Friday, July 2
Though I Do Agree Americans Should Be Polled Regularly. And At Length.
George Eff Will, Leading "Conservative" Intellectual, "Obama's Apogee in His Rearview Mirror". July 1
EFF, you say:
So, naturally, it would surprise you to note that in the run-up to the 2004 election Will was anticipating--oh, do not get ahead of me!--George W. Bush finally being able to concentrate on his Domestic Agenda Plain-Talking Texas Awesomeness (now that all that forced focus on International Unpleasantness was behind him), solving Social Security (by turning it over to Just the Man for the Job: Alan Greenspan!), and reforming Taxes and Welfare. (How ironic, then, that these would prove the twin sticking posts which would drag his Grand Domestic Schemes down! If only Public Assistance and High Taxes hadn't crashed the Global economy!) Followed by the natural withering of the Democratic Party when its Tax and Spend Lifeline is permanently kinked shut.
Sure, sure, the first instance speaks of "most" second terms being more difficult; the second of the specific salivary prospects of George War President Bush being unleashed on domestic enemies. Still, it's not exactly unreasonable to expect the general principle of 2010 to've tempered your views in 2004.
And if you don't like general objections, try the specific on for size: by 2004 Bush's popularity had plunged below 50%, on its way to Historic Levels of Suck; it briefly revived just in time for the election. His days of hiding behind The Day That Changed Everything were rather clearly numbered. You might think a paid political observer of whatever stripe would've noticed.
(Is there even any reason to point this shit out anymore? The Daily Show can do this nightly if it wishes, just by having an intern monitor Fox and Friends, tempered only by the Law of Diminishing Comedic Returns. These people are liars, ever' las' one of 'em. And in a culture which has decided the penalty for that is thirty years on This Week, the only response is that there can be no more appealing to "facts". And whom does this benefit? "Conservatism" and its intellectuals? The Republic? As we've noted here before, Mr. Will, it's you guys who insist you believe that Lying can send you to a Lake of Fire for All Eternity.)
Speaking of Gehenna fire, it's where people who now insist Obama was elected by young, idealistic idiots belong. Right next to the people who two years ago were celebrating the fact that young, idealistic idiots were going to drive a national election.
Yeah, We let you guys win.
Look, we don't engage in this kind of shit, and we wish George Effing Will wouldn't either. But we realize this "the Real America thinks exactly as I do" is either in "Conservatism's" DNA, or his bowtie's been on too tight. Why aren't "conservatives" still dispirited? Their party's still in the hands of microencephalics, mule traders, fast-food culture "personalities", and various mixes of all three; it has already proven in spades it can't govern, and its ideas are toxic. If Sarah Palin doesn't want the 2012 nomination her All-Powerful Endorsement Powers might determine where it will go, and she'll still get her own night at the Convention. You're facing the prospect, at best, of achieving Congressional majorities which won't be filibuster or veto proof (though they will have the advantage, as always, of having the Democratic party as opponents), and every Obama veto will make him look like the last goddam hope of Moribund Sanity. (Fuck, that could've been his plan All Along. Nothing else explains it.)
Which still doesn't make it anything but gibberish, George.
As a theory, the swift and total opposition to everything Barack Obama touched will prove to be a mistake, in that 1) you were bound to pick up seats in the midterms anyway, building toward Palin/Daniels '12; but now you've already begun wearing out your welcome ahead of time, and 2) you've got nowhere to go, and you don't know how to stop yourselves from going there, over and over. Your solutions don't work. Only your complaints do, on occasion. And in practice, well, George: your people are assholes. They couldn't keep their mouths shut about Barack the Magic Negro even when they imagined he was the wildly popular focus of a temporary mass Messianic delusion. What're they gonna do when they imagine they almost have him pinned?
The Teabagger shit won't hold, George; you didn't do a goddam bit of self-reevaluation after the utter public failure of "conservative" truths which was the Bush administration. Somebody somewhere in your party needs to get it to stop jumping at every shiny mirage of Returning to Reaganite Glory, and start working on how to effectively govern the country. The real country, not the one you imagine. And at this point it's becoming clear that'll have to wait for the first generation of "conservatives" who can't remember who th' fuck Reagan was.
EFF, you say:
If Obama has a second term, it probably will be, as most are, more difficult than the first, during which his party’s brand has been badly damaged in just 17 months. The 22nd Amendment renders reelected presidents instant lame ducks. Public boredom is induced by the incontinent talkativeness of those who occupy the modern rhetorical presidency. And power seeps from reelected presidents as attention turns to selecting their successors.
So, naturally, it would surprise you to note that in the run-up to the 2004 election Will was anticipating--oh, do not get ahead of me!--George W. Bush finally being able to concentrate on his Domestic Agenda Plain-Talking Texas Awesomeness (now that all that forced focus on International Unpleasantness was behind him), solving Social Security (by turning it over to Just the Man for the Job: Alan Greenspan!), and reforming Taxes and Welfare. (How ironic, then, that these would prove the twin sticking posts which would drag his Grand Domestic Schemes down! If only Public Assistance and High Taxes hadn't crashed the Global economy!) Followed by the natural withering of the Democratic Party when its Tax and Spend Lifeline is permanently kinked shut.
Sure, sure, the first instance speaks of "most" second terms being more difficult; the second of the specific salivary prospects of George War President Bush being unleashed on domestic enemies. Still, it's not exactly unreasonable to expect the general principle of 2010 to've tempered your views in 2004.
And if you don't like general objections, try the specific on for size: by 2004 Bush's popularity had plunged below 50%, on its way to Historic Levels of Suck; it briefly revived just in time for the election. His days of hiding behind The Day That Changed Everything were rather clearly numbered. You might think a paid political observer of whatever stripe would've noticed.
(Is there even any reason to point this shit out anymore? The Daily Show can do this nightly if it wishes, just by having an intern monitor Fox and Friends, tempered only by the Law of Diminishing Comedic Returns. These people are liars, ever' las' one of 'em. And in a culture which has decided the penalty for that is thirty years on This Week, the only response is that there can be no more appealing to "facts". And whom does this benefit? "Conservatism" and its intellectuals? The Republic? As we've noted here before, Mr. Will, it's you guys who insist you believe that Lying can send you to a Lake of Fire for All Eternity.)
The remainder of Obama’s first term will be complicated by this November’s elections. Turnout in this nonpresidential year will be significantly smaller than in 2008. The largest declines will be among young and minority voters who were energized by Obama being on the ballot. So this year’s turnout will be older, whiter—and more conservative.
Speaking of Gehenna fire, it's where people who now insist Obama was elected by young, idealistic idiots belong. Right next to the people who two years ago were celebrating the fact that young, idealistic idiots were going to drive a national election.
Many conservatives were too dispirited to vote in 2008.
Yeah, We let you guys win.
Not now.
Look, we don't engage in this kind of shit, and we wish George Effing Will wouldn't either. But we realize this "the Real America thinks exactly as I do" is either in "Conservatism's" DNA, or his bowtie's been on too tight. Why aren't "conservatives" still dispirited? Their party's still in the hands of microencephalics, mule traders, fast-food culture "personalities", and various mixes of all three; it has already proven in spades it can't govern, and its ideas are toxic. If Sarah Palin doesn't want the 2012 nomination her All-Powerful Endorsement Powers might determine where it will go, and she'll still get her own night at the Convention. You're facing the prospect, at best, of achieving Congressional majorities which won't be filibuster or veto proof (though they will have the advantage, as always, of having the Democratic party as opponents), and every Obama veto will make him look like the last goddam hope of Moribund Sanity. (Fuck, that could've been his plan All Along. Nothing else explains it.)
Gallup reports a four-poll average of 59 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying that this year they are unusually enthusiastic about voting, the highest number Gallup has recorded for a midterm election since the earthquake year of 1994, when Republicans gained 54 House seats. In Gallup’s June poll, 53 percent of Republicans said they were unusually enthusiastic, 39 percent said they were less; 35 percent of Democrats said they were unusually enthusiastic, 56 percent said they were less. The Republicans’ net of plus 14 more enthusiastic compared with the Democrats’ negative 21 is the largest party advantage Gallup has ever recorded for a midterm election.
Which still doesn't make it anything but gibberish, George.
As a theory, the swift and total opposition to everything Barack Obama touched will prove to be a mistake, in that 1) you were bound to pick up seats in the midterms anyway, building toward Palin/Daniels '12; but now you've already begun wearing out your welcome ahead of time, and 2) you've got nowhere to go, and you don't know how to stop yourselves from going there, over and over. Your solutions don't work. Only your complaints do, on occasion. And in practice, well, George: your people are assholes. They couldn't keep their mouths shut about Barack the Magic Negro even when they imagined he was the wildly popular focus of a temporary mass Messianic delusion. What're they gonna do when they imagine they almost have him pinned?
The Teabagger shit won't hold, George; you didn't do a goddam bit of self-reevaluation after the utter public failure of "conservative" truths which was the Bush administration. Somebody somewhere in your party needs to get it to stop jumping at every shiny mirage of Returning to Reaganite Glory, and start working on how to effectively govern the country. The real country, not the one you imagine. And at this point it's becoming clear that'll have to wait for the first generation of "conservatives" who can't remember who th' fuck Reagan was.
Thursday, July 1
Well, There's Your Problem Right There
Andrew Bacevich, "Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance". June 27
I'M recovering from two minor shocks this week, the second being last night's Channel 8-assisted revelation that Indiana Sixth District Choirboy Mike Pence is really, really, really in favor of extending unemployment benefits to, well, the unemployed who've lost benefits, and feels their pain so acutely that he's driven to explain--for local consumption--why he's voted against doing so at every opportunity since the 2008 elections. It's the Budget, don't ya know. Gotta draw the line somewheres. It ain't like we're in the perfect fiscal shape we enjoyed back in October of 2008.
