This morning I was driving to work on the interstate, minding my own business, and sipping a nice, hot, oversize mug of coffee. It was a pretty typical morning commute. Nothing particularly noteworthy or interesting. At least not until a Volkswagen Jetta passed me on the left. The Jetta itself wasn’t remarkable. It was like hundreds of others I’d seen before. But something about it caught my eye and caused me to do a double take. Much to my surprise, the car had a gas pump nozzle still inserted in the gas tank sticking out the side of the car. Even better, the six feet of hose still attached to the nozzle was dragging on the road surface well behind the rear tire. I couldn’t help but laugh. “Clueless!,” I thought to myself, “How could anyone be that oblivious to what’s going on around him?”
Of course, we can all be clueless at times. When I was in grade school, I used to fill up the lost and found with gloves and hats and coats. I could have outfitted half the third grade with all the stuff I misplaced.
And to tell you the truth, I’m still that way. Those who know me are well aware of my bad habit of putting things in odd places and completely forgetting about them. I recently lost my eyeglasses for a week and had no idea what I might have done with them. I finally figured out they were in the pocket of my new hoodie, but not after overturning the house and making special trips to two restaurants, thinking that I had left my glasses at the table.
Some people think that my writing is clueless too. I hope that’s not the case, but maybe they have a point. No doubt I have several cords worth of wood in my eye. A man should never judge his own case. Whatever.
That being said, certain people evidence a capacity for invincible cluelessness so truly breathtaking in scope and staying power that it calls for special comment. And not wanting to let a good opportunity go to waste, I have taken great pains to compile a select list of the intensely uninformed. These are no ordinary examples of cluelessness. Far from it. Rather they are examples of those who truly have gone over and above the clueless call of duty. The leaders. The achievers. Those whose example we all yearn to follow, whose clueless accomplishments rise to the level of – dare I say it – inspired genius. But without further ado, let us move on to a few examples.
Keynesian economists: I lead off with a brief mention of these fine chaps, because for eighty years they have heroically and steadfastly supplied the necessary intellectual raw sewage to justify all manner of incompetent government boondoggles. These are the fine folks who tell us that a nation can solve its financial problems that are the result of too much debt by taking on more debt and spending counterfeit money to do so. Print and spend is their motto. Clueless!
Central bankers: See above. These people are not only in agreement with the Keynesians, but actually are a sub-species of the same. Cranks, quacks and culprits, they stalk the corridors of power at the Federal Reserve and in financial capitals the world over. Their main attribute? A truly remarkable facility with the printing press, which they used to great effect supplying the phony capital required to bail out Wall Street during the 2008 financial crisis. And if that weren’t enough, they’re due back soon for an encore performance as they once again print, print, print, this time to bail out Europe’s collapsing financial system. If only Johannes Gutenberg could have seen these guys in action! Clueless!
The mainstream financial press: Mostly comprised of Keynesians or Keynesian dupes, they breathlessly report the latest “solutions” offered by politicians to the European and American debt crises as though they were conveying actual news of real importance. Yawn. You people can wake me up when the news breaks that Ben Bernanke has perfected the art of creating trillions of dollars out of nothing whatsoever. Oh, wait a minute. He’s already done that you say? I’m going back to sleep. Clueless!
Mainstream financial advisors: Stock, bond and mutual fund salesmen at heart, they constantly push underperforming, overpriced investments on their uniformed clients, all the while steering them away from “risky” assets such as precious metals. After all, with the all those bright Keynesians from MIT, Harvard, Yale and Princeton working diligently over at the Federal Reserve and US Treasury Department, only a tinfoil hat wearing nut job would actually want to own physical gold and silver. I mean, what could possibly go wrong with our financial system? Clueless!
Occupy Wall Street: Since I seem to be picking on the financial industry, why not do a riff on OWS. I have to admit, I’m not a big fan of mass civil disobedience, but it was kind of nice to see somebody rattle the cage of the arrogant masters of the universe on Wall Street. Those phony capitalists who line their pockets with seven figure bonuses when times are good but get their government buddies to bail them out at your expense when things don’t go their way are truly repulsive to anyone who retains even a shred of moral character. No group is more deserving of public censure.
But for all that, OWS couldn’t see the obvious: the reason why Wall Street was able to pull of the great heist of 2008 was not due to the lack of government involvement in the financial industry, as the OWS crowd seems to think, but because of it. None of the vast federal regulatory apparatus did anything to prevent the financial meltdown. In fact, as a result of regulatory capture – a term used to describe the state of affairs when a regulated industry actually comes to control the government agency supposed providing oversight – and past government bailouts of the financial industry, you could make a good case that the government’s regulation of and heavy involvement in the financial industry actually helped bring about the meltdown in the first place.
But what did OWS call for? The reintroduction of capitalism into Wall Street? Hardly. No, the OWS folks demanded the usual boring array of socialist nonsense: more government regulation and higher taxes. If they had any sense at all, they would have realized that the best regulator is the free market. Had laissez faire capitalism been allowed to do its job, all the people OWS spent so much time loudly protesting would have been out of business years ago as a result of their own financial incompetence. Because of its complete obliviousness to the role big government played in bringing about the 2008 meltdown and bailout of the financial industry, and because of its call for more government intervention when it should be demanding less of the same, I pronounce OWS – as I’m sure you’ve already guessed – clueless!
