The Star Stalker

In the prolific and versatile output of Robert (author of The Scarf and some others) Bloch, The Star Stalker (1968) stands as something of an anomaly. It is neither horror nor science fiction; nor, despite the title, is it an actress-and-maniac romance of psychological suspense. In keeping with Hollywood screen values, there is a melodramatic climax in which a gun does go off, though to less than devastating effect; but for most of its length the book is a period tale of a young man's adventures in the screen trade.

The action takes place in the nineteen-twenties, among the Hollywood generation that produced the films of Bloch's own childhood. The narrator's progress from teenage gofer to top-tier scenarist takes place alongside the metamorphosis of the early studios' carnivalesque free-for-all into a factory floor presided over by dead-eyed accountants and dead-headed production executives. In the astrological bent of a Great Director, as well as in the young woman whose persona he tries to mould in the time-honoured fashion, Bloch creates neat parallels for the all-too-extinguishable stars in his young hero's eyes.

Bloch's distinctive style, combining hard-boiled brevity (one recalls that Hollywood was also home to Philip Marlowe) with paronomaniac clown-at-midnight cackles, has rarely been better, and conjures the collective madness of the dream industry as effectively as his most famous work conveys the individual madness of the homicide. With admirable concision Bloch delineates his characters' varying combinations of hucksterish frenzy, cock-eyed idealism and unpleasant secrets, and delivers a sardonic meditation on the advantages and perils of believing one's own ballyhoo. What this book's characters share with those in Bloch's suspense and horror novels is their precarious dance between illusionism, delusion and reality; the knives wielded here may be purely metaphorical, but film cuts can still wound, as can paper cuts from a back-stabbing hack in the press. After his exhausting decade in Hollywoodland, the protagonist is finally relieved to find himself practising a more mundane profession; albeit one that, according to Bloch's "That Hell-Bound Train", is not quite reputable enough for the Devil.

I believe Bloch planned further novels charting Hollywood's mutations through subsequent decades, and it's a pity that he never managed to produce them. Since The Star Stalker was retitled (inaptly and without Bloch's consent; his own title was Colossal) and marketed as a suspense novel, and was later reprinted alongside two actual suspense novels in a collection called Screams, its pursuit of an appreciative readership has presumably been less than stellar. Arguably, given its subject matter such a fate is appropriate enough; but even so, like many films from the silent era, a regrettable loss.

Overtonian Defenestration Through Ambidextrous Revisionism

Since capitalist democracy is essentially a marketing exercise, with public debate reduced to a branch of advertising, political terms are largely meaningless except as expressions of personal preference. Thus the red-baiting blandness Neil Kinnock was denounced as a socialist and crypto-communist by the Poujadist thug Margaret Thatcher, and the state-slashing, poor-bashing, wog-baiting, flag-flaunting administration of Fishy Rishi stands accused of "governing left" by the wannabe thug Kemi Badenoch. Fortunately, matters have been clarified no end by a study rating MPs from the major parties from left to right on a scale of zero to a hundred, according to the judgement of some local councillors. Sir Edward Davey, whose policies in office were identical to those of the Bullingdon Club, is significantly to the left of Team Starmer's CEO, whose policies are arguably slightly different. Badenoch, whose rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of Farage Falange Inc., is actually a couple of points to the left of the strutting Caudillo, presumably owing to their recent disagreements over the quantity of the Falange's registered shareholders. According to the researcher in charge, the purple-faced Regency squire Pigsticker Dave was on the left of the Conservative party; which itself provides an eloquent demonstration of the analytical rigour involved.

Still Catching Up

Not only is there some doubt as to whether the humanity and restraint of Russia's conduct in Ukraine will match that of the master race in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Libya, but the fiend Putin has now committed the indiscretion of apologising for the recent Azerbaijani airliner crash without any trace of denial, victim-blaming, or a seven-year official inquiry headed by a legal expert from Missile Command. It's true that the apology included no admission of responsibility, thereby enabling a draft of history along the lines of Britain's participation-free abolition of the Atlantic slave trade; but the boorish haste with which the matter has been conducted means that - despite presiding over a spectacularly corrupt and inefficient state, and despite his illegal invasion of a sovereign country - Tsar Vladimir may still have some way to go before approaching full moral Britishness.

