by liberal japonicus
Count-me-in posted, via Steve Benen, this link to a former Republican congressional staffer who quit because he was fed up and bob_is_boring, (who I am sure isn't, but that is his handle) wondered why it hadn't been front paged. So here it is.
It is an interesting piece, and a few have picked it up, notably James Fallows, Mike Tomasky, and the previously mentioned Steve Benen.
I don't really have anything to add to it, but I do think that there is a common thread, despite the surface differences, between the political situation in the US and watching Naoto Kan get run out of office, but I can't quite put my finger on it.
Unrelated to that, but interesting in a depressing way is the Legistorm page that details Lofgren's salary and the comments that have found their way there.
Unfortunately, I don't see anyway out of it, the cycle is a downward spiral. What do y'all think?
I’m not informed about Japanese politics, but the Lofgren essay is a finger pointing to a naked king. The GOP “descent into madness” is the current analogue to a time in the Twenties when the KKK took over a large segment of US politics via the Democrats. The outcome is not yet clear but my instinct is that the boil will have to come to a bigger head before it can be lanced. And even then healing will be measured in years, not months. And it might take a generation.
Meantime, a looming global economic disaster remains unresolved and the characters on stage are barely able to remember their lines, much less keep from tripping over the furniture. It’s worse than sad. It’s tragic.
I had to copy and paste that article into Word. Was the 30-character column width really necessary? Asked rhetorically, of course.
The Republican Party has to destroy itself as a national force. Then the Democrats can split (again) and we might get an actual left party out of it. (If the right branch of the Democrats call themselves “the Republican Party,” fine, but the name may be too tainted by then.)
The hopeful fact is that the Republicans’ worst, most bigoted elements skew old; the Tea Party may have some young members but it is decidedly not a youth movement. That limits how violent it can get, and also means it’ll burn itself out demographically even if nothing else gets better. But that process will take a couple of decades.
There’s also a contingent of sort of middle-class quasi-libertarian types about my age, early forties, who we’ll be stuck with for a long time. But they may change their tune about rugged individualism as they age into the too-old-to-get-hired-and-too-young-to-retire gap. And they’re not really into racial/cultural super-conservatism.
It’s a slow process, though, and our politics are going to be really dysfunctional in the meantime.
The 2010 elections were crucial, and redistricting is going to make it even harder than it was before to make these people go away. But we have to make them go away, not hope that they just die off. Maybe it’s too late, but we really need to fight, not watch the country go die like a sickening snuff film.
Clearly, a lot of us here will go to the polls and do our duty in that way. But it might take more than that. I hope we figure out what that “more” is really soon.
It’s tempting to look at Matt McIrvin’s comment (the first paragraph) and talk about what the country will look like after the Republican Party destroys itself. It’s a lot more pleasant to skip the part about the fascist years. I’m afraid they’re not going to destroy themselves though, not in my lifetime or maybe the next generation’s. As russell says, they have the money. Once fascists have power, they don’t go away without a fight.
Maybe it’s time to take those sons of bitches out.
I guess my comment above could be seen as not helping with this, but I’m seeing a *lot* of vivid death imagery in recent political blog comments over the past few days.
I’m not sure it’s so helpful: there are well-known psychological results to the effect that concentrating on death makes people’s political impulses more authoritarian and tribalistic.
What I was trying to do, couched in more positive terms, is point out that the young today are actually pretty damn progressive. I’m not talking about some eternal verity here; this *wasn’t the case* when I was a teenager. The Eighties conservative movement had a lot of youth support. Those kids are all fogies my age now.
Now the problem in the short- to medium-term is that the young don’t vote a lot. They especially don’t vote in midterm elections, which is a large part of what happened in 2010. But you can sometimes get them to turn out a bit in presidential elections, which is a large part of what happened in 2008.
I see the *movement* to elect Obama as a very hopeful thing beyond the personal characteristics of Barack Obama. Those people are still out there, and they will only get more powerful as they get older. Part of what has to happen is to use that fact to move the frame of acceptable discourse.
…So, for instance, a lot of what I’ve been doing lately is looking for instances in which American self-described liberal Democrats are thinking about economics in ways that basically fall into right-wing categories–calling for austerity and spending cuts, for instance–and trying to move their intuitions a little.
I think a large part of the weakness of modern progressivism is that right-wingers basically own the whole acceptable mainstream frame of conversation about money, taxes and spending, etc., so that Paul Krugman sounds like a radical when he talks about things that used to be common knowledge. This isn’t a new thing; it’s been going on since the 1980s. It isn’t going to change because people supported some candidate or other; we have to change thinking from the bottom up. And it’s sensible to start with the people who are already sympathetic.
I’m not trying to foment civil war. I hope that you’re right about the mobilization of young people to the polls in 2012. What I’m worried about it that there’s not sufficient enthusiasm to get them there. That’s our first fight. But just like any gun battle, it requires strategy, discipline and participation.
“Maybe it’s time to take those sons of bitches out.” Of power? Yes.
What I’m worried about it that there’s not sufficient enthusiasm to get them there. That’s our first fight. But just like any gun battle, it requires strategy, discipline and participation.
Of course there’s little enthusiasm. As Matt points out, younger citizens are broadly progressive. The Democratic Party… isn’t. It’s all well and good to talk about having the discipline to hold your nose and vote for a center-right technocrat because he’s the lesser of two evils, but that’s no way to generate enthusiasm. Telling people they have literally no choice but to compromise their principles just to participate generates resignation and a sense of marginalized insignificance rather than enthusiasm and a sense of meaningful participation…
Ultimately, it is yet proof positive that democracy indeed is the hardest form of governance because in its optimum form it requires the most out of ordinary people.
Unfortunately, the ordinary people of the United States have proven themselves to be the most put-upon and callow.
What needs to happen, in addition to what I have adduced before here and in the creaky windmills of my own mind, is that Americans need to re-connect the solid social progress that has been most conspicuously made in terms of the mainstreaming of gays to a sense of economic progress; there is something seriously un-wired between the head and the ass when we can accept gay marriage, but somehow look the other way with a CEO making 500-odd-times what an entry-level worker makes. There was a time when we were all for worker rights and a decent salary that could keep us in at least a regular change of underwear and Pabst Blue Ribbon, yet balked at the idea of gays having the right to be, well, gay. Now, we’ve gone the other way.
So if the bottom-up is the only meaningful direction, then we have to start with the fact that we permitted this state of affairs in the first place. Geert Hofstede had the last word: the top gets its strength from the bottom. The cultural mandarins, the religious quacks, and the political sadists never have the platforms they have if it were not for those the bottom permit them to have.
I do not advocate violence, but I’m still waiting for the day when a corporate boardroom gets raided mid-meeting by a band of people sufficiently pissed-off enough to treat them with the utter contempt they richly deserve.
This was, to me, spot on:
American religious fundamentalist seem to prefer the Old Testament to the New (particularly that portion of the New Testament known as the Sermon on the Mount)
Jesus as the Golden Calf, an idol with no message.
“The Democratic Party… isn’t [progressive]. It’s all well and good to talk about having the discipline to hold your nose and vote for a center-right technocrat because he’s the lesser of two evils, but that’s no way to generate enthusiasm.”
I’m not sure why people like you, envy, don’t understand that the President is not governing by himself. He is not a center-right technocrat. He’s dealing with an obstructionist Congress – you know, that branch of Government that passes laws. He is strategically trying to move things forward despite a fascist, obstructionist movement in Congress (which is joined by a handful of blue dog Democrats who hold their seats only because they talk the talk and walk some of the walk of the right). The right is very effective, not only at affecting the conversation, but at obstructing the legislative process. What Obama was able to accomplish in the first two years of his term was a minor miracle.
Does this make me a front-pager? I’ll be looking for my ObWi check in the mail.
The long view taken, above, by John Ballard, Matt McIrvin and sapient — while attractive — assumes that we come out the other side of this relatively intact.
It’s pretty clear that the national GOP is willing to burn the whole fncking thing down if they don’t get more austerity [read: tax breaks for billionaires, etc.]. Like grind it to a halt. Better to rule in Hell and so forth.
I really want to assume that somewhere (one imagines a smoky room filled with immaculately dressed old men with watch fobs] the Real Conservatives Who Hold All of the Power are actually pulling the strings and acting in good faith, if not the general interest. This assumption plays out when, say, a Palin, or, more recently, a Bachmann, has a nice flash-in-the-pan moment before fading into Teh Crazy. (One hopes this will also be the case with Perry; as a recently ex-Texan, I can tell you this guy is a) stupid, b) nuts, c) corrupt^n, and d) dangerous.)
But now I’m just not sure. As I mentioned on the other thread: this article wasn’t surprising (except that the prose is pretty good); it just brought my fring-y-ist thoughts about the margins of how ill-intentioned the national party is in my most paranoid moments (or so I thought) closer to the mainstream.
Lofgren includes a quote from John Judis on the obvious “American precedent for today’s Republican Party.” But I’m surprised that he didn’t even mention that not only is my party (or, more accurately, the party of the same name that I have been part of for decades) pursuing the same approach as Calhoun’s antebellum Southern Democrats, it is being driven today by essentially the same folks.
Not, obviously, the same individuals. But individuals from the same tradition and culture. The same horror at the “other” (moderately broadened to include not just blacks but other non-white immigrants). The same old-time religion. The same recruitment of poor whites to fight (so far electorally) in defense of the privileges of the aristocrats. “The South shall rise again!” Indeed.
I see the *movement* to elect Obama as a very hopeful thing beyond the personal characteristics of Barack Obama.
Yeah, I don’t really. That’s not to suggest that it means nothing at all, but I don’t think hope is warranted; there’s a reason the word ‘movement’ needed to be modified in some way (although I don’t know what the ‘*’s mean). My view is that it wasn’t a political movement at all: true political movements – like, for instance, the anti-liberal oblivion-craving reactionary movement which calls itself the Grand Old Party – aren’t characterized by its members voting and then completely forgetting about their politics for the next four years. If Obama For America was a *movement*, the political landscape in the US would look a lot different than it does at the moment.
As mentioned upthread, Lofgrin’s article has nothing surprising or new in it, AFAIC, but it would be nice if it helped some critical mass of people start to get over the weird idea that because something is extreme or unpleasant, it can’t be true (e.g. that the current GOP is insurrectionist and dangerous). Even Brian Lamb might notice in a few decades.
bob_is_boring: “The long view taken, above, by John Ballard, Matt McIrvin and sapient — while attractive — assumes that we come out the other side of this relatively intact.”
I’m not assuming that at all. I think we will not come out of this intact unless we get good electoral results in 2012, and that will only be a first step. Barring that, I do think there will be blood. Either it’s going to be the blood of most of the country who has been trampled upon without a fight, or it’s going to be violent conflict. People are not going to deal well with having a reasonably comfortable standard of living purposely and permanently snatched out of their reach. There are already many people in that position, and more being added by the day. The problem is, the left isn’t the group that has the guns, so I’m afraid when it comes to that, the left isn’t going to be calling the shots. Or determining where they’re aimed.
this article wasn’t surprising (except that the prose is pretty good)
Now see, I see maybe not the opposite, but a lot of red flags that make me discount the article. The title, frex (cult?). Where it was “published” (Truthout?). The “both are bad but let me just talk about one” aspect of the article. Calling people crazy. And how does a guy that has worked for the past 28 years in Washington have any idea what the base actually thinks is beyond me.
This reads so much like normal Kos fodder that I can’t understand why anyone on the left thinks it is some sort of revelation just because the guy claims to have been a “cult” member.
And remind me, why would I give any credence to a staffer who’s apparent area of expertise is budgets wax eloquent on religion (just to take one example)? Especially when the purpose of that foray is to compare Republicans to Gadarene swine? And that metaphor really doesn’t make much sense to me anyway.
In short, ho hum. Next.
bc: And how does a guy that has worked for the past 28 years in Washington have any idea what the base actually thinks is beyond me.
Enlighten us, then.
Wow. That saved me some writing. An ultraconservative friend asked me to email him what I had against the right, and now all I have to do is type in a link. (Bonus points for the author pointing out what stinks about the Democrats, while still acknowledging that the Republicans are worse.)
Enlighten us, then.
I’m not saying I know. I know what I think and I’d better leave it at that lest Gary pounce. And I’m saying a career budget staffer is not likely to know either.
And I’m saying a career budget staffer is not likely to know either
Why not? I mean, someone who has been working on The Hill for 28 years surely knows something about what “the base” thinks/wants, no?
Nevermind, don’t answer that, instead, are there any portions of the Lofgren piece describing the views of the GOP base that you find particularly unfounded?
” lest Gary pounce.”
I wish he would. Gary hasn’t been around lately, AFAIK.
Tne ‘Gadarene swine’ are a term/image used by preachers on the Right regularly enough to become a code word. So I do not see its use in this context as inappropriate.
Maybe it’s time to take those sons of bitches out.
Full quote, which is to say, not as cited on Fox News:
Everybody here’s got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let’s take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong!
Note the first sentence.
I can’t understand why anyone on the left thinks it is some sort of revelation
I doubt anyone does.
Ugh: Sure, it’s possible that he knows more. But knowledge of every day life seems to be inversely proportionate to time spent in Washington. IHHO, of course.
As for the other question:
1) Default in the debt is irrelevant as the Second Coming is nigh/playing hard ball on the debt ceiling was an act of economic terrorism;
2) “Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn’t look, think, or talk like the GOP base.”
I could go on and on. Not representative at all, I think. I mean, come on, when you make comparisons to or reference the Salem witch trials, the Supreme Soviet, possessed swine, battle of the Old Testament, the Koch brothers, birtherism, Paul Krugman, Gov. Walker, Big Pharma ™, Ayn Rand etc. in ONE ARTICLE with precious little mention of insider budget experiences (which I would actually find rather interesting) don’t expect me to be impressed or even interested. Social Security = “earned benefits . . .”
I wouldn’t know what’s on Fox News, russell.
Does this make me a front-pager? I’ll be looking for my ObWi check in the mail.
You’ll be getting exactly half of my weekly check. In fact, you probably have already received it!
All the warm fuzzies and good karma that you get for helping out here as well as my gratitude is, strictly speaking, off the books.
I’m sure that’s so slarti.
I’m also sure that Fox’s editing of Hoffa’s comments, leading to folks inferring an actual threat of violence, was not inadvertent.
You can open carry an assault rifle to a Congressperson’s “town hall” meeting, but god help you if you try to get people to vote.
The question of knowing what the ‘base’ thinks is an interesting and problematic one, I think. It is relatively easy to doubt anyone’s opinion of the base on the grounds that they are not a part of it and a lot of blog fights descend into demanding that people provide bona fides for their perception.
But the article, at least in my reading, while making some observations about the base, is less about the base and more about the Republican party, which I do not think are equivalent. In fact, Here’s what the piece seems to build up to:
As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars.
3. Give me that old time religion.
I clipped out the prose after each of these points, but none of them is an observation about the base, they are all observations about the Republicans that he presumably worked with and interacted with on the Hill. As a congressional staffer, I think that Lofgren should have some insight into what the Republican party is, so I think you dismiss his observations at your peril.
I doubt anyone does.
That’s because you have common sense. Google Lofgren’s name and it’s all over the “left” web.
So I do not see its use in this context as inappropriate.
Hartmut, you’re right. I personally have never heard it used in a political context, but a quick search shows that George Will used “Gadarene rush” in a column in 2010. Shows what I know.
“Gadarene” is one of George Will’s favorite words.
god help you if you try to get people to vote.
Now come on; there’s no evidence for that. What happened to ACORN was a total accident.
knowledge of every day life seems to be inversely proportionate to time spent in Washington
Er…why would you say that? When I was hanging out in DC and socializing a bit with congressional staffers, I got the impression that they were underpaid working in a high cost of living metro area and had awful job security. They seemed like similarly educated professionals anywhere else; they had families, were balancing household budgets, complaining about the commute, etc.
So why do you think these people as a class are ignorant of everyday life? Do you think the government gives them free servants?
bc, given the content, it is hardly surprising that the “left” web would pick up on it, while the “right” web would ignore it. Which may say something about their respective prejudices. But not necessarily anything about Lofgren’s biases, if any.
Maybe it’s time to take those sons of bitches out.
“Don’t retreat: reload!”
“And you know, I’m hoping that we’re not getting to Second Amendment remedies.”
Hey, anybody seen my Liberal Hunting License anywhere? I think I left it next to my Purple Heart Band-Aid at the last Tea Party rally.
Thanks stickler. There’s so much of this outrageous crap that one can’t keep it all in mind. I had forgotten about the gleeful and mass mocking of Kerry’s Purple Heart at the GOP convention. Jesus, what a proud moment.
it is hardly surprising that the “left” web would pick up on it, while the “right” web would ignore it. Which may say something about their respective prejudices. But not necessarily anything about Lofgren’s biases, if any.
Exactly so. And Lofgren’s biases, whatever they might be, also don’t determine whether what he is saying is *accurate* or not. Furthermore, the accusation that he doesn’t know what ‘everyday life’ is like for the Base of the GOP is both immaterial (because vague – the matter at hand is what their political life is like), unprovable (which is convenient), and very likely false anyway.
If you had told me 35 years ago that the GOP would be the party of situational ethics, truth-is-subjective, anti-rational Postmodernism, I would have thought you were on some powerful drugs. Oh well.
Oh well.
I think the guy is spelled Orwell, just like Ah-nold. 😉
—
I am not calling for violence but I would be willing to commit it against certain* RW figures, should they by chance stroll by me while I have the appropriate tools at hand. Admittedly that’s unlikely to the extreme. Dubya does not make the list and is about the only one coming to within a 1000 miles of me (Rummy might have, not fully sure).
*not strictly linked to actual criminality but to how strongly I personally loathe them. Currently Eric Cantor tops the list.
Currently Eric Cantor tops the list.
I’m neither calling for violence, nor am I willing or interested in committing it against anyone. There’s enough of that going around, IMO.
If I could visit some fate or other on a guy like Cantor, I’d have him spend a couple of years trying to raise his kids on a minimum wage income. Or no income.
IMVHO these guys don’t need a beating. That would only confirm their sense of being among the embattled righteous few.
They need to live with some direct experience of the consequences of their words and actions.
They could look at it as an opportunity to show us all how to quit complaining and rise to the challenge of life without the government teat. Leading by example, as it were.
Think of it as something like an “It’s A Wonderful Life” remake. Eric Cantor wakes up to find that he’s just been laid off from his job as a Wal-Mart greeter, which was where he landed after being laid off from his teaching job, only to find that one of his kids has an acute chronic illness that requires $100 a day in meds.
Oh yeah, and the bank is taking his house.
Show us how it’s done, Eric.
1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.
2. They worship at the altar of Mars.
3. Give me that old time religion.
Looking at it from the outside, the conservative agenda looks much simpler than this. To me, anyway.
