Prophets & Sophists undoing Pharos’ Graft & Corruption

County Oddfathers & Apologists for Regime of Petty Graft are full of baloney -- Voters beware

A freely available Cowboy Times EDITORIAL

Originally published 12. 14. 06

And so it came to pass on the 6^th day of the 12^th month, following a criminal investigation at the behest of a governor, sparked by the forked tongue of a county whistleblower, that two sophists appeared to save the people from believing that just because Pharos had filched their gold that somehow meant they had been taken for fools.

One issued from the East and another from the West. But still their missives arrived together professing similar things.

Like relentless Jesuits, and noble Plato before them, their epistles rang with the high passions of the converted and of the devoted converting the dumb and backward, sitting atop their thumbs, into ignoring the truth before them and accepting the apologists’ devilish religion.

A faith as far and foreign from the truth as Jesus was from Satan before him. A dogma born of hubris undoing sins denied in pious writs that swore no evils had ever been committed in thy names nor even existed at all.

Actually, the sophists were recent letterwriters to the despised editor of the now detested Jackson Hole News & Guide. A public tablet honeycombed with scribes so audacious in their reporting of provably true facts that a high-flying local Oracle recently lamented: “They used to be such a nice little paper. Now, they’ve become such a mean little paper.”

Not to be outdone, soothsayers Betty and Jim put stylus to papyrus and, forgetting all their dully Platonic noblesse obliges, made alchemy and voodoo dance with falsehood and fakery in their ingenious defenses of the indefensible indulgences of select Pharisees and Knights of the Round Table and their incorruptible Den of Loyal Knaves.

And the prophets? But where are the prophets?

Where are the wise voices of the attentive few still mildly or morbidly intrigued by this venial and cynical sideshow to high and official doings?

Sitting by, week after week, since those dastardly heralds first broke wind in the Tablet O’Record last July, we have watched. We have waited. And still, nothing but hollow and apathetic reforms lacking teeth passed before us as if blind men cursing, under their mighty breath, the sighted for seeing through their mindless myopia.

But what sayeth the High Priest and Giver of the Law about the conduct of his fellow Pharisees?

And should "We the People" even care?

Now, as the immemorial celebration of the ancient manger birth draws near, some might wonder, between sick and wicked turns in the newly formed powder of all true power here, if the sophists and their cryptic indecencies might be right.

Ought we—of the meek, of the uninformed, of the unenlightened knuckle-dragging plebeian flat-headed—the sophists dare tell us—revert to perching on our thumbs and concern ourselves with lighter, merrier, more Christian thoughts?

Ought we be charitable to those who have while assembling to commit decadences on the dole also devised clever dissemblings for hiding and denying their many thefts?

Or ought we first unmask how many and how often, and for how much, their known and unknown conspiracies have taken us for?

And how now are they still conspiring to parlay their undeserved wealth after the people were asleep enough to let these cynics raise themselves so handsomely, so they can further afford to loaf and lounge in the land where most honest and hard-working men and women can no longer?

Ought we forgive those who have never considered apologizing for taking our trust and imbibing with odalisques and whoring with their brethren on it? Then, while bending our pliable rules and destroying the scrolls, forgot to destroy the finer print of their royal, frat house outings?

What in their lust for vacations, for drunkenness and for feasts from around the Empire and hemisphere and back justifies this charade justifying chicanery and tomfoolery?

Where does their gall for graft and gifts and bids and junkets and lies about rewarding their already well-heeled pals and constituents, regardless of why, originate from?

Should we forgive those who forgot to defend what was right as they bled us like Vandals?

Among the chattering, chronicling class of this sordid, picayune and now obvious tale much sport and prophesying has been made.

Surely, the facts suggested, as any reasonable soul could plainly see, rules and laws had been laughed at, broken and now scoffed at.

How many blind eyes had turned away from one sophist, who, while taking his weekly grand, also slumbered in the tomb of his labors and drove gas guzzlers while preaching about pathways to save the air for all? As another, by her signature, enabled how many bosses untouchable to wallow in the trough she now makes light of as well as their corrupt extravagances? For what has she taken in return for her pardon?

But will anything besides official rug sweeping—known among the part-time Pharos as “executive sessions”—be done besides their public edicts of minor reforms and internal scoldings for breaking hard rules gone slack by those who divorced themselves from their oaths of office?

Without realizing what they had done, and thinking they had done good and done it ever so righteously, the twin sophists, by their right and mighty pens marking bold and immutable words, unbeknowingly raised new and nasty questions.

Was the county’s spending of taxpayer funds on questionable expenses “criminal”? Or, as the letterwriters suggest, are the allegations just a mean-spirited and baseless attack by a “disgruntled” county ne’er-do-well and square with one hell of a loud whistle to blow?

Well, this much the public scrolls laying about the county’s dusty bowels do not lie about: Regardless of the motives behind the allegations reality disproves any charge of their frivolity, unless made by those with their fingerprints all over the job.

For the public record, you see, is as clear as the sophists’ John Hancocks. And all that fine and hasty penmanship suggests public servants, through their now indignant accomplices, none dare say it, used their official positions for personal gain.

Though the amount, on one hand, is inconsequential. The long pattern of petty graft casts a shadow on a devious and highly sanctioned intent. To the curious, the gain, depending on how one tallies it, now rests between $20 and $34k to date.

But this would surely expand the longer those who could look into what those who have said they have not done have done.

But see: All the sophistry and all the chatterings of the scribes misses the point entirely and matters not.

For, in the end, no legality or the dancing about it can undo what has always been true.

And the sightless said it best: “Those who put out the peoples' eyes reproach them for their blindness." Milton

And if this is the Peoples’ will let it be so. And it will be done.

But if not, remember to vote not for those who have allowed their minions to blind us with their songs and dances. Less we all remain chasing the shadows of Pharos on the walls.

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