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| Voltaire |
Dr. Pangloss is one of the chief characters in Voltaire’s Candide whose optimism by page twenty becomes a bit cloying. “All is for the best,” Pangloss tells Candide, “in this, the best of all possible worlds,” and Candide swallows this large lump of candied optimism without question.
After Candide is subjected to war, rape, theft, hanging,
earthquakes, cannibalism, slavery and other indignities, he begins to have
doubts concerning Pangloss’ irrational optimism.
Voltaire, who managed to live most of his life with his eyes
open and was what we might call an enlightenment realist, had a few troubles of
his own, most of them related to his writing. Thomas Jefferson kept a bust of
Voltaire within worshiping distance of his desk at Monticello.
After two years in which the Constitutional order of
government in this “The Constitution State” had been subverted – of necessity,
some say – by a General Assembly that simply refused to meet during the
Coronavirus pandemic, a sort of medical insurrection far less severe than the
Black Plague, Governor Ned Lamont, our very own Dr. Pangloss, put on a show of
optimism during his State of the State address before assembled legislators.
Everyone, even elementary school children across the nation
whose noses and mouths have been wrapped for years in what we now might regard
as medically insufficient facemasks, knows that Coronavirus and its variants is on the wane. It is now safe to come out and resume one’s normal life – two
years after Dr. Anthony Fauci, first an optimist then a pessimist, told us that
face masks were unnecessary, then necessary, then obligatory, then optional
under certain conditions invented by Dr. Fauci.
The mothers of Connecticut’s elementary school children now
testifying, sometimes temperately, sometimes not, before Boards of Education,
when permitted to do so by querulous politicians some of whom have tagged them
as “domestic terrorists,” want to burn their children’s mask as, decades ago
when it was safe to protest indignities, feminists use to burn bras they regarded
as above the waist corsets, in protest of lingering Edwardian male dominance.
“Today,” Lamont boasted before a joint State House and Senate
at the state Capitol, “the state’s in much better shape than it was three years
ago, but we still have a long way to go. Three years ago, we were standing at
the edge of a fiscal cliff, facing a $3.7 billion budget deficit, and today we
are deciding what taxes to cut and what school programs to grow — thanks to our
third consecutive year of budget surpluses.”
The surpluses, partly a result of an increase in the state’s
“rainy day fund,” partly an infusion of inflationary cash from the Biden administration,
are, the Governor neglected to note, built on disappearing federal funds and a
relatively weak post-COVID business recovery. The Tuesday after Armageddon will
always be brighter among optimists than the Monday after Armageddon.
The business recovery is the result of relaxed plenary gubernatorial
decrees. Many businesses closed by Lamont are now open for business, minus
those businesses that have been shuttered permanently owing to the zeal of the
saviors of the Republic. The very first rule of salvational politics is: You
must cause the problem you wish to solve.
Lamont has been operating as a plenary executive officer and
a quasi- legislature for two long years, while paralyzed Connecticut courts were
partly or fully closed, the General Assembly was taking a long Rip Van Winkle snooze,
and the executive department was vigorously executing its plenary powers. These
powers, always intended to be temporary, have not elapsed and may be due for an extension by a Democrat dominated General Assembly whose leaders do not wish
to mar 2022 election opportunities by voting openly and transparently on
matters of public importance.
And -- just to register an unwelcomed contrarian opinion -- Connecticut
is not better off than in previous administrations when government functioned
in a constitutional manner and its citizens were honorably represented by
elected General Assembly members who actually voted publicly on their
political preferences.
Connecticut, one of the richest states in the union, has
become a beggar state reliant upon inflated federal dollars, budget sleight-of-hand,
a passive legislature, an imperious governor, and a media that has for decades
been loathed to put forward views contrary to that of power wielding Democrats.
Connecticut, in truth, has been marking time throughout the
pandemic years and will be in no better position – once the inflationary federal
welfare dollars disappear – than it had been as a has-been state in pre-pandemic
years.
The remedy for this the Winter of Connecticut’s discontent,
many citizens of Connecticut have come to understand, is as simple as it is revolutionary
– vote the bums out.
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