Here is a quote from Allen Raymond. Raymond was hired by the New Hampshire Republicans to jam a Democratic GOTV phone bank when Jeanne Shaheen was running against Sununu for NH governor. He was busted, and spent three months in jail for it.
He was invited to post over at Talking Points Memo as a host of their ‘Table For One’ thing. Here is an excerpt from his comments there, discussing what he saw his role to be as a professional Republican operative:
As a Republican campaign operative at the Republican National Committee it was drilled into me that election law attorneys serve the purpose identifying the bright line of the law so it could be taunted but not crossed. Anybody who has a problem with that or doesn’t get it doesn’t understand America. America is about self interest, within the rule of law.
Bolds mine.
“Self-interest within the rule of law” sounds like a not-so-bad thing. It’s certainly a crisp and easy to understand formulation.
And what could be wrong with it? Everybody does what they want, nobody breaks the law. All good.
What “self-interest within the rule of law” excludes is any sense of common purpose, or any sense of mutual obligation or responsibility. Any sense of being involved in or committed to any concern broader than your own, personal interests.
Individual people *may choose* to involve themselves in interests broader than their own personal concerns, but there is no institution that can demand it of them.
Certainly no public institution.
And the proper purpose of government and public institutions generally is nothing more or less than creating a context where each of us can pursue our own personal self-interest, with the minimum possible interference or constraint from anyone else.
That is what the Republican agenda appears to be, to me.
Perhaps not. But there was no shortage of people who claimed that Sarah Palin advocated violence against Gabrielle Giffords, no? Probably lots of people still do.
Editing. Context-stripping.
But I wasn’t underscoring the “take [them] out” part of it so much as the “sons of bitches” part. “No labels” is convenient so long as it’s the other guys doing the name-calling.
We can have an elevated discourse or sons of bitches, but I don’t think those two mix very well.
My point of view in the matter, anyway. I don’t expect to get a lot of agreement on this point.
election law attorneys serve the purpose identifying the bright line of the law so it could be taunted but not crossed.
To me this is the key phrase. What does it mean to ‘taunt’ the law? Odd phrase. It’s not the same thing as civil disobedience, which implies a respect for law, i.e. breaking the law and suffering the consequences to make your point. Seems to me that the modern GOP uses the letter of the law against the spirit of the law. The idea is to break down customs and institutions (and eventually simply change the law to make the bad thing you want to do fully legal). There’s an endless list of things which are technically legal but generally haven’t been done because they’re a.) stupid, b.) insane, 3.) pointlessly destructive (It’s not illegal to poke yourself in the eye, for instance). Debt ceiling gambit is a perfect example, but hardly the only one. It’s loophole-ism to the nth degree. It’s pure power lust, and the meta-legal things which make the American system work – customs, trust – are swept away. In today’s Washington DC, this is called ‘smart’. I can think of other words for it.
We can have an elevated discourse or sons of bitches, but I don’t think those two mix very well.
That’s because it’s difficult to have an elevated discourse with sons of bitches. Obama continues to try.
The idea is to break down customs and institutions
Good point, jonnybutter. Certainly some customs and institutions need to be broken down occasionally (slavery, Jim Crow). But customs and institutions such as people’s efforts to get out the vote? The concept of one person, one vote? Hmmm.
I strongly doubt that the author of the linked article is actually a former Republican staffer. He sounds like a liberal mouthpiece. Not to say that I disagree with anything he says. I just think the piece reads like progressive porn (the other side KNOWS it’s screwed up and crazy, they just can’t admit it!).
Slarti, you are making a logical error. You are treating the states of these things as binary (either they’re doing it or not).
There is also relative frequency and virulence to consider.
So make your case on that basis, since the one you’re using is irrelevant (because both sides DO do it, but we need to go further to say anything useful).
I strongly doubt that the author of the linked article is actually a former Republican staffer.
Troll alert. You don’t fake 30 years working in congress. He is well known.
it’s difficult to have an elevated discourse with sons of bitches. Obama continues to try.
Not ‘difficult’. Impossible. It’s worse than foolish to try. Obama ‘continues to try’ for political reasons – it’s what oblivious ‘independents’ think they want.
Certainly some customs and institutions need to be broken down occasionally (slavery, Jim Crow)
I’m talking about the customs and institutions of government, like: don’t block every single nominee of the Executive Br.; don’t use the filibuster for every single bill; don’t hold the economy hostage to default…stuff like that.
I’m talking about the customs and institutions of government, like: don’t block every single nominee of the Executive Br.; don’t use the filibuster for every single bill; don’t hold the economy hostage to default…stuff like that.
This got me thinking about the endless campaign. I hear it used to be that there was a time for campaigning and a time for governing, such that the two parties agreed after the election to get things done, even if they didn’t necessarily agree on what those things would be. If that’s true, when did that change, or over what time period did our politics devolve into what they now are? I’d guess it started getting much of its steam during the Clinton era, right next to the internet and the expansion of cable news.
hsh, yes.
As a congressional staffer, I think that Lofgren should have some insight into what the Republican party is, so I think you dismiss his observations at your peril.
So, if another congressional staffer writes the opposite, do we dismiss that at our peril as well? I sense a logical flaw here.
Julian called that piece “progressive porn.” Well said.
Nothing new there, nothing particularly insightful, just a rehash of the progressive lament that the country just doesn’t get how awesome progressives are and how awful Republican/conservatives are.
Hoffa’s speech should be an embarrassment to the left, but it’s defended.
Surely, there is a slice of the Republican apparatus that has its head buried in big business’ lap, but the left does the same for organized labor and does so proudly and publicly. Yet, the fervor doesn’t catch on outside the left’s base. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone here that people really do get most of what progressives are selling and there really isn’t a market.
That’s an approach that’s virtually guaranteed to fail in any endeavor to elevate the discourse. If that was ever an actual goal, that is, which I am not at all sure is the case.
I watched this again the other night, and it resonated, somehow. It’s probably just me that sees something funny there; don’t ask me why.
so I think you dismiss his observations at your peril
Maybe so. It’s just the tenor of the whole article that says to me there is not much there. It reads like Rachel Maddow wrote it. In fact, he links to other liberals to make a lot of his points. Julian’s progressive porn label is close.
So why do you think these people as a class are ignorant of everyday life? Do you think the government gives them free servants?
No, they’re just in Washington. Myopia. He’s hanging around with POLITICIANS every day, for heaven’s sake. Tends to warp the brain. And nothing turns the brain faster from reality than daily doses of federal budget talk. It’s been proven.
America is about self interest, within the rule of law.
If you ask me, it’s more of ‘as far as one can get away with it’.
I get the impression that the Hobbesian view that people obey the law only because (or as far as) it has fangs is extremly common in the US. And to me it also seems stronger with religious people. It’s the belief in the ‘Gotcha’ God often combined with the claim that non-believers cannot be virtuous because they lack the fear of divine retribution (and why would anyone be virtuous voluntarily?).
So, if another congressional staffer writes the opposite, do we dismiss that at our peril as well? I sense a logical flaw here.
If you dismiss it out of hand simply because the writer *spent too much time in DC*, yes. If you find specific reasons to think it is wrong, that’s just normal critical reading. No one is claiming that you can’t find fault with the piece, just that a generalization about *being in DC for too long* isn’t valid criticism.
So, if another congressional staffer writes the opposite, do we dismiss that at our peril as well? I sense a logical flaw here.
So, McKinney, you believe that what someone says should be treated independent of reality. That someones speech should be not checked against the facts. IS that how lawyers work? Uh sh.t, they have fingerprints!!!
Do you really believe in GOPs self righteous: We create new reality. That must be good for the country, if its good for you, isn’t it?
Shortly after i came to this country i realized that capitalism is better then communism because it helps individuals instead of collective. That came from many programs i enjoyed to get on my own feet. One by one individual: many individuals hence country is better off then if individual have always to sacrifice for collective. Later on i found out that is socialism part not capitalism part that helps individuals on the bottom. and the bottom is much more numerous and cheaper to help then middle.
So it must be true if an individual is better off in every case, then the country is better off.
But do you ever consider that in some cases when an individual is better off, let’s say a CEO gets huge bonuses, that many get hurt. Hence the country is worse off.Give it enough time for many CEOs to get exorbitant bonuses and it hurts almost everyone and you get present income inequality and poor consumers which can not spend enough, without more debt, to keep economy going. You get this present unemployment. But you create your own reality so you can treat what someone says independent of the real world. And CEOs deserve what they get for their work only.
Pure marketing mentality.
Russel
Lofgren and Allen Raymond are both correct, just on different levels. Lofgren describes what you get from leadership mentality that Raymond described. And what Raymond describes comes from idea that i described in last comment, idea that the country is better off if an individual is better off. It is a perversion of that idea because it doesn’t consider how many are worse off for one to get better off.
So you get 1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors.
Individualism is only good
2. They worship at the altar of Mars. They have to prove that the country is better off with individuals better off at any costs: they are patriots defending the country.
3. Give me that old time religion. And you have to be a believer in order not to check it against reality.
jonnybutter, yes, of course.
Surely, there is a slice of the Republican apparatus that has its head buried in big business’ lap.
A slice? What slice doesn’t? Can you name names?
but the left does the same for organized labor and does so proudly and publicly.
And that’s a bad thing because, they too, without exception, should be standing up for big business?
Somebody has to stand up for people who work.
Who doesn’t work? Aside from the ever-disappointing number of unemployed, I mean?
Pure capitalism (individualism) is as bad for the country as pure communism (collectivism). They are opposite extremes of an ideology, they both require believing independent of reality, they both give the same end results.
Both are dependent on central planing, whether 5 year plan to help weakest industry or tax cuts/ credits to help weakest segments of industries. How about socialism that helps weakest segments of population and controls both extremes?
It’s just the tenor of the whole article that says to me there is not much there. It reads like Rachel Maddow wrote it. In fact, he links to other liberals to make a lot of his points. Julian’s progressive porn label is close.
Actually CT, yes, this is precisely how lawyers work quite often: Logical validity and substantive argument aren’t important (see the above quote) except as regards the other side’s arguments. And if there is no logical problem on the other side, they make one up (‘What if a staffer wrote the opposite?’). With all due respect, it’s pure crap. The point is to ‘win’, not have the better argument, better plan, serve justice, etc. That what may be appropriate in a legal case isn’t so in a regular political argument is just kind of ignored.
sorry, this is the comment from critical tinkerer I was responding to:
So, McKinney, you believe that what someone says should be treated independent of reality. That someones speech should be not checked against the facts. IS that how lawyers work? Uh sh.t, they have fingerprints!!!
Who doesn’t work?
We Americans are all working-class people, janitors and Warren Buffet included, all to the same degree, all with the same resources and influence and power (except for the unemployed, natch).
Who doesn’t work? Aside from the ever-disappointing number of unemployed, I mean?
Well, corporations don’t work, although we know that they are people too. The people who work for them work though, and sometimes labor unions need to negotiate their individual needs that don’t coincide with the needs of the corporation.
McTx: Nothing new there, nothing particularly insightful, just a rehash of the progressive lament that the country just doesn’t get how awesome progressives are and how awful Republican/conservatives are.
And the awesomeness of Republican/conservatives these days is…?
Only when it’s convenient for the sake of our argument to know that. Otherwise, we don’t know any such thing.
For that matter: show of hands, who thinks coporations are people?.
Of course, I didn’t say anything at all like this.
Just attempting to capture some explication of “people who work”, which is I admit somewhat narrower in scope than “people who breathe”.
Of course, I didn’t say anything at all like this.
Since we’re going all literal, I didn’t say you did. 😉
johnybutter
Thanks, i am aware of that. I am also aware that majority of congress are lawyers by profession, some 80% or more, as i can recall. Can’t find the article with that information.
Such lawyers Congress will have such mentality i recon.
I am trying to break the circle that lj was desperate about in his post
I am working on educating republicans to stop destroying this country, to conserve the conditions and ideas that created middle class. FDR ideas. Conservatives should conserve, right? Not progressively dismantle the conditions of prospering times, prospering for everyone. Reagan started progressively dismantling FDR ideas present for 50 years before.
Talk about history and FDR ideas with every republican, ideas that every progressive takes for granted. Do not let the bullsh!t goes trough without confronting it, whether said by your friend, family, coworker or your boss. No matter the cost, alternative is fascism and destruction of this country. Point to the paradox of their policy, point to the paradox of their ideas and ridicule it. Use the harshest words applicable. The best to use is religious wording since most of them are religious. Say openly that they are professing against Jesus’s ideas and words. Prove that they are hurting themselves in the end. Passionately but without extreme emotions.
That’s what i do to break the path toward the civil war.
Do not let the bulsh!t trough.
That’s what i do besides voting.
I think russell (way back at 7:03 AM) has a useful idea (fantasy) of what the GOP leadership, and likely all GOP politicians, need in order to get a grip on reality. (And something analogous would do Democratic politicians a world of good also.) But it isn’t going to happen easily.
That said, and without for a minute advocating it, I can still predict that absent some significant change of behavior the kind of violence that Hartmut and others mention metaphorically will eventually come down on a lot of politicians. With the GOP probably getting first (but not only) attention.
It’s unfortunate, to put it mildly. But I increasingly fear that it is unavoidable. Nothing short of that kind of vigorous smack up side the head with a 2×4 is likely to get their attention.
wj, the same has been said about high-level clerics that teach doctrines leading to the misery of many millions. Esp. priests working in the 3rd world have stated that they would love to force the archbishops and Roman cardinals to live a month or year under the conditions they help to create, e.g. by fighting contraceptives, esp. condoms (explicitly even for married couples with one partner HIV positive, even if the wife is sterile* an no pregnancy is prevented). And compared to some influential RW protestants the Vatican is a bastion of pure commiedom on social issues.
*a hypothetical case explicitly mentioned in a Vatican decision: a woman without an uterus may still not use a condom to prevent infection by husband since God could make her pregnant by miracle. Condoms are miracle-proof it seems.
I finally read the Lofgren piece. I read it looking for a specific piece of information: what made the author a Republican in the first place? You can’t be an “apostate” unless you were a believer first.
I did not find an explicit answer. Lofgren does say, in footnote 2: “I am not a supporter of Obama and object to a number of his foreign and domestic policies.” Perhaps he will write a follow-up sometime, enumerating the Obama policies he objects to. (If and when he does, I offer a small bet that bc, McTx, et al will NOT be as dismissive of either the article or of Lofgren himself. But I digress.) That Lofgren is sincere about not being a “supporter of Obama” seems plausible from the first paragraph of his June 26 LA Times Op-Ed but I for one would still like to know WHY he thinks (or at least, says) that “President Obama’s fiscal policies are a mess.” Is it because they are contrary to whatever policy preferences made Lofgren a Republican in the first place?
Lofgren does say, in the “Gadarene swine” paragraph:
Frank admission of self-interest as a partial motive for leaving seems entirely Republican in spirit. But quietly leaving is different from public apostasy. (I doubt anybody would know of, let alone comment on, the mere retirement of a congressional staffer.) And it doesn’t explicitly answer my original question, except perhaps indirectly: maybe there was a time when Lofgren thought that Republican policies served his own interests better than Democratic ones. I would love to know when that was the case.
If Lofgren has been a congressional staffer for thirty years, his career must have started in the first years of the Reagan administration. Maybe he already thought of himself as a Republican back then, maybe he didn’t. What puzzles me is this: what GOP policy preferences have changed in the last 30 years?
Oh, sure: the GOP has steadily become more … aggressive … in its pursuit of power, but “power” is merely a means to certain ends. Some of us recognized, even 30 years ago, what the GOP’s ends have always been: untax capital, abolish the Great Society, undo the New Deal, and reverse certain consequences of the Civil War. Some of us favor such ends, some of us don’t. Some of us, I suppose, favor the ends but have taken 30 years to grow disgusted with the means. I would like to know whether Lofgren is in that last camp, or whether it took him 30 years to figure out just what the GOP’s ends actually are.
–TP
Julian says “I strongly doubt that the author of the linked article is actually a former Republican staffer.”
This is provable one way or the other. My research led me to Michael S. Lofgren who worked for John Kasich, a Republican Congressman from Ohio from 1983-1994 and then spent the succeeding 16 years working on the House then Senate Budget committees.
You can argue that this is a different Lofgren or you can argue that someone is impersonating Lofgren. You can argue that Lofgren was really not a “Repbulican” but I don’t see how you can say this wasn’t written by a former Republican staffer.
I also have to disagree with Mr. McKinney who stated “Nothing new there, nothing particularly insightful, just a rehash of the progressive lament that the country just doesn’t get how awesome progressives are and how awful Republican/conservatives are”
Nowhere in the article did I see any hint that progressives are awesome. This is why this piece resonated with me. I am a man without representation. Voting for Democrats to fight off the onslaught of Republicans is like taking a butter knife to a machine gun fight.
Democrats are worthless, spineless and plain stupid. Unfortunately they are all I get to vote for in my desire to protect me from Republicans.
Lofgren’s piece may not have been “insightful” nor “new” but it perfectly encapsulated and articulated what I see. In that it has great value.
Liberal porn? Perhaps. But he sees the world as I do and it’s damned frightening.
BTW Tony asks some great questions of Mr. Lofgren that I too would like the answers to.
I think it’s fairly unlikely that the author of the piece is not the Mike Lofgren who worked for Kasich, and then for the budget committees.
At a minimum, if it were not, the actual Lofgren would likely have spoken up publicly by now.
I can think of lots of reasons why someone who was a Reagan-era Republican would be less than happy with the GOP today.
I *know* lots of people who were Reagan-era Republicans who are less than happy with the GOP today.
When I say “lots”, I mean most of the Reagan-era Republicans I know.
So, the basic narrative here seems completely plausible to me.
Russell, if the “basic narrative” you mean is the “I did not leave the GOP; the GOP left me” narrative, then I have no doubt that many people sincerely narrate their own political evolution like that.
My perplexity still stands, though: where exactly do “Reagan-era Republicans” differ with teabag-era Republicans?
That’s an honest question, not a rhetorical one. I am not a Republican of any sort, so I don’t pretend to know the answer. What I CAN say is that I would find certain answers … illustrative. If some Reagan-era Republican says “Look, I basically agree with the stated goals of the Tea Party, but I think the teabaggers are pursuing those goals too forcefully”, I think that would illustrate something. But it would illustrate something different if that Reagan-era Republican were to say “Today is not 30 years ago. I still think Reagan-era Republicanism made sense in 1981, but it doesn’t now. I have figured that out, and the teabaggers have not.”
–TP
I find it interesting, in this era of unquestioned belief, incoherent exhortations, flat-out sophistry and plain old horseshit, that there are those on the right ready to question the authenticity of the Lofgren piece, claim it as ghost-written, or poo-poo it as a reprise of what Markos Moulitsas serves up regularly.
