Author: Batocchio

Calling Torture Torture

by Batocchio

Digby’s recently covered The New York Times‘ decision to call torture torture, Marcy Wheeler’s summary of the issue, and possible reasons for the Times‘ shift.

It’s worth remembering that The New York Times and many other outlets have been consistently pressed on their reluctance to use the term “torture” since news of U.S. torture first broke. A 2010 media study by Harvard students showed that, since the 1930s, major U.S. media outlets consistently called waterboarding torture when other countries did it, but changed their approach after 9/11, news about U.S. abuses at Abu Ghraib broke and the subject became more widely discussed. The study’s conclusion:

The classification of waterboarding is not unclear; the current debate cannot be divorced from its historical roots. The status quo ante was that waterboarding is torture, in American law, international law, and in the newspapers’ own words. Had the papers not changed their coverage, it would still have been called torture. By straying from that established norm, the newspapers imply disagreement with it, despite their claims to the contrary. In the context of their decades-long practice, the newspapers’ sudden equivocation on waterboarding can hardly be termed neutral.

Brian Stelter at The New York Times quoted some of the study as well as other criticism (to his credit), and also ran the response from then-executive editor Bill Keller. At Harper’s, Scott Horton offered a scathing assessment:

The man who authored the New York Times’s doublespeak standards on torture, Bill Keller, responded recently to the Harvard University study of his paper’s use of the word “torture” with respect to specific techniques, including waterboarding, by saying:

I think this Kennedy School study — by focusing on whether we have embraced the politically correct term of art in our news stories — is somewhat misleading and tendentious.

Got that? It’s “misleading,” “tendentious,” and “politically correct” to point out that the newspaper of record uses “torture” to describe specific practices when used by governments other than the United States, but does not use the word when the same practices are used by the United States. In fact, of course, it is Keller who is being “politically correct.” He made plain in his comments to Brian Stelter that the Times decided not to apply the term torture to waterboarding because Vice President Cheney insisted that it was not torture. This is not merely being politically correct; it is being politically subordinate. This is particularly clear when we examine the work of a prominent Times reporter in the field: Bill Keller (hat tip: NYTPicker). Reporting on police brutality in the field from South Africa and the Soviet Union in the eighties, Keller had no compunction about using the word “torture.” Here’s a snippet from his reporting on Soviet police brutality that won him a Pulitzer Prize–describing the mistreatment of a factory worker in Petrozavodsk (Karelia):

A factory worker, according to the report, was kicked so severely that doctors had to remove a ruptured spleen. The medical report said doctors had found three pints of clotted blood in the abdomen.

Keller called this “torture,” and indeed it was. Soviet authorities insisted at the time that the conduct, while abusive, was not torture, yet Keller didn’t see fit even to bother his readers with their denials. Another major difference between the Soviet torture incidents and the more recent American ones is that the Soviet incidents, also covered in reform-oriented Soviet journals like Ogonëk and by the courageous Arkady Vaksberg in Literaturnaya Gazeta, were investigated by the office of the procurator general, with the investigations leading to dismissal and prosecution of the law enforcement officials involved. The idea that American officials of the Bush era who were involved in torture would be punished or prosecuted is, of course, simply unthinkable.

Bill Keller’s political correctness couldn’t be more clear cut. Aggressive interrogation tactics applied by a regime like the Soviet Union or South Africa in the eighties are “torture,” even though their officials insist they are not. But aggressive interrogation tactics applied by the Bush Administration cannot be called “torture” even if they are even more brutal, because that would offend Dick Cheney. This is precisely the sort of political manipulation of language that George Orwell warned against in “Politics and the English Language.”

Considering the crap that was flying publicly during the heyday of the Bush administration, when any pushback could earn an attack on the questioner’s patriotism (“watch what they say, watch what they do” ), it’s likely it was even worse behind closed doors. (Examples abound in Barton Gellman’s excellent book Angler and Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side; read them if you haven’t.) After all, Bill Keller also chose to hold a story on the National Security Agency’s warrantless domestic spying at the urging of the Bush administration (who wanted the story killed outright). When it came to torture, Bush officials surely did a full court press on The New York Times and other outlets, insisting (in some combination) that what they ordered wasn’t torture, and/or that it was necessary, and/or the people who did it were patriots, and/or that the media were disloyal traitors and would be aiding the terrorists if they didn’t toe the line. It’s easy to imagine some hesitation from the top editors. Still, they had standards and history to drawn on, to help them decide between essentially two competing interpretations:

1. Magically, now that members of the Bush administration – Americans – were ordering it, waterboarding and other forms of torture were no longer torture.

2. The Bush administration was seeking to avoid accountability for wrongdoing that could include war crimes; this demanded further investigation.

(Hanlon’s razor comes to mind, as does the value of a good bullshit detector.)

A later piece by Horton, “The Importance of Being Judgmental,” covered that NPR, The Washington Post and most other U.S. media outlets took the same approach toward the word “torture.” As Horton observed, “In this case, suspension of judgment was not neutrality. It was substituting euphemisms for the direct words that the English language furnishes.”

Greg Sargent also wrote a good piece about this issue at the time (partially quoted by Stelter):

The Times’ explanation is that once Bush officials started arguing that waterboarding wasn’t torture, the only way to avoid taking sides was to stop using the word. But here’s the problem: Not using the word also constitutes taking a side: That of the Bush administration.

That’s because this debate wasn’t merely a semantic one. It was occurring in a legal context.

The administration’s critics pointed out that the decision to approve waterboarding was illegal under international law designating it torture. The Bush administration argued that waterboarding isn’t torture in order to argue that it isn’t illegal.

The decision to refrain from calling waterboarding “torture” is tantamount to siding with the Bush administration’s claim that the act it acknowledged doing is not illegal under any statute. No one is saying the Times should have adopted the role of judge and jury and proclaimed the Bush administration officially guilty. Rather, the point is that by dropping use of the word “torture,” it took the Bush position — against those who argued that the act Bush officials sanctioned is already agreed upon as illegal under the law.

Think of it this way: We all agree that pickpocketing constitutes “theft.” A pickpocket doesn’t get to come along and argue: “No, what I did isn’t theft, it’s merely pickpocketing, and therefore it isn’t illegal.” Any newspaper that played along with a pickpocket’s demand to stop using the word “theft” would be taking the pickpocket’s side, not occupying any middle ground. There is no middle ground here.

The semantic battles are symptomatic of a deeper disengagement. Since the beginning of the torture “debate,” I’ve been continually struck by how torture apologists and proponents refuse to engage honestly with the evidence. They’ve all but ignored The Red Cross Torture Report, the “Taguba Report,” the Senate Armed Services Report and other accounts. As I’ve written before, torture apologists offer a set of descending denials: We did not torture; waterboarding (and the other things we did) are not torture; even if it was torture, it was legal; even it was illegal, it was necessary; even it was not necessary, it was not our fault. They will talk endlessly about Jack Bauer, ticking time bombs, and theoretical threats, but not about the very real torture and abuse of Mahar Arar, Binyam Mohamed and Dilawar Dilawar, among others. The crucial role of torture in selling the war in Iraq is also ignored. Some reporters and outlets have doggedly covered these subjects, but these issues haven’t been popular with the Beltway establishment and most mainstream outlets. It’s not as if they’ve been pushing for a more full investigation – mostly, they’ve sought to shut such efforts down. (Probably, as with the lead-up to the Iraq War, shame and culpability play a role in the lack of attention.) As usual, I’ll say: the more you seriously study the subject of torture, the more likely you are to oppose it. And the more you seriously study the Bush administration’s torture program, the less likely you are to accept the arguments of “good faith.” (It’s not as if they weren’t warned at multiple stages.)

Releasing the summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report would be good, and releasing the whole report would be even better, preferably with minimal redactions (those that are actually necessary versus redactions due to ass-covering and embarrassment). There was a time South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was discussed as a possible model for investigating the U.S. torture program, but there’s little desire for that from the Department of Justice, the Obama administration, or the mainstream Beltway press. (There’s certainly no interest from the Cheney family, the rest of the Bush administration, or their allies.) Probably the most hopeful notion comes from one of Brad DeLong’s readers, back in 2012:

I would urge people to think of accountability as a generational project — this is how it has worked out in Chile, Argentina, South Africa… the thing that can be done now is create opportunities for more participants to tell their stories, put on record what was done and who did it and how, so that the record gets fuller rather than thinner over time.

Lucky Duckies and Fortunate Sons

by Batocchio

A high school teacher of mine told the story of playing a trading game as part of teacher training on race and social issues. The kicker was that the game was rigged. My teacher wound up in the group the game was rigged against. A competitive guy, he grew increasingly frustrated, and eventually stood off to the side and asked others to play his turn for him. Throughout the game, the group the game was rigged for downplayed or outright denied their own advantage and that the game was unfair. They urged him to keep playing (most in a kind manner, some gently upbraiding him for being a sore loser). They insisted that he was just unlucky, and that things could get better.

The lessons he took from this were:

1. People tend to grow discouraged when the game is rigged against them.

2. People benefitting from a rigged game are reluctant to acknowledge that the game is rigged.

The game from his story, StarPower, is more of an experiential teaching tool than traditional game. The Wikipedia entry provides some information and the webpage for the actual game is here. Donella Meadows wrote a good description of what normally happens in the game, while Carol C. Mukhopadhyay has written a lesson plan for it and a detailed description of the game pieces. The experience works much better if the participants go in not knowing the game’s nature, and the game’s replay value is limited. I haven’t played it myself, but apparently the game has made a lasting impression on some participants.

From Meadows’ account:

The game starts with players drawing colored chips from a bag. Different color combinations have different point values. The players trade chips, trying to increase their point counts. Very ordinary. Slightly boring.

After the first round, those with the most points are given, with much fanfare, badges with big purple squares on them. The lowest scorers get badges with demeaning green triangles. Those in the middle wear red circles.

Then comes the insidious part. For the next trading round the Squares draw from a bag laced with high-value chips. The Triangles’ bag has low-value chips. After this round a few players change fortunes and switch to a higher or lower group, but mostly the Squares stay Squares, the Triangles stay Triangles, and the gap between them widens.

