Aphorisms Suck! Part 16

T.S. Eliot never had to rake leaves.

-Jimbo Riley

Apparently There's Now No Distinction Between "Conservatism" And "A Fractured Carousel of Tired Gripes"

George Eff Will, "Conformity for diversity's sake". November 2

TAKE that, Academy!

Seven-hundred fifty words, arguing that the First Amendment, if properly interpreted (that is, if interpreted according to George Eff Will, not legal precedent) guarantees the right of private groups to behave as they see fit, even under the aegis of Vanderbilt University, without restriction.

Six-hundred eighty words before we get around to mentioning that Vanderbilt University is, itself, a private institution.

I'm not going to waste time typing "George Will is intellectually dishonest". * George Eff Will has clearly demonstrated, and more than once, that he would short-change a blind street merchant.

Time and place of public expression. If you don't understand that this is a major philosophical stumbling block in the history of the First, then you're unqualified to even discuss it. Vanderbilt has as much right to control the terms of operation of its student groups as an employer has to control the distribution of Communist literature in his parking lot.** End of discussion. How is this even relevant?

Although Vanderbilt is a private institution, its policy is congruent with “progressive” public policy, under which society shall be made to progress up from a multiplicity of viewpoints to a government-supervised harmony. Vanderbilt’s policy, formulated in the name of enlarging rights, is another skirmish in the progressives’ struggle to deny more and more social entities the right to deviate from government-promoted homogeneity of belief. Such compulsory conformity is, of course, enforced in the name of diversity.

So Vanderbilt, which doesn't actually qualify, is here as a stand-in for the thousands of "progressive" right-think conformity farms--I'm sure George Eff will get around to listing them in due time--which are clearly violating the First Amendment, not to mention the Special "Conservative" Intellectual prohibition against Actions Which Can Be Described Ironically.

Okay, George. We'll untangle this for you. Follow along closely; it's real confusing.

Vanderbilt, which is a private institution of higher learning (though that private/public distinction really just obscures the principle rather than illuminating it), sponsors, as most such institutions do, student and community organizations. And, as any such institution which sponsors such organizations and isn't run by absolute morons, Vanderbilt requires those organizations to meet its guidelines. (Which, not to interject too much fact at once, none of these put-upon religious groups has done yet, and which, as a result, they've been given provisional approval to operate anyway. Throw off your Chains!)

This is, in fact, enough to close the argument for sensible people, but here we are required to go further. The fact that the Court has upheld the right of some St. Patrick's Day Parade assholes to be bigoted assholes under the First Amendment , or of the Boy Scouts to restrict molesters in their ranks to the avowed heterosexual type, is beside the point. Those are free association issues. Like the California case which you find so baffling, Vanderbilt doesn't restrict what individuals or organizations believe, or say; it restricts what organizations can do and still get official recognition. The Association of Bible-Believin' Students can say or think whatever it pleases; it cannot discriminate against gay Vanderbilt students and qualify for rent-free meeting space or on-campus fundraising, or whatever else Vanderbilt--and any public institution, for that matter--makes available to them under the rules.

Is this really hard to understand? Free speech is not license, but the law has tended to protect it short of risk to public safety or reasonable restrictions on time and place (including the right of property holders to permit or deny speech at their whim). The Boy Scouts can keep out the gays, Bob Jones University can keep out the the coloreds, and the Washinton Post can bar the ethical. They cannot do so with public monies, because the public has wide-ranging, but not total, rights against discrimination. Homophobes can march down the streets of Boston the way Nazis can march through Skokie. They can start a private club and get together to rub dicks without allowing gays in. They cannot open a public boiled meat and vegetable emporium and discriminate against large classes of customers. Is this really that tough to understand? A public university is not required to let anyone at all attend classes. And it's not required to give official recognition to the Jesus Hates Fags Alliance.

You'd think, really, that the nation's Last Remaining Mediocre 19th Century Mind would recall that his own religious sect was discriminated against in just this fashion a mere century ago, and that it is a belated response to all such practices--and especially non-citizenship for women and partial personhood for non-whites--which informs this today. Too bad that some people prefer to live in an earlier, more hate-filled time. They're sure entitled. But they're not entitled to require everyone else set his clock back to accommodate them.

All this is standard George Will Reds in the State Department/ Fluoride in the Water Supply As Updated for the Reagan Era babble. Didn't Will essentially become The Leading Conservative Intellectual thirty years ago with his groundbreaking monograph "PC Campus Goons vs. Free Speech"? I'd'a just moved right along, but for this:

Here, however, is how progressivism limits freedom by abolishing the public-private distinction: First, a human right — to, say, engage in homosexual practices — is deemed so personal that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Next, this right breeds another right, to the support or approval of others. Finally, those who disapprove of it must be coerced.

Sound familiar? It should. First, abortion should be an individual’s choice. Then, abortion should be subsidized by government. Next, pro-life pharmacists who object to prescribing abortifacients should lose their licenses. Thus do rights shrink to privileges reserved for those with government-approved opinions.

Because, y'know, there's lying cupidity, there's partisan shit-slinging, and there's politically-motivated haberdashery, and then there's the idea that, alone among licensed professionals pharmacists should have the right to deny proper medical care to citizens they don't agree with--and in this single instance, of course--We're not saying a druggist should refuse cramp medicine to an unclean woman!--which is the stupidest thing anybody but Jonah Goldberg has ever said.


_____________

* Unplanned praeteritio, hence exempt from the requirement of a warning sticker.

** But not Guns & Ammo, not in Indiana. Oh, the publication, probably. Just not real guns and real ammo.

Forget It, Jake.

David Weigel, "Bi-monthly attempt to write the history of the Teabaggers in a way that makes David Weigel seem relevant, OWS edition". October 31

I WON'T go so far as to call them principles, but let's say this blog has as a persistent article of faith the idea that Dick Fucking Armey is a Republican. And the Koch Brothers are Republicans.

And that the Republican party has been the Party of Mellon since the end of the Great War, when the Progressive wing of the party was taken out and shot because of Woodrow Wilson, who was neither Progressive nor a Republican. And this marked the end, at least to date, of the Republican party doing anything that made sense.

And you might say that, at least to some extent, I believe that history is, or more accurately, should be, composed of "facts". I like facts. I'm not head-over-heels in love, but I do prefer a sensible, responsible fact to the bad boy on the motorcycle with the sleeve tattoos.

So if you, in 2011, want to try to convince me that the Teabag Party, in 2009, was the creation of some teevee chatterer and a housewife in Florida, and represented something entirely unheard of in Republican politics to that point, then let's just say I prefer you do so with evidence, and not by recounting the Narrative.

Before [Santelli's] fiery speech, the right had been protesting President Obama but struggling for tractionSome of the groups that would drill the Tea Party into an electoral force, such as David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity, were already campaigning against the $787 billion stimulus bill and the pro-union Employee Free Choice Act. But according to Jared Bernstein and other veterans of the White House’s economic team, Santelli’s rant and the subsequent rallies spooked the right people. Suddenly, a president who had entered office with a 70 percent approval rating had to explain why his policies made people so angry.

Before Santelli's speech, "mainstream" or "official" Republican leadership--which differs from the Republican donor list in that it's the faction in position to receive the largess and dole out the favors, and which differs from the Republican base in that it's the faction in position to receive the largess and dole out the favors, had gone to the President's Post-Partisanship Banquet, left the room, and vowed to never vote for a single thing the man proposed to do.

While he was enjoying that 70 percent popularity.

So let's conclude from this that either a) Republican intransigence was a forgone conclusion or b) Barack Obama seriously misplayed his hand, or displayed a weakness seasoned charlatans like John Boehner picked up on like a cat hears a can opener, or c) both.

