by publius
I have mixed feelings about this weekend's protests. On the one hand, I have a soft spot for marches like these. Regardless of who sponsors them, lots of people made the effort to join the proud tradition of speaking out on the DC Mall on issues important to them.
That said, the amount of racism on display was genuinely disturbing — and I actually think Maureen Dowd of all people made some good points on this today. (Lindsay has pictures). But in general, I think organizing and protesting are healthy things.
So the protests themselves don't bother me. What bothers me is how logically incoherent they are — and, by extension, how incoherent the broader anti-government rants against Obama are.
To begin, the entire premise of these anti-government protests is that there's some "party of government" out there. Hate to break it to them, but there's not. There's no true "Left" in America — and there's never really been one.
In fact, the Democratic Party has drifted sharply right on economic matters over the past 25 years. Today's arguments about whether marginal tax rates should be a few points higher or lower aren't exactly contemplating seizing the means of production. The boogeymen are imaginary — and manufactured.
It's also frustrating to hear angry protests from people who would be outraged if we actually took government services away from them. The ironic aspect of the Tea Party movement is that it takes place within a widely-shared (if invisible) consensus that government should pay for lots of expensive stuff — schools, retirement, massive military projects, and health insurance for senior citizens and poor people.
These costs are the bulk of the budget, but any politician who proposed serious cuts to them would be chased out of town with pitchforks . . . by the Tea Party people.
The Medicare demagoguing is a perfect example of how internally contradictory these protests can be. Think about it — the GOP is demagoguing "government-run health care" at the same time it demagogues imaginary cuts to Medicare benefits. I mean, roughly 30% of the country is in a single-payer system already, and those programs are extremely popular.
On top of all this, the Obama administration itself is extremely pro-market and pro-capital (some would say excessively so). And the examples cited to justify Obama's preference for "big government" don't hold up.
The finance meltdown was forced upon them, but they resisted the more obviously "Leftish" policy of nationalizing banks. Their health care reform is painstakingly crafted to protect private insurers — and is premised almost entirely on market competition. Obama, recall, also ran on a platform of not raising taxes on virtually anyone in the country. It's hard to see the boogeyman here.
I suppose the stimulus is fair game. But even here, the level of anti-government ranting is completely disproportionate to the administration's actual policies. The stimulus, for instance, should have been about twice as big.
In sum, I have sympathy for people who care enough to travel to DC to march. And I say that with complete sincerity. But it's also weird — and more than a little disconcerting — to see how unconnected with reality the substantive economic complaints are.
“There’s no true ‘Left’ in America — and there’s never really been one.”
Eugene V. Debs, Richard Wright, John Lewis, and Harry Bridges, among many others, are rolling over in their graves thanks to that remark.
Sheesh.
The thing that annoys me the most about these “logically incoherent” protests is how much press they have received. Almost seven years ago the largest anti-war demonstration since Vietnam was held on the Mall with over 100,000 in attendance and the story was not even on the front page of the Washington Post but was pushed off to the Metro section.
If you listened to Obama’s (and Clinton’s) speeches at Walter Cronkite’s memorial last Wednesday, the subtext was that our media is failing us, the press is doing a piss poor job of informing us. I know times have changed and all that but if we cannot trust the major media outlets to provide the facts on which we can base our arguments then we will be hard pressed to have a debate and will likely just talk past each other.
It is truly remarkable that Obama (and Clinton before him) can be so middle-of-the-road and fiscally conservative and yet so reviled by the right wing. While it is seemingly bizarre, I guess it does make some sense if your goal is to simply to push a rigidly conservative agenda to scream bloody murder over even the slightest liberal-leaning policy or pronouncement. But for the media to give these protests credence instead of pointing out that they really are nonsensical and guano crazy is disheartening to say the least.
“But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy! “
You talk about protesting against imaginary enemies, while approvingly citing a Dowd column in which she relates her auditory hallucinations as evidence of somebody else’s racism?
Keep telling yourself the Obama-hate is not racist, Brett. It won’t work out for you – or for the rest of us – but you just keep right on going, like you always do.
Keep telling yourself that it IS racist. I know you will, anyway.
and I actually think Maureen Dowd of all people made some good points on this today.
I think it’s a no-brainer, except for the people who actually share Joe Wilson’s views about a black President. Back in February, I read a blog post / comment thread in which a bunch of conservatives assured each other that some comment by Barack Obama (I think it was the “I won” remark to Republicans who wanted to continue 2008 economic policies) proved he was now “too big for his britches” and deserved to be given a smackdown.
There absolutely are a bunch of white people who really can’t cope with the fact of a black man who is the President. That Joe Wilson – an admirer of Strom Thurmond – is one of those people, is not exactly surprising.
(On his twitterfeed, he was patting himself on the back for having 8500 people write in support. Even granted the ten for one rule – for every 10 people who care, 1 will write – that still suggests the vast majority of Americans are at least sufficiently non-racist enough to know that Joe Wilson is an asshole.)
“It’s also frustrating to hear angry protests from people who would be outraged if we actually took government services away from them. The ironic aspect of the Tea Party movement is that it takes place within a widely-shared (if invisible) consensus that government should pay for lots of expensive stuff — schools, retirement, massive military projects, and health insurance for senior citizens and poor people.”
I’m sorry, but what evidence do you have of this, at all? You even contradict yourself in the middle of your statement by suggesting this consensus is “invisible.” I guess you’re the only one who can see it, huh?
I can imagine that many of the protesters voicing their discontent over health care reform, would also approve of reduced federal involvement in the education system, for example.
Keep telling yourself that it IS racist. I know you will, anyway.
The facts support that conclusion.
Decades after the Republicans sold their souls to the racists with the Southern Strategy, they are slowly losing all but the racists as their voters. If you don’t like that the racism is there, complain to the racists, not the people who point out how full of racism the opposition to Obama is.
Not all opposition to Obama is racist, but there is a huge amount of racism in the opposition — and too many of the other opponents of Obama appear to be perfectly happy to have the racist bigots on their side.
C’mon, Brett – is that the best you can do? Y’all constantly trumpet that you’re the ones with the facts, the numbers, the principles … and the best you can come up with is ‘I know you are but what am I?’
If you guys are the keepers of the clue – to the extent that you think we should IGNORE THE ELECTION and let you lot continue running things – it hardly seems unreasonable to expect a cogent, reasoned argument that *could not* be hear on a playground at recess.
Absent that, y’all aren’t even a political party, an ideology, a movement: you’re just a bunch of entitlement freaks who’ve had their bottles taken away. Turn EVERY public forum into the Jerry Springer show, Brett. It really seems to be all you guys are capable of…’cause IF y’all were capable of some *real* thought & the construction of a reasoned, coherent argument, we’d see something beyond this shamefully embarrassing public spectacles you’re so bloody fond of.
Love & kisses, a post-racist Southern conservative
I don’t have a soft spot for large public protests by people whose views are informed largely by misinformation and hate, and who have no discernible answers to a serious problem that’s bankrupting (and worse) so many Americans, even people who are probably related by blood to the people marching around. Their outcry is some kind of primal scream. An overwhelming majority of people in this country favor a public option, and we’re not going to get it. People who want it are the ones who should be out on the streets with pitchforks.
Eugene V. Debs, Richard Wright, John Lewis, and Harry Bridges, among many others, are rolling over in their graves thanks to that remark.
Doesn’t your list reinforce the point? Would you have been happier if the remark had been that the Left has always been marginal in this country? Leftists have never been in any danger of winning even one state. Sure, Henry Wallace got about as many votes as Strom Thurmond in ’48, but we haven’t seen anything even that good since.
I’m kinda torn. I feel like the left has always been marginalized (I often note how anarchist became a term of abuse), so I don’t think publius overstated it, but I would point to the Wisconsin Progressive Party as leftists winning one state. On Wisconsin!
The finance meltdown was forced upon them, but they resisted the more obviously “Leftish” policy of nationalizing banks.
Had he temporarily nationalized some of the big banks and delivered big rhetorical spankings thereto, there would’ve been howls from Republicans, but, ironically, it might have been relatively popular among some of these ‘populists’. Their objections to Obama aren’t due to his being a leftist, because he most definitely *isn’t* one. Their objections aren’t really very ideological at all. I think this is a populist moment, and other than the racists and anti-abortion people, a chunk of these teabaggers just want someone to acknowledge their fear and anger, which – while incoherent ideologically – is real and somewhat justified. Obama and the dems don’t do it – the dems practically fetish establishmentarianism. Our politico-economic establishment *is* pretty rotten, so..voila, right wing populism.
Keep telling yourself that it IS racist.
Yeah, I’ll spot you that. With some fairly vivid exceptions, it takes at least one ounce of mind-reading to get all the way to racist.
I’ll settle for ignorant, clueless, dumb-ass, stone cold stupid.
Dumb as a box of hammers now, dumb as a box of hammers tomorrow, dumb as a box of hammers forever.
Just brutally, stunningly, willfully dumb. And pissed off too, although they have not one original thought of their own as to why.
It’s painful, bro.
Would you have been happier if the remark had been that the Left has always been marginal in this country?
Yes.
Would you have been happier if the remark had been that the Left has always been marginal in this country?
At a number of times, most notably in the 1930s and 1960s, the actual left had an impact on policymaking. Think, for example, of the influence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Michael Harrington in the 1960s. Correctly declaring that neither could have been elected president doesn’t accurately measure their impact on U.S. politics.
And though Henry Wallace got only 2.4% of the vote in 1948, he had been Vice President of the United States. And his presence in the race contributed to the decision of the Democrats to add a civil rights plank to their platform for the first time.
I may not be paying a whole lot of attention to the current Two-Minutes Hate, but it sure seems like the Clinton-hate in 1992-93 was a lot nastier than the Obama-hate in 2008-09.
The Clinton-hate included accusing him of murdering dozens of people and participating in drug smuggling. They hated his wife (probably more intensely than they hated him). They said his daughter was uglier than a dog.
I mean, I think there are a bunch of people on the Right who dislike Michelle Obama, but I’d be surprised if they despised her as much as they despised Hillary Clinton in 1993. And they’ve left Obama’s daughters entirely alone. And I don’t think they’re accusing Obama of killing his friends to hide his illegal drug scams (though I haven’t been following the Rezko thing very closely).