The second was that Colonel Bacevich (USA ret) is in fact even older than I am, which I hadn't guessed, and which means that at least one of us had a first-hand perspective of Vietnam (Bacevich served, in country, as they say when they are trying to sound like they know something) that differs a bit from what they call Reality, which is what they say when they don't know what else to call it. I vote him.
Do not get me wrong. Bacevich served, and, furthermore, he lost a son, First Lieutenant Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr., in Iraq. He was perceptive about the risks of that war early on, and in print. He's a professor of International Relations at Boston U., and a Princeton Ph.D., and he makes any number of good points here. I'm the mouthy idiot. It's just my continuing insistence that what this country really needs Divine protection from is not Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, but the Middle: "Conservatives" for Obama and Democrats for Unlimited Militarism Provided Everyone Feels Good About It.
The American Revolutionary War took eight and one-half years. The Civil War took four, and for at least the last three of those Lincoln expended considerable energy convincing the North to continue, and jailing those who disagreed. Our share of the Second World War was over in three and a half, but public sentiment was just as solidly behind it on V-E Day as it was on Pearl Harbor Day. Even before Congress shut down the draft in 1972, half the men in Vietnam were enlistees.
So I'm gonna say this: either there's something about Afghanistan which justifies the switch from 9/11 Changed Everything! to Quagmire!, or there's something about the modern American public which is shallow, fickle, ill-informed and easily (mis)lead, or the toxins are particularly potent this time. Or all three.
Because before last week, who ever heard of an arrogant General contemptuous of his civilian bosses? Apart from anyone who's ever taken a cursory glance, I mean.
Okay, again: my experience is anecdotal, but that's at least one more anecdote than anyone offers in support of the idea. I sorta came in at the tail-end of things, but I knew several people who served, some of whom were close enough to my age for me to know them well. And I opposed that war from the time I was old enough to learn what was going on, first in a sort of generalized Christian pacifist sense, later from beneath the full weight of our monumental historical error and moral failing. I never heard anyone in my peer group express actual contempt for the troops, because we were all in the same boat, the one on a collision course with the Selective Service. And we all knew how unpleasant and life-altering were the alternatives. It may've been different if one went to West Point. But I'm tired of the easy calumnies, Colonel. The guy I knew who came back from Indochina without the legs he'd walked in on was cared for, in the remaining half-dozen years of his life, by Hippies. And not particularly clean ones.
Iran, Yugoslavia, Uruguay, Greece, Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Lebanon, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Panama, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Cambodia, Laos, Cambodia, Iran, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Honduras, Iran, Libya, Bolivia.
Ring any bells, Professor? It's a list of direct foreign military interventions, manpower or materiel, between the beginning of the Cold War to the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. (It excepts covert actions.) Not exactly my definition of Reticence.
The truth is actually found on the reverse of that coin: we felt able to continue shoving around fifth-rate powers because we weren't conscripting armies of anti-war voters. (Since 1989 the list reads: Iraq/Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Haiti, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Afghanistan, Philippines, Colombia, Iraq, Haiti, Pakistan, and Somalia. If that was a sudden change in Batting Average we wouldn't exactly suspect steroid use.) It's like after 1971 we gave everybody with a couple bucks in his (or her, another issue we conveniently avoid) pocket unlimited Cheney Deferments.
Exactly, sir. But, again, some of the truth is hiding on the backside. Would we be in Afghanistan if there'd been an honest accounting of the risks we faced (let alone a Kreskinesque revelation of how long we'd be stuck there, or an honest appraisal of the costs from Mitch Daniels)? The only way we were even able to send an insufficient number of troops to invade Saddamland eighteen months later (including a bunch we'd plucked away from, oh, Afghanistan) was the steadfast refusal to increase their number by conscription; otherwise we couldn't have met the Bush/Cheney Pre-Election Celebration Parade (budget: $1 million) set for 2005. The all-volunteer army hasn't increased our willingness to use force at the first threat, real, perceived, or humbug; it's made it politically possible to continue to do so at the rate we've grown comfortable with. The American public doesn't tune out wars just because someone else is paying the price; it tunes out questions about starting them before they happen.
Well, to begin with, the Services are uniformly behind the deal, and a fuck of a lot of people seem untroubled by the $4.7 billion the Pentagon spends each year to keep the Rah Rah going. It may well be that all-volunteerism has increased insularity and hubris, but it's not like they were unknown before. You can add to the natural right-wing tendency of military officers throughout the globe and history sixty years of post-war hubris, nuclear age assumption of limitless spending, particularly technological spending, and the fact that you guys have gotten away with losing every major conflict since 1946 with the exception of twice defeating Saddam Hussein's Vapor Army, and still convince everyone you're invincible. Leave us not act like America's Praetorians do not now enjoy the very set of circumstances they sought to fabricate after Vietnam; nor the one Curtis LeMay could only have dreamed of in 1946, twenty years before he and George Wallace could only have dreamed of the sort of electorate that today makes Sarah Palin a star. After Vietnam the military seems actually to've done some soul-searching, but once Reagan turned the spigots back on Full it began to fade (we're excepting the Air Force in all this, on the grounds that it is always and unfailingly Stark Raving Fucking Nuts). By the time of Mission Accomplished, On to Damascus! we were worse off than before. I have no idea what the Emotional Component is in all this. And I don't care. What I do know is that the professional soldier is not supposed to be Half Advertising Exec, regardless of his competence in the role.
I'M recovering from two minor shocks this week, the second being last night's Channel 8-assisted revelation that Indiana Sixth District Choirboy Mike Pence is really, really, really in favor of extending unemployment benefits to, well, the unemployed who've lost benefits, and feels their pain so acutely that he's driven to explain--for local consumption--why he's voted against doing so at every opportunity since the 2008 elections. It's the Budget, don't ya know. Gotta draw the line somewheres. It ain't like we're in the perfect fiscal shape we enjoyed back in October of 2008.
The second was that Colonel Bacevich (USA ret) is in fact even older than I am, which I hadn't guessed, and which means that at least one of us had a first-hand perspective of Vietnam (Bacevich served, in country, as they say when they are trying to sound like they know something) that differs a bit from what they call Reality, which is what they say when they don't know what else to call it. I vote him.
Do not get me wrong. Bacevich served, and, furthermore, he lost a son, First Lieutenant Andrew J. Bacevich, Jr., in Iraq. He was perceptive about the risks of that war early on, and in print. He's a professor of International Relations at Boston U., and a Princeton Ph.D., and he makes any number of good points here. I'm the mouthy idiot. It's just my continuing insistence that what this country really needs Divine protection from is not Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, but the Middle: "Conservatives" for Obama and Democrats for Unlimited Militarism Provided Everyone Feels Good About It.
Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government.
The American Revolutionary War took eight and one-half years. The Civil War took four, and for at least the last three of those Lincoln expended considerable energy convincing the North to continue, and jailing those who disagreed. Our share of the Second World War was over in three and a half, but public sentiment was just as solidly behind it on V-E Day as it was on Pearl Harbor Day. Even before Congress shut down the draft in 1972, half the men in Vietnam were enlistees.
So I'm gonna say this: either there's something about Afghanistan which justifies the switch from 9/11 Changed Everything! to Quagmire!, or there's something about the modern American public which is shallow, fickle, ill-informed and easily (mis)lead, or the toxins are particularly potent this time. Or all three.
Not least among those values is a code of military conduct that honors the principle of civilian control while keeping the officer corps free from the taint of politics. Events of the past week -- notably the Rolling Stone profile that led to Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's dismissal -- hint at the toll that nearly a decade of continuous conflict has exacted on the U.S. armed forces. The fate of any one general qualifies as small beer: Wearing four stars does not signify indispensability. But indications that the military's professional ethic is eroding, evident in the disrespect for senior civilians expressed by McChrystal and his inner circle, should set off alarms.
Because before last week, who ever heard of an arrogant General contemptuous of his civilian bosses? Apart from anyone who's ever taken a cursory glance, I mean.
In Vietnam, Lyndon B. Johnson plunged the United States into what became its Seven Years War. The citizen army that was sent to Southeast Asia fought valiantly for a time and then fell to pieces. As the conflict dragged on, Americans in large numbers turned against the war -- and also against the troops who fought it.
Okay, again: my experience is anecdotal, but that's at least one more anecdote than anyone offers in support of the idea. I sorta came in at the tail-end of things, but I knew several people who served, some of whom were close enough to my age for me to know them well. And I opposed that war from the time I was old enough to learn what was going on, first in a sort of generalized Christian pacifist sense, later from beneath the full weight of our monumental historical error and moral failing. I never heard anyone in my peer group express actual contempt for the troops, because we were all in the same boat, the one on a collision course with the Selective Service. And we all knew how unpleasant and life-altering were the alternatives. It may've been different if one went to West Point. But I'm tired of the easy calumnies, Colonel. The guy I knew who came back from Indochina without the legs he'd walked in on was cared for, in the remaining half-dozen years of his life, by Hippies. And not particularly clean ones.
After Vietnam, the United States abandoned its citizen army tradition, oblivious to the consequences. In its place, it opted for what the Founders once called a "standing army" -- a force consisting of long-serving career professionals.
For a time, the creation of this so-called all-volunteer force, only tenuously linked to American society, appeared to be a master stroke. Washington got superbly trained soldiers and Republicans and Democrats took turns putting them to work. The result, once the Cold War ended, was greater willingness to intervene abroad.
Iran, Yugoslavia, Uruguay, Greece, Germany, Korea, Vietnam, Guatemala, Lebanon, Panama, Vietnam, Laos, Cuba, Panama, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Cambodia, Laos, Cambodia, Iran, Libya, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Honduras, Iran, Libya, Bolivia.
Ring any bells, Professor? It's a list of direct foreign military interventions, manpower or materiel, between the beginning of the Cold War to the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet Union. (It excepts covert actions.) Not exactly my definition of Reticence.
