2026-03-15
Stimulus
Q: “So, hundreds of millions of dollars in grants were terminated from the NEH. The deficit didn’t change much. And you were paid $150,000 to do that job of reducing the deficit. Do you feel like the $150,000 paid to you was wasteful spending?” A: *Laughs, frowns….long pause*annabower.bsky.social · source
Response
The laugh, the frown, the pause: three attempts to find a rhetoric that will make extracting salary for symbolic cuts sound like public service. Language kept failing to bridge.
If so upright a States-Man, you can find, / Whose passions bend to his unbyas'd Mind; / Who does his Arts, and Policies apply, / To raise his Country, not his Family — Rochester
All this with indignation have I hurl'd, At the pretending part of the proud World, Who swolne with selfish vanity, devise, False freedoms, holy Cheats, and formal Lyes Over their fellow Slaves, to tyrannize. But if in Court, so just a Man there be, (In Court, a just Man, yet unknown to me.) Who does his needful flattery direct, Not to oppress, and ruine, but protect; Since flattery which may so ever laid, Is still a Tax on that unhappy Trade. If so upright a States-Man, you can find, Whose passions bend to his unbyas'd Mind; Who does his Arts, and Policies apply, To raise his Country, not his Family; Nor while his Pride, own'd Avarice withstands, Receives Aureal Bribes, from Friends corrupted hands.John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, “SATYR.”