It may very well be that a career on Capital Hill disconnects you with “the base.” But what did the second George Bush ever know of “the base”? What, with a largely coasted-through Yale degree and repeated shelter from failure? Duh. “The base” is a canard, a banality along the lines of “the masses” or “der Volk” (“die Volk”? I’d like Hartmut to set me straight on that).
“The base” would be more accurately described along the lines of Lenin’s useful idiots – a conglomeration of lick-spittles, parroters, live ventriloquists’ dummies, and in our special cocktail, lots of jesuschristers, flat-earthers, killjoys, and native son-wannabes.
The real vectors of the GOP’s ideological underpinnings doesn’t come from “the base.” It comes from people who hate government yet want careers in it, for the purpose of dismantling it. All what’s happened is that after 30 years or so of this poison, worked assiduously by a generation of politician-government haters, the formula’s reached a level of toxicity that whatever moderates are left in the Republican ranks can’t control its release.
If in fact Lofgren is who he says he is, the really astonishing thing about it is that it’s been said by an insider who’s now lapsed, because it wouldn’t be anything new if it were pinched off of Kos. One thing’s for certain – it sure as hell wouldn’t have been realized by anyone in “the base.” QED?
das/ein Volk Nom.Sg.
des/eines Volk(e)s Gen.Sg
dem/einem Volk Dat.Sg
das/ein Volk Acc.Sg
oh Volk Voc.Sg
die Völker Nom.Pl.
der Völker Gen.Pl
den Völkern Dat.Pl
die Völker Acc.Pl
oh Völker Voc.Pl
no indefinite article in the plural form.
Bevölkerung is the common term used for citizenry, although it includes non-citizens and excludes absent citizens (i.e. the strict meaning is residents = Einwohner)
The verb ‘völkern’ only exists with prefixes like be- and ent- (bevölkern = inhabit, populate; entvölkern = depopulate).
Never ever use the adjective ‘völkisch’ (except in historical context) which originally meant ‘populist’ but has been totally usurped by the Nazis. Be careful with using Volks- as a prefix for almost all combinations are historically tainted by either the Nazis or the Communists. Volkswagen is safe though. Beware of anything labeled Volksmusik (or worse volkstümlich) for it is not folk or traditional (music/songs) but an imitation created* to suck out and liquify the brains of its victims.
*main ingredients: saccharine (or frosting: Zuckerguß) and lard (Schmalz)
Thank you Hartmut. To start with – I don’t speak German, but I was thinking at that moment of Nazi-era posters and excerpts from Hitler’s speeches in all the parts in translation, referencing things like “we are a single people united in brotherhood” and all that – things also served up liberally by Rosenberg, Ernest Newman, etc., and regurgitated by Oswald Mosley across the Channel.
All it is was that I seem to remember seeing “die/der Volk” in a translated excerpt once.
My apologies for my ignorance. When my Japanese and other Asian students complain of the comparatively far simpler English article system, I can say that, well, it’s still a lot simpler than the German – though that’s not a knock against your language, as the article system comes naturally to you.
Another piece of ignorance on my part – so Schmalz is lard. I didn’t know, as it liberally comes up in the States, anglicized into adjectival form, to describe something ham-fisted, overdone, etc. (a schmaltz-y piece of music, a schmaltz-y movie, and so forth – I can only think that it got imported by way of Yiddish, mainly in vaudeville and burlesque routines).
where exactly do “Reagan-era Republicans” differ with teabag-era Republicans?
First, I will point out that I’m also not a Republican of any kind. I’m therefore speaking for other people, so add salt as required.
When the Reagan-era no-longer-Republicans I know discuss this, the following reasons come up consistently:
1. The religion thing. Which is to say, the embedding of conservative evangelical religiosity in the public sphere.
2. The unique and, to them, incomprehensible incompetence of George W Bush. I know a number of folks who voted for him in ’00 and either did not vote in ’04 or voted for Kerry. Mostly, did not vote.
3. The tendency among current-day Republicans toward irresponsible, destructive theatrical gestures. For example, the threat of not extending the federal credit limit.
4. The embrace of anti-intellectualism and historical ignorance.
That’s what I hear. And I hear it a lot, from lots of people.
I like “federal credit limit” instead of “federal debt ceiling.” It’s kind of the opposite of calling the estate tax the death tax. We may have found our liberal Karl Rove in russell.
To riff on what russell wrote in a more serious manner, I’d say disenchanted former Republicans agree with the general direction the tea party wants to go in without agreeing with how far they want to go in that direction.
On top of that, I’d say it’s like a phenomenon I’ve experienced on this very blog – agreeing with the position someone is taking but finding the style and/or validity of his or her arguments undesirable.
Without naming names, there was a regular here whom I almost always agreed with on the substance, but couldn’t sign on to “what [insert handle] said” because of the nature of [insert handle]’s rhetoric.
And, less commonly here, but more commonly on other blogs and life in general, I’ve agreed with someone’s conclusions based on my own premises and logic while finding the other’s premises and logic to be lacking in truth and soundness, respectively.
So I’d sum it up this way, listing reasons for disenchantment with the current GOP:
1. They’re taking it too damned far.
2. They’re just plain ugly about it.
3. They’re using bad arguments – not based on reality and poorly reasoned.
We may have found our liberal Karl Rove in russell.
I appreciate the point you’re making, but I want to be clearly on record as saying that I do not wish to be, and will not be, any form of Karl Rove, in this or any other lifetime.
It’s just not a hat I care to wear.
As LJ’s original thoughts on any connections between the Kan wind-up and the American scene have still not been addressed (understandably, since he and I are the only ones here, as far as we know, who live in Japan), I’ll advance a few thoughts of my own.
For what it’s worth, the symbiotic relations between the Japanese press and the government have long been far more entwined than in the States. A basic primer as best as I have ever understood it: The most obvious example is the Yomiuri Shimbun’s long, cozy relationship with the Liberal Democratic Party, and perhaps only somewhat less so, with the Keizai Shimbun, the Japanese equivalent of the WSJ. Less obvious to those overseas are the kisha clubs, the news-official interface between the press and the government that essentially, in exchange for relatively extensive access to the PM’s office and the cabinet, manages the news; what gets reported, and what doesn’t, is largely the doing of the kisha clubs. More subtle, but visible, is what I see as the management of quasi-official leaks by way of the kishas (would like to hear LJ’s take on that).
Now that that’s out of the way: my stab at the connection LJ is guessing at is that the Fox News-GOP connection has become something of a more toxic, more vitriolic version of this kind of interface. The kisha club-gov connect is far more button-down, far less noxious, but perhaps as ideological as the Fox-GOP nexus. The difference is the sense of moment Fox ramps up; this is America, America is the shining city on the hill that is being tarnished, and of course, full of pseudo-history and inflated destiny, must have the amps cranked up to 11. Mainstream Japanese culture is far too sophisticated for that (though the far-right is alive and well here – some links if I get time in a separate missive, if LJ doesn’t beat me to it, about the Japanese equivalent of the tea-baggers)
The PM’s office in Japan is about the most thankless in the whole realm of Japanese governance, and largely ineffective by design (the examples of Tanaka, Nakasone and latterly, Koizumi notwithstanding). Having said that, the Kan government’s response to “3/11” – the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, appended by the Fukushima crisis – parallels in some ways with what Obama has been facing: an obstructionist opposition (the LDP), an overweening corporate bloc indignant at having to accept responsibility for any of it (Tepco and the other, octopus-like regional energy combines), a lethargic public that complains well privately but doesn’t vote enough; and a press too full of information but unwilling to stick its neck out unless it’s from the right.
In the face of this whole political-corporate tsunami, Kan got fed up and called uncle. But rather like Obama, he actually accomplished quite a great deal in the worst crisis the country has faced since World War II.
Perhaps, then, what’s happening in the States is only a metastasized version of a phenomenon that has gone on for quite some time here at a far more moderate temperature setting. With far more cash, far more “corporatization,” far greater vulgarity, some stupendous, exaggerated self-importance and self-indulgence, and topped off with an encouragement of far more open extremism in the U.S., it’s inevitable that what you’ll get is the political equivalent of a Funkadelic show, totally over-the-top and unapologetic.
Maybe the connection, if there really is any then, is in the parallel and overlap with the manipulation of information and entrenched political/corporate oppositions, who have found how to end-run around their own governments.
I would like to know if a similar interface is occurring in the UK, or any of the other leading countries.
Actually the whole problem with the debt-ceiling debate was that people thought of it as being a credit limit, but it wasn’t a credit limit. Credit limits are set by creditors. It was more like a point below your credit limit beyond which you arbitrarily decide never to pay your bill.
Tony asks, “what GOP policy preferences have changed in the last 30 years?”
Unlike russell, I am a Republican and have been for 4 decades. So here’s where I see the changes. (Changes, I would add, which would make any politician with Reagan’s record, but without his name attached, get denounced for apostacy.) And I’ll limit myself to Reagan’s actions, since at the time Ragan was on the right of the party as a whole.
1) no tax increases trumps any concern about deficit reduction. When cutting taxes failed to produce the predicted increase in revenue, Reagan increased taxes to keep the defic from increasing so fast.
2) no consorting with the enemy. Reagan was famously friends with lots of Democrats in Congress, including Tip O’Neil (the Democratic Speaker of the House). They disagreed about a lot of policy issues, but still were friends. Don’t try that now.
3) public piety is an absolute must. Reagan rarely went to church, either before or while President. (Indeed, there was even some uncertainty as to which sect of Christian he was!) Do that now, and your chances of getting nominated by the party are nil.
4) ideological purity trumps every other consideration — AKA no compromise allowed. Ragan was pragmatic (see item 1 above and item 5 below) — getting things done came first. There is, for example, no way he would have refused the offer of a massive reduction in the size of government merely because it had some (small) tax increases included.
5) policy on immigration must be as draconian as possible; anything resembling “amnesty” is right out. Reagan signed an Immigration Act which provided amnesty to over 3 million illegal immigrants. Even suggest that now, and you’re toast as a Republican politician.
I could go on, but you get the picture. (In fairness to Reagan, I think a similar case could be made that no Republican President in the last 60 years would be acceptable to today’s Republican Party. “The party left me” indeed.)
wj,
Do you still count yourself as a Republican?
In my more moderate days I was concerned about issues and policy and considered voting for candidates who seemed reasonable, to hold the public good as paramount, and were smart and capable. Now I wouldn’t consider voting for anyone with an “R” next to their name at any level of government, because I don’t think smart, sane, reasonable people with the welfare [sic] of the country in mind could associate themselves with the GOP, no matter what they say.
And: why or why not? Your point 4) sort of sums up how I used to view things; although Bill Buckley’s views were anathema to me, I thought he was smart, reasonable, and willing to admit when he was defeated in debate. Respect for the process and will of the people and all that, like Reagan raising taxes to get the business of the country done.
I guess the thrust of my question (rather than about you or your views in particular) is: what does a reasonable/intelligent conservative do? Hold their nose and vote for the crazy god-botherers hellbent on destroying the middle class? Stay home? Vote for conservative Dems?
I think this article and the author are both a little suspect (not that I’m significantly in disagreement with many of the points made).
But why would those who comment here represent this as more credible than say, David Mamet and the views offered in his recent book, except that what’s offered fits the mindset better?
Matt McIrvin: Credit limits are set by creditors. It was more like a point below your credit limit beyond which you arbitrarily decide never to pay your bill.
Very true. The only trouble is, it won’t fit on a bumper sticker.
wj: …Reagan increased taxes to keep the defic from increasing so fast.
Also very true. And it reminds me of a Newsweek column from 1984:
It’s possible that George Will would nowadays deny he ever wrote that column, but I probably still have that copy of Newsweek in an old box somewhere.
Notice that Will implicitly defines “Reaganite” in the above paragraph. The Reagan who “must hurry to restore the government’s revenue base” was evidently NOT the Reagan whose name “Reaganites” revere, in George Will’s view.
Thirty years is a longer time than we sometimes acknowledge. It’s long enough to grow a whole new generation of voters. New voters can join an old party; if enough of them do so, they can redefine the party’s character — to the point that it starts to disgust the original partisans. But is that a plausible description of how the Grand Old Party changed in the last three decades?
–TP
But why would those who comment here represent this as more credible than say, David Mamet and the views offered in his recent book, except that what’s offered fits the mindset better?
Because Mamet is an idiot with no knowledge or experience in policy or government, and because he repeatedly made huge errors in fact and logic in his writings.
I mean, I read political scientists on the internet already; what possible benefit could I gain from reading the incoherent scrawlings of a playright whose political comments are more naive than a sixth-grade civics text book? My point is that when it comes to policy and government, Mamet says really dumb things.
To be fair, the author of the truthout piece said at least one dumb thing. His point about language and the naming of the stimulus bill strikes me as beyond stupid. No one on this planet cares one whit about what cutesy little names Congress gives its bills. They’re just irrelevant to normal people. What matters is outcomes. The fact that the stimulus was too small for the economic crisis we were facing matters a hell of a lot more than the name that Congress tacked on to the legislation. And people who hate Obama and thought the stimulus was bad policy would not have changed their minds if only the legislation had a different name. That’s just absurd.
So that was dumb. But it was one obviously stupid claim in a sea of at least plausible claims, written by someone with firsthand experience working as a Republican staffer. Mamet brings many many more obviously stupid claims with a lot fewer at-least-plausible claims and no first hand experience doing anything relevant.
‘What matters is outcomes.’
In the United States, what matters is how we get there. The outcomes are worthless if the means are totalitarian.
In the United States, what matters is how we get there. The outcomes are worthless if the means are totalitarian.
Care to expand on this?
totalitarian?
‘Care to expand on this?’
Sure. Totalitarian is one way an outcome is tainted. Fact is, most outcomes Progressives seek require new legislation and constitutionality is rarely considered, promised outcomes rarely reached, and promised costs usually exceeded. And when programs fail, the promise is always that it will work if we put more money in. ‘Obamacare’ was passed by a mere majority vote and most politically astute observers know that major legislative programs need a bipartisan consensus to ever be warmly received.
Somewhere back in these comments someone alluded to the fact that it seems we are at war, and I think we are. In that context, positions like that taken by the tea party element on the ‘debt ceiling’ issue should not surprise, no matter how drastic the outcome. The stakes are high.
bob, well I’m still registered as a Republican. Perhaps just a quixotic attempt to move the party back to sanity.
I feel perfectly comfortable voting for a sane and sensible candidate with an R next to his name. More, I think it a definite Good Thing. because the only way to get rid of the whackos is to build up a cadre of sensible elected Republicans.
It may, as I realize, be a futile effort. But failing another viable alternative, I think that we need to get back to having two parties which can be trusted in government. If that means atempting the impossible . . . well so be it.
New voters can join an old party; if enough of them do so, they can redefine the party’s character — to the point that it starts to disgust the original partisans. But is that a plausible description of how the Grand Old Party changed in the last three decades?
Tony, what happened to the GOP has two threads. First, Nixon (with an assist from LBJ) brought the Southern Democrats in. Second, Roe v. Wade forced thru something that, left alone, would have occurred over the course of the next 5-10 years anyway. And in doing so, motivated a bunch of religiously-motivated individuals to get deeply involved in politics. They were sufficiently dedicated that they were willing to put in the long hours in the political trenches, which resulted in their gaining positions of power within the party locally and at the state level.
The combination resulted in a party which steadily changed from a center-right one to what would, any time before 1990, have been regarded as a right-wing fringe party. And the trend has continued, to the point that I can get incredulous comments whenever I reveal my party registration — even from people who already know I’m a conservative.
I suppose it is a hopeful sign that the Democrats are willing to nominate center-right candidates (Obama comes to mind), now that it’s hard to find them among the Republicans. But I don’t have to like it, and I don’t.
“Sure. Totalitarian is one way an outcome is tainted. Fact is, most outcomes Progressives seek require new legislation and constitutionality is rarely considered, promised outcomes rarely reached, and promised costs usually exceeded. And when programs fail, the promise is always that it will work if we put more money in. ‘
I’m confused. American progressives are totalitarian based on this evidence?
Thank you, sekaijin, for getting at what I was trying to say precisely right and I’d underline the similarities between Kan and Obama in regard to accomplishing a lot in the face of incredible obstruction. The added fillup is that the DPJ (the current party in power) has just chosen a virtual unknown as the new Prime Minister because the infighting in the party who apparently wowed everyone with a spectacular speech but who seems to be a lot more centrist/conservative on several points.
One thing that makes the discourse in the US so much worse is that imho the population cannot accept the US at any position other than #1, which seems to necessitate a constant spending to keep up appearances as well as a toxic reaction whenever threatened.
GOB, I’m kind of impressed at what a bizarre tangent you’ve taken based on (what I thought was) a pretty banal notion. What I was trying to say was that voters care about the effects of government action, not the cute little names Congress attaches to it. Do you disagree with that?
Totalitarian is one way an outcome is tainted.
You’re really defining totalitarianism down here. Wikipedia defines it like this:
I don’t think it is reasonable to describe the process by which the ACA was passed as totalitarian. That’s just…completely wrong.
And in doing so, motivated a bunch of religiously-motivated individuals to get deeply involved in politics. They were sufficiently dedicated that they were willing to put in the long hours in the political trenches, which resulted in their gaining positions of power within the party locally and at the state level.
Do you have any evidence to support this claim? There seems to be a fair bit of evidence showing that the Christian Right’s origins as a political force were largely drawn from rage over desegregation and that abortion simply didn’t interest them for years after Roe v. Wade:
Second, Roe v. Wade forced thru something that, left alone, would have occurred over the course of the next 5-10 years anyway.
This analysis is inconsistent with history. Scott Lemiux, a political scientist who has studied this question extensively, explains:
GOB: ‘Obamacare’ was passed by a mere majority vote and most politically astute observers know that major legislative programs need a bipartisan consensus to ever be warmly received.
Totalitarians are funny people. Pretty much by definition, totalitarians are always a minority in their own society.
Nobody talks about the “totalitarian” impulse to require everybody to wear clothes, because pretty much everybody considers clothing to be “common sense”, not a “totalitarian” edict. (I have often said that a principled libertarian would be somebody who is as outraged by laws which forbid him to walk down the street naked, as about laws which forbid him to walk down the street armed. I have never met a principled libertarian.)
Policies which are so uncontroversial — so bipartisan — that not even run-of-the-mill libertarians object to them, are not the sort of policies that require “totalitarian” backing. No: “totalitarians” worthy of the name have to back policies that do NOT have majority support.
If a “consensus” is in favor of X, the totalitarian has nothing much to gain by championing X. If a “mere” majority is opposed to X, the totalitarian who opposes X has nothing much to do, either. To find gainful employment in the marketplace of ideas, the totalitarian has to be against policies which “mere” majorities support.
I do not mean to call GOB a “totalitarian”. I am only pointing out that an actual totalitarian would be just as likely as GOB to describe a majority as “mere” — when the majority supports something he opposes.
