Scott and Matt are talking about a favorite diversionary tactic of conservatives:
One has to keep in mind the broader picture here, too. The right’s main tactic whenever Democrats want to do something that might be helpful to any group of citizens everywhere is to identify some even more desperately poor group and claim that their opposition to helping out is driven by a die-hard commitment to these truly needy types. Try to help the working class, and the underclass are trotted out for moral blackmail. Try to help the middle class, and what about the poor? But then when push comes to shove, these are the same people trying to cut section eight housing programs, trying to cut food stamps, etc. The only people they’re really serious about helping are the extremely wealthy beneficiaries of their tax cuts.
Scott correctly identifies this as part of a larger issue for the right when it comes to framing their arguments, which is that their end goals/results are generally unpopular, so they at least have to put up a semblance of caring about progressive goals while undermining them.
Which creates what I call the “stupid or evil?” conundrum. Stupid-or-evil tends to be the major question when it comes to a slightly different tactic of the right, which is to claim that their asinine ideas are actually better at achieving progressive goals than progressive policies. Like claiming that dismantling Social Security will improve the retirements of the poorest elderly in our nation. Or claiming that bombing the shit out of people and making them hate you is a good way to win people over to Western-style democracy. A lot of the time, I think that evil wins out over stupid, such as the free market capitalist nuts who think that sending economies spiraling into widespread inequality and overwhelming levels of poverty will eventually help the poor (those TVs will come if you can weather the starvation now! soon! yes, TVs any day! we swear!). Right now, only the extremely stupid are wowed by the theory of trickle down economics; everyone else who trots it out is just taking advantage of the assumption of good faith.
The S-CHIP fiasco lends credence to “evil” over “stupid” as well, since conservatives who realized there was no way to advance the argument that you could get more health care to kids by denying them health care resorted not to giving in to reality—sort of the gold standard of arguing in good faith—and instead went straight into shit-flinging mode. Score one for evil.
When you do a lot of work in reproductive rights, the stupid-or-evil conundrum greets you on a minute-to-minute basis. Anti-choicers lay claim to progressive goals—healthier women, healthier children, healthier families—but their every move indicates that they’re interested in subjugating women to a rigid patriarchy, and don’t care how much suffering comes to pass. Look at the debate over birth control for middle schoolers—the kids are already getting pregnant, this stopgap measure is the best to prevent that, and wingnuts automatically support the measure we know will result in more middle schoolers giving birth, and for what? Um, to get less girls pregnant? More girls pregnant for less girls pregnant. Trickle down birth control.
Same story with abortion—given solid evidence that their ideas actually do nothing to decrease abortion but everything to increase women’s suffering, what do anti-choicers say? Well, nothing at best, “LOOK OVER HERE AND QUIT PAYING ATTENTION TO REALITY” at worst. Or this thread, where it was asserted that feminism increased divorce, misery, and teenage pregnancies, when it likely reduced all of the above.
So the question is, are they too stupid to put together cause and effect? Or too evil to give up their cover story, even in face of overwhelming evidence that everyone is onto their lies?
I think both. I think the likeliest story is that the leaders of the right wing culture wars are completely full of shit, know they’re full of shit, and don’t give a shit. And some, though not all, of their followers are just enamored of the bullshit and don’t know the truth. But even in the latter situation, you have a lot of willful ignorance going on—I suspect that the commenter with egg on his face about the supposed ill effects of feminism will be back in a few days, pretending that getting smacked upside the head with reality never happened. The pain of cognitive dissonance, in these cases at least, tends to knock people off their feet until their soothing myths recrowd their brain and it’s like the nasty truth incident never happened.
In sum, when I speak about wingnuts who lie and deceive, I’m usually referring to the leaders who know they’re lying but don’t care. Their followers, who fall somewhere on the truly ignorant to the willfully ignorant continuum, are a slightly different phenomenon.
