The Commentariat -- Nov. 1, 2013
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the confirmation of two of President Obama's nominees, one to a powerful appeals court and another to a housing lending oversight post, setting up a confrontation with Democrats that could escalate into a larger fight over limiting the filibuster and restricting how far the minority party can go to thwart a president's agenda." ...
... Niels Lesniewski of Roll Call: "'I think it's worth considering it,' Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said of changing Senate rules on nominees after Republicans filibustered two nominees." CW: Biden is, of course, president of the Senate. ...
... John Stanton of BuzzFeed: "Senate Republicans Thursday successfully blocked the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt to head up the federal agencies overseeing the real estate industry, only the second time a sitting member of Congress has had a nomination blocked since before the Civil War." ...
... Susan Davis of USA Today: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., vowed to try again after Senate Republicans on Thursday blocked the nomination of Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., to head the agency that oversees mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac at a critical time for the industry. 'Republicans' unprecedented obstruction continued today with a step that we have not seen since the Civil War,' Reid said."
Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) pushed back hard Wednesday against those hammering ObamaCare for forcing some patients out of their current insurance plans. The House minority leader said the number of patients who will have to change plans under the law is small, and they will ultimately benefit by moving into new plans with better coverage.... Pelosi said the sharp rise in medical costs, combined with the transient nature of the individual insurance market, would eventually have forced people out of their individual plans -- ObamaCare or not." ...
** Todd Purdum in Politico: "To the undisputed reasons for Obamacare's rocky rollout -- a balky website, muddied White House messaging and sudden sticker shock for individuals forced to buy more expensive health insurance -- add a less acknowledged cause: calculated sabotage by Republicans at every step." Purdum outlines many of the sabotage tactics.
... David Firestone of the New York Times: "The so-called cancellation letters waved around at [Wednesday's] hearing [on the ACA] were simply notices that policies would have to be upgraded or changed. Some of those old policies were so full of holes that they didn't include hospitalization, or maternity care, or coverage of other serious conditions. Republicans were apparently furious that government would dare intrude on an insurance company's freedom to offer a terrible product to desperate people.... In the face of absurd comments and analogies..., Ms. Sebelius never lost her cool in three-and-a-half hours of testimony, perhaps because she knows that once the computer problems and the bellowing die down, the country will be far better off." ...
... The "Daily Show" issues a correction:
... Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker interviewed "Jonathan Gruber, an M.I.T. economist and an architect of both Mitt Romney's health-care plan in Massachusetts and Obama's Affordable Care Act" about the "winners & losers" ObamaCare will create. CW: Gruber's assumptions about the "losers" so annoyed me that I wrote to him about it. ...
... Update: I wrote to Gruber:
From the Ryan Lizza piece...:
... three per cent of the population, will have to buy a new product that complies with the A.C.A.'s more stringent requirements for individual plans. A significant portion of these roughly nine million Americans will be forced to buy a new insurance policy with higher premiums than they currently pay. ...
Gruber summarized his stats: ninety-seven per cent of Americans are either left alone or are clear winners, while three per cent are arguably losers. 'We have to as a society be able to accept that,' he said. 'Don't get me wrong, that's a shame, but no law in the history of America makes everyone better off.
Wait a minute. These people are 'giving up' their junk policies, some of which don't even pay for hospitalization, to get -- and pay for -- more comprehensive policies. Some of these 'losers' will also get tax subsidies and/or Medicaid assistance. (Yes, there may be some real losers in those states that refuse to accept the Medicaid expansion, but they still can get the tax breaks, at least at this point.) Most of those among the 3 percent who don't get assistance can afford to pay for their own insurance -- so the rest of us don't have to cover their hospitalizations, maternity complications, etc., -- via higher premiums on our own policies -- when they get sick & can't afford to pay the resulting huge medical bills.
These people, for the most part, are 'losers' only if you mean by losers that they're financially-comfortable jerks complaining about having to pull their own weight. What's a shame is not that they have to pay more for better policies but that they are caterwauling about it.... Your characterization of the 3 percent as losers is misleading.
