On the Other Foot

What would the national reaction be if there was a liberal version of the Tea Party? Though the craziest thing about this is that nothing would change. They already say all the worst things they can about liberals in this country.



Hell, half the time, they ain't even talking about liberals when they say those things: they're talking about pragmatists, moderates, centrists, and even really real conservatives. There's only one thing anyone has to do to enter the "Enemy of America" club in the eyes of these radical right-wingers: disagree with radical right-wingery. The only acceptable version of America, to them, is their own version, no matter how make-believe or utopian that version is.



HT: To the Dish where we are also reminded about the peaceful, non-violent nature of America's internet "Christian" population. < / sarcasm >



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Fighting Back

I'm just going to leave this right here next to this.

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The Parallel Universe Expansion Kit

What is the sound of one hand, clapping?

That tree falling in the woods without anyone to hear it gets a little bit louder.

From the start, I've said that Ryan's plan was courageous. It was proved so yesterday--kamikazi courageous. It lays plain the true intentions of latter day radical conservatism: the gutting of the social safety net. Republicans will now have to run on this principle. We should all be grateful to Ryan for his intellectual honesty. The President should be especially grateful.

A lot of folks in the echo chamber of the left got really angry that people looked at Paul Ryan's plan and said the words "serious" or "courageous." They forget that such a plan has a chance to become law when it is seriously proposed by the majority party in the House of Representatives, and is the end result of a serious right-wing ownership of political dialouge in this nation for the past generation (mainly do to liberal and progressive incoherence, non-participation, and lack of focus).

The folks proposing the plan just won a national election in a landslide, control congressional partisan gerrymandering redistricting in the majority of the states, and have sold a lot of folks on their ideas through constant mass marketing. This stuff is about as serious as it gets.

But here's the catch: it is far easier to market vaugue ideas, theories, and common-sense-isms than it is to really flesh out the details of policy. "Protect Your Marriage From Gay People" and "Support the Troops With Lapel Pins" isn't policy.

That's why I've always said I prefer to discuss policy involving plans like Paul Ryan's. Disagree with it as much as you want - it presents an intellectually consistent argument; it is the tip of the iceberg of real Republican political wishes. It is this is our plan serious, and it presents something tangible to be discussed.

It is difficult to engage in fake arguments about imaginary things like the "Ground Zero Mosque," "Death Panels," and "Kenyan Anti-Colonial Islamic Atheist Birth Certifications."

But when it comes to discussing deficits and voucherizing Medicare, privatizing Social Security, and why all these tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans have yet to produce any economic expansion after 10 years, liberals and progressives may have some traction. Those are arguments that liberals and progressives won at least once already.

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The Liberal Media

I don't think that means what you think it means.

When it comes to covering and analyzing the news, the reverse of right isn't left; it's independent reporting that toes neither party nor ideological line. We’ve heard no NPR reporter -- not a one -- advocating on the air for more government spending (or less), for the right of abortion (or against it), for or against gay marriage, or for or against either political party, especially compared to what we hear from Fox News and talk radio on all of these issues and more.

On my morning drive to work, I can tune into WWL News, Talk, & Sports; Rush Radio; or Walton & Johnson on Clear Channel. Until Glenn Beck comes on Rush Radio at 9am, Walton & Johnson provide a long string of invective and false folksy "common sens-ism" towards all things center or left. The number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations are simply stunning most of the time.

Such are the building blocks of agnotology. Even strung together with grossly exaggerated fake gay, black, and overly redneck voices, people listen to that morning show in New Orleans, and later repeat those inaccuracies as fact in discussions.

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The Unions Forever?

I don't subscribe to that apparent left-wing narrative that "all unions are always good always." Unions, like any large human organization, are just as capable of serious and fatal flaws as they are to obsolecence.

But the "union thuggery" narrative used so often by the far-right wing, despite contrary evidence, is a national one. It further erodes the credibility of real conservatives who associate with madness like this and refreshes in my mind what is at stake in Madison.

Don't fool yourself, this is all about political power, political marketing and credibility. Ending the right to collectively bargain has very little to do with actually balancing a budget. Because budgets have to do with revenues and expenditures; you don't balance those two things by significantly cutting revenues while reducing tiny amounts of expenditures and granting massive subsidies or giveaways to political allies.

In essence, the Republican runs on a platform of fiscal responsiblity, then institutes fiscally irresponsible legislation while cloaking it in some larger, more emotional national narrative. If they actually win, all the better. If they lose, they get to harvest the support that comes from intellectually incurious individuals on their "side" who see other Americans as less than Americans. Partisan political hackery at its finest.