At this point the Squares are given the power to change the rules. They can reshuffle the chip bags, give away free points, do whatever they like. They can consult the other players on rule changes, if they want to.

They almost never want to.

Predictably, and usually gleefully, the Squares rig the game to favor Squares. The Circles concentrate on elevating themselves to become Squares, so they can bend the rules in favor of Circles. But the few Circles who do gain the hallowed status of Squares start to act like Squares.

The poor Triangles, with less and less power, wealth, or hope, first get angry, then apathetic. They sit around waiting for this dumb game to be over. They come to life only if they think up a way of cheating or of creating a revolution. Only subversion brings out their interest and creativity.

After about an hour the game is stopped and the players talk about what happened. There is usually an emotional outburst. “I can’t believe how much I hate you guys!” a Triangle says to the Squares. “Why? We were managing things pretty well!” a Square replies in honest surprise.

The Squares seldom see how systematically they oppressed everyone. The Triangles are a mass of smoldering resentment. The Circles are shocked to discover that Triangles consider them materialistic sell-outs, while Squares look down on them as incompetent pseudo-Squares.

A simple, unpleasant game. A crude representation of a much-more-complicated world. Unforgettable to those who play. It’s one thing to know intellectually about social classes. It’s another to spend an hour experiencing the rage of a Triangle or the self-righteousness of a Square.

When tempers have cooled, I find that surprising insights remain. Having watched myself act like a Square or Triangle, I have to admit that my behavior depends greatly on where in the social structure I sit. Nearly anyone exposed to Square perceptions, pressures, and rewards acts like a Square. Nearly any Triangle gets apathetic.

Those few who don’t are easily handled. Once I watched a Square try to convince her fellow-Squares to even up the rules. “This game is unfair, and unfair games are boring,” she pleaded. The other Squares appropriated her points and demoted her to a Triangle. They weren’t mean people, they were just Squares.

Suppose we could admit that most of us act as we do because of our places in the system. Suppose we turned our energy from blaming each other to blaming the structure of the games we play. Starpower games — games in which the winners gain ever more power to win again — occur everywhere, on both the Right and the Left…

My teacher’s story about the board game stuck with me, probably because studies in the social sciences, life experiences and conversations with others about theirs have consistently borne out his conclusions. It’s also persisted because those conclusions about the way people tend to react to a rigged game – discouragement or selective blindness – are pretty common sense, yet are vociferously denied nonetheless by significant segments in the United States.

Digby’s noted before that Americans are more likely than Europeans to attribute poverty to a lack of character rather than to unfortunate circumstances. Racism often plays a role in these attitudes, but not always. The StarPower experience is somewhat reminiscent of Jane Elliott’s Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes experiment. Several more recent studies show that, as social psychologist Paul Piff puts it, “As a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down, and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases.” (Interestingly enough, some of his studies have also employed rigged board games.) Piff performed another study that indicated that the poor were more charitable than the rich. Regarding the behavior of the Circles in StarPower, studies on last-place aversion are relevant. Meanwhile, social psychologist John Jost’s multiple studies on system justification are also valuable.

(To counteract these negative dynamics, some programs do try to encourage the development of empathy. The chronically underfunded arts also have a fine track record in this regard. Discussing the social contract in more depth in our national political discourse could be nice, too.)

Some people (particularly conservatives) tend to get upset when they hear the term “privilege” in relation to themselves. I believe it’s because it feels like an accusation that they haven’t worked hard in their lives, and that often isn’t the case. Yet acknowledging privilege doesn’t disregard the presence of hard work or setbacks – it just recognizes consequential advantages. John Scalzi, in a good post (and two follow-ups) using a gaming analogy, called “straight white male” the “lowest difficulty setting.” That doesn’t mean a guaranteed win, or a life free from struggle, or a better outcome than everyone in a different demographic (being rich tends to be an awfully good trump card). Still, all other things being equal, the odds are better with some “settings” or starting positions than others. Horatio Alger stories of rags to riches can occur, but relying on them makes for poor public policy. A fairly recent study suggests that socioeconomic mobility in the United States hasn’t changed much in decades, but also that it isn’t great compared to other industrialized nations, and as John Cassidy points out, the study “doesn’t mean that the effects of inequality aren’t more serious than they used to be.” (Since by definition there will always be a poorest 10% and 20%, perhaps it’s wise to ensure that relative poverty is less dire and some basic needs are met for everyone.) Hard work and talent are indeed important, but the reality is that luck, and “choosing one’s parents at birth,” play an enormous role in success, and certainly prosperity. It takes a pretty cloistered life not to realize this.

Although cloistered, privileged, entitled wankers have always been with us, it does seem that in the last decade or so they’ve become more aggressive crowing about their own preciousness and expressing contempt for the (supposedly) lower orders. It’s hard to keep up all the extremely wealthy figures indignantly insisting that a slight raise in their taxes would be like Hitler invading Poland, or Kristallnacht, or making similarly ridiculous claims. (Unsurprisingly, they won’t mention that tax rates for the rich are lower than in earlier decades or provide context about the significant and increasing wealth inequality in the U.S.) We’ve seen periodic rants from egomaniacal Wall Street players that read like parody but have been linked approvingly by conservative outlets. Nor is it hard to find material that, for instance, praises Ayn Rand and insists that the ‘99% give back to the 1%’ – countless pieces give voice to the persecuted privileged and promote the plutocratic, neofeudalist view.

Jonathan Chait’s 2009 piece “Wealthcare” (about the conservative adoration for Ayn Rand) took a good look at this mentality:

Not surprisingly, the argument that getting rich often entails a great deal of luck tends to drive conservatives to apoplexy. This spring the Cornell economist Robert Frank, writing in The New York Times, made the seemingly banal point that luck, in addition to talent and hard work, usually plays a role in an individual’s success. Frank’s blasphemy earned him an invitation on Fox News, where he would play the role of the loony liberal spitting in the face of middle-class values. The interview offers a remarkable testament to the belligerence with which conservatives cling to the mythology of heroic capitalist individualism. As the Fox host, Stuart Varney, restated Frank’s outrageous claims, a voice in the studio can actually be heard laughing off-camera. Varney treated Frank’s argument with total incredulity, offering up ripostes such as “That’s outrageous! That is outrageous!” and “That’s nonsense! That is nonsense!” Turning the topic to his own inspiring rags-to-riches tale, Varney asked: “Do you know what risk is involved in trying to work for a major American network with a British accent?”

There seems to be something almost inherent in the right-wing psychology that drives its rich adherents to dismiss the role of luck–all the circumstances that must break right for even the most inspired entrepreneur–in their own success. They would rather be vain than grateful. So seductive do they find this mythology that they omit major episodes of their own life, or furnish themselves with preposterous explanations (such as the supposed handicap of making it in American television with a British accent–are there any Brits in this country who have not been invited to appear on television?) to tailor reality to fit the requirements of the fantasy.

The association of wealth with virtue necessarily requires the free marketer to play down the role of class. Arthur Brooks, in his book Gross National Happiness, concedes that “the gap between the richest and poorest members of society is far wider than in many other developed countries. But there is also far more opportunity . . . there is in fact an amazing amount of economic mobility in America.” In reality, as a study earlier this year by the Brookings Institution and Pew Charitable Trusts reported, the United States ranks near the bottom of advanced countries in its economic mobility. The study found that family background exerts a stronger influence on a person’s income than even his education level. And its most striking finding revealed that you are more likely to make your way into the highest-earning one-fifth of the population if you were born into the top fifth and did not attain a college degree than if you were born into the bottom fifth and did. In other words, if you regard a college degree as a rough proxy for intelligence or hard work, then you are economically better off to be born rich, dumb, and lazy than poor, smart, and industrious.

In addition to describing the rich as “hard-working,” conservatives also have the regular habit of describing them as “productive” . . .

This mentality fits perfectly with Mitt Romney’s infamous 2012 remarks about the “47 percent”:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. And I mean, the president starts off with 48, 49, 48—he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. And he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people—I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. . .

Romney’s claims were at best grossly misleading, and taken in larger context were outright false. Still, that didn’t stop him from sticking by them (as did many surrogates), eventually apologizing, then making similar remarks and finally claiming he didn’t say what he did. It’s also worth noting that he said this behind closed doors, at a private event, which suggests that Romney really believed this bullshit himself or at the very least thought his donor base did. Likewise, for the past several years, Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan has offered various plans to funnel more money to the rich while gutting the social safety net, an old con that never seems to go out of fashion with conservatives. The essential story of the past fifty-some years for movement conservatism and the Republican Party has been selling bigotry and delivering plutocracy, of the Southern Strategy and Reaganomics (also know as supply-side economics or trickle-down economics). The theme for one day of the 2012 Republican National Convention was “We Built It,” referencing clumsy remarks by Barack Obama taken out of context, lacing them with resentment, and pushing any sort of “debate” about the social contract and the role of government to a petulant, childish and dishonest extreme. The leaders of movement conservatism agree that the game is rigged, but they deny it’s for the benefit of the rich and powerful, instead offering scapegoats such as liberals, Democrats, feminists, ethnic minorities, gay people… (really, something for everyone – but then, that’s why Republicans are the inclusive, big tent party).

In recent years, there’s been an interesting variation on the ol’ “I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps” claim. The stories to deflect charges of privilege and about the value of hard work from Rick Santorum, Ann Romney, Mitt Romney and Marco Rubio, among others, have focused on their fathers and grandfathers. Naturally, they don’t come right out and say ‘I’m not privileged because my (grand)father worked hard,’ or ‘I deserve it all because of my (grand)parents,’ but that is the gist. (Apparently virtue, like money, is passed down through the generations.)

(I’ve focused on conservatives and Republicans here, but obviously, the Democratic Party has a significant plutocratic, corporatist faction, and that shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to reform efforts. That said, the Republican Party is definitely more plutocratic and their rep in that regard is well-deserved. Despite several notable electoral defeats, it still doesn’t have anything beyond lip service and dogma for the middle class, not to mention the poor – remember them? It certainly has nothing comparable to what the Congressional Progressive Caucus offers, policy-wise.)