His Charity Spurned

Readers of a certain age may recall the Tebbit test, suggested during Thatcher's heyday by one of the old bag's more overtly thuggish acolytes, whereby the darkie Untermenschen might gain honorary membership of the master race by supporting the England cricket team. In keeping with the standard Blairite strategy of implementing Thatcherite policy under a cheap coating of schmoozy-woozy saccharine, it seems the Reverend Tony himself tried a cuddly version of the Tebbit test during the 2002 World Cup. The intended beneficiaries were Irish unionists, whom his reverence advised, on the day after the Republic's team was eliminated, that they should see the defeat as a chance to redeem their prospects as honorary English nationalists. For some reason the suggestion was not received in that spirit of humble and worshipful gratitude which the Saviour of Kosovo, Sierra Leone and the Labour Party was even then accustomed to expect.

Hard-Headed Realism

Labour being the party of working people, Team Starmer's flunkey in charge of profitable postal services has expressed his gratitude to some of the major culprits in the Horizon scandal for condescending to help mitigate some of the havoc they have wreaked. Since the best way to change an organisation that has treated people badly is to give more power to those who were badly treated, Team Starmer's flunkey also did some grown-up and decisive chin-stroking about the need to ensure that social value does not interfere with share value. Despite existing in order to make profits and despite having amassed record profits in the last quarter, the profiteers have expressed comparatively little remorse or inclination to change: an attitude at which Team Starmer's flunkey thinks he is a bit surprised.

Entities Flitting in a Country Churchyard

The climate tolls the knell of parting life,
The profiteer burps forth his happy fumes;
Away from famine, wildfire, flood and strife
The conservationists tramp 'midst the tombs.

Here still the beetle wheels his pious drone,
And dormice feed to cheer the owl that mopes.
Stone elegies by lichens overgrown
Display dead names consumed in modern hopes.

Corrupt earth may redeem the Lord's abuses,
Rare flesh may thrive on dusty holy stuff;
So churchmen and their dupes can have their uses
Provided they've been dead for long enough.

Samuel Grimsnipe

with apologies to Thomas Gray

The Black Spider

A great favourite of Thomas Mann's, The Black Spider (1842) is, on the surface, an allegory of the mediaeval plague as divine punishment through the instrument of toxic femininity. Its author was Albert Bitzius, a Swiss pastor who attained literary success under the prophetic pen-name Jeremias Gotthelf, which was also the name of his first novel's protagonist. Intended as one episode in an extensive Balzacian tapestry of which only a few parts were eventually completed, The Black Spider was less popular in its time than the author's many novels of peasant life.

In fact, the novella opens with a bucolic idyll surrounding a christening ceremony, which introduces the major motif of baptism. Gotthelf came of reduced patrician stock, and depicts his prosperous contemporary peasants with amused contempt (the godmother hasn't been told the baby's name; she may have to whisper it to the priest, and she isn't allowed to ask anyone - oh, what larks); but the bulk of the story, related by one of the older men between courses at the celebration feast, is told in deadly earnest. It treats of a bargain with the devil, undertaken in mediaeval days when the Lord's mercy placed a proud and brutal landlord over the community. In accordance with Christian ideas of truth, the landlord is given the name of a real historical figure whose generous reputation earned him a memorial stained-glass window in the local church.

Disaster is visited upon two separate generations through the actions of two venerable Christian hate-figures: a disobedient woman and a weak man who lets women rule over him. In the first case, which takes up most of the story, the devil offers to aid the peasants in the impossible task their overlord has set them; the men equivocate, but the outsider and virago Christine completes the bargain, which the fiend seals with a peck on her cheek. When the community tries to avoid paying over the agreed fee of an unbaptised child, Christine develops a stinging facial blemish which eventually grows into a malignant black spider. A pseudo-baptism with holy water causes her to become completely absorbed into the monster, which roams the district delivering painful death to master and peasant alike until defeated by the willing self-sacrifice of a pious priest and a virtuous mother.

Like many actions which in other contexts might be considered indiscreet, human sacrifice is virtuous enough when conducted in the proper spirit; and these two agonised deaths propitiate the Almighty enough that He allows the community to prosper a while, although His infinite wisdom does not stretch to dispensing sufficient grace to resist for long the temptations of worldly wealth. Eventually the imprisoned spider is released for another rampage, which is ended only by the sacrifice of Christine's mirror image, a gentle but ineffectual male; and, though fatal, Christen's punishment is noticeably milder than those which befall the foreign shrew and her fellow harridans. Finally the storyteller returns to the post-christening party, where he reveals that the spider is still imprisoned in the house, ready to be loosed upon the district whenever people forget their place.