(And if we could just repeat, here, that from our own lazy perspective, the Teabag Revolution imagery had been used in the Indianapolis mayoral campaign of 2007, in which a similar group of pretend grassroots irritants with an average net income of $250,000 ceremoniously and camera-readily dunked property tax bills in the Indianapolis Water Company Canal to protest the incumbent Democratic mayor, who had nothing whatsoever to do with the rise in those property taxes. *)

“The left had always protested,” explains Brendan Steinhauser, director of state campaigns for FreedomWorks, now one of the most influential Tea Party groups. “Conservatives getting out into the streets—that was a paradigm shift.

Previously they rented.

Now, insTead of fighting the GOP, a Party with a dingy brand and no credibility, the Democrats were fighting a new political force that voters kind of liked. If the Tea Party hadn’t caught on, the Obama Team would be fighting the same conservative movement that it had defeated in 2008. And a few more victories could have meant life for some legislation that died prematurely. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s “big bang” strategy of win after win after win could have happened — if it hadn’t been for all those people waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and panicking about “death panels” when members of Congress went back to their districts.

First, "fighting" is too strong a word here, unless its used in the sense of "Fighting fire with prone supplication and offers of unlimited buttsecks". Second, Republicans were--I think History will bear me out--the minority party in both Houses at the time, and thus incapable of defeating anything the Democratic party decided to do, as in "accomplish". And the Democrats called on their famous circular firing squad as a result. As with the Clinton healthcare debate twenty years earlier, the Obama legislative package wasn't defeated because the minority party's base was upset about something (what else is new?). It was defeated because the corporate masters of the GOP also control a sizable chunk of the Democratic party as well. Maybe a majority. Maybe all. The point is, it wasn't Teabagging killed the beast.

What bills could have passed in a Tea-Party-free America? For one, some kind of climate legislation to limit national greenhouse-gas emissions could have moved. One massive problem with the cap-and-trade bill that passed the House in June 2009 was that Democrats faced angry crowds at home when they defended it. That happened again and again on other issues, too, as Tea Partyers — talking to each other online, tuning in to Glenn Beck — would learn of some nightmare moving through Congress and turn their muskets on it. The in-person pressure, tactics they’d seen the left use for years, slowed down the Obama agenda.

And, again, assuming this is what did it, and not the usual transfer of cash from vested interest to vested suit, all Democrats had to do was show some balls, or, at the very least, some recognition that a solid narrative beats a thousand little maybes. You can't be too careful in your choice of enemies.

But the Obama agenda would have had tough going anyway. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) was determined to block the Democrats, and the Tea Party only helped him do it. So let’s consider what the Tea Party prevented him from doing. McConnell wanted Trey Grayson, Kentucky’s capable, conservative secretary of state, to be the next U.S. senator from that state. But the Tea Party made sure that Grayson lost to the libertarian scion Rand Paul. It brought down Sen. Bob Bennett in Utah, and it almost beat Sen. Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. For two years, it declared war on any Republican who had backed the bank bailout or suggested compromising with Democrats.

Bum disposal methods having been wholly unheard of in American politics to that point.

Fuck. I'm from Indiana, a state so Red it voted against FDR three times. There's always a Teabagger challenge or a religious nutjob in the wings here, ready to take some Republican incumbent's job. Religious cranks staged a mini-revolt in the Indiana House in 2004, the year of My Man Mitch, and it was kept from spreading only because the Big Money (at the top) clamped the lid down. Those guys got to bluster and badger and buffoon their way through successive legislative organization weeks, but they never got a bill out of committee, not before Mitch Daniels was a lame duck governor and a non-Presidential candidate. People now talk about this Murdock character's challenge to Dick Lugar, but Lugar's 109 years old, and he's still going to win his 64th term next year going away. In the meantime the nuts get him to lie about things their way, instead of some other way, for a while before it's back to business as usual.

This is confusing fact with Cherished Narrative. Teabaggers won some seats! Teabaggers changed some legislation! Teabaggers almost comically defeated Lisa Murkowski, before even more comically losing to a write-in candidate. So what? Some Ayn Randian or Rand Paulian intractable idiots get elected. Some bump in the road is navigated, some bridge to nowhere is painted Red not Blue. So what? Six Republicans voted against the Iraq War resolution. Anybody think if any of their votes--including the other Paul dingbat--was crucial they wouldn't have gone the other way? Backwoods religious troglodytes are an important constituency, too. Backwoods religious troglodytism was the New! 100% genuine grassroots political game-changing formerly-not-Republican movement from 1980-1992. If people who talk to dead carpenters who rule the universe can be co-opted, anybody can be co-opted. You think there's going to be a Teabagger Let-the-Gol'Durn-Gubmint-Default revolt with a Republican in the White House? If it's even more contrary to large-scale election prospects than the last one was? Yeah, sure there will. Like Republicans voted against the Iraq war.

The 2010 primaries—the wins and the threats—kept Republicans honest.

"Kept the Republicans honest? Ten thousand comedians are out of work, Dave.

In 1995, the GOP briefly fought a debt-limit vote but then balked. In 2011, there were rallies and new conservative power brokers demanding concessions in exchange for raising the debt limit.

Yeah, and in 1962 Charlie Manson was knocking over 5 and 10 cent stores. We don't consider what happened afterwards to be a measure of his progress.

Without the Tea Party, Paul, Lee and Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.) wouldn’t have been in the Senate to give the debt standoff form and focus.

And as a result, what? Default is now a better idea?

That is where this alternative history starts to look good to Republican leaders. The debt fight hit both parties, but it knocked the most out of the GOP. As the party has turned its attention to the presidential race, it has watched the man with the most endorsements—Mitt Romney—spar with pretenders, candidates who shouldn’t be competitive, given their fundraising and organizing limitations. Why is Herman Cain relevant? Because the Tea Party learned last year that it can demand the world—and nearly get it.

The definition of "demanding the world" being "put a wholly unqualified crank who, frankly, it must now be asked how he came to manage a Godfather's franchise, let alone run something, then congratulations are in order. I guess. The Republican party has found a way to make itself more incoherent with each passing day. It's not an accomplishment.

And it's not new. The current incarnation surely dates to the nomination of George Herbert Walker Horrible Sperm Factory Bush, which was according to Hoyle, or the laws of coronation. George H.W.Whatever Bush was hated for proclaiming No New Taxes, and then, well, Taxes. He was a politician who lied. Okay, that didn't narrow it down any. He lied rather dramatically, and stupidly, to a national convention audience. Everybody says, "Then he went and raised taxes, the dolt." Nobody ever mentions how Republican politics, in the Age of Reagan canonization, made him posture in a way which wasn't good for the country, and made him pay for daring to do what was right. Then, of course, Clinton Scandals, Inc., during which time Doubling Down became the Republican Strategy version of No Taxation: Real Republicans do it, every time. Real Republicans don't look around--let alone look at the fucking facts--and say, okay, losing proposition, let's move on. No, they start another investigation, and another, and they find a man who'll buttfuck a diseased rodent corpse if that's what it'll take.

We know where the rest of this goes. And look, if there was a Teabagger Revolution, explain why Mitt Romney turned into the World's Greatest Panderer in 2007. Explain Sarah Palin. Herman Cain? Herman Cain is a crackpot. Crackpots rule the party. This is only something new if you consider Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Newt Gingrich to be classical scholars.

A world without the Tea Party would have been a little brighter for the Republican establishment. But it wouldn’t have been so bright for conservatives. They learned that there’s nothing like a megaphone-blaring, flag-waving populist movement to move the country your way. That’s why the Democrats now embracing the Occupy movement are kicking themselves for not getting into the streets sooner to protest Wall Street. Why did they ever imagine a world without it?