Sadly, conservatives have become increasingly intent on screwing the poor and anyone fallen on hard times, with consistent attacks on food stamps forming one of the more glaring examples. More striking is the relentless demonization, including claims that Jesus hates the poor (who have it good), that Jesus opposes progressive taxation and social services, that the filthy homeless should stay out of the sight of their betters, that those who have lost their homes should be mocked, that food stamp recipients are akin to animals, and that that starving schoolchildren should dive into dumpsters for food.

The game is rigged. Some people are too cloistered to know it. A percentage of that group can be reached. But some people know the game’s rigged, want to keep it that way and tilt the game even further. And some are so filled with hatred it’s unlikely they’ll ever significantly change their views. After all, in contrast with those lucky duckies they decry, theirs is a hard life, and it requires sustained cruelty for them to live with themselves.

We Cheat the Other Guy and Pass the Savings to You

by batocchio

I’m returning to David Brooks’ January op-ed “The Populist Addiction,” because it’s quintessential Brooks, but also because it provides a useful framework for conflicting political views in America. The full column is here and worth reading for full context (and Brooks’ cute plea not to scapegoat poor Goldman Sachs). However, this is my favorite section:

So it’s easy to see the seductiveness of populism. Nonetheless, it nearly always fails. The history of populism, going back to William Jennings Bryan, is generally a history of defeat.

That’s because voters aren’t as stupid as the populists imagine. Voters are capable of holding two ideas in their heads at one time: First, that the rich and the powerful do rig the game in their own favor; and second, that simply bashing the rich and the powerful will still not solve the country’s problems.

Political populists never get that second point. They can’t seem to grasp that a politics based on punishing the elites won’t produce a better-educated work force, more investment, more innovation or any of the other things required for progress and growth.

In other words, for the lower classes: You’re getting screwed, but it’s really in your best interest. Plus: You populists can’t win – you can’t change the game. There’s also the reverse psychology plea to vanity: The plebes who know their place are much smarter those elitist rabble-rousers. Real Americans don’t want a living wage, after all. Those silly populists mostly want to complain about the wealthy, not, say, tax them more heavily and invest that money in the middle class and poor. (And we’re spunky America the Exceptional, which is why we can’t have nice things, like great social systems and public transportation.)

I’m surprised Brooks admitted the game is rigged. He often uses some planned concession to pivot to some more ridiculous point, something like, ‘Yes, Bush should have worked with the Democrats more, but the Democrats should be better than that…’ (And enact conservative policies.) In this column, I think Brooks overshot on his calculated concession and gave up the game. Still, I’m utterly unsurprised by the other stuff. Almost every column Mr. Applebee’s Salad Bar writes makes one or more of same basic pitches: I’m a man of the people, you’re better off with me and my class/party in charge, know your place, real Americans are center-right, the Democrats are just as bad, who is this Bush fellow you speak of, and have your kissed your aristocrat today?…

Matt Taibbi makes similar points in his great dissection of the same column, “Populism: Just Like Racism!” After ripping into Brooks for his faulty analogies and “Leave Goldman Sachs alone!” shtick, Taibbi also notes:

What’s so ironic about this is that Brooks, in arguing against class warfare, and trying to present himself as someone who is above making class distinctions, is making an argument based entirely on the notion that there is an lower class and an upper class and that the one should go easy on the other because the best hope for collective prosperity is the rich creating wealth for all. This is the same Randian bullshit that we’ve been hearing from people like Brooks for ages and its entire premise is really revolting and insulting — this idea that the way society works is that the productive ” rich” feed the needy “poor,” and that any attempt by the latter to punish the former for “excesses” might inspire Atlas to Shrug his way out of town and leave the helpless poor on their own to starve.

That’s basically Brooks’s entire argument here. Yes, the rich and powerful do rig the game in their own favor, and yes, they are guilty of “excesses” — but fucking deal with it, if you want to eat.

Exactly. What Brooks is shilling here is: The game is rigged for the rich and powerful, but we all benefit from this.

That’s in huge contrast to the liberal view, which normally goes something like: Of course the game is rigged for the rich and powerful, but they benefit from this, other people get screwed, and we can build a better, fairer system for everybody. (Those few “social contract” conservatives buy parts of this, too.)

Members of Congress with a compromised, corporatist bent have a stance closer to: Sure, the game is rigged for the rich and powerful, but we can’t change it that much, so we won’t mention it too often – and let’s try to get in on some of the action.

Further to the right, whether Democrats or Republicans, there’s even less ambivalence. It’s considered a breach of etiquette to speak of the game, let alone acknowledge it’s rigged for the rich and powerful. Behind closed doors, the attitude is: Why would you even want to change the game? Give me my piece!

Some Beltway denizens, especially journalists, really do seem to think: Of course the game isn’t rigged! I got here (and stay here) solely due to my talents!

Other Villagers may or may not think the game’s rigged, but what really gets them angry is if anyone denounces it. (Don’t trash their place!) The Very Serious People are establishmentarians, and like their pal David Brooks, they know their ways are the best ways, and that things are the finest when they’re on top. (How could it be otherwise?)

The Randians are similarly convinced of their superior talents, and have their own ideas about the game, but the defining attitude for them is simply: I got mine, screw you!

The truly callous and evil (the Catfood Commission and Estate Tax Repeal Club come to mind) believe: Sure, the game is rigged, and sure, many people are getting screwed – Now let’s rig this sucker even more!

The teabagger rank and file, the target of the Southern Strategy, believe: The game is rigged, alright – to favor liberals, women and minorities! In many cases, they are being screwed, but they’re blaming the wrong folks and not the people they voted into office for the past 30-40 years. Their ringleaders mostly know better, but they’ve got a good racket going. (And as Pat Buchanan and Lee Atwater might say, “You do not talk about White Club.”)

(Feel free to improve on these breakdowns – I’m not entirely sold on all of them myself.)

A few other points bear mentioning. Generally speaking, liberals are focused on being fair while conservatives (movement conservatives at least) are focused on power. They’re simply not playing the same game. (The same goes for wonks versus hacks.) This can make for some serious misunderstandings and cross-talking, most of all when liberals try to be fair-minded with people seeking their destruction. (Offering the olive branch is fine, Dems, even admirable, but after they smack you in the face with it, wise up.) While reasonable, wonky conservatives do exist, if you can’t tell that Andrew Breitbart, Newt Gingrich and Karl Rove are hacks and extremely dishonorable men, it’s time to recalibrate your bullshit detector.

Liberals generally embrace a cooperative paradigm, while conservatives are more likely to see things as a zero sum game. There’s a huge difference between trying to make the game more fair for everybody and trying just to win it personally (or trying to control it completely and rig it further for your side). Movement conservatives are further likely to see things in terms of dominance, submission and humiliation. It’s one of the reasons that trash talk is so important to them, and why they’re such bullies when in power yet so ridiculously whiny when criticized. Check out Rush Limbaugh or any of the far right for long and you’ll encounter that weird mix of asserted superiority alongside deep victimization. Reagan supposedly regretted calling the Soviet Union “the evil empire,” but the far right loved it, just as they loved Bush saying “axis of evil.” The language might have been juvenile and hurt international relations, but for the far right, insulting one’s opponents is itself a victory. They see diplomacy as the failure of war, not the other way around. (To be fair, some of this is standard imperialist narcissism, and hawks in both parties share much of the same idiocy even if comes in a slightly different flavor.) Remember, Sarah Palin became a right-wing darling overnight, not for any cooperative, inclusive vision for America or command of policy (hahaha), but because she delivered a single attack dog speech at the RNC in 2008.

In contrast, while “foul-mouthed” liberal bloggers may swear and insult their conservative counterparts, they generally don’t seek their destruction. Eliminationist rhetoric is pretty common on the right, and pretty rare on the left. Liberals may say mean things (preferably, true things, whether harshly put or not), but they also want their political opponents to have health care so they and their children, friends and family don’t die unnecessarily. It comes with the bleeding hearts. Policy does matter, and it’s not incidental to someone’s world view.

These world views do clash, and sometimes get revealed in small exchanges. Betsy McCaughey, during her epic dissembling about death panels on The Daily Show, was flailing occasionally, and at one point tried an odd attack on Stewart. If you can stand watching it, it’s in the Extended Interview Part 2 (1:55 in), but here’s a transcript (they talk over each other throughout):

McCaughey: Well, you know, Jon, you’re so rich –

Stewart: That is absolutely –

McCaughey: (to audience) He’s got a great big penthouse –

Stewart: That is absolutely right, I can –

McCaughey: You are so rich, you can provide care for anybody in your family –

Stewart: That’s right.

McCaughey: Whatever they need –

Stewart: That’s right.

McCaughey: (to audience) But you –

Stewart: And that’s why I don’t mind being taxed a little more to help people who are not in as favorable a situation.

(Cheers from the audience.)

Stewart: I don’t mind that. In fact, I welcome it, because it’s a way for me to, to give back to the country that has allowed me to come this far.

Stewart’s remarks completely shut her down. McCaughey clamed she agreed, and tried to move on to her next piece of bullshit. What’s interesting is that she seemed to be trying to depict Stewart as a rich, hypocritical elitist, unconcerned about others, and herself as a populist champion (a classic Rove reversal). This was a planned “out” or trump card for McCaughey, but it didn’t work as intended. She should have known that to Stewart’s audience, those characterizations – especially the one of Stewart – would be laughable. McCaughey had a brief “curses, foiled again” moment of course, but it seems like it was more than that, because it looks as if she really hadn’t anticipated that sort of response. The idea that Stewart would be rich, and would also support higher taxes on himself, and would also support some sort of governmental, universal health care to help everyone else, seemed to genuinely flummox her. (I could be wrong, and reading in a response I’ve seen elsewhere.) Yet while Stewart’s extremely sharp, his stance in the clip is pretty standard for rich liberals: Yes, I want to take care of myself and my family, but after that, of course I’ll tend to a favorite cause, the community, my city, my state, my country.

