Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.
Interpretation
The current state of political discourse makes it difficult to distinguish between candidates based on their qualities, as they all seem flawed.
In this quote, P. J. O'Rourke critiques the state of political discourse, suggesting that the negativity and flaws in presidential candidates have become so pervasive that discerning one candidate's weaknesses from another's has become an impossible task. The metaphor of 'stench' highlights the morally questionable nature of modern politics, where all candidates appear equally untrustworthy.
In practice
This quote can be used during a political debate to highlight the flaws in all candidates.
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
You will find that you cannot do without politicians. They are a necessary evil in this day and time. You may not like getting money from one source and spending it for another. But the thing for the school people to do is that if the politicians are going to steal, make them steal for the schools.
I draw a very clear distinction between populism and democracy.
The military destabilised my government on politically motivated charges.
Presidents have absolutely gone against the will of Congress. Congress hasn't declared a war since December 7, 1941, and yet we've been at war ever since with somebody or other in order to justify the war machine. Now we have alienated almost the entire earth
Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting?
Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable β the art of the next best
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