The breadth of the title of this essay might lead you to believe that it is a formidable undertaking.  But when taken by its individual parts it is not necessarily so formidable operation.  Let us take the pissant part to start. 
The word pissant is far from a vulgarity.  It identifies a living creature who has been condemned to blindness for all of its life.  The pissant is a gnat-like creature who seeks warmth, either from animals or from the human skin.  In terms of insects that fly, it ranks at the bottom of the aviary creatures.  My belief is that it ranks somewhere between the troublesome gnat and the bedbug.
Pissants exist in droves rather than in singularity.  As far as I can determine, the pissants have no function in this life.  Perhaps the main function is as an adjective used by such people such as my mother to describe a preacher as being a pissant one.  Bear in mind that my mother was a religious person but pissantry was a common part of the rural speech pattern.   My mother used “country speak” for much of her discourse.
At this point, I have told you all I know about pissants and pissantries.
The second part of this title has to do with politicians.  I would not want you to believe that all politicians are pissants.  But when push comes to shove, professional politicians all exhibit overt signs of pissantry to casual observers such as myself.  Nowhere is this tendency toward pissantry more evident than it is in the current negotiation over whether or not there will be a government shutdown.  Simply put, I suspect that professional politicians who regard decency as a fact of life will come to an agreement to avoid a government shutdown.
When the Tea Party people are added to the mix and tend to bind the hands of the Republican Speaker of the House, he has very little alternative but to accommodate them.  I am dictating these lines on Friday, April 8, which is the Ides of March or some other mythical creature but at midnight tonight the government will run out of money and will shut down.
The Tea Party folks are undisciplined and amateurish.  They are new to this game and they are headstrong in the power that has been allotted to them.  But they are a formidable force of the American electorate for one good reason.  Under the American system, we have primaries devoted only to one party or the other.  For example the primary vote involving the Republican Party is reserved for Republicans.  The same is true of the Democratic vote.  There is no crossover vote.  The primaries are held at unconventional times of the year and only the greatly interested tend to vote in them.  From this, the Tea Party people derive their strength.
For example, Dick Lugar, the senior Senator from Indiana, has been a stalwart on defense and foreign relations for many years.  But this year Senator Lugar is facing a challenge from the Tea Party that reflects on his voting patterns.  In the western part of this country, we have Orrin Hatch, who has been a Senator from Utah for as long as I can remember.  But Orrin Hatch is tacking to the right so as not to offend the Tea Party challengers.
Coming back to pissantry, there was an occasion when Dick Lugar proposed a bill that seemed to displease the former administration of George W. Bush.  When it came time to vote, Dick Lugar did not stand by his convictions but rather he voted against his own bill.  That signifies to me a preposterous degree of pissantry.
As you know, the Representatives in the House are forced to seek election every two years.  It now is clear that Speaker of the House John Boehner is tacking to the right to avoid a challenge in the next election of 2012.  This means that Boehner is standing on shaky ground as he negotiates the settlement having to do with not requiring the government to shut down this evening.
At this point it is quite clear that ideology is intruding its ugly head into this process of shutting the government down.  If the Tea Party representatives had their way, they would shut the government down merely to show their displeasure with the democratic process of funding the government.  As an added thought aside from shutting the government down, the Tea Party people would love to reverse every aspect of the social liberalism such as the right of women to control their own bodies.  In effect, they wish to do away with the Roe v. Wade decision and would define females as second class citizens.
The Tea Party and a high proportion of the Republicans want to control women’s bodies by failing to fund Planned Parenthood.  Planned Parenthood has been one of my favorite charities because it has to do with much more than abortions.  It also has to do with women’s health issues, particularly poor women.  If there is no Planned Parenthood, we will have more unplanned babies and hence more abortions.  The stupidity of this rider to the negotiations is atrocious.  But that is where we are, and Obama and Harry Reid are trying to do their best to lead us on an adult level of conversation.  I might add parenthetically that I am afraid that Obama will enjoy another period of ballessness and will admit the rider on the ban on Planned Parenthood. 
In summarizing my views about politicians, after a long period of observation since 1928, I conclude that not all politicians are pissants but as time has gone on, fewer and fewer of them escape this definition.  If I were asked, “Are all politicians pissants?” I would have to say that with rare exceptions, that is the state of the record.
Now we deal with cupidity.  Cupidity as defined by the dictionaries has much to do with the acquisition of wealth.  It is the acquisition of wealth by any means necessary.  The dictionary definition is, “an inordinate desire for wealth: avarice and greed.”  It is now clear that the Republicans, particularly as represented by the Tea Party people, wish to impose their will on the rest of the American electorate.  Obviously I contend that their desire for wealth also extends to the political spectrum.   Are all politicians guilty of cupidity?  Some are and some are not.  When push comes to shove, I would say that more often than not, politicians, particularly when they face a primary challenge, are much more inclined toward cupidity.
In this formidable essay, I have the feeling that we have not been fair to the pissants.  We lump them together with politicians and cupidity which gives the pissants a bad name.  And it follows forthwith that I formally apologize to all respectable pissants who may in the future buzz around my head.  I know that pissants are blind, but then, so am I.  So we are starting from the same place.  If you detect a degree of cynicism about politicians in my writing, you are probably right.  The American political system is screwed up beyond all recognition.  Perhaps if the American political system can be reconciled, which I doubt will ever happen, pissants and Uncle Ezra’s blindness may be addressed at that time.  But don’t hold your breath.
 
E. E. CARR
April 8, 2011
Essay 542
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Kevin’s commentary: Read another of Pop’s essays concerning pissants here.
In any event, I’m not seeing any way around the current system short of appointing Ezra Carr as supreme dictator of these United States, which I feel is a position that he may not take. Perhaps he has learned from the recently-ex-Pope that taking positions of extreme power when you are rather advanced in age is a poor idea. But hopefully he has not.