This strikes a certain breed of conservatives as bizarre, a foreign concept, a violation of the rules. Why the hell would you give up a personal advantage in the game? Occasionally this comes up in political discussions. It did during the 2004 presidential election season – shockingly, wealthy Bush wanted to continue or add to the tax cuts for the wealthy, while wealthy Kerry and Edwards didn’t. It came up with the “Joe the Plumber” circus in 2008 and again with Joe Biden’s remarks about paying taxes being patriotic. The Republican pitch, echoed by some political reporters, is that there’s something awfully suspicious about a rich man who promises he’ll raise his own taxes – never mind if it’s for the good of the country – and something somehow trustworthy about a rich man eager to lower his own taxes and increase his own wealth. Vote for the upfront scumbag, I guess. The idea of being civic-minded has become viewed as utterly foreign and un-American to the party that claims to be more patriotic.

Back in his day, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was denounced as a traitor to his class – he had battled against the code David Brooks still peddles. FDR named his enemies and declared that he “welcomed their hatred.” Obama, whatever his other faults and merits, isn’t as “lucky” as FDR in the hatred he receives from the right. He’s not denounced as a traitor to his class – he’s attacked as wholly alien to America.

It’s been astounding to see the petulant rage that’s erupted from conservative politicians and their far right base in reaction to Obama’s election and presidency. After ignoring or even cheering on all the abuses of the Bush administration, suddenly under Obama they started attacking even those policies more conservative than Eisenhower’s or Nixon’s or of the Republicans of 10-20 years ago as socialist. It may be because Obama broke the biggest unspoken rule of the game they thought they owned: You’re not supposed to win. A similar dynamic drives all the reflexive hippie-punching and “center-right” blather from Beltway reporters. Liberal activists are very familiar with this rule, and have unfortunately seen plenty of it over the years, including during the current administration. Sensible policies have been denounced as too radical or “liberal” over and over again, watered down or completely eliminated. The conservative critique of Obama is that he’s radically changed all the rules and is rigging the game against them – which might be poetic justice, but isn’t true. The liberal critique varies, but it’s generally that Obama has made some changes and improvements, but also has been too timid about changing the rules of the game, too accepting of how badly the game’s rigged. The more sympathetic would argue he simply can’t change things that much with an obstructionist GOP and other obstacles. The more critical think he’s happy with a rigged game, or is making it worse, or is just too establishmentarian by nature (as with his economic team). If so, he’s far from alone in Washington, more’s the pity. But beyond any character assessments, the fact remains that good governance is not encouraged by the current rules of the game. Contrary to Brooks, the present set-up does not benefit us all, or anything remotely resembling a majority of Americans. When the dominant attitude in the Beltway is that liberals must always lose – and more importantly, that sensible, effective policy shouldn’t guide decisions, especially if it’s supported by the wrong sorts of people – it’s time to challenge the rules, or change the game.
 

Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Needy Wealthy?

by batocchio

Republican Senator Jim DeMint recently introduced an amendment to repeal the Estate Tax permanently. Not adjust it or improve it – repeal it entirely. Never mind that there’s staggering wealth inequity in America. The amendment failed, but the GOP and some of the Blue Dogs voted for it. Like the Republicans, Blue Dogs Kent Conrad and Evan Bayh want to extend Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, despite the ineffectiveness of those cuts at creating jobs (and even though they don’t affect more than 2% of family farms and small businesses). Needless to say, these are the same people who vote against unemployment benefits, fought for a smaller stimulus bill, and often oppose jobs programs. Their only goal seems to be to give more money to the wealthiest Americans, and everything else is secondary. As Paul Krugman points out, “The truth… is that the only problem Republicans ever had with George W. Bush was his low approval rating. They always loved his policies and his governing style — and they want them back.”

Senator Bernie Sanders has been speaking out against this, and Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars passes on a short video and Sanders op-ed. Here’s DeMint, followed by Sanders:

And here’s part of Sanders’ op-ed in The Nation, “No to Oligarchy”:

The American people are hurting. As a result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of Americans have lost their jobs, homes, life savings and their ability to get a higher education. Today, some 22 percent of our children live in poverty, and millions more have become dependent on food stamps for their food.

And while the Great Wall Street Recession has devastated the middle class, the truth is that working families have been experiencing a decline for decades. During the Bush years alone, from 2000-2008, median family income dropped by nearly $2,200 and millions lost their health insurance. Today, because of stagnating wages and higher costs for basic necessities, the average two-wage-earner family has less disposable income than a one-wage-earner family did a generation ago. The average American today is underpaid, overworked and stressed out as to what the future will bring for his or her children. For many, the American dream has become a nightmare.

But, not everybody is hurting. While the middle class disappears and poverty increases the wealthiest people in our country are not only doing extremely well, they are using their wealth and political power to protect and expand their very privileged status at the expense of everyone else. This upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country.

The 400 richest families in America, who saw their wealth increase by some $400 billion during the Bush years, have now accumulated $1.27 trillion in wealth. Four hundred families! During the last fifteen years, while these enormously rich people became much richer their effective tax rates were slashed almost in half. While the highest-paid 400 Americans had an average income of $345 million in 2007, as a result of Bush tax policy they now pay an effective tax rate of 16.6 percent, the lowest on record.

Sanders gave a Senate speech on the same subject earlier in the week, which you can read or watch here, or watch below:

It’s too bad Bernie Sanders isn’t the norm rather than the exception, but it’s refreshing to hear him speak. As Bill Moyers says, “Plutocracy and democracy don’t mix.”
 

Geeks 1, Homophobes 0

by batocchio

Actually, “homophobes” is too tame a word for Fred Phelps and the hate-filled gang of the Westboro Baptist Church. But when they showed up to protest at Comic-Con, they were met by some counter-protesters:

Unbeknownst to the dastardly fanatics of the Westboro Baptist Church, the good folks of San Diego’s Comic-Con were prepared for their arrival with their own special brand of superhuman counter protesting chanting “WHAT DO WE WANT” “GAY SEX” “WHEN DO WE WANT IT” “NOW!” while brandishing ironic (and some sincere) signs.

The Phelps crowd might think they have God on their side, but do they really want to get into a stamina war with folks who can wait hours in line for a sneak peek at The Green Hornet or an autograph from Stan Lee or Ray Bradbury? Mess with fanboys and fangirls on Star Wars Day and the Force will not be with you.

Major style points to the counter-protesters on this one. There’s a short video and more photos at the first link. (Via.)

Fox News immediately announced an investigation – where is the liberal media on robot-on-human violence? Why the double-standard?
 

Daniel Schorr Remembered

by batocchio

NPR senior news analyst Daniel Schorr has died at the age of 93 after a lifetime in journalism. NPR has put together several pieces on him, including a 3 minute one, a 12 minute one, and a 55 minute memorial special. His stints in Moscow and Germany yield some interesting tales, and I found the Nixon and 70s era stories particularly fascinating. Here’s one:

In 1975, Schorr reported on assassinations that had been carried out by the CIA. “The anger of the administration can be gauged from Richard Helms’ denunciation of Schorr,” historian Garry Wills recounts in his 2010 book, Bomb Power.

Helms, then the CIA director, confronted Schorr in the presence of other reporters at the White House, calling him names such as “son of a bitch” and “killer.”

“Killer Schorr: That’s what they ought to call you,” Helms said.

In 1976, Schorr reported on the findings of the Pike Committee, which had investigated illegal CIA and FBI activities. The committee had voted to keep its final report secret, but Schorr leaked a copy to the Village Voice, which published it.

Schorr was threatened with a $100,000 fine and jail time for contempt of Congress. But during congressional testimony, Schorr refused to identify his source, citing First Amendment protections. The House ethics committee voted 6 to 5 against a contempt citation.

But CBS had already taken Schorr off the air. He ultimately resigned from the network that year.

“CBS found that, like other big corporations, it did not like to offend the Congress,” Mudd said. “He broke his ties to CBS and before they could fire him, he resigned.”

That’s pretty gutsy. In the NPR pieces, Schorr’s recent and past colleagues speak with him and about him with admiration and affection. And if one is also judged by the quality of one’s enemies, Schorr did quite well:

Schorr was surprised to find himself on the so-called Enemies List that had been drawn up by Richard Nixon’s White House when he read it on the air. The list — naming hundreds of political opponents, entertainers and publications considered hostile to the administration — became the basis for one of the charges of impeachment against Nixon.

Schorr, along with some other members of the list, counted his inclusion on it as his greatest achievement.

Update: Gordonskene at C&L has posted the audio of a piece by Schorr – the “CBS Reports documentary Berlin: Wall of Shame, which aired on January 4, 1962. A vivid picture of just how bad relations had become between East and West.”
 

The Five Circles of Conservative Hell

by batocchio

In American politics today, there are five circles of conservative hell. Unlike those in Dante’s Inferno, these are primarily states of pain and suffering that conservatives seek to impose on others in this earthly world – or places of torment where they drag their fellow Americans for company. After all, there’s no problem in the country that’s not made sweeter by domineering spite!

Note that these are conservative movements, not solely Republican, since the conservative Democrats, the Blue Dogs, are indisputably unrepentant scumbags. That said, it’s movement conservatism that really excels at toxicity and dumb, destructive authoritarianism.

(This post is sorta the shorter, rude companion to the taller, serious Social Contract one. Needless to say, this one is partially tongue-in-cheek. Partially.)

Preserve Cultural Privilege: This category probably has the sharpest party divide, since preserving cultural privilege is really the raison d’être of those French-hating social conservatives. Theocrats and Christian Dominionists can be found here, but they appear further down, too. The anti-gay marriage and forced pregnancy movements operate on this level, as do really all conservative culture warriors. Many of the teabaggers, who are mostly just conservative Republicans after an astroturf-funded makeover and Glenn Beck tongue bath, can be found in this circle. Not all of them are racist, but almost half of the teabaggers feel that blacks are poor because they’re lazy. Meanwhile, teabagger scumbags like Mark Williams and Ryan J. Murdough go much further, testing the very limits of “racist,” “asshole,” and of course “racist asshole.”

