Shitocracy ('shit-&-'tä-kr&-sE)

Author: Aardvark

The increasing influence of Texans in the national political arena has prompted the coining of a new term for a predominantly Texan form of hierarchy: "the shitocracy" (pronounced "shit" "talk" "crass" "ee"). Unlike meritocracy, a system where power and influence correlate with merit, talent or accomplishment; shitocracy promotes those who appear to get ahead by making their opponents appear to be behind. Put in few words, shitocracy promotes the survival of those most adept at slinging shit on their opponents while covering their own shit with a heavy dose of perfume.

While shitocracy has been the norm in Texan politics for some time, the art of the shitocrat has reached new heights in the arch-shitocrat George W. Bush, whose entire substance is nothing but shit and whose form can only be described as held together by a dense coating of evaporated perfume. For those of us not originally from Texas, it is impossible to understand how a dung heap like GW could have gone un-smelt for so long, but then again, we are not from the Midland-Odessa area and have never smelled the background stench of several hundred thousand Texan steer on a hot West Texas day.

The term "shitocracy" has been waiting to be born since the first Texan politician rewrote the history of the Alamo and painted the lost battle as a victory. Until now, without the talents of this author, we have only seen foreshadows of the concept in expressions such as "shit floats." But alas, I have come to your rescue and coined the perfect term for Texan hierarchy and now that it, SHITOCRACY, has a name, we can all talk about it freely. Indeed, we can write volumes about it and point out those instances of the phenomenon we have encountered, identifying them, for the first time, by their proper term, SHITOCRATS.

However, I must be modest and point out that another author (David Jefferson) discovered long before I did a precursor to shitocracy. While not quite there, it describes an essential quality of the shitocrat - namely a level of bogosity approaching the Lenat (or 1,000,000 µL). Not surprisingly, the name sake of the microLenat (Douglas B. Lenat), floated to Texas some time back and his own corporation closely resembles a shitocracy, but I digress.

A formal definition of shitocracy, therefore, might read something like this:

Shitocracy:

Pronunciation: 'shit-&-'tä-kr&-sE
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural -cies
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English scite; akin to Old English -scItan to defecate + -o- + -cracy
1 : a system in which the bogus are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their ability to fling shit at their competitors
2 : leadership selected on the basis of endowment with a high bogosity, approaching or exceeding 1,000,000 µL
- shit·o·crat·ic /"'shit-&-'kra-tik/ adjective

Shitocracy, by its very nature, is unstable. Whereas there is a natural basis for meritocracy, shitocracy requires constant maintenance. In order to keep the shit on the top of the hierarchy, a great deal of energy must be spent on keeping down those who would naturally rise above the top node of the shitocracy. Manufacture of shit must be constant to maintain order and its application consumes a great deal of the energy available to the shitocracy. Thus, since shit is non productive, there must come a time when all available resources are consumed in an effort to maintain the shitocracy itself. Once these resources are consumed, the shitocracy's formative forces are out competed by the natural but suppressed meritocratic forces within and a restructuring takes place, leading to the re-emergence of a meritocracy. Shitocracies, therefore, as we have seen in Enron and the first President Bush, are temporary structures predestined to collapse under their own weight.

The inevitable collapse of a given shitocracy, while welcome, does not negate the need to clean the shit up after its demise. Indeed, the laws of good plumbing require that those who survive the fall take care to build an infrastructure which will drain away the fecal remains of the shitocracy, thereby leaving fewer resources to the next shitocrat looking for an opportunity to rise. It is only by putting shit its place that society can delay the eventual return of the next shitocracy.