The Obama-hate is pretty much, “(1) Dude’s not really a citizen, and (2) dude’s a Commie-Nazi.” It’s not much to write home about, hate-wise.
I guess I’m willing to believe that race is a big, unspoken component of those beliefs – but in terms of virulence, I think 1992 takes it.
It doesn’t take a whole lot of mind-reading to get to the idea that Joe Wilson, who referred to the actual of fact of Strom Thurmond’s half-black illegitimate daughter as “a smear,” might be a little tiny bit racist.
” …. who would be outraged if we took government services away from them ….
Do it.
Start with Joe Wilson and his parasite family.
Move on to the confederate scum in his district who voted for him.
Maybe Rick Perry of Texas wants a piece of this. He needs a good federal mussing up of his coward’s coiffure.
” …. chased out of town with pitchforks.”
I’ve got machetes.
They have guns. Which means we’ll need an armed federal presence in those areas to protect the true citizenry.
Will they stop paying taxes and show up in the tens of millions on the Washington mall (and claim a billion, the liars)?
Good. I want them to have their defining moment.
Bring it on and come and get it. But they had better use the Second Amendment to its full advantage this time. Because I’m sick of talk.
If you’re going to wave those effing things around, shut up and use them and leave the effing wildlife alone. Shoot the ones you imagine in your fever dreams.
Maureen Dowd, whom I’m replacing at the New York Times, didn’t hallucinate one republican politician and activist after another twittering his and her racist horseshit.
definitely agreed.
you look at their signs and read the interviews and you notice that the only unifying theme is a shared hatred of Democrats (with Obama as poster boy); and beyond that, most of them are protesting things which are completely imaginary. sure, you get a few deficit whiners (who couldn’t bother to complain when W put us on this road), but mostly you’ve got people screaming about how Obama is a communist/socialist/nazi, how he’s raping the constitution (let’s hear it for the 10th A!), “Chicago-style politics”, etc..
and what really gets me is the Joker/Obama mashup posters. it’s a neat image, sure. but the Joker was an insane, murderous, anarchist (and the best part of that movie). Obama is none of those things – and the whingenuts don’t even accuse him of being any of those things! it’s a total fail as a symbol.
So after 8 years of dissent is unpatriotic, we’re in for 4 to 8 of dissent is racist. Great. It’s politically incorrect to criticize the most powerful man on Earth (unless from the left).
Of course the protesters don’t have a coherent plan for governing and of course they include some nuts. Have you ever been at a protest, publius? It isn’t a graduate seminar and it isn’t a budget reconciliation session.
What I hear is what you get in every Lewis Lapham column and many an ObsiWi thread: this country would be more democratic if everyone agreed with me.
Comparing the attacks on the Clintons with those on the Obamas, I would suggest that they were more extravagant for Bill and Hilary because there was not a reservoir of racism to tap into as there has been regarding the notion of a black president. I’m not sure what would qualify as proof of this, but if you already have enough tinder to start a fire, you don’t need to stock up on charcoal starter fluid.
“The Obama-hate is pretty much, 1) Dude’s not really a citizen, and (2) dude’s a Commie-Nazi. It’s not much to write home about, hate-wise.”
Really.
Why he doesn’t take those Hitler comparisons as a compliment is beyond me.
Avedon Carol on the Sideshow:
Avedon’s right that the vast majority of Republicans who hate Obama would hate Edwards or Clinton just as much: the outrageously racist Republicans who literally cannot bear to have a black man as their President are a minority. Most of the maniacal hatred of Obama would be just as maniacal if he were regarded as being of his mother’s race instead of his father’s, so long as he was a Democrat.
@bedtime:
“Why he doesn’t take those Hitler comparisons as a compliment is beyond me.”
I don’t think comparing Democratic Party politicians to totalitarian dictators is particularly unique to Obama. Comparing him to Hitler is spectacularly, mind-meltingly dumb given, y’know, the Nazi Party’s policy on race. But it’s not new. (I’m not arguing we should tolerate it, or that race isn’t part of it: I just think that this level of Crazy-Hate has been around for decades.)
Of course the protesters don’t have a coherent plan for governing
Nice the way you changed inchoate, irrational, contradictory protest into ‘not having a plan for governing’, Pithlord.
So after 8 years of dissent is unpatriotic, we’re in for 4 to 8 of dissent is racist.
Publius took pains to stress his admiration for the idea of public protest. Did you read that part? Neither he nor anybody else said dissent is racist. Racism is racist. Did you see the all those confederate flags? There were lots of them. Pretty good bet those people have some racial animosity within.
What distinguished this event was not that there were a few crazies, but that the majority was crazies. If you don’t agree, please tell me what the main, coherent message was. The marches about the Iraq war had some crazies with other agendas, but it was very clear what the protest was about, in the main. What was this event about? Pelosi is a nazi? Obama’s plan to essentially rescue the private insurance industry is socialist? Government run health care is also socialist/nazi, but keep your hands off my Medicare?
This was gibberish protest, and yes, there was a very clear racist component. It is what it is, Pith, not what you wish it were.
Pithlord, I don’t mean to dismiss your observation, which could be correct in describing some analyses of dissent, but I would be careful in dismissing all discussion on this as political correctness. Especially if, as I believe is the case, you are not an American and not based in America. I can’t claim that my knowledge is recent, but given is not only the first black president, but was the first black candidate of a major party (I sadly omit Dizzy Gillespie and his outstanding cabinet) suggests that this has gotten ahead of American society might find itself so I find it hard to think that American society has changed so much as to rule out any link to some dissent and racism.
It is interesting that Maureen Dowd, of whom Clark Hoyt, the public editor at the NYTimes, said “Politically correct is never a term one would apply to Dowd’s commentary” is the one delivering this observation. The book on Dowd is that she is simply concerned with personalities, not with anything deeper. I suppose you could suggest that she is turning Wilson into the personality in this case, but her discussion of Wilson is limited to a paragraph. If you argue that she is suddenly succumbing to political correctness, it seems remarkable that she has been able to resist it for so long.
“Why he doesn’t take those Hitler comparisons as a compliment is beyond me.”
Well, some on the Mall imagine Hitler and Stalin were black men.
As to the Clintons, I think they received a little hate bonus boost after Bill Clinton was identified as the first black President.
But incoherency does not do nuance. People who carry pitchforks will stick them in anything that they are told is pitchfork-stickable by their queen of hearts on the car radio.
The fact is that the foks on the Mall are being demagogued by the Republican Party for the same reason that the Republican Party demagogued social issues for the religious Right.
The Republican Party hateses themses taxes. It doesn’t matter what the tax rate is.
They hateses themses taxes, but the Republican requires lots of other ancillary hate to gain a majority.
Interesting comparing dave’s comment with this one. Finding it easier to be nasty to a woman says a lot.
It seems fitting that this posting is titled what it is, because if you look at the rhetoric, there’s no sense about what these protestors are for. A protest made up entirely of negative polemics does not amount to much of a protest at all.
My feeling is that rather than liberate people, the extremist right has simply forced people into alienation and resignation who can’t face facts about the forces that are actually arrayed against them. Facing facts is the last thing it wants; it wants them to retreat into pointless fantasies that economic forces have their best interests at heart, when these forces have created the state of affairs that threaten them while the extremists serve themselves from the economic stewpot. My guess is that a vast number of the people at these protests truly, if you cornered them privately, have no clue as to what they feel threatened by, and at least some don’t even know what it is they’re protesting save for what Glenn Beck tells them to. They’re immersed in a situation they don’t even know exists but is all around them, while they feel victimized by bugaboos the right feeds and manipulates them with.
So as for the sense that we must feel “heartened” by these people willing to come on out to the Mall – sorry Pub, can’t be with you on this one. I would feel as such if what they were coming out for was done out of a heartfelt sense of outrage, out of a struggle for justice with their self-respect at stake and a quest to reclaim that self-respect. But all I see is the opposite – a parody of civic duty expressed by a confederacy of dunces whose self-respect has been bought out from them, pathetically manipulated by people who claim to speak for their concerns but secretly piss firehoses on them.
I see nothing ennobling in this protest – I only see childishness, ignorance, and cant. The worst part of it all is that as venomous as the rhetoric is and as uglified as many of these people have made themselves look, I can’t despise them, as much as I am tempted to. They are real victims who don’t know it, in a culture that celebrates victimhoom in people who usually don’t deserve it. What went on at the Mall was equal parts farce and tragedy, and I’m not buying this as worthy protest.
My apologies – that should be “victimhood”
Sometimes I think the caricature of hand-wringing left-of-centerites is justified when I see the amount of bits expended on this insignificant fart of a protest.
To follow on jonnyb — pith, the larger point isn’t just the protesters. It’s one piece of a larger anti-Obama attack that I think just isn’t founded on actual reality.
You more than most probalby recognize how non-Left the so-called ‘american left’ truly is. or at least, how non-left the national party nominally aligned with “the left” actually is
Norbizness, couldn’t agree with you more – and I’m not wringing my hands over it, as much as it seems (and which I wouldn’t blame anybody for accusing people like me of), but some things are too outrageous to keep one’s mouth shut about.
allow me.
bold, too ?
mmk.
Could do with a touch more salt, too.
Dm–what evedence is there of the hypocrisy of the Teabaggers? They come mostly from red states. Red states are the ones that depend for their economic survival on goverment subsidies. Those red state residents not living a parasitic exsistance on farm supports or ranching subsidies or timber subsidies either work for the federal or state governements or live on Social Security and Medicare and/or veterans’ benefits.
ANd yet the endless bitching about taxes, big government and Democrats wasting money. No Republican politician is willing to apply his or her own campaign rhetoric to his or her own state.
Example; in near unison Republican politicians in Congress and many governors denounced the stimlus while at the same time hailing its effects on the economies of their own states! Why? Because they were cynically matching the behavior of their constituents who oppose any spending that might help someone else but support anything for themselves.
The Republican party isn’t the party of “No”. It’s the party of “I want for me, but not for thee.”
I don’t think this is really d’d’d’dave. And I’ve tried to close the italics – even with /p and /i. That’s as much as I know how to do in that regard.