Preserve the Aristocracy: No one works this beat quite like David Brooks, leading marketer of the “reasonable conservative” brand. (Sprinkle in a little truth to make them drop their guard, and then spring that false equivalency to disappear the disasters that were the Bush and Reagan administrations!) Unlike some of his more rabid party members, Brooks actually expressed concern for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. However, he is first, last and always a class warrior shilling for the aristocracy. He’ll claim that the rich are harder-working and more virtuous, and compare populism to racism, but he sorta gave up the game when he admitted that “the rich and the powerful do rig the game in their own favor.” (However, according to all Brooks columns, this is in your best interest – he followed that admission with his usual pitch: “Simply bashing the rich and the powerful will still not solve the country’s problems.” Uh-huh.) When Brooks couldn’t derail health care reform by his usual means, he became increasing desperate, lying about Senate procedures, and claiming that something precious would be murdered, forever, if it passed. For if the majority party, the Democrats, responded to this urgent policy need, the desires of the public, and dared to win – it would hurt the Republicans’ feelings. Yes, it was laughably pathetic, but arguably better than claiming that providing health care would kill our sense of adventure, dampen our fighting spirit, or sap our Precious Bodily Fluids. (Flaccid courtier apologia doesn’t just write itself, ya know!)

Repeal the New Deal: We can still find plenty of teabaggers here, and plenty of conservative politicians, especially in the current climate of kicking the poor and stealing their lunch money. But now we’re also into the long-standing professional wankery of such wingnut welfare outfits as the Peterson Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, National Review… really every conservative think tank and loss leader magazine. Nothing chafes a rich wingnut’s ass quite like the idea of the wrong sort of people living in anything better than abject poverty, especially without their permission. These are the type of people who rewind the first part of A Christmas Carol over and over again and never go to the end, so they can enjoy the part where Scrooge is still a dick. (Yeah, one of the movie versions. What, you think they’re readers?) Republican president Eisenhower made his peace with the New Deal, in large part because it worked extremely well, but these assholes won’t be happy until they’re destroyed the social safety net for all those lesser, “non-rich” Americans, and the elderly have to eat cat food. (The Blue Dogs are fans of cat food, too, and good lord, they give Palin a run for her money in the dumb category.)

Repeal the Constitution: We’re still seeing teabaggers, who want to repeal some of the amendments. Of course, their ignorance on the Constitution outstrips even their impressive ignorance in other areas. The hard-core religious authoritarians who want to impose a Christian theocracy fall here as well. The war porn and neocon penis welfare crowd, led by smirking Bill Kristol, can be placed here, too, given their dual disdain for the wishes of citizens in occupied countries (get out Iraq) and the wishes of American citizens (get out of Iraq, don’t go to war in the first place). Worst of all is the Dick ‘n’ Liz Cheney American Fascism Tour (Now with Extra McCarthyism!). They want to – hell, they just went ahead and did, during the Bush administration – strip all due process and civil liberties from everyone they chose, torture them, and lie about it. Lying the nation into an unnecessary war was fun, sure, but that only devastated someone else’s country, and there’s much more damage still to be done here. Their contempt for democracy would make Machiavelli blush, and it’s impossible to overstate how arrogant, ambitious, delusional and dangerous these people are. Unfortunately, they’ve been getting more company, as with Broder’s best authoritarian buds, John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who also want to strip due process rights. And while Obama didn’t create the messes at Guantanamo or Bagram, he and his administration have continued to hold prisoners without charges, and claim that they can do so indefinitely. This is not the bipartisanship we were looking for, folks.

Repeal the Enlightenment: Several groups can be found here. There’s of course the anti-science folks, of a religious, corporate, or confused bent, who ran many agencies under Bush. The most rabid of theocrats push a Counter-Enlightenment agenda. Most dangerous are probably the plutocrats and Randians, pushing for a neo-feudalist system to undo most of the best ideas of America’s founding, and to eliminate all of the progress achieved since then. They’re a spiteful crowd, and don’t believe that everyone is created equal or deserves basic rights. Theirs is a highly regressive agenda. The economic neo-feudalists are a callous, reckless bunch, but the legal neo-feudalists that flourished in the Bush administration are even scarier. They are probably best described by their ruthless and sometimes violent opposition to the reality-based community. It’s not accidental that they borrowed torture techniques from the Spanish Inquisition. It’s not that they don’t know better; it’s that, like O’Brien in 1984 (which they regard as a how-to manual), they just don’t fucking care.

Civil Rights and Shirley Sherrod’s Family

by batocchio

Earlier this week, Digby posted some of Shirley Sherrod’s speech – the parts Andrew Breitbart and his team chose to hide. (Media Matters has the video.) If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s pretty moving and thoughtful.

Three recent posts delve more into her story, her father’s and her husband’s.

“Hosie Miller: Shirley Sherrod’s dad, and a casualty in a forgotten war,” by Will Bunch:

How unusual was it for a black man to be killed by a white man in the Deep South up through the mid-1960s with no one brought to justice. Way too common. We hear a lot about one particular killing in Mississippi — the 1964 murder of a trio of civil rights activists that included two white college kids from up North — but in reality dozens of black men were killed for taking a stand, for trying to vote or just on a whim. If you want to read something sobering, check out this letter from 2007 from the Southern Poverty Law Center, asking the FBI to investigate some 74 additional unsolved deaths from the era.

“The civil rights heroism of Charles Sherrod,” by Joan Walsh:

People who care about civil rights and racial reconciliation may eventually thank Andrew Breitbart for bringing Shirley Sherrod the global attention she deserves. Really. Her message of racial healing, her insight that the forces of wealth and injustice have always pit “the haves and the have-nots” against each other, whatever their race, is exactly what’s missing in today’s Beltway debates about race. What’s even more amazing, but almost completely unexplored in this controversy, is the historic civil rights leadership role of her husband, Charles Sherrod, an early leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, who served on the front lines of the nonviolent civil rights movement in the early 1960s.

Despite Breitbart’s attempt to cast Shirley Sherrod as The, um, Man (“The Woman” doesn’t have the same ring), out to keep oppressed white folk down, under our first black racist president, she turned out to be the opposite, an advocate of justice for everybody. Given that history, it’s fascinating to learn more about her husband, an early SNCC leader known for being willing to work with white volunteers even after tension developed over the role of whites in the organization. Charles Sherrod is important for much more than the fairness with which he treated whites, but given Breitbart’s attempt to make his wife the poster woman for black “racism,” that footnote to his leadership history is particularly noteworthy. If there’s anyone more clueless about our civil rights history than Breitbart, as well as more abusive to it, I’m challenged to think of who it might be. He tests my commitment to nonviolent social change, but I’ll share the work of Charles Sherrod to remember my values.

“Shirley Sherrod and the Dark History of Baker County,” by Elizabeth Holtzman:

The bad news is that the forces of racism and those who cower before it are alive and well. The good news is that both the Spooners, the poor white farmers that Ms. Sherrod helped, and Ms. Sherrod were able to reject that racism to find what connected them. The best news would be if the country would decisively cast off the legacy of Sheriff Screws, Sheriff Johnson, and all the racist evil they represent.

Out here in L.A., some of the local PBS stations have been re-running Eyes on the Prize this year. I doubt Breitbart will watch it, but it seems it’s always timely.
 

The Social Contract

by batocchio

(Be warned this guest post is a long one.)

Sorely lacking from the chattering class’ discussions on national politics is the concept of the Social Contract. There have been different takes on it throughout history, but the basic idea of creating a fair society, one ‘ruled by laws not men,’ of checks and balances on power, and of shared, basic prosperity, was central to the founding of the United States. The plutocrats, Randians and neo-feudalists preaching today about the pressing need to give more money to the super-wealthy, to cut regulations on powerful corporations and to slash the social safety net seem to have forgotten that the United States began by overthrowing a monarch.

America’s origins are far from perfect of course, given our history of slavery and conquest, and the long denial of voting rights to women and minorities. But as E.J. Dionne wrote for Independence Day, 2006:

…The true genius of America has always been its capacity for self-correction. I’d assert that this is a better argument for patriotism than any effort to pretend that the Almighty has marked us as the world’s first flawless nation.

One need only point to the uses that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. made of the core ideas of the Declaration of Independence against slavery and racial injustice to show how the intellectual and moral traditions of the United States operate in favor of continuous reform.

If you were to create a fair society from scratch, what would it look like? What mechanisms would you put in place to keep it fair? How would you encourage it to self-correct or progress, as Dionne describes? What rights would be guaranteed, how would abuses and excesses be curbed, and what resources would be shared? What if you didn’t know what class or position you’d have in this new society? How might that change your design? How would you help the least fortunate? (Build on the ideas of your favorite “Social Contract” philosopher, or imaginative author, or dip into anthopology if you like.) John Rawls approached these questions by way of the “original position” and the “veil of ignorance,” nicely discussed by driftglass and Blue Gal in one of their June podcasts. But there are many ways to approach these issues.

If we try to visualize what this might be in America – a Social Contract for a fair, sustainable, dynamic system – I think we get something like this:

In this model, individuals, groups and companies have an enormous amount of freedom, but there are certain common sense parameters. The U.S. is a democratic republic, and in theory at least, we have majority rule, and the governing approach should benefit the majority of Americans. However, there are certain fundamental rights such as due process that all Americans possess, and the majority cannot strip these from any minority group or individual (again, in theory for all of this). Companies can pursue their goals, produce goods and make profits, but they face certain restrictions and can’t infringe unduly on the public good. For example, marketing a dangerous, unsafe product or massively polluting public air and water might boost a corporation’s bottom line, but harms the public. That’s a bad, unnecessary tradeoff. Meanwhile, the American Dream rests on the idea that the U.S. is at least partially a meritocracy. If one works hard and plays by the rules, one can achieve some basic prosperity. If one’s particularly talented and industrious, one can excel. Not everyone will start with the same resources, opportunities and support, but everyone deserves some basic tools, otherwise the promise of “freedom” rings hollow. Society as a whole benefits from investment in basic prosperity and opportunity, in public works and services, such as basic education, public libraries, public parks and public roads and transportation.

