Cynic—one who no longer believes in the comforting illusions and protective half-truths that most others naturally use unreflectively to get through their lives.
A
administration, n.—an abstract concept to disguise a concrete problem of government; an administration of 4.4 million people, such as the U.S. has attained, has been found to be incapable of administering to 310 million citizens, though it is comforting to know that every group of 70 people has an administrator looking after them.
aristocracy, n.—the rule of a state by its ablest and usually richest people; where this is not allowed, as has happened in the U.S. since the popular election of the Senate and the formation of the civil service, there is established the unshatterable illusion, since disproven by experience, that anyone is fit to govern.
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beetle, n.—despite those clinging to a contrary belief fostered by the Bible about the primacy of man, beetles are the most popular species by far in Nature’s design, for which J.B.S. Haldane once said the Creator had “an inordinate fondness;” of all known species, 75 per cent are insects, and 60 per cent of those are beetles.
bureaucracy, n.—lit., government by desks; usu. the body of bureaus, offices, and petty administrators whose task is to create an ever-larger leviathan of inefficiency, intrusiveness, insufferability, and inertia so that only those laws that increase their power are carried out.
C
capital, n.—1. the prime seat of government, as of a state or nation, usually situated as far as possible from the largest city and most populous areas, in the hopes that most people will not know and have little influence on what goes on there, and the rubes in the neighborhood will not understand. 2. the primary coinage by which the capital functions, usually distributed with acute generosity to those in charge there, including the lawmakers as well as the lawwriters, who meet in the lobby.
Christian, n.—one who professes to believe in the New Testament of the Bible, at least insofar as it is compatible with his current life, which may not necessarily contain any of the virtues therein described, but believes it does, or ought, to pertain in all its admonitions and strictures to his neighbors.
civil service, n.—the system of government administration that replaces the graft of cronyism and the corruption of nepotism with the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the lethargy of job permanency.
commonwealth, n.—a group of states with a presumed common interest, though not necessarily in sharing wealth in common; in the U.S., an appellation chosen by certain states (Kentucky, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia ) to give the illusion that somehow wealth is common to all its citizens, or at least that is the goal its leaders proclaim, though patently this does not pertain.
compromise, n.—an arrangement by which two parties agree to agree, each side giving up nothing it holds dear but trying to convince the other that its future is dark and stormy indeed; it is not a device much used in modern politics because both sides nowadays seem to be convinced of the unalterable faultlessness and exactitude of their differing positions.
congress, n.—generally a meeting for a common purpose, sometimes legislative, from L. con (with) and gredi (step), therefore a body that works in harmony; in U.S. politics, cap., a meeting of politicians in Washington, sometimes legislative, that never works in harmony.
Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons–Menken
conservative, n.—in politics, one who wishes to conserve his superior position, and his superior positions, as one would fruit cooked to a jamlike consistency; see also neoconservative, paleoconservative.
corporation, n.—the fictitious contrivance devised by American robber barons (and baronets and knights below them) in the 19th century to put responsibility on the public for any failure of private greed; in later centuries, the device by which, and for which, the nation was ruled through such fronts as the Congress and the Presidency.
D
debt, n.—an ingenious device cooked up in the early days of capitalism so as to promote the work of bankers and others of wealth by convincing others of the counterintuitive truth that owing money is the successful way to ultimate riches; the device has been used by modern American governments largely to make wars by vast expenditures of public money with the promise of ultimate riches, behind curtains that assure that the accumulated expenditures remain illusory.
defense, n.—the act of resisting an attack from without, or the fortifications for such a purpose; cap., a modern American department not for defense of any substantial kind but for waging war (formerly, until 1947 and America’s embarkation on a series of wars every year since then down to the present, the properly named War Department) on a scale so vast that it now acknowledges spending more than the next 25 countries in the world—combined.
democracy, n.—a system of government according to which a majority gets to decide the fate of a minority, regardless of the justice, truth, morality, temperance, and common sense of the decisions, to which the minority has no recourse—-until of course it somehow becomes the majority.
dependency, n.—reliance upon others for what you cannot otherwise force from them; the chosen condition for those the state determines poor, or insufficiently wealthy, which no amount of free government money, housing, food, health care, child care, and counseling will alter, nor is it designed to, lest the dependent not vote Democratic.
dictator, n.—the head of a state whose people have chosen to do the bidding of a single man or cabal, in return for being relieved of the agony and uncertainty of having to think, learn, judge, and cast ballots.