The same dave thing is going on in the Kanye thread. My html thing didn’t appear to work over there in preview, but I got as far as cleek before he cleared out the bold, apparently, given how it looks now. Imposter trollery abounds.
An important source of the “Obama=socialist” nonsense is the complete suppression of true leftist ideas in this country for the past 30 years or so. Publius overstated the suppression of the left in this country but it *has* been almost completely suppressed in the media since around when Reagan took office. Even things like nationalization of the banks during the panic last year got almost no play with people like Geithner spouting off about how only the free market can run banks – while dealing with a monster catastrophe that conclusively proved the free market *can’t* run the banks. These protesters haven’t the foggiest notion of what real socialism is.
The left has to some extent assisted with its own marginalization by rejecting Americana imagery. Old-style leftists were much smarter, singing “This land is my land, this land is your land” (originally a leftist anthem) and waving flags enthusiastically. That had a lot to do with why they were much more successful than current leftists.
The ridiculous mob provides a great focus for my own rage since the protesters seem to embody the stupidity at the heart of the gridlock of American politics. Most people want big change in the way health care is paid for. Most people support a public option. As soon as they experience it, most people enjoy and support government-run single payer health care. But enough clueless people take to the streets spurred on by the disfunctional media that the main story becomes “healthcare reform is controversial” or “Americans unsure about Obama’s plan” or “people don’t trust government to solve healthcare problems”. It’s so frustrating, because, except for those who feel compelled to take some dogmatic anti-government position, there’s really very little argument that the current system sucks, and that Congress can improve it. And then the Senate gloms onto this media-created perception to cater to the insurance company lobbyists yet again. It’s disgusting.
I’m going to blame the media. See, for example, the front page Washington Post article on the latest ABC poll. Then go to Nate Silver’s blog and read his take, and the comments to his blog post. It’s very demoralizing to think that the media seems to have such an intense interest in derailing health care reform.
“My guess is that a vast number of the people at these protests truly, if you cornered them privately, have no clue as to what they feel threatened by, and at least some don’t even know what it is they’re protesting save for what Glenn Beck tells them to.”
I wonder if Beck has some mind-control abilities.
To think that he can move a sizable crowd of people is scary.
I keep thinking about Jim Jones and Jonestown for some reason.
BTW if anyone is still trying to make the argument the the Teabaggers are protesting something real go to Red State blog and read their sign montage. By their own words as posted on a supportive site they are a bunch of paranoid wackojobs.
If you doubt the existance of racists amongst the crowd go to Dailly Kos and read their sign montage.
I don’t think the Obama hate is primarily racist. I agree with the Avedon excerpt: is Democrat hate. So the question is why do these people who want for themselves the benefits of programs created mostly by Democratic politicians so full of hate for Democrats(while continuing to support the programs that benefit them?)
I think we are looking at a demographic that is comprised largely of authoritarian personality types from the sort of family or social backgrounds that don’t support the habit of learning or logical thinking and who come from those regions of America that have entenched and dishonest local cultural myrths such as the myth of the independent Westerner or the more-patriotic-than-thou Southerner. They have beliefs that don’t correspond to reality and lack the ability to change their beliefs, so they are mad at reality.
They are a subset of a subset of a subset, the dregs of our politics. Unfortunately the Republican party represents them. Indeed the Republican party has gone so far to the extreme that the majority of it’s members of Congbress ate just as willfully ignorant, arrogant,hypocritical, and meanspirited as the minority of the population that they represent.
The Republicans made the decision back in Atwood’s day to increase their base by inviting the lunatic fringe into the party. Now the lunatics are the party.
Every country has it’s haters. Our country has a political party of haters with their very own media outlets, a big hunk of Congress, and a veneer of apologists to lend them a respectability they don’t deserve.
FYI, two articles about Japanese equivalents (more or less) of teabaggers.
here and here (Uyoku dantai are at the top, some other interesting groups when you scroll down)
Every country has it’s haters. Our country has a political party of haters with their very own media outlets, a big hunk of Congress, and a veneer of apologists to lend them a respectability they don’t deserve.
Yes, we need the hater party to be a marginal party that keeps getting its 5-8% of the vote but is totally irrelevent to day to day politics. If we had such a thing, the GOP could reclaim its heritage instead of being embarrassed by its two greated presidents: Lincoln and TR.
Nixon and Atwater have a lot of explaining to do, but so do today’s GOP that are still willing to keep bigots and haters in their party.
JamesNostack says: …it sure seems like the Clinton-hate in 1992-93 was a lot nastier than the Obama-hate in 2008-09.
Yup. And the vitriol switched to Bush-2, escalating frenetically from the Left after it became obvious Iraq was a disaster. This is the nature of partisan politics in our hyper-smug media culture. Divide and hate. And not only enmity between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, but also between those with inter-party differences. Just check the archives here for recent examples of the disrespectful, hostile abuse Hillary Clinton was subjected to during the primaries. Or the recent personal attacks on Von, from various narrow-minded assholes who don’t like his views, or his morals, or his veracity, or his IQ, or the way he clips his nails or ties his shoes.
That’s why so many of us in the middle think the Lefties are just as smugly intolerant and insulting as the Righties, as redundantly annoying as automobile security sirens that go off for no reason at 3AM…
But the Left is certainly more hypocritical than the Right — mouthing platitudes about how important it is to be tolerant, then exhibiting their own version of narrow-minded intolerance.
Just look at the level of nastiness expressed in this thread, where poster russell calls them:brutally, stunningly, willfully dumb. And pissed off too, although they have not one original thought of their own as to why.
And Thulen, spouting his own vicious brand of invective under a tissue-thin cover of satiric irony, categorizes Wilson and his family as ‘parasites’ and those who voted for him as ‘confederate scum.’
This is the era of the fight-cage mindset. Forget the Marquess of Queensberry, anything goes. So protect your balls, and pass the invective.
“I think we are looking at a demographic that is comprised largely of authoritarian personality types from the sort of family or social backgrounds that don’t support the habit of learning or logical thinking”
Elitist psychobabble–
I don’t understand why pithlord and other’s continue to try to insist that racism on the right isn’t as major a factor today as it has been historically. I mean, I get that you guys want to think that there’s *lots of good reasons* for the American Right to be fixated on anti welfare, anti urban, anti health care, anti immigrant policies *absent* racial issues and racism at this present moment. But its simply undeniable that racism played a big role in the creation of the modern Republican party up until fairly recently. Nixon’s southern strategy which pulled former democrats out of the party entirely, and flipped the south from the D to the R fold. The infamous switch from naked racial code words to the language of anti “entitlment” and anti “civil rights” (whose that nobody on the right? Oh yeah–Lee Atwater?
Viz:
Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…
Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?
Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me—because obviously sitting around saying, “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”[7]
But even if you wave a magic wand and you forget Reagan’s “big black buck” on welfare cheat stories how on earth do you ignore the fact that the NRA, the militias, the minutemen and the white Supremacists are all in bed together and supporting this teabagger event? I mean, as I said on my old blog–the accusation that right wingers are “racist” and that their opposition to Obama is informed by, or colored by, their racism may be old but *its your old*–so own it.
Of course there are lots of reasons a sane person, or even an insane person, could be opposed to this or any president. But just as it seemed to add insult to injury to Clinton’s win that he was a “bubba” without upper class style it simply adds insult to injury, apparently, to Obama’s political foes that he’s an uppity black guy. Its not the only thing they hold against him. But the preponderance of the evidence is that its an extra fillip that causes even more rage because he is extra, totally “not like” the imaginary white american.
I actually read exactly this defense by a parent holding their kid out of school to prevent them from hearing Obama. The problem was that he was “exotic” and “not like other people” and “very well spoken” and “attractive” and “had kids” so he’d “come across like a parent” and he wasn’t a “good christian” because he wasn’t going to tell the kids only god could help them in school. Of course the exact same thing could have been said of Obama had he been some other alien quantity–like a Jew–but the exact same thing could never have been said of any other white candidate. And it wouldn’t have been.
aimai
I don’t think the Obama hate is primarily racist. I agree with the Avedon excerpt: is Democrat hate.
I agree. The race thing is lagniappe.
Just look at the level of nastiness expressed in this thread, where poster russell calls them:brutally, stunningly, willfully dumb. And pissed off too, although they have not one original thought of their own as to why.
Nasty?
“Keep your government hands off my Medicare”.
How many of these people can explain, in two or three sentences, what socialism or communism are?
How many of them participate in existing entitlement programs, and find no cognitive dissonance whatsoever with their argument that “Obamacare” is an un-American exercise in socialism?
How many of them would know what I was even talking about when I say “entitlement program”?
How many of them have read any portion of HR 3200 other than whatever bits were quoted on radio, TV, or in an email?
How many have read any independent analysis, at all, of what is in the bill or any of the alternative bills?
In short, how many of them have *any freaking idea* what the hell they are talking about?
They’re ignorant, and in a world where access to basic information is virtually ubiquitous that means they’re willfully ignorant.
They don’t just not know, they don’t care to know. If they cared, they could find out. But they don’t.
And they’re pissed off, but the only explanation they can offer for why they’re pissed off is to say that “Obama’s health care plan is socialism”.
They don’t know what’s in the plan, and they don’t know what socialism is. They just know they’re agin it.
I’m not being nasty at all, I’m just making a comment on the facts. In fact, I’m being relatively generous, because unlike many folks here I’m not assuming racism as a motivation.
If you find my characterization of the protestors to be ungenerous, maybe the problem isn’t with me. Maybe there just isn’t anything positive there.
The infamous switch from naked racial code words to the language of anti “entitlment” and anti “civil rights” (whose that nobody on the right? Oh yeah–Lee Atwater?
they have new code words these days.
[/tagclose]
@Jay Jerome:
Whereas the anti-intellectual populist tradition you evoke here doesn’t have an elitist bone in its body…
can you ban him now?
The “race thing” isn’t lagniappe. It’s central to the GOP hatred of all Democrats. Obama’s own race may be lagniappe. But absent racism, the GOP couldn’t sustain this level of hatred.
In this regard, see Glenn Greenwald and Ta-Nehisi Coates, both of whom remind us that: a) irrational GOP hatred of a Democratic president is not a new phenomenon; b) irrational hatred of Obama is about more than just race; but c) the GOP’s irrational hatred of Democratic presidents has always had a strong element of racism in it, even with a president who is not himself black.