If the readability of The Black Spider has worn rather well into the present, that may be partly because the misogynistic piety on display can be attributed to its elderly peasant narrator, and thus viewed with the same patronising irony that marks the opening section. A sterner and presumably unintended irony emerges in the concluding sentence, which undercuts the storyteller's moralising with a reminder of Who it was that gave the monster strength while depriving human beings of the power to resist it.

One Billion Euros to the Pound

As seems to happen all too often these days, Britain is being outperformed by the lowly Italians; and now in no less an arena than the mutually totemic business of wog disposal. True, the Meloni fraternity's scheme to ship asylum seekers to Albania has resulted in only twenty-four deportations, none of which was permitted to stand; but the guards are having a nice time courtesy of the Italian government, and one of the detention centres has been unofficially converted into a shelter for stray dogs. Though undeniably expensive, this is considerably more than was ever achieved by the Rwanda scheme.

Peak Precedence

With their characteristic focus on the vital issues facing their adopted country, the Trumpster and his head-tribble have pledged to re-name North America's tallest mountain after one of the USA's early imperialists. Despite being an anagram of denial, the peak's current name was officially ratified by a member of the nominal opposition and must therefore be erased from the page of history. William McKinley, the president after whom it was named by a sycophantic gold-digger in 1896, had the bad taste to fight in the Civil War rather than pleading bone spurs or cheering the racist insurgency from the sidelines; but he was a friend of Rutherford Hayes, who sneaked into the presidency despite losing the popular vote, and he pursued a colonial war of aggression against the Hispanic Untermenschen, which led to the usual triumphs of democracy in Cuba, the Philippines and the Republic of Hawaii. Perhaps even more usefully in terms of averting the head-tribble's wrath, McKinley was an enthusiast of tariffs; and when shot by a libertarian he also managed to make considerably more efficient use of the bullets than a mere bleeding earlobe.

Hornet Swatted

In one of the more optimistic developments of the current catastrophe in the Middle East, some minions of the World Cop have managed to shoot down one of their own wog-bombing resources, apparently thanks to the negligence of some trigger-happy Houthis. The good guys with guns were aboard the USS Gettysburg and evidently had the wrong address, perhaps led by the fog of war to mistake the multi-role combat aircraft for a civilian airliner or something similarly heinous. Poetically enough, the Gettysburg is part of the USS Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group, named for the aircraft carrier from which the friendlily-fired-upon took off; and also, of course, named for the president who deliberately increased American casualties in order to turn a conventional war nuclear.

Conscience Money

From the time of St Paul until now, it has been the privilege of Christians to re-write the teachings of their Saviour; and the late Archbishop of Canterbury has duly utilised his CEO's privilege to improve upon the Sermon on the Mount. Rather than giving alms in secret, as commanded in Matthew 6 i-iv, his grace has augmented his comedy turn in the Lords with a donation in his own name to the Children's Society; which, given the reasons behind his belated resignation, provides further insight into the theological subtleties of the archiepiscopal sense of humour. Alas, the Children's Society has declined to be in on the joke.

We're Safe For Now

Since the innate superiority of the British political vocabulary dictates that "overpopulated prison" is a contradiction in terms, patriots will rejoice that record numbers of protesters are being morally reformed this humbug season. Objectors to Zionist genocide and to the profitable destruction of human civilisation in general have alike received record sentences, so that incarceration for climate activism has joined wog-bombing and migrant-bashing among our more healthily growing industries. This seems jolly fortunate given that, according to Britain's leading liberal newspaper, at least two of the climate activists managed to throw tomato soup over a painting at the National Gallery rather than over the glass covering in front of it. Doubtless others among the fiends in our dungeons are possessed of still more sinister superpowers.