The truth is actually found on the reverse of that coin: we felt able to continue shoving around fifth-rate powers because we weren't conscripting armies of anti-war voters. (Since 1989 the list reads: Iraq/Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Haiti, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Afghanistan, Philippines, Colombia, Iraq, Haiti, Pakistan, and Somalia. If that was a sudden change in Batting Average we wouldn't exactly suspect steroid use.) It's like after 1971 we gave everybody with a couple bucks in his (or her, another issue we conveniently avoid) pocket unlimited Cheney Deferments.
To be an American soldier today is to serve a people who find nothing amiss in the prospect of armed conflict without end. Once begun, wars continue, persisting regardless of whether they receive public support. President Obama's insistence to the contrary notwithstanding, this nation is not even remotely "at" war. In explaining his decision to change commanders without changing course in Afghanistan, the president offered this rhetorical flourish: "Americans don't flinch in the face of difficult truths." In fact, when it comes to war, the American people avert their eyes from difficult truths. Largely unaffected by events in Afghanistan and Iraq and preoccupied with problems much closer to home, they have demonstrated a fine ability to tune out war. Soldiers (and their families) are left holding the bag.
Exactly, sir. But, again, some of the truth is hiding on the backside. Would we be in Afghanistan if there'd been an honest accounting of the risks we faced (let alone a Kreskinesque revelation of how long we'd be stuck there, or an honest appraisal of the costs from Mitch Daniels)? The only way we were even able to send an insufficient number of troops to invade Saddamland eighteen months later (including a bunch we'd plucked away from, oh, Afghanistan) was the steadfast refusal to increase their number by conscription; otherwise we couldn't have met the Bush/Cheney Pre-Election Celebration Parade (budget: $1 million) set for 2005. The all-volunteer army hasn't increased our willingness to use force at the first threat, real, perceived, or humbug; it's made it politically possible to continue to do so at the rate we've grown comfortable with. The American public doesn't tune out wars just because someone else is paying the price; it tunes out questions about starting them before they happen.
Throughout history, circumstances such as these have bred praetorianism, warriors becoming enamored with their moral superiority and impatient with the failings of those they are charged to defend.
Well, to begin with, the Services are uniformly behind the deal, and a fuck of a lot of people seem untroubled by the $4.7 billion the Pentagon spends each year to keep the Rah Rah going. It may well be that all-volunteerism has increased insularity and hubris, but it's not like they were unknown before. You can add to the natural right-wing tendency of military officers throughout the globe and history sixty years of post-war hubris, nuclear age assumption of limitless spending, particularly technological spending, and the fact that you guys have gotten away with losing every major conflict since 1946 with the exception of twice defeating Saddam Hussein's Vapor Army, and still convince everyone you're invincible. Leave us not act like America's Praetorians do not now enjoy the very set of circumstances they sought to fabricate after Vietnam; nor the one Curtis LeMay could only have dreamed of in 1946, twenty years before he and George Wallace could only have dreamed of the sort of electorate that today makes Sarah Palin a star. After Vietnam the military seems actually to've done some soul-searching, but once Reagan turned the spigots back on Full it began to fade (we're excepting the Air Force in all this, on the grounds that it is always and unfailingly Stark Raving Fucking Nuts). By the time of Mission Accomplished, On to Damascus! we were worse off than before. I have no idea what the Emotional Component is in all this. And I don't care. What I do know is that the professional soldier is not supposed to be Half Advertising Exec, regardless of his competence in the role.
Tuesday, June 29
It's "You Broke It You Bought It", Not "You Broke It, So You're Just The Guy To Design An Unbreakable Version For Us".
Ross Douthat, "One Way Out". June 27
OKAY, Stop Me When the Barrel's Out of Fish:
Quagmire! Quagmire! Quagmire!
Look, Ross-boy: I don't need the utter failure of your ideas under real-world conditions to score easy political points off you and your ilk, though thanks for all the opportunities. Simple observation, simple motherfucking common sense, and a glance at either of your columnist head shots is enough to tell us neither you nor Brooks has any business advising us on Afghanistan.
Our point, instead, is this: maybe you should shut th' fuck up about grim paradoxes and dark setbacks, since you and more than 80% of your fellow citizens thought the war was such a great idea back in '01 that we didn't need to spoil the rollout by waiting for market research to come in. Maybe that's your column, Ross. For the next nine years. Write about what you know. That's something the next generation could learn from.
Of course not. They know better.
Look, kiddo, the only reason there is an insurgency in Afghanistan is our military presence created it. And, needless to say, we weren't prepared for one, first because we can't imagine anyone else in the world seeing things differently than some cloistered sinecure at The Atlantic. Because, y'know, New York New York. You've made it there. USA! Just the World's Jolly Copper, having an apple on the arm, maybe, but everybody knows he's there for our protection, right? Our Cause, like our Operation, was Just. Right again? Only criminals could oppose us, so everyone who opposes us is a criminal.
Hold up, Clausewitz. We don't need you to explain why Success is our only chance of winning. We need you to explain what, exactly, we win if we get there.
Well, y'know, maybe you Official Keepers of The Memory of 9/11 could try to recall that original rationale of the thing was to get bin-Laden and his three-dozen #2 men. And that Your Boy in the White House had seven years and unlimited black budgets to catch him, and failed. (I'm sorry. I know The Memory of 9/11 isn't suppose to evoke anything unpleasant.) In theory, anyway, if The Taliban had just handed over al-Qaeda before sundown, the way we demanded, we wouldn't have given a shit about how they treated their women. Or no more than we give about how our corporations and health care systems treat ours.
Of course The Memory of 9/11 has fuck-all to do with it, anyway; the reason no American president--and particularly a Democratic one--will not simply eliminate a costly and worthless mission in Afghanistan is that people like you would try him for treason.
One: you don't know al-Qaeda from Quinoa, the Mayan Grain of Death™. You don't know who's in Waziristan, what they think, what they want, nor what they're capable of. You spout "base of counterterrorism operations" the way a preacher might say "guardians of moral rectitude". Not because it means a goddam thing; because it reflects your Faith. Our counterterrorism methods will be our counterterrorism methods, and they will either work, or they won't. They do not depend on our continued military presence in Afghanistan, or if they do, please explain how.
Two: if we--that is, the administration you backed without reservation--hadn't been in such a goddam hurry to exercise cowboy diplomacy and win the dick contest with its daddy administration, we could have exerted real pressure on Pakistan (and the Taliban, for that matter) instead of threatening to come in and kick everyone's ass. Would the Taliban have given up bin-Laden once we peeled off enough million-dollar bills? Would Musharraf had been willing to exert real pressure on the Badlands? We'll never know. What we do know is that your fucking method didn't work, had about zero chance of working, and was only a pretext for sending in the bombers. It's not like we could have known the region was volatile ahead of time, right? And what th' hell's a few metric tons of fissionable material and technological upgrades handed over to a non-NPT signatory like India because we had to even things out? It's not like increasing the amount of nuclear fuel in the region could ever come back to haunt us.
Finally: y'know, Ross, I don't particularly care for the Taliban. In fact, I was making my objections known back when they were just subjugating women and destroying world heritage sites, the sort of shit you couldn't care less about. But then, I'm not really partial to Pakistan, either. Or India, or China, Myanmar, Russia, France, the British Royal Family, or the New England Patriots. Hell, that Dalai Lama guy's on my last nerve. I just don't imagine--since I pretty much see it close up everyday--that the United States has the fucking answers, the capability of finding the answers, the political will to put those answers in place over the objections of Mitch McConnell or Glenn Beck, nor the ability to do so even if it did. And I think the record going back sixty years now is pretty clearly on my side.
You wanna prove me wrong, go ahead. But take my advice. Sneak up on it slowly. Try being right about one thing first.
OKAY, Stop Me When the Barrel's Out of Fish:
Here is the grim paradox of America’s involvement in Afghanistan: The darker things get and the more setbacks we suffer, the better the odds that we’ll be staying there indefinitely.
Quagmire! Quagmire! Quagmire!
Look, Ross-boy: I don't need the utter failure of your ideas under real-world conditions to score easy political points off you and your ilk, though thanks for all the opportunities. Simple observation, simple motherfucking common sense, and a glance at either of your columnist head shots is enough to tell us neither you nor Brooks has any business advising us on Afghanistan.
Our point, instead, is this: maybe you should shut th' fuck up about grim paradoxes and dark setbacks, since you and more than 80% of your fellow citizens thought the war was such a great idea back in '01 that we didn't need to spoil the rollout by waiting for market research to come in. Maybe that's your column, Ross. For the next nine years. Write about what you know. That's something the next generation could learn from.
Not the way we’re there today, with 90,000 American troops in-theater and an assortment of NATO allies fighting alongside.
Of course not. They know better.
But if the current counterinsurgency campaign collapses, it almost guarantees that some kind of American military presence will be propping up some sort of Afghan state in 2020 and beyond. Failure promises to trap us; success is our only ticket out.
Look, kiddo, the only reason there is an insurgency in Afghanistan is our military presence created it. And, needless to say, we weren't prepared for one, first because we can't imagine anyone else in the world seeing things differently than some cloistered sinecure at The Atlantic. Because, y'know, New York New York. You've made it there. USA! Just the World's Jolly Copper, having an apple on the arm, maybe, but everybody knows he's there for our protection, right? Our Cause, like our Operation, was Just. Right again? Only criminals could oppose us, so everyone who opposes us is a criminal.
Why? Because of
Hold up, Clausewitz. We don't need you to explain why Success is our only chance of winning. We need you to explain what, exactly, we win if we get there.
three considerations. First, the memory of 9/11, which ensures that any American president will be loath to preside over the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul.
