After years of focus-grouping, the self-esteem movement has settled on a new mascot.  I think they’ve nailed it.  No one, and I mean no one, has more self-esteem than this handsome guy.

Like other governments, republics don’t fray and weaken by accident.  One of the greatest hazards in politics is to act without understanding the passions and motives by which decadent political classes are driven.

We may suppose that members of the political classes seek government action in order to deal with crises.  But they may crises in order to have reasons for government action.

We may suppose that they make individuals and families dependent as an inadvertent effect of trying to help them.  But they may seek methods of so-called help in order to make them dependent.

We may suppose that they fashion laws and regulations to serve the public good.  But they may overhaul their concept of the common good just to have a reason for more laws and regulations.

We may suppose that they try to manage the problems assigned to them.  But they may seek to make the problems worse in order to prove their own importance.

We may suppose that they intervene in economic institutions in order to correct market failures.  But they may court market failures as an excuse to intervene.

We may suppose that they allow outrages to acquire the force of precedent because they misunderstand the requirements of justice.  But they may be unwilling to do justice because they cherish continuity more.

We may suppose that they hope to do great deeds to do in order to bask in the sun of public notice.  But if notice is all their desire, then provided they go unpunished, they may value infamy almost as much as fame.

We may suppose that they try to uphold public order.  But at last, at long last, there may come a time when it better serves their interests to aid and abet those who undermine it.  And then the end is near.

Such motives, though not universal, are far more common than one may think.  I don’t say that all who are driven by them understand their real aims, though some do.  Nor do I say that all who cooperate with those who do understand their aims understand their own complicity.  As in every age, the greater number are so called useful idiots, who take for granted the framework within which they are working.

One should desire to be useful – but to whom or what?  It would be cruel to write about idiocy if there weren’t a cure for it.  There is a cure, a hard one.  “Does not wisdom call, does not understanding raise her voice?”  It would be a good thing to listen.

As a society, we are more and more obsessed by sex.  Yet surprisingly, we are having less and less of it.  The sociologists call the latter phenomenon the “sex recession.”  One writer asks whether it is turning into a Great Sex Depression, like the great economic depression of the 1930s.

What accounts for this odd fusion of obsession with indifference?  I suspect that it results mostly from the ongoing project of separating sex from the making of new life and the mutual devotion of the husband and wife in making it.  For it isn’t just that people have sex outside marriage.  Even within what passes for marriage, they often seek to avoid having children.

What a bore.  If sex is but willful sterility, why not just use porn?  It’s a lot less trouble.  You don’t even need other people.

Over time, though, that sort of thing loses its ability to excite.  You must seek more and more extreme stimuli, for less and less result.  Surprise, surprise!  That’s just how obsession works.

"They couldn't say it if it wasn't true."  That’s how one of my elderly relatives used to chide me, bless her heart, when I mocked the tabloid newspapers.  Years ago, in a spirit of fun, I attached to my university office door a page from the Weekly World News showing a story about Bill Clinton getting advice from space aliens visiting from the planet with the most advanced economy in the galaxy.  I reluctantly took it down after several of my students thought I was serious.

Well, at least they asked.

Now come up to the present.  We live in the day of politicized medicine, science, teaching, news reporting, “fact checking,” administration of justice, and internet censorship.  One of the pundits said recently that we shouldn’t complain about things being politicized, because politics just means governing ourselves.  Yes, of course.  But what I mean by the term is governing ourselves crookedly – manipulating people and telling lies for political advantage.

The amazing thing isn’t that the people running these scams lie.  It’s that they lie even when they know they can be caught at it.  On the one hand, people have become cynical:  They know there is a lot of lying.  On the other, they tend to believe the lies of their own favorite thugs:  "They couldn't say it if it wasn't true."

What accounts for this unstable compound of cynicism and gullibility?  The answer is that most modern lying involves the claim that the other guy is lying.  “I’m not doing that bad thing.  He is.  Don’t look at me.  Look at him.”  You can be gullible about this kind of lie, even while being cynical about the person the liar is lying about.

So add this to the Book of Best Practices for Living in a Decadent Age:  When public figure P says that public figure Q is up to something, by all means consider the evidence.  It could well be true.  But first consider the evidence that the one who is really up to that something is P himself.

For this midweek post perhaps I will be forgiven for making just a little point about language.  Sometimes, political writers use the term “meritocracy” for a system in which the citizens place those whom they consider the most qualified in public office.  But often, the term is used for a political system in which those who consider themselves entitled, or who possess some sort of credential, shoulder the citizens aside and do what they think best.  These two meanings are not the same; they are almost opposite.  Yet we allow ourselves to slip back and forth between them.

It would be helpful if we could bring ourselves to be a little more fastidious when we speak.  “Meritocracy” has become such a weasel word that we would do better to give it up.