–TP
‘Obamacare’ was passed by a mere majority vote and most politically astute observers know that major legislative programs need a bipartisan consensus to ever be warmly received.
‘Mere majority vote’ is the way legislation is passed.
I think you need to revisit your understanding of the word ‘totalitarian’.
As for ‘bipartisan consensus’, anything presented by, or supported by, either Barack Obama or by the D’s in either house of Congress will be voted against, as a solid block, by the R’s in both houses.
I suppose Obama and/or the D’s could ask the R’s to write the legislation and then present it as their own as a way of gaining R support, but in many cases that’s virtually what they’ve done anyway, and still garnered zero support.
There will be no bipartisan consensus for at least the next 10 years, probably for another generation.
That is the reality of current-day US governance. Trying for bipartisan support is a non-starter. There will be none.
Also, for the record, Mike Lofgren’s career and political affiliation are a matter of public record. Not a matter of the opinion of anybody here.
As the man said, you can look it up.
This is making my head hurt. I don’t even know how to discuss stuff like this, it’s like arguing about whether water is wet.
Nothing personal GOB, I just don’t know where to go with stuff like this.
And like you said, the stakes are high.
First, Nixon (with an assist from LBJ) brought the Southern Democrats in.
The ‘assist’ from LBJ was signing civil rights legislation.
I guess you could somehow therefore blame Johnson for the realignment of the traditional racist vote from D to R, but that seems somehow wrong-headed to me.
‘the traditional racist vote ‘
And this makes my head hurt.
And in doing so, motivated a bunch of religiously-motivated individuals to get deeply involved in politics. They were sufficiently dedicated that they were willing to put in the long hours in the political trenches, which resulted in their gaining positions of power within the party locally and at the state level.
I did not live in this country at the time when the political shift happened, but as far as i know these forces GOB described were existent since the beginning of the country with more or less effectiveness depending on the world political movements (awareness). The shift was enabled by liberal “relativism” thinking supported by wide accepted economic knowledge from both parties where there was practically not much off a difference in what either party proposed but how a candidate looked and spoke was of more importance. As far as i know liberals were claiming that everything is relative in this world, even that crime is not caused by the person but by environment that created such person able to kill and rob. Everything was relative even what republicans are saying, even what racists are saying. Over time more and more bullsh!t was not attacked and ridiculed. So Reagan’s bullsh!t about unions, government and Cadillac driving welfare queen was transformative for the whole country.
Poor GOB. It must be rough when simple history gives one a headache.
–TP
“I see where the shoe pinches. It will pinch more yet.”
It seems Patrick Buchanan takes offense at the notion that the southern strategy was based on racism. Tut, tut.
“Poor GOB. It must be rough when simple history gives one a headache.”
Yeah. I grew up seeing that shift that Russell described. My father told me the South was traditionally Democratic and yet many of my white friends were Republicans (or rather, their parents were) and were racists. Even as a child I sorta picked up on what caused the switch.
“It’s a fair cop but society is to blame.”
“And now I’d like to conclude this arrest with a hymn.”
I’m not so sure America is even about “self-interest within the rule of law” any more. Organized labor isn’t philanthropic; it’s based on self-interest. Social insurance is about self-interest: most people are at some risk of needing it sooner or later.
What we have today are people rejecting these things for some sort of ideological reason even if they’d likely benefit from them. A large fraction of the US population seems to have an active desire to promote the interests of people richer than themselves over their own. When asked why, they describe it in terms of personal virtue, as a rejection of envy or a desire not to live on handouts. This isn’t self-interested behavior, it’s more deontological.
I think the idea that what changed in the GOP is, roughly speaking, tone, rings pretty true. Tony P. was asking how the Republican ideology changed from the 80s to now, and I don’t think it really has. Remember, the Movement of the 60s-70s from which Reagan emerged was an outsider group vis a vis both the GOP and the Democratic party. They were attacking a MOUNTAIN. It makes perfect sense for such a movement to be maximalist in rhetoric, but more pragmatic once in power. Reagan was a huge success. He changed the ethos of the country (for the much-worse, IMO, but he did it). I wouldn’t say that Reagan didn’t take his own party’s rhetoric seriously, but that he didn’t take it literally; he was serious about his role in the country in a way that today’s ideologues aren’t. For all his failings, Reagan understood the difference between the real world and the imaginary world of ideology, and was thereby able to accomplish much more than the pinheads running the GOP now. Reagan was a democrat. Today’s ideologues are authoritarians, and are heirs more of Nixon than Reagan (e.g. GOB’s assertion that a result of democratic republicanism he doesn’t like is ‘totalitarianism’ because the ‘stakes are so high’. That is classic authoritarianism).
The problem for the modern GOP is that their ideology-as-literal-truth is hopeless – unworkable and extremely unpopular. They can’t be committed democrats if they want to actualize it. They have to lie and trick and destroy, so that’s what they do. They pretend that they are still attacking the same mountain Wm F. Buckley, et. al. faced, but THEY are now the mountain.
Jonnybutter at 8:51—
That sounds right to me. I was trying to figure out what was different between the Republicans of the 80’s and those of today and since much or most of the ideology is the same, I couldn’t figure it out. Saying that Reagan was pragmatic is part of it and that’s all I had, but the way you expressed it seems more profound to me. I think he was wildly wrong in his views, but Reagan and his bunch loved the country and wanted to persuade people of their views and win that way and that’s why they were pragmatic. The current crop of Republican politicians (I’m not talking about the voters) just seem fixated on obtaining power any way they can.
I’m glad if I was clear enough to get some of that across, DJ.
I think we live in a very literalistic time. We have fundamentalists in many spheres, not just in the religious one. Recall that Reagan had a sense of humor, in the broader sense – not just the ability to tell jokes, but in the sense of having perspective, which is, after all, a wellspring of humor. He’d been through the Depression and WW2, which may have contributed to an innate skepticism of ideology as anything other than a model. When faced with real world barriers, he did his best and went home, understanding that the printed recipe and the actual food on the plate are not the same thing; and remembering the difference between rhetoric and reality. Can you imagine Eric Cantor telling a truly funny political joke? I can’t. He’s much too busy earnestly scanning the horizon for a possible grandmother to walk over (little Nixon reference there, ha ha).
As you say, Reagan and co. understood that if you couldn’t persuade your fellow Americans, then the game wasn’t worth the candle. Not only were they genuinely patriotic (i.e. democrats), but they were much more effective for that approach. I’m not GLAD they were so effective because I don’t like most of what they did. But I have basic respect for Reagan that I don’t have for today’s insurgents, who are the worst kind of scum, politically speaking. At least Reagan had character. Compare him with Gingrich, or just about any Republican today.
… possible grandmother to walk over…
That was said of Charles Colson as I recall it, referring to his zeal to reelect Nixon.
(Gary’s absent so *somebody* has to fill in 🙂
As for Newt (Gingrich!) if you haven’t watched John Lithgow’s performance of the famous press release you must click the link.
I knew it was Colson, but it’s still very much a Nixon reference.
Oh yes, I saw the Lithgow piece the day it came out. Newt is made for comedy, and I never miss any of his hits.
I knew it was Colson, but …
Sorry ral, didn’t mean to sound like a smartypants. Yes, it was Chuck Colson, the ‘old man’s’ “hatchet man.” I forget that there are lots of younger people who are not so steeped in Nixonallia as people my age tend to be. I might have spelled it out.
No problem, I was just making sure it was clear.
Just think, George W. made Tricky Dick look good. gah!
I thought I had posted last night to Jonny’s 8:51 about Reagan, which I thought was dead-on; and found that, perhaps due to a quirk on my end, it didn’t post.
So I’ll just add here, though Donald has done it so well – it’s a little more than ironic that Reagan, seen now, was a lot more pragmatic than what he looked at the time, as his whole career up to that point had been grounded in virtual reality – a contradiction in terms that only makes sense when we consider that he was, at bottom, a real actor.
I now think he appeared to realize, somewhere around the latter half of his first term, that the country he was at the helm of was made up of so many contradictory and convoluted needs that the ideology he had come in on couldn’t be a basis for governance; hence the tax increases, the illegal immigrant amnesty, and so on. For all the government-is-the-problem line, he at least apprehended that he had a job to do within a context of governance; at that point, he still had enough nous to distinguish campaign slogans from the real issues of governance.
Having said all that, I will still never forgive him for permitting a number of strains that have now ripened and are wreaking the havoc they are now: namely, allowing corporate America to break the social contract, and doing nothing to curb the creep of the religious right into the mainstream of Republican ideology.
Jon’s assertion that today’s GOP ideologues are authoritarians I cannot gainsay. What has unhinged the GOP is the disconnect that an authoritarian worldview, grounded in a toxic tub of pampered corporate fecklessness and unthinking religious rigidity, can only bring about: that events must be dominated and controlled at all costs, and that people are base and treacherous and must be brought to heel. That some events may be best left to their ways of playing themselves out, and that most people do not recognize themselves as wretched, damnable creatures are, of course, irrelevant.
I see little, besides somewhat better tailoring and hairdressing, and a lack of brown or black shirts, that truly distinguishes the Republican Party in its machinations of today with say, the Falange or any one of a number of European dictatorial parties of the ’30s or `40s of a similar ilk.
What I think is that the national Republican party is, at this point, a fundamentally reactionary movement.
And a sort of extraordinary one, because the “radical changes” they wish to roll back occurred 50, or 80, or 100 years ago.
Seriously, here is George Will coming out in favor of Lochner.
Lochner v New York, 1905. Nineteen-ought-five.
The institutions that conservatives want to dismantle – federal regulation of the private economy, social insurance in its various forms, publicly provided basic services – did not come into existence from some bizarre governmental will to power.
They came into existence because they addressed real, palpable problems.
And they came into existence through a process of representational governance, in which a broad range of interests had their say, and were balanced against each other.
In short, they exist because we chose them. And they have endured because they are useful.
The wonderful world that conservatives want to return to via some kind of political Way-Back machine was not so great. To be honest, I’m not sure it ever existed at all, at least not the way they imagine it.
russell,
I am curious what in particular you disagree with in Will’s analysis.
They lie and trick and destroy. And none of that addresses the all too familiar millionaires and billionaires line defining anyone who dares to make 200k a year.
Russell’s 9:01 comment sounds remarkably like a summary of Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation, except that Polanyi is describing the history of laissez faire in 19th century Europe and not the US.
” history of laissez faire ”
I should say the history of how pure unregulated capitalism never actually existed, because it couldn’t–regulations sprang up naturally in reaction to the problems it brought with it.
A review of the book by an economic historian.
link
Having said all that, I will still never forgive [Reagan] for permitting a number of strains that have now ripened and are wreaking the havoc they are now..
Oh yeah, me too. No Reagan, no current mess. The ideology hasn’t changed, and it’s really no worse than it ever was, theoretically, but I think Reagan had a saner conception of what an ideology is, what its proper function is (and he had a lot of pushback). But he was still a disaster, because he managed to modify what I would call the ethos of the country: there is no ‘we’, there is only ‘me’ (or my family). It’s a fantasy-land view of human nature, and the political and moral economy that flow from it are in front of us now.
What I think is that the national Republican party is, at this point, a fundamentally reactionary movement.
I agree Russell. The tragic thing is that there has been so little in the way of countervailing force. Reagan, and the movement behind him, found the gap left by establishment Democrats (and Republicans). Where’s the reformation on the other side, now that Reaganism is, in turn, exhausted? It’s not there, and so we have a kind of zombie Reaganism. With apologies to Sapient, President Obama (or a President HR Clinton) doesn’t qualify. He faithfully represents a very well established, rather compromised, Democratic party. Is Chuck Shumer a ‘new broom’? HA. Reagan was more successful at transforming the country than he ought to have been, in the long term. We can rail against reactionaries all day, but to some pretty great extent, they’re just filling a political vacuum.
Despite some rhetoric (on both sides), Obama never really pretended to be a ‘movement’. Certainly a holding pattern is better than nothing, but non-reactionaries need to get back to some fundamentals one of these decades.
Marty:
There is no lie in Obama’s speech. He says in the very same speech how he accounts for this spending. It may be fanciful – hell, the whole thing is probably fanciful, because the GOP congress won’t pass it anyway – but it’s not a lie. ‘Death panels’ is a lie. ‘Social Security is a ponzi scheme’ is a lie – ie something factually untrue. Holding the US and world economy hostage is destructive. Citing average rather than median income is a trick GW Bush used to justify his tax cuts which overwhelmingly benefited already-rich people (yes, millionaires and billionaires – what he actually called his ‘base’). You must see the difference.
jb,
all semantics, they are lies, just ones you are ok with. and this:
“‘Social Security is a ponzi scheme’ ”
Is factually true. When the new participants can no longer pay for the committments to the previous participants then the scheme collapses. And here we are.
Is factually true. When the new participants can no longer pay for the committments to the previous participants then the scheme collapses. And here we are.
Does that mean all insurance plans are ponzi schemes?
No Marty, sorry. SS is simply not a ponzi scheme. It’s your right to be against it, but not to call it something it isn’t. The latter, by definition, is committed to paying out more than it takes in – that’s the point of it. It’s deliberate fraud. SS has traditionally taken in more than it pays out, and invested the rest in Treasury bonds. Just not the same thing at all. You do not get to have your own facts. Whether something is factually true or not is not a matter of ‘semantics’.
CCDG
all semantics, they are lies, just ones you are ok with. and this:
“‘Social Security is a ponzi scheme’ ”
Is factually true.
Here you are using semantics.
SS is a ponzi scheme by structure only, but not by purpose and not by enforcement.
Purpose is not to get rich quick as in real ponzi, and it returns everything back as long as it is enforced-opposite of real ponzi.
Enforcement is totally opposite from real ponzi, SS is enforced by power of government and everyone participates while real ponzi is strictly volunterily.
Semantics, you say, ha?
If i am too blunt and non-specific please read this
And you obviously are not aware of mathematics that pertain to SS structure and even worse, not aware of provisions that prohibits it from being negatively affecting federal deficit.
Only way for SS to collapse is by not being enforced and by US having no more income workers.
Only ways not to be enforced are by US disintegration or by legislating it so.
I am really puzzled by otherwise intelligent people being absolutely non-critical of propaganda they receive in emails from GOP. Examples: CCDG and GOB comments on this post.
My response to GOB “totalitarian” redefinition disappeared just like seakaijin’s comment.
If i may ask and get an answer, Marty, is it because you take those emails as a gospel, or you know they are bs, but you find the benefit of your tribe more important then anything else?
CCDG
I appologise for asking in a manner to get answer with negative connotations. Ill refrase.
Do you believe those emails from GOP because you believe that they would not dare to lie to you, that they are true or you know that they aren’t true but are ready to sacrifice some of your principles for some kind of benefit? Or something else?
I think those are only two options considering known benefits and history of SS.
ct,
I dont get emails from the GOP, so I have no idea what they say. I am a great supporter of SS, it is in structure a ponzi scheme as managed today.
I am curious what in particular you disagree with in Will’s analysis.
First, I would say that there isn’t much analysis in Will’s piece. He simply makes a number of assertions about the historical context of Lochner, and about the agenda of the folks who disagreed with the court’s ruling, then and now, without supplying much in the way of supporting evidence.
But, it’s not a long piece, so I’ll spot him the need for extensive cites.
What ‘analysis’ he does provide is a simple statement of the basic issues involved, couched in a tone that makes his preferences obvious.
Lochner claimed a substantive but unenumerated natural right to engage in contracts with his employees. The state of NY claimed the right to regulate the business of baking in the interest of public safety and health.
NY lost, Lochner won. In subsequent cases, the trend of the court went the other way. Where the SCOTUS lands on stuff like this is kind of a moving target.
Basically, it appears to me that Will and Bernstein would like to return the settled understanding of the law back to what it was between, say, 1905 and 1935.
So, I call that reactionary. It seems to me that it is more or less the definition of reactionary.
Charles Ponzi’s scheme paid out 100% profit to investors for a 90 day investment. To pay out that amount, he had to double the number of investors in each round – to pay back the money that people had invested and the same amount again as profit.
Simple math can be used to show that this is unsustainable, and his investment scheme lasted a total of 200 days.
Social insurance programs have existed for many decades – Germany’s has been operating continuously for over 120 years, America’s for over 75 – and they are run transparently. We know that taxes paid in to Social Security are currently greater than the amount paid out in benefits, we know that this will continue for some time, and we know that if the projections of demographers are accurate, there will need to be minor adjustments to the program for it to continue in its current state, but that is in no danger of all at being unsustainable.
What possible benefit would there be in engaging in conversation with someone who sees no difference at all between these two situations? You might as well try to convince a devout Christian that there is no god, or a hardened atheist that there is one.
SS is no more of a Ponzi scheme than any pension is. A bank is closer to a ponzi scheme than SS or any pension is. Do you object to banks, Marty?
The problem with SS is not how it’s administered nor the very idea of it. The problem with it is the rancid politicians who raise spending and cut taxes for three decades, and then raid pension funds to make up some of the gap. That’s not a ponzi scheme, it’s just corrupt politicians (of both parties, Marty) who are paid pennies on the dollar by wealthy people to keep their taxes low, whereupon said politicians plunder our pensions.
“Charles Ponzi’s scheme paid out 100% profit to investors for a 90 day investment. To pay out that amount, he had to double the number of investors in each round – to pay back the money that people had invested and the same amount again as profit.”
Then, of course, the Madoff scheme that is commonly referred to as a Ponzi scheme, also wasn’t.
To have this conversation with someone who doesn’t understand how the meaning has been expanded in common parlance is useless.
The point of calling it a Ponzi scheme in the first place is to illustrate to people who paid all their lives into SS “insurance” on the assumption that the SS “trust fund” was being invested to cover their retirement that it doesn’t work that way.
I thought it was an effective description of how it works that most people could understand.
“Basically, it appears to me that Will and Bernstein would like to return the settled understanding of the law back to what it was between, say, 1905 and 1935.”
I guess I don’t see any problem questioning “settled law”, it seems it wasn’t so reactionary when we did that in 1964.
In the same vein, the change has led to the latest stupid law proposed.
I guess I don’t see any problem questioning “settled law”
Me either, per se.
Reactionary generally carries the meaning of wanting to go back to some earlier point in time that you liked better.
So, 1964, not reactionary.
Revisiting Lochner, reactionary.
In the same vein, the change has led to the latest stupid law proposed.
Yes, I’d say that’s a pretty dumb law. Some laws are dumb.
If your point is that a law proposed in the state of CA to require breaks every two hours for babysitters proves that Lochner was correctly decided, I’d say that’s kind of a stretch.
If your point is even that there is some meaningful connection between the Bakeshop Act of 1895 and babysitter breaks in CA in 2011, likewise.
It’s not a matter of common parlance, Marty.