Because they're Democrats, and because they're as disinclined to reward their base as Republicans are inclined to give theirs smacking good lip service. And the reason in both instances is that's what the money masters require.

Money created the Teabaggers. Money created the Occupiers, too, but in the reverse sense. A lot of us have seen that movie before, and think we know how it ends. But, then, a lot of us feel the Spit Bubble of Reaganism should have disappeared by 1987, and think it's partly a shame that modern humanitarian notions precluded jacking up the S&L looters on poles and leaving them to this day on bridges across America, which, on top of everything else, would probably be better maintained as a consequence. This shit has gone on far too long, far too long without an acknowledgement of its fallacies, its failures, its consequences, and the real populism now turning to the Occupy protests with admiration, not dirty hippie jokes. Maybe someday Decency and Sense might just happen to win one, and all you babblers and flunkies and fellators and facilitators better hope we run out of bridges before your number's called.


__________

*Slight exaggeration. Bart Peterson, the Republican-Democrat, had exercised a local-option tax provided for by the Republican legislature in order to pay existing police and fire pensions, whose plans were in poor shape. The incoming Ur-Teabag Republican replacement left the option tax in place. You were sitting down, right?

It's One Thing To Be A Liar. It's Another To Be An Ill-Informed, Third-Hand Liar.

Ross Douthat, "What Tax Dollars Can't Buy". October 30

FOR starters, having Herman Cain on the Sundays might be justified by his front-runner, or "front-runner", status--might be; it sure isn't justified by anything else--but if you have to talk about that fucking ad, then the point is not "promoting smoking" but "perpetrating this phony Fuck You! USA! shit" which has gone on thirty years past its expiration date now because no egghead's gonna tell me not to eat tainted meat-like substances. That shit worked for Reagan (when it shouldn't have, and wouldn't have if the Press had pressed, instead of raising its hand and hoping to be recognized by the big Hollywood star) at a time when product bans (DDT, cyclamates) were still news, and widely misunderstood by the public, with help from industries disinclined to be bothered with the common good unless there was a profit in it. Tobacco, of course, was still the beneficiary of a well-funded counterintelligence campaign. Today it is time to understand that the great majority of Americans now get the concept, aren't flummoxed by the very concept of risk, prefer safety to faux economy, and want nothing whatsoever to do with cigarettes, including being within fifteen miles of somebody smoking one. And they are right.

I don't give a shit if someone smokes a cigarette on camera. (Hell, half my teevee viewing is Turner Classics.) This might be a minority opinion these days, but to accuse Herman Cain of "promoting smoking" or, more accurately, to accuse him of "not caring" that the ad might possibly promote smoking, is to lead with your chin into Herman Cain's wheelhouse or, more accurately, the general location of Herman Cain's wheelhouse, if he had one. The question is why Herman Cain, in a Presidential primary campaign we'll be nice for once and call "quixotic" (when calling it "a campaign" is probably far too generous already), finds it necessary to trot out this phony issue of Cigarette Freedom, especially in a fucking Republican primary, where it distinguishes him not one whit from the rest of the field, and why he would imagine it bestowed some benefit in a political process where 98% of Americans clearly believe not being forced to walk through clouds of carcinogens wherever they go out in public is a more important freedom than the right to choose cancer.

Of course, this was Bob Schieffer, who clearly took a look around in the mid 70s, realized he had half the talent of Dan Rather and one-third the talent of the talented people at CBS, and opted for the career strategy of making himself seem as innocuous to the Nixonites as possible.


LET us examine, for a moment, the other side of the George Eff Will "conservative" coin, though I'm not certain "moderate" "conservativism" is distinctive enough to be considered something separate. If Will's bright balloon is never more than the business end of a toothpick away from full-on anti-fluoridationalism, Douthat is George Will if Will had grown up listening to babbling hillbilly schizophrenics in place of the Latin Mass.

Compared to graceless Ross, Brooks' simpering "reasonableness" seems almost genuine in its abject marketability, and Mitch Daniels' calculating venality sounds like intellect. Douthat's "moderation" amounts to nothing beyond the fact that by the time he got to Hahvahd it was no longer possible to pretend to be Bill Buckley, Defender of the Faith at the Liberal Ivies, because that ship had sailed, and the American right could no longer read. Scratch him and you get Jerry Falwell with social pretensions.

But true social mobility and broadly shared prosperity are not so easily achieved. Remember that those tax dollars, once collected, would not be disbursed with perfect effectiveness to the most deserving members of the American middle class. Instead, they would be used to buy a little more time for our failing public institutions — postponing a reckoning with unsustainable pension commitments, delaying necessary reforms in our entitlement system and propping up an educational sector whose results don’t match the costs.

This is how one displays one's Republican reasonableness (consider Mitch Daniels and the culture war on slow simmer): agree that the opposition has a good point. And then explain why the answer is the same Republican crackpottery as before (or, in a pinch, explain that it should be left to sort itself out, which is sure to happen once you're back in charge).

We have a roaring cascade of inequality in this country, and it is directly traceable to the argument--and the tax policies--of the Reagan administration thirty years ago. There's no question. And, for those who tend to forget the inconvenient, let us remember that the point of all that was not More Wealth for the Wealthy, but the beneficial effect all that water was supposed to have on everyone's little dinghy.

And let's add to that, as is always necessary, that the current Horrible Budget Armageddon Caused by Libruls amounts to an increase in the deficit essentially equal to the size of all that tax cutting all these years.

So, just for starters, raising taxes on the wealthy is justified. There really need be no other argument than this. The deficit is life-threatening? Return lost revenues. Incontinent tax-cutting, thirty years on, has produced an even worse, and considerably more stratified, economy? Do away with it. Put it to right.

The argument failed. Twice. As algebra. You had thirty years.

Connecting it now to the social safety net, union hatred, and education, for fuck's sake, where the only reason you can even make out the category on the Federal pie chart is the massive increase in Federal spending and meddling under the Bush II administration, when "conservatives" and soon-to-be-disowned "conservatives" decided to make over the educational system in the image of the Great Conservative Permanent Majority to Come, just demonstrates what's been going on all along. Social Security is solvent, all the Withered Anti-New Deal hornswoggle to the contrary, and it's a trust, not part of the general revenues. Not to mention that the Jobs Creators barely pay into the thing. Eliminate Social Security altogether and you do nothing for the Deficit. It shouldn't even be part of the argument. Unfunded Federal pensions have grown substantially, but that isn't a prima facie argument against pensions; it's an argument for responsible government funding its obligations. As in levying equitable taxes.

Instead we've had this two-shoe Republican method of "bankrupting" the government (Freedom!) followed by "the only way to fix this is to do away with all the programs we are too politically cowardly to face head on". And, as such, I'll believe you're serious about the deficit when you start proposing to balance it with military cuts.

And I'll believe you're serious about rescuing the lower classes…no. I won't.

Federal Bow-tie Tension Guidelines: Opposed By The Very People Who Stand To Benefit The Most

George Eff Will, "Mitt Romney, the pretzel candidate". October 28

IF I had to choose a single reason for the thirty-five years I've spent trying to ignore George Fucking Will as much as humanly possible, it's here: like his Latin-cognater idol Buckley, Will is really never more than a couple paces from complete, mouth-foaming, Anti-fluoridationalist rant of the sidewalk wingnut sermonizer. Either man would have been entertaining, if not interesting, had he been able to keep that in check. But had he been able to keep that in check he wouldn't have been such a crackpot in the first place, because the wingnut mentality can take hold only with a constant source of cranky flapdoodle near at hand. Quemoy and Matsu are to the American Right what a creek that flows throughout the summer is to the cattle rancher.