43 Responses to “The conundrum”
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Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. — Vernon Schryver
Evil / stupid? Why yes, this is a “both / and” blog!
As Upton Sinclair so famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” (yeah, he was writing in a sexist time.)
So if you’re going to be evil, it behooves you to become mostly stupid as well. And of course for purveyors of Bullshit, stupid versus nonstupid is a pointless argument that hews to the oldfashioned idea that there are facts out there and that anyone cares about them. If you have enough power to win by flooding the entire arena with manure, that’s what you do, and doesn’t matter who drowns there.
Stupid because evil.
Not to Godwin the thread or anything, but didn’t Hannah Arendt talk about “the banality of evil”? I’m not saying that anti-abortion folks are the equivalent of Eichmann, mind you, just that the two things aren’t all that far apart.
The thing that seems to pervade a number of these movements, whether we’re talking about rape apologists, anti-abortion activists, global warming deniers, or even the Republicans who want to stop programs like S-CHIP, is a lack of intellectual honesty. I guess that tilts the measuring stick toward evil over stupid.
What Indy said.
I think that many on the right don’t have even a passing notion of what we call “logical thought” (i.e. stupid). But also I think many feel some glee when someone who “deserves it” suffers (i.e. evil).
The diversionary tactic the Reichwing uses is effective and frequently used. The Left’s inability to cope with it by now (after at least 20-years of its use) says a lot about the incompetence of Democratic leadership.
But what’s interesting to me is what appears to be the underlying motivation for using the tactic: The critical importance of not allowing the Democrats to succeed with anything. No matter how popular any given change is with the public, if the Democrats support it, it will fail. By design. And the Democrats will acquiesce to the failure. When a Democratic bill does pass, it’s only after being emptied of any meaning ensuring Democrats a hollow victory.
The entire thrust of the Rethuglican Party is to ensure that no matter how poor, incompetent, craven, manipulative, and evil the right appears to be, the Left will always look even worse - at least to a lot of Americans.
This ensures that any given election will always be a contest between people considered marginal or bad and what is considered even worse.
Not a good place to be in for the Democrats…
The psychology is worthy of a work like Robert Jay Lifton’s The Nazi Doctors.
I wouldn’t be surprised if their conscious and subconscious thought processes (defining “thought” broadly) ran something like this: subconsciously they know they are doing harm, so their conscious desire is to “do the right thing” (ideologically defined, whether according to free-market ideology or Chrisitanism), which results in more harm, etc. Radical splitting of the self.
The simplest explanation is that they just don’t care.
sara:
I’m not sure it’s as complicated as that. The ones near the top can easily just be lying bastards or people who have decided that “power for me and pain for everyone I think is icky” is a perfectly good moral principle. And the middle and lower echelons might just be classic addictive types — their tactics don’t get them what they claim to want, so they just keep on doing the same thing (more or less) with more and more ferocity.
This has always been kind of true of right wingers, that they make every effort to make sure that any progressive initiative fails. They are just a tad too insecure about themselves.
Now, in light of comments above, I was remembering BlackBloc’s comment about more agressive leftwing and union action…I was never that big on the idea. Mostly because the classic Billmon’s essay on the Spanish Civil War and comparable states of politics here. I’ve been more and more convinced that we will eventually hit a flashpoint and get something between an 1877 or a full on out undeclared civil war with plenty of privatised violence.
That’s the thing about speaking with so much violence to fellow citizens. The more that makes up the world of the people who listen to violent words in the guise of ignorance, the more acceptable the reasons, however bad they might be, for one to pick up a rifle and shoot some “enemy”.
We really do have to do something about the Rush Limbaughs, Coulters, Malkins, and all their talk ilk. We really do have to find some way to get the mainstream to value genuine moderation and truth. It’s probably our lives for it.
