants speaking the same language (and others reminiscent also of that era, to whose ancestors President McKinley brought the benefits and bayonets of liberty, now to behold his successor decrying proverbial chickens) to so very defensively "hold the border"? (Note, about the not-so-often-pronounced, but ever-present Hitler analogy, the absence of calls for a German-Polish border wall, which to Nazi troops would genially, if not ferociously, have been the foremost object slated for complete annihilation.)
Who, then, governs this empire? In the garniture, or garnish, adoring his plate there are the usual suspects: The military, police and security apparatus, equally cancerous in its growth (if perhaps beneficially) to feed various, well, conspiracy theorists varyingly on left and right, and the secretaries having previously . Previously, from the objective hindsight of time, we may decry the likes of Stanton, Daugherty and of course Dulles (need I say which brother, or proclaim through your absence of doubt that we are both a "conspiracy-lover/hater" too?) have exerted tremendous power . If that is enough, throw in the name Hoover, and know I speak not of the philantropist and second nonagenarian to have held the supreme office, but the one he served so briefly under.
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