Gruber responds,
that is a good point. Really it comes down to whether these folks were in crappy policies that they misunderstood, or whether they were rationally buying very skinny coverage. If the latter they have some complaint, but to my mind it is pretty small relative to the gains to everyone else. ...
... Ed Kilgore makes pretty much the same point I made to Gruber: "The bottom line is that the 'losers' are people with really bad individual insurance policies that expose them to ruinous out-of-pocket costs.... But these 'victims' do get to buy much better insurance without fear of being disqualified for pre-existing conditions, and if their incomes are below 400% of the federal policy level, they qualify for tax credits to help pay for it." ...
... Turns out bloggers were much taken with Lizza's piece; economist Justins Wolfers even created a pie chart reflecting Gruber's numbers. ...
... Josh Barro of Business Insider claims -- accurately, I think -- that Gruber's analysis is even worse than I realized. Barro asserts that Gruber's "numbers are garbage," & explains why. CW: How could this happen? Gruber is the expert's expert on the ACA & RomneyCare. AND he's an MIT professor. So the tendency is to defer to him. The Villagers simply accept an argument from authority -- which is no argument at all. Paul Krugman wrote an excellent blogpost a few weeks back (I think I linked it then) or "experts" v. "just bloggers" that applies here. ...
... Joshua Holland of Moyers & Co. debunks the latest ObamaCare horror claim, this one by conservative "intellectual" Avik Roy. ...
... Henry Aaron, in the New York Daily News, has a good piece that explains those policy cancellations to the somewhat dimwitted: "Obamacare is removing insurance products from the market that are bad for your health." You could send it to your somewhat dimwitted friends. ...
... AND a reminder from Josh Barro: "The American health care system sucks."
Philip Rucker of the Washington Post: "In recent stump speeches and policy remarks, Bill and Hillary Clinton have offered sharp criticisms of the partisan gridlock paralyzing Washington, signaling a potential 2016 campaign theme if Hillary Clinton chooses to run for president. The Clintons' critiques in recent days have been explicitly aimed at congressional Republicans, who helped spur a 16-day government shutdown and potential debt default in October. But their remarks also seem to contain an implicit rebuke of President Obama's failure to change Washington as he pledged when first running for the White House." CW: Right. Because Obama should have been able to turn sludge into honey. ...
... Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "President Obama's top aides secretly considered replacing Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. with Hillary Rodham Clinton on the 2012 ticket, undertaking extensive focus-group sessions and polling in late 2011 when Mr. Obama's re-election outlook appeared uncertain.... The idea of replacing Mr. Biden with Mrs. Clinton had long been rumored, but the journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, in their new book, 'Double Down,' provide a detailed description of the effort inside the senior circle of Obama advisers. It was pushed by the chief of staff at the time, William M. Daley...." ...
... Sean Sullivan & Philip Rucker of the Washington Post outline a few more revelations from the Halperin-Heilemann book.
** Paul Krugman: "Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn't really stand for anything else -- and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality." ...
... War on Poor People, Ctd. Alex Rogers of Time: "Just as Congress sits down in a new bipartisan conference committee to the hard work of funding the future of the food stamp program, benefits are set to drop Friday as stimulus spending dating from the 2009 recession expires. The cut of $5 billion for fiscal year 2014 equals 21 fewer meals a month for a family of four, or 16 fewer meals for a family of three, according to the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.... The decline in benefits is unlikely to be reversed anytime soon. In fact, Congress is preparing to impost [sic.] further cuts in the coming years."
Rick Hertzberg of the New Yorker has some thoughts on "What did the President know & when did he know it"?
They could well be spying on the president, for all I know. He has a cell phone, and, in fact, my guess is that they have collected data on the president's phone. -- Sen. Rand Paul (RTP-Ky.), on the NSA
Here is one instance where Rick Hertzberg & I more-or-less agree with Li'l Randy (tho neither of us assumes the NSA is listening in to the President's calls). But do read on. We ain't with Sen. Conspiracy Theories on much. -- Constant Weader ...