The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.

Correct. Cognitive dissonance is the relationship between that second sentence and the first. What the Republican presidential dynamic is is reduced cognitive ability.

Obama, a floundering naif who thinks ATMs aggravate unemployment, is bewildered by a national tragedy of shattered dreams, decaying workforce skills and forgone wealth creation. Romney cannot enunciate a defensible, or even decipherable, ethanol policy.

And this is not cognitive dissonance. It's a non sequitur.

Life poses difficult choices, but not about ethanol. Government subsidizes ethanol production, imposes tariffs to protect manufacturers of it and mandates the use of it — and it injures the nation’s and the world’s economic, environmental, and social (it raises food prices) well-being.

In May, in corn-growing Iowa, Romney said, “I support” — present tense — “the subsidy of ethanol.” And: “I believe ethanol is an important part of our energy solution for this country.” But in October he told Iowans he is “a business guy,” so as president he would review this bipartisan — the last Republican president was an ethanol enthusiast — folly. Romney said that he once favored (past tense) subsidies to get the ethanol industry “on its feet.” (In the 19th century, Republican “business guys” justified high tariffs for protecting “infant industries”). But Romney added, “I’ve indicated I didn’t think the subsidy had to go on forever.” Ethanol subsidies expire in December, but “I might have looked at more of a decline over time” because of “the importance of ethanol as a domestic fuel.” Besides, “ethanol is part of national security.” However, “I don’t want to say” I will propose new subsidies. Still, ethanol has “become an important source of amplifying our energy capacity.” Anyway, ethanol should “continue to have prospects of growing its share of” transportation fuels. Got it?

Got it.

That is, I've got this: the wholly crazed American Right, which likes to call itself "conservative", doesn't like Mitt Romney. This much is easy to understand. For the life of me, I can't figure who does like him, or why; the best argument, the only argument, is that he isn't one of the other guys. I understand why "conservatives" don't think Mitt is one of them; he isn't. He's a born-rich rich guy and the son of a politician, like the ethanol-enthusing last Republican president, who appears to have the same relationship to power that thirteen-year-old boys have to eroticism: you can tell he's desperately interested in the game, but he seems to have no idea how it's played, and he lunges around so gracelessly you can only imagine he's trying to mimic something he saw somewhere and missed the point of.

On the other hand, he does have long experience pandering, and his routine here is pretty much standard politics (which reminds me, another ethanol fancier is diminutive Indiana governor Mitch Daniels, George Eff Will's dream candidate). Romney may not do it particularly well (who does?), but if we want to suggest that this qualifies as actual cognitive dissonance, and thus disqualifies a candidate from the intellectual rigor required to run an economy, we might consider who else gets caught in that net. And we might start with Ron Paul, the anti-government-subsidy legislator with the history of earmarks. Or Michele Bachmann, the anti-socialist nutball with the bank balance stuffed with government funds. Or Rick Santorum, subsidy hypocrite and the Sacred Right to Lifer who finesses his own wife's medical pregnancy termination into a miscarriage. And that's the three Republican candidates--none of whom can ever have expected to be the nominee, and thus really get called on this shit--willing to oppose ethanol subsidies in front of Iowa audiences. For principle.

Hey, this is fun, if familiar; what else is there? Carter's ethanol subsidy deal was a pander, coming during his reelection campaign, but he'd resisted subsidizing Gasoline, Now With 10% Less Gasoline! in favor of fossil fuel alternatives to that point. Free-Market Ron's sugar embargo, still in effect, which resulted in high fructose corn syrup replacing the sugar we add to everything, didn't damage his reputation with "conservatives" like Will, though with Reagan we're always left to define where "pander" leaves off and "ongoing criminal conspiracy" begins. (Not that he invented the Sugar Production scam, our nation's longest running.)

Can you spell politics without pander? Probably not. We could take the money out of it; we could reform the electoral process, the major party domination, make it more inclusive, use the public airwaves to create a better-informed electorate. Those ideas don't seem to garner a lot of Republican support, or generate too many George Eff Will columns. Is there some Freedom! argument, or something in the Pledge of Allegiance, which guarantees Iowans the right to screw up the first eighteen months of every Presidential campaign roll-out? Sheesh if there's one thing Republicans have proven to be good at over the last four decades, it's suggesting rules, regulations, and Constitutional amendments designed to save themselves from what they want to do. You can't propose a bylaw that triggers a Blue Ribbon Panel selected by the Competition Committee once the level of pander reaches some designated point?

Every day, 10,000 baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, from which they will receive, on average, $1 million of benefits ($550,000 from the former, $450,000 from the latter). Who expects difficult reforms from Romney, whose twists on ethanol make a policy pretzel?

I guess this is supposed to qualify as an argument; it's a little bit of a shock to see Will succumb to the modern practice of letting the Reader fill in your point for you in order to save time. Of course, I don't read him very often, and he has been working the Unreliable Narrator thing since the 70s.

But, look, maybe Ross Douthat or one of those other young hot-shot techno-linkers can explain to me where those figures come from. In the meantime, all I know is there's a 3.6% COLA raise in Social Security due next year which will raise the individual take to 13,452 lucky-ducky bucks per annum. So if my calculator skills haven't deteriorated, this means that Baby Boomers, on average, are expected to live to be 105.886 years old.

Can anybody suggest any good cat food stocks?

A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one. It is what Romney did when he said that using Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts “was the wrong source for that funding.” Oh, so the source was the bailouts’ defect.

And here I imagined its success was the problem, and that Romney was just trying to find some way to criticize the President for a favorable outcome in a way which might pass muster with that sliver of the Republican electorate known as "somewhat sane".

Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?

Heaven forfend. Do, please do, nominate a real "conservative" and continue the work thus far so nobly advanced, give or take a few utter disasters. How else are we to see another complete collapse of the Savings and Loan industry, or the banking system descend into piracy, without "conservative" principles to guide them? And how else will be get the principled response of Letting Everything Turn to Shit as a result? You know, the way in would in a perfect world.

"Dear Penthouse: I Never Thought I'd Be Writing You At Age 70. Then One Day I Bought A New York Times…"

David Brooks, "This Oughta Be Good For Two Holiday Columns At Least". October 27

I RARELY tackle Brooks in one of those Sociology reveries of his, when he's apparently imagining himself at some private, exclusive, expensive liberal arts college, be-Tweeded and Meerschaum'd, privately discussing her semester grade with some pillowy coed, just enough of sixteen, or fifteen, still echoing in her cheeks, or tongue-moistened lips, just enough college girl experience in her eyes, stubby little fingers a bit too fidgety, paint-chipped some ridiculous color or two. Extra credit! The sinecure's wet dream of a sinecure. Because, frankly, I'm subject to fits, and this computer desk has sharp corners.

If the Times wants to pay a rank amateur to regularly fill its Op-Ed pages with unlettered and highly selective culls of social science articles written for the general reader, well, it's not like it has much of a reputation left to lose.

It's bad enough that Brooks evinces no awareness whatever of the basic issues in the social sciences; what's worse--or, at least, what's a greater risk to my maxillofacial structures--is how Brooks seems to imagine he can use this stuff to reinforce his Preppy Monarchist routine without anyone being the wiser. It's always relentlessly aspirational, always wowed by some Untapped or Recently Discovered Human Potential which, in the future, will serve the ever-perfection-bound perfection of Capitalism well, or would, if it weren't largely a shell game. Brooks didn't get where he is on the back of a turnip truck. That doesn't mean he doesn't actually believe this shit. It just means he has to know that not everyone does, and might consider writing accordingly.