It’s possible to be extremely individualistic (or even personally misanthropic) and still see the value of public goods such as basic education, after-school programs and a city fire department. Public works and services generally exist for moral, practical and economic reasons. For instance, universal health care tends to deliver better results and be much cheaper than other systems, leads to a healthier workforce, and greatly facilitates job changes and entrepreneurship. (Also, fewer people die unnecessarily.) In some arenas, private enterprise might work better, or coexist well with public equivalents. This model allows for all of that, and for initiative of all sorts. But only individuals of royal wealth could afford to own the equivalent of a national park, the public library system of a major city, the art collection of a local museum, or a state highway network. Public access to these clearly benefits individuals, communities, and the nation as a whole. (It’s also silly to extol Wall Street profits as a the pinnacle of human achievement, de-fund scientific research, the arts and humanities, and then complain about a lack of creativity.)

The model above stands in stark contrast to the hierarchical model of feudalism or modern authoritarian regimes, where any degree of freedom, justice or prosperity depends almost entirely on the whims of those in power. However, this diagram represents more a philosophy of governing than a socioeconomic pecking order. There’s also room for considerable debate within its framework. (What’s the right level of regulation? What’s the right amount of infrastructure investment? What civil liberties are essential?)

I’d say most modern democracies follow something like this model, even if the execution or mix varies significantly. It can work extremely well. America has employed some version of it, and we still have some vestiges, but obviously many of the principles behind it have been under assault in this past decade, and really the past 40-some years. America has staggering income and wealth inequity (as explored in more depth in an earlier post). Progressive taxation, social spending and other factors (represented by the red and blue parts of the diagram) helped close those gaps from the New Deal up until the onslaught of Reaganomics. Since at least Reagan, those gaps have widened again, and now income and wealth inequity are back to Gilded Age levels. Meanwhile, it’s disturbingly common to hear rich pundits express disinterest in or active disgust at the idea of helping their fellow Americans. This isn’t a coincidence. As Bill Moyers puts it, “Plutocracy and democracy don’t mix.”

There’s really nothing that new about that diagram – half the point is that these are very old principles. It’s just that these days, it’s not uncommon to hear the red, blue and even gray elements attacked as radical, socialist or un-American. The Social Contract in America has been badly torn by incompetent and corrupt governance, by selfish and reckless ideology, and by plutocrats eager to destroy any social safety net for their fellow Americans. Randians and neo-feudalists have no interest in the “self-correction” or improvement mentioned by Dionne. Some aggressively seek to impose a more regressive system on America, while others simply pursue personal gain and power, damn the consequences. Given this situation, restoring, honoring and improving the Social Contract is kinda the height of patriotism. After all, the concept is intrinsic to our origin as a nation.

Foundations

Some Social Contract philosophers were suspicious foreigners with funny-sounding names like you might find on some artsy TV show, and unlikely to pass muster with the flag-wavin’ Texas State Board of Education. However, America was founded with basic ideas about core rights and balancing principles in mind. Let’s start with the gray foundation of the diagram. On the rights of individuals, and the potential tyranny of the majority over the minority, Thomas Jefferson stated:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

Moving on the red part of the diagram, in terms of regulations and restrictions, Thomas Paine asserted that “government even in its best state is but a necessary evil,” but also that:

Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

James Madison expressed similar thoughts in The Federalist No. 51:

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.

This also speaks to the “freedom” section of the diagram. A key concept throughout all these passages and most of the founding documents is balance. Freedom is the overall goal, but realistically, this requires a balance of power, sometimes countervailing forces, and often wise judgment. Liberty and equality can clash at times, and how do you balance one person’s freedom with another person’s rights?

When it comes to basic prosperity and opportunity (the blue part of the diagram), the Founding Fathers and later generations of Americans have argued about the details, but most have supported the general concept. The Declaration of Independence’s most famous words are probably: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The preamble to the Constitution includes the term “promote the general welfare.” Thomas Jefferson, who founded the University of Virginia, was a fierce advocate for publicly-supported education; he saw it as an unqualified good. First, it was a basic right:

I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it.

Second, it was a means of spurring activity and innovation:

The object [of my education bill was] to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind which in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries.

And third, an educated, informed electorate is a necessity for a healthy democracy:

…Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that, whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.

Jefferson also assumed that local governments would care for the poor in some manner. Later Americans have fleshed out the idea of public works and support. Teddy Roosevelt was a champion of national parks. Eisenhower created the national highway system. Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced the New Deal and Lyndon Baines Johnson had his Great Society. Activists such as Dorothea Dix, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martin Luther King and many others worked both to secure fundamental rights for all Americans and to let them share in some basic prosperity.

Some of these measures have more contentious than others, of course. But in terms of finding “common ground” with one’s opponents, I feel it’s possible to work with people who differ on the details but agree with this basic model, who believe in a social contract and actually want to run things well. The wonks and sincere, responsible adults have plenty to discuss within this basic framework.

Recent History and the Current Day

Unfortunately, if we limit discussion today to those who “want to run things well,” it disqualifies some politicians from one major political party, and almost everyone in the other. As Misty at Shakesville recently pointed out, the Republican Party platform of 1956 expressed many of the values espoused above, but as Digby’s pointed out, they’d be denounced as socialists by today’s GOP. Paul Krugman shows in The Conscience of a Liberal that during most of America’s post-war boom from the mid 40s to about the mid 60s, the Democratic and Republican Parties were far more bipartisan than they are today in terms of voting on each others’ measures. However, this wasn’t blind Broderism; it was because they generally were working together on shared goals such as investing in the middle class and national infrastructure. (Not coincidentally, this more “liberal” economic approach was highly successful, and a huge improvement on the approach of previous eras.) Eisenhower, a Republican, made his peace with the New Deal and built on parts of it rather than trying to repeal it. The New Deal worked, and it was popular, so why not? Of course, not everyone shared in that national prosperity or had the same freedoms, particularly women and minorities. Thus, the Civil Rights Movement hit its full stride in the 60s out of necessity. With LBJ pushing civil rights legislation, Nixon developed the Southern Strategy in response, and the party of Lincoln started exploiting racial resentments to win elections. Reagan further perfected the conservative shell game, telling voters that it was minorities and the cultural elite who were oppressing them, rather than the wealthy elite. He then cut taxes to give massive amounts to the super-rich and ramped up military spending, making the deficit and debt skyrocket. His attacks on unions and business regulations didn’t help, either. He might have seemed avuncular to the middle class citizens who voted for him, but he was screwing them over.

During the Bush administration, Dick Cheney remarked privately that “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter.” It’s this statement, this attitude, that encapsulates movement conservatism and the modern Republican Party: Who cares about running the country well if we win elections? Who cares about the country as a whole if we can enrich ourselves and our donors? Thom Hartmann provides a good brief history in “Two Santa Clauses, or How The Republican Party Has Conned America for Thirty Years,” but the conservative approach results in spending huge sums of money to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans and to increase military spending, all while attacking social spending. It’s not exactly a secret, but you’ll rarely hear Beltway reporters put it all in context. Meanwhile, certainly no one could have predicted that crony capitalism, horrible governance, fantasy-based policy, abandonment of the rule of law, a drowned city and two wars under Bush would make things disastrously worse.

The Republican Party has not been run by responsible adults for decades now. Their leaders have no interest whatsoever in running the country competently. They don’t give a damn about the consequences of their reckless decisions – deficits are things to be balanced during Democratic administrations, if at all. The same goes for ending wars and any of a number of other problems. Conservative pundits – who cover politics for a living, after all – get paid for pretending not to notice any of this, most of all their own side’s damning culpability. (While the Democrats aren’t stellar, at least they occasionally do things for their average constituents.) None of these dynamics will be revelatory to political news junkies. For just one glaring example, check out Talking Points Memo’s piece “It’s Unanimous! GOP Says No To Unemployment Benefits, Yes To Tax Cuts For The Rich.” Read the piece, and you’ll see, for the umpteenth time, leading Republicans spout outrageous falsehoods about important matters. Some of them may know better and are lying, some may be zealous true believers, but as a whole, it’s that they simply don’t give a damn whether what they say is true or not.

Realistic Models versus Dogmatic Demands

National political news would benefit immensely from fact-checking, but also from some degree of nuance. Issues are also often framed in an overly simplistic, prejudicial and sometimes downright juvenile way. Consider regulation, covered in the red part of the diagram above. Continuing our theme of balance (and not in the “he said-she said” reporting sense), regulation can be visualized like this:

(Update: Here’s an alternative graphic.)

Looked at one way, “regulation” itself is a public good that requires balance and good judgment. Looked at another way, “regulation” itself is neither good nor bad, it’s a necessity. The sweet spot of regulation is optimal, while on either side, overly restrictive and dangerously permissive regulations need to be adjusted. If, for example, a specific financial regulation is silly or ineffectual, get rid of it or rework it, but eliminating financial regulation altogether makes no sense.

This is a simple, pretty common-sense model, with the aim of running things well. But many politicians and pundits, especially among conservatives, reject any model this accurate or complex in both their rhetoric and their voting. Newt Gingrich isn’t interested in making government effective, or as Bill Scher puts it, “representative, responsive and responsible.” Gingrich isn’t aiming to make government as large as it needs to be, but as small as possible. He only wants to shrink government (often by privatizing or eliminating effective public services). Grover Norquist isn’t interested in finding the optimal tax rate. He’s working hard only to lower taxes, regardless of the circumstances, and eventually to eliminate taxes altogether. John Boehner and many other Republicans aren’t trying to find the right level of regulation. They’re aiming to halt regulations, or eliminate them altogether.

In the same vein, libertarian John Stossel can, like Rand Paul, argue that private businesses should be able to racially discriminate. The idea of good or necessary regulation, or finding a balance, seems to be entirely beyond his vocabulary (whether for cognitive or profitable reasons, or both). In any case, Stossel can also decide to ignore the near collapse of the world economy from lack of financial regulation, to argue instead that the main problem with government is – it over-regulates. His proof? Ayn Rand decried regulation, and banning fish pedicures is silly! (Seriously, that’s about all he’s got. Follow the link.) Therefore, all regulation is bad, or something. Never mind about the global financial meltdown, or any of a hundred other examples! If you merely ignore world events and human nature, and instead cherry-pick minutia and cite really crappy fiction, you, too, can become the proud, smug, intellectual giant that is the dogmatic libertarian. (To be fair, Stossel has a point – when fish pedicures are outlawed, only outlaws will get fish pedicures.)