... CW: The Plagiarist. Aah, I was wrong. I said Rand Paul learned everything he knows about science from science fiction movies. Forget the movies. Li'l Randy doesn't have time to go to the movies. Turns out he learned everything he knows about anything from copying -- verbatim -- Wikipedia movie synopses. Andrew Kaczynski of BuzzFeed elaborates. Thanks to contributor Tommy Bones for the lead. Sorry I missed it earlier. ...
Well, we, we borrowed the plot lines from 'Gattaca,' a movie, and I gave credit to the people who wrote the movie. I think they're arguing about whether things are properly footnoted. And there are technicalities to this. But nothing I said was not given attribution to where it came from.... The rest of it is making a mountain out of a molehill from people I think basically who are political enemies and have an ax to grind. -- Rand Paul responding to a Rachel Maddow segment in which she outed him for plagiarism
This is something that high school students know not to do. And you are presenting yourself as potential candidate for president. -- Rachel Maddow, responding to Rand Paul
The speeches do appear on Paul's website, without footnotes. -- Andrew Kaczynski ...
If I didn't care so much about our country, I would hope he would get the Republican nomination for president, because that would mean the end of the Republican Party. -- Give-'em-Hell Harry (Reid, that is), on Ted Cruz
... The Essential Cruz. David Korn of Mother Jones: Ted Cruz's father Rafael Cruz, "speaking to the North Texas Tea Party on behalf of his son ... [while Ted] was then running for Senate, called President Barack Obama an 'outright Marxist' who 'seeks to destroy all concept of God,' and he urged the crowd to send Obama 'back to Kenya.' ... It's appropriate to take Rafael Cruz into account when evaluating his son the senator. Ted Cruz ... has often deployed his father as a political asset. He routinely cites his Cuban-born father, who emigrated from the island nation in 1957, when he discusses immigration and justifies his opposition to the bipartisan reform bill that passed in the Senate. (Ted Cruz hails his father as a symbol of the 'American dream' ....) Moreover, Ted Cruz campaigns with his father.... Rafael Cruz regularly speaks to tea party and Republican groups in Texas as a surrogate for his son...." ...
... ** "Sins of the Father." Ed Kilgore has an excellent take on Corn's report.
Brad Plumer of the Washington Post: A Brookings Institution study finds that the "Cash for Clunkers" program of 2009 wasn't a very efficient stimulus.
Senate Race
Charles Pierce is thrilled that some crazy teabaggers will or may primary Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). Pierce is particularly happy about the potential candidacy of "historian" David Barton, whose "life's work is dedicated to proving that the Founders were as god-nutty as he is."
Local News
Joseph Goldstein of the New York Times: "A federal appeals court on Thursday halted a sweeping set of changes to the New York Police Department's practice of stopping and frisking people on the street, and, in strikingly personal terms, criticized the trial judge's conduct and removed her from the case. The Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the judge, Shira A. Scheindlin, 'ran afoul' of the judiciary's code of conduct by compromising the 'appearance of impartiality surrounding this litigation.' The panel criticized how she had steered the lawsuit to her courtroom when it was filed nearly six years ago." ...
... Scheindlin's removal outrages Jeff Toobin.
News Ledes
CBS News: "A gunman walked into Terminal 3 at Los Angeles International Airport Friday morning, pulled an assault rifle out of a bag and opened fire, killing a Transportation Security Administration officer at a security checkpoint and wounding three other TSA officers, authorities and law enforcement sources said. U.S. law enforcement officials confirmed to CBS News correspondent Bob Orr that the suspect has been identified as Paul Ciancia, 23, of Pennsville, N.J. Officials said he also spent some time in the Los Angeles area. A preliminary review of government terror databases and watchlists found no connections to Ciancia, and he does not have a significant police record, Orr reports."
... The Los Angeles Times story is here.
Washington Post: "A U.S. drone strike killed the chief of the Pakistani Taliban on Friday, local intelligence officials said, in an attack that could cripple the group but undermine an effort by Pakistan’s government to engage militants in peace talks. If verified, the death of Hakimullah Mehsud would be a victory for U.S. officials who have spent years hunting down a leader implicated in a 2009 attack that killed seven Americans at a CIA outpost in eastern Afghanistan. But the drone strike also threatened to add to strains between the United States and Pakistan, whose new prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, had announced earlier in the day that his government would begin talks aimed at reaching a negotiated settlement with the group."
