"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed [and hence clamorous to be led to safety] by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins [they may appear to be groundhogs to some], all of them imaginary." H.L. Mencken

As some of you may know, there is a game for arcades and computer, called (I think) "Groundhog". In this game, the pesky little groundhogs randomly pop up from their tunnels and it is your mission to smack the little rodents upside their heads with a hammer. Violent? Sure. Fun? No doubt. When one plays the game, if one has an axe to grind - and who doesn’t? - all sorts of analogies pop into the one’s imagination about just what (or who) you might be swinging at. As you are crushing craniums left and right, in your mind’s eye, the groundhogs could represent your co-workers, your spouse, your ex-spouse, your teenagers, that annoying bearded guy selling Oxy-Clean on television or, heck, maybe Sean Penn. The best image, at least for me, is that the game is an wonderfully graphic depiction of the stupid, counterproductive and infuriating gyrations of contemporary government. Allow me to explain.

Whack a Ground Hog Whack as many ground hogs as you can before the time runs out.

Play this free game now!!

The groundhogs, in my construct, are societal problems - many in number and seemingly unconquerable even for the player with fast reflexes. The hammer, in the mighty hands of government, are the bills, sweeping reforms and "uplifting" programs constantly hatched by our fearless "leaders" (tongue firmly in cheek) to quash the problem. It doesn’t matter what the nature of the problem might be or the actual root causes for said problems. In the eyes of those croaking along the Potomac, government is the answer. The evil could be a perceived maldistribution of wealth, disproportionate incarceration rates for your black males, inner city violence and black-on-black crime, re-runs of Gilligan’s Island, drug addiction, homelessness, rampant illegal immigration, teenage pregnancy, homeland security, global warming, mad cow disease, the practices of radical religious sects, violence in video games, misogyny in hip-hop "music" or what have you. It doesn’t even matter whether the problem is real or imagined, a statistical aberration or a one-time blip on the radar. The fact is that one need only convince the voters (rousing rhetoric and calls for national togetherness usually suffice) that a problem exists and Washington can declare, "game on!"

In playing the game of politics-as-social-engineer, as in the groundhog analogy, there are two possible ways to score:

1. You may actually make an impact on a problem but, due to the complexity, variability and nuances of man living within society, it is, statistically, going to be in a very small percentage of your swings and the energy and expense will always be prohibitive. And,

2. Immediately after addressing one "urgent problem", another quickly pops up for your attention; the exercise, as a result, has no "Game Over" screen.

It is this philosophy of government that has been running our lives (and pilfering our wallets) since the Old White Men inscribed their collective John Hancocks to the Guiding Parchment in 1787. Government is forever using their increasingly-expensive hammers to try and rid the nation of groundhogs...er...ah...problems. At least, whenever conditions that are perceived as problems can be sold to the clod-hoppers that vote. But, as we should have learned from history by now, these "conditions" - just like the pesky groundhogs - usually, given sufficient time, resolve themselves (with or without our "help) or were never actually situations that were amenable to human intervention to begin with. When there exists a healthy, unfettered and truly free society of mankind, the conditions and inequities of one century or one decade have a predictable way of gradually sorting themselves out in due time. As one example of a non-problem masquerading as a legitimate groundhog, the inequality of poverty rates between black and white Americans in the 1960s was labeled a national tragedy by the Johnson Administration. After much public gnashing of teeth, renting of clothes, wearing hair shirts and crowns of thorns, the public pressure (predictably) rose to a fever pitch. And, as politicians are paid to do, Johnson declared a "War on Poverty" in his 1964 State of Union Address. The result? After billions of dollars and a tremendous expansion of government jobholders, there was little if any effect on the living conditions of black Americans. After a time, when the mob tired of holding hands, singingKumbaya and marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, a strong backlash arose among white Americans who began to sense they had (yet again) been sold a bill of goods. Deja vu, all over again. And it came to pass that the "war on poverty" fizzled. It was soon replaced by another groundhog: the Vietnam War and America’s rationale for involvement in it.

It is no small irony that, as Thomas Sowell has noted, blacks were making healthy strides in their economic conditions through their own initiatives prior to Johnson’s mighty swing at the "poverty groundhog" and, quite possibly, the ongoing improvements ended up being stymied by the very program designed to push it along. As Sowell observes:

"The poverty rate among black families fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent in 1960, during an era of virtually no major civil rights legislation or anti-poverty programs. It dropped another 17 percentage points during the decade of the 1960s and one percentage point during the 1970s, but this continuation of the previous trend was neither unprecedented nor something to be arbitrarily attributed to the programs like the War on Poverty. In various skilled trades, the incomes of blacks relative to whites more than doubled between 1936 and 1959 -- that is, before the magic 1960s decade when supposedly all progress began. The rise of blacks in professional and other high-level occupations was greater in the five years preceding the Civil Rights Act of 1964 than in the five years afterwards."