Our Mandelson in Washington

Whether it goes under the influence of an alcoholically demented chimpanzee or a tangerine trash-can driven by the defecations of a hydrophobic head-tribble - wherever America goes, there must the heirs of Blair sycophantically follow. Thus it is that the World Cop's re-election of a several-times-disgraced right-wing crank has brought about the latest recrudescence of Lord Mandelbrot the Infinitely Recurring, this time as ambassador for the World Cop's clapped-out comedy sidekick. The CEO of Team Starmer has pronounced that sucking up to the Trumpster constitutes hard-headed realism, in virtuous contrast to any antisemitic sentimentality about single markets and freedom of movement. The current choice between Europe and the US is therefore as false a dichotomy as the choice between Europe twenty years ago (viz. staying out of the Iraq quagmire) and the chimpanzee's America (viz. plunging into the Iraq quagmire); and, after all, Winston Churchill never felt he had to choose between allies. In fact, Churchill's disdain for the beastly Euro-wogs was precisely why he took a favourable view of their working together with each other rather than with the master race: he thought Britain's rightful station was among the superpowers, not in equal partnership with lesser breeds. In a similar tradition of greatness among the English-speaking peoples, Lord Mandelbrot himself has already parroted the National Johnson's blithering rah-and-blah about having our cake and eating it, and has thereby made a fine rhetorical start towards the coveted Faragean photo-opportunity in the gold-plated lift.

Royal Justice

Dedicated endurers of news about the royal family may recall that, as a consequence of his part in the Epstein-Maxwell-Giuffre scandal, his grace the Duke of York was relieved of his public responsibilities. Doubtless the punitive element in this was acutely perceptible to the Duke's refined aristocratic sensibilities; and his latest little indiscretion is set to bear similarly bitter fruit. His alleged involvement with an agent of the Heathen Chinee means that the his grace will not have to attend the Firm's pre-Christmas bloater, thereby inflicting a further excruciating reduction upon his annual tedium quota. Meanwhile, the Heathen Chinee themselves have strongly denied expecting to find intelligence in the House of Windsor.

Transports of Apathy

As with such other triumphs as shale-fracking and the poll tax, driverless buses have been tested on the provincials and found wanting. A pioneering service between Fife and Edinburgh is to be withdrawn because its driverlessness has been excessively augmented by passengerlessness. Even the endearingly British fact that driverless buses require twice as many human crew aboard as driverful ones has proved insufficient to tempt the meatware aboard. Since the standard British solution to public indifference is Whether They Like It Or Not, the termination of the service is naturally a delay rather than a setback.

And Another

God and the Second Amendment have brought their usual degree of concern with child welfare to the Christian state of Wisconsin. A pious establishment ironically named Abundant Life has suffered nine casualties including three deaths, bringing the year's total of American mass shootings one closer to the magical five hundred. Presumably God and Baby Jesus will soon be thanked because there were only nine, with appropriate mortals scapegoated for forcing that limit on Heaven's mercy.

Still Employable

It's an ill extinction event that blows nobody any good, and the climate catastrophe may yet prove a blessing to the Christian states of Texas and Florida. The cooking of the Caribbean has enabled the spread of the mosquitoes that carry dengue fever, an inconvenient and sometimes fatal complaint which is likely to prosper everywhere vaccines and other preventive measures are considered un-American. Readers of Lord Dunsany will rejoice that one of the world's less sustainable species has even now not entirely lost its usefulness.

Fratelli di Sangue

Like the British royal family, the mafia and some of the more endearing popes, the modern Italian state values blood ties above all, and so has granted citizenship to the Boris Johnson of Buenos Aires because of his immigrant background. This has prompted indignation on behalf of people resident in Italy who may work, pay taxes and enrich the culture of the Republic as much as they please, but who are denied the honour of citizenship because they or their parents were born abroad. In Italy as on the mainland, the belief prevails that the worth of an individual depends less on their deeds or their potential than on the presence or absence of a few shared gobs of genetic gunk. It is fortunate indeed that this idea is shared only by patriots and family-values touts, and not at all by racists.

Tripartite Pact

In a charming echo of history, two right-wing one-party states have formed an axis with the heirs of Mussolini in order to gain air supremacy over the United States. Britain, whose Luftwaffe has suffered severe privations since the country's last major wars of aggression, is collaborating with Italy and Japan to design, develop and deliver a new fighter aircraft, whose target debut date of 2035 indicates that should all go well it may possibly be nearing completion by the centenary of the Tet Offensive. Apparently Britain's favourite Islamic fundamentalists in the head-chopping House of Saud have been solicited for cash; while Britain's own contribution so far has been confined to providing real estate for the company's headquarters. Given the mainland's previous misadventures in the military procurement business, the junior partners doubtless view this with some relief.

