Higher Extremities

The medieval picture of heaven and hell hasn't been replaced  with anything more realistic.--Madeleine L'Engle, 1988, ushering in A Grief Observed

Treasure Coast Newspapers had a small scoop in disseminating Paul Ryan’s exit speech to wire services like Reuter’s and The Associated Press, but it was diminutive and low impact in terms of any breaking news story, and was rather reflective of attrition of established Republican ideology, to the extent that Ryan’s departure was a harbinger of any sort, and it was, for the core tenets of fiscal conservative sensibility. Ryan took the political temperature, told the truth about the swerving fissures under Donald Trump’s feet, and then walked it back, under pressure from whom, unknown. One might reasonably surmise the Senate Majority Leader used a careful selection of words, and the 54^th Speaker was reigned in, unlike the new empress from New York, who is seeming impossible to restrain. But when a somewhat simple-minded polemicist like Posoblec asked his followers what Ryan achieved after his 20 odd years in the House, this is disingenuous. Legislating is a difficult process even under one party rule: the Obama Trinity actually got the ACA into law and created a healthcare crisis in an ideologically aligned city like Philadelphia within five years. Insurance carriers hemorrhaged, and this represented a beginning once unfathomable. Beltway policy and execution put an already vulnerable quadriplegic in jeopardy.

Ryan and the Freedom Caucus had the more difficult task of restricting federal outreach. Sequestration proved nearly undoable, recalling Obamacare proved nearly impossible, and yet Ryan is still the boy wonder who has remained rhetorically elegant, consistent, and mathematically accurate. Entitlements will always outpace capital, they are punitive in stricture, and entirely unsuitable for quality of life, and the Rust Belt outcry prevailed. Trumpian populism lanced Ryan’s fiscal faith in business models, and Ryan, like Scott Walker, saw the writing on the wall. Yet people who live in Philadelphia row homes aren’t financially secure, let alone those who are subsidized in public housing. This may not be the case for every individual, but compliance modules and red tape have been the tragedy of this blogger’s life, and what did she want, precisely? The freedom a secure career might have offered, the esteem of home ownership, a husband. All this is a fairy tale now, bootlegged by the minority collective, lungs wheezing as readily as the PA GOP is losing. Lamb beat Saccone by a very narrow margin, D. Raja was asleep at the wheel, felled by lack of campaign contributions, and young Turks no longer emulate Ryan's exercise regime. Would it help to reflect back in time to when you did?