I work in a mental health clinic full of left-leaning social worker types and one business manager. Guess who is the Repug? Guess who drives the Jaguar parked in the far left corner away from everyone else in the ‘hood? The funny thing is — she’s really nice and sweet and polite. Which I appreciate since I make her life a lot harder with my consistently late paperwork. But try and talk politics with her and she very sweetly and nicely explains that she doesn’t support the tax levy for the public transportation since it would bring “the wrong element” to her McMansionville miles outside the city. I gave a short speech about how someone has to sling the Cinnabuns at her local mall and that she should WANT the lesser folk of the world to have that opportunity so that they wouldn’t all jump in one guy’s car some night and come and TAKE ALL HER STUFF. I figured I’d hit her right where she lives. But then she just smiled politely and sweetly and said “Oh, I don’t think that would happen” and shut down. The bottom line is, she is nice and sweet because she likes not knowing about the great unwashed. She likes keeping them away from her gated community so that she doesn’t have to feel bad by looking at their misery. It keeps her nice and sweet. The trick of course, is dealing with the people who pass her office every day. The people who are supposed to live on $620.00 a month and be grateful for the $20.00 in food stamps they might get. People who talk about the sales at Family Dollar and how they can save up for the votive candle they’ve had their eye on. Deal with them and stay sweet and stupid. You can’t. You get pissed and cynical when you help them sober up then send them back to their crack dens to do their fourth step. Find out they’re actual people like you and it takes the fun out of driving your Jag past the blood lines.
Burma military leaders are insulted to be receiving women’s underwear — very bad luck indeed.
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/2007/10/19/D8SCHK380_panties_for_peace/index.html
“The trick of course, is dealing with the people who pass her office every day. The people who are supposed to live on $620.00 a month and be grateful for the $20.00 in food stamps they might get. People who talk about the sales at Family Dollar and how they can save up for the votive candle they’ve had their eye on. Deal with them and stay sweet and stupid. You can’t. You get pissed and cynical when you help them sober up then send them back to their crack dens to do their fourth step. Find out they’re actual people like you and it takes the fun out of driving your Jag past the blood lines.”
See, that’s where the Bush/Cheney attitude saves a lot of problems. They are so numb to the suffering of others, so secure in their inherent superiority, so convinced that they deserve to run/own/control everything, they could run their limousines right over the bodies of poor people and it wouldn’t bother them in the least.
More rubble, less trouble…
OT: Apparently, Dumbledore was gay. link
I think a large part of it has to do with post-communist politics, to be honest. That boogeyman, to a large part is gone, over and done with. The specter of incremental socialism just doesn’t have the same sell that it used to have.
America is finally growing up. I know it doesn’t look like it, but Bush had to sell progressive ideas in order to get elected. He blurred the waters enough to turn 2000 into a popularity contest, with the help of Nader. From 2000-2004, it was ALL about selling his progressive bonafides on the domestic front. Maybe his ideas are different, but really, he has the same goals as you! Right.
I have a theory, I call it the channel surfing political theory. I think this is the primary tool the Bush administration used on the domestic front to keep up popularity. Person surfs through the channels, mute on. Passes CNN, sees Bush speaking in front of a backdrop that says “Clean Skies” “Saving Social Security” “Affordable Health Care for All”. He’d assume that Bush shares his ideals, and goes along happily.
In 2005 or so they stopped doing this. That’s when the popularity really started going in the crapper. Maybe they realized that Iraq couldn’t be spun away. Who knows.
But the reality is, we’re very close to a situation where the conservative movement as an anti-progressive force is all but dead. 2008 will probably be the last nail in the coffin.
At the risk of painting with too broad a brush, I would argue that the “evil-stupid” divide among those on the right depends on place in the movement.
I don’t believe that progressives should assume knowledge of the motives of others, but it seems illogical to think that the highly educated leaders of right wing social conservatism simply have no clue about the social forces at work in the US today. Surely James Dobson is smart enough to distinguish between the world he would like to live in and the real one he wakes up to every morning. He must understand that the social order he seeks to create–culture and law based on his personal version of Christian values–has never existed, and is impossible to construct through state action.
