Permit me to introduce to you the hog-fat suckers.
The State - any State, to be sure, any government from the highest level to the lowest, but in particular the Federal government - is a porcine monster, so bloated that terms like "obscenely" or "grotesquely" do It not the slightest justice. Its eyes are small and see only the main chance, but never consequences. Its tusks are huge and jagged, and run ever red with blood. Human blood - the blood of its preferred prey.
From Its pendulous lips runs fat squeezed from the victims It devours. And around the Beast, like remoras about a shark, gather creatures which feed upon that fat as it drools down Its chin and jowls. These are small, curdled, misshapen beings, who lack the State's sheer majesty of corruption, which redeems it at least to the extent that it can instill awe.
These are the Hog-Fat Suckers.
They come in all flavors, colors, shapes, and sizes - though ironically the great preponderance of them are white, male, and heterosexual. They are any age. They are of every station - although all of them hold themselves implicitly superior to you, and believe it their divine right to feed upon your very flesh - such of it as escapes the appetite of the Beast they serve.
They are not politicians. Politicians - leaders, statesmen, whatever spurious label they carry (indeed, the invention of such labels is a primary function of the Hog-Fat Suckers) - are the very stuff of the Monster, extruded from Its infinitely corrupted flesh. They are mere pseudopods, and display mere pseudopersonalities. Like warts or boils, they might differ in dimension and appearance, but they're really all the same. Still, they're given names - Bill, Hillary, Newt, Ross - so we can pretend to tell them apart.
Neither are they bureaucrats, from the perpetual agency heads, Cabinet members, and emissaries-without-portfolio who persist from administration to administration and can be dislodged by nothing short of death - remember Cyrus Vance? - to the lowliest, pre-homicidal- outburst postal clerk. Bureaucrats are not exactly part of the Monster, but intrinsic to It: Leviathan's intestinal flora.
No, the hog-fat suckers are the loyal supporters and supplicants who surround the Beast in Its wallow: academics, media darlings, and those who throng the especially fluvial fat-runnels called "welfare" and "subsidies."
With all the many mouths of the pseudopod flesh-puppets the Beast puts forth, It proclaims that Its incessant slobbering is actually a sign of compassion: a gift of love, that the poor and needy may feed therefrom. And certainly there are poor nonwhites (and indeed poor whites) among the Hog-Fat Suckers. Yet the majority of these parasites, who slurp down a disproportionate share of the bounty, are rich, white, and male. Many indeed hold certificates proclaiming them "corporations," which is to say miniature, honorary Beasts. A cynic might say the only reason the poor are allowed to partake is to obscure the rampant gluttony of those who nestle closer to the Beast.
The Hog-Fat Suckers, it must be realized, do not subsist solely upon what drips from the Monster's mouth. Some stake out other territories. One named Rush, for example, squats among the bristles of the Beast's right buttock, which now shows marked signs of atrophy, and thinks himself grand. Another named Jesse spends his time buzzing around the left buttock, which is huge and round - with the swollenness of inflammation: it's no more healthy than the other.
Then there are those who seek the center.
Any effluvium or offal, from any orifice or pore, is seized upon and avidly consumed.. In this way the Hog-Fat Suckers prevent the Beast from drowning in its own waste - although they're losing that battle over time.
The Hog-Fat Suckers provide myriad other services as well. Some tickle its immense belly, or more intimate locations still. Others affect to bite it, mosquito style, pretending to be adversarial; but in the end, their own survival depends upon the ceaseless gratification of the Monster's appetite no less than that of others.
Most Hog-Fat Suckers devote great energy to singing praises of the Beast; many do nothing else. Others, as mentioned, give names to its body parts so they will appear other than they are.
Perhaps their most crucial function, though, is to attack and discredit those who begrudge having the flesh sucked from their bones to sate the hunger of the Beast and Its legion dependents.
Consider, for example, famous Hog-Fat Suckers known for decrying greed, such as Gerry Trudeau, Oliver Stone, and Robert Bork (to single out from multitudes three who share the trait that they amuse us with shadow-shows and capering). "Greed," to them, means that when you earn wealth, through whatever proportions of your time, effort, and ingenuity - your life - you expend to do so, you desire to keep it and enjoy the use of it. That's evil. Whereas their desire that third parties take that wealth - that concentrated life-force - from you at gunpoint as offering to the greater glory of Leviathan makes them the very embodiments of virtue.
What's in it for the Hog-Fat Suckers? First, it makes them feel good about themselves: they can pretend to help "the poor," by paying them your money. Such enforced compassion is no different from robbing someone at gunpoint to buy cocaine, which also produces unearned good feelings about oneself. Except, of course, that Hog-Fat Suckers would never have the courage to rob anyone themselves. They leave that chore to Leviathan's appendages.
But the proceeds go only incidentally and incrementally to the poor. They go to the Monster. And all Hog-Fat Suckers share in what runs down their master's chin. That's true trickle-down economics.
So, on these Ides of April, I trust you gave graciously and freely of whatever limbs, fluids, organs, or entire loved ones were demanded of you for the welfare of the Beast and Its hangers-on, which is so immeasurably more important than yours.
The Hog-Fat Suckers are clamorous in their gratitude. It only sounds like laughter.
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