We Are All Cynics Now, Part 1

The Cynic

The Cynic tells me, with a wry smile, “We are all cynics now.” He is cynically referring obliquely to an often quoted quip in late 19^th century, when socialism first bestrode Europe like a colossus  -- “We are all socialists now.”

President Joe Biden, my Cynic says, is protean, crossing and re-crossing political barricades with impunity because, ideologically weightless, he is able to assume the character of whichever emergent group he wishes to appeal to. He is thinking, he says, of the sloppy mental ruminations of U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others like her. Biden is a derivative, rather than a creative, politician. That is why plagiarism for Biden is not an error in judgment but a habit of mind.

Recently in France, Biden referred to himself as “Jill Biden’s husband,” a line he borrowed without attribution from President John Kennedy. The quip must have confused some French people who likely are aware that Jill Biden’s maiden name is Jill Tracy Jacobs, Frenchless, unlike Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, former President Jack Kennedy’s wife.

Emerson used to say that a FOOLISH consistency was the hobgoblin of little minds, but to Biden’s way of thinking every consistency represents a loss in political standing. If you have two faces or more, and if you are a member in good standing in a leftist political club, you can speak out of separate mouths at the same time without fear you will be called a hypocrite. Postmodern politicians hire fork-tonged spokespersons to square such impertinences with likely voters.

For Biden, all inconvenient consistencies – that is to say, anything that is a bar to his own forward movement --  are the hobgoblin of little minds. This is cynicism, my Cynic tells me, writ large. But there are two kinds of cynicism – good and bad. Biden’s cynicism, designed to fool most of the people some of the time and some of the people most of the time, is not good.

The Greek cynics, he says, brought good cynicism out of the closet. Antisthenes, the father of Greek cynicism, was a student of Socrates, and there is, even in Socrates, a barely restrained golden vein of cynicism.

The early cynics had some things in common with the yellow journalists of the last century. Both delighted in pulling noses and creating a public stir.

My Cynic finds postmodern journalism flat, depending, of course, on the ideology of its targets. Journalism in the United States was hypercritical during the Trump administration. It has been far less critical during the first year of the Biden administration, and The Cynic doubts whether a cleansing journalistic cynicism will emerge any time soon in the post-Trump era.

Since much of the media is left of center, he says, criticism tends to whip political leftists lightly with a feather. And in the age of cancel culture, it takes considerable courage to harass in print the leading lights of 21^st century progressivism such as Biden, Sanders, Pelosi and Schumer. A defense of Christopher Columbus, who paved the way for the European discovery of America, is a perilous venture. George Washington and, absurdly, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas, have all recently been attacked by ant-racist postmoderns who fall silent when the subject of late term abortion is mentioned or, for that matter, the continuing cultural devolution of African American boys in urban areas politically controlled by infrequently criticized Democrats.

Times have not changed much since Anton Chekhov groused despairingly, "And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!"

In the postmodern period, that sentiment alone would be sufficient to put ‘The Wild Duck’ behind bars.

My Cynic does much mind the left's hypercriticism of Trump. He thinks yellow journalism in the post Trump, Biden period could use much more yellow.

“Unless you are willing vigorously to denounce Trump and all his works,' he says, even AFTER Trump has been unplugged, "you will be denied entry to the sacred grove of Connecticut journalism. Half measures in denunciations do not measure up. I don’t suppose there are many editorial page editors in Connecticut who have poured over Victor Davis Hanson's book, The Case for Trump, without suffering permanent damage to their leftist tendencies

“I live in Connecticut, where ardent criticism – or, indeed, even innocuous criticism – of our sainted U.S. Senator, Dick Blumenthal, will earn you a stretch in the censorious slammer.

“Like millionaires – Blumenthal is a millionaire – the progressives here have bought up all the rentable journalistic property. Politically, progressives now own the governor’s office, the General Assembly, all the state’s constitutional offices, and huge chunks of what used to be called the liberal media.”

What can it possibly mean, I ask the Cynic, to be a “liberal” in the second decade of the 21^st century?

“Awkward,” he says, and adds after a pause, “anachronistic. The democratic liberalism of Jack Kennedy, Abe Ribicoff, Ella Grasso, et al is a dead letter. It can no longer move the pieces on the political chessboard. We [in Connecticut] are all progressives now.

“And to be progressive in the post-modern period means, above all, TO RULE. Humpty Dumpty, in the Lewis Carroll tale Through the Looking Glass, is a post-modern progressive. You know, Alice tells him, you cannot use words to mean anything you wish them to mean. And Humpty Dumpty replies coldly, ‘There is only one question: Who is to be master? That’s all.’”