As for the unions and their sympathizers, I can only hope this serves as a wake-up call to revitalize local and state-level activism. I hope it serves as a moment when these unions and activists become more politically savvy. (The ironic "union thug" t-shirt is a fantastic idea that needs to be replicated.) I hope this is the moment they begin to bring unions back from the brink of outdated-ness that they are fast approaching. There is some serious antipathy towards unions in this country, and for real reasons. These folks should start to see that, and not just base their support on something because all the cool liberals are doing it.

And they shouldn't couch this one event in terms of "losing" and "winning." Just because the GOP gets their legislation now doesn't mean that policy can't change later. You just have to remain vigilant and involved. If you fail to acheive your objectives here, you have to reevaluate and try again later. Once you do acheive your objectives, you must always seek to improve them. In a representative republic, we don't just get to enjoy one legislative battle and then luxuriously never revisit the issue.

Because, when it comes to unions, there is an awful lot of self-improvement that could take place.

I'm from the South, so it ain't like I've had a lot of experience with unions, even though I was in one for a year. A public employees union at that. Despite even active participation in said union, I am at a loss to figure out what that union did for me as a worker. Or for any of my co-workers, for that matter. I am at a loss to figure out what value that union added to the local area, whose public schools had experienced decades of decline and neglect.

Apparently, I was paying dues so some national-level union administrators could have snazzy lunches with congressfolk, and some local-level union administrators could throw cookouts. I also guess that, if anything had happened to me, the union might appoint some local and well connected lawyer to my case, if I didn't have the wherewithal to get one on my own. They could have just called the union I was in "legal troubles insurance." That's how membership was sold to me, after all. Though I never could find out how that would have worked. I also didn't quite trust the track record, since the union watched as 5,000+ employees were summarily dismissed once upon a time, and not one thing could be done about it.

This is all in spite of the fact that I knew some very spirited and sincere individuals who worked for that union. But that's to be expected. After all, I am from the South, and we've got a lot of spirited and sincere people here. Whatever civic or private organizations we create, there are going to be those people - just like there will be bad people. That's just the nature of things.

Despite the fact that I'm a "liberal,"* I'm a Southern liberal, and we tend to focus more on race than collective bargaining. To collectively bargain, after all, you have to accept some semblance of equality in the collective. And corporate interests didn't even have to divide us down here before we were conquered, we generally handled that for them ahead of time.




* (Roughly defined, by both "liberals" and "conservatives" as "anyone who doesn't agree with the most right-wing utopian thought processes.")
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Republican Voters on TV

In the comments section of a previous post, Dante wondered why I lump Glenn Beck in with the rest of the allegedly-conservative "right-wingers," such as Sean Hannity, Sarah Palin, and Rush Limbaugh.

Maybe because these are the kinds of folks who explicitly stand with Beck? (HT: Daily Dish)

Now I wonder why I didn't lump Beck in with right-wingery of Iowa Republican Caucus-goers.



Here's what the President says that starts this discussion:

The President: "It is important to say that our only two options are not the Muslim Brotherhood or a suppressed Egyptian people" (though O'Reilly interrupts him during the last part).

O'Reilly (interrupting): "But you don't want the Muslim Brotherhood?"

The President: "What I want is a representative government in Egypt."

Here is where I wonder where any truly conservative individual, outside the general red vs. blue team politics of a situation, will have any problem with this. Right now, in Egypt, we don't have many options. The President of the United States can't tell the demonstrators in Tahrir Square to go home. He can't demand that citizens of Egypt not participate in self-government if they don't reflect our interests.

The President can express the opinions and interests of the United States to whatever government is currently sovereign in Egypt; he can use his influence with the current regime to decrease violent repression in the hope that the demonstrations do not turn anti-American; he can make sure the State Department is looking after US interests, and those of our allies, in that country while these demonstrations continue - which are all things he is doing.

Criticisms of the President, from a conservative standpoint, would wonder if there was anything more that could have been done to use US influence earlier, to move Egypt to a more representative government before people went into the streets in demonstrations that threatened stability. Another could look forward to other autocratic client-states of the US, and how we should begin using our influence there to promote democracy without the same instability (and the anti-American sentiment that might come with it) from happening elsewhere.

You'd think the responses of a real conservative would reflect something like that. I've read about a few, and I've posted a few. I sure hope conservatives who read this will add a few truly conservative thoughts to the Egypt situation.

But what we see in this video is the exact opposite. The responses from the "conservative" Republicans read like a litany of all that has been said by Beck, Hannity, Limbaugh, Palin, Levin and O'Reilly over these last two years. Let's see how fast this "policy" conversation goes off the rails.