The same can be said of the longest-running "war" still being waged by the Federal Bureau of Groundhog Extermination. That is to say, "The War on Drugs". The only thing that is required to get the full Monty of this federal fiasco is to observe the time line of this marathon, tail-chasing Chinese fire drill. As is true of most government crusades - and unlike bad Broadway shows or brothels doing business in downtown Salt Lake City - the doors haven’t slammed shut on this national punch line since 1911. After all, what need be said of the groundhog hunt to end alcoholism in our time that went under the name "Prohibition"? It’s wonderful benefits (racketeering, the rise of the Mafia, a rise in the national murder rate, 10,000 speakeasies in Chicago alone, accompanied by skyrocketing prostitution and other such niceties) occurred against the backdrop of an actual rise in the consumption of alcohol by Joe Q. Public. That, Sparky, is government-as-social-conscience at its best.

Even the lowest of God’s creatures (warthogs, salamanders, earthworms, amoeba) learn from their mistakes. Clearly, nature’s law does not hold true for man as "The War on Drugs" continues apace. What exactly has been accomplished over the past 25 years of the pitched battle to save the American dunderhead from his own flawed character? Other than wasting trillions of dollars, ending thousands of lives (civilian and law enforcement), filling prisons nationwide to 120% capacity and exponentially expanding the bureaucracy in Washington, where’s the beef? Does anyone actually believe that illicit drug use is reduced in this nation or that drugs are any more difficult to purchase on the streets? Raise your hands if you are sure. Now both of you put them down. You’re either idiots or lifetime DEA agents (or both) and should not be allowed have an opinion on this or any other issue.

The point is simply this: If we have learned anything from the countless "Wars on ______ " (fill in the blanks with any groundhog of your choice: poverty, crime, drugs, bad haircuts, skateboarding on public sidewalks, ad infinitum), most social inequities can not be solved by the best laid plans of mice or men and especially not by the District of Columbia which, as the largest unsupervised asylum on the planet, is populated with neither mice nor men. To point the finger more directly at the perpetrators of crusade after crusade, titling at phantom windmills, we must single out the liberal numbskulls of either Party. The irrefutable truth of the sordid and unpredictable nature of man has never been accepted by anyone pandering for votes on a platform of social engineering. And that would, for the most part, include all modern-day politicians - even so-called "conservatives".

The point of performing this unending dance of the dunces, however is not missed on the politicos who, if not terribly bright, know how to manipulate Homo booboisie. It is not so much that they are required by their constituency to solve problems but that they appear to be solving them. By running about, helter-skelter, screaming that the sky is falling and making a grand show of whacking at the innumerable and prolific "groundhogs", our elected officials can, at least, appear to be huffing, puffing and sweating to protect and serve their electorate. At the same time, the mob of 3^rd rate men can sleep soundly, content in knowing their betters in Washington are hot on the case. Nothing really gets accomplished but the illusion of activity makes for an anesthetized and appeased citizenry.

So, the show’s the thing. After all, historically Americans have never been too harsh on absolute failure (see the Presidencies of Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush) as long as the attempt was made and carried out with grit and determination. After all, these two desolate no-hopers were basically good men in a bad trade. As long as politicians can loudly and demonstrably stomp in the direction of enough groundhogs (even, as often occurs, they turn out to be the wrong groundhogs) and make an occasional pretty speech which obfuscates their complete lack of progress toward actually eradicating said groundhogs, the proletariat is appeased. The rabble can sustain their comfortable oblivion to the harsh, unforgiving nature of mankind that unceasingly stares them in the eye. The booboisie can continue to believe (against all evidence to the contrary and millions of corpses crying the brutal truth from their shallow graves) that, with just a little more tweaking, a few billion more tax dollars, a couple more ivory tower "special consultants" and the unfailingly guidance from the experts in D.C., their world can really be a better place. Surely, with the genius of man at work, harmony, a chicken in every pot and good will is only a moment away. [Cue Everything is Beautiful ]

If, perchance, they become aroused from their slumber by unsettling rumblings that all might not be well in the battle for the Glorious Cause, they can be, easily enough, lulled back to their quietude. All that is required is for the Washington Post or the New York Times to publish the remarkable progress being made through the efforts of our fearless leader and caution that "a great deal of work remains to be done". Since every other newspaper, broadcast channel and Internet site republishes everything the Post or the Times prints, the propaganda reverberates endlessly. And, to coin a trite but thoroughly applicable phrase, as long as the mob can be assured that "All’s quiet on the groundhog front", the Great Unwashed can resume their standard repose: intoxication, mental suffocation and reclination.

To say that all the world’s a stage and that all of politics is a game would be too obvious. But it is exactly thus.