If I repeatedly do CPR by administering chest compression and at the same time sticking a knife into the patient’s neck, and then use the results as evidence that CPR is dangerous and should be done away with, you’d call me something worse than a fool, and you’d be right.
Madoff is categorically similar to Ponzi without being identical because they were both confidence frauds, and intended to be nothing else. Now, you could argue that irresponsible politicians – very many of whom you ceaselessly support and defend on this blog no matter what they do – have committed a legal kind of fraud on SS beneficiaries, and THAT I would agree with. But instead, you call the program itself a ‘ponzi scheme’, which it never was and isn’t now. It is a fully funded pension and will remain fully funded for many years. With extremely minor reforms, it will pay out 100% for decades. That describes precisely what a ponzi scheme is not.
You and all your friends can call a punch in the nose a ‘handshake’ from now until doomsday and that’s still not what it is.
CCDG
I won’t question your honesty regarding GOP emails, but i question it regarding the purpose of calling SS a Ponzi scheme. You claim that the reason is education I thought it was an effective description of how it works that most people could understand.
Only reason to call it a Ponzi is to attach a negative emotions to SS. Since SS is much more similar to life annuity insurance then to Ponzi scheme, there has to be hidden agenda to disregard such childish comparative education.
Using similarities of structure, participation and purpose with Venn diagrams you can see that structure is same for all three. Purpose of life annuity insurance and SS is same while opposite to Ponzi.
2 for life insurance while 1 for Ponzi. Want to educate?
Other differences between SS and life insurance are administration costs, which is a big plus for SS, and SS is beneficial to everyone who could not participate due to birth, health conditions or employment conditions which is another plus for SS. Both are investing unused portion of receipts.
to people who paid all their lives into SS “insurance” on the assumption that the SS “trust fund” was being invested to cover their retirement that it doesn’t work that way.
That is a difference between SS and 401K not a difference between SS and life annuity insurance.
Only reason to call SS a Ponzi is to attach negative emotions to it with long term intention to privatize it for purpose of account managers fees.
CCDG: “When the new participants can no longer pay for the committments to the previous participants then the scheme collapses. And here we are.”
No, actually, here we aren’t. We’re actually here. In other words, social security is completely fine for almost 20 years, and if we’d improve the economy and the jobs picture, it would be fine for longer than that. And it will still be fine if very minor tweaks are made to the system, like raising the income level of contribution.
Just saying.
I apologize to all for not previewing my comment and causing italics
this sometimes works to get rid of italics … I wonder whether it will this time.
“It is a fully funded pension and will remain fully funded for many years. With extremely minor reforms,”
How do you define “fully funded”? This is the first year, if I recall correctly, that we begin paying more than we are collecting. And yes, it takes a while for the money to run out.
if I recall correctly, that we begin paying more than we are collecting.
Yes, which means that this year we begin drawing on the surplus payments that you, and I, and everyone else who earns a wage in this country have made since 1983, and which are invested by and large in T-bills.
Which will come due and be paid in due course, like they always have.
Unless the country decides to default on its debt obligations, in which case SS is only one among many, many, many headaches we will be having.
We thought of this back in ’83, CCDG, and addressed it.
I am curious what in particular you disagree with in Will’s analysis.
Russel, if i may. I will anyway.
Will’s analysis asks for individualism above all, begin all-end all practice. It doesn’t consider individuals abusing other individuals. Since the US constitution is mostly concerned with state power being used against individuals and having no clear protection of individuals from other individuals using tricky and abusive contracts.
I think you would agree that contracts could be used to practically enslave people. Should contracts be unbreakable in absolute?
What are bankruptcies for? And who dissolves contracts in bankruptcies?
By Will’s arguments bankruptcy is unconstitutional.
What is the reason bankruptcies are not “casual or disreputable reason”?
He even goes further to deny dissenting opinion from Holmes which is giving power to legislators to legislate. Since any new law will trample someone for benefit of others, there should be no new laws.
I do not hear anybody crying about legislating time limits to professional drivers, except commissioned mileage drivers. Statutory limit is something like 10 hours of driving within 20 hours. The same reason is for limiting food worker hours. There must have been a lot of complaints about sand, hair, nail clippings, machine parts, etc. in their bread at the turn of the century.
Do you think that with workers exhaustion and despair there would be no mistakes?
“We thought of this back in ’83, CCDG, and addressed it.”
Good to hear, now the Dems and Reps will just stop talking about cutting back, raising the retirement age(again) and charging more. Super.
This is the first year, if I recall correctly, that we begin paying more than we are collecting.
The reason that this happened this year already is payroll tax cut from last year bill in amount of $120B. SS fund projections were $87B deficit for this year with effects of the bill. Without payroll tax cut there would still be $33B surplus from present year. But it seams that income was higher then included in last projections. And now they are talking about 3% payroll tax cut instead of 2% for next year.
Do you think that with workers exhaustion and despair there would be no mistakes?
Apparently, at the time the Bakeshop Act was passed, 100+ hour workweeks for journeymen bakers were not uncommon. Guys would be expected to sleep in the bakery.
So, yeah, nothing but rent-seeking by unionized bakeries and unions, sticking it to the little guy.
Socialist bastards.
‘Apparently, at the time the Bakeshop Act was passed, 100+ hour workweeks for journeymen bakers were not uncommon.”
Funny, this was true when my Dad started working in big bakeries in the 50’s, but then there weren’t that many little bakeries anymore.
Too bad he didn’t work in NY.
It’s a pension, Marty, essentially like any other pension. If you think a pension that workers contribute to and draw from is the same thing as a ‘ponzi scheme’, go ahead, I guess.
A better version of my CPR metaphor is this: Prescott Pharmaceuticals has invented a product called ‘EZ CPR’. But it’s not selling because the ‘CPR Lobby’, which is all liberals and socialists, natch, has issued a statement saying that ‘EZ CPR’ is a waste of money – you need only free or cheap training and two hands to do CPR. So Prescott bribes a bunch of doctors to do a study in which sumo wrestlers perform CPR by jumping up and down on the chests of patients. Then they publish a report claiming that manual CPR is clearly dangerous. Then they bribe a bunch of congressmen to pass an appropriation for the purchase of 90 million ‘EZ CPR’ units per year a the cost of $xx each – no discount for bulk purchase, because that might ‘discourage innovation’. Because it’s ‘common parlance’ that manual CPR is dangerous.
Reactionary rhetoric has it that SS is bad for our moral fibre (I think Rubio said something like this recently). But there’s another motivation lurking. Wall Street is and has long been drooling over SS funds, Marty. It’s TRILLIONS. They want that money. They want it VERY MUCH. They want the money itself and they want the transaction and other fees, because it would mean hundreds of billions of $$ for them every year. They also know that if any or all of the principal evaporated – which it would eventually – that Uncle Sam would step in, just as he always does, and just as the government of Chile has had to do. They know that Moral Hazard is a concept for the Little People and not for them.
Roosevelt famously, and against advice, opted for worker contributions to SS so that there would be a constituency for it – people paid in their own money so they would rightly feel entitled to their pension; so that ‘no goddamned politician could take it away’ (not an exact FDR quote, but close). Goddamned politicians have never completely stopped trying, even though private – or privatized – national pensions don’t have a good record. I wonder why? Must be in response to the never ending crisis of our rotting moral fibre.
Not remotely intentional. Major distractions in life.
Now I’ve got a lot of depression going on, but I otherwise hope to start at least commenting more, and build up to posting again.
You really don’t have to take a time machine back to early 20th century to see what life could be like under the Lochner regime. Just go to China for a few weeks. Or even watch a documentary. At least China has the excuse that it’s a developing nation. Republicans here seem to want us to return us to those good old days.
jonnybutter – thanks for a terrific comment at 6:48.
“Funny, this was true when my Dad started working in big bakeries in the 50’s, but then there weren’t that many little bakeries anymore.”
Wonder if he got at least minimum wage, then time and a half for that extra time he put in, CCDG.
They want that money. They want it VERY MUCH.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJeFrqBJF6ECarlin.
CCDG, I’m sorry your old man had to work 100+ hour weeks in the bakery.
If there were no mom and pops around, it sure as hell wasn’t because of the NY State Bakeshop Act.
When my old man got back to NYC from WWII, along with the other 3,584,992 guys who came back that same week, he scrambled for any gig he could get. Among the jobs he worked was night shift in a match factory. Guys would get nose bleeds, on the job, from inhaling the chemicals they dipped the matchsticks in.
Of course, when he was younger, before the war, working WPA bridge construction jobs in GA and SC, some of the guys he worked with would eat sulfur to keep the bugs off.
Where’d they get sulfur? Matchheads.
So much for those NY pussies, worried about a damned nosebleed.
People do whatever they need to do to get a toehold.
The point of workplace regulation is to make sure folks who are in that position don’t get totally f**ked over.
You can either look at that as an infringement on their god-given right to get royally screwed if they so desire. Or you can look at it as an attempt to make the world a slightly less dog-eat-dog place.
The issue at stake in Lochner was trying to find a balance between the individual right to enter into a contract, even if it kinda sucks, vs the need of government to ensure that commercial activity observes some basic standard of general public health and safety.
That’s what was at stake in Lochner.
Sometimes the court sees the balance tipping the wrong way in one direction, sometimes in the other.
In any event, what the Bakeshop Act was about was not the desire of an overweening statist bureaucracy to insert itself into every nook and cranny of private commercial life.
Guys were working 100+ hour weeks and sleeping in bakeries. For reference, a 100 hour week is 14+ hours a day, 7 days a week.
In other words, sleep, eat, sh*t, and bake. All day, every day.
There was a big fuss about it. They passed a law saying you could only work a 60-hour week as a baker.
That’s pretty much it.
Just a few more thoughts on Reagan and the want of a true movement from the left, as it is now September 11th here in Japan…I’m wondering just how much 9/11 has played into the histrionic tenor of the right at present and detoured it away from a direction it might have gone had the attacks not occurred.
I have felt for some time that the dominant tropes in American culture are the twin towers of control and domination. 9/11 traumatized us as a nation; as the contemporary right values power as an end in itself, it seemed inevitable that it would lash out the way it did – manufacture evidence for a war, starve any function in government that did not serve it, and create a parallel regime of renditions, warrantless surveillance, and torture.
Because it is as irrationalist as it is, it also necessitated a scandalous alliance with the countries known to have produced the most terrorists, while damning and cursing those within our midst who happened to look like people from those countries.
Because it also looks to the past and not the future, it sought to extend that control and domination over the whole American scene, to Victorian economic schemes, pre-Scopes educational policies, a frigid, vengeful morality, and a state of fear and confusion as a sustained course of emergency just to survive the calamity of the moment that 9/11 released but will never be outlasted.
This last point may also be one of the reasons why the right is so blithely unconcerned with the debt burden it is leaving to the future. As it is also corrupted with its creature comforts and immediate needs, it’s natural that it’s willing to wreak an entire economy to get them.
So re Jonny’s 10:41 all the way up: the we-ness a moment like 9/11 cried out for could never come about. What we got instead was the self-pity of overfed children, a big fat every-man-for-himself mindset under the guise of action (which really isn’t an exaggeration – jeez, corporations now have ‘personhood’).
Reagan, and his “revolution”, was a cultural and political disaster that America is now paying mightily for, and that has metastasized into what I fear is a sustained regime of economic and political despair that, barring something from left field (no pun intended) looks to drag on for another generation.
The whole SS-as-Ponzi-scheme is just an extra fillip. Marty – the right is entirely comfortable with fraudulent investment schemes. It’s a true case of the pot calling the kettle black.
But I am willing to entertain the notion that at least some of what has transpired up to the present would have been unthinkable under Reagan.
thanks Sapient, and thanks Russell for the Carlin clip. Is George Carlin a ‘leftist’? That question sounds ridiculous, because it is ridiculous. No, he’s just a streetwise guy who knows a hosejob when he sees it. There’s nothing terribly ‘ideological’ about why privatizing SS is a bad idea. It’s what Johnny Guitar Watson used to call ‘slick’, aka an elaborately rationalized piece of legal robbery. It IS slick.
corporations now have ‘personhood’
Corporations have been considered to be legal persons, entitled to all the protections guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, since Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad was decided in 1886.
Citizens United is just that, plus the “money equals speech” doctrine.
No-one should have been surprised by it.
But I am willing to entertain the notion that at least some of what has transpired up to the present would have been unthinkable under Reagan.
Interesting comment, Sekaijin. Counterfactuals are tough, aren’t they? Reagan was president at the beginning of the final dissolution of the USSR, and he broke with what were arguably tenants of his own ideology when he negotiated with Gorbachev. That neoconservative view (no negotiation) and its bizarrely fixed cold-war mentality lived on despite there being no USSR anymore, and found its new unitary enemy after 9/11. Imposibble to say what Reagan would have done, but it’s at least possible that he would have resisted some of the worst – invading Iraq, torture, etc.
That Reagan regulated – moderated – the Movement is a double edged sword, of course. If he hadn’t been there to do so, it might have burnt itself out, like the ridiculously misnamed ‘tea party’ will do (the astroturf contingent will live on though – Dick Armey, et. al.). So in moderating the Movement, he also established it. The Arc of History is long and bends toward injustice.
I think many people who supported Reagan (but no longer support the GOP) did so because RR was about finally breaking the Liberal Consensus, particularly as regards economics. I don’t think someone like Bruce Bartlett was thinking ‘Great, now we can become a country of atomized individuals and get rid of that silly civic virtue!’. I don’t think Reagan himself had that in mind. I think that they/we just got more than they/we bargained for. Said Consensus was replaced by Reagan with…nothing, really. So, no consensus at all, except for ‘We’re Number One!’ or something (notice that if you are truly self-confident, it doesn’t occur to you to say stuff like that). Instead of creative push back, the Democrats just scrambled to become more like Reagan. Democrats to this day start with Reagan’s assumptions. So here we are.
” Corporations have been considered to be legal persons, entitled to all the protections guaranteed under the 14th Amendment, since Santa Clara County vs Southern Pacific Railroad was decided in 1886.”
But the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights is based on Citizens United. Money = speech is actually based on the 1976 case, Buckley v. Valeo.
The reason it’s not a surprise is because there are 5 Republicans on the Supreme Court. We can expect a lot more non-surprises like that if we don’t change the current ratio.
But the idea that corporations have First Amendment rights is based on Citizens United.
Actually, there’s a generous handful of cases on the topic of corporations and 1st Amendment rights, in particular freedom of speech.
Nike v Kasky being probably the most well-known recent example.
The only innovation of Citizens was applying that to political speech in the form of money.
If corporations are legal persons for purposes of interpreting the law, then giving them the full protections available to natural human persons is the logical conclusion.
I find myself forced to object and unwilling to have the argument all over again.
So, with apologies as this will be my only comment on the subject, the very heart of all Democratic politics for my whole lifetime has been to create any “us versus them” that could be leveraged to get votes.
Republican willingness to prey on the fears and uncertainties of their constituents is not only not unique to them, it is less pervasive than the identity politics of the left.
I have been voting for almost 40 years and I am always baffled by several things, this complete blindspot by seemingly intelligent people being the most important.
We are willing to evaluate the reactionary motives of terrorists in the arc of history and then simply refuse to understand the perfectly predictable causes of reactionary politics in our own country.
After decades of politicians, and then bloggers, ranting on about the evil intent of the majority, the wealthy, the religious, (heck even the white middle class was a popular target before the Democrats perceived that they might be able to turn those people against the wealthy) then the reaction we have seen over the last 8 years is perfectly predictable.
No one likes constantly being called the bad guy, evil or ill intentioned. So any “we-ness” ever created has been systematically and intentionally subverted by politicians on both sides, as long as I have been an aware political observer.
So in other words, “a pox on both houses (but yours much more than mine)”. Lovely. Unsubstantiated, but lovely.
After decades of politicians, and then bloggers, ranting on about the evil intent of the majority, the wealthy, the religious, (heck even the white middle class was a popular target before the Democrats perceived that they might be able to turn those people against the wealthy) then the reaction we have seen over the last 8 years is perfectly predictable.
But Marty, you are just echoing rhetoric from Nixon and his heirs meant to create resentment, and calling it fact (like the ‘ponzi scheme’ thing). Why in the world would any Democratic politician – why would any politician – ‘target’ white middle class people in the US? Or target the majority? That is just senseless, even from a cynical point of view.
I know you are done commenting, but…geez, when Durwood Kirby says that Wonderbread builds strong bodies 12 ways, I didn’t take it as fact. When McDonalds says that they ‘do it all for me’, I don’t really believe it. When George Wallace or Nixon suggested that Democrats despise white people, did you think they were filling us in on some inside info out of the kindness of their hearts?
WTF?
No one likes constantly being called the bad guy, evil or ill intentioned.
No indeed, though as I alluded to above, if the shoe fits… I don’t mean you personally, I’m thinking of more public examples.
Both the aggressive “your side is worse” and the oft seen, more passive pearl clutching, fainting couch defense against pointing out the naked emperor are wearing a bit thin.
Did i imagine cheering at the mention of executing 248 people by Rick Perry at GOP debate? Those evil Democratic identity politicians.
So any “we-ness” ever created has been systematically and intentionally subverted by politicians on both side
Political manipulation aside, I’m still trying to figure out what the “we-ness” is in the first place.
How it looks to me these days is that we have lots of different interests, which may or may not align depending the time of day, frame of mind, and circumstance.
And we have a process for those various interests to duke it out without shooting at each other. Which is, in fact, an excellent thing in and of itself, and nothing to be sneezed at.
But I’m not seeing anything like a common understanding of what the nation is about.
Sorry that is so, but that’s how it looks to me.
Most of the time when I talk about this stuff, I try to limit my assumptions to whatever seems to be the most basic. common-ground concepts I can think of.
Self-government. The rule of law. Separation of powers, enforced by checks and balances.
Even at that, it’s hard to find basic agreement on what any of that means or what it looks like.
I’ve had conversations with people where I could hardly understand what planet they were from. Not here, but not at particularly obscure places, either.
Basically, I don’t think we all want the same things. I don’t know if we ever did, but I’m pretty sure we don’t now.
I’m talking about at a political / economic / social level. Everybody wants to be happy, and have useful work to do, and for their families to do well.
But at the level of anything touching on public life, I don’t see anything like a common understanding of what it’s about.
I don’t even see a common understanding of what “public life” means.
I don’t know where we go from here.
I don’t even see a common understanding of what “public life” means.
Unless I’m not understanding you, I’d say that that is an enormous understatement. I don’t think we have a common understanding that there even is such a *thing* as ‘public life’.
I don’t know where we go from here either, but wherever it is, getting there has got to involve some basic factual information we can all see. We seem to be caught in a woozy postmodernism wherein everybody’s ‘truth’ is equally ‘valid’, or might be. That is really dangerous. If the one thing which is not allowed is factual information, we are well and truly fkt.
Have faith, guys, there really is an objective reality.