Well, y'know, maybe you Official Keepers of The Memory of 9/11 could try to recall that original rationale of the thing was to get bin-Laden and his three-dozen #2 men. And that Your Boy in the White House had seven years and unlimited black budgets to catch him, and failed. (I'm sorry. I know The Memory of 9/11 isn't suppose to evoke anything unpleasant.) In theory, anyway, if The Taliban had just handed over al-Qaeda before sundown, the way we demanded, we wouldn't have given a shit about how they treated their women. Or no more than we give about how our corporations and health care systems treat ours.
Of course The Memory of 9/11 has fuck-all to do with it, anyway; the reason no American president--and particularly a Democratic one--will not simply eliminate a costly and worthless mission in Afghanistan is that people like you would try him for treason.
Second, the continued presence of Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan’s northwest frontier, which makes it difficult for any American president to contemplate giving up the base for counterterrorism operations that Afghanistan affords.
One: you don't know al-Qaeda from Quinoa, the Mayan Grain of Death™. You don't know who's in Waziristan, what they think, what they want, nor what they're capable of. You spout "base of counterterrorism operations" the way a preacher might say "guardians of moral rectitude". Not because it means a goddam thing; because it reflects your Faith. Our counterterrorism methods will be our counterterrorism methods, and they will either work, or they won't. They do not depend on our continued military presence in Afghanistan, or if they do, please explain how.
Two: if we--that is, the administration you backed without reservation--hadn't been in such a goddam hurry to exercise cowboy diplomacy and win the dick contest with its daddy administration, we could have exerted real pressure on Pakistan (and the Taliban, for that matter) instead of threatening to come in and kick everyone's ass. Would the Taliban have given up bin-Laden once we peeled off enough million-dollar bills? Would Musharraf had been willing to exert real pressure on the Badlands? We'll never know. What we do know is that your fucking method didn't work, had about zero chance of working, and was only a pretext for sending in the bombers. It's not like we could have known the region was volatile ahead of time, right? And what th' hell's a few metric tons of fissionable material and technological upgrades handed over to a non-NPT signatory like India because we had to even things out? It's not like increasing the amount of nuclear fuel in the region could ever come back to haunt us.
Finally: y'know, Ross, I don't particularly care for the Taliban. In fact, I was making my objections known back when they were just subjugating women and destroying world heritage sites, the sort of shit you couldn't care less about. But then, I'm not really partial to Pakistan, either. Or India, or China, Myanmar, Russia, France, the British Royal Family, or the New England Patriots. Hell, that Dalai Lama guy's on my last nerve. I just don't imagine--since I pretty much see it close up everyday--that the United States has the fucking answers, the capability of finding the answers, the political will to put those answers in place over the objections of Mitch McConnell or Glenn Beck, nor the ability to do so even if it did. And I think the record going back sixty years now is pretty clearly on my side.
You wanna prove me wrong, go ahead. But take my advice. Sneak up on it slowly. Try being right about one thing first.
Monday, June 28
Wish I'd Said That, Vol. MMMDCCXLIII
ROGER Ebert, via Wonkette:
Supreme Court sides with squirrel hunters and drug gangs against cops and innocent bystanders.
Friday, June 25
Friday Olio: The Dextromethorphan Edition
• Maybe You Could Just Stop Lying: My guess is that the relative calm on the Right over the McChrystal McFiring has much to do with the injection of Warrior Saint "Faintin' Dave" Petraeus into the story, who cannot and will not be opposed by Congressional Republicans (and while we're thinking of it, couldn't we solve many of the worst aspects of hyperpartisanship in this country by assuaging the Big Daddy anxieties of the Right? Like the Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of every other Dalai Lama, couldn't we just bruit it about that the President is George Washington, George Mason, or George S. Patton?), and more than a little to do with the fact that the savvier among them don't want that stinking albatross back around their own necks. Most of the What Passes for Sane voices from that direction have allowed as how McChrystal had to go, even though Obama hasn't nuked the Taliban the way George W. Bush did, or would've by now, certainly. But then, God help me, there's Lt. Col. Brooks, who thinks the real problem is, y'know, Vietnam, and the Culture of Small People Thinking They Need To Know Details An' Stuff:
But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.
McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976. Which means that over his entire fucking career he's somehow missed his employer's overarching concern with how it's portrayed in The Media, from the Powell Doctrine to the embedding of compliant photo-op seekers and happy little stovepipers. Just one of those unfortunate things that the guy earns four stars but misses all those memos.
(Say the same for Looey Bird Brooks: all those weekend philosophy confabs fine-tuning the details of Man's Basic Imperfectability, and, somehow, still, no one who rises to the Top can be an asshole. How convenient.)
• Maybe You Could Just Stop Lying To Yourself: Christ, speaking of military geniuses, faux-Classicist Victor Davis Tiberius Molliculus Hanson lectures the President on the swift retribution accorded "overweening arrogance"?
• Maybe You Could Just Stop: Jonah Goldberg:
Head to the local big-box electronics store and buy yourself: a Panasonic home theater system ($500), an Insignia 50-inch plasma HDTV ($700), an Apple 8GB iPod Touch ($175), a Sony 3-D Blu-ray disc player ($219), a Sony 300-CD changer ($209), a Garmin portable GPS ($139), a Sony 14.1-megapixel digital camera ($200), a Dell Inspiron laptop computer ($450), and a TiVo high-definition digital video recorder ($300)….
The average American worker needs to work 152 hours to earn that much money.
In 1964, however, the average American worker could buy one pricey stereo from Radio Shack after working 152 hours. My colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Mark Perry, a University of Michigan economist, crunched the numbers.
And again, the really big difference between Now and Then is that nowadays a large percentage of illiterates can read.
• Maybe You Should Just Turn Off The Teevee and Get Some Rest: Bad enough that for the entire blessed week what non-weather-related news could be squeezed into the scant ninety minutes the locals give themselves each evening included a daily mantra that Congress had not voted to extend unemployment benefits. (We should note here that for local teleprompter readers Unemployment is generally considered One of Those Things Everyone Agrees Is Bad, despite the positive effect it has on the Domestic Help market.) And this mis-direction of blame by metonym was compounded, Wednesday, by someone sticking a microphone in front of the corpse of Kindly Grampa Lugar, so he could assure everyone that the Tricky Budgetary Questions involved (no need for you folks to interrupt the milkin' for details!) would surely be solved so that "Congress" could do the Right Thing. This, of course, came about sixteen hours before he and his "Democratic" colleague Evan Bayh voted Nay. Despite what I've said about David Brooks, as a practical matter we really do need to hold people in the higher income brackets to a much lower standard, and it's not like you're supposed to believe these people really care about unemployment unless it's their own, anymore than we're supposed to believe they'd feel some professional obligation to inform the Increasingly Unwashed that it was in fact their Gilt Masters in the Imperial Senate who were cutting off the bologna money, lest we have to mothball a carrier or something important.
But then there was a 5.0 quake in someplace called "Canada", and the tremors were felt in Indiana, which was news, but needed to be handed over to the Channel 8 Chief Meteorologist for the technical explanations an' stuff. And he reported that the last quake to be felt here was a 5.4. "So only a little stronger," he said.
Right. Assuming you think fourfold is "only a little". It's a logarithmic scale. We might compare earlier in the week, when our two-decimal-point advantage over Ohio's unemployment rate was (again) evidence of Mitch Daniels' enormous economic brainpower.
But McChrystal, like everyone else, kvetched. And having apparently missed the last 50 years of cultural history, he did so on the record, in front of a reporter. And this reporter, being a product of the culture of exposure, made the kvetching the center of his magazine profile.
McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976. Which means that over his entire fucking career he's somehow missed his employer's overarching concern with how it's portrayed in The Media, from the Powell Doctrine to the embedding of compliant photo-op seekers and happy little stovepipers. Just one of those unfortunate things that the guy earns four stars but misses all those memos.
(Say the same for Looey Bird Brooks: all those weekend philosophy confabs fine-tuning the details of Man's Basic Imperfectability, and, somehow, still, no one who rises to the Top can be an asshole. How convenient.)
• Maybe You Could Just Stop Lying To Yourself: Christ, speaking of military geniuses, faux-Classicist Victor Davis Tiberius Molliculus Hanson lectures the President on the swift retribution accorded "overweening arrogance"?
• Maybe You Could Just Stop: Jonah Goldberg:
Head to the local big-box electronics store and buy yourself: a Panasonic home theater system ($500), an Insignia 50-inch plasma HDTV ($700), an Apple 8GB iPod Touch ($175), a Sony 3-D Blu-ray disc player ($219), a Sony 300-CD changer ($209), a Garmin portable GPS ($139), a Sony 14.1-megapixel digital camera ($200), a Dell Inspiron laptop computer ($450), and a TiVo high-definition digital video recorder ($300)….
The average American worker needs to work 152 hours to earn that much money.
In 1964, however, the average American worker could buy one pricey stereo from Radio Shack after working 152 hours. My colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, Mark Perry, a University of Michigan economist, crunched the numbers.
And again, the really big difference between Now and Then is that nowadays a large percentage of illiterates can read.
• Maybe You Should Just Turn Off The Teevee and Get Some Rest: Bad enough that for the entire blessed week what non-weather-related news could be squeezed into the scant ninety minutes the locals give themselves each evening included a daily mantra that Congress had not voted to extend unemployment benefits. (We should note here that for local teleprompter readers Unemployment is generally considered One of Those Things Everyone Agrees Is Bad, despite the positive effect it has on the Domestic Help market.) And this mis-direction of blame by metonym was compounded, Wednesday, by someone sticking a microphone in front of the corpse of Kindly Grampa Lugar, so he could assure everyone that the Tricky Budgetary Questions involved (no need for you folks to interrupt the milkin' for details!) would surely be solved so that "Congress" could do the Right Thing. This, of course, came about sixteen hours before he and his "Democratic" colleague Evan Bayh voted Nay. Despite what I've said about David Brooks, as a practical matter we really do need to hold people in the higher income brackets to a much lower standard, and it's not like you're supposed to believe these people really care about unemployment unless it's their own, anymore than we're supposed to believe they'd feel some professional obligation to inform the Increasingly Unwashed that it was in fact their Gilt Masters in the Imperial Senate who were cutting off the bologna money, lest we have to mothball a carrier or something important.
