"We become cynics because we desperately don�t want to be moralists, and because earnestness is boring, and because skepticism is a hard and elusive thing to master."

"American education, by and large, has become an education in cynicism: Our Founders were rank hypocrites. Our institutions are tools of elite coercion. Our economy perpetuates privilege. Our justice system is racist. Our foreign policy is rapacious. Cynicism gives us the comfort of knowing we won�t be fooled again because we never believed in anything in the first place.... This is the America that the Clintons seek to enlist in their latest presidential quest. I suspect many Democrats would jump at an opportunity not to participate in the exercise... But they will go along with it, mostly because liberals have demonized the Republican Party to the point that they have lost the capacity for self-disgust....  As for the rest of the country, Mrs. Clinton�s candidacy offers a test: How much can it swallow? John Podesta and the rest of Mrs. Clinton�s campaign team must be betting that, like a python devouring a goat, Americans will have ample time to digest Mrs. Clinton�s personal ethics..."

From "Hillary�s Cynical Song of Self/The Clintons are counting on America to digest their ethical lapses the way a python swallows a goat," by Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal.

Stephens asks many good questions, but since I pounced on Lanny Davis's animal analogy yesterday � the rooster crowing and the sun rising supposedly explained away Hillary's "Clinton Cash" problems � I've got to take a closer look at that python devouring a goat. Davis's analogy was bad because it didn't do what he needed it to do: illustrate coincidence. Does Stephens's analogy function properly? He isn't saying Americans will be able to do the equivalent of slowly digesting the a goat, only imagining that Clinton's people must be hoping that will happen. But the slow digesting can only occur if the goat is swallowed. The python performs 2 tricks: swallowing the goat and digesting the goat. The swallowing must come first. Without the swallowing, the devastating evidence is preserved. 

I will not take one more step down the metaphorical path established in the previous paragraph. And to refresh your brain, I offer this story about a captive python named Houdini who swallowed a queen-size electric blanket (including the cord and control box). The blanket was there to keep the cold-blooded creature warm, and he was provided with rabbits to eat, but somehow he decided he'd have the blanket. (Oh, I always take the rabbit. Tonight, I'll try the blanket!) Was the python able to slowly digest the electric blanket? We'll never know, because the blanket was surgically removed. I'd like to think of a political predicament for which that could be an apt analogy.