If this is so, Dobson must support state management of the social order for another reason–he either wants to oppress those who do not share his beliefs, or his support for state action on moral issues simply makes him wealthy and powerful. Either qualifies as evil.
His followers, on the other hand, may not have an intellectual capacity or education that permits analysis of the relationship between state power and social order. Many have developed a belief system based on an outside agency that ultimately sets everything right, as long as they keep faith. I cringe at the word “stupid,” but this world view can hardly be called evil, notwithstanding Schryver and the evil nature of the actual consequences of their efforts.
If I am right about this, two obvious solutions present themselves to progressives. First, liberals have to mobilize to wrest the levers of state power away from social conservatives. I would recommend adopting their “start at the bottom” strategy–get liberals elected to school boards and county commissions, among other tactics. Imagine Amanda Marcotte on a school board–and leveraging this experience to higher office. Since retail politics at that level is more about building relationships with neighbors than issue analysis, this is more than a fantasy.
Over the long term, however, liberals have to work on the followers with both formal and informal education (Dave and Sara have some great thoughts on this over at Orcinus).
This is hard work. But Social Conservatives owe what power they have to forty years of grassroots mobilization. We have to stop conceding them the field.
she doesn’t support the tax levy for the public transportation since it would bring “the wrong element” to her McMansionville miles outside the city
This is funny to me because young liberals like myself always suspected that this is the reason that public transportation infrastructure is so poor, but people were always too polite to actually articulate that belief in public. But here they are, saying it point-blank!
You should let her know that, actually, no one wants to go to her McMansionville.
The Left’s inability to cope with it by now (after at least 20-years of its use) says a lot about the incompetence of Democratic leadership.
I think it says more about the left’s (and this must be distinguished from the Democratic party leadership) unwillingness to argue dishonestly. The right’s willingness to make shit up in order to “win” an argument is unparalleled–oil companies funding global warming denial research, etc. I have no doubt that were we willing to do the same, we could “win” even more of these arguments, but with rare exceptions, we’re not.
Don’t forget that raising the minimum wage causes the poor to be worse off. (Would it follow that lowering the minimum wage causes them to be better off? And would raising corporate salaries lower the amount left for the minimum-wage workers? Would keeping the minimum wage down help when the price of the poor’s purchases goes up?)
I’ve lost track of who you are and how you’ve argued in the past, ace.
That was sarcasm, right?
Not necessarily. The leaders of the right wing don’t necessarily have any better understanding of history, social forces, or reality in general than their followers. In fact, to me at least, the opposite seems to be more the case: it’s the followers who will acknowledge reality in their arguments; the peons are the ones who make the arguments connect up to reality. There’s a reason that so much effort is spent on scaring the followers into following.
The true believers tend to be the higher-ups. They believe so strongly in their “facts” that real facts don’t make a dent, and are treated as a sign of stupidity or bad faith on your part. There may be some high-level con-artist types, but I am convinced that people like Dobson and Bush actually believe what they’re pushing, or believe it to a great extent.
There’s a core of fanaticism to the right wing, and it doesn’t vanish at the top.
From #6: The diversionary tactic the Reichwing uses is effective and frequently used. The Left’s inability to cope with it by now (after at least 20-years of its use) says a lot about the incompetence of Democratic leadership.
The way for the Left to start coping up to it is to own up to when we are evil / stupid ourselves. We talk a lot about how every white person, no matter how well-meaning, is racist, simply because we are all swimming in the soup of white privilege. And we express that racism through little acts of evilness / stupidity.
How many times have white progressives been called out for racist statements and then gotten all defensive and diversionary? I don’t exclude myself from this…watch how fast my white-girl tears pour out when a poc calls me out.