But then there was a 5.0 quake in someplace called "Canada", and the tremors were felt in Indiana, which was news, but needed to be handed over to the Channel 8 Chief Meteorologist for the technical explanations an' stuff. And he reported that the last quake to be felt here was a 5.4. "So only a little stronger," he said.
Right. Assuming you think fourfold is "only a little". It's a logarithmic scale. We might compare earlier in the week, when our two-decimal-point advantage over Ohio's unemployment rate was (again) evidence of Mitch Daniels' enormous economic brainpower.
Thursday, June 24
Whatevs
Ross Douthat Blog™ "Did 'Jaws' and 'Star Wars' Ruin Hollywood?" And Does the Times Stylebook Really Call For Titles To Be Put In Quotes? June 22
I HAVE a cold, which is currently taking some Viral Baedeker of the charming but less-visited off-season attractions ("The mandible offers adventurous Picomaviridae an opportunity to view the rare Third Molar close up") its host has to offer. I don't think I've ever had a cold in the summer before. The novelty wears off quicker than you might imagine, and downing NyQuil shots in the heat is like drinking Port in the tropics.
Wingnuts haven't helped matters, not that they ever do. One is reminded, particularly reading that Brooks thing Tuesday, that they are never so obnoxious as when they imagine themselves in the ascendant, which they attribute to God and Middle America being resolutely behind them. (Nor did the fact that I'm presently too weak to grab the remote from my Poor Wife, nor run from the results as she switches to Channel 13 Eyewitness News for thirty seconds, just long enough for me to hear the male hairdo introduce the story of a threatened lawsuit over McDonald's Happy Meals by the Center for Science in the Public Interest thus:
"Excuse me? Could I get this with extra Blatant? And substitute Corporate Bukkake Whore for the Deep-Fried Crisco Sticks?" Sheesh, somebody wrote that, before the natural-born shill behind the deskread it sounded it out phonetically. Though it might be that 13 is Dennis Miller's last stop in showbiz.) You'll note, too, that the obnoxiousness and the delusion of ascendency are near simultaneous; that Ho ho! Back from the Dead! shit began when the Obama administration failed to get health care legislation before the 2009 summer recess, and it's continued with every Town Hall meeting gone viral, and every Teabagging event that drew 200. Compare just how long it took for any of 'em to admit they had a problem in Iraq, in New Orleans, or with Bush II in general, and just how much virtual ink was spilled confronting that.
Anyway, I had plenty of good reasons not to open the Times but I did anyway. McChrystal McKabuki? Seven stories, and three Opinions? Pass. Max Boot didn't think he should be fired. That alone is enough for every American to support, or at least consider, summary execution, of McChrystal and whomever books freelancers for the Op-Ed pages. Matt Bai, given space above the e-fold to demonstrate--unwittingly, apparently--that the supposedly smartest Bush Brother is a nitwit? Didn't we know this already? Are our lives not busy enough?
And a glance at the Opinion Corner catches a tease for Douthat's "blog", and in the Cherry Haze of an early-morning Dextromethorphan buzz I briefly hallucinate the possibility of an original thought from Linkmaster Ross.
Insert Reefer Madness laugh.
So far as I can tell, the impetus for all this is that the Summer Blockbuster Season has disappointed some middle-aged white guys (John Podhoretz and David Edelstein, to use the two examples Douthat links) who used to be the target audience for such shenanigans. Enough so that they've become retro-nostalgic for a Golden Age that was over before either could get into an R-rated movie. And they blame this on the concept of the Summer Blockbuster, as ushered in by Jaws (Podhoretz) and not-Jaws Star Wars (Edelstein).
It's a common-enough argument--I've used it plenty myself--though I have to question, yet again, how "conservatives" such as J-Pod manage at one and the same time to be Profit's harlot and Art's chaste handmaiden.
But I think there's something missed in not having lived through it, or not as an adult whose intelligence could be insulted. I'd say, for example, that Edelstein has to be watching Jaws through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old to call it the Best Anything ever made, but I'd agree with him that it didn't usher in the modern Summer Blockbuster. At the time it felt more like a one-off; popular movie made from a popular trash novel. So was Valley of the Dolls. It was when the damn thing started spawning sequels, and people flocked to those, that the real danger became clear, but by then it was Too Late. And, hey, I'd like to think that Podhoretz is onto something there, even if he's slightly off, but only the oldest Boomers were out of their teens when Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate hit the screen. Italian neo-realism, the Nouvelle Vague, and post-war Japanese film all found an audience here before Boomers were out of grade school. It's the rise of the Blockbuster which is the aberration, or was before it went on for thirty-five years and no abatement in sight.
Nor did it happen in a vacuum. It coincides with the rise of Happy Talk news, People magazine, Good Morning America, of Disco and Anthem Rock. It heralds the coming of the New (Carter) Democrat and the already withered Reagan Republican, the transition from Elvis to Elvis impersonator. They dumbed down game shows, fer chrissakes, so that none a' your fancy book-larnin' got in the way. Astute moves, swing of the pendulum, faddishness run amok, or fiendish Straussian cabal; it happened.
And I spent ten years expecting it to swing back, particularly, say, for some bright-boy at the nets to counter-program Baba Wawturs Pweesents Suhlebwuty Gossip an' Headwines with someone reading real news in English. Never happened. At some point I decided you can only worry about your own reading list, anyway.
So I don't blame Jaws and Star Wars, or not really; they're just the pustules the thing broke out in. It would'a been something else otherwise. The bigger question, I think, is this: Podhoretz imagines the Golden Age as the result of executives recognizing the boomer insistence on more complex fare. How is it no one's decided to give that another whirl in two generations since?
I HAVE a cold, which is currently taking some Viral Baedeker of the charming but less-visited off-season attractions ("The mandible offers adventurous Picomaviridae an opportunity to view the rare Third Molar close up") its host has to offer. I don't think I've ever had a cold in the summer before. The novelty wears off quicker than you might imagine, and downing NyQuil shots in the heat is like drinking Port in the tropics.
Wingnuts haven't helped matters, not that they ever do. One is reminded, particularly reading that Brooks thing Tuesday, that they are never so obnoxious as when they imagine themselves in the ascendant, which they attribute to God and Middle America being resolutely behind them. (Nor did the fact that I'm presently too weak to grab the remote from my Poor Wife, nor run from the results as she switches to Channel 13 Eyewitness News for thirty seconds, just long enough for me to hear the male hairdo introduce the story of a threatened lawsuit over McDonald's Happy Meals by the Center for Science in the Public Interest thus:
The so-called Food Police...
"Excuse me? Could I get this with extra Blatant? And substitute Corporate Bukkake Whore for the Deep-Fried Crisco Sticks?" Sheesh, somebody wrote that, before the natural-born shill behind the desk
Anyway, I had plenty of good reasons not to open the Times but I did anyway. McChrystal McKabuki? Seven stories, and three Opinions? Pass. Max Boot didn't think he should be fired. That alone is enough for every American to support, or at least consider, summary execution, of McChrystal and whomever books freelancers for the Op-Ed pages. Matt Bai, given space above the e-fold to demonstrate--unwittingly, apparently--that the supposedly smartest Bush Brother is a nitwit? Didn't we know this already? Are our lives not busy enough?
And a glance at the Opinion Corner catches a tease for Douthat's "blog", and in the Cherry Haze of an early-morning Dextromethorphan buzz I briefly hallucinate the possibility of an original thought from Linkmaster Ross.
Insert Reefer Madness laugh.
So far as I can tell, the impetus for all this is that the Summer Blockbuster Season has disappointed some middle-aged white guys (John Podhoretz and David Edelstein, to use the two examples Douthat links) who used to be the target audience for such shenanigans. Enough so that they've become retro-nostalgic for a Golden Age that was over before either could get into an R-rated movie. And they blame this on the concept of the Summer Blockbuster, as ushered in by Jaws (Podhoretz) and not-Jaws Star Wars (Edelstein).
It's a common-enough argument--I've used it plenty myself--though I have to question, yet again, how "conservatives" such as J-Pod manage at one and the same time to be Profit's harlot and Art's chaste handmaiden.
But I think there's something missed in not having lived through it, or not as an adult whose intelligence could be insulted. I'd say, for example, that Edelstein has to be watching Jaws through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old to call it the Best Anything ever made, but I'd agree with him that it didn't usher in the modern Summer Blockbuster. At the time it felt more like a one-off; popular movie made from a popular trash novel. So was Valley of the Dolls. It was when the damn thing started spawning sequels, and people flocked to those, that the real danger became clear, but by then it was Too Late. And, hey, I'd like to think that Podhoretz is onto something there, even if he's slightly off, but only the oldest Boomers were out of their teens when Bonnie and Clyde and The Graduate hit the screen. Italian neo-realism, the Nouvelle Vague, and post-war Japanese film all found an audience here before Boomers were out of grade school. It's the rise of the Blockbuster which is the aberration, or was before it went on for thirty-five years and no abatement in sight.
Nor did it happen in a vacuum. It coincides with the rise of Happy Talk news, People magazine, Good Morning America, of Disco and Anthem Rock. It heralds the coming of the New (Carter) Democrat and the already withered Reagan Republican, the transition from Elvis to Elvis impersonator. They dumbed down game shows, fer chrissakes, so that none a' your fancy book-larnin' got in the way. Astute moves, swing of the pendulum, faddishness run amok, or fiendish Straussian cabal; it happened.