Today's column is a bleg for seventy-something readers to write their life stories, and a couple of columns, for him ("around Thanksgiving". Good timing.). This will benefit young readers, who rarely get the advice about adulthood they so desperately crave from withered senescents.

And so does Youth turn to David Brooks for help! like he's an elevated sleeping platform 12 hours up the overnight trail. Actually, Dave recently "stumbled across" brief biographies written by Yalies, Class of 1942, for their 50th reunion. While looking for the definition of "bleg", I'm guessing.

So, first off, young reader, I'm with Dave on this one. I wish someone had advised me to be wealthy enough to attend Yale during a Great Depression.

Of course, Young Dreamer, we are not here to discuss what sort of effect Every Fucking Opportunity in the Book might have on your Life Story, as this is why you have been provided bootstraps, or a Times to sleep under. There is, after all, a 1 in 2 chance you are female and a 1 in 5 chance you're black, or otherwise disadvantaged, and so wouldn't be writing about your time at Yale in the 40s in the first place. Mutatis mutants, future entrepreneur! Enjoy your refrigerated beverage! Not so common among your kind back in those days, yet look where you are now. Consider the selection in the beverage aisle! Consider the opportunities in the burgeoning field of refrigerator repair. Or the admittedly spartan, but relatively inexpensive housing afforded by their ubiquity. David Brooks did not happen to stumble on a treasure trove of bios from the Alumni of the Watts Riots or Khe Sanh or the Auto Industry. Take what aid life gives you, and be thankful he didn't stumble over your bedroll on his way to the Deli.

For example, you might consider a double major--"Appliance Repair" and "Dumpster Diving", say--if you wanna be truly happy:

The most common lament in this collection is from people who worked at the same company all their lives and now realize how boring they must seem. These people passively let their lives happen to them. One man described his long, uneventful career at an insurance company and concluded, “Wish my self-profile was more exciting, but it’s a little late now.”

This, of course, is welcome news had you planned on a career in public education, manufacturing, or anything else, actually, not involving nepotism.

Looking back, many were amazed by the role that chance played in their lives. Others point to the pivotal moment that changed their lives. One man was nationally humiliated when he lost to Charles Van Doren in a television quiz show (Van Doren was cheating).

From which you may learn, Future Leader, that it's a lot better to be the major corporation running the crooked game than it is to be the pawn in that game who broke no law, went on to a distinguished academic career, and will forevermore be referred to as Cheater. At least so long as it's up to the David Brookses of the world to assign blame.

The men all mention serving in the war, but none go into detail about their war experiences.

Take note, Young American! Although if you actually do happen to be headed to Yale you can just skip that part.

That's All I Can Stand, Vol. CCXLVI

Peter Lattman, "A Stunning Fall From Grace for a Star Executive". October 26

Diana B. Henriques, "Ruth Madoff Says Couple Tried Suicide in 2008". October 26

Susan Saulny, "As Cain Promotes His Management Skills, Ex-Aides Tell of Campaign in Chaos". October 26

FUCKING Hell. If there's anything I want to say about Ruth Madoff, unfairly unincarcerated Dowager Queen of East Ponzistan, trying to kill herself it's this: Next time, consult a professional. On the dosage.

I heard at the time how Poor Ruth Madoff was trapped inside her luxury condo. That was one time too many. I'm a humanitarian. I believe in redemption, but I believe in sincere atonement, too. Madam, kindly crawl back to wherever it is society is kind enough to let you keep living, and pull it in over you. For about the next three lifetimes. Then we can hear what you have to say.

Had you been unfairly, demonstrably unfairly, imprisoned, that would make you American #268,438 whose story deserves to be told. Barring that you're Human Being #6 billion 750-some million anyone should give a shit about. Have the decency to shut th' fuck up.

There oughta be a hole now where CBS News once stood. I mean a literal one, not just the figurative one that's been in place for years.

What can you say about someone who trumpets this stuff, except that he obviously believes there's no shit Americans won't eat? That his only reality is his own reality, one where Bernie Madoff is a "story", one where Bernie Madoff formerly was "a winner".

Regardless of the case’s outcome, the charges punctuate a stunning fall from grace for Mr. Gupta, whose personal story reads like a caricature of a Horatio Alger tale.

Nobody reads Horatio Alger. Plenty of people read True Crime.

So let's start here: Horatio Alger heroes rose from being street urchins or bootblacks to productive, respected members of the community. They did not climb the ladder to the corporate board room penthouse so they could piss on the next generation of newsies.

Orphaned at 18! Something tells me this doesn't qualify as tough luck for Josie from Accounting. In fact something tells me this doesn't qualify as a tough luck story except for people who automatically add "and the Trust Fund doesn't kick in until twenty-one" when they hear it.

At any rate, fuck you. The difference between Rajat Gupta and a sleazy pornographer is that the latter earns an honest living. Simple self-respect and basic human decency are all that was required to ashcan that Brown Skin to Riches story in the first place. There's no reason today to suggest that anything about Gupta's career ever amounted to anything beyond a swindle. He clawed his way to the top so he could steal a bigger pile. If that's not 100% accurate the fractional difference is too small to matter any more. It shouldn't make anyone nostalgic for a time when he hadn't been found out.

And, for fuck's sake, if we can't stop talking about Herman Cain altogether--yet--can't we at least stop talking about Herman Cain as though he's ever uttered an honest or sensible word on the campaign trail? No, there is no mystery that "despite Herman Cain's claims to managerial expertise" he turns out to be a crappy manager. Despite Herman Cain's claims, everything he's ever said is a load of crap. Despite the White Star Line's claims, the Titanic is at the bottom of the Atlantic. This does not mean the actual truth is swimming around at 1900 meters.

And, while we're at it, "ex-Herman Cain volunteer" ranks right up there in credibility with "former Goldman Sachs director".

To Preserve Disorder

IT'S 2011. Nobody's ever said there aren't corrupt police officers, even corrupt forces in some places, but I believe that over the last twenty-five years or so I've been justified in thinking, along with much of America that has a functioning sense of history, that "law enforcement officer" was now a profession, not a polite term for thugs to hide behind, the way it too often has been in the past. I expected that the men who run police departments in major cities were, though admittedly selected from the ranks of human beings, a fault we cannot fix, serious men dedicated to the difficult, and sometimes impossible, task of law enforcement. Men who, unlike their predecessors, understood, accepted, and worked within a system which grants certain rights to the lawless, the accused, and even to the convicted it doesn't always provide the innocent, and who worked within that system whole-heartedly.

Any large department is going to have bad actors, but their careers ought to stop there. * A cop who slams into three motorcyclists stopped at a traffic light, killing one and critically injuring the other two, and blows a .19 BAC two hours later is a reprehensible policeman and a contemptible human being; if his cohort, including top officials, manage to ignore protocol and get the blood evidence excluded as a result--whether intentionally or through a negligence of the first order--other careers should end as well, and a lot of soul-searching should follow, from top to bottom.

That didn't happen in Indianapolis; the matter was turned, as every serious matter seems to be these days, into a PR maintenance and mop-up operation. And that's not acceptable.

I have no idea if the Oakland cops were justified in using gas and percussion bombs on Occupiers last night; I don't know whether the Atlanta arrests were called for. But it sure doesn't look like it, and it sure looks like you have people at the top who don't care what it looks like.