How many times do we hear of a situation - such as the horrible mistreatment of brown-skinned “illegal” detainees in for-profit-corporate-owned detention centers - young children separated from their families and forced to wear prison garb, for Goddess out loud - and either close our eyes and ears b/c we don’t want to disturb our sunny day, or throw up our hands and say “there’s nothing we can do?”…And I’ve had both of those reactions. I’ve been waving my hands at this until this morning when I read Nezua’s post, and now I’ve moved on to “there’s nothing I can do”, which is real helpful [*snort*], I’m sure, to those who are suffering in those conditions.
We’re very good at criticising the Reichwing for this stupidity / evil, and we should continue to do so, but we need to stop ignoring when we are stupid / evil ourselves.
When progressives start owning up to this, and start saying “I’m taking a look at this within myself and working hard to change my attitudes, so I know, and *expect*, Mr / Ms Reichwinger, that you can too”, then we’ll see the progressivosphere effectively counteracting the Reichwing.
I forgot to leave a link to Nezua’s article about for-profit detention centers.
Well, I’ve got plenty of guilt about not doing enough IRL to improve things, but I don’t believe in beating myself up about having imperfect, sometimes stupid or thoughtless reactions. If that is I am ready to listen to criticism or be frank with myself and others that I’d said or done or thought something stupid, and learn at least a little bit from this mistake.
I don’t think we should substitute for a religious-type sense of guilt over being “impure” for a secular version of same, this is all I’m saying.
Mark - I don’t think Rachel’s talking so much about making yourself feel more guilty as she’s talking about owning up to your own flaws/imperfections/bigotries/blind spots. There’s often a feeling of guilt that accompanies the latter, but it’s a whole different animal and, in my experience at least, often lessens the guilt by turning the flaws from something you should hide to something you can fix.
Of course, I may be misreading Rachel, and I don’t think I made sense anyway.
Alix:
Failure to acknowledge reality or the lessons of history does not imply lack of understanding. It means only that for some reason or another social conservative leaders wish to keep this understanding out of the debate.
You may, or course, be right, but this requires a level of cognitive dissonance among some very capable people–they successfully run complex organizations–that I don’t buy. I just don’t believe that educated, intelligent people can hold such contradictory beliefs (the Bible is the word of God, except for the parts that aren’t), or that they could in good faith apply these beliefs so inconsistently (God wants them to save unborn babies, but infants are at the mercy of markets and their parents’ choices).
I argue that social conservatives–at least the leaders–consciously adopt and apply their beliefs based on an analysis of the social forces at work. I argue further that their analysis is not fundamentally flawed–they understand very well that they ultimately cannot use the state to construct society without destroying both. But they support doing so anyway because it gives them a chance to perpetuate a social system that rewards those they favor at the expense of others. My point really is that they can do this without actually believing what they say, or even believing that they can reshape society. This, of course, is the nature of politics–but that doesn’t make it right.
R. Stanton Scott:
We may both be right, for different people. I know a lot of well-educated, intelligent people who are not intellectually curious (and therefore don’t seek out new information, which leaves them with knowledge gaps), or who are well-educated in only a few areas, or by an odd measure (”well-educated”, in a society where we have to battle to keep evolution in science class, seems to be a bit in the eye of the beholder; also, I know that in history classes at least, students are taught our myths about history more than history), or are really good at compartmentalizing (with the result that, say, their theories on economics never quite sync up with their religious system).
Furthermore, if you believe something, you are likely to see proof of that belief wherever you look for it, and you are likely to miss information that would prove it wrong. We all do it - not just the crazy right-wingers. Believe that the world is organized around the number five, and you will find your proof. Believe that men made all the great intellectual leaps and women just followed, and you will find proof. It is much, much harder to really look at your own beliefs than we like to think, and it’s pretty much impossible to look at the world without imposing our own beliefs on what we see. The only way, really, around that is to be aware of this and constantly check your own beliefs - something that many well-educated, intelligent people consider a waste of time.
Our beliefs aren’t conscious. They’re internalized. And they affect us on a deep level - often before we get to actually thinking about things.
