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Outis's avatar

Kudos. "Smalltime Bureaucrat Syndrome" is actually pretty good though I would concur that an expert polemicist like Mencken might already have come up with a classic.

I didn't find a term as concise as what you propose, but Mencken had many characterizations of the enveloping process, e.g.:

https://fee.org/articles/12-hl-mencken-quotes-on-government-democracy-and-politicians/

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

A politician is an animal which can sit on a fence and yet keep both ears to the ground.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

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Hrothgar Pedersen's avatar

And to think, instead of dog-paddling in Taibbi's comment section, each of us could have actually been reading Mencken or something. Really makes you think

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Outis's avatar

I have learned quite a few interesting things in Taibbi's comment section. Check Bull Hubbard's note above on "Gauleiter", a term I was not familiar with and one that seems to apply quite well to the mischevious bureaucrats (like the subject of Matt's article) and their attempts at election interference.

It's also amusing to swat snarky little twerps with their out-of-place and misguided petulancy; e.g., I just provided some Mencken quotes; you can read Mencken right here.

My background is mostly technical (e.g., PhD in math, etc.). I work to improve my understanding of subjects I did not "get into" as a youth. Practically every very day I find myself thankful that I went to a Jesuit high school and had those three years of ancient Greek and four years of Latin.

I did save my father's early-edition copies of Mencken's "The American Language; An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States", though I admit I haven't gotten to them yet.

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Starry Gordon's avatar

Well, get to them, then.

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