Jobs for the Bots

In the great British art of management relations, there are essentially two methods by which a workforce can be made more efficient. One is to make people poorer while demanding more work; the other is to deprive them of their living altogether. Team Starmer's efficiencies in the civil service appear likely to be the latter variety, though not without some pious preliminary finger-wagging about the culture of shirkerdom and unambition that makes it All Their Own Fault. A spokesbeing has now reasserted Team Starmer's commitment to improving skills by firing a few thousand people who have acquired them, and to harnessing new technologies so that the country may better serve the interests of Elon Musk. Besides, at a time of hard choices and tough decisions, it is only to be expected that the party of working people should reduce its own workforce and thus economise as far as possible on the number of people it has to worry about.

Peaceful Crimes for Violent Climes

While the average global proportion of climate and environmental protest leading to arrest is under seven per cent, among the master race it's seventeen. The only country with a greater zeal for persecuting activists is Britain's penal continent from the pre-Rwanda days; and the countries with the lowest rates tend to be those, like Uganda and Brazil, where the police have more scope for assertiveness and need not give excessive consideration to the well-being of subversive elements. Nevertheless, the greatest democracy in the world has found it necessary to make itself still safer for profiteers and still less soft on insidious acts of non-violent protest. This approach has been "followed by many other countries," so patriots will rejoice that Britain continues to be world-beating on at least one criterion related to the climate crisis, though naturally not with anything so immoderate and unsensible as mitigating it.

It's Those Hordes Again

Despite numbering among its presenters the toxic toff Jacob Rees-Mogg and the strutting Caudillo of the Farage Falange, Britain's most expensive far-right rah-and-blah channel has apparently seasoned the culture wars with a touch of the crusades. Half of the broadcast coverage of Muslims in a two-year period has been put out by Gobshite Brownshirt News, almost all of it negative; which has naturally come as a shock to Rees-Mogg's party colleague Lady Sayeeda "the Brain" Warsi, who used to campaign on the claim that the Conservatives could deliver where the British fascist movement could not. Almost equally shocked was GB News itself, which immediately extruded a spokesbeing to counter the findings by denouncing them as an Islamic conspiracy to suppress free speech.

Damascene Conversion

Farewell then, President Assad:
A criminal and very bad,
And not remotely like our true
Head-chopping chums in old Riyadh.

You butchered many and you threw
To jail and torture not a few;
Of course such hobbies make us glad,
But they're for Israel, not you.

Wibler Smimp

If I Only Had A Brain

Routine news of some silly money paid at auction for an old Hollywood prop is enlivened by the tale of the man who obtained the merchandise from a display case eighteen years ago. According to his lawyer, the entrepreneur was persuaded by a corporate acquaintance that Dorothy's ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz were adorned with real rubies, apparently so that MGM would have the privilege of paying more to insure them. Obviously this made perfect sense; but having acquired the slippers through an act of percussive free enterprise, though sadly not in Kansas, the realist was disabused by a sales executive. Doubtless the details of the conspiracy between MGM executives and their colleagues in the Democratic Party's adrenochrome unit are even now being assiduously concealed behind the chemtrail curtain.

Let Them Drink Mineral Water

Yet another blessing of British independence from the beastly Euro-wogs has materialised in the form of greater liberty for moisture provision profiteers. The scruples of privatised water companies as regards the cleanliness of their output are of course quite flexible and buccaneering already; but their application will be further enhanced by efficiency savings in the laboratories which test new cleaning products. All such laboratories in the UK have now been closed in order to fund tax cuts for the nice people, and liberation from the Strasbrussels yoke has also brought about compulsory freedom from cleaning products that are tested in filthy foreign labs. By contrast, the beastly Euro-wogs have bound themselves into a hideously collectivised and uncompetitive régime in which - even as a means of increasing boardroom bonuses or shareholder dividends - the poisoning of tap water seems to be considered barely acceptable.