New York Times: "An international scientific panel has found that climate change will pose sharp risks to the world's food supply in coming decades, potentially reducing output and sending prices higher in a period when global food demand is expected to soar."
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Reader Comments (22)
Here's a bit more about the Rand Paul plagiarism scandal, something in my very own words (or as Chico Marx once said, "Now I'd like to play one of my own compositions by Victor Herbert"):
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to plagiarize stuff about the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Teabaggers and of Teabaggers' God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should have properly footnoted the causes which impel them to the separation and not mess around with copying stuff from other people without attribution.
So smoke on your pipe and put that in.
Part of the plotline of Raymond Chandler's The Little Sister:
Marlowe finds a man who presents himself as a retired optometrist living in Orrin's old room. The man seems rather cagey for a retired optometrist and he and Marlowe trade wise cracks as they both try to feel each other out for information. During the exchange, Marlowe notices that the "optometrist" wears a toupee and is carrying a gun.
When Marlowe returns to his office he gets a call from an unidentified man who offers him an easy $100 to hold something. Marlowe agrees to meet the man at his hotel. As he enters the man's room, a blonde emerges from the bathroom with a gun in her hand and her face covered with a towel. She knocks Marlowe out with the gun.
When he comes to he finds the "retired optometrist" dead on the bed in the hotel room, also with an ice pick in his neck. The room has been searched and is in complete disarray. It is obvious that whatever they were looking for was rather small based on the kind of containers that have been opened. As Marlowe surveys the scene he tries to think of a possible spot that the killer may have missed. He remembers the optometrist's toupee which is now fixed to his bald, dead, head. He removes the toupee and finds a claim check for the Bay City Camera Shop. He keeps the claim check and notifies the Los Angeles police of the murder.
Nothing I
saidwrote was not given attribution to where it came from.Sounds likeIt's a great story.I don't know why this story reminds me of Li'l Randy, but I wouldn't wish him an icepick in the neck.
Marie
P.S. Any similarity to this Wikipedia entry is purely coincidental.
I enjoy, up to a point, watching Jay Carney’s White House briefings. Carney’s cool and often guardedly amused at the questions he fields, like, perhaps, Brooks Robinson fielding routine ground balls.
The White House press corps, at first glance, appears to be largely composed largely of fools. Few observers would argue. Some of the foolishness, however and without doubt, occurs because the reporters' editors gave them specific questions to ask; editors, most reporters will tell you, are dumber than they are, perhaps dumber than anything you can imagine.
There are two exceptions, however, to the White House press corps stupidity rule. One is Major Garrett of CBS; the other is Ed Henry of Fox—both ask good questions, both seem to know what they are talking about, both seem to remember the answers when the nearly same questions were asked a day or two before.
Garrett and Henry really do challenge Carney. And Carney really is Brooks Robinson.
Marie,
Are you kidding me? You must be reading my mail. Either that or you are Ed Snowden's secret sharer.
How ever did you come up with this synopsis of Chandler's "Little Sister" to connect with Li'l Randy? (It's brilliant, by the way.)
As a college student I became an instant devotee of Raymond Chandler, he of the striking, grand guignol similes (comparing leaves of hothouse flowers to the freshly washed fingers of dead men--The Big Sleep) and Little Sister was one of his more byzantine and ambagious narratives (and it IS a great story, as were the High Window, Lady in the Lake, Big Sleep, and Farewell my Lovely, with the tragico-comic-underworld-knight-pure figure of Moose Malloy).
No matter how you happened upon this unlikely, weird comparison, I would point out another serious Chandleresque deficiency of the Little One besides a bad toupee secreting mystery-busting claim checks.
In his seminal essay on the "Simple Art of Murder", Chandler describes, far better than I ever could, the essence of the hero, the qualities of which 'baggers seem to assign to Li'l Randy. Here is how Chandler puts it:
"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness."