And I spent ten years expecting it to swing back, particularly, say, for some bright-boy at the nets to counter-program Baba Wawturs Pweesents Suhlebwuty Gossip an' Headwines with someone reading real news in English. Never happened. At some point I decided you can only worry about your own reading list, anyway.
So I don't blame Jaws and Star Wars, or not really; they're just the pustules the thing broke out in. It would'a been something else otherwise. The bigger question, I think, is this: Podhoretz imagines the Golden Age as the result of executives recognizing the boomer insistence on more complex fare. How is it no one's decided to give that another whirl in two generations since?
Tuesday, June 22
Boy, Everyone Is Stupid But Me
David Brooks, "Faustus Makes a Deal". June 21
THIS week is already notable for two things, three if you count the ceaseless terrible thunderstorms and flooding rains I hope Jim Inhofe's family is now standing under in open fields with their mouths open: I have a miserable fucking cold, fer chrissakes, and everywhere I turn I wind up defending "liberals", which includes--let's makes that "means"--the sort of dishwater Centrists I'd as soon see hanged.
Ho ho! "double mocha frappuccino". Bet several of Dave's old Weekly Standard colleagues had to replace their keyboards this morning.
Now, for one: by the winter of 2007--let's assume, arguendo, that what is intended is the first ten weeks of the year, not the final ten days--Democrats (aka "The Left-Wing") had just taken control of both houses of Congress as a response to the bedlam six years of de jure Republican control had made of the previous thirty years of de facto Republican control. This is the sort of thing you can look up.
I distinctly remember at the time that "liberal" and "progressive" bloggers (aka "The Left-Wing") found in this circumstance reason for something between shining hope for the future and unbridled synchronic triumphalism. It signaled the ascension of Markos Moulitsas and The Netroots Orchestra. And I remember it distinctly, because it convinced me that all of 'em have a much better supply of psychotropics than I've got.
So I'm not really sure why The Left-Wing would've been interested in making Faustian bargains at that point. And if you mean the end of 2007, well, there was an even greater national confidence that not even the Democratic party was likely to lose the White House with the sorts of advantages the Republican party had passed out during the second Bush/Cheney administration, though certain columnists felt that Rudy Giuliani might still prove a formidable foe. Now, maybe it's the case that Brooks means the actual Left-Wing, properly described, but grading its fortunes on how Democrats are doing in the polls is like assessing the Confederacy's chances by looking at NASCAR's teevee ratings, and imagining that 2% of the population really believes that 49% is going to suddenly sign on for Socialism just because their pockets were picked again--speaking personally, news that Bernie Madoff had gotten punched in the joint exceeded my expectations by a full one-third; hell, half of that was Madoff being in the joint in the first place--just vastly underrates both the experience and the intelligence of your opponent. Many of us lived through the Reagan administration, Dave. We know in our fucking marrow that Americans will never get the point.
So we conclude that by The Left Wing Brooks means that convenient amalgam of everyone in America who thinks economic rapaciousness should be tempered to some degree, with Ward Churchill as their acknowledged spokesman. And this would be the same David Brooks who, a while back--possibly in the winter of 2007--took umbrage at the fact that people treated "conservatives" as though they came in fewer than 31 flavors.
Here's the Bargain the monolithic Left jumped at:
• "[T]he nation to be hurled into an economic crisis caused by Wall Street greed and recklessness. This will discredit free-market fundamentalism once and for all.”
• "[T]he smartest Democratic politician in the land [made] president.”
• "[A] political climate so he can immediately enact an $800 billion spending package. [Which] will avert economic collapse and show the American people how effective government can be."
• "[P]ass a universal health care law. This will show a grateful nation that government can provide basic security.”
• "Just to be sure, I would like a multinational oil company to cause the biggest environmental disaster in American history. This will completely discredit corporate America and remind people why they need strong regulations and global warming legislation.”
Allrighty, then. Q-E-Fucking-D.
So, first, we say the same thing to you, Dave, we told your son Ross yesterday: call us when you're ready to govern, m'kay? And not when you're ready to complain about government, because the phone would never stop ringing, and we already got the message in 1981.
Then, we'd appreciate another jingle when rabid Republicanism solves any of those problems, or even lessens their real-world and/or domestic political impact.
You won't need to tell us when you've actually won an election or two. We'll hear about it. Hell, Indiana Republicans are already lining up the Indy-to-D.C. Daniels Triumph of the Brain Parade. But what you can do is tell us what you personally stand to benefit from in all this Teabagger shit. The St. Reagan administration quadrupled the Debt, engendered the worst post-war recession to its time and the biggest bailout (and still the most scandalous). The Bush I administration had an even bigger recession and a worse jobs creation record. Bush II. We don't even need to say anything else. The Gingrich Revolution--wait, I know I wrote down its accomplishment somewhere, since I never can remember it. Th' fuck can you possibly even hope for, at this late date, in another Republican victory, aside from another opportunity for a long-distance nose-thumbing at those dirty, lunch-money-swiping, Main Line hippies who shoved you in a locker in 1978?
I'd note that it takes a lot of nerve for someone who's backed disaster after disaster caused by the pure application of his and his party's "principles" to start slinging Faust around, but it doesn't take any nerve at all. That's why we keep hearing about it. On the other hand, if the mushy middlers who control the Democratic party had exhibited some, those disasters would a permanent brand on your back, where they belong. But go on, y'know; keep tempting fate, and keep insisting that Middle America will never catch on. Hell, it's worked perfectly so far.
THIS week is already notable for two things, three if you count the ceaseless terrible thunderstorms and flooding rains I hope Jim Inhofe's family is now standing under in open fields with their mouths open: I have a miserable fucking cold, fer chrissakes, and everywhere I turn I wind up defending "liberals", which includes--let's makes that "means"--the sort of dishwater Centrists I'd as soon see hanged.
It was the winter of 2007. Dr. Faustus, the famous left-wing philologist, was sitting in a coffee shop in despair over the Bush-Cheney regime and the future of his country.
Suddenly, Mephistopheles, who happened to be the provost at his college, appeared, sipping a double mocha frappuccino. He sat down next to Dr. Faustus and casually asked him if he would like to be granted any five wishes in exchange for his immortal soul.
Ho ho! "double mocha frappuccino". Bet several of Dave's old Weekly Standard colleagues had to replace their keyboards this morning.
This was Dr. Faustus’s chance to do something grand for his country. He would lose his soul, but if he chose wisely, he could make the United States a bastion of liberalism forevermore.
Now, for one: by the winter of 2007--let's assume, arguendo, that what is intended is the first ten weeks of the year, not the final ten days--Democrats (aka "The Left-Wing") had just taken control of both houses of Congress as a response to the bedlam six years of de jure Republican control had made of the previous thirty years of de facto Republican control. This is the sort of thing you can look up.
I distinctly remember at the time that "liberal" and "progressive" bloggers (aka "The Left-Wing") found in this circumstance reason for something between shining hope for the future and unbridled synchronic triumphalism. It signaled the ascension of Markos Moulitsas and The Netroots Orchestra. And I remember it distinctly, because it convinced me that all of 'em have a much better supply of psychotropics than I've got.
So I'm not really sure why The Left-Wing would've been interested in making Faustian bargains at that point. And if you mean the end of 2007, well, there was an even greater national confidence that not even the Democratic party was likely to lose the White House with the sorts of advantages the Republican party had passed out during the second Bush/Cheney administration, though certain columnists felt that Rudy Giuliani might still prove a formidable foe. Now, maybe it's the case that Brooks means the actual Left-Wing, properly described, but grading its fortunes on how Democrats are doing in the polls is like assessing the Confederacy's chances by looking at NASCAR's teevee ratings, and imagining that 2% of the population really believes that 49% is going to suddenly sign on for Socialism just because their pockets were picked again--speaking personally, news that Bernie Madoff had gotten punched in the joint exceeded my expectations by a full one-third; hell, half of that was Madoff being in the joint in the first place--just vastly underrates both the experience and the intelligence of your opponent. Many of us lived through the Reagan administration, Dave. We know in our fucking marrow that Americans will never get the point.
So we conclude that by The Left Wing Brooks means that convenient amalgam of everyone in America who thinks economic rapaciousness should be tempered to some degree, with Ward Churchill as their acknowledged spokesman. And this would be the same David Brooks who, a while back--possibly in the winter of 2007--took umbrage at the fact that people treated "conservatives" as though they came in fewer than 31 flavors.
Here's the Bargain the monolithic Left jumped at:
• "[T]he nation to be hurled into an economic crisis caused by Wall Street greed and recklessness. This will discredit free-market fundamentalism once and for all.”
• "[T]he smartest Democratic politician in the land [made] president.”
• "[A] political climate so he can immediately enact an $800 billion spending package. [Which] will avert economic collapse and show the American people how effective government can be."
• "[P]ass a universal health care law. This will show a grateful nation that government can provide basic security.”
• "Just to be sure, I would like a multinational oil company to cause the biggest environmental disaster in American history. This will completely discredit corporate America and remind people why they need strong regulations and global warming legislation.”
And, indeed, everything Dr. Faustus wished for came to pass. Yet he watched events unfold with growing horror. Not in 70 years had there been a sequence of events so perfectly designed to fortify liberalism. Yet the country wasn’t swinging to the left; it was swinging to the right!
Allrighty, then. Q-E-Fucking-D.
So, first, we say the same thing to you, Dave, we told your son Ross yesterday: call us when you're ready to govern, m'kay? And not when you're ready to complain about government, because the phone would never stop ringing, and we already got the message in 1981.
Then, we'd appreciate another jingle when rabid Republicanism solves any of those problems, or even lessens their real-world and/or domestic political impact.