For example, Greenwald reminds us about all the fuss about midnight basketball under Clinton.
A healthy “individual” is a happy individual, an individual who would be “more free”?.
And, I suspect, for many right-wingers, certain people should not be more free.
See also Amanda Marcotte on the racist undertones (those Confederate flags ain’t there for nothing, folks), including the coded messaging in the perennial “conservatives didn’t even leave any trash behind” meme, which translates to “liberals (i.e., black people) are filthy and live in garbage like pigs.”
I agree with Glenn, and Ben Alpers. As Jonah Goldberg would say “this is central to my point.” Lets not forget that Clinton was absolutely identified and overidentified with the black community–he was yclept (sorry, had to do it, a momentary spasm of S.J.Perlman) the “first black president” for a reason and that was very much a part of the whole hate on Clinton.
aimai
Normally, I’d have banned him already, but I can’t.
*sigh*
grow up
sorry – i deleted his first two, and had to turn to other things.
I apologize for not being able to ban this person completely. If anyone out there is tech-savvy enough to identify via IP numbers, etc., I’d be comfortable tracking this person down, particularly if he’s using a work or university network
…
Reverse IP lookup
Maybe the kid needs a hug.
If we had to reduce this to a binary, is it a good thing or a bad thing that the racism is coming out of the woodwork? It certainly hasn’t appeared ex nihilo. If a good metaphor for racism in the U.S. is a festering wound, then we will have a lot of pus to drain before things improve, right? Or are things getting worse now that racism is better-encrypted by politicians, so that it’s harder to nail them on it?
“This is the era of fight-cage mindset. Forget the Marquess of Queensbury .. anything goes.”
Years ago, as a registered Republican, I woke up in a Party that had become a cage-match. I learned quickly. The poor Marquess had been kicked in the nuts and had his ears chewed off by Lee Atwater and the rest of the racist filth. (see AIMAI above)
They (not Von, whom I defend, not Sebastian, not you, not Andrew Olmsted,) but the infestation that took over the Party) will not be appeased. No matter how low I set the bar, the Republican Party limbos under it.
But Marquess of Queensbury rules are fine with me, Jay, despite your rhetorical earbiting techniques on behalf of Hillary Clinton.
Set something boxing-wise up for me with Glenn Beck or any of the other batshit luminaries who have a well-paid platform for their hate — much more prominent and dangerous then anything I spew at Obsidian Wings …. cripes … set it up in Vegas, where Beck will likely end up in his show-biz dotage …. as the center ring in the 2042 Cirque du Soliel show celebrating the Republican assholes of the early 20th century.
Invite the NRA so I can KO Beck’s pasty face even while being threatened by a bunch of shitheads with weapons.
As to Hillary, I’d have voted for her in a second, if not for Obama. In fact, I wish it had been Hillary Clinton giving the speech the other night instead of Barack Obama.
She’d have called the lights up and given Joe Wilson a tongue-lashing that would have had him on his knees apologizing right then and there.
Talk about a woman who knows her way around a cage match.
You underestimate her.
cleek – it just said “resolved to ‘.'”
any other ideas?
You know how to IP-ban, publius?
Yes — but he constantly changes them.
You can also name-ban.
It’d be really awesome if Typepad automatically closed unclosed HTML. I’m not sure whey all blog-commenting systems don’t do that.
How useful is name-banning given the frequency of this commenter (these commenters?) signing other people’s names?
Or: was that really you, Slarti?
P.S. Not that it’s my decision, but also: I vote Slarti be given the new sekrit password. 😉
Where are OUR demonstrators? Why aren’t we going to town hall meetings and — respectfully — stating our own views, even handing out flyers detailing the nonsense others are spouting. Why aren’t we setting up a meeting in Washington to *shudder* actually support our President and health care reform.
Act Blue just raised almost, maybe over, a million dollars for Ron Miller — and 90% of it came from people who couldn’t tell you his position on health care or anything else
But when have any of you sent even $5 to a Congressman or Senator, not because they were in a desperate battle against a monster like Wilson — who is unquestionably a true racist, tied in with the racists that took over the Sons of Confederate Veterans and turned it f5rom a battklefield preservation society to a political organization. He’s also one of the seven hold-outs who fought to keep the Confederate flag flying over the State House.
No, just sending that $5 as a way of thanking and encouraging a Barney Frank, a Henry Waxman, a Kirsten Gillibrand — whose prinary opponent would have gotten lots of support if she’d had one — or any of the many quiet hard working Senators and Representatives who are on our side.
(And, OT, but this new trolltrick of deliberately opening tags and leaving them open — instead of just forgetting, as I have been guily of — is REALLY getting stale.
Prup, I agree – we need to get our own polite pitchforks out and go to it. They can get 30,000? Let’s get 300,000 or 3M. I can’t believe that not enough of us are furious that we are stuck with the health care situation in this country. I’m happy with the Democrats who are doing their best, but the others need to know that we need a public option that everyone can buy into. I am NOT happy with my current insurance. I want a public option. How are we going to do it?
P.S. Not that it’s my decision, but also: I vote Slarti be given the new sekrit password.
Isn’t that how Publius was outted?
I have to add to my Ron Miller comment. I am currently Googling “Ron Miller South Carolina.” I’m on page ten, and still have not found anything relating to the Ron Miller we gave all that money to. (Unless he is the singer, the pastor, the Arizona sex offender, or the artist with that name.)
Does anyone know who it was we gave all that money to?
That’s an utterly genius theory, Jadegold. Can I subscribe to your newsletter?
Prup, you gave money to ROB Miller.
I don’t have a soft spot for people who carry signs saying “We came unarmed [this time]”, “Pennsylvanians are armed and ready”, more stuff about watering the tree of liberty with blood, etc etc.
Those – along with the milder ones that just equate Obama with Hitler – threaten a violent rejection of democratic rule. These are people threatening to kill whoever gets in their way if their wishes are not granted. I don’t have a soft spot for that kind of thing. I don’t think it’s cute to foment an armed insurrection against the democratically-elected government of the United States just because you don’t like the current President.
This is a movement that is going to kill people. They’re saying so, explicitly. Are you going to be surprised when it happens?
Yo, “Jerome”-
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-schaeffer/glenn-beck-and-the-912-ma_b_284387.html
Heres a guy who was present at the Reagan era fusion of crooked economics with crooked religeon.
He posits the Teabaggers are immune from logic because they are intellectual separatists, in insular, mutually supported fantasy worlds. Which has been my observation, over many years.
Jacob,
It already has.
As Sapient points out (My blushes), it was RoB Miler, and I have found his website. I’m now even madder. We’ve given a lot of money to replace a truly vicious racist with an unlraconservative Blue Dog whose positions are so ‘boiler plate conservative’ that all he will add to the Congress is another ‘D’; while we do nothing for the people who are actually fighting for us.
Slarts: With all those teabagger newsletter subscriptions, you want another?
Jacob Davies is right; it’s just a matter of time before one of these low-information types gets it into his head that popping off a few rounds is not only justified, it’s the will of most Americans.
Ha – I didn’t even know Slart outed me. No, I have a fairly good idea of who informed Whelan, though i can’t prove it. But it’s not Slart at all.
So yes, Slart — let’s talk later. Everyone is making good points. I’ll email you, or you can email me (I’m pretty sure you have my indiv account).
And I apologize again for not catching this troll sooner.
Err…what? How/when did I do that? Without even being aware of it, I mean?
Taking Back America, One Uneducated White Racist At A Time
Obama is going to do what Hitler could never do, and thats destroy the Untied States of America
If it wasnt for Glenn Beck, wed all still be in the dark
From Max Blumenthal, Inside The 9.12 Project: “Ge…
Also, why can’t anyone just block the IP address of the guy asking for panties? Doesn’t that violate the posting policy?
It does violate policy, it’s just a question of the levels of admin access. But if it’s your post, you should be able to delete comments and ban commenters.
Max Blumenthal visits the teabagger march… yipes.
Yes – I have tried, but he changes his IP addresses a lot. sometimes you don’t see them b/c I ban them quickly. but sometimes i don’t see him for a while.
I’m emailing you both too
Jacob:
Nope, I won’t be surprised.
Well, maybe I will be surprised. So much tough guy talk and so little action so far.
What’s taking them so long?
The guy who had the sign saying they’ll be armed next time they visit Washington, I expect, is hoping to shoot his mouth off many more times before he shoots his gun off.
I am curious, though, will they be stopped at the airport or on the interstate by Homeland Security since they have threatened my government and the people who work for my government?
Doubtful, because the government protects chickensh-t talk.
It’s fascinating how the NRA was transformed from a pretty good interest group who threatened little more than elk into the armed wing of the Republican Party which threatened its own government.
At least the elk wanted to take away their hunting rifles. I don’t know what the government ever did to them.
Now, Glenn Beck is chickensh-t taken two diapers farther. As are Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, any number of Redstate (cool (in the sense of it’s cool how effing stupid, stupid can be) video over there on a teabagger march thread of a guy demonstrating a new shotgun (fashion statement and will do a lot of damage, although the guy mentioned fashion statement three times and “damage’ only two times, so I think looking good over his diapers matters more than actual bloodshed to these natty cowards) and Neil Boortz.
Once the shooting starts (it won’t in any mass way; chickensh-ts who kill what they think are liberals hide in the bushes and book depositories, and buildings next door, or track them down in church) they’ll (Beck, tripping over his clown shoes) be hiding in their secure radio T.V studios or in their bullet-proofed Goebbelsmobiles as they run for cover.
On another note, I never want to be in a rhetorical cage match with Lindsay Beyerstein.
Who needs Wayne La Pierre when you have Lindsay to bring out the heavy armor?
“After all, he only wanted to make some soup.”
No soup for you!
publius posted: “Obama, recall, also ran on a platform of not raising taxes on virtually anyone in the country. It’s hard to see the boogeyman here.”
Not being a teabagger, I myself am suspicious of President Obama keeping this pledge. I mean, sooner or later, someone or something is going to have to bring some sanity to the country’s soaring deficit.