Is Randy mean?
It's his essence.
A man of honor?
Only if by honor, you mean sliminess.
Does Randy have a disgust for sham?
Clearly not.
Does Randy detest pettiness?
Look up "petty" in Webster's and you'll see a picture of Rand Paul.
Would Chandler apply the soubriquet of hero to Rand Paul?
Not on the day of his worst bender.
(And Marie, I want your word that you have not been Vulcan Mind Melding or Ed Snowdening me. Sheesh!)
P.S. I have to relate one of my favorite Chandler exchanges. I could be wrong, but I believe this is from the earliest short story version of Red Wind, I think it was first published in Black Mask. It involves a several people in a California bar in the middle of the day. A guy sits down and sees a drunk at the end of the bar. He chats up the bartender who is not happy about it. Why?
"In the first place I don't like drunks. In the second place, I don't like them getting drunk in my place. And in the third place, I didn't like drunks in the first place."
The guy he's talking to (who later becomes Philip Marlowe) says "Hey, that's pretty good. Warner Brothers should use that." The bartender says "They already have."
And so they did.
@Akhilleus: "And Marie, I want your word that you have not been Vulcan Mind Melding or Ed Snowdening me. Sheesh!"
I'm afraid I can't give you my word on that, but I will tell you that my powers work only once a year, so by the time you read this, you're on your own again. Till next Halloween.
Marie
I just emailed this column to a friend using your email article tool. What showed up was NOT 11/1... they got 10/29 instead. This explains a lot about what I had sent them from here last week.
Please have a word with the code monkey who handles such things. Thank you.
Other than this I enjoy your work.
The front page headline in the New York Times declares: “Troubled Start for Health Law Has Democrats Anxious.” The article points to the website debacle and the policy cancellations as fueling the anxiety. And yet the Times fans the flames in the following article, which profiles three “victims” of the law’s new policy requirements. Victim number one, Mr. Nance, has been against the law from the get-go, claims he wouldn’t qualify for subsidies, but hasn’t checked out his options because the website won’t work. Victim number two, Mr. Wright, went through his state exchange, and discovered he could save $100/month on a new policy. That’s $1200/year savings, though the reporters don’t bother noting that figure, nor do they spend much time with Mr. Wright, since he’s no longer a victim. Finally, there’s Ms. Tyrell of Arizona, who seems concerned by a recent diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, but which, thanks to the ACA, shouldn’t affect her getting insurance. She, too, hasn’t been able to access the government website.
Okay. The federal website isn’t working, but apparently the phones are. Couldn’t the reporters have sat with the “victims” while they made a phone call or talked to one of the navigators that can be found in most communities? Then we’d have a more complete story, rather than this hand-wringing-sky-is-falling sloppy excuse for investigative journalism.
@Dave: Thanks for the heads-up. I've never paid any attention to the e-mail tool. So I tried e-mailing myself the Nov. 1 post (using different from & to e-mail addresses), & what I got was -- Nov. 1, not Oct. 29.
I assume you know to use the e-mail feature at the bottom of the Nov. 1 post, not at the bottom of the Website (which currently is the Oct. 29 Commentariat post), but I have a suspicion you may have slipped up & used the feature at the bottom of the Website, which would explain your result.
At this point, then, I can't very well complain to my host that the tool isn't working since it worked for me.
@ALL: If a few of you would try e-mailing today's (or any day's) Commentariat to yourselves & letting me know the results -- you can contact me via the Comments or at constantweader@gmail.com also linked here -- I'll have some better data to pass on.
Thank you kindly.
Marie
Re; A word from your friends at NSA; "I'm afraid I can't give you my word on that"; Marie M. Burns. But we here can. She said it, wrote it, and thought it. Hope that eases your mind.
@Ak, I started smoking at fifteen because of that P.I. Marlowe, I wanted to be a tough guy. Took me another fifteen years before I threw down the coffin nails.
@Janice. Thanks for your analysis. The Times' Democrats Are Worried story is here. The "victims" story is here.
