A Confederacy of Dunces

"A Confederacy of Dunces" is the title of a book written by John Kennedy Toole, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, albeit posthumously. Not only do I consider it one of the best books I have ever read, the antics of Toole’s main character, Ignatius Reilly, make it probably the funniest book I have ever read. I highly recommend it.

However, Toole’s book is not the topic of this blogpost. It is the title of his book that I unabashedly borrow and use because it so perfectly describes one of my least-favorite topics – Congress.

The following definitions are from Dictionary.com:

Confederacy

1. an alliance between persons, parties, states, etc., for some purpose.

2. a group of persons, parties, states, etc., united for by such a confederacy.

3. A combination of persons for unlawful purposes; conspiracy.

Dunce

1. a dull-witted, stupid, or ignorant person; dolt.

By combining the definitions for these two terms, I came up with the following definition:

A Confederacy of Dunces

1. An alliance between a group of dull-witted, stupid and ignorant persons for unlawful purposes.

I cannot think of a better definition to describe Congress.

Congress IS an alliance between a group of dull-witted, stupid and ignorant persons. All you have to do is listen to what comes out of the mouths of our esteemed Congressmen/women and Senators to know that to be a fact. Even worse, everything that Congress does is for illegal purposes, or so it seems. Every bill that Congress attempts to pass is another illegal infringement on our rights and freedoms.

To paraphrase Admiral Farragut, "Damn' the Constitution (torpedoes), full steam ahead!"

Yep, Congress is indeed A Confederacy of Dunces. And if it weren’t for the fact that everything that Congress does, every piece of legislation that Congress passes, tends to negatively impact the lives of the people they purport to represent, Congress’ antics it might be just as funny as the antics of Ignatius Reilly.

Unfortunately, this Confederacy of Dunces is not a title of a book and it is not comprised of a bunch of fictional characters.

It is real. And it is not funny.