Sackcloth and Ashes

As befits a Lord Spiritual, the late Archbishop of Canterbury has delivered his farewell blah-blah in the House of Donors, Lickspittles and Catamites, making urbane jests about historical decapitations and his suddenly vacant diary and eliciting urbane sniggers from the elevated and erminated. As befits a CEO, the Archbishop had clung on by his fingernails and teeth for as long as possible before resigning; as befits an Anglican, repentance and contrition for his role in condoning the activities of a wealthy abuser appear to have been conspicuously absent; and as befits an Christian, he has now delivered a form of words with which the little people are expected to rest content.

Well, Of All the Unpredictable Things

Will the ivory-tower intellectuals never cease making their mischief? Less than a fortnight after academics at King's College London dared to postulate that poverty might be decreased merely by subjecting the poor to disimpoverishment, a trade think-tank has put forth the even less patriotic assertion that flouncing out of a major trading bloc might have some sort of deleterious effect on exports to that same bloc. No, I can't quite fathom it either. Apparently independence from the Strasbrussels tyranny has somehow resulted in Britain's being regarded as a "third country" by the beastly Euro-wogs, rather than conferring that exalted status upon itself. Despite regarding Britain as a "third country," however, the beastly Euro-wogs have taken it upon themselves to trade with Britain as though it really were one, in defiance of all standards of economic literacy and moral reason. Nor is this even the most extreme dereliction to result from the removal of British pragmatism's guiding hand and restraining underwear, as the Continent has actually seen fit to complicate matters yet further by diverging its standards from those of the mainland. With duly prolonged and appropriately funded study, it is just possible that an explanation may one day emerge.

Even Fewness Can Be Taken Too Far

Britain did not become top nation by fighting against heavy odds, and a flunkey at the Ministry for Wog-Bombing has warned that the greatest army in the world - the British army, for those who came in late - would be expended within six months if forced to fight a war that was not a "limited intervention" of the sort practised by the previous Labour government. After the past decade and a half of Churchillian military planning, even the legitimising coalitionism, limited casualty figures and cleanliness of mission-creep that characterised the humanitarian adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq would not be enough to balance losses on the scale of those now being inflicted in Ukraine upon the famously inept, inefficient, ill-trained, omnipresent, world-threatening Russian aggressor. On the bright side, the Trumpster and his head-tribble have at least threatened to refrain from exerting the Special Relationship; so for the first time in three generations Britain's Ministry for Wog-Bombing may be forced to live up to its euphemistically defensive designation.

Dripping With Moderation

As the moisture provision industry watchdog makes ready yet again to apply its toothless gums while enthusiastically humping corporate leg, the profiteers' trade union has kindly provided some friendly advice. Since three and a half decades of private ownership have led to rotten infrastructure, polluted waterways, rising bills, astronomical levels of corporate debt and seventy-eight billion in dividends, the obvious solution is to pay out more in dividends. On the other hand, any funds to repair whatever infrastructure the shareholders permit us will have to come from somewhere; and in accordance with the national religion, that somewhere will not be the rich. Accordingly, the watchdog is seeking to raise water bills in order to throw money at corporate gamblers in the vague hope that they might feel disposed to spend some of it undoing their achievements of the past thirty-five years. It all sounds jolly sustainable.

Their Chosen Ground

We are only too well aware that the Conservative Party contains some very uncharitable people, and Team Starmer has today, alas! been forced to defend itself against a particularly ill-mannered example. The shadow Minister for Wog Disposal squealed that the Government was not being beastly enough to refugees; from which we may at least draw the consolation that modern Conservatism still has a few scruples about over-hasty changes in rhetoric if not in party leaders. Some Team Starmer anonymoids bolstered their CEO's patriotic image by blaming the weather; while the Home Secretary pointed out that the previous administration had spent more than seven hundred million on the Rwanda transportation scheme and had barely managed to be beastly to anyone at all.

Marketable Compassion

Supporters and opponents of the assisted dying bill have raised concerns that people may be pushed into seeing death as the only option, and have called for better palliative care as a safeguard. The chair of the health and social care committee, whose party's record on maintaining palliative care is identical with that of the Bullingdon Club, threw down the gauntlet to Wideboy Wesley Streeting, who has opposed the assisted dying bill on the grounds that palliative care isn't good enough. As a mere Secretary of State on behalf of the private sector, Wesley naturally has neither the power nor the desire to repair the situation, as witness his pragmatically nonexistent policy announcements on the subject. The likelihood that greater profits can be made from prolonging pain than from ending it is no doubt purely coincidental.