I should also add that the better educated you are, the more you’re able to make a bullshit “reasonable” argument. We’ve all done it on some essays in school, I’d bet.
I find this is especially true of people who went through programs focused on making connections between seemingly-unconnected fields - they’re very, very good at arguing anything reasonably.
Yes it’s sarcasm–I think minimum wage increases are a good thing within reason (both on the state and federal level) and they’re always proposed within reason.
(Sighs) Yet another person on the progressive left that can’t distinguish between oneself being slightly and/or passively bad on the one hand, and one’s enemies being actively cruel on the other. Forget all the utterly horrible things that people are doing, such thinking goes, and concentrate on flagellating oneself and one’s friends and allies for errors or acts of far less consequence.
What’s really disgusting is that Nancy Pelosi has yet again* bowed to the GOP, played their game, slagged a person who is on her side rather than fighting back.
What a total, useless wimp. She and Reid between them couldn’t find a spine if they tried.
I suppose we should be grateful, though, for timing. Had Pelosi or Reid been president during the Civil War, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Chamberlain would have all been fired and notes of apology for their victories and their desire to win would have been sent to Jeff Davis.
I’m just going to go ahead in put in a vote for stupid here. Simply because the Republicans that I know, especially the business school educated ones, really seem to believe what they’re saying.
seeker6079 -
Oh, come on, that’s not what I am saying and you know it, and I’d like you to point out exactly where I’m saying that the left is just as actively bad as the right.
What I am saying is, that none of us is perfect, and the more we admit that we on the left are human, that we make mistakes that are sometimes hurtful to others and are doing everything we can to correct those mistakes, the more we can hold Reichwingers to the same standards of humanity - that if we on the Left can do it, those on the Right can too, and it gives them even less of an excuse for their batshittery. But as long as we present ourselves as perfect, the right-whingers will always be able to pick at every flaw, deflecting attention from themselves, and poc, poor people, etc, will continue to have every reason to distrust us.
And, a thousand little cuts can hurt, too. I was once in a group, and sitting next to me was a black woman who was struggling to survive on a part-time job that paid $600/month, with no health insurance, and here was little privileged me telling her that $50 bucks a month did not seem like a lot to spend for a medication that she needed, but could not afford. She looked at me like I was a cross between a total alien and an idiot, and she’s never since let me forget that incident. She probably gets a lot of that, every day, and mostly from people like me who consider themselves progressive
Sure, I’m not some fuckwad trying to destroy SCHIP, but my comment hurt her pretty deeply, I think…probably about as much as it hurts me, when I report street harrassement, someone asks what I was wearing “to trigger it”.seeker6079 -
Oh, come on, that’s not what I am saying and you know it, and I’d like you to point out exactly where I’m saying that the left is just as actively bad as the right.
What I am saying is, that none of us is perfect, and the more we admit that we on the left are human, that we make mistakes that are sometimes hurtful to others and are doing everything we can to correct those mistakes, the more we can hold Reichwingers to the same standards of humanity - that if we on the Left can do it, those on the Right can too, and it gives them even less of an excuse for their batshittery. But as long as we present ourselves as perfect, the right-whingers will always be able to pick at every flaw, deflecting attention from themselves, and poc, poor people, etc, will continue to have every reason to distrust us.
And, a thousand little cuts can hurt, too. I was once in a group, and sitting next to me was a black woman who was struggling to survive on a part-time job that paid $600/month, with no health insurance, and here was little privileged me telling her that $50 bucks a month did not seem like a lot to spend for a medication that she needed, but could not afford. She looked at me like I was a cross between a total alien and an idiot, and she’s never since let me forget that incident. She probably gets a lot of that, every day, and mostly from people like me who consider themselves progressive.
Sure, I’m not some fuckwad trying to destroy SCHIP, but my comment did hurt her, on an individual level, pretty deeply, I think…probably about as much as it hurts me, when I report street harrassement, someone asks what I was wearing “to trigger it”..