1. He doesn't have a grasp on how serious this could be, doesn't know what the details are, doesn't know what we want or what we need as a country.
2. Doesn't understand the difference between a Republic and a Democracy
3. No coherent policy/Doesn't know what he's doing.
4. Barack Obama is a Muslim, and that's guiding his policies.

That didn't take long at all. As a matter of fact, on video, that took exactly 36 seconds. Once that happens, you can see the affirmation of that thought process in the assembly. And before anyone says anything about this being a "liberal media setup," this was on Hannity.

The majority of individuals gathered for this panel think the President of the United States is a Muslim, that being Muslim is a problem, that the interests of Muslims run counter to that of the United States as a matter of foreign policy, and specifically as it relates to the Egyptian people demonstrating against a tyrant.

They also think they will be chided by "the media" for these beliefs. Not that some of these beliefs might be wrong, not that some of these beliefs may be erroneously held, but that they may be complained about by the media. This is what complete epistemological closure looks like: reality has no bearing here, and is seen as a conspiratorial boogeyman.

Who does that sound like?

Now, to be fair, there are some real conservatives who are surprised by this reaction on the part of Republican voters, or do not take this belief on the part of Republican voters seriously. Conor Friedersdorf explains this. On the other hand, I'm not surprised at all. If all people hear from their choice of "populist" media personalities is that the President is a Muslim, that Muslims are bad, and no one but "teh ebil liberals and medai" refute any of those ascertations, what do you think these people are going to think? What did you think they'd say on television?

Let's unpack this.

1. Taking the situation seriously? What we want or need as a country? This country has supported Egyptian autocrats for decades. This runs right up against the later comments in the video that claim President Obama:

• Feels that the United States is to blame, and doesn't respect all the "good" the United States does in the world.
• Will lead us down a "path of destruction," like Neville Chamberlain, through appeasement.
• Always seems caught unaware in the event of a crisis.

What our country "wants" is stability and peace so that our goods and capital can flow to and from foreign markets, and we can access the natural resources we need and new markets for our goods. What our country claims to promote around the world is the dignity of human liberty, individual freedom and human rights. What our country actually does is attempt to reconcile those two things, and the result ain't always pretty.

But don't tell these people. They aren't real conservatives, because real conservatives would understand that foreign policy is an ugly mixture of realpolitik and idealism. For these people, this isn't a complicated issue - the United States does only good around the world, and anyone who thinks we do anything bad hates and blames the United States, isn't a patriotic American and is most likely a liberal (the most intolerant religion).

If our country supports autocrats and tyrants it is because their people can't be trusted with representative or democratic government and hate the United States because of Marxism or Sharia. After all, just look at what happened in Cuba, Iran, Lebanon, the West Bank and Iraq! Why, as soon as those people got out from under their dictators, they started hating the United States for no reason whatsoever. All they do is sit around hating the USA, and being ungrateful for all the wonderful things we did for them under Batista, the Shah, the Israeli occupation or by bringing Saddam Hussein to justice. All these intolerant liberals want to do is encourage that sort of behavior because they hate America.

As far as being prepared for unexpected crises, that's why they're called crises. You can try and be prepared all you want, but sometimes you're not going to be in control of a situation. Real conservatives would realize that.

2. Doesn't understand the difference between Republic and Democracy? Both are governments where the people hold real elections and are not ruled by autocrats.

3. No coherent policy, doesn't know what he's doing? Hell, I told you that earlier in this post. I'll repeat it here for simplicity's sake.

The President can express the opinions and interests of the United States to whatever government is currently sovereign in Egypt; he can use his influence with the current regime to decrease violent repression in the hope that the demonstrations do not turn anti-American; he can make sure the State Department is looking after US interests, and those of our allies, in that country while these demonstrations continue - which are all things he is doing.

I'm quite unclear as to what else our President should or is able to be doing at this time from a policy standpoint. Perhaps one of my conservative readers can clue me in on this as well.

From what I read and hear from the right-wing, however, the basic idea appears as "be outraged" and "blame Obama" and "no, you don't need actual reasons."

And, of course,

4. President Barack Obama is a Muslim. Which pretty much tells you everything you need to know about these people Fox News and Sean Hannity put on television to talk about politics. It tells you everything you need to know about what these people think of Barack Obama, Muslims, liberalism, politics and religion all in one. It tells you instantly what these people really think about the United States of America and our laws, our policies and our place in the world. And if I keep hearing Republican voters talk about this, I'm going to start ascribing this erroneous belief to the whole of the GOP and the Tea Party.

Because this is exactly the reason I do not identify with mainstream Republican voters. That is exactly why I do not trust many Republican elected officials. Put the "R" after someone's name on a ballot, and these people are who I think of. I try to rise above that, and think instead of the people I know who do not act like this, but the reaction has become a gut one at this point.