E
economy, n.—the name given by economists for the state of material life at any given time, which they claim to study and understand, though no pronouncement from them has ever stood the test of more than a few month’s duration; its cumulative impact is said to be gross, as in “national product,” “national income,” “national debt,” and the like, and no one who has ever looked at the workings of economists would ever dispute that assessment.
emancipation, n.—the presumed release of human beings from bondage by another, without necessarily securing their true freedom but only allowing the despotism of themselves as preferable to the despotism of others; in American history, cap., the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which freed not a single slave, nor was it intended to, but served eventually to give the Northern forces a supposed moral cause for the slaughter they visited upon their foes that they could comprehend better than the fight for the abstraction called the Union.
equality, n.—that impossible condition in which everyone is presumed to be the same as everyone else, in quality, degree, rank, value, and/or ability; in American politics, a pestilence visited offhandedly by Thomas Jefferson in an extra-legal document, referring to status at birth (“created equal”) that is patently untrue, which various charlatans have subsequently been pleased to refer to as if a condition of the Constitution (where it does not appear) in their quest to increase the power of central government, thus to try to create an equal distribution by government fiat —e.g., in income, rights, opportunity, education, marriage, love, etc.—of that which inherently does not admit of correspondence.
executive, n.—one who sees to the execution of laws, in the sense not of the termination of their lives, though that happens often enough by high-minded executives who disfavor their provisions, but of the carrying out of their instructions; in American government, cap., it is the branch of government that carries out in its own chosen ways (see Presidential Signing Statements) the laws passed by the Legislative until forbidden to do so by the Judiciary.
F
flag, n.—a piece of cloth of no particular value or interest, that, when it comes to symbolize a nation, regardless of that body’s importance, significance, affluence, or influence, takes on uncommon and indeed unnecessary grandeur and symbolism, somewhat as does the cross, the Romans’ instrument of punishment and torture that was so cruel and horrible that subsequent civilizations, though quite open to many other forms of punishment and death, banned it; in American terms, the “Stars and Bars,” the addressing of which requires from military personnel a salute to the brim of a hat and from civilians a clutch of the right side of the chest similar to that which a person suffering a seizure might make, although the burning of which, held by the highest court to somehow be an act of speech though no utterance of any kind need be involved, may be contrived by anyone anywhere without any prescribed forms of address.
Federal Reserve, n.—in U.S., a self-created collection of private banks that is allowed to serve as a central bank for the American government, whose interests are no more in the public welfare than public toilets and whose authority is no more federal than Federal Express.
G
Gettysburg Address, n.—a short address by Abraham Lincoln to a crowd in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in 1863, in which he attempted to make “equality” a formal purpose of American government by claiming the Declaration of Independence as a founding document equivalent to the Constitution, the latter of which evinces no such purpose and indeed endorses slavery; as an example of successful deceit and duplicity, it is likely the most effective piece of rhetoric in American history, which has had much of that.
government, n.—an arrangement of human affairs by which a few manage to operate their society with the sanction of the many, and miraculously contrive to convince them, without offering the slightest substantiation by way of proof, that all other ways of ordering life bring anarchy and chaos, although historical experience has yet to show that those are in fact brought by any other agency than government itself. G. “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” a phrase invented by an abolitionist preacher in Massachusetts and picked up by Lincoln for a short address (c.v.) in which he claims that this is the sort of arrangement that obtains in the U.S., although the Founding Fathers would have rejected all but the last part of the phrase, having a reasonable dislike and distrust of “the people” as the dangerous rabble that a proper government is formed to keep in check.