For those who haven’t see it, Yglesias has a good take on the role of race in right wing reaction here. The key excerpt:
In other words, all this teabag crap really does have a racial cast, but I think it might be more precise to call it ‘ethnic’. In 1928, it was unthinkable to elect an African American to much of anything, so the boogey was Al Smith and all the drunken Catholic thug mulligans, and other dirty urban immigrant sots, he represented. And the other choice was that nice Mr Hoover. Hell, Prohibition was largely a result of ethnic (white, protestant, small town) hysteria.
At the risk of sounding like the dread hangdog Lewis Lapham, racial/ethnic anxiety is not new in the US, but is also not only old. It’s still thick as mud all over this country, and if you think otherwise, you are either a Canadian (and therefore excused) or in denial.
so none of those posts from Lindsay actually were from Lindsay it turns out.
Pssh. In my day, bored teenagers amused themselves online via 1337 h4x0ring, not tedious comment-spoofage.
Also, we had to use dial-up, uphill both ways — in the snow!
fundamentally no matter who’s in charge the election of a Democrat represents the mainstream’s loss of power to the outsiders
And at the risk of sounding like dreaded hangdog Thomas Frank, I’ll observe that the folks who spent 9/12 on the Mall in DC do not strike me as powerful insiders.
Dial-up? Huh, in my day we wished we had dial-up. We had to make do with tin cans and string.
I’ll observe that the folks who spent 9/12 on the Mall in DC do not strike me as powerful insiders.
No, but they were protesting on behalf of the powerful insiders. Which is why they sound so crazy.
I’ll observe that the folks who spent 9/12 on the Mall in DC do not strike me as powerful insiders.
I think Yglesias meant that in a putative way, russell. But you knew that.
Of course the true teabaggers are mainly the white losers of the country. If you’re black or latino with no hope, hey – life’s not fair. But if you’re *white* and a loser…hey wait a minute! That’s not supposed to happen!
For me, it’s the 1920s and not the 1960s, in which are modern day assumptions concerning political parties, gets formed.
In the 1920s, the United States consolidated its Anglo-Protestant ethnic character in a series of legislative actions:
The Volstead Act of 1920 prohibited the consumption of alcohol;
The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 shaped immigration flows around a quota system designed to preserve WASP dominance;
Al Smith, a Roman Catholic of part-Irish extraction, was defeated in his bid for the presidency in 1928.
In communities large and small, powerful Protestant voluntary associations like the Ku Klux Klan, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Masons, and American Protective Association (APA) nurtured the bonds of white Protestant ethnicity and enforced Anglo-American hegemony
Nativist commentators glowed with praise for a U.S. Congress whose ethnic composition matched that of the Continental Congress of 1787.
Anglo-Protestants had been interacting with non-Anglo immigrants in numerous ways since the founding of the Republic. The difference now lay in the new left-liberal’ preconceptions. Instead of approaching the foreigner with fear and loathing, the left-liberal Anglo-Saxon reformer exhibited humanitarianism—albeit from a position of superiority. This differing preconception was the result of an ideological shift which cannot be explained by social interaction.
The protests are NOT “incoherent” once you understand the protestors are demonstrating because they do not want a single red cent fo “their money”–even when it’s paid in taxes, it’s “their” money–going to assist, aid or relieve the struggles of their “inferiors.” That’s the same reason making a “moral” appeal fails. A “Moral cause,” to these folks, is just a way of giving good white folks’ tax-money away to give shiftless, pregnant, drug-abusing nee-groes, messikans, and immigrants a free ride…
For me, it’s the 1920s and not the 1960s, in which are modern day assumptions concerning political parties, gets formed.
In the 1920s, the United States consolidated its Anglo-Protestant ethnic character in a series of legislative actions:
The Volstead Act of 1920 prohibited the consumption of alcohol;
The Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 shaped immigration flows around a quota system designed to preserve WASP dominance;
Al Smith, a Roman Catholic of part-Irish extraction, was defeated in his bid for the presidency in 1928.
In communities large and small, powerful Protestant voluntary associations like the Ku Klux Klan, Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR), Masons, and American Protective Association (APA) nurtured the bonds of white Protestant ethnicity and enforced Anglo-American hegemony
Nativist commentators glowed with praise for a U.S. Congress whose ethnic composition matched that of the Continental Congress of 1787.
Anglo-Protestants had been interacting with non-Anglo immigrants in numerous ways since the founding of the Republic. The difference now lay in the new left-liberal’ preconceptions. Instead of approaching the foreigner with fear and loathing, the left-liberal Anglo-Saxon reformer exhibited humanitarianism—albeit from a position of superiority. This differing preconception was the result of an ideological shift which cannot be explained by social interaction.
Sorry about that, I posted and the thing vanished….so I thought.
The racial undertones of the protest where real. The lack of a real message is not.
The message, unheard by progressives and, to some extent Republicans, is that more and more government intervention is not what the average conservative American wants. Certainly not at the cost numbers being thrown around.
What is missing in this discussion is the unease expressed by those same people as Bush tallied up the debt. When people complained about the debt in the Bush era, Democrats in particular, they found a broad based willing audience.
Now, when that same audience complains about the exponentially rising debt, the progressives want to blame it on everything from Bush to racism.
Those nasty facts are that at the rate we are implementing costly social policy, along with the relatively little stimulus, our children will be paying for a debt that could truly make us into a third world economy.
How people express this fear often does reflect the least noble aspects of the emotional spectrum. But just as many conservatives have to listen through the vitriol from progressives to see if there is a point, Progressives should listen also.
Since this has been happening since much longer than the great depression, I don’t think those poor white folks would agree with your characterization, or character assassination.
In the week after the President gave a stirring account of the discussion representing the character of our nation, the character of both sides seems equally on display.
Having lived much of my early life dirt poor in the South, I can assure you that lazy white folk and lazy folk of color are considered quite equal. Hard working poor folk of any color are treated with respect by hard working poor folk. It is only the outsiders who see them differently.
The message, unheard by progressives and, to some extent Republicans, is that more and more government intervention is not what the average conservative American wants. Certainly not at the cost numbers being thrown around.
Cost by itself is irrelevant — what matters is whether the costs are offset. I mean, it would be pretty stupid for an unemployed person to refuse to take a job that paid $100,000 per year because doing so would cost him $2,000 per year in commuting costs. You can’t just say “but there are costs! and they’re more than zero!”
What is missing in this discussion is the unease expressed by those same people as Bush tallied up the debt. When people complained about the debt in the Bush era, Democrats in particular, they found a broad based willing audience.
Eh? Why do you think this is true? I don’t recall most conservatives being upset with the Bush policies that increased the deficit. I certainly don’t recall Bush or congressional Republicans paying a political price because of his efforts to increase the deficit. So why do you think there was a great deal of unease?
Now, when that same audience complains about the exponentially rising debt, the progressives want to blame it on everything from Bush to racism.
But complaining about “exponentially rising debt” by itself is absurd. You can complain that the bills under consideration are not really deficit neutral even though they claim to be; but then you have to explain why you disagree with the administration or the CBO. Do you really think that Limbaugh or Beck or their viewers who showed up at the 9/12 protests even understand these issues well enough to have an opinion on them?
Those nasty facts are that at the rate we are implementing costly social policy, along with the relatively little stimulus, our children will be paying for a debt that could truly make us into a third world economy.
The economists that I read disagree with you. And I’m not sure why I should trust your opinion, or the opinion of the 9/12 protesters, more than Brad Delong’s or Paul Krugman’s. I mean, this stuff is complicated.
“Eh? Why do you think this is true? I don’t recall most conservatives being upset with the Bush policies that increased the deficit. I certainly don’t recall Bush or congressional Republicans paying a political price because of his efforts to increase the deficit. So why do you think there was a great deal of unease?”
Well, there was this thing called an election, where they expressed that unease. Beginning with midterms and then the Presidential election. I would say the Republicans did pay a political price.
And as far as Krugman goes, there are some very respected economists who repectfully disagree. That is, however, irrelevant to the average guy who heard Bushes extra trillion was horrible, but now we are adding four or five more. They don’t need an economist to tell them that is not a good thing.
But it matters what debt is incurred for marty – do you really not see that?
The fastest way to become a third world country would’ve been to do no stimulus at all.
When people complained about the debt in the Bush era, Democrats in particular, they found a broad based willing audience.
The fact is that virtually no political Republicans objected to the huge increases of debt in the Bush 43 years, and few objected in the Reagan years, which, you remember, was when this (quite deliberate, btw) explosion of debt started. Reagan was elected twice, as was Junior Bush. Debt is bad only when Democrats incur it. (Yes, Ron Paul objected, but he’s only a nominal repub.) I didn’t see any teabag rallies on the Mall from 2001-2008, did you?
The protests are NOT “incoherent” once you understand the protestors are demonstrating because they do not want a single red cent fo “their money”–even when it’s paid in taxes, it’s “their” money–going to assist, aid or relieve the struggles of their “inferiors.”
To be honest, I don’t think this accurately captures the flavor of what the 9/12 folks are angry about.
There is, no doubt, some racism involved, but race is woven into everything in this country. There’s also a lot of resentment of immigrants, especially illegal, but again I don’t think that’s the whole picture.
The 9/12 folks seem to be as likely to be angry about TARP, or the cash for clunkers program, as they are about health care, or welfare, or whatever.
It appears to me that what all of these various complaints have in common is a sense that they’ve lost control of their lives, and that they’re subject to the control of remote and unaccountable forces in Washington, NY, and/or any of a small number of other wealthy, urban centers.
Again, as it appears to me, it’s a present-day version of “little guy” populism.
The fact is that lots of people in this country *have* lost control of many important aspects of their lives. They have damned good reason to be pissed off.
There are about 1,000 damned good reasons for tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or whatever the hell the number was, of people to show up on the DC mall.
The sad thing is that their anger is not directed toward any goal that’s going to make anything better for them.
They want government out of their life. What does that mean? What part of government do they want to do away with? What things that government does for them now do they want to take on?
It’s quite clear that other actors, with significant resources to bring to the table, are more than happy to slice and dice every single aspect of their lives and sell them off to the highest bidder. Or lowest bidder, depending. Or no bidder at all, just close up shop and Mr. Average Guy can go screw.
And they want government out of the picture?
I don’t doubt that these folks are pissed, nor do I doubt they have good reason to be pissed. I just think they’re putting the blame on one of the few institutions that has any hope of improving their situation.