This is not conservatism. Conservatism focuses on policy, regardless of religion. What you see here is right-wingery, hackery and demagougery. That's what this is.

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Left-Wing Narratives: Everything Was Fine Until...

Michael Lind is no left-winger, but after reading a recent article of his, it appears that he is a subscriber to one of the left-wing's most prevalant narratives. Lind falls into the same category of many left- and right-wing elite, especially those who cannot seem to reconcile the positions of others who do not agree with them 100%. Thus is the burden of already knowing everything.

You know how they know this? Because in the past, back when everyone who mattered "agreed" with them (the idea that they could be picking and chosing the agreement of historical figures to their personal philosophy never seems to be taken into account), the world was a far better, almost utopian, place. Just look at the state of things today, and how much better off we'd be if we had continued what was working!

Sound familiar? It should. There is an almost identical past-as-utopia streak running through the right-wing. (I'm not surprised that Lind is described as a "former" neoconservative.) But we can't ignore the danger of the same narrative running through the DNA of the left.

The main difference with the left's version is the understanding of what and where that utopian past specifically went off the rails. Lind fairly nails this current: Everything Was Fine Until The Christians Showed Up (In the 1970's). To many a leftist, society's fall from the rational advance of rational reason can be explained rationally as a result of irrational Christianity's rise to political power some time after 1970.

Because, the narrative tells us, lots of people in this country were Christians in the past, but they weren't very Christian-y. Not like today, anyway. Religion didn't have a very large impact on policy or history, the narrative goes, except as a foil for the forces of rationalism to defeat. The forces of irrational religion never won against the reasonable arguments of rational behavior, until something went wrong in the very recent past.

Oh, and this switch was made without any rational reason, because every scientific advance experienced in American history never had a consequence that was bad, ever.

This very recent and shocking rise of religion over rationality is an exception to the historical rule. Though it does explain, to the left-wing mind, the following things:

1. Why people disagree with their rational beliefs in the first place;
2. Why people vote against their own interests, making their disagreements policy;
3. Why the most left-wing candidates lose elections to dumb people voting against their own interests;
4. Why people who disagree with them should just shut their stupid mouths as not to encourage the dumb people who vote against their interests;
5. Why the only recourse is to make fun of those who disagree - there's nothing that can be done except withdraw into circles of similar thought and maybe throw a protest every now and again to compare witty and ironic signs.

With all that in play, I can tell you that the left doesn't have a problem losing elections because the "dumb people" are "irrationally" voting against their interests. The left loses elections because they subscribe to this narrative, and don't see the value in understanding why voting against their policies can be seen by large numbers of voters as the most rational thing to do.

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Left-Wing Narratives: The Military Industrial Complex

Was Eisenhower a peacenik, darkly hinting that Pentagon insiders and defense contractors would secretly lead America to war every chance they got?

Probably not. Though his Presidential farewell is often quoted, it is done so for the one line - not the realism, pragmatism, internationalism, context and optimism it beautifully displays. Section IV of the address is where you will find the quote, along with these:

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.
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We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
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The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present--and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

So, I guess if you could simplify the context in which Ike utters the phrase "military-industrial complex," you could simplify the context of his "captive of a scientific-technological elite" quote to undermine both Global Warming and Federal participation in university research.

Those aren't good roads to take for the left-liberal-progressive side of the political aisle. The Slate examination goes further:

As Ledbetter's book shows, Eisenhower had estimable motives too. He feared America might become a "garrison state," as the lingo of the day had it, limiting civil freedoms in the name of one military crisis after another. He resented the skill with which Defense Department brass finagled congressional leaders. Even his obsession with balancing the books, though a product of a pre-Keynesian worldview, had the virtue of keeping him alert to Pentagon bloat. And his warnings about military overreach were couched, it's usually forgotten, in passages insisting on the need for a military of unprecedented size, which Eisenhower called "a vital element in keeping the peace."

Narratives. No matter which side uses them, they dull the wits and focus only on those parts that support a "side" in an argument made today.

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The Real Constitutional Threat

Is the so-called "Repeal Amendment." Sounds like another round of nullification to me. If you like the 1st, 4th, 5th, 14th, amendments; if you like Civil Rights; if you like women's suffrage and a bunch of things like that, the Repeal Amendment isn't for you.

But civil libertarians and the American left will be content to sit around, drinking their high-gravity beer or soy-milk lattes, not talking about this while thinking "oh, the GOTP will never be able to pull that off. Someone is sure to stop them."

First they came for your pragmatic, centrist President's birth certificate...

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