Did I Wound Senator Cassidy’s Vanity?

A couple of days ago, Dr. McCullough sent to me the following notice from X.

It is not clear how the post violated the X rule against Paid Partnerships, given that Dr. McCullough has reposted hundreds of my Substack posts on X without receiving any such notices or penalties.

Note that he tagged Senator Cassidy’s X account. Did my essay wound the Senator’s vanity?

X restored Dr. McCullough’s account only after he deleted the post.

For the record, I have always endeavored to understand the trials and tedium of being a U.S. Congressmen—a job that, in many ways, strikes me as being thankless. The American journalist H.L. Mencken made a sport of making fun of Congress, and I’ve often thought he was unfair. In his view,

Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.

This remark strikes me as hyperbolic and snarky. I am convinced that there are at least three good men on Capitol Hill—namely, Senators Ron Johnson and Rand Paul, and Representative Thomas Massie.

Mencken was closer to the mark with the following observation.

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

I suspect that my essay, Bill Cassidy is Wrong About Everything, did indeed wound the Senator’s vanity.

Please be sure to share it with all of your friends.

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