American Neoconservatives: A sort of philosophical kudzu, neo-conservatism has come to the fore in American politics over the past 30 years. Singing a siren song of big government with a conservative twist – don’t end welfare, mend it with faith-based initiatives! – its advocates exploited an intellectually confused conservative movement, working their way up through the ranks of various conservative organizations and eventually choking out the host plant. Conservatism was never very intellectually sound, especially after William Buckley took over, but before the arrival the Neocons, one could still find individual conservatives who really cared about limited government and were capable of mounting a reasonably serious intellectual defense of freedom and capitalism. Today, conservatism has been so leavened by neoconservative statist rubbish it is little distinguishable from fascism. Clueless!
Newt Gingrich supporters: Unstable as water, Newt will never excel. Just don’t tell that to his many loyal fans. They take him seriously as an intellectual – he’s a historian don’t cha know – mainly because he can speak well and convey the appearance of wisdom. Unfortunately, it is only an appearance. I’d be tempted to say his ideas are sophomoric, but that would be an insult to sophomores, who generally display much better sense than the former speaker. How long can he go on before even his starriest eyed supporters start to waiver? Clueless!
Dispensationalist Evangelicals: This one pains me. Not that I am or ever have been a dispensationalist, but as an Evangelical I have at least something in common with these folks, some of whom I take to be genuine Christians. In Christian charity I would like to think that they mean well, but when it comes to foreign policy, they’re way off base. They sincerely if mistakenly believe that Genesis 12:3 requires the US to either slavishly support the Likud party’s latest hair brained initiative or run the risk of bringing the wrath of God Almighty upon these United States. More Zionist than the Zionists, during the next state visit by a high Israeli official, I half expect to see them lining Pennsylvania Avenue while laying palm branches on the road and shouting Hosanna in the highest. Sadly, to the extent they have been duped by dispensationalism, they are indeed – altogether now – clueless!
Imperialist/militarist Conservatives: Much the same as neoconservatives, these folks believe that an aggressive, militarist foreign policy of empire is somehow compatible with a domestic small government, Jeffersonian republic. They do not seem to realize that federal lawlessness abroad implies federal lawlessness at home. As Frank Sinatra used to sing, “let me tell you brother, you can’t have one without the other.” If the federal government is willing to take the outrageous step of violating the Constitution to go to war without a declaration, why would it respect any of the finer points of the law regarding the civil and property rights of American citizens? But be prepared, should you ever find yourself in a political discussion with one of these folks and dare question their assertion that a sparrow falling to the ground in east Waziristan is intimately connected with vital US interests, you’ll likely to have your intelligence and patriotism severely questioned. Because they profess to want limited government at home and big government empire abroad, because they are completely and invincibly ignorant of the logical incompatibility of these views, because they are the very embodiment of double mindedness, these people are most definitely and unquestionably – dare I say it – clueless!
Barak Hussein Obama: Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” Not wanting to be outdone by the old Messiah, the new messiah recently offered, “If you love me, pass this bill!” Wow. I guess my high school civics book really dropped the ball in neglecting to mention “love” as a vital component of the legislative process. Can anyone imagine Winston Churchill saying such a thing? Or Eisenhower? Even Jimmy Carter wasn’t that lame. Then again, perhaps Obama’s onto something. Had he tried this tactic with the Iranians, maybe they would have returned his little lost toy drone by now. I can just see it. Obama: “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, if you love me, return my drone.” Ahmadinejad: “Oh Barry! I love you, truly I do! Here, take your drone and my entire stockpile of enriched uranium too!” And people thought Nixon in China was big. The trickster couldn’t hold a candle to Mr. Obama’s second Nobel Prize, which surely would follow such a diplomatic coup as the night follows the day. For his combination of sappy sentimentality and messianic arrogance, Mr. Obama is – how shall we delicately put it – clueless!
Rush Limbaugh: Ah, what shall I say about El Rushbo? Here’s a man who has spent over 20 years on nationwide radio bellowing the finer points of the way things ought to be for all who would hear him. Limbaugh was a staunchly individualist pro-gun, pro-capitalist and pro-small government conservative. Year after year he would bash Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy and the RINOs who loved them. It was all great fun to listen to, and as a dittohead I longed for the day when true conservative Republicans would ride into Washington on their white horses and scatter the evil Democrats before them. So now that the Republican party has finally produced a first-tier presidential candidate who is a staunchly individualist pro-gun, pro-capitalist, pro-small government, patriotic American with the conviction, courage, character and intellectual acumen to actually deal a serious blow to the socialist state, you’d think Limbaugh would be all over that. But you’d be wrong. In fact, not only does Rush not support Ron Paul, but goes out of his way to excoriate the man and anyone who dares support him. It would seem all that talk about the way things ought to be was just that, talk. As a reward for his extraordinary example of loud-mouthed, two-faced hypocrisy, it must be said of Rush Limbaugh that he is most certainly, most assuredly, beyond the shadow of a doubt, without hesitation or mental reservation, absolutely, totally…CLUELESS!
Lux Lucet 
Leave a Reply