Unless I’m not understanding you, I’d say that that is an enormous understatement.
No, you have me right. I was just trying to stay on the positive tip.
I’ve kind of stopped worrying about finding common ground. I just try to speak for, and advance, the things that I think are important.
God knows everybody else is speaking for theirs.
I’m just going to keep quiet and work on my high score in Tea Party Zombies Must Die.
Common ground is still common for all of us: Our own family to do good and better. It is just that one side is obsessed with instant gratification and other side knows it is a road to ruin of all.
And we as a group have to get out from that relativism trend and start blocking the bullsh!t at every step from anybody, even from Obama if somebody have a chance to get in touch face to face. Working on it while at the same time being aware of dangers becoming like them and dehumanizing other side.
Defending people against discrimination is identity politics, but the discrimination isn’t. I suppose it’s a matter of perspective.
It’s a formulation that fits nicely with Will’s, finding labor laws to be oppressive, while thinking that people having to work themselves to exhaustion to keep their jobs isn’t.
It is just that one side is obsessed with instant gratification and other side knows it is a road to ruin of all.
I actually think this is not a fair comment.
What I think the issue is, is that different people think different things are good.
Not that some people want good things, and some people bad things, or want good things in a bad way.
Different people have different definitions for “good”.
I actually think it’s possible, although generally only with some serious effort, to come to some kind of understanding of what other folks think “good” is.
That’s a useful thing to do.
But it’s not the same thing as agreeing with them, or having a whole lot of overlap between what you think is good and what they think is good.
But still, a useful thing nonetheless.
The issue I run up against is that, after about 8 years of studious, reasonably good faith, best effort to understand what many other folks think is “good”, I find that their idea and my idea don’t share much common ground.
And when I say studious best effort, I mean hours, often hours per day, of engaging in dialogue with them, explaining myself at length, providing whatever supporting documentation or evidence I can find for my point of view, following up and reading whatever they provide for theirs.
Hours and hours and hours. Hundreds, probably thousands of hours, over about 8 years.
That’s what I’ve invested in the project.
We disagree. We have profoundly different understandings of what is good and what is not good, and I don’t see that changing in my lifetime, or in the next generation’s lifetime.
Doesn’t mean they’re bad people, doesn’t mean they aren’t acting in good faith.
By there really is no common purpose, that I can see. At least beyond some common denominator that’s so bleached out and devoid of sap that it hardly has any meaning left.
Look, if you were to put me and, PURELY AS AN EXAMPLE, someone who would support Sarah Palin, or Rick Perry, or Michelle Bachmann, or Eric Cantor, or who found themselves nodding along with a Rush Limbaugh broadcast, I doubt that we could find much to agree on.
At least as regards anything to do with public life.
I would want X, and they would want Y.
And there are millions of people like me, and millions of people like them, and neither of us is going anywhere.
Where I think that leaves us is precisely at the point of being grateful that we have some kind of political institutions that let us at least try to each get some of what we think is important, without shooting at each other.
I’m not sure we can expect much beyond that. Frankly, I think we’re lucky to have that much.
I do not see a disagreement with your and my view. Mine is compressed and yours is nuanced, on two different levels, mine determined your more relative.
Different people have different definitions for “good”.
Yes, and those differences are coming from a single idea, me me me me. We all are selfish. Want satisfaction. One group finds it in more wealth (instant gratification) and other is finding satisfaction from others around us, from the happy world around us.
I would appreciate if you would give me some examples of different definitions of “good” that you are aware of. I am aware only of those two definitions that come from what is good for me only, don’t care about others and another definition that comes from what is good for humanity as a whole (tide lifts all of us together)
I would appreciate if you would give me some examples of different definitions of “good” that you are aware of.
Sure.
I think that the insurance mandate in the Obamacare plan is at least OK, if not exactly good, because it’s a trade-off that at least makes access to insurance accessible to almost everyone.
Other folks think it’s definitely NOT good because it’s a case of government coercing them into doing something they might, or might not, otherwise like to do. To them, it’s an imposition on their personal liberty.
I see their point, I just think it’s more important that we find a way for everyone to be able to get insured. Because something like 15% of the population had no insurance. That’s a lot of people.
And, to me, the level of coercion in question is just not worth getting worked up about. It doesn’t read, to me, as anything like a real-world restriction of liberty, in any meaningful sense.
If I’m not mistaken, you can even get some help with it if money is the issue.
As a practical matter, traffic lights probably bug me more than the ACA health insurance requirement.
But, to a lot of folks, it appears to be, really and truly, offensive.
So, which is better, making health insurance broadly available in the actual context we are operating in, or leaving folks free from any coercion from the government?
It depends. It depends on what you think is good.
And to be clear, I’m not trying to stir up another 1,000 comments on the ACA health insurance mandate. I’m just trying to provide an example of how what you think is good results in you landing on one side or the other of a political question.
There is no common understanding of what “good” is, when it comes to public life. Or, at least, the closest thing I can find to that common understanding is that it’s good for us to at least work out our differences through the public institutions we have, rather than shoot at each other.
Even that’s in question these days, but I think the “I’ll shoot you” position continues to be a fringe position. Thankfully. If that changes, no holds will be barred.
Ok. Now they are right that it is an imposition on their personal liberty, even tough in very insignificant, minuscule measure. They do not want to pay for others/ keep all their money for themselves (instant gratification). Other side is arguing that they still are paying for others trough market forces, trough federal expenses for ER even tough they are not aware of it. So they are still getting other kind of imposition on their personal liberty at the present that they are not aware of it.
Those that are aware of such indirect pressure on their personal liberty are not aware of total price of having sick people dying off, costless in dollar measure but very costly in total productivity of the country.
So they are thinking in ways of “i do not want to pay for someone else” and we are thinking :”you are paying it even tough you are not aware of it, so lets fix it to minimize suffering and get the total cost down”
Instant gratification versus delayed gratification. Individualism versus colectivism
Would that this were, strictly speaking, only a matter of competing goods, Russell. Sure would be easier if it were entirely rational like that. I am skeptical. I think quite a bit of the political animosity and gridlock we’re living through is manufactured, one way or another.
To use your example, imagine if a Republican president had signed the ACA – it was essentially a Republican plan in the beginning, after all. GW Bush could have done it. Do you think there would be monolithic opposition to the mandate from Republican pundits and voters? You and I and Marty know full well that there wouldn’t be. There would be some principled disagreement, but it wouldn’t be 100% and tribal the way it is now.
I think there is actually a metric ton of bad faith out there, especially among pols, obviously, but not only them. I think our problem goes beyond competing goods, because it goes beyond rationality. I’m not asserting that this applies to you, Russell, or anybody reading this, but as a general rule, I’d say that it’s a perennial strategic weakness of Liberals to assume that everyone must be rational and reasonable like them; it’s the dark side of the Golden Rule that they aren’t. Irrationality has a lot of appeal and allure for a lot of people, and the phenomenon is nothing new.
Do you think there would be monolithic opposition to the mandate from Republican pundits and voters?
More to the point, would there be a monolithic Republican opposition in the House and Senate.
The answer is “no”.
I’d say that it’s a perennial strategic weakness of Liberals to assume that everyone must be rational and reasonable like them
I make no such assumption. I don’t even assume that I’m rational and reasonable about everything, or even most things.
I just try, not always successfully, to avoid approaching things from the point of view of “I’m right and you suck”. It’s sufficient to just say, “This is what I think is good”.
Not sufficient from actually making things happen, always, but sufficient from the point of view of making whatever tiny point I’m trying to make.
In the privacy of my own space, I frequently respond to stuff that goes on with a great big giant “WTF”, followed by a strong desire to kick something or someone. I yell at the radio a lot. A lot. Really, a lot. But I do my best to, as a buddy of mine would say, leave that sh*t in the car when it comes time to talk to folks other than my wife and/or a handful of close friends.
I’d put my batting average on that count at about .268. But I try to make the effort.
Other than here in blogland, I VERY VERY VERY rarely talk politics. Even when I’m around people I agree with.
A lot of stuff goes on that I think is just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. But I have to at least recognize that I look that way to the other guy, too.
It doesn’t change how I feel about things, it just changes (hopefully) the way I carry myself in conversation.
The nation is divided because a lot of different kinds of people live here, and they think different things are good. It’s been that way since day 1, to be perfectly honest, and there has never been a day when it was not so.
Seriously, pick a time when you think we were all united in some grand purpose. WWII? There were tons of folks who thought we should stay the hell out of it, and wanted nothing to do with it.
The only thing that unites us is our willingness to work out our differences through the instrument of government, and not through shooting at each other, or through taking our bat and ball and going home.
That’s why I get pissed at all the gun talk. People who talk that way, IMO, have NO F**KING IDEA what kind of holy hell they are playing around with. None.
When the wheels really come off and the shooting starts, it’s nothing but pain for everybody, 24/7. People that talk about how they’re going to engage in “2nd Amendment remedies” have no freaking idea what they’re playing at.
We’ve already been there once. Wasn’t that enough? Not enough blood for you?
Anyway, I’ve kind of given up on the common ground thing. I’m happy to settle for taking my best shot at making what’s important to me happen, through the public institutions we have created for ourselves, and living with the inevitable compromises that come out of that.
I’m not sure what the alternative is.
My two cents, and worth every penny.
For all the talk about competing and contradictory interests, I find it odd how a consensus about what America stands for ever emerges. Maybe it’s all about the right to have all this competition and contradiction, and still live with each other. I dunno.
But within such an acrostic, I think a balance needs to be struck in order for things to maintain a state wherein people, within their disagreement, can still live with one another. And right now, there is a serious imbalance between the interests of a relative few and the rest, who are paying for the few to have the privileges they are enjoying. In such a state, the only disagreement that can reasonably be expected to emerge will be pointed, frustrated, and unresolved, and one that people won’t be able to live with others over.
While I was born in the States, I grew up in Australia, with its egregious, horrifying system of mandated universal access to health care, long-service leaves, relatively more generous workers’ comp, state housing that, back in the 60’s, rivaled that of some of the better suburbs in the States (and – gasp! choke! was state in name, which is to say, publicly-funded), and all the rest that some Americans now, if you told them about it, would think represented a condition somewhere between indentured servitude and white slavery. But we returned to the States for one main reason – so my American father could start collecting Social Security when he retired, as he thought it would have been difficult for him to do so had he stayed in Australia as an ex-pat.
So since we’re talking about interests, here’s what would have been his: to have lived out the rest of his days in relative peace and assurance. He lost his job, was forced into retirement before he wished to go into it, was diagnosed with cancer in 1989 and after soon emptying the IRA to pay for what insurance didn’t cover, ended his days nine months or so later in a hospital bed wheeled into our living room, in a makeshift hospice when my sister, a nurse, saw the writing on the wall. That he was at least surrounded by us was the crumb of comfort.
So that’s my interest for him, and one that I can only hope I’ll get. It doesn’t involve the ruination of others, or the re-alignment of whole polities, or tax breaks for people who don’t need them, or the demonization of people of a certain color, religion and/or sexual orientation, or wasteful wars based on lies.
A modest request, in other words. How ghastly.
As a practical matter, traffic lights probably bug me more than the ACA health insurance requirement.
I read somehwere that the introduction of traffic lights in the US met massive (and organized) opposition from people that considered them to be an intolerable infringement of their freedom.
right now, there is a serious imbalance between the interests of a relative few and the rest
I agree with this, 110%.
I read somehwere that the introduction of traffic lights in the US met massive (and organized) opposition from people that considered them to be an intolerable infringement of their freedom.
I don’t know if this is snark or not. These days it can be hard to tell the difference.
We’re all the Onion, now.
In any case, my only comment about this is that, whether offered in fun or in earnest, I find it completely believable.
Re Hartmut: indeed, what baffles most non-Americans I talk to (not only Japanese, but a number of people from a variety of countries) is the overweening assertion of rights that Americans invoke in knee-jerk reaction – even where what they are reacting to may be rather sane, reasonable things that most of them can agree on once they knock off having the heebie-jeebies over them.
The WPA and other New Deal employment and worker schemes, when enacted during the Depression, were not only met with the teeth-gnashing of the right, but even hand-wringing from some progressives who felt that it would harm the Puritan work ethic. It didn’t matter that most of the public works projects involved hard, physical labor that sometimes proved to be rather dangerous (re Russell above about his father’s experience with this pre-WWII); there was a still-predominant ethos that the right to work itself had to be hard-earned, sort of.
So just a guess: the reactionary strain in some folks may be from this sense that anything seen to be a benefit, however well-earned it may be, however humane it may be just to let people have it as it may really, literally cost little, must somehow be weakening, coddling, or dissipating.
“I’d say that it’s a perennial strategic weakness of Liberals to assume that everyone must be rational and reasonable like them”
I make no such assumption. I don’t even assume that I’m rational and reasonable about everything, or even most things.
As Reagan would say, there you go again, being all reasonable and circumspect. HA. I kid.
I don’t mean to impute anything to you, russell. Just saying that irrationality is a wild card, and different from competing interests, and it’s bound to be more effective to see it as it is. I’m fine with arguing about competing interests, and don’t expect to be able to convince everyone that my interest should prevail over theirs. But, for example, the assertion that this country deserves or should expect harsh reactionary politics because Democrats have ‘targeted’ the majority (and [?] white people), doesn’t sound like something Madison would say – or even understand. And I’m not just picking on CCDG – I actually appreciate that he has the guts to come right out with stuff that others, who probably basically agree with him, wouldn’t.
The ‘competing interests’ in the present instance seem to be: my interest in not admitting to myself or anyone else that I’ve been a fool, vs your interest in getting me to do it so that life can go on. There’s no negotiation that’s going to work on that conflict, other than perhaps your observation that we’re *all* fools sometimes – most especially including me, btw – and that it’s not really that big a deal for a human to be foolish. Par for the course, in fact.
Also sorry to hear about your father, Sekaijin. A modicum of comfort and dignity at the end of life is not beyond our means and therefore shouldn’t be beyond our will.
The traffic light story was meant seriously. Since it came from a book I have not at hand, I cannot judge the sources but I am pretty sure it was not The Onion. If it is true it dates from the time that the Tammany Hall machine dominated NY.
A modicum of comfort and dignity at the end of life is not beyond our means and therefore shouldn’t be beyond our will.
In the face of some of the highly questionable things we expend massive resources on as a nation and as private individuals, I agree, while also wanting to beat my head against the nearest brick wall.
The traffic light story was meant seriously.
I remember something like that too. Also can’t cite it, but pretty sure there was indeed resistance to traffic lights (and speed limits) when they were first proposed in the US.
Thank you, Jon. It’s been 21 years, and I had him for the 28 years of my life up to that point. And it still wasn’t enough, and anyone here who’s lost a parent or two might know that. Thank you again.
I would agree that no-one here’s deliberately reading into certain posts and gleaning things out of them that aren’t there. And I would also agree that a world where everyone agreed on every point all the time, without dispute or an iota of discouragement or compromise, is a world that cannot exist.
But I’m still sorry to say that something other than say, war-making capability, or the prerogative to execute people with only cursory review of the facts at the breach, might just be a saner start among things to agree on.
So when I hear people who consider themselves to be rational and transparent (I hope) mouth things that they know aren’t true, just for the purpose of girding someone’s loins or riling up someone they know would react negatively to it, I think that’s an abuse of the polity because 1) there’s something reflexively untrustworthy about anyone who snookers people then expects their support and 2) it fixes in a lot of people’s minds that the only relationship they can expect with elected officials is one based on manipulation and deceit.
Of course, this has been going on since time immemorial. But to rest on that now is still setting the bar pretty low, when one thing so many can agree on is that not asking for better has the effects it has every time out.
Rick Perry doesn’t need Social Security. Okay, all good and fine. I can live with that difference. But I get to have my difference and qualify it too, which consists of dismissing someone who doesn’t need something preaching to a much larger majority than the one he comes from that no-one from it should ever have what he doesn’t want, even with it being as modest as it is.
Other than here in blogland, I VERY VERY VERY rarely talk politics.
That is unfortunate.
The people to whom you do NOT talk politics get their political opinions from somewhere, just like the rest of us. Very, very, very few people have original political ideas; almost all of us adopt political ideas we come across in the course of “consuming” media like TV, radio, literature, etc. — or in the course of conversation with people we know. And which ideas we adopt is often a matter of how we feel about the source.
Here in America, we have got out of the habit of talking politics with our friends, neighbors, colleagues, and so on. We have trained ourselves to avoid talking politics face to face. We have divorced “politics” from what we like to think of as “real life”. We have ceded the “marketplace of ideas” to the mass-marketers of ideas.
It’s understandable, of course. But lamentable nevertheless.
–TP
At risk of being unable to communicate this effectively, I can’t imagine anyone watching Democratic politics over the last 40 years and accusing Republicans of rhetoric meant to create resentment. It is the very lifes breath of Democratic politics to repeat over and over that “those” people have more than you so you should vote for me. More money, more freedom, more opportunity, more evil intent, pick your more and they are going to point it out.
On another topic, it is interesting to see the President go back to pass.the.bill.now, it worked for healthcare maybe it will work for the jobs bill.
People like to chant.
I can’t imagine anyone watching Democratic politics over the last 40 years and accusing Republicans of rhetoric meant to create resentment.
This has to be the most candid admission in the history of blogging. To admit such lack of imagination on the world-wide web takes real courage, and I salute Marty for it.
–TP
it is interesting to see the President go back to pass.the.bill.now,
“Interesting” in your sentence i read as something negative, derogatory. Are you saying that he should not campaign for election (because that’s all he is doing)when everyone else is doing it. Is it because the President is Democrat? Do you ever think in such way when the President is the one you voted for?
T.P. Agree totally with your comment, it is indeed unfortunate that russell does not talk politics with more people, albeit, entirely understandable. It is to the detriment of russell’s acquaintances that they do not get hear his thoughts and argument as we do here.
The body politic needs to debate these issues openly and while each of our individual opinions is just a grain of sand or drop of water it is all part of the process by which 300 million people can somehow manage to govern themselves and create a livable society.
But I am guilty, I only discuss politics with like-minded folk and then arguments are mainly limited to nuances of policy or tactical maneuvers.
But what would be the point of arguing with CCDG, it seems pretty clear that we would rarely agree about the larger issues. He sees 40 years of Dems waging class resentment against the rich while I see the Repubs using resentment against the needy as being much more clear and obvious, going from Reagan’s mythical welfare queen to last night’s debate where no candidate could speak against a crowd that cheered the idea of letting someone die because they had no health insurance.
And one other point, I sure do not remember the President saying “pass the bill” with regard to health care, I remember months of dithering while Congress compromised and whittled and still came up with something that got one (or maybe it was two) Republican votes. How can I argue with someone when we apparently exist in two different realities.
But darn it, I want someone like russell who can articulate common sense and the reality I see to try and talk to those folks who either don’t see it or don’t seem to care.