You won't need to tell us when you've actually won an election or two. We'll hear about it. Hell, Indiana Republicans are already lining up the Indy-to-D.C. Daniels Triumph of the Brain Parade. But what you can do is tell us what you personally stand to benefit from in all this Teabagger shit. The St. Reagan administration quadrupled the Debt, engendered the worst post-war recession to its time and the biggest bailout (and still the most scandalous). The Bush I administration had an even bigger recession and a worse jobs creation record. Bush II. We don't even need to say anything else. The Gingrich Revolution--wait, I know I wrote down its accomplishment somewhere, since I never can remember it. Th' fuck can you possibly even hope for, at this late date, in another Republican victory, aside from another opportunity for a long-distance nose-thumbing at those dirty, lunch-money-swiping, Main Line hippies who shoved you in a locker in 1978?
I'd note that it takes a lot of nerve for someone who's backed disaster after disaster caused by the pure application of his and his party's "principles" to start slinging Faust around, but it doesn't take any nerve at all. That's why we keep hearing about it. On the other hand, if the mushy middlers who control the Democratic party had exhibited some, those disasters would a permanent brand on your back, where they belong. But go on, y'know; keep tempting fate, and keep insisting that Middle America will never catch on. Hell, it's worked perfectly so far.
Monday, June 21
Shut Up, He (Tried To) Explain
Ross Douthat, "The Agony of the Liberals". June 21
THIS started for me at the Race Day Soirée we attend, when my neighbor, the dyed-in-the-wool-headed "conservative" "libertarian" with the framed Reagan/Bush reelection campaign poster in his garage, the one who left his Bush/Cheney 2000 yard sign up until after the Inauguration, asked my Poor Wife and I what we read of the Sunday Times he so kindly tosses over the fence for us when he's finished. He added how much he was enjoying the fact that "now even the Times" was "giving Obama a hard time" which he found "pretty funny".
Reader, I'm a tolerant man, philosophically, and only philosophically. I resist the urge to treat every "conservative", "libertarian" or no, as though he were a largely unexamined bundle of Christian morality tales for Children, stultifying nationalism that takes itself for patriotism, self-aggrandizement, barely-contained racism, FOX News rejoinders, and some self-fulfilling half-assed notions of the law, the Constitution, and US history which cannot withstand the slightest scrutiny, simply because that adequately describes every last one I've ever met. Aside from the outright clinical cases.
I mean, there must be some, right? You'd think the Times could find one, or even two.
Let's just go back to that statement for a moment. This comes from a guy who reads the Week in Review every Sunday, or at least folds the pages back. So he's had the theoretical ability, at least, to read That Dowd Woman since Senator Obama announced his candidacy; he might've noted the forced and belated apology for Judith Miller launching the Iraq War; if it was his habit back before they moved next door he could've read the Gore-sliming of MoDo and Frank Rich, and the factual Gore-sliming of Kit Seelye, and, before that, the comic fiction of Jeff Gerth. Yet, somehow, the Times is both epitome and pinnacle of Liberalism, and the fact that even they now criticize the President is proof positive that he's the worst failure in history, and everyone admits it.
He's fifty, my neighbor, meaning, if you'd care to do the math, prime Reagantot, David-Brooks-Without-the-Road-to-Damascus-Moment, no chance in hell he'd've been conscripted to put his warlust into practice; his natural inclination toward Regional Sales was reinforced during his sexual peak--and the most-likely-simultaneous peak of his indifferent political awareness--by the whole Morning in America crap pile. Meaning that between the Age of Majority and the time last year his teenaged daughter decided she was a Democrat, the only substantive political debates he's either entered into, or deigned to witness, were the imaginary sort that leaves one's opponents bawling like the little girls they are. And it's at least even money an erection was involved, at least metaphorically.
Dude, you been talking to yourself for thirty years! Which means I'm not quite certain what to make of Douthat, who apparently has been talking to himself since before he could talk:
They doubted him during the health care debate. They second-guessed his Afghanistan policy. They’ve fretted over his coziness with Wall Street and his comfort with executive power.
But now is the summer of their discontent. From MSNBC to “The Daily Show,” from The Huffington Post to the halls of Congress, movement liberals have had just about enough of Barack Obama.
Y'know, Ross, this reminds me: every time I read you I'm tempted to ask if 1) you play poker, and 2) what a seat costs. 'Cos son, that's a Tell a man could back a Brinks truck inta.
Let's just forget that notion of "movement" liberalism--aside from the cartoonish MSNBC, in Cartoon Land, there is no such thing--as well as the idea that Barack Obama is a paragon of Liberalism. He's a fucking Centrist. How much plainer could he have made that from Day One? How many times does it have to be diagrammed for you? Who d'ya think all those people will be voting for in 2012? Let's concentrate for a moment on George W. Bush.
Yeah, I know: another Liberal changing the subject. I'm not, and I'm not, but just fucking listen to an argument that isn't either your own, or safely corruptible, for once.
Let's focus on two major disasters of the Bush administration: Domestic, and Foreign. Worst economic record since the War, worst spending since the War, worst wars since the (Vietnam) war, and worst two wars ever. Toss in Katrina, since you're intent on comparing a slow-motion natural disaster greatly compounded by an ideological objection to doing anything about it--or, perhaps more precisely, to doing anything for those people--with a massive man-made ecological disaster which is directly attributable to 1) this country's self-centered consumption mania, which has been egged on by the Republican party especially, and 2) the cult of corporatism, ditto, though most Democrats show up for regular worship there, too, or have since George McGovern nearly toppled Western civilization.
So, tell me, Ross, where were the fucking objections from "conservatives" while those were going on? Please; not the six or seven editorialists who sorta kinda cautioned about soaring deficits, then wholeheartedly backed two blank-check wars. You're the guys who're so opposed to debt, but you're always finding reasons to excuse it when you're in power. We had a week of public denial about the non-response to Katrina before anyone on the Right allowed as how the problem went deeper than the genetic aquaphobia of your average African. Y'all still love those little military adventures, despite the fact that it's been five years since either one could be remotely defended as sane or successful or serving some national purpose.
So, y'know, just fucking spare us the "even the liberal MSNBC" routine as a mark of "liberal" discombobulation. The most substantive criticism of the Obama administration has come from Glenn Greenwald, and that's since the election, back when your side was consumed with Messiah complexes and hatching Birther conspiracies. A lot of us would be happy to make common cause with y'all when possible, provided you ever decide to stop being batshit crazy.
Consider, instead, what it means that such criticism is never heard in your party until it's too late. Consider what that's meant, and what it's gotten you.
Friday, June 18
What A Difference A Day Four Years Makes
SHORTER David Brooks: In a remarkable post-Katrina turnaround, Louisiana state officials are now fonts of wisdom, exemplars of preparedness, and paragons of truth!
• You didn't think he could write a Shorter and just leave it at that, did you?
• You didn't think he could write a Shorter and just leave it at that, did you?
Compare Samuel Langhorn "Sam" Clemens, who once noted how astonished he was, at age 19, to reflect on how much wisdom his father had gained in just three years; note that your modern "conservative" has rejected the notion of linear Time, despite having pretty much skipped all scientific progress (and economic evidence) of the 19th century. The great Jean Piaget observed that by age three children have already rejected the physics of Aristotle, so I suppose it's entirely possible that there's some intuitive wisdom at the heart of the modern "conservative's" ability to treat contradictory evidence as though it never occurred. Then again, to my knowledge, Piaget never compared a child's ability to bullshit with that of the average columnist/political pundit.
• Of course Brooks didn't let George W. Bush off unscathed--this is the difference between being a full-time mouthpiece and having a covert career as one--but he did so in a roundabout fashion which treated Bush's failure as old news, and How the Sadly Misunderstood Republican Party Rebrands as the central question. 2005 was a pretty good year for that sort of thing; it was also his approach to Iraq.
• Connoisseurs of internet idiocy and Lamar Alexander's Jes' Folks impressions will no doubt enjoy the opener from Brooks' September 8, 2005 tree killer:
The opportunity in that instance being for majority Republicans to remake the modern American urban landscape in their image, specifically by moving the Coloreds into middle-class neighborhoods. (Such is the reality of Compromise that what Brooks' party decided to do instead was to drown what was left of the middle class, so every neighborhood looked the same and the Poor would relax a little, and maybe turn that goddam music down.)
• How interesting, then, that the man-made disasters of financial system meltdown, exponentially-overpriced health care, and environmental enormity are mere opportunities to explain that Government can't fix anything and shouldn't try, although being Government, and under Democratic control (for now), it no doubt will.
• And that the Public, which was so convinced by 2005 that politics required a fundamental change, now clambers for a spot behind Bobby Jindal, and all those other knowledgeable locals who just four months ago were the unreconstructed pimps of offshore drilling. *
• Of course Brooks didn't let George W. Bush off unscathed--this is the difference between being a full-time mouthpiece and having a covert career as one--but he did so in a roundabout fashion which treated Bush's failure as old news, and How the Sadly Misunderstood Republican Party Rebrands as the central question. 2005 was a pretty good year for that sort of thing; it was also his approach to Iraq.
• Connoisseurs of internet idiocy and Lamar Alexander's Jes' Folks impressions will no doubt enjoy the opener from Brooks' September 8, 2005 tree killer:
As a colleague of mine says, every crisis is an opportunity.
The opportunity in that instance being for majority Republicans to remake the modern American urban landscape in their image, specifically by moving the Coloreds into middle-class neighborhoods. (Such is the reality of Compromise that what Brooks' party decided to do instead was to drown what was left of the middle class, so every neighborhood looked the same and the Poor would relax a little, and maybe turn that goddam music down.)
• How interesting, then, that the man-made disasters of financial system meltdown, exponentially-overpriced health care, and environmental enormity are mere opportunities to explain that Government can't fix anything and shouldn't try, although being Government, and under Democratic control (for now), it no doubt will.
• And that the Public, which was so convinced by 2005 that politics required a fundamental change, now clambers for a spot behind Bobby Jindal, and all those other knowledgeable locals who just four months ago were the unreconstructed pimps of offshore drilling. *
____________
* Though not the only ones, of course.