For freedom to really flourish and society to function – and not in a fantasy realm or feudal state – there needs to be some sense of balance and some sort of healthy social contract. Anonymous Liberal summed this up nicely in a piece on Rand Paul’s views:

While libertarians claims to be driven by a goal of maximizing freedom, what they mean by “freedom” is not what most people take that word to mean. To a libertarian, the only freedom that really matters is freedom from government intrusion. But often, meaningful freedom can only be created through government intervention.

Take education, for example. The existence of a public school system greatly enhances freedom by giving everyone the opportunity to get at least a basic education and opening the doors that go along with that. Similarly, without a social safety net (government programs like Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, unemployment insurance, etc.) people would literally starve or die of from lack of medical care and extreme poverty would be epidemic. This isn’t conjecture. This was the reality before these programs were put in place. That’s not “freedom” in any meaningful sense.

Indeed, in the health care context, I am continually perplexed by the suggestion that universal health care somehow inhibits freedom, rather than enhancing it. How liberating would it be to know that you could do whatever you choose from an employment perspective and not have to worry that you or your family will be denied access to health care? How liberating would it be to know that there’s no risk that illness or injury will unexpectedly derail your dreams and bankrupt you? Even if the only freedom you care about is entrepreneurial freedom, how can it be denied that lack of universal health care discourages people from taking entrepreneurial risks, that there are people out there who would love to quit their jobs and start a business but can’t because they would lose access to affordable health insurance?

Similarly, government spending on roads, transportation systems, and other infrastructure increases our physical freedom to move around and enjoy our physical environment. Government spending on law enforcement reduces crime and enhances our freedom from a physical security standpoint. Government regulation of industry keeps the air that we breath and the water we drink clean and the food and drugs we ingest safe. It gives us the freedom to enjoy our physical environment and partake of the myriad of products and services available to us without fear and without significant risk to our well-being. These are all very liberating things. I don’t know about you, but my conception of freedom is not a world where I can’t get a breath of fresh air, can’t swim, fish or enjoy the outdoors because of pollution, and am constantly playing Russian roulette every time I go to the grocery store.

I realize there are tradeoffs with everything, that in exchange for these freedom-enhancing benefits, I have to pay a little more in taxes and deal with a little more red tape if I want to do business. But libertarians seem to deny that there is any tradeoff going on; they seem to think that freedom is only a factor on one side of the equation. The reality is that lawmaking involves balancing freedoms…

Yup. That’s well put, but the core ideas are pretty much common sense.

For some issues, it might be useful to modify the original diagram:

Here, government and major forces are in the frame versus outside it and implied. And better models can certainly be devised, but one virtue of the first diagram is that it depicts a healthy society and good governance as a balancing act versus using an overly simplistic, black-and-white paradigm.

Competing Icons

One last way of looking at the Social Contract is through competing political icons.

We’ll start with Ronald Reagan. In his successful 1980 presidential campaign, he said, “Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?” In one sense, it was a fair, basic question, and Reagan did mention unemployment and other national issues. However, Reagan was also presenting the election as a referendum on Carter, not really as a contrast in policies and governing styles, with true evaluation of the consequences. Reality-based conservative Andrew Bacevich, no fan of Carter, nevertheless finds fault in Reagan’s pitch:

Reagan did not call on Americans to tighten their belts. He saw no need for sacrifice. He rejected Carter’s dichotomy between quantity and quality. Above all, he assured his countrymen that they could have more…

To call Reagan a hypocrite is to miss the point. The Reagan Revolution was never about fiscal responsibility or small government. Far more accurately than Carter, Reagan understood what made Americans tick: they wanted self-gratification, not self-denial. Although always careful to embroider his speeches with inspirational homilies and testimonials to old-fashioned virtues, Reagan mainly indulged American self-indulgence.

Reagan ignored the energy issues Carter highlighted, and that was just the beginning. George H.W. Bush called Reagan’s policies voodoo economics; Reagan was always selling a fairy tale. Rather than asking “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” or “Am I not better off today?” Reagan could have have asked, “Are we better off today? Is America? What do we need to improve it, and fix these problems?” But Reagan didn’t, nor was this accidental. The Reagan method is one approach to governing, and we’ve seen its harmful effects over the past 30 years. In a similar vein, after 9/11, rather than issuing a national call to service, or fostering a new sense of community, or working toward energy independence, Bush told Americans – to go shopping. (Oh, and also to attack Iraq.)

In sharp contrast, John Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” (He continued, “My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.”) This sentiment absolutely hinges on the idea of the Social Contract. (Predictably, the speech disgusted Ayn Rand.) Kennedy’s plea rings hollow if the government is oppressive, if society gives nothing to the individual, and if public institutions don’t fulfill their part of the contract and provide basic rights, basic protections and basic opportunities. Government should be “representative, responsive and responsible.” However, if one is given these things, what’s the rationale for opposing Kennedy’s words? It’s a stirring call to action. Don’t most human endeavors that don’t screw over one’s fellow human beings contribute in some small way to the nation as a whole? Doesn’t doing something well, and fairly – running a small business or a medical center or a school or a library or a community center or creating a work of art – make the world a better place?

Zealots like Ayn Rand see the world in black and white, in paranoid terms of domination and submission, as a zero-sum game. Control and power are their aims, not running things well. They cannot truly grasp any idea of balance, equality or sharing of power. Nor can they acknowledge the value of public goods, or that investing in basic prosperity for everyone has a positive ripple effect throughout the entire nation.

The same dynamics hold true for Glenn Beck and his teabagger groupies, screaming about “taking our country back.” Taking it back from whom? The party that fairly won the last two major national elections? Their fellow Americans? (And were they comatose for the past decade?)

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin could hear 12-year old Graeme Frost speak about how a government health care program for kids helped save his life and his sister’s after a horrific accident. Malkin’s response was to say, How dare you presume that I would care about a fellow human being! I refuse to, even for a child! What America really needed, in her view, was the launching of a spiteful War on Compassion. The Social Contract is a fool’s game, you see. Not acting like a complete and total asshole would play right into the liberals’ hands.

“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Ayn Rand saw this as a threat. She couldn’t hear its poetry. That’s sad, but it’s okay. There’s plenty of room in the country for those who can’t hear America singing, or can’t sing the body electric, or those who churn out 2000 plus pages of tedious agitprop grunting out “the song of myself, and only my glorious, superior self, you goddam moochers.” It’s just that such people can’t be trusted with power. There are far better ways to run a country that the Randian, plutocrat or neo-feudal models. There are more wonderful things in America and humanity than are dreamt of in Rand’s dogma. Kennedy’s words were never about some ridiculous, absolute self-denial or martyrdom. They were a renewal of the Social Contract, an invitation to cooperate, to work together to improve the America we all share.
 

Deny Me Health Care or Give Me Death

(or, Nazi Commie Illegal Space Aliens are Going to Kill White Grandmas)

by batocchio

(Read the full comic here. Digby’s featured it before, but ya can never get too much Tom Tomorrow. Oh, and be warned this is a long-ish post.)

Angry conservatives are fighting against their own interests, they’re unappeasable, and dishonest politicians are fanning the flames. Yet national Democrats seem terribly shocked by this, as does the media – who then give angry conservatives the microphone. The more liberal perspectives are often lost in the shuffle, of course. We’ve seen this basic story before, although this time it does seem uglier and more dangerous.

I’m curious as to the exact breakdown – how many of the eager mob are birthers? How many believe in death panels? How about internment camps? Where do they draw the line? How many of them supported Bush to the bitter end? How many would score high for authoritarian traits? I would guess there’s significant overlap, but the particulars might be interesting. Is there a guy out there somewhere who’s saying, “Whoa, of course Iraq had WMD and Obama’s a Muslim born in Kenya, but death panels? That’s just crazy!”

During the Bush presidency, some conservatives eventually acknowledged he was a disaster and jumped ship. Others, when pressed, would admit he was horrible, but they remained convinced that those damn Democrats would do far worse. Some conservatives, when pushed, will even admit that Rush Limbaugh exaggerates and sometimes outright lies (Al Franken used to have his childhood friend and dittohead Mark on the radio and present him with Limbaugh’s latest BS). On the other hand, some conservatives think Stephen Colbert is a conservative. And authoritarians will often defend directly opposing beliefs, or insist on a belief in the face of strong contradictory evidence, even when a simpler explanation is available (see Bob Altemeyer’s The Authoritarians, especially pp.120-121). At least one study found that when conservatives were presented evidence suggesting one of their beliefs was wrong, it actually reinforced their convictions. (Perhaps it’s just that social dynamics – the “oh yeah?” reaction – is stronger than empiricism, but conservatives apparently have a stronger affinity for that.)

Social conservatives often put a premium on what they view as the natural social order. Get the right kind of people with the right “values” in charge, and all shall be well (or at least better than it will be otherwise). Authoritarians tend to define right and wrong mainly based on group identity – torture is right when we do it, wrong when done to us, and so on. Re-read Ron Suskind’s classic article on “Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush” and you’ll see similar dynamics. That approach does make decisions much easier, and absolute certainty is comforting in a way the “reality-based community” may not be.

Rush Limbaugh doesn’t provide information as much as flattering confirmation bias for his fans. Most of them probably wouldn’t believe – or simply wouldn’t care – that he just makes shit up. He offers rituals to share grievance and reaffirm tribal superiority. Limbaugh delivers the psychological equivalent of comfort food to the rabid faithful, only in an extended version of the Two-Minute Hate.