Let’s not put all the burden on russell, RD.
I’m fairly sure that we all shrink from face-to-face political arguments. Lord knows I do. I don’t mean that I avoid talking back to people who express noxious political opinions to me. Such people are usually perfectly happy to have an argument, and I like to make people happy.
Most people, though, are like my teenage niece at a recent family dinner saying to her father and me: “Aw, do you HAVE to talk about politics at the table?” Well, when your family is Greek, “the table” is pretty much where you’re always at, so you always have to choose between boring your niece or shutting up about politics. So I shut up, because I love my niece.
–TP
Quick correction, no Republicans voted for the PPACA.
I’m fairly sure that we all shrink from face-to-face political arguments.
Tony, I do not shrink from face-to-face politics. Two years ago, even kicked a person out of the tax office i am manager off for calling Obama a nigger. In Phoenix, AZ.
I do it because i am aware of the alternative, and i did nothing to prevent the war in Croatia(not that i could anyway). Not this time. I will do everything that i can.
And i do it every time i hear bs, but i never start it, even with my customers in my other business, every time i hear a bs i respond.
‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’
I can’t imagine anyone watching Democratic politics over the last 40 years and accusing Republicans of rhetoric meant to create resentment.
Here is a thought for you:
Perhaps what you see as unfair demonization and fostering of resentment is nothing more or less than a clear statement of what some folks believe is true.
And yes, I’m sure that can be said on both sides.
People like me think a lot of what conservatives want is bad. No short-sighted, not ill-advised. Bad. Pragmatically bad, morally and ethically bad, bad for the nation.
Bad.
I personally try to make a point of not extrapolating from that to an assumption that conservatives themselves are bad. Although frankly I believe that some of them *are* bad. But most are not.
But *their understanding of what is good is different from mine*.
And, their understanding of what is good and mine are rooted in decades or centuries of personal and collective history and experience.
So, it’s not going to change anytime soon.
We don’t misunderstand each other. Or, maybe there’s some of that. But basically, I think we understand each other very well.
We just don’t think the same things are good.
There is not going to be a kum-ba-ya moment. We are going to have to settle for coexistence. And we’re going to have to settle for coexistence with a constant ambient level of suspicion, resentment, and anger.
Because our understanding of what is good is not the same.
That’s the ground truth of the matter, as far as I can tell.
All I ask is that people *LEAVE THE FREAKING GUNS AND GUN TALK AT HOME*. Because if things get to that point, there is no coexistence.
Just ask critical thinkerer.
We don’t want to go there.
Tony and RogueDem, I stopped talking with people about politics about the time I found myself riding back with friends from a jazz festival and yelling at one of their guests after he offered his opinion that we should, regrettably, probably just let NOLA sink into the swamp.
This was right after Katrina.
It was awkward for everyone. It wasn’t a very big car. And the guy was a guest of my friends.
It was, basically, rude of me. I’m prone to being a hothead, I’m prone to foot in mouth disease, I’m prone to going off when I get upset.
So, I generally confine my political conversation to online.
Here on blogland I can rant away and then delete my comment if it’s over the top.
IRL there’s no rewind. So I keep it to myself most of the time.
It’s easy to be reasonable when you can edit.
I don’t want “gun talk” either. I don’t own a gun, and wouldn’t know what to do with one if I did. But the idea of living under a fascist (no, it’s not an exact term, but close) regime, which I believe is in the hearts of a lot of “Tea-Party” Republicans, is not something I’m willing to accept. I’m not sure what the next step is, so I am going to work crazily for Democratic victories in 2012.
The Bush era was bad enough, but at least a small part of the malice, torture and war mongering can be attributed to fear. The kinds of attitudes that are coming out now have nothing to do with fear of attack. They have to do with old-fashioned racism and hatred of the poor. I don’t want to sit around and watch while my country turns into that. People close to me fought to eradicate that kind of hate-based government in Europe, and I certainly don’t want to sit around and watch it happen here like a Vichy.
So, yeah, no gun talk, but it would be nice to have some talk about what we’re actually going to do about it.
It is the very lifes breath of Democratic politics to repeat over and over that “those” people have more than you so you should vote for me.
No politician who wants to win an election ‘targets’/hates/runs-against the majority of voters (white people in the US, btw), which is what you said Democratic pols do. That is your original charge, and it’s senseless.
Do you think that a country in which the bottom 50% of people have less than 3% of wealth is an equitable or sustainable political economy? In which the top 1% have 20% of income? That was about the situation in the ’20s and that’s what it is now. Politicians don’t have to *create* resentment in that situation. It’s remarkable that we don’t have a MORE demagogic left, frankly. Cite for me what you’re talking about. And ‘the people vs the powerful’ doesn’t count, because it has been used in some form by every party since the beginning of the Republic, including the ‘tea party’.
I agree with Tony P. that it is a shame we don’t talk about politics in real life, especially eloquent, down to earth people like Russell. I understand why we don’t, but it’s a big problem. Our very discourse is thereby atomized like we are – talking about politics is like talking about our salaries: taboo. Kind of a bad thing in a democracy. ‘Debate’ is for professionals (usually professional liars). crit. tinkerer knows whereof he speaks.
Cite for me what you’re talking about.
It probably has something to do with suggestions that we return to Clinton-era tax rates, or something equally *hateful*. Maybe it’s because Democrats are more prone to advocacy of policies that counter discrimination and disadvantage, thus *targeting* the discriminators and the ones enjoying relative advantage.
It’s as though Democrats (or liberals) simply dreamed up excuses to go after rich whitey (or middle-class whitey, for that matter) rather than trying to defend minorities and the poor against real injustice and hardship.
I can’t help but think that many conservatives in this country are compelled politically by defensiveness about being white. I acknowledge that I can’t prove that and that I could be wrong about it, but that’s how it looks to me.
Just stepping back a bit…
If Marty had said, ‘This country has changed enormously in the past 40 years, especially in terms of social mores, and putting aside, for the moment, the merits of those changes, it freaks me the hell out. I feel like the ground is shifting under my feet. I feel like I and people like me are always portrayed as the bad guy, and I’m NOT the bad guy. I’m a good guy.’ THAT I could totally understand. I’m about his age, and the country really has changed in pretty dramatic ways, not all of them good.
But of course you *can’t* really put aside the merits of the changes we’re talking about, and to talk in terms of actual politics requires at least basic analysis, not just emotional reactions. The emotional reaction is real and totally understandable – and I’m not being condescending. But it’s literally crazy to think that *only* Democratic politicians try to stoke fear and anxiety and resentment, particularly when one is so full of that anxiety one’s self. What do you think ‘silent majority’ meant, Marty? What do you think every Ann Coulter book’s title is about? What is every GOP debate about? THEM THEM THEM THEM. The Liberal Agenda. The Homosexual Agenda. The Muslim Agenda. THEM THEM THEM THEM.
So, I’m not scornful of the anxiety white male people my age feel sometimes. I feel it too to some extent – the US 40 years ago seems like a completely different world. But politics is not therapy, it’s not ENTERTAINMENT, and it’s not life itself. It’s nuts and bolts – let’s do this, let’s don’t do that. I honestly don’t think that achievement and well being and success are as dependent on privilege as a lot of us (white men) want to think. We’re just used to it. And most of the aforementioned changes really have little to do with government anyway.
Emotions are what they are, and they’re real. But I don’t respect willful blindness because your feelings are hurt as a POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. Life’s a bitch, man. It’s not Liberal’s fault.
It was, basically, rude of me. I’m prone to being a hothead, I’m prone to foot in mouth disease, I’m prone to going off when I get upset.
Russel
I had to deal with the same problem, had to stop and think about how to solve it after realizing that i was doing more damage then use to my purpose of educating and finding a consensus.
After a period of listening only and asking more questions to understand from what logic such ideas come and from what source did they initially get them it was a time for action with purpose. I followed this course: Do not react instantaneously, give yourself time to calm down, figure out epistemology from their vocabulary use and watch the reaction of others who were listening.
Initial words should point to absurdity of their statement as to be an attention grabber, reach far down close to the bottom line of the common ground and build from there. And watch for my own emotions not to get out of hand.
I found out, just as you did, that so many times the split of ideas occurred after “i want to be a good person and do good for the country”, really far down. Extremely rarely i encounter a pure evil person where they advocate for killing of the other side, mostly as a passing car sticker with “where is Oswald when we need him”.
Cheering the mention of Rick Perry’s executions, and YEAHs at “Let them die” insinuations from GOP debates come really close to that.
And do not use too sophisticated wording because such their idiotic solutions did not come from sophisticated knowledge of the matter at hand. It came from stopping the investigation of the problems when it matched their emotions. It is like attacking their emotions which is really dangerous, but given enough practice i can manage it. I manage by using questions with implications, or transferring their positions to some well known example from history. Goodwin’s law applies equally to the real world, except with the tight group of friends and family.
Hey ct – many thanks for the thoughtful advice. I will think about what you’ve said here.
where is Oswald when we need him
Haven’t seen that one.
I don’t think that is the person I’d try to reach out to…. 🙂
Whining from the right about being “targeted” by the left as a divisive tactic is like my 11-year-old nephew.
He lives in a house on a lake with a boat and three different video game systems and all the toys in the world, and is utterly fncking inconsolable when he feels (“feels” being the operative word here) that he never gets to do what he wants and/or is being treated unfairly.
Yes, I’m sorry your privilege has blinded you to the fact that you’re far, far better off than 99% of people on earth. Yes, I understand that such feelings are relative, and that, for you, it “really” is/seems like it is unfair and hurtful. Yes, I understand, too, that you “deserve” everything you have, and that your idea of “normal” is not even on the same scale as most of the rest of humanity.
No, I don’t feel bad for you, and I think you’re divorced from reality if you think that *you’re* the oppressed one.
ccdg: At risk of being unable to communicate this effectively, I can’t imagine anyone watching Democratic politics over the last 40 years and accusing Republicans of rhetoric meant to create resentment. It is the very lifes breath of Democratic politics to repeat over and over that “those” people have more than you so you should vote for me. More money, more freedom, more opportunity, more evil intent, pick your more and they are going to point it out.
And, of course, the consequences are equal on both sides as well. Elect Democrats, and, hey, they government regulates more and might take more of your income in taxes. Elect Republicans, and, hey, you can’t get married, the Justice Department will abandon it’s civil rights enforcement, and you’ll need to show ID to vote. All the same.
This is an example of overreaction on our side.
If Republicans get their president in 2012 there is extremely small chance that there will be a civil war. It requires a multi-year drought and exhaustion of the Ogallala Aquifer and Lake Mead. There is no chance for American Spring lasting long enough given the Republican president. The response will be more fierce then the response in Bahrein.
The 2nd civil war can happen with Dem president only and when Republicans feel that they control most of the military. And i do not see a concentrated effort to control the military, not even an effort. They do control private armies like Xe and other, tough. But their forces are outside of the country still. Sometimes i ask myself if that is the reason Obama keeps them in Iraq and Afghanistan instead of stopping the wars and letting them back into the US.
For a civil war you really need about 20-25% of population to feel like they have nothing to loose with some kind of a leadership. And we are not there yet, maybe half-way there. Multi-year drought would get us there. Or a multi-year GOP control of the institutional powers would get us there. Given that we are in the historic period of huge electoral swings from election to election, GOP would not stay in power long enough. But combination of GOP presidency and continent wide drought will reduce the time for creating conditions for civil war to a couple of years.
Two scenarios for civil wars: top down like The American Civil War, or bottom up from starvation and lack of effective safety-net institutions like in Arab Spring.
So we are very far from civil war but very close to fascism that eventually can lead us there.
You are very welcome
where is Oswald when we need him
Haven’t seen that one.
I live in south where i’ve seen about half a dozen of them and a couple of others with a similar message. There is a relatively strong support for such thinking down south, and i really badly want to remove such support.
“So we are very far from civil war but very close to fascism that eventually can lead us there.’
Yep. And thank you, crithical tinkerer, for your insights.
Civil war would certainly be ugly. But fascism is quite ugly too.
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about, here. No reference point at all, sorry.
Explain, please?
This, too, wants explaining. The Tea Party that you guys are so fond of reviling are any sort of entity at all only because they think the government is controlling too much; is too authoritarian.
Which sort of leans away from fascism, no?
Not that they are mutually exclusive.
—
On the “Where is…when one needs him”, I have heard of versions with John Wilkes Booth. Would make more sense since I am unaware that Kennedy is as reviled as Lincoln among the people that would use such slogans (and would deny, if the could, that Lincoln founded their party).
The Tea Party that you guys are so fond of reviling are any sort of entity at all only because they think the government is controlling too much; is too authoritarian.
Which sort of leans away from fascism, no?
Well, that depends on how they think the government is too authoritarian. If it’s a matter of rolling back the New Deal and Great Society, then I’d say it leans away from socialism and various forms of equality, but not necessarily fascism. If they were focused on rolling back the Patriot Act, hyper-militarism, the War on Drugs, high encarceration rates and such, then I’d say, yes, they’d be leaning away from fascism.
My impression is that there is some of both in varying degrees among self-proclaimed Tea Party members, but, in general, that there is a bit more focus on the former list.
Slartibartfast, the “fascism” that we’re beginning to embrace is the corporate oligarchy. The “Tea Party” is indistinguishable from Republican hard core (the ones who are described in the article that inspired this thread), the ones who have always supported the “rights” of big business at the expense of the human persons.
Why are those retired dudes with the tea bags hanging from their hats trying to help corporations? They don’t get it that they’re not the ones who will benefit from the demise of health and safety regulations, the destruction of the social safety net, the neglect of infrastructure. They just see that they’re higher on the food chain than “the ones who made bad choices” – immigrants, unemployed people, poor people – people who are exploited and marginalized by the culture of corporate profit. The “self-sufficiency” rhetoric validates their own “hard-earned” position in society, as opposed to those failures over there who couldn’t make the cut. The “Don’t Tread on Me” folks are often happy to sign up for the private regulations of the gated communities; they don’t mind the years of “regulation” that their corporate employers placed on their lives. All freedom means to them is that they don’t have to share with those ne’er do wells who failed to get promoted like they did.
As far as the term “fascism” goes, I already noted that it isn’t exactly apt. But the results – extreme disdain for the rights of the weaker members of society, and unbridled power in the bullies – are similar.
The Tea Party that you guys are so fond of reviling are any sort of entity at all only because they think the government is controlling too much; is too authoritarian.
Hmm, That’s what they say, but I don’t think they are so coherent as you suggest. They are fine with the government having a lot of control – total control in fact – in some realms.
Fair enough on both points.
I don’t think that “hyper-militarism” is apt, though. It’s not as if we have the parades, and such. If that should translate more as “more militaristic than I think is good and right”, then I won’t argue the point. If it means also something like “we should keep our sweaty meathooks out of other countries’ business”, I think you’d probably find some agreement with that sentiment in Tea Party circles; enthusiastic agreement from dissatisfied paleocons.
Which is not to paint you as one of them, just to note that individual points of agreement do not necessarily make for convenient labeling.
Also, I should note that many Teapartiers that I have spoken to were none too happy with the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and other folly. I, too, am none too happy with those things. But that unhappiness doesn’t make me one of them, nor does it make me one of you, whichever niche-ifying label you might accept. Other than human, and possibly cantankerous.
I mean: get off my lawn, already.
Not being privy to the hive mind of the party of Tea, I’d appreciate a few examples.
They are fine with the government having a lot of control – total control in fact – in some realms.
For example, warrantless wiretapping, fenced free-speech zones, secret prisons, torture.
And, the more recent example(s) from the Republican debates: capital punishment for the uninsured. OK, that’s a slight exaggeration.
Slarti, I’m glad to hear your report of some opposition to the Patriot act among those you spoke with. Still, the blood lust on display at the debates is troubling (even to Rick Perry).
I should note that many Teapartiers that I have spoken to were none too happy with the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and other folly. I, too, am none too happy with those things.
Which is why the teaparty formed just after 9/11 and all the folly you mention was promulgated – right?
Cite? I have to admit near-complete absence of exposure to any conversation in favor of this, emanating from the Tea Party. Which doesn’t mean it’s not there.
That’s practically Death Panels.
Maybe there’s more in common between D and R than you thought.
Ok, slight exaggeration there. Your frivolity is contagious, it seems.
Sometimes things take a while to develop. Like, you know, the Democratic upswell that led to the 2006 election. Where was that in 2004?
Not being privy to the hive mind of the party of Tea, I’d appreciate a few examples.
Also not privy. I can deduce though. A vast majority of teapartiers – in the 80% range – self identify as Republicans – sorry I don’t have time to find that cite, but I don’t think that is controversial. There was evidently no need for the teaparty to take to the streets 8 or 9 years ago when the folly you mention was being enacted, not to mention state sanctioned torture, the wiretaps, etc. etc. The teas may not have liked everything Bush and Cheney did, but it seems to me that authoritarianism in service of ‘security’ and warmaking didn’t bother them a bit, since they didn’t exist then as such, and were then just regular Republicans, most of whom presumably voted for Bush and Cheney for a second term – the base came out for that election, as you recall.
Now I can’t PROVE this, but it seems like a pretty good bet to me.
It seems as if you’re making some things mean everything, jb. 2.5 years into the Obama presidency, we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan; what’s that mean? We actually involved ourselves in other ME conflicts.
All with the best of intentions, I’m sure.
And, for all you know, “wiretapping” is still being done. Politifact says little has changed on that front.
So: what’s that mean?
If we can use the Tea Party Express as a proxy for what “Tea Partiers” believe, here is their platform:
End the bailouts!
Reduce the size & intrusiveness of government!
Stop the out-of-control spending!
No government-run healthcare!
Stop raising our taxes!
Exclamation points theirs.
I choose the Tea Party Express because they were the sponsors of the “Tea Party” debate.
To me the Tea Party position boils down to:
Quit taking my money.
Leave me alone.
But that’s just my impression. I don’t presume to speak for them.
I actually find discussions about the tea party to be somewhat frustrating, because nobody seems to want to actually own up to either being a tea partier, or to speaking for them.
Push back on a putative tea party claim, and the response is that nobody really speaks for them.
As best I can tell, it’s a term of convenience for folks to claim when they want to vent their frustration, anger, or resentment about something or other.
Quit taking my money and Leave me alone is about as coherent a position as I can glean from it all.
Well. I think it means we can see if the Tea Partiers are against these things by observing if they’re on their common list of grievances against government. If they really don’t seem to be all that hung up about them, then we can probably conclude they’re not concerned with this sort of governmental intervention.
OTOH, if they are seriously protesting these things, then it’s a lot less informative.
Sure, that’s a problem. I tend to sympathize with some of their issues and not others. In general, though, I am not really a joiner of organizations that would have me as a member. I was raised as a Republican, never really participated in Republican politics or campaigns, briefly identified as a Republican, and nowadays I am simply registered as one so I can decide which Republican asshole makes it to the general election. Florida has closed primaries, so I had to pick one or t’other.
