I feel for AS in his Hillary derangement syndrome, but here is a compare-contrast that maybe will help him - and others, of course - understand why head-in-the-sand conservatives (yes, including Reagan) who are most happy whoring the public interest rather than recognizing it; who sell expensive, false promises of National Security warm blankets; etc., drive so many to the same level of frustration:
They really do get under your skin, as sociopaths can*. They make you want to flee all political activity; they make you want to give up; they make you realize that truth and politics need not have any connection if you have long since had your sense of shame surgically removed.-AS
Now imagine how progressives feel when they read something like this, which can be summarized, "This is How It Is, idiot [some add, by God]. Our politics is irrefutable because it is life itself. Please thank me, pay me, and elect me for telling you so, and, if you are screwed "by life", suck-it-up!"
Mamet, however, hints at the real basis for conservatism. We can't cure war. We can't end all poverty. We can't make people into angels when they are not. The fundamental principle of conservatism can be roughly summed up into this: "sometimes life just sucks." Even if we could fix the problems that create war, poverty, racism and injustice to do so would be to have a society robbed of free will—because the root of all these problems are found in human nature itself.-AS, quoting Jay Reding
*All politicians ... ameliorate. It would help if you gave particulars and why the Clintons are soooo much worse. I mean, Rumsfeld stood at the podium and mused in response to a request for him to be self-critical, in a wonderful, stupdendous Rummy-ism, "Give me all your sixes", which of course he refused to do.