Argghhh…Sorry for the doubled comment…stupid cut-n-paste error
Put that way, RachelPhilPa, I see your point now; we were talking apples and oranges. You were talking awareness and decency and self-improvement at the micro level. I was talking about those insufferable twerps who think that minor transgressions by their allies are The Worst Crime Ever, but look the other way at major offences by their opponents and enemies. (”GASP! MoveOn used word play! Condemn! But a mass-killing war goes on! Shhhhh! Don’t fight it! We might upset people!”)
That sort of deluded, priggish jiminy cricket wannabe shows up here with fairly distressing frequency. They’re the sort of people who will take you to task for shouting “Fuck!” when somebody hits you in the face, but pretend not to notice the assaulter. I seem to have erred in leaping to the assumption that such was what you are doing.
I will note, however, that in the context of the conservative diversion at issue in this thread, ANY moving off of the attack on the shitbags and onto to the people who want to stop shitbags from acting like shitbags is foolish: such discussions — in effect if not in motive — helpfully carry the shitbags’ bags of shit for them. Progressives must be concerned with self and societal improvement, but not to the point where we play the game for those who don’t want any damned improvement at all.
Duncan Macpherson, god rest him, drew it better than I could ever say it.
Some of this has to do with rationalizing belief as a mindset
and justifying that belief with thoughts, speech and action.
We need to believe..we do not like to lie
[excepting the pathologic liars who really can’t help it…
‘cause that’s probably innate].
And that gets us to lying v. self deception.
The latter allows us..however much or little intended…
to carry on in thought, speech and action with which we are uncomfortable. Without the lie part.
This for example - and Bush, who is of course always so instructive:
Does anybody here doubt that Bush might have actually believed that…at base…”I really AM a compassionate conservative, just chock-a-block with progressive ideas. Thass me, yo!”
So he blurs the water not just for the unwashed but for himself too.
It’s a lot of personal framing. We frame both to allay our own hesitations and/or to persuade others to the goodness of our ideas or explanations.
Some of the great framing we’re seeing today is the sell of ‘natural’.
For example:
There is nothing particularly ‘natural’ about (the implied validation of) the ‘free market’…except in the unnatural? framing.
Juxtapose that framing to governance and you get…
“Governance is inherently artifice while the market (however obscenely loosed) is natural and free”.
Like that.
[I don’t need to remin anybody that ‘artifice’
as a word is akin to ‘phony’ or ‘lie’ or…cetera]
There is nothing wholly ‘artificial’ in any governance.
Neither governance nor market are really natural nor entirely artifice.
And governance is altogether as natural as the vaunted ‘free’ market claims to be.
Well regulated markets and good or optimal governance
are better seen as obverse faces of the same coin…yin and yangish, if you will. Or twining rails of a double helix, cross-link’d as they rise.
BOTH are happening systems doing best for all with lots of bottom-up active and encouraged.
And it is thus that the convinced or ?conniving work to convince others
(the unwashed..us).
And as we come better to understand their machinations develop resistance..antibodies to their malignant antigen.
We just need to see many more of us properly vaccinated.
Bit of a run-on, sorry.
Rachel, I don’t disagree that some soul-searching, etc. is good, but I think it’s deeply deceiving to sell it as a way to undermine the right. Or suggest that until the left achieves some impossible-to-reach purification standard, we don’t have a leg to stand on to fight the right. There’s exactly no reason to think that me examining my white privilege will help make Bush admit Iraq was a mistake, and selling it as if it will to people will make them wonder what’s your deal. Sell it on its own merits; don’t make up reasons why doing X will achieve Y when it won’t.
Amanda, can you tell me where in my comments I am saying that we have to make ourselves pure as the driven snow before we can give Reichwingers the stink-eye? Because I don’t think I’m saying that.
What I am saying is that doing some soul-searching and being honest with ourselves, *at the same time as* we critique the Right, will increase the effectiveness of our arguments.