So: sorry to be an additional source of frustration to you by not being able to speak for them or even, really, about them.
I am not really a joiner of organizations that would have me as a member.
Say the secret woid and a duck will come down from the ceiling.
I think ‘The Tea Party’ is not one unified movement. It’s at least two astroturf groups (TP Express and TP Nation) and a very heterogenous mass of ‘followers’ that neither group fully controls. The followers contain on the one hand people with actual justified grievances that believe the TP to be an actual independent grassroots movement that will give them the voice they are denied by both established parties. They clearly have my sympathy but I think they are/get(?) duped by the string-pullers behind the scene who give a semisolid digestive final product about their grievances but need their numbers as chips in the game. Then there are the people that believe that they themselves can profit from the movement at the expense of ‘Them’ if they support the agenda of the leaders in the mistaken belief that the supply of read meat will continue once the higher-ups have achieved their goals. And then there are the lumpenbourgeoisie and (as recent addition) the American Taliban .
The ‘problem’ for the original organizers and the (un-scare-quoted) problem for society is, that the originally purely artificial movement took on a life of its own, became partially a real movement, and, because it is not unified but extremly angry, threatens both their masters and society in general. The ‘masters’ wanted to use the TP to just destroy the social contract as it applied to the lower classes hoping to derive money and power from that. But it looks like the conjured up monster will not be content with that and has become at least partially aware of the game that is played with it. It might also be that the attempt to regain control by appealing to the American Taliban and including them in the TP will backfire because this time they will not as usual be content with mere promises forgotten after the election. It’s there where I see actual parallels to Weimar. The Old Right (equivalent to the GOP establishment and their corporate backers) tried to use the Nazi movement (which was at its core disaffected middle class) as a tool against the moderate and radical left. The primary goal to crush democracy in all but name was achieved but the Old Right found that the new kids had not the least intention of handing over the reins to them. The results are known.
Unlike the Nazi movement the TP has no real leadership and those that believe that they are (Bachmann, Perry*)** can only unleash the destructive potential but risk to be devoured themselves in the medium to long run. Perry already got a taste of that about immigration.
The results will be very, very ugly. One can only hope that those that lit the fire will not escape it. I fear to contain the fire will not be possible anymore.
*I consider Perry to be just a sociopath and bottomlessly personally corrupt with no loyalties to anyone but himself. Bachmann seems insane enough to believe at least part of what she says.
**Palin seems to be out of the game
The Maine Tea Party in its own words, after taking over the drafting of the platform at the convention of the Maine Republican Party in May of 2010.
My favorite line from the platform:
My favorite line from the write-up about the platform coup on the Maine Tea Party’s own website:
No room for interpretation! This reminds me of a critical piece I once read on Kafka’s The Trial, in which the writer Freudianly assigned male and female symbols to everyone and everything in the book, and said that he had found the “key” to The Trial, and there was no longer any room for arguing other interpretations.
True Believers in the One True Truth, which is always…whatever any given True Believer says it is at any given moment.
What a trip.
**Palin seems to be out of the game
I wouldn’t count on it……
I really wish that it were possible to accommodate the teabaggers’ demands to:
If it were logistically possible, I would gladly allow any Tea Party member to “secede in place”, for want of a better expression. You don’t have to leave, but you’re no longer under the jurisdiction of the US; you’re a citizen of the Tea Party Nation.
Keep your damned money, and we will keep ours. You don’t have to contribute a penny to “the government”, but you no longer get anything from the government either. No SS checks to you, no Medicare reimbursements to your doctor. You have a billion-dollar invention? No US patent for you. Your boss demands you work 90 hours a week for $2/hr? Cool; it’s none of our business. You got screwed by a fellow Tea Party national and want to sue the bastard? Help yourself to your own courts — we promise not to call them “sharia courts” or anything.
Hold your own elections and we will hold ours. If our elected representatives decide that your US passport is no longer valid, feel free to print up your own. If your elected representatives decide to open embassies abroad (since ours no longer represent you) it’s no skin off our nose. How you fund them is your own look-out. Try a bake sale.
As in any amicable divorce, I’m sure we can work out a fair division of our joint assets and liabilities. Some of the assets would be hard to divvy up: the “USA” brand name, for one. Since the outstanding “national” debt you’re all het up about is intimately tied up with the brand name, I’d say whoever ends up with the one has to take the other with it. But that’s just my opinion.
Two separate sovereign nations living intermingled on the same territory is of course a ridiculous fantasy. Logistically, it would be a nightmare to implement. But it’s getting to the point where it might be worth trying to
just as an experiment.
–TP
“I fear to contain the fire will not be possible anymore.”
This is what I fear too. And I don’t know what the program is for those of us who want to fight the fire. I’m still supporting the electoral process (Democrats) because I still believe they’re good people trying to fight the fight. And that’s why I’m so infuriated by progressives who, lacking an alternative means of fighting, seem to be opting out.
And I don’t mean to be relentlessly blaming people who believe essentially what I believe, but hey: This is important, and there’s really no alternative but to be faithful, on message, and disciplined about politics – because war isn’t an option for us.
I don’t think we have the luxury of waving our hands at the Tea Party because all the members may not espouse all the attributed Tea Party beliefs at the same time, given that the debate was CNN and was co-sponsored with some group with the Tea Party name.
lj, agreed.
And what’s this about? J. H. Christ. If there was any doubt about these horrible slimy people ….
It seems as if you’re making some things mean everything, jb. 2.5 years into the Obama presidency, we’re still in Iraq and Afghanistan; what’s that mean? We actually involved ourselves in other ME conflicts.
So, 2.5 years into the Obama presidency and they are ready to secede (actually after less time than that) but 7-8 years into the Bush presidency…no tea party even exists. I’m sure it’s just happenstance.
Along the same lines, from Andrew Sullivan’s live-blogging of the debate the other night:
8.35 pm. So they all want to repeal Obamacare, but no one wants to touch the Medicare Prescription Drug Entitlement. Blow me over with a feather.
IOW: consistency for thee, but not for me.
It cuts both ways, no?
It’s ridiculous that we have to pretend that we know nothing solid about a group which has at least partially taken over the gop and one cohort of which sponsored their last presidential debate. Evidently, we can say what they stand for only when we agree with them, but any criticism is out of bounds, since…who knows, really? Give me a break.
I will say, though, that the ‘letting the uninsured die’ part of the last debate was possibly more Ron Paul than tea party, if I am allowed to make that distinction. It was Paul’s question, and the morons who yelled ‘YEAH’ at his answer were probably Paul guys. They are their own kind of crazy. I would estimate the tea party position to be more nuanced: YEAH, let him die! unless it’s *me* that’s uninsured and sick, in which case, it’s the Liberal’s fault, like everything else!
I’m sure it’s just happenstance.
IOW: consistency for thee, but not for me.
It cuts both ways, no?
You lost me Slarti. Many teas you know don’t like civil liberties violations which were begun 7 years ago, but didn’t feel the need to form a movement until after Obama was elected. So then I guess the reason they did it is that they’re disappointed that Obama didn’t end the wars and the civil liberties violations! They were Hoping Audaciously and disappointed, just like so many others of us.
The Maine Tea Party in its own words
I know I’m only displaying my effete liberal arugula-eating, French-wine-drinking snobbery when I say this, but:
Due *diligence*, not “diligent’s”.
There *are* no more wishy washy statements, not “there is no more wishy washy statements”.
And so forth.
For crying out loud in a bathtub, it’s your damned party platform. Proof read it. If you can’t parse English, hire a freaking copy editor.
But no, this dude is going to educate the masses. He is going to hip us all to the real meaning of the Constitution, which we all have apparently forgotten.
I’m still looking for the Article and Section where the founders pledged their allegiance to Austrian economics.
I am seriously not looking to pick on tea partiers, but they CANNOT FREAKING WRITE. I’m not talking elegance, I’m talking grammar and spelling. Fourth and fifth grade stuff.
Why? What the hell is it with them? Seriously, can somebody please explain their inability (or, perhaps, refusal) to write correct English?
And forgive me for saying this, but they DON’T KNOW MUCH. They don’t. And half of what they do know is wrong.
Not matter-of-interpretation wrong, not interesting-if-eccentric-interpretation-of-history wrong.
Just wrong. False. Not true. Lacking a basis in history or in fact. Incongruent with reality. Wrong.
I wish them well, mazel tov, may the road rise to meet them.
But they are stone ignorant. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to give offense, but they are. They are very clear about the things that bug them, which is great, but their understanding of any of the relevant history or facts is profoundly shallow.
Jeez Louise.
Sorry, I didn’t really mean to go there, but the freaking Maine Tea Party platform sent me over the edge. Thanks for humoring me, I’ll try to keep a lid on it next time.
Yes, I would be happy to let them keep their money, and would be more than happy to leave them alone, if they decided to break away to form their own republic.
The problem is, they want mine.
Wow, check out the platform of the Mainers TP:
Some highlights:
Freedom is not a pre-existing condition into which everyone is delivered. Freedom and personal liberty are conditions of existence which are hard fought for and once won, must be maintained.
No Natural Law? Just wondering. No ‘BORN FREEEEE’?
one more, from the preamble:
We are presented with a situation in which WE THE PEOPLE, must re-educate ourselves and our neighbors, and put the knowledge of liberty to work in the elections this November.
Hot. Re-education!
This is going to be comedy gold. Can’t wait to read the rest.
First
This is categorically NOT what I have ever said. “only” is not what I said. In fact what I said was it is literally crazy to think that ONLY Republican politicians try to stoke fear and resentment. Almost my only point.
Second, I am now officially not surprised anymore when the answer to this discusssion is “your rich, or comfortable or better of than 99% of people” so you have no empathy any more. For the record, thats BS.
” I’m still supporting the electoral process (Democrats) because I still believe they’re good people trying to fight the fight.”
Depends on your POV. From mine, Kucinich fits this description. He’s goofy or sometimes comes across that way, but I’d buy that he is trying to fight the good fight.
For the rest, the Democrats are less distant from my beliefs than the Republicans. On average, that is. I could never vote for Ron Paul because he horrifies me in some ways, but in this exchange he’s closer to a leftwing position than any mainstream Democrat (Kucinich not being mainstream)
link
I suppose if I were disciplined I wouldn’t be noticing such things out loud (or at all, maybe).
“In fact what I said was it is literally crazy to think that ONLY Republican politicians try to stoke fear and resentment. Almost my only point.”
That was it? It’s not saying much–without knowing anything at all about politics in, say, Australia, I would bet that at least a few members of each of its major political parties try to stoke fear and resentment now and then.
And since I am now irritated, I would like for you to find any group of people at any level on the economic ladder who are, in general, willing to say that they don’t deserve what they have.
And then point out the people that are in a lower economic class that believe they deserve what those people have.
Thats everyone. So every line that the Democrats draw, 200k, millionaires and billionaires, 150k when Kerry was running,are just ways to define a segment of society that they can pit against the next level up.
Despite the rhetoric I don’t like, I am more interested in any party that talks about making things better for everyone. Rising tide etc. because thats the only thing that works in the long run.
Marty, you said:
“I am more interested in any party that talks about making things better for everyone. Rising tide etc. because thats the only thing that works in the long run.”
I couldn’t agree more, which is why your continued support of Republican positions still baffles me.
It’s not that Dem positions are marginally better, for fundamentally they take conservative stances that are still too tepid for the socio-economic realities Americans are facing. But they’re attempts at positions, as half-baked as they have been.
But I’m failing to see what the GOP is offering that remotely resembles workable, hell, even plausible statements of policy that would benefit more than just a small constituency of really rich people. So commensurately, I’m failing to see what they stand for that remotely resembles unity of a broader polity.
What I’m seeing through my imperfect, myopic lens is bitterness, divisiveness, manufactured resentment and an exaggerated sense of dissatisfaction from an extremist faction that appears, by the day, to be consuming a major political party more completely – and in reference to Hartmut’s observations above, is so relentless that it raises serious doubts as to whether the old guard in the GOP is capable of controlling it.
My gut is beginning to tell me that at least a few of the old-timers are afraid of these extremists and fear that they are losing the high ground to them.
I also fail to see where the great resentment of wealth you attribute to the Dems comes from. That might’ve been more characteristic of say, the ’60s more than at any other time, and who were the preeminent Democrats of that era? Why, the Kennedys, the exemplars of inherited wealth par excellance.
That divisiveness alongside lines of upward income may have been directed more at irresponsibly-gained wealth, or wealth that did not have a socially-responsible remit within the ideology of those holding such monetary power.
The Kennedys, given what the vectors of their wealth were, admittedly cannot be gainsayed, but they appeared, imperfectly, to have held a caretaking ethos within their value system.
But wherever you feel they stood/stand with regard to wealth, I have yet to have ever seen, heard of or read about a Democratic candidate on any level that has proposed, say, to openly confiscate the largess of rich folks with, nor threaten them with a reserve of Second Amendment-guaranteed weaponry, nor even pass legislation shutting them out of access to Social Security or Medicare. That they may not need these programs has been a given, but I am not cognizant of any effort to deprive them of it by legislative fiat.
The Tea Partiers want government off their backs. Okay, fine. But what they seem to continue to burden themselves with comfortably is the very real weight of the privatized, unaccountable power of corporations, wealthy individuals and interests. I see no anger there at all.
We can debate whether the overamped “yeahs” at the debate were simply for Rand Paul himself, or for Wolf Blitzer’s leading let-the-uninsured-die suggestiveness. But in the name of what value does such a remark go unchecked and unqualified? It isn’t a value that takes into review any sort of unity I recognize, in my blinkeredness.
What it is is an every-man-for-himself mentality that I shudder to think will make its way into the deliberation of policy. The message to me, in my misinformed mind, is this: failure to be anything other than a self-secured world beater in career is a crime against society. Anyone who’s lost his/her formerly well-renumerated job, and/or health insurance, is a socio-economic liability, a cipher, a moral bankrupt, a living piss-stain on America. And we’ve gotten a fair sense of what the penalty for all that is.
If I’m wrong on any of this, please, Marty, please educate me out of my misinformation, ignorance, and debilitating dependence. God knows, if I ever return to the U.S. the sentence will pretty much be passed on me from the ride out of the airport.
Rising tide etc. because thats the only thing that works in the long run.
Unfortunately, the rising tide has been very selective about which boats it raises for the last 35 or 40 years.
Not my opinion, it’s the reality, as reflected in census and tax information. For reference please see, frex, the CIA factbook page on the US, scroll down to the section on the economy.
And speaking personally, my “animus” toward wealthy people as a class consists of my wanting them to pay, at most, an additional nickel on their top dollars in federal income tax.
Not because they suck. Because we need the revenue.
For one of the reasons for that, please see my comment above about rising tides.
The situation is out of balance right now. We should adjust it, before the wheels come off.
That’s almost my whole point.
But it’s literally crazy to think that *only* Democratic politicians try to stoke fear and anxiety and resentment,
This is categorically NOT what I have ever said. “only” is not what I said.
Mea culpa. Yes. Sloppy on my part. You said that stoking resentment and anxiety is the life’s breath of the Democratic party in the last 40 years. I think that’s unfair. Whatever you think of it, Dems do have a positive program – a very mild welfare state combined with halting recognition of civil rights for people who had been denied them. You can call that ‘resentment’ if you want, but I think we ought to be able to agree that it’s just the establishment of minimum standards of civilized life. It’s at least arguable.
What isn’t, except for people in complete denial, is that the GOP in the last 40 years has had little positive program. It’s been almost all negative – against said safety net, and about the stoking of racial and cultural resentment about…well, take your pick: government is the problem, liberals are the problem, feminists are the problem, welfare queens are the problem, immigrants are the problem, gays are the problem, Muslims are the problem, academics are the problem, scientists are the problem, media are the problem, ETC. It never fricking ends because it can’t end.
An honest argument is what I want. Say ‘I hate the welfare state because it’s based on resentment, and I want to get rid of it’. Why don’t Republicans do that consistently and clearly? Because people like minimum standards of civilized life and GOP would lose elections. So they do the other stuff – stoke resentment, bankrupt the government on purpose, obstruct, and the rest. It’s sneaky and anti-democratic. Don’t like being called that? Then don’t be that way. Duke it out in the open.
Saying that politicians of either party can be craven is saying the sky is blue when the sun is out. Not untrue, but trivial.
So every line that the Democrats draw, 200k, millionaires and billionaires, 150k when Kerry was running,are just ways to define a segment of society that they can pit against the next level up.
So I was right about it being about marginal tax rates. Great. Progressive taxation is a matter of stoking fear and anxiety and resentment – a way to pit people against each other.
Two words: Welfare Queens
Three words: Ground Zero Mosque
Four words: Defense of Marriage Act
The sky is friggin’ red.
Believe it or not, I wrote that last comment before reading jonnybutter’s. Welfare queens and the color of the sky – crazy, man.
Only at night. So far, anyway.
Four words: Defense of Marriage Act
DOMA vote in House: 342-67
DOMA vote in Senate: 85-14
Signed by: President Clinton.
I haven’t looked but assume most, if not all, votes in opposition were by Democrats, but let’s not pretend they covered themselves in glory there.
FWIW, 65 of the 67 voting against were Democrats. 118 of the 342 were also Democrats. You can assume without incurring much error that all the rest of the voting was by Republicans. All of the nay votes in the Senate were Democrats; also, the one abstention. Notable aye votes: Joe Biden, Robert Byrd, Tom Daschle, Leahy, Levin, Reid, Wellstone. Notable nays: Kennedy, Kerry, Boxer, Feinstein, Feingold, Moynihan.
I miss Moynihan. He was smarter and more principled than most in elected government at present.
…but let’s not pretend they covered themselves in glory there.
Agreed. Democrats can be passive, spineless weenies.
The point, though, is where the push for it came from and where the opposition to it came from – and who continues to support it and who continues to oppose it. Who are the most vocal and determined people on either side of the debate on the general issue, for which the reference to DOMA is a proxy, and which party do they belong to?
I miss Moynihan. He was smarter and more principled than most in elected government at present.
Seconded.
I miss Moynihan. He was smarter and more principled than most in elected government at present.
We at least agree on this. I didn’t necessarily share his principles, but he certainly was principled, and extremely smart – in the traditional sense of that word, meaning ‘intelligent’, not the current Washington DC sense, meaning’ruthlessly cynical’.
Rising tide etc. because thats the only thing that works in the long run.
Yeah, except you may need to help buy boats for the people that don’t have and could never afford them, unless you’re willing to let them simply drown. Which, as it happens, a great many GOPers simply are.
Believe it or not, I wrote that last comment before reading jonnybutter’s.
It’s the anti-reactionary hive mind. We’re all the same! unlike tea party people, who are all so unlike one another that we can’t describe them ideologically.