What is missing in this discussion is the unease expressed by those same people as Bush tallied up the debt. When people complained about the debt in the Bush era, Democrats in particular, they found a broad based willing audience.
Bush’s tax cuts passed with full GOP support (and even a few Dems). where were the teabaggers? they weren’t marching, or bringing guns to townhalls, or wearing “Bush = Hitler + Stalin + Mao” t-shirts.
where did they hold these big rallies against deficits ? in your imagination?
Well, there was this thing called an election, where they expressed that unease. Beginning with midterms and then the Presidential election. I would say the Republicans did pay a political price.
Elections do not tell you why people voted for a particular candidate. They might have voted for Dems because of the war or because of the corruption scandals or because Bush sounded like an illiterate fool or because Cheney gave their children nightmares or for any number of reasons. If you want to claim that the election proves that conservative voters were particularly upset about deficit financing, you’ll need additional evidence.
My point here is just that I haven’t seen much indication that people, especially conservatives, are really aware of what effect Bush’s policies have had on the deficit. People who don’t know that that Bush engaged in lots of deficit financing can’t be politically motivated to act on that knowledge. And if they only develop deficit concerns when a Dem takes office, well, clearly the deficit is not what is motivating them.
And as far as Krugman goes, there are some very respected economists who repectfully disagree.
Can you name some of these other respected economists? I read a few conservative economists and I don’t recall seeing deficit issues as underlying their objections to health care reform. But I might have missed something.
That is, however, irrelevant to the average guy who heard Bushes extra trillion was horrible, but now we are adding four or five more. They don’t need an economist to tell them that is not a good thing.
$4-5 trillion more? What? Where are you getting these numbers from?
“$4-5 trillion more? What? Where are you getting these numbers from?”
If you believe here
Its closer to 9 trillion
“Bush’s tax cuts passed with full GOP support (and even a few Dems). where were the teabaggers? they weren’t marching, or bringing guns to townhalls, or wearing “Bush = Hitler + Stalin + Mao” t-shirts.”
No they didn’t. But they did express enough concern that between 2005-2007, prior to the mortgage crisis, in a wartime economy, the deficit was reduced every year.
Incoherent is an interesting term because you have a mundane way of viewing it and a scientific way. Mundanely, it just means ‘sticking together’, so in that sense, yeah, the teabaggers are coherent. But in terms of physics, it means (and the more sciency types can correct me here) the ability to make predictable changes. There are lots of folks with better physics chops than me, but I believe that one talks about coherence in regards to waves, and can be tested.
While I don’t want to play definition flame, but I’m thinking that the two meanings account for some of the argument here. For some, just getting 60-70 thousand folks out on the Mall is proof of coherence, for others, coherence is proven by showing that a specific group has a predictable aim and goal.
“Doesn’t your list reinforce the point?”
Eugene V. Debs–Social Democratic Party
presidential candidate in 1900, Socialist Party of America presidential candidate, 1904, 1908, 1912 and 1920. 1 million votes as a Presidential candidate in 1912 and 1920. His 1920 run was made from prison; the crime was opposing the US entry into World War I.
Richard Wright–influential advocate of racial integration
John Lewis–main founder of the CIO.
Harry Bridges–International Longshore and Warehouse Union founder and leader
“Would you have been happier if the remark had been that the Left has always been marginal in this country?”
I would have been happier if the remark had been correct. Publius, I was very tired both when I made that remark, and now. If I had been less so, I probably would have kept my peace, or e-mailed. Nonetheless, I plead the importance of history.
I’m trying to see some meaningful coherency here, as Marty is, but in the videos and slideshows I’ve seen (selective assuredly, although I’d be surprised if anyone had a sign there that said “please raise my taxes to pay down the debt”, which would at least have some coherent message to it.
Instead, I see one woman telling the interviewer that she wanted the “government out of everything’.
I wonder how she got home? Highway, airplane, not to mention the goddamned pavement she was standing on that I paid for.
I’d call that incoherent vagrancy at best.
Then you had the guy with the sign depicting the Twin Towers in the background and Obama giving some al Qaeda types the high sign.
Who let him out of the silly farm?
Let me see. Lots of pictures of Obama with a Hitler moustache, not to mention Nancy Pelosi with the same moustache.
These people are on about the same level of coherent sanity as the crazy lady who sits next to me at the bar sometimes and talks to herself thusly, “My daddy says I look just like Adolf Hitler” (to which the bartender replied one time “It must be the moustache”) followed by (the woman speaking again) “I just adore Marjorie Lord” (the Danny Thomas Show).
That last is at least sad, but then I’m into liberal elitist psycobabble.
Many years ago, my high school had a dress code. No jeans for girls, collared shirts for boys, hair couldn’t touch the collar etc. (a public school). So we had ourselves a protest. A nice sit in in front of the school (a thousand kids) and then a march on the administration building. The news cameras showed up on the way and they picked a random young lady who seemed to want to talk to them and asked what the protest was all about. Her answer was that the protest was about the discriminatory practice of making women wear bras to school, ranted a little about womens rights (which we all supported) and they left.
The news had their soundbite that ran at 5 and 10, we all stood around dumbfounded that she hadn’t even mentioned the dress code overall.
Deja Vu.
“It appears to me that what all of these various complaints have in common is a sense that they’ve lost control of their lives, and that they’re subject to the control of remote and unaccountable forces in Washington, NY, and/or any of a small number of other wealthy, urban centers.”
I think people resent government for the same reason why other people (or in many cases the same people) resent large corporations: they feel that they are being controlled with little real input.
And for the most part they are right.
Also, lots of people remember the negative much more easily than the positive. The time that some faceless government or corporate entity ruins your life is often more obvious than the 30 times it helped you out.
If you believe here
Its closer to 9 trillion
Marty, that link doesn’t say anything about health care costing $4-5 trillion. In fact, the only mention of health care reform is $1 trillion, which overstates things since that number doesn’t include any compensating offsets. Once again, only counting costs while refusing to count offsets is either dishonest or dumb. Which do you think it is here?
I’m not sure this discussion with you will go anywhere. I’ve asked you repeatedly for any evidence supporting your contention that a significant number of conservatives were upset with Bush for deficit spending and so far, you’ve presented no evidence. I get that you were upset, but I don’t think you’re very representative.
The news had their soundbite that ran at 5 and 10, we all stood around dumbfounded that she hadn’t even mentioned the dress code overall.
This anecdote seems…irrelevant to the current discussion. There were multiple media pieces written by different organizations reporting on the 9/12 protests. There were lots of individuals who write/comment on blogs that attended the protests and took pictures or spoke with the protesters. There’s just no way to portray this as a single protester screwing up and misrepresenting the other protesters. Nor is it plausible to assert that all the media organizations and all the non-protesters who showed up conspired together to present one seamless narrative that completely distorted what actually happened.
“I’ve asked you repeatedly for any evidence supporting your contention that a significant number of conservatives were upset with Bush for deficit spending”
Well, that is the second time so I am not sure repeatedly is realistic. I never said healthcare would cost 4-5 trillion, I said people see the debt was being added to at that rate. Both the CBO and the White house use revenues and any offsets they count (differently) to estimate the debt. Worries me, not you?
I’ll go back a few years and find some references for you, but Democrats and conservatives both expressed concern about the debt.
Thullen is too much.
I wanna go to your bars.
sod,
not sure if this is the right thread, but if you would like to post something longer with more links about what you were discussing concering Kaufmann and culture, I’d be happy to give you a set of keys to TiO.
Raven – no need to apologize at all. It was a valid point. I probably should have reworded it. I didn’t so much mean that no true Left existed. Just that it’s influence on national parties, etc. was relatively much smaller
LOL, did you read what I posted in “The Speech”?
LOL, did you read my response in “The Speech”? I’m still trying to balance nuance and clarity.
I’ll go to TiO and get your e-mail?
Sounds good.
Marty:
Where did you go to school? Were you the guy in the third row of the meeting we had with Principal Dr. Tranquil (I kid you not) over the dress code and how we wanted to wear blue jeans.
There was a pale, very smart, quiet, redheaded girl sitting in the front row and when Dr. Tranquil (I kid you not, nice man) finally, exasperatingly, blurted out, to his everlasting regret , “Do you want to look like a bunch of farmers?” .
.. at which point, the redhead (who lived in a big suburban house) broke into shuddering heaving sobs, crying out “But what’s wrong with that?” sob sob sobbbity sob.
I don’t know what happened to her but it’s probably somewhere between Squeaky Fromme and reverse collatarol bond salesman during the go-go years turned fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Mark Levin’s assistant ghost-writer.
Maybe she was the woman who said she wanted government out of everything, which the latter said twice very slowly so that the guy was sure to get his newsbite.
I went to alot of demonstrations with alot of wackadoodles in my time, but Buffy St. Marie never showed up with a picture of an automatic weapon (and a little picture of a clip of bullets which the guy I saw loaded into the picture of the automatic weapon and shot at a picture of Nancy Pelosi — kind of performance art for dickheads with beer guts and no control over their paltry lives.)
But they did express enough concern that between 2005-2007, prior to the mortgage crisis, in a wartime economy, the deficit was reduced every year.
oh how i’d love to see you prove that the vanishingly small amount of criticism had anything to do with the deficit reduction.
more likely the deficit declined as the economy inflated due to the recently-burst bubble. which is the flip side of what ee have now: the deficit being exacerbated by the recession.
I think people resent government for the same reason why other people (or in many cases the same people) resent large corporations: they feel that they are being controlled with little real input.
And for the most part they are right.
I think this is about right.
What I note, however, is that the opportunity for real input is significantly greater in the case of government.
What I also note is that I’ve never seen tens or hundreds of thousands of people blocking the streets around the corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs, or Monsanto, or Archer Daniels Midland, or WalMart, or Raytheon.
The line is not likely to make this week’s eulogies to Ronald Reagan, but when Vice President Cheney allegedly declared, “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” he summed up an enduring argument from the former president’s economic legacy.
Reagan Policies Gave Green Light to Red Ink
Dick Cheney on Budget & Economy
But they did express enough concern that between 2005-2007, prior to the mortgage crisis, in a wartime economy, the deficit was reduced every year.