The first "victim" is complaining that the new policy his insurer offered cost twice as much. Big surprise. Since he has what sounds like a good job, he & his wife probably won't qualify for a tax subsidy, & since he lives in Missouri -- which refused to accept the Medicaid expansion -- they sure as hell won't get Medicaid assistance. The "victim" acknowledges that he's not eligible for a tax break. But here's a kicker: "For now, he has purchased a one-year plan through United Healthcare that is similar in price and features to his existing plan." Okay, so his "victimization" was that he had to shop for a new plan, which he claims is just like the old plan (hmm, wonder if his old plan guaranteed that he & his wife couldn't be kicked off & if it covered prescription drugs -- there's a high likelihood it didn't).
The second "victim," as you say, was surprised to find out he got a better deal.
The third "victim" was offered a policy that cost only 18 percent more than her current policy. Since it almost certainly has better benefits -- no caps, no way to terminate her if she gets a serious illness, free check-ups, pap smears (I think -- not certain about this), etc. -- & since she's 54 years old & at an age where she may need extensive health care, she definitely is getting a better deal for the 18 percent increase. Since she's a freelance writer, there's a good chance she would qualify for a tax break or Medicaid assistance (she lives in Arizona which does not have its own exchange but has accepted the Medicaid expansion).
Although none of these "victims" falls into this category, I'm skeptical of claims that people can't get on Healthcare.gov . (The third "victim" said she had trouble finding out if she was eligible for a subsidy, & that's believable, as I've read stories that this part of the site has serious issues.) I've tried to get on Healthcare.gov three times, & each time it came up immediately. Once I went all the way thru the shopping part with no problem. The other times I've just logged on to the main page. I think many of the "I can't get on the Website" stories are bunk.
Marie
@JJG. Literature can be bad for your health. Also, I didn't write that plot summary. Wikipedia contributors did. That's why I linked the Wiki page. It was a joke, see.
Marie
My favorite Raymond Chandler bit from "Red Wind."
"There was a hot desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On a night like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of a carving knife and study their husband's necks. anything can happen."
PD,
Yeah...and like that...Chandler was a gem.
Morality and the Conservative mind.
We’ve been going back and forth now for some time watching in appalled horror at how easy it seems for wingnuts who preach the virtues of Christianity (to the point of trying to force their belief system down everyone’s throat)--care for thy brother, turn the other cheek, love others as oneself--to think, speak, and act like such immoral monsters. In pondering this problem, I thought I’d take a look at how some systems of morality work and where and how conservative morality took the pipe.
We start with good old Kant, because, well, why not?
Kant’s philosophy posits that moral action is almost entirely the result of obligations stemming from duty. Sometimes referred to as deontological, this approach clearly places ultimate value on good will and behavior that privileges good actions over personal desires.
Hume’s approach to morality eschews the armature of Kant and the rationalists which suggests that the good can be discerned primarily by logic and reason. Hume, as is his wont, recognizes the inherent complexity that attends moral behavior. Humans have, he claims, tendencies to act both greedily, in their own self-interest, but also humanely.
But for my money, one of Hume’s greatest contributions to the morals debate is his laying out of the ought vs. is problem, something that still confuses many people to this day. Hume says that we can’t get to “Is” from “ought”. In other words, those who wish to impose their own belief system on others think that because something ought to be so, it should be. Hume basically says, “get outta town” with that kind of thinking.
This is useful for paring down moral arguments that have no standing in the real world. For instance, the statement “it ought to be completely sensible to deny poor people assistance because they have not earned it” eventually becomes “it IS completely sensible…”. Hume says NOFI (no ought from is), pal. He also subscribes to a naturalistic view of morality, one in which moral sentiments come from natural laws and not from a system of ratiocination.
Aristotle’s moral system is largely teleological, in other words it comes wrapped up with a predetermined end result, which earned him many fans among Christian theologians and philosophers. But even Christianity foregrounds the essential altruistic nature of its moral tone. But these days “Greater love than this no man hath that he lay down his life for another” has become, through the perversions of modern conservative morality “Fuck those other people. They don’t deserve shit. You deserve everything you earned. You built it all on your own” or worse, “Those people don’t matter. If they have to die so that you can live the good life, so be it”.