The police should not be there to take sides in the age-old debate between personal and property rights. (Yeah, I know: it's Tradition.) And those who supervise the police should think long and hard before showing contempt for American citizens peaceably assembling, even quasi-illegally. It's disturbing. The goddam history of this sort of behavior, from the Haymarket Riots, through forty years of John Edgar Crossdressing Dwarf Motherfucker Hoover, to the Let's Fake An Assassination And Blame It On Protesting Wisconsin Union Workers tells us that we're a finger-width, if that, away from instigation, deceit, and malfeasance. And if that history isn't enough to shame people into thinking twice, the ubiquitous phone camera should be.

The policeman is extraordinarily vulnerable. It's not a good idea to give the appearance of his taking sides--whatever the reality--and, frankly, we now have to make this determination each and every time it comes up. There are no longer any small examples of our legal machinery favoring the wealthy. Not when the wealthy violate the law with impunity.




____________

* void in Arizona.

It's Over.

Ross Douthat, "The Inevitable Nominee". October 22

OH, not the End of the World (again), and not the Death of the American Experiment, although every time I read Douthat's byline at the Times I wonder what's holding that up. No, what's over is the Republican presidential race.

And, in a shocker, the winner is the guy who most resembles Ross Douthat: a moderate Republican (a "moderate Republican" is one who won't scream in public that all Muslims should be in Gitmo, or all Medicare recipients on ice floes, unless there's profit to be made, or an election to be won) with a history of religious nutjobbery running in the family, willing to disown his own ideas if the mob thinks otherwise or the winds change direction, and undoubtedly nostalgic for the time when all those other religious nutjobs ("the base") filled the coffers, passed out campaign literature on Sunday, voted Republican, then went back to screaming about abortion for four years.

I have no idea whether Romney is inevitable. What I am pretty sure of is that if this is so it should be a clear indication even to Republicans that the brand has been selling tainted tinned meat by-product for so long the survivors can't tell the difference.

Let's just note again that in 2008, with the Bush/Republican party sure to suffer another crushing at the polls, this one involving the Constitutional Big Daddy figure such types love, Douthat co-authored a blueprint for a "conservative" resurgence. One which lasted all the way to Inauguration Day 2009 before falling victim to what his critics might call "the fucking reality of the Republican party anyone not willfully blind, congenitally mazed, and/or aware that the Bill Kristol seat at the Times was going to be vacant soon--I mean "vacant without Bill Kristol" as opposed to vacant with him--understood at a glance." Let's just say that the much-anticipated soul-searching for the future of "conservatism" did not survive the realization that Barack Obama is black. Like David Brooks, Douthat went from mild condescension about the Teabaggers to running around to the front of the parade and pretending to be its drum major, and pretending to mute the racist section with a withering stare. (Brooks got there first, if only because the much-ballyhooed and wholly-fictional shelving of culture war themes seemed to've hurt Ross' feelings, proving once again that the only people who believe the Right's PR crap are the same people who dish it out.)

Four years later there's one Presidential candidate who embodies Douthat's vision: Mitt Romney. Only problem is it's the Mitt Romney of 2004. The current Mitt Romney is the guy who's been furiously backpedaling for five years now in an effort to appease the base ("mouthbreathers"). Which, in Douthat's view, proves he was right all along.

Last week the big story was Herman Cain’s rise to the top of the polls, and then Rick Perry’s combativeness at the Las Vegas debate. Next week, perhaps, it will be Newt Gingrich’s surprising resilience or Ron Paul’s potential strength in the early caucuses or the appeal of Perry’s flat-tax plan. Then there will come a debate in which Mitt Romney looks shabby instead of smooth, a poll that shows one of his rivals surging, a moment when all his many weaknesses are on every pundit’s lips.

Please do not listen to any of them.

Except the Republican polls haven't been a random walk among announced candidates; it's been Romney, the roundly-disliked, roundly-distrusted "moderate" windsock with the well-financed campaign machine vs. Whichever Genuine Republican (i.e. completely unstable wilting) seemed to have a chance against him. If Newt Gingrich ever gets a second thought that will be news. If Ron Paul ever garners more than his dedicated and unbalanced 10% he might become as much of a danger to Republican politics as he is to himself, and wake me when it happens. What has actually occurred is that Sarah Palin gave way to Donald Trump gave way to Michelle Bachmann gave way to Rick Perry gave way to Herman Cain. You can look this sort of thing up. The probably have records of it someplace on the internets. The Republican party isn't searching for excitement. It might've been, at one time, but that's long past. Today it's searching for a nominee who represents the party. That's not Mitt Romney.

For now, though, none of his rivals look capable of even pushing the race that far. They don’t have the money or the organizational muscle, but more important they aren’t clearing the first hurdle that every presidential candidate faces. After months of campaigning, it is nearly impossible to imagine any of them as a major party’s nominee, much less in the White House.

It's a little late for Republicans to start talking about who is or isn't credible, doncha think?

People like to cite counterexamples: The Republicans nominated Barry Goldwater, after all, and the Democrats nominated George McGovern. But Goldwater and McGovern, for all their weaknesses, were far more credible nominees than a Perry, a Herman Cain, a Michele Bachmann, a Newt Gingrich.

This assumes, of course, that our standards haven't sunk as rapidly as the quality of our candidates. An assumption which is at best unwarranted.

They were too extreme to win the general election, but they were not political novices or washed-up self-promoters, and they had a mix of eloquence and experience that’s largely absent from the current Republican field. (Watch clips of Goldwater being interviewed by William F. Buckley Jr. on “Firing Line,” and then try to imagine how Perry would fare in the same format.)

And speaking of unwarranted assumptions, the idea that Bill Fuhbuckley would be turning his High Church monarchist, Latin cognate, and Tourette's syndrome routine on Rich Perry in 2012, the way he did forty-five years ago with Barry Goldwater, sorta raises the question of where one would even find Firing Line these days. Still on the hated PBS? As a lead-in for Chris Wallace? One of the few great moments in justified political payback to've occurred in my lifetime is the fact that Buckley lived long enough for the anti-fluoridationists to throw him out of the party. One of the saddest is that he didn't stay vital long enough to devote an hour to South Park. Or Jersey Shore. I do so hope he enjoyed reading the National Review Online in his dotage.

(And, look, how long is it going to be necessary to respond to the idea of George McGovern, Senator from South Motherfucking Dakota, as the Bolshie version of the racist, sun-mazed Goldwater? Not even close. The whole thing is founded on two repugnant ideas: that Ross Douthat knows anything about political history he didn't learn from Family Ties, assuming that snake-handling cult he grew up in had a teevee, and that the Birchward shift of the "conservative" movement that preceded his birth didn't sweep him up, making Barry Goldwater appear almost rational, something he clearly wasn't in his day. If you're looking for reasons the Republican party has nothing but religious pinheads and fourth-rate grifters left to nominate, maybe there's part of your answer.)

What’s more, Republicans have only themselves to blame for his inevitability. Romney owes his current position to two failures: the Bush era’s serial disasters, which left the Republican establishment without a strong bench of viable national politicians, and the Tea Party’s mix of zeal and naïveté, which has elevated cranks and frauds and future television personalities to the party’s presidential stage.

Political naïveté may be defined here as "demanding implementation of the crackpot shit St. Ronald Reagan said to get elected, and continuing to do so even after a Republican got the seat."

To date, neither the establishment nor the populists have come to terms with the failures of the last age of Republican dominance. And despite occasional flashes of creativity, neither has groped its way to a credible vision of what the next conservative era should look like.

Have your credit card and that ISBN number at the bottom of your screen handy. Make checks payable to "Grand New Party: This Time We Mean It, ℅ Ross Douthat, New York, New York. Operators are standing by.

What they have to offer instead is a largely opportunistic critique of a flailing liberal president. So it’s fitting that America’s most opportunistic politician is destined to be the standard-bearer for their cause.