H
history, n.—that telling of events in the past that most of those in the present have no first-hand knowledge of, and generally depend on others, called historians, who have no such knowledge either, generally recounting stories about kings and princes mostly corrupt or power-mad or both, and battles fought between two armies neither of which has any idea about why it is doing what it does but manage a good deal of mayhem and destruction in the process.
humanism, n.—that belief, fostered in the Renaissance when humans were most admiring of themselves despite ample evidence even then of their errancy, that the human species is primary in the eyes of God (man, followed by woman, followed by mammals, fishes, birds, insects), indeed in some senses the equivalent, as in “man the divine,” and is thus fit to rule over the other species as well as their habitats, a truth initially proved by the ability of European humans to conquer and occupy most of the known earth and later proved by the ability of humans to kill off species, including their own, and their habitats.
I
ignoramus, n.—the condition of ignorance given to the largest number of humans, most of whom are ignorant also of their condition but find that no impediment to acceding to positions of influence in nearly all professions and undertakings, particularly politics.
incumbent, n.—one who holds office and spends his greatest effort, time, and money trying to ensure that this condition will continue to exist so long as life and voice shall last.
Israel, n.— that modern state created in 1948 as an experiment to assuage Ameri-European guilt over aspects of the war and Nazi atrocities by planting down in the midst of an Arab Muslim section of the Levant a foreign Jewish, mostly European, population, whose presence was never welcomed but successfully enforced by Israeli military might supported unquestioningly by the United States; the experiment having proven itself a failure, with no neighboring state accepting of its imposition in over 55 years, and Arab populations both within and without the country increasing much faster than the Jewish, the logical solution would be for its dissolution, the achievement of which should not be anticipated soon.
A Cynic’s Dictionary—II
J
justice, n.—the condition that the state promises to deliver through its courts and other administrative offices in return for loyalty, obeisance, and regular taxes, though there is of course no one other than the courts to assure that what is delivered is in fact just; in U.S. politics, cap, an officer of the Supreme Court who is appointed for life to assure that there is no recourse to decisions made no matter how foolish or ignorant.
L
labor, n.—the means by which the rich get richer while allowing the actual workers to have as little of the increased riches as possible.
labor union, n.—in certain democracies, a system by which workers make the ultimate surrender of their freedom to an organization whose leadership professes to look out for their interests immediately after looking after their own; it is most common in professions of civil servants, such as teachers, where it would rationally be illegal, as it provides these public servants with a means of ignoring the wishes and interests of the public as whole while steadily looking after private gain.
law, n.—a profession that teaches people how to bend, maneuver, and otherwise evade the laws or any jurisdiction, all under the rubric not of seeking justice—for that is not what the American system of jurisprudence, rhetoric aside, is all about—nor of seeking truth and veracity as some other legal systems do, but of seeking the best possible case for either side that may be employing them regardless of the merit of the case, this process being overseen by another lawyer who has remarkably managed to be endowed with the gown of judgeship and with that impartiality and wisdom that had not been given him previous to his exaltation.
liberalism, n.—at one time a belief in freedom (Latin liber, free)in behavior or belief, as in “liberal toward artists,” but now meaning the freedom of centralized government to do whatever it wants, particularly in the establishment of a welfare (sic, q.v.) state.
M
machiavellian, adj.—behavior erroneously believe to have been sanctioned by Niccolo Machiavelli in his The Prince (1532), in which much cunning and conniving is urged upon a man of high office but nothing so wicked and malevolent as that of which the modern office-holder, who evokes his name, is capable.
Mammon—the highest god in the world’s most popular religion, to whom many temples have been built in every major city but whose principal temple, even one might say cathedral, is on the oddly named Wall Street in New York City.
money, n.—that form of currency that is assumed to have worth, though there is often little enough to prove that claim other than the stubborn belief of those who have a good deal of it; though it is of no use whatsoever except when those who possess it part with it, for most people its amassment only instead seems to be their primary goal.