So what does that get us, besides nausea and a ball peen hammer headache?
Most all systems of morality that I’m aware of strive for the good, for concern for others, and in many instances, for the value in helping others in difficulty even at one’s own expense.
Something that’s gone largely unnoticed, at least as such, is the extreme revolution in the way conservatives define and apply morality. They may preach Christian virtue, but Republican actions are at cross purposes with any traditional system of morality, whether Kant’s, Hume’s, Aristotle’s, Plato’s or Jesus Christ’s.
They have constructed an upside down Bizarro world of immorality in which altruism is not only frowned upon, it is considered the single worst sin against the new conservative code, which is basically, “Fuck you, Charlie. I got mine.”
But as with Hume’s Fork, a system that relies on a two pronged approach to make it work, conservatives have melded their antipathy to natural moral systems with a sense of victimhood that helps soothe any pangs of conscience about taking food away from babies and denying others healthcare or their natural rights as citizens. So, it’s absolutely essential that The Other (whether that be women, minorities, immigrants, liberals, gays, atheists, union members, etc) be painted as undeserving and evil, conniving slackers who want nothing more than to loll in hammocks at the expense of the Real Americans.
These myths are indispensable for keeping their powerful, paradoxical system of immorality from tipping them over. They are, after all, still humans (I think), and, as Hume points out, in the dark of night, if they were able to look at things in a completely unbiased manner, they would see with horror, their perversion of traditional moral codes.
I would imagine Kate could discuss with greater clarity the kind of break humans might suffer who try to maintain such fiercely competitive demands on their mental well being. This may be another reason conservatives seem so incurably dyspeptic and angry. It must suck to recognize the kind of pain you insist on inflicting upon innocents, all the while keeping the balls of victimhood flying in a circle, trying desperately to stave off the guilt. The result must be a form of mental illness. How else to explain such vicious attacks on a plan designed to increase the good for millions of fellow humans?
I may be making this too complicated but I don’t think people are born ignorant evil dickheads (although some might; lookin' at you David Koch...).
But the problem for the rest of us is wondering when and how these people will return from their self-imposed immoral universe. Especially when we have “leaders” who drag the group further and further away from any recognizable system of human morality. Maybe they like it that way. If so, they’ve created their own version of hell on earth. Unfortunately, they insist on the rest stopping by for extended visits.
Apologies for these occasionally interminable posts but I sometimes fear for my own mental health if I don't spit this stuff out.
@ALL. As a reminder, this site is about politics. I give a lot of leeway in the Comments section, but if your contributions don't relate even tangentially to politics, it's best to share them elsewhere.
I won't reveal anybody's e-mail address to anybody else -- or anybody's name if s/he uses an avatar -- but if you wish to personally share something with another contributor, I can pass along the content if I have the intended recipient's e-mail address (I don't have them for all contributors). I've done this a few times in the past at the request of contributors.
Marie
@ Marie: Re: literary discussions: I know, I know, but it's so much fun to dabble in the genre every once in awhile. I certainly enjoyed your Raymond Chandler and I bet we could make the case that his writings correspond quite well to our cut throat political shenanigans. AND you got a reply from Gruber––good for you, I'm impressed.
@James Singer: Ed Henry? Really? You mean the guy that walked out of the presser because he wasn't being called on? CNN did not renew his contract and it was then that he hopped over to Fox. I tend not to watch those WH pressers––too painful, but have caught a few where Ed Henry has asked questions and I found his demeanor off putting, and accusatory. Caught him again the other night on the Kelly File dishing the dirt with the rest of the crew re: the horror of the "glitches" in the ACA.
@Ak: Want to thank you for your response to me yesterday. Our only hope here is the total collapse of various inflated parties.
Gruber's (eventual) clarifying response to Marie's criticism of his "loser" characterization is another instance of our cultural rush to gloss over uncertainty and simplify complex issues for easier consumption. Sounds like the second time around, after prompting, Gruber got it right. His losers might have been losers, but not in the way he originally meant or made it sound.