US public debt, 1940-2009, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP.
I don’t see a much of a negative slope in the period under discussion.
I’m not doubting Sebastian, but I have to wonder what sort of negative experience underlies the various protesters anger. A long line at the DMV? An unfixed pothole? A overly long tax form? Or is it something like the infamous Helms commercial, such that any bump on the road of life gets blamed on the government?
US public debt, 1940-2009, both in absolute numbers and as a percentage of GDP.
deficit, not debt. (a chart) there’s a little bit of an upturn 05-07. but it starts back down in 08.
Yeah, but wasn’t part of the reason why Bush was able to claim lower deficits because the war spending was being authorized as emergency spending not counted in the deficit? We still had to pay it (or borrow for it), it just didn’t get counted in the official numbers. That also part of the reason why the deficit appeared to balloon so dramatically when Obama came in to office – he pledged to budget for the wars inside the normal budgeting process. Of course, TARP and ARRA are a big part of it too, just there is also a large component pre-existing Obama that was previously hidden.
The protestors are not the main story here. We will always have a significant part of the electorate whose thinking is incoherent and nonsensical (sometimes they can be a majority). But when the press gives them credence, heck, they are enabled and even fomented by the media (see Fox News and Glenn Beck), then something is very wrong here. Remember those who protested in the run-up to the Iraq War and how they were marginalized and even demonized (see Scott Ritter) by the press. The treatment is so disparate that it cannot be accidental.
I truly think we may be seeing something new and disturbing here. It started to pick up speed with the unhinged Clinton hatred and has just taken off from there. And the press has been along for the ride. Obama is a socialist? Then I guess Nixon was a socialist, in fact anyone who does not espouse laissez faire capitalism is a socialist. The stupidity is not what is disturbing as that is to be expected, but the fact that our corporate media is aiding and abetting this self-destructive mode of thought is downright scary.
Here’s an interesting take on the protests and what is motivating them, from 538.com. Wonder how this does or does not accord with other peopie’s views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUPMjC9mq5Y&hd=1
Telling video about the tea party march in DC, great interviews.
I am a bit late here but someone far up the thread mentioned the infamous Clinton murder list. A similar list was circulated about Obama before the election. It was even more absurd since some of the names were from the Clinton list and iirc there were people on it that were very much alive. I also remember the quite insane claims about Obama’s parentage trying to link him by birth to black radicals and/or the communist party (apart from the claim that his parents must have been commies since only those would commit Rassenschande at the time).
—
Personally I have my doubts that the instigators themselves are racists but they know that appeal to racists sells very well.
I can understand what you mean, Woody, in terms of the internal logic of the protest itself, and the machinations that work it. But to add more – what the protestors are missing out on is that the ideology they’ve bought into secretly calibrates them in terms not unlike “shiftless, pregnant, drug-abusing nee-groes, messikans, and immigrants.” In other words, the joke’s on them and they don’t know it. So on that tack, the protests are still incoherent because the people who came to the Mall were there to reinforce an illusory sense of power. But the tenor of the protest was for a sense of justice that their ideology has denied them, while the ideology that could give it to them in at least some measure is one they don’t recognize. Perhaps in their own minds, then, what they’re protesting is coherent – but only in theirs.
While some might think I’m out on a limb, the character of “9/12” strikes me more and more as not entirely unlike the working-class, populist fascism of people like Father Charles Coughlin or Oswald Mosely in the 30s, or the National Front in Britain in the late 70s-early 80s – putative stands for justice entirely depended on perpetual resentment and marginalization of certain kinds of people by those who were marginalized and resented themselves, but not for the reasons they believed. A scary thought indeed.
Yet one more correction – I meant “dependent on.” My apologies.
“What I note, however, is that the opportunity for real input is significantly greater in the case of government.”
If you think that, you don’t understand the nature of the complaint. You could give your dog some say in which direction you’ll tug the leash next, but he’ll still be on a leash.
Well, what exactly is the nature of their complaint, Brent? Their protest is entirely confounded and confused by some nefarious, hydra-headed boogyman – first, it’s a black man in the White House, then it’s the loss of some putative sense of privilege, then it’s health care reform, then after that it’s illegal immigrants…in other words, there’s no coherence to any of it because it’s over everything they don’t like and nothing they grasp, all at once.
What I suspect is at the heart of the whole government-versus-market jag is the notion that the former is the master with the keys to the cage, while the latter is the thing run wild, living on the run. It reminds me of the Bush years, when democracy was something you had to get through in order to get to freedom. But what sort of empty-headed freedom? The logical end of that would be existentialism, which would also require the exorcising of all institutions, systems, religions, and money, and no-one, conspicuosly the right, can face living this way.
I have no doubt that government can be at its worst – viz the election of a couple of weeks ago in Japan, where a monolithic, entitled, self-satisfied and -serving government finally got its just desserts after almost 50 years of uninterrupted power. (A sidebar – I’m not holding my breath for the new guv, but I am breathing)But given the reactionary climate in the States, there are those who don’t seem all that troubled by an eternity of a monolithic, entitled, self-satisfied and-serving market. The difference is that one, at some point, is accountable and can be voted out, whereas the other, at any point, has no accountability and gives no franchise. What the protestors feel threatened by is the former, whereas what actually threatens them is the latter. That is what I see at the heart of the protests, and if there’s any coherence to it, it’s of a kind I sadly lack the insight to grasp.
If libertarian dogs are now going to start whining, they can get their own march on Washington.
I’d watch where you step the next day, however, seeing as how they are libertarians, I mean dogs, I mean libertarians.
Plus, as soon as dogs find out they will have to get jobs in the private sector, I expect their moods will turn.
Okay, I’ll eat my slice of humble pie while readying my own cream pie to throw in my own face – I meant “(b)ut what sort of empty-headed freedom is that?”
Talk about incoherence…
“I went to alot of demonstrations with alot of wackadoodles in my time, but Buffy St. Marie never showed up with a picture of an automatic weapon (and a little picture of a clip of bullets which the guy I saw loaded into the picture of the automatic weapon and shot at a picture of Nancy Pelosi — kind of performance art for dickheads with beer guts and no control over their paltry lives.)”
Yes, but we were Americas Children (Stephen Stills) and they were pretty sure they were in charge. Yet, even then, they complained about the Federal Government pretty regularly. They were for local school districts (the State government wasn’t that well thought of), the state roads were, well, state roads (farm to market roads were the route to anywhere fun), and they still felt like they represented the country and to some extent vice versa.
Now all they hear is that they are overrepresented in the Senate, they shouldn’t count because their population count isn’t high enough, nor is their IQ.
Charges of xenophobia aside, the lower middle class and working poor whites in this country feel less in control and less represented in government all the time.
I keep reading that this bill is somehow for them, they should appreciate whaat the progressives are doing “for” them, they don’t see it that way.
Being forced onto the dole is not their view of the American dream.
Fix the economy, raise their wages, give them the means to buy healthcare and other things, that’s what they want.
You may not understand that basic thought process, but they don’t want to think of themselves as needing a government handout. It impacts their sense of self respect.
You can think it is stupid like Russells bag of hammers, I respect it, that sense of self is what the country was built on. Your charity, well meaning and honestly given, diminishes them in their eyes.
Marty,
I’ll agree with you here: “the lower middle class and working poor whites in this country feel less in control and less represented in government all the time.
I’m sorry to inform you, but is seems to be a minority of these whites.
I suspect in other parts of the nation, “lower middle class and working poor whites” are working with “lower middle class and working poor of color” to get union jobs and and see the Democratic Party as too conservative. Right now, it is in the intrest of certan media types to pretend “lower middle class and working poor whites” are, in the whole, against any State activity.
Marty,
I’ll agree with you here: “the lower middle class and working poor whites in this country feel less in control and less represented in government all the time.
I’m sorry to inform you, but is seems to be a minority of these whites, if a healthy minority, who are anti-anything Democratic government.
I suspect in other parts of the nation, “lower middle class and working poor whites” are working with “lower middle class and working poor of color” to get union jobs and see the Democratic Party as too conservative. Right now, it is in the interest of certain media types to pretend “lower middle class and working poor whites” in the whole, are against any State activity.
“I suspect in other parts of the nation, “lower middle class and working poor whites” are working with “lower middle class and working poor of color” to get union jobs and and see the Democratic Party as too conservative”
I believe you are probably right. No sector is homogeneous in their opinions.
Marty,
I’ll agree with you here: “the lower middle class and working poor whites in this country feel less in control and less represented in government all the time.
I’m sorry to inform you, but is seems to be a minority of these whites, if a healthy minority, who are anti-anything Democratic government.
I suspect in other parts of the nation, “lower middle class and working poor whites” are working with “lower middle class and working poor of color” to get union jobs and see the Democratic Party as too conservative. Right now, it is in the interest of certain media types to pretend “lower middle class and working poor whites” in the whole, against any State activity.
“I’m not doubting Sebastian, but I have to wonder what sort of negative experience underlies the various protesters anger. A long line at the DMV? An unfixed pothole? A overly long tax form?”
Probably different for a lot of different people. Maybe a capricious exercise of eminent domain taking away their family house. Maybe a contractor who finds that he loses bids to higher bidders who preempt him as minority contractors. Maybe someone whose mother has a nasty experience with Medicaid. Someone who has problems with zoning. Someone who has to go through ridiculous licensing procedures after doing well on his job for 20 years.
You’ll note that some of these are local, but he probably thinks (and rightly) that he can’t even substantially influence his local governments, how does he have any chance with a more remote, more powerful government with more layers of people between him and the decision maker.
“What I note, however, is that the opportunity for real input is significantly greater in the case of government.”
I’m not entirely sure this is true. My chances of personally getting through to someone in a large corporation with a complaint are low. My chances of personally getting through in government seem even lower. Policies made in a corporation are often flexible in reality. Getting through to someone who can make an exception to a government policy, no matter how good the exception may be, can be impossible.
“What I also note is that I’ve never seen tens or hundreds of thousands of people blocking the streets around the corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs, or Monsanto, or Archer Daniels Midland, or WalMart, or Raytheon.”