What a shame that, once again, the "conservative" critique won't be responsible for its consequences, despite everyone's best efforts. Maybe someday they'll get that Purity thing straightened out.

Friday Olio: Forty Years Of Worrying About Katie Graham Getting Her Tit Caught In A Wringer Doesn't Make You A Breast Cancer Awareness Pioneer Edition

AH, WaPo.

Do tell. Why does the Librul Media always have to spoil everyone's good time?

Do tell. Maybe this is just a question of style books, but, y'know, if someone said "Churchill planned the Gallipoli campaign as a response to the Armenian genocide" I'd call him "wrong", not "an embellisher".

Rubio's response, though--that he wasn't checking facts, he was merely writing a book--should cement him as a frontrunner in the Republican Veepstakes.

Now, a couple things, here: when, out of the 20% of Americans who have ever heard of Herman Cain, at least 10% of them are laughing at him at any one moment, "honeymoon" might not be le mot juste. I can't speak for what the "conservative" media is up to, but the fact that Herman Cain, jibbering dingbat, has been given unconditional, uncritical, and unreflective conjugal love from that quarter makes him different from any other certified wingnut how now?

Isn't the story that Cain, or any of that ilk, is cheered for stomping his oblivious way across a rhetorical minefield until that includes abortion (or tax increases, which amount to the same thing)? Cain hasn't exactly been hiding his lack of intellect or preparedness, has he? Not understanding math, or giving a shit about political geography, earned him applause. Maybe it's the honeymoon part y'all should be concerning yourselves with. I mean, there's a difference between a week of connubial bliss at the threshold of a life together and pretending to like Brenda Watson in fifth grade because she's stupid enough to climb a tree with no panties on.

Do tell. Leave it to Walter Isaacson to really blow the lid off the whole Steve Jobs mythos.

Every time I see something like this there's a brief moment when I wonder if the Chinese are at the bottom of a campaign to make all Americans just give up and wallow in whatever cultural shit they're being slopped with this week. Then I tell myself the Chinese are too smart to bother paying for something they can get for free.

Why, Yes. It Is.

Steve Kornacki, "This is really the best the GOP can do?" October 19

David Weigel, Liveblogging Tuesday's debate October 18

OKAY, I really just wanted to riff on Kornacki's title, not his analysis, and as for Weigel's latest exercise in excusing every Republican excess by seeming to poke it some--the man is Mitch Daniels with a sense of humor and slightly better hair--let's just get it over with:

9:26: An actual Bachmann quote: "He put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa." Remember that month when people took her candidacy semi-seriously? I'm really sorry about that.

People? Semi-seriously? You wondered, Mr. Weigel, "how anyone could have underrated Michele Bachmann". Sure, in your defense, you were four months younger then. But you did so, sir--along with, yes, any number of the other cool kids "wowed" that her first debate performance included whole sentences and no outbreaks of glossolalia or spaz dancing--largely because to you the most important political story in this or any other season is "Stupid Liberals Think They're So Smart". It's not going to get you your lunch money back. You can go on excusing yourself with a comic burp and a readjustment of the rear-view mirror every time this happens, but you're thirty years old. At the present rate you'll be Jonah Goldberg in five years. With, perhaps, a byline at the Times of New York, or La Ciudad de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, if there still are such things. As cities, I mean, let alone newspapers. But it won't bring that lunch money back.

Youth is fleeting! Turning this shit around while simultaneously trying to cover a bald spot is practically impossible. Do it now, before you and Ezra Klein are sitting in a Green Room somewhere swapping colonoscopy stories.

This is not the best Journalism can do, nor does, praise the Lord, but I see no reason to ask whether Herman Cain, Mitt Romney, Tex Bumpkin, and Santoro-Bachmann is the best Republicans can do. Incompetent, disingenuous, hypocritical, wrapped in showoff nationalism, ill-informed--proudly ill-informed--pandering to Wealth and the Antebellum wetdreams of the base, and, ultimately, all Noise and no Result; what th' hell is more Republican than that?

We have already answered the question of whether Republicans can do any better this time around; the list of saviors, from "Bobby" Jindal to Chris Christie, might just as well all pile in Mitch Daniels' RV and go on one big No Sale book tour.

The desire for "better" Republican candidates is nothing if not understandable, but it resembles the sort of thought process which gave the Ancients tales of mythological beings composed of ten different animals, or, for that matter, which gives the modern Republican party its economic program. The ability to dream something up doesn't make it possible, except maybe to the native Hopi speaker. The idea of the suave, Reaganesque pitchman convincing America of the correctness of the wingnut agenda was a Republican fiction at the time; Republicans rode a wave of economic trouble (largely created by Vietnam, Vietnam-created shortages, speculation fueled by Vietnam-created shortages, and the two oil embargoes, the result of policies then and now championed by the Right, and blamed on Jimmy Carter) and resentment over cultural change (civil rights, women's rights, the refusal to support immoral wars, the invention of Sex) to a Lesser of Two Evils victory in 1980, and a subsequent fortuitously-timed economic upswing to a landslide in 1984. Reagan's popularity--I'm not denigrating it--was heavily PR-managed, and eagerly dispensed by a Librul Media anxious to shake that tag and gain its employers anti-trust exemptions in the nascent age of cable. Ronald Reagan did not convince Americans to become raging anti-fluoridationists. He cemented the trend, begun by his boy Barry Goldwater, of its wingnuts becoming more, and more desperately, nutty. Reagan's electoral successes gave hope to his party's ideologues. The ideology itself remains hopeless.

That pathetic class of "presidential" "contenders" now on display is the result, not of Reagan nor anyone else talking America into "conservatism"; if it were the last thirty years of results, or "results", would have convinced them back out again. They're the product, not the by-product, of that Reagan mythology being taken seriously. What produced that daisfull of political flotsam is enforced ideology--wouldn't Mitt Romney at least be an interesting curiosity if he hadn't blown with every rightward breeze since 2007?--and a comfortable belief that Money would always win in the end, collecting the predictable and uncomprehending votes of the Great Unwashed at no cost, so the looting could go on as before without the risk of alienating sane Americans. It was a fool's bet that kept on hitting. But these fools are going to play it forever.

The cool kids want a better Republican candidate so they don't have to fake admiration for a gibberish-spouting (and nouveau riche!) pizza deliveryman, or any of three certifiable religious nutcases. Why'd Weigel want a successful Bachmann campaign enough to convince himself he saw one? Because it would "prove" his cherished script about underestimated Teabaggers as a serious, and thoughtful, movement. He didn't want a Bachmann presidency, because that would have put those ideas to the test. And like all Republicans who imagine a willingness to rearrange their prejudices qualifies them as open-minded, he figured, on that June day so long ago, that a Bachmann success would be temporary, just until some real smart Republican stepped in to take the reins and prevent disaster. He just never figured that would turn out to be Herman Cain. Others wanted Daniels (or Barbour!) in the race, not because they'd taken a close look at the actual record, but because he offered the convenient cover of a man with a reputation for seriousness, deserved or no, to hide behind. The internets has made it a lot harder to ignore facts with impunity, so it's nice to have a candidate like Daniels, where everything that comes out of his mouth is unquestionably True.

Isn't the real question how the Republicans come to field, and serially enthuse over, such nobodies, and not why they can't do better? And not in the sense of "how'd he get here?" Cain, Perry, Bachmann, and Donald Fucking Trump have all led polls, and there's barely a qualification there in the conglomerate. Sarah Palin has been a national figure for more than three years. That's the question, although it's one the pundits don't want to ask for fear someone will point out they've ignored it for a lifetime. The Republican party took its intellectuals out and shot 'em fifty years ago. Now it's reduced to pretending Mitch Daniels is one. It may be a head-scratcher, but it's not exactly mysterious.