But Marie's objection (thank you, Marie) to Gruber's mischaracterization (In my own simple way I'd concluded he was a closet Romneyite) led me to wonder why such simplifications are as common as they are.
We know intellectual laziness is rife because it is easy but the wonder is that easy as it obviously is, it is so often rewarded. Somehow in the world of journalism and punditry any rational relationship between effort and reward breaks down and dumb seems to pay as much as, often even more than, smart. In the world of the intellect, where ideas and facts are supposed to count for something, I continue to wonder why?
I think the reasons are at least three-fold. First is the lazy factor. We produce news for mental couch potatoes, who would rather not think too much. Who wants an already complicated and troublesome life to be further confused by nuance?
But our news and information consumption habits have something besides easy in common with the popularity of fast food, where production and the quick hits we get from flavor enhancers of salt and sugar trump essential quality. We want our news fast and flavorful and that's what we get. If there's no simple controversy, no argument, no crisis, no peril in the offing, news is just not very interesting. It's not produced to our taste.
Lastly, there's something very appealing to humans, featherless bipeds that we are said to be, about the either/or, he-said-she-said, good guys and bad guys narrative structure. Maybe it's a night and day or black and white thing, all on the one hand and then on the other pattern we impose on reality even when there's no other hand at all.
And it's as easy as it is misleading to identify winners and losers--another of our favorite bifurcations-- when we don't even understand, acknowledge or bother to explain the complex rules of the game.
@Ken Winkes: Thanks. The bad news in this particular instance is that the "3 percent losers" figure is quickly becoming a meme even tho Gruber himself seems to acknowledge that the number should be lower (i.e., applies only to people who have no idea their policies suck).
Marie
Marie,
E-mail service working okay for me. Sent today's page, got today's page.
A-OK on this end.
Ooooh....plenty of high fiving going on at NRA central headquarters (aka Guns R Us) today.
ANOTHER shooting! Golly gee willikers, Mr. La Pierre. And in god-hating Gommorah, Los Angeles, of all places.
Another NRA success story! Bullet wounds, GSR everywhere you look...
Bad guy with guns, good guys with guns, maybe bystanders with guns. Guns, guns, guns. Lots of shooting, air hot with lead, blood on the floor. OMG just think of the all those tiny erect members at NRA HQ!
As long as guns are in the news people will be afraid. When people are afraid that's when the NRA really gets to work. "What? You mean you DON'T have a gun? Not even one? Well, step right up, Mrs. Average Scared to Shit American. Have we got a deal for you..."
Now this here gun will stop an elephant in Africa (Taxi Driver)
Rand Paul is such an embarrassment to our country. Plagiarizing Wikipedia? That sounds just about right actually, considering the Wikipediazation of society these days. Especially considering the proliferation of ALEC-type groups who are paid to do the actual intellectual labor so they can just hand the written legislation pre-stamped by the company sponsors. I'm convinced the majority of the "lawmakers" in Washington don't even know how to write up laws. Instead they all huddle together in their information bubbles and wait to receive their marching orders, while playing Angry Birds on their smartphones.
Here in France, to my surprise, Wikipedia can be used as a legitimate source of information even within respected universities. After transitioning from student to teacher, at the beginning of the year I encourage the students to move beyond their addiction to Wikipedia and look into more trusted academic research. After introducing an activity it's inevitable that 70% of the students are looking up the info. on Wikipedia...the rest are on Facebook. It's frustrating but that's how a lot of the youth are wired these days. So Rand Paul, a graduate of Duke University, has the the same intellectual prowess of a college freshman. But with my students I scare them to the bones claiming they'll be kicked out if I catch them plagiarizing. Rand Paul? He doesn't see what the issue is, and asks those questioning him to please fuck off. He's not going away any time soon unfortunately.
I was quite taken by this piece:
http://www.salon.com/2013/11/01/why_is_always_a_white_guy_the_roots_of_modern_violent_rage/