That is an observation that doesn’t cut obviously onto either side of the argument. Is that because WalMart is so unresponsive that no one ever bothers, or that they are at least minimally responsive enough that you don’t have to get to the point where massing tens of thousands of people on a single day is necessary to get its attention?
Being forced onto the dole is not their view of the American dream.
If we are going to make broad and unqualified statements to characterize the hopes and dreams of large swathes of lower middle class and working poor whites, let me throw my own anecdotea into the ring, as this is the culture I was raised in.
A non-trivial portion of said demographic view the American dream as winning the lottery. Not hard work and perseverance. Certainly not communally distributed aid based on their economic status. Just a random lucky break to elevate them above their peers and make all their worries disappear, with nothing to thank but providence and their personal good fortune/persistent hoping/clever number choice.
I’m reluctant to accept the assertion that how one demographic or another views the “American dream” should enter into policy formulation.
About the link between the protesters and Ron Paul: during the primary my rural, impoverished county was festooned with Ron Paul signs which stayed up well after McCain got the nom. I understand, at least in local terms, the mindset behind the signs.
There is the myth in the West of the independent self-supporting American who carves his (always his) life with his own bare (oops–not bare! Armed, locked and loaded!) hands and never took nothin’ from nobody but who is now strugglinng because of those damed environmentalists or immigrants or regulators.
Lie. Out here those folks worked for the heavily tax-subsidized timber industry cutting our trees on our land for their benefit. The timber mills went out of business mostly because they didn’t want to pay to upgrade their facilities to accomodate smaller trees (having cut down all the big ones). It was easier just to move operations to Siberia and tell the locals that it was all the fault of the spotted owl. As for excessive regulation: we aren’t the wild west any more. And we are only semi rural. The days when someone could dump their untreated sewage into Hoods Canal are over. The days when anyone could take their gun out and shoot any place are over. The days when anyone could build whatever they wanted anywherre are gone. WHy? Because responsible people consider the impact of their behavior on their neighbors.The same people who bitch that that ordinances won’t allow building on the water’s edge any more are the ones who piss and moan when their house erodes into the bay. The pattern isn’t one of being independent; it’s one of being selfish and irresponsible. The local Ron Paul cult is comprised of people who never grew out of the two year old mentality: whaa, whaa, whaa! I want! I want! Whaa, whaa,waha!
They are right that local taxes are high. Well, duh, assholes. If they hadn’t elected Reagan and his supporters we wouldn’t have lost all that federal money which used to be available to pay for infrastructure that was too expennse to pay for at the local level. Now the state receives less than fifty percent of the federal support it got back in the eighties and everything has to be funded by state and local tax increases. But do the Ron Paul cultists want cuts in the serviceS that they use themselves? Of course not. They want lower taxes, cuts in the services other people use, and funding for themselves. The two year old mentality again: whaa! I want! For me! Not you! Me!
Example: the wonderful ladies who run the local dog rescue are also, for the most part, shriekers. Overtly racistabout the local immigrants, alwasy bitching about taxes, always bitching about government, always spouting the latest rightwing crap. At the same time they want a leash law to be passed, are upset the budget cuts may result in the closure of the municipal animal shelter, and depend on vet benefits, Medicare, and Social Security etc for their incomes.
Whaa! Whaa! I want! For me! Not you!
Fleshing out what wonkie said:
Legacy of Conquest, by Patricia Nelson Limerick. Very readable, and fascinating.
Marty: I keep reading that this bill is somehow for them, they should appreciate whaat the progressives are doing “for” them, they don’t see it that way.
Yes: because they’re being lied to, successfully, by Republican politicians and pundits whose job it is to ensure that a certain percentage of the US population will continue to vote Republican, even though it’s Democratic politicians who have, past and future, actually supported their freedom, their livelihood, and now their life and health.
Being forced onto the dole is not their view of the American dream.
And that is the key, isn’t it? Republican policies to keep the rich richer and keep the middle/working class poor and powerless, only work if a significant percentage of the population are always terrified they’re going to lose their jobs. Centrist and left-wing and liberal policies that ensure people are less likely to lose their jobs, earn more while in a job, and don’t fear that losing their job will be their death, are the exact policies that Republicans must lie about – and lie about their reasons for opposing. And as the very rich own all of the big media outlets in the US, there’s no real opposition to their side of the story – no real attempt to point out that they’re lying.
i’d be more than happy to get the government out of a few people’s lives, just to make examples out of them.
they can pay no taxes.
in exchange, they get no city water, electricity, garbage collection or other utilities (because there was probably tax money involved in those things at least during start-up). no cable TV because cable co’s work with local govt’s to ensure their monopolies. no phone. no police or fire service. no use of any road maintained by local or federal money. no access to any food, drug or substance which is regulated or tested by the FDA. no protection from foreign invaders (ha!). no employment regulation – if you can find someone to pay to you under the table (as long as that business is not regulated in any way by the government), you can work. no 401k. no access to any bank or financial business that is regulated by the govt..
in other words: sit in your bunker, don’t make use of anything that the government regulates, maintains, sells or provides, and STFU until you die.
deal?
sign up below.
You fail to add to that list bad things that happen that people imagine are because of government, but are not. I also think, given the current economic climate, things like eminent domain seizures and contracting opportunities are way down, so if these complaints are driving anything, they are old ones that are only surfacing now. I also have to wonder about people who don’t get a job automatically coming to the conclusion that a minority obviously got the job meant for them. Do people really know who is getting the job enough to draw these kinds of conclusions.
Speaking of eminent domain, my understanding is that it more severely affects minorities (Ilya Somin at Volokh mentions it, and here are some stats, but I only came across the Institute of Justice thru Google, so I don’t know much about them, but it’s been a while since we had an eminent domain discussion here), but these gatherings look pretty pale to me, though everything has been thru various photosets on the web.
Has there been any polls of those who attended the rallies? Or is it impossible to get an accurate sample like that?
Fix the economy, raise their wages, give them the means to buy healthcare and other things, that’s what they want.
You may not understand that basic thought process, but they don’t want to think of themselves as needing a government handout. It impacts their sense of self respect.
You can think it is stupid like Russells bag of hammers, I respect it, that sense of self is what the country was built on. Your charity, well meaning and honestly given, diminishes them in their eyes.
I agree with everything you’ve said here. Every single word.
How has it happened that these folks feel like their entire way of life is threatened, and that they are in danger of becoming dependent on the charity of folks who look down on them?
People who get up and go to work every day, who live modestly and honestly, who do their best to be responsible for themselves and for their families, ought to have those things be recognized as their contribution to the social compact. That contribution should be respected, and reciprocated by having their interest considered in decisions made by other people and institutions.
That’s the way you build and sustain human communities and cultures.
I don’t really see that happening. And I don’t really see government as the reason for that. If anything, government is trying to staunch the bleeding. Maybe it’s not doing a good job of it, but as you note, at least the intention is sort of good.
It probably is rude and unwelcome for me to say the folks who showed up in DC over the weekend are dumb as a box of hammers. It’s true, I occasionally say rude and unwelcome things.
But you tell me how running around with a picture of Obama photoshopped to look like the Joker, or like a cartoon of an African witch doctor, is going to make these folks lives better, at all.
They’re being played, and if they think guys like Glenn Beck give one rat’s behind about them or their lives, I call it folly.
I invite any one of them to call Beck and say, I’m going to lose my mortgage, can you help me work out a new deal with the bank? Or, the auto parts plant in my town is moving offshore, what can I do to convince them to stay? Or, my wife has cancer and I have no coverage, is there any way I can get the treatment comped?
See what Glenn Beck says. If Beck doesn’t suit, call FreedomWorks, or the National Taxpayers Union, or the Institute for Liberty, or any of the other sponsors of the 9/12 protest.
Call them up, tell them your kid needs a loan so she can finish college and maybe get a job other than retail clerk, and see if they help out.
I think it sucks that every person in this country who wants to work can’t get a job. I think it sucks that you can work a full time job and still not have enough money to pay for food, shelter, and a reasonable level of basic health care. It think it sucks that a college education is increasingly out of reach for middle class kids, even if they’re willing to take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt.
I think all of that sucks. I think everyone should be just as mad as they can be.
You can work your whole damned life and end up with nothing. Not a damned thing. Why shouldn’t they be mad as hell?
But I think channeling that anger into walking around with a teabag stapled to your hat, or carrying a picture of Nancy Pelosi with a Hitler moustache, or wearing a 9mm on your ankle when you attend a forum on a health care proposal, is a collossal waste of time.
It’s folly.
These folks are being played, and my heart quite sincerely goes out to them. Not least because I could easily be next. I’ll probably eke enough years out of the software biz to retire, but I’m 53. If I was 30 or even 35 I’d be thinking about another way to make a living.
Cause that’s in the process of going away, too.
And the source of the problem is not publicly provided health care, or a lack of open carry privileges, or Mexicans.
And the solution is not drawing Hitler moustaches on a picture of Barack Obama. Even if it makes you feel good to do that.
My chances of personally getting through to someone in a large corporation with a complaint are low. My chances of personally getting through in government seem even lower.
Long story short, my experience has been the opposite. YMMV, and I don’t mean that sarcastically.
That is an observation that doesn’t cut obviously onto either side of the argument.
I’m not really sure if there was a specific point I was trying to make with that observation. It just struck me as curious.
Maybe it’s because corporations are more responsive to public sentiment, but I find that point of view hard to align with reality.
russell – you oughta know that one person would get help. That one caller would get put on easy street, become the next Joe the Plumber and spend three telling us how they just “called on their community” like everybody should. Just so Beck can spend the next election cycle rubbing that one non-government success story in our faces.
It’s against the law for a not insignificant number of people to have a job.
All those government backed student loans bid up the price of tuition.
It’s against the law for a not insignificant number of people to have a job.
You lost me on that one.
All those government backed student loans bid up the price of tuition.
Oh yeah, I forgot, the dreaded unintended side effect of market forces.
Everything that anyone does or doesn’t do has unintended side effects. Sane people make decisions based on the primary effect they’re interested in and deal with the other stuff as it arises.
If someone can’t find an employer who thinks their labor is worth at least the minimum wage, they won’t be hired since employers are prohibited from hiring at less than the minimum wage. In effect, it’s against the law for them to have a job.
And here I thought the “against the law for … people to have a job” comment was referring to undocumented workers.