I Smell Pulitzer. With A Soupçon Of Dirty Hippie.

Anne Applebaum, "What the Occupy protests tell us about the limits of democracy". October 17

FIRST, that was a "fiery" debate last night? A "fierce clash"? How 'bout "a group of privileged, unruly, and particularly unattractive grammar-school students shoving in the lunch line"? Christ, it's the barely articulate vs the marginally literate for the championship of the Greater Ottumwa Financial Institutions Slo-Pitch League. Mitt Romney strikes back! Like that's ever meant anything other than having some underling's assistant craft a strongly-worded letter, or leaving something less than his customary 10% tip. (I love the idea, by the way, that Mitt Romney personally spoke with his landscaper about employing illegals. Sure he did. Through a surgical mask.)

If Matt Bai was right accurate, and Republican insiders really are feeling confident that a Romney candidacy, coupled with an Obama candidacy, is enough to put them back in the White House, then either a) they aren't watching (which I highly recommend), or b) we need a new word to replace "cynical".

Yes, it's early, and yes, none of this really has anything to do with the actual campaign. But that's going to start when the Republicans choose one of those colorless idiots as their standard-bearer, and no amount of time is going to make any of 'em look any better. Sure, there's a built-in Republican electoral advantage, and, sure, the President is plenty unpopular himself. But nobody in America can possibly like any of these people. There aren't even any ideas on that stage. Just slogans. The only suits that aren't empty are filled with something that, if you stepped in it, you'd just throw the shoes away and be done with it. And it's not like the Republican party suddenly finds itself thus trapped; this is what 2008 was, but with more, and less charming, Huckabee Wanabees. It's a semi-ruling and non-governing coalition of Bronze Age superstitionists, Ayn Rand acolytes, and itinerant hucksters, and we desperately need a better media to call them on it, not the one we have now, trying to fluff enough air into the thing to make Twinkie filling.


Cue the clown car:

Of course these international protests do have a few things in common, both with one another and with the anti-globalization movement that preceded them. They are similar in their lack of focus, in their inchoate nature, and above all in their refusal to engage with existing democratic institutions. In New York, marchers chanted, “This is what democracy looks like,” but actually, this isn’t what democracy looks like. This is what freedom of speech looks like. Democracy looks a lot more boring. Democracy requires institutions, elections, political parties, rules, laws, a judiciary and many unglamorous, time-consuming activities, none of which are nearly as much fun as camping out in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral or chanting slogans on the Rue Saint-Martin in Paris.

I hate to detract from the originality of that statement, but, y'know, it tends to ring a little hollow coming from the pages of the Washington Post, the goddam poster child for the last thirty years of expense-account, Golden Rolodex, "insider" journalism, multi-mega mergers-and-acquisitions information empires, and ruling-class apologetics as a way of "balancing" "liberal" "bias" when your major local competitor is the Moonie Times. This is the paper of Sally Fucking Quinn, fer chrissakes. The birthplace of Vandalgate, conveniently at a time when the grubby little details of democracy pointed to a stolen election. Had the Post had the foresight to hire away Judy Miller it could have cornered the market in Iraq warflogging. It's the sordid sheet Politico was born on. So leave us not talk about people who'd rather chant than do grunt work when the Watchdog of Democracy has been hand-fed on filet mignon and vintage port while everything went to shit.

Check the log in your own eye. That'd be an original approach.

I'm guessing that, for a lot of people in Zuccotti Park and elsewhere, 2008 was a time when they imagined they did address the institutions of Democracy on their own terms. In this they were deceived, some naively, some willingly, and perhaps nearly all with the same lazy, self-absorbed, easy reach for easy answers as the rest of the American electorate. So what? The Teabaggers insist that the national debt can be eliminated while taxes are reduced, by targeting 20% of the budget. That's not inattention to the niceties of the democratic process (which they ignore, into the bargain). That's innumeracy. Yet the Teabaggers are the vital, grassroots, driving force behind the reenergized Republican party. Or were, until the quadrennial elections got close enough that it became inconvenient to hold any Republicans to an obligation to actually do anything about it.

Yet in one sense, the international Occupy movement’s failure to produce sound legislative proposals is understandable:

In every other sense, as well.

Both the sources of the global economic crisis and the solutions to it lie, by definition, outside the competence of local and national politicians.

Both the sources and solutions lie by definition, period.

If you’re upset about the austerity program being imposed on your country by indebted banks on the other side of the world, it doesn’t seem logical to complain to the mayor of Seville.

Correct. If he lied to you about it while stuffing his own pockets, and now presents you with a bill you have to pay, because "it's a global thing", complaining is futile. Plus, stringing him up by his necktie is so much more satisfying.

Unlike the Egyptians in Tahrir Square, to whom the London and New York protesters openly (and ridiculously) compare themselves, we have democratic institutions in the Western world. They are designed to reflect, at least crudely, the desire for political change within a given nation. But they cannot cope with the desire for global political change, nor can they control things that happen outside their borders. Although I still believe in globalization’s economic and spiritual benefits — along with open borders, freedom of movement and free trade — globalization has clearly begun to undermine the legitimacy of Western democracies.

“Global” activists, if they are not careful, will accelerate that decline. Protesters in London shout,“We need to have a process!” Well, they already have a process: It’s called the British political system. And if they don’t figure out how to use it, they’ll simply weaken it further.

And if they work within The System, generate serious, equitable, workable proposals, present them as part of The Process (lest they weaken it further), and give back 2/3 of their gains in the name of democratic "compromise", this time, with luck, someone in power will take the time to grease the Garden Implements of Democracy before shoving them unceremoniously up the Public Fundament.

Leave us say this plainly: you people had the opportunity to ensure fairness, to hold the Corporate Feeding Frenzy in check, to give some thought to, to spend some small fraction of your energies in aiding the poor, helping the helpless, and protecting the great Middle. And instead you gorged yourselves. You paid lip service to that rising tide lifting all boats, then you cut everyone else adrift. After Reaganomics crashed and burned in 1987 you set about reclaiming your own, not making things right; you saw to it the '88 election was about Willie Horton and tank rides, not the S & L lootings. You saw to it that the Clinton presidency was about blow jobs, and pushy, scheming wives, not solving the health care crisis. You've been whistling past this graveyard for almost four decades now; maybe you can convince some younger people this mess is of more recent, unavoidable, way-of-the-modern-world vintage, but the rest of us know where the stench is coming from. You fucks expect the Little People to praise God for their crude democracy, while you spend Sunday mornings at the counting house. And then you shit yourself every time it looks like the Great Unwashed might get wise, get angry, or stop buying nicknacks. You've had all this time to think about this, and think you did, but not in any way remotely resembling altruism (though I will grant you never tried all that hard to camouflage it). So let's start with you taking responsibility. Let's can the global claptrap excuse-mongering for the rich to get even richer, and set things to rights. My mayor can't solve global problems, but my Congressman, and Senator, and others can make it prohibitively expensive to rake in profits in this country while treating its population like ciphers. Well, not my Senator; I'm from Indiana, but you know what I mean. I've stood by for thirty years or more while democracy was expressly co-opted by sloganeering and dirty money, and heard that called Wise, and True, and Adult, and never once heard anybody ask where the reasonable, workable proposals were. And now it's reached the point, or damned near close, when large numbers of our fellow citizens will have precious little to lose because of it. They're not really going to give a shit about the niceties of The Process when it tells them it's time to starve. Or much care how you came by the gold in your parachute.

And whose fault is that?