It’s not an either / or situation. We can do both at the same time. Sheesh.
RachelPhilPa:
Given that the political / media right in the USA covers up its own errors and evils, and inflates the mistakes and wrongs of the centre and left (and lies about them or makes them up, come to that), admitting error in public discourse is like giving a rabid dog an opening through the door. It makes no sense. They just seize on our admissions and use them to further and more gloriously cover up their far, far, far worse malfeasance.
In a way, it’s rather akin to a psychologically abusive relationship. Your admitting that perhaps you were wrong in how you folded the tea towels or put away a dish with water spots on it is going to give him something more to complain about, validate his view that you are useless and he is wonderful, and energize his screaming at you about it. Further, it is a lovely distraction from his hitting on your sister or wrecking your car or stealing from your parents. It most certainly is NOT going to provide him with a good example that he will ponder and possibly follow.
Right now the only rule for progressives, the centre and the left in the USA should be never apologize, never explain, pivot and attack, pivot and attack, pivot and attack. I think that the zealot minority in the USA should learn how civilized people behave long before we concede it the right to lecture us on our manners.
Exactly, seeker. As it is, the Democrats tend to apologize too much, confess too often. The public does not seem to see them as the better people for it, but weak AND faulty AND probably hiding worse faults. It is best on an individual level, of course, to see our faults and try to overcome them, but it’s not a winning political strategy.
Well, for “stupid versus evil” dichotomies, I feel I should point out something that can muddy the waters a bit.
See, I’m an amateur philosopher (but I only do it in private, and I always wash my hands afterwards), and I did some cogitation about the nature of good and evil.
I realized that, if we need to have a meaningful definition of good and evil, we have to be able to say that drunk driving is evil. But drunk drivers aren’t malicious; they don’t want anyone to be hurt, they just don’t want to sleep it off or call a cab. Most of them can be viewed as “stupid”, and that’s one of the reasons DUI didn’t get people in serious trouble for a long time.
So I realized that the root of evil wasn’t malice, or a willingness to hurt people… it was indifference.
Driving when you’re not able to drive safely isn’t evil because you want to hurt someone; it’s because you don’t care enough about the potential consequences that you’re willing to do it.
Even premeditated murder can be viewed as being rooted in indifference… the murderer is indifferent to the other person’s desire to be alive. If a would-be murderer did not have this indifference, s/he wouldn’t commit the murder… but might rejoice if s/he heard that the would-be murder victim had a particularly nasty form of cancer.
I guess what I’m saying is, when contemplating “stupid or evil?” don’t be afraid to embrace the power of “and”. Willful stupidity can be evil in its own right.
Several things:
Kudos to Rep. Strak for not apologizing for his remarks. The evil Augusta Chronicle needs to shut the fuck up about what Mr. Stark said and do something constructive for once!
The only way we are gonna bury the wingnut movement six feet under is to force them to answer questions they don’t like to answer. Such as do they support Roe. If the wingnut fails to asnwer such a simple question, then it is the responsibility for the pro-choice candidate to answer that question for the anti-choicer by simply saying, “My opponent is opposed to Roe” and the like.
And as for the State CHIP program that was voted down by the real Party of NO (the GOP), I hope that the Dems pull out the nastiest ad possible against the GOP asap.
I agree with LongHairedWeirdo–in my experience indifference is a form of evil in its own right. And I think it is far more often the cause of social ills.
I’m not entirely sure about going so far as to define premeditated murder as simple indifference though…I think the DUI is a much better example of indifference that is evil or that results in an act that is evil. In fact, I just watched the episode of Dexter with the man on trial for DUI and killing a boy, who, Dexter discovered, had done so multiple times before and just kept changing states so that his past didn’t catch up with him. Perhaps that is not the best example since it is fictional, but even in exaggeration I think it demonstrates the way indifference can be evil. He had nothing against the people he killed…but he didn’t care enough to avoid killing them.