N
national security, n.—the purported purpose of the instruments of the federal government, even those whose actions and policies serve to threaten the nation’s security; in usage, the excuse by any agency for doing whatever it chooses to do, regardless of constitutionality or legality.
neocon, n., short for neoconservative (obs.)—that kind of conservative who believes in conserving nothing, especially despised governments and the lives of the young, and in the transformation of the world in its image of itself, which embodies about all the glories that politics is capable of; in recent years the neocon has elaborated on its name by adopting the con games (from confidence game, elaborate swindle) of pretending to find weapons where they did not exist and creating imaginary sins for unliked foreign leaders sufficient to justify their destruction.
O
optimism, n.—a mental aberration by which certain people believe (without evidence, which is the way with beliefs) that everything will turn out to be better on some tomorrow, the arrival of which is never doubted though it never occurs.
P
paleoconservative, n.—that kind of conservative whose ideas are so ancient that the stem “paleo-,” usually used for earlier geologic eras, is applied, with the suggestion that conservatism actually had a system of ideas having somewhat to do with the conservation of values and beliefs of an earlier, though not necessary a geologic, time.
politics, sing. n—the art of deluding the public for private gain, with its full biannual or quadrennial approval, the mysteries and inscrutabilities of which remain unknown and for the most part unexamined so that the superficialities and posturings may be regularly examined by a most incurious press.
R
reformer, n.—one who has come to the inevitable conclusion that the government he is under is dishonest, corrupt, insane, undemocratic, and insufferable, but has somehow come to the conclusion that he can change it.
religion, n.—the organized system by which the ignorant are taught to believe in everything known about the unknowable and eternal omniscient deity, which is very little.
republic, n—a rare form of governance far removed from dictatorship and not far from anarchy, where a chosen few decide the laws for the unchosen few, who acquiesce in the belief that they might someday be the chosen, and often are, making a harmonious relationship rare in human affairs.
S
senate, n.—a body of deliberative purpose, usually to counsel, govern, or pass legislation; in U.S. government, cap., the senior assembly of the Congress, now subject to the voters of one of the fifty states, thus creating politicians not concerned so much with the affairs of the country as with the enrichment of their state, creating a sizeable barrel capable of being filled with expensive porcine products.
suffrage, n.—the right to vote, often taken to be an obligation, even a privilege, and thought desirable in a democracy, regardless of how useless it may actually be; its Latin origin tells it best, from suffragium, from subfragor—sub—meaning under, plus fragor—meaning noise, together being the condition of one out in a thunderstorm, or under a passing subway, that is to say, one without thought, or one incapable of thinking.
What ass first let loose the doctrine that the suffrage is a high boon and voting a noble privilege?–Mencken
T
tribe, n.—the basic and original social grouping of humankind (averaging around 500 people), characteristic of homo sapiens life for 500,000 years, until recently, though no adequate substitute has been found; still the bedrock fact of life for many in Africa and Southwest Asia, though guilty decorum demands that fact be overlooked.
truth, n.—that quality of a thing that conforms to fact or reality, not necessarily an attribute of speech, particularly political speech, and thought by some to be an impediment to it; it is said to be the goal of philosophy, which is why that discipline in the hands of academics has existed forever and will never come to an end.
U
usage, n.—the current favorite style in speech or grammar, as opposed to other styles based on logic or other notions of correctness, or descriptive rather than proscriptive; as employed by the illiterate, often found on public radio, use—see also closure, a psychiatric term, employed by the illiterate to mean close or closing.
W
welfare, n.—once the good fortune of a person or group, now a task that is no longer an individual or even religious duty but exclusively given to the government, generally one centralized and bureaucratized, to perform, and usually to guarantee.
Z
zeal, n.—an ardor given to young lovers and warriors in about equal amounts, doing great damage to others in either case; rarely found in those of superior intellect or inferior gumption.
And thus a cynic’s dictionary’s finally done,
Which may be ignored, but at their peril, by anyone.
