A CRY from the FAR MIDDLE ALSO BY P. J. O’ROURKE Modern Manners An Etiquette Book for Rude People The Bachelor Home Companion A Practical Guide to Keeping House Like a Pig Republican Party Reptile Confessions, Adventures, Essays, and (Other) Outrages Holidays in Hell In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World’s Worst Places and Asks, “What’s Funny About This?” Parliament of Whores A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government Give War a Chance Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind’s Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer All the Trouble in the World The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut “I Was Tragically Hip and I Recovered! You Can Too!” Eat the Rich A Treatise on Economics The CEO of the Sofa One Year in the Life of a Man Who Said, “Mind If I Put My Feet Up? I Think I Will Take This Lying Down.” Peace Kills America’s Fun New Imperialism On the Wealth of Nations A Minor Mister Opines upon a Master’s Magnum Opus Driving Like Crazy Thirty Years of Vehicular Hell-Bending Celebrating America the Way It’s Supposed to Be—With an Oil Well in Every Backyard, a Cadillac Escalade in Every Carport, and the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Mowing Our Lawn Don’t Vote—It Just Encourages the Bastards A Treatise on Politics Holidays in Heck A Former War Correspondent Experiences Frightening Vacation Fun The Baby Boom How It Got That Way . . . And It Wasn’t My Fault . . . And I’ll Never Do It Again Thrown Under the Omnibus A Reader How the Hell Did This Happen? The Election of 2016 None of My Business P.J. Explains Money, Banking, Debt, Equity, Assets, Liabilities, and Why He’s Not Rich and Neither Are You A CRY from the FAR MIDDLE DISPATCHES from a DIVIDED LAND P. J. O’ROURKE Atlantic Monthly Press New York Copyright © 2020 by P. J. O’Rourke Jacket design by Gretchen Mergenthaler Cover art: USA political party symbols © RedKoala/Shutterstock All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected]. Earlier versions of a number of chapters in this book originally appeared in the online magazine American Consequences Published simultaneously in Canada Printed in Canada This book was set in 12.5-pt. ITC Berkely Oldstyle by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH. First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: September 2020 Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data available for this title. ISBN 978-0-8021-5773-7 eISBN 978-0-8021-5775-1 Atlantic Monthly Press an imprint of Grove Atlantic 154 West 14th Street New York, NY 10011 Distributed by Publishers Group West groveatlantic.com To Andrew Ferguson Great writer, great friend, great guide in the political wilderness with whom I have explored the savage land of the Yahoos and with whom I still hope to discover the lost country of the Houyhnhnms “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.” —Stealers Wheel CONTENTS Pre-Preface: As We Go to Press . . . xi Preface: Manifesto for Extreme Moderation xv Introduction: O Beautiful for . . . Pilgrim Feet? 1 One Nation—Divided as Hell 25 Coastals vs. Heartlanders 27 Goodbye to Classical Liberalism . . . “It’s the End of the World!” 39 Big Fat Politics 51 But Thank You Anyway, Partisan Politicians 61 Robin Hood Arithmetic 67 On the Other Hand . . . Just Give Them the Money 73 It’s Time to Make Rich People Uncomfortable Again 77 Negative Rights vs. Positive Rights It’s Positively Confusing 81 Sympathy vs. Empathy Is It Better to Hold People’s Hands or Bust into Their Heads? 85 Patriotism vs. Nationalism 91 Big Brother (and Everybody Else) Is Watching You Thoughts on Rereading 1984 97 Whose Bright Idea Was It to Make Sure That Every Idiot in the World Was in Touch with Every Other Idiot? 103 A Brief Historical Digression on How Communication Has Devolved 109 And While I’m Ranting Against the Digital Age Let Me Not Forget to Excoriate an Aspect of Social Media that Lacks Even Sociability . . . On the Fresh Hell of The Internet of Things 113 Lessons in Fake News from Two Old Masters of the Form 119 Woke to the Sound of Laughter 123 Why Kids R Commies And Never Mind How the Free Market Bankrupted that Backwards R Big Box Store that Once Held a Greedy Monopoly on Selling Toys 129 Knowing Write from Left 137 Educating My Kids 145 My Own Lousy Education And How It May Be of Aid to the Nation 151 What We Can Learn from the Sixties Drug Culture 157 Can the Government Be Run Like a Business? 165 Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who Do We Appreciate . . . The Electoral College! 169 Is a Reasonable, Sensible, Moderate Foreign Policy Even Possible? 175 The Inaugural Address I’d Like To Hear the President—Whoever It May Be—Deliver 183 My Own Personal Fantasy League Presidential Election 189 A License to Drive (Me Crazy) 195 The Founding Fathers Have Some Words With Us 201 What I Like About U.(S.A.) 211 Acknowledgments 221 Pre-Preface: As We Go to Press . . . While this book was being written in 2019, America was deep in an era of idiot populism and hooligan partisanship. Our country was engaged in a sort of socio-political Peloponnesian War. That is, we were in the midst of a long, confusing, tedious, useless, foolish conflict that threatened to destroy democracy and left ordinary commonsensical people feeling “It’s all Greek to me.” Then, when this book was being edited and typeset, somebody ate an undercooked bat in a Wuhan wet market. Panic and pandemic ensued. The nation was brought to a stay-at-home standstill—whether reasonably or not no one is quite certain and by whose authority no one is quite