To the conservative, right-wing base, Obama is both a socialist and a fascist, and simultaneously a weak appeaser to foreign rulers but a ruthless dictator domestically. Bush’s monarchial power grabs were just fine with them, and anyone who spoke out then was a traitor, but now that Obama’s president, America’s being ripped asunder. Internment camps were once a swell idea, but not now. Elections have consequences, but for the right-wing, only Republican politicians have legitimacy. There’s a range of sincerity to the craziness, of course – Betsy McCaughey’s a vile hack, Sarah Palin’s more of a demagogue, while many in the rank and file believe every evil tale they’re told (and invent new ones). Regardless, they’re bad news, and the conservatives trying as usual to blame their own craziness on liberals and Democrats are particulary loathsome. Journalists pretending that “both sides” are somehow equally hostile, irrational and dishonest is sadly not surprising, but it is highly irresponsible. The ‘Deny Me Health Care or Give Me Death’ movement is fascinating from a psychological standpoint, and may make for good headlines, but oddly enough, the republic doesn’t work very well when the stupidest, meanest, greediest and most dishonest citizens get to set the agenda.

Michael Savage and other conservatives of some prominence are shilling conspiracies about internment camps, but I’m more intrigued by an example Sadly, No caught. Go over and read the piece, but basically, on an airplane flight, a right-wing pastor/blogger sees what he thinks are internment camps. He’s heard some people say they’re for holding illegal immigrants, but he reasons this can’t be, because the government has shown it doesn’t care about that. “To think that the federal government intends to place thousands of illegal aliens in internment camps borders on lunacy,” is probably the best sentence, since the author also imagines the camps may be intended for those the government is suspicious of: “Christians, conservatives, people who support the Second Amendment, people who oppose abortion and homosexual marriage” and so on. Of course he works in a reference to Nazi Germany and concentration camps. At the risk of mischaracterizing his specific flavor of paranoia, I find his assumption about internment camps and illegal immigrants fascinating, and very much in line with many other paranoid right-wingers. I think the mindset is self-feeding, and goes something like this, however unconsciously: Obama can’t be trusted because he doesn’t hate the right people. And surely Obama must hate us as much as we hate him.

As Digby’s pointed out, euthanasia conspiracy theories have been around for some time. Similarly, while I don’t want to diminish what a singular piece of counter-factual, idiotic, craven crap Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is, accusing liberals of being Nazis is also a pretty old game. Another Sadly, No post, “Godwin Shrugged,” (Feb. 2009), looked at the The Washington Times’ habit of comparing liberals to Nazis. The specific cause was an uncredited op-ed attacking the Democrats. It claimed that efforts to use computers and standardize medical records were really a “chilling” invasion of privacy designed to spy on Americans. (I’ll note that editor Tony Blankley penned an op-ed, “Yes, we need censorship,” about the dangers of allowing civil liberties – including privacy – the very next goddam day. Yes, they have no coherence, nor shame.) The health care op-ed also suggesting that the Democrats were proposing something “fully in the spirit” of the Nazis’ “euthanasia” program. I’ll get to that in a moment, but Sadly, No’s Gavin M. made some excellent observations:

What we learn today from the Washington Times is that medical records must not be digitized as the Obama plan proposes, but can only exist in paper form because YOU KNOW WHO LIKED EFFICIENCY HITLER THAT’S WHO…

But it’s also the case that these tantrums represent something different to the wingnut mind than to the clinically normal one. To the wingnut mind, or according to the wingnut assessment of what would shock and upset liberals (a nearly identical consideration), the notion of the totalitarian dictator naturally refers to Barack Obama, and to a chain of previous images of Obama-as-cult-leader, Obama-as-false-prophet, Obama-as-Manchurian-Candidate, as usurper, as dictator, as “chosen one,” as false Christ. “Imagine,” the editorial is saying, “If Obama could access our medical records. What would stop him from euthanizing the weak, the so-called ‘unfit,’ or the ‘politically incorrect?’”

It’s not that wingnuts literally believe such things (or care what happens to the weak). They don’t really believe anything in the ordinary sense of the term, but rather make instrumental, conditional use of certain kinds of beliefs, much in the way that other kinds of people make use of thrill sports or porn.

The attraction of extremist politics is that it allows its devotees to indulge irrational, basically infantile impulses; and while the American conservative movement has in a sense chained itself to the devil in becoming a willful gratifier of such impulses, it’s also the case that the wingnut type has no fundamental affinity for conservatism per se, and will switch to any flavor of extremism that will cater to its needs. Wingnuts only care about the drama.

The elements of the wingnut drama are outrage, spite, self-pity, and gloating; and any irresistible fact or narrative will hold the possibility of at least two of these, together or in sequence…

I think there’s a great deal of truth to this, although I would argue that authoritarianism strongly lends itself to conservatism, and both are reactionary to social and economic change, whereas liberals seek change in the name of a more fair society. Additionally, modern movement conservatism is pretty obsessed with gaining and maintaining power, outward displays of aggression and strength, dominating an unequal socioeconomic structure and attacking even basic diplomacy and cooperation as dangerously feminine. Real men bomb the shit out of brown people in foreign lands, because who can tell them apart anyway, and even if they didn’t do anything, they were thinking about it. Plus, surely the ungrateful foreigners we’re “liberating” must hate us as much as we hate them. (And one of them somehow got in the White House, in the greatest conspiracy since global warming!) So, yes, there are definitely crazies who aren’t conservatives, and conservatives who aren’t crazy, although the right-wing political ideology does not have much merit nor integrity. However, especially in contemporary America, it’s not accidental that angry zealots trend conservative.

I did want to address the op-ed’s specific claims about Democrats, Nazis and health care, especially since we’re seeing similar crap these days. Read the whole of “Health ‘efficiency’ can be deadly,” for yourself, but here’s the thrilling conclusion:

There is no telling what metrics will be used to define the efficiencies, but it is clear who will bear the brunt of these decisions. Those suffering the infirmities of age, surely, and also the physically and mentally disabled, whose health costs are great and whose ability to work productively in the future are low. And how will premature babies fare under the utilitarian gaze of Washington’s health efficiency experts? Will our severely wounded warriors be forced to forgo treatments and therapies based on their inability to be as productive as they once might have been? And will the love between a parent and child have a column on the health bureaucrats’ spreadsheets?

Consider the following statement: “It must be made clear to anyone suffering from an incurable disease that the useless dissipation of costly medications drawn from the public store cannot be justified.”

This notion is fully in the spirit of the partisans of efficiency but came from a program instituted in Hitler’s Germany called Aktion T-4. Under this program, elderly people with incurable diseases, young children who were critically disabled, and others who were deemed non-productive, were euthanized. This was the Nazi version of efficiency, a pitiless expulsion of the “unproductive” members of society in the most expeditious way possible.

The program was publicly denounced in 1941 by Clemens Galen, the Catholic Bishop of Muenster, who said in a sermon, “Here we are dealing with human beings, with our neighbors, brothers and sisters, the poor and invalids … unproductive – perhaps! But have they, therefore, lost the right to live?”

The efficiency-based approach to health care reform is a betrayal of the compact between those who are most capable of work and those who are least capable of defending themselves. And we have come a long way from what was supposed to be a “targeted, timely and temporary” stimulus bill.

This is shameless fear-mongering, even if The Washington Times portraying itself as the voice of compassion is laughable. Civil rights are very important, but some people don’t care about such things only when a Democrat is president, and the day before they argue against rights. Accusing the Democrats of mistreating returning troopers is especially brazen and hypocritical. Of course, those monstrous Democrats will also destroy the bond between “a parent and child.” Is nothing sacred? Still, I must say portraying as evil efforts to make our horrible health care system more “efficient” is pretty ingenious propaganda. The Nazi analogies are particularly appalling, though.

It just so happens I have a post on the Nazi T4 “euthanasia” program right over here. (it was for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, 2008.) For the Nazis, euthanasia and “mercy killings” were really murder, of course. They started with sterilization of ‘undesirables,’ then moved to murder, with the T4 program providing a ghastly test run for the later series of death camps and methods of murder such as gassing. They used propaganda, including a number of films, to try to sell murder to the public (alas, I could only provide two clips). Invoking the Nazis and their “euthanasia” program does not ultimately work in conservatives’ favor. For one thing, in their propaganda, the Nazis deliberately conflated voluntary euthanasia (suicide or assisted suicide) with involuntary “euthanasia” (their murder program). For another, they warned of the dangers of “inferior” people out-breeding “higher quality” people. Additionally, they continually expressed outrage over the cost of caring for the supposedly inferior, as in: “60,000 Reichsmarks is what this person suffering from hereditary defects costs the People’s community during his lifetime. Fellow German, that is your money too.”

Our current political battles are very different, of course. But if we must make comparisons, it’s not really a secret which side is conflating personal end-of-life decisions with murder, who’s talking about white people being outbred, who’s expressing outrage over the cost of providing health care for the uninsured, who’s talking about the country being tarnished by the unworthy, who’s for letting people die in the street and who’s praising Hitler as a role model. Obviously, conservative opponents of health care reform are not Nazis or anywhere near as bad. Screaming that a living will is a murder plot, that some people deserve to die or fighting to deny Americans health care is callous, unconscionable and even evil, but it’s nowhere near the evil of state-sponsored murder and genocide. (I’ve also got an older post about the value and limitations of Godwin’s Law, if that’s a concern.) Invoking the Nazis shouldn’t work in conservatives’ favor – but it’s not likely it will stop. And as long as that prevails, and the craziness and demagoguery continues, it’s important to call it out, from the usual skullduggery to hate speech to proto-fascist stirrings. We might not be “there” yet, but standing up for civil rights, good government and decent treatment of everybody tends to head it off at the pass. The current insanity shouldn’t go unchallenged.

The diehard right-wingers view Obama as a dangerous usurper – they can all agree on that. The only real question among themselves is what boxes they check off on their hate list – Democrat, liberal, black, Muslim, foreign-born, socialist, fascist, trying to take your guns, trying to kill grandma, trying to put conservatives in camps, trying to give the unworthy health care on your dime… It’s just slightly different flavors of bullshit from the hacks and varying flavors of batshit from the zealots.

However, far more Americans can agree that our current health care system is often atrocious, and many people know someone with a health care horror story, or have their own. Their stories should be told. Every “death panel” lie should be called out, and countered with a piece on Remote Area Medical or something similar. Instead of phantoms and paranoia ruling the day, attention must be paid to this struggle’s many human faces.

I don’t say he’s a great man. Willie Loman never made a lot of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall in his grave like an old dog. Attention, attention must finally be paid to such a person.