Thursday, June 17
Walking Tall: Happily Ever After
Andrew Ferguson, "Ride Along With Mitch: Can the astonishing popularity of Indiana's penny-pinching governor carry him to the White House in 2012?" Six volumes. June 14
Or just luxuriate in the tale from 2001: Lovebirds Mitch and Cheri are nesting in Washington, D.C., and Some Gated Community, Hamilton County, Indiana, respectively, when the anthrax bomber strikes. Cheri Daniels calls 911 in a panic, because she's received a bulging envelope in the mail which is leaking white powder faster'n Kelsey Grammar. Turns out, the Boys at the Crime Lab say, to be talcum powder. Despite this being, y'know, the height of Total Fucking Panicky Time in America, and this being the personal dwelling of a Cabinet official, the investigation is pretty much done before the responding officers leave. Mitch does not vow to quit his job and hunt down the perp, by motorcycle, for however long it takes. So if you view Miss Havisham as a role model, you'll love their story, too.
When the oppo researchers and the national press do get around to opening up Daniels’s life for inspection, they will find a few embarrassments. One is his arrest in 1970 for marijuana possession when he was a student at Princeton. He spent two nights in jail and paid a $350 fine, and later wrote about the bust in a column for the Star in 1989.WHICH of course by now serves his purposes, cost-free: the Faithful love nothing so much as the Sinner Redeemed an' Testifying, and the libertarians--I'm sorry, the even more Faithful--admire the fact that he was caught dealing. Meanwhile, we'd like to point out that within two years he was working for Dick Lugar, which goes on his resumé with pride, further proof that our priorities as a nation are severely screwed up, and have been for forty years minimum.
More painfully, he and his wife Cheri divorced in 1994. She moved to California, leaving Daniels with the four daughters, aged 8 to 14, and married a doctor. She divorced again and moved back to Indiana. She and Mitch remarried in 1997.People who enjoyed The Mitch and Cheri Story may also like: Diana: The People's Princess; Creepy Co-Enablers and the Public That Can't See Through Them; and The Big Book of Combovers.
Cheri has never spoken about this publicly, and from what I can tell it’s been mentioned in print only twice. Daniels’s only comment was to the Indianapolis Star in 2004: “If you like happy endings, you’ll love our story.”
Or just luxuriate in the tale from 2001: Lovebirds Mitch and Cheri are nesting in Washington, D.C., and Some Gated Community, Hamilton County, Indiana, respectively, when the anthrax bomber strikes. Cheri Daniels calls 911 in a panic, because she's received a bulging envelope in the mail which is leaking white powder faster'n Kelsey Grammar. Turns out, the Boys at the Crime Lab say, to be talcum powder. Despite this being, y'know, the height of Total Fucking Panicky Time in America, and this being the personal dwelling of a Cabinet official, the investigation is pretty much done before the responding officers leave. Mitch does not vow to quit his job and hunt down the perp, by motorcycle, for however long it takes. So if you view Miss Havisham as a role model, you'll love their story, too.
Wednesday, June 16
Walking Tall, Vol. XXI
Andrew Ferguson, "Ride Along With Mitch: Can the astonishing popularity of Indiana's penny-pinching governor carry him to the White House in 2012?" Six volumes. June 14
WHEREIN Philosophy is something you can't argue with:
I was stuck at a red light the other afternoon behind a guy with a "This is my Peace Symbol" bumpersticker--the graphic was a reticle, perhaps better known as "crosshairs"--a few inches above his In God We Trust license plate.
Okay, so I read a little into that, and those plates--they're the sort of thing Daniels thinks the government should be doing with the dollars it seizes--aren't Christian, but merely a tribute to Our Selectively Semitic Heritage. It's perfectly possible to be a monotheist and routinely solve problems at 900-1200 meters. It's just that, well, there's Philosophy, and there's the things that Philosophy is used to justify, and somehow we refuse to acknowledge both at once, preferring to tout our own, while pointing out the shortcomings of others.
No, Andrew; when you put it like that government seems un-American. After you've declared that Taxation=coercive seizure, how do you justify taxes at all?
Is this the root cause, or just a symptom, of the modern rhetorical syndrome which requires the hearer to fill in any pertinent information the speaker can't be bothered with? (Watch the nightly news, your choice of network, or any half-hour chunk of CNN. Count the number of stories where you come away knowing less about it than when you went in. Note how many times language is used to convey to you the emotion you're supposed to take away, or the emotion you're already supposed to have, rather than the information that's supposed to be at the heart of the thing. It dates to Nixon's assault on the Press, and the Press' hasty retreat into Happy Talk once it took fire.)
Of course with Daniels this isn't just sloppiness; he's even older than I am, he remembers all this stuff, it's just that he was on the other side, and instead of reviling it these past decades he's been honing his skill. The blank we're supposed to fill in here is that Taxes are Confiscation, Unless They're Going for Something Mitch Daniels Supports. Meaning, at least to someone educated in the previous century, that the proper question for debate is "So fucking what?" Is this supposed to close off discussion or something? It's "seizure" when our "overlords" address skyrocketing health care costs, but it's the proper function of government when we spend a trillion dollars, or, off the top of my head, roughly a trillion dollars more than Mitch "OMB" Daniels predicted it would cost, to overthrow a tin-horn strongman in Iraq because none of the top Bush administration officials could get laid in high school?
Suppose we simply agree, arguendo, that Defense is the only legitimate communal function of a Randian Superparadise. That settles the argument? It's not seizure when you build eight more carriers than you need? Where are the weapons systems Big Brain Mitch has called for us to eliminate? What did we eliminate when he was at OMB? (The Bush administration cancelled three--the Crusader artillery system, the Comanche reconnaissance helicopter, and the Navy Area Missile Defense system--in its first four years, for a net savings of…zero. We spent the money on other Bright Shiny Penis Replacements.)
So if we divide both sides of the equation by What We Buy we get…zero. Tax=Seizure. Or divide by Tax and we get Shit You Approve Of vs. Shit I Approve Of. I understand why the argument doesn't get treated that way at The Weekly Standard, but what about elsewhere? Over the past thirty years the Federal Government didn't shrink during Republican administrations and expand during Democratic; still, the argument gets phrased as Wanton Spending Democrats vs. Good, Practical Republican Stewards of The Public's Money Who Are Sadly Required To Spend Sixty Cents of Every Dollar On The Defense Industry, And Who Are Really, Really Certain That The Invisible Hand Will Take Care Of Any Future Problems If We Just Let It. And not only are both those premises demonstrably False, but it's not even the way Republicans act when they get the chance.
Are we back to using the original number now, Andrew, or did you get some out-of-date figures? Damn thing had ballooned to $500 million just before the 2008 election.
Though, again, it had; it just hadn't bothered (or obsessed with, for partisan political purposes) squaring all accounts at the end of every fiscal year. Really, again, it's fucking Indiana; it's not like we pass out free Government Jumbo Tenderloins and heroin to all unwed mothers. It's not like the one real constant over the past twenty years hasn't been that every budget deal has to win the approval of a state senate which is two-thirds Republican. The first Bush II recession (Mitch Daniels, Enormous OMB Brain-director; see, I can play that game, too) hit Indiana particularly hard, and, like everywhere, was particularly long-lived, unless your source of income was buying and selling derivatives, or providing secondary-market armoring for US military vehicles. We could have "solved" it the way we had for seven years previous, without, y'know, declaring State Bankruptcy or having a huge Statehouse Yard Sale; that is, we could have squeezed some here, cut some there, raised this tax or that fee, amortized some expenses, and fudged some others. Not pretty, but lawmaking never is. Instead we elected a guy who wanted to use Big Brained Budget Balancer on the logo for his next two campaigns, and we gave the GOPers a majority in the House to match the Senate, and they turned the whole thing into one big Republican PR Fest, which is precisely where we are today. They took the Debits column, sliced it to match the Income column, and declared Mitch Daniels a genius. Nothing to it, provided you have the political power, the political will, and the temerity to assume it won't blow up on your watch, or if it does you'll be able to finesse it, given that your base consists of backwoods RV gawkers with atrocious eating habits.
And yet "cut here, squeeze there, raise some taxes, and pass other expenses down the line" is precisely what we did, while giving it a spiffy new wrapper that tested well with the vital Don't Know No Better demo.
Let's say you are among Indiana's 10% (counted) unemployed. Wait, better yet, let's say you're a Heroic Indiana Jobs Creating Entrepreneur, not like Mitch Daniels. Your business drops off 30% in the present economy. Do you take a list of everything you spend money on and cut it all by 30%, thereby solving the problem and becoming Profitable again? Well, if you cut your hours by 30%, you might lose even more business. You cut employee hours 30% your customers might not get the personal attention they crave and shop elsewhere. You're not going to dim the lights 30%, or switch off the AC for two-and-a-half hours every day. You're going to look at all your options and make informed decisions. You're not going to destroy your business to save it. You're not going to pawn your wife's jewelry, or her Toll Road, without getting her permission first, and when you do, you're not going to spend that money on more jewelry and more Toll Roads. This is yet another way business is different from government.
Oh, and if you do, you're not going to be able to convince some guy at the Weekly Standard that you're actually open longer now, and that at 95% it's still 20% cooler inside than it is in Michigan stores. Unless, of course, he's desperate for a candidate who talks shit because he needs to, not because it's all he has for brains.
WHEREIN Philosophy is something you can't argue with:
In Indiana, as elsewhere, schools have been typically funded by local property taxes, which local officials could raise to match their budgets, by increasing either rates or assessments. Consolidation took that option away from them. Under Daniels, home property taxes have been cut drastically—by one third in most cases—and are now capped at one percent.
“Property taxation is the most pernicious taxation there is,” he said. “Where else in life can you just decide how much you want to spend and then just dial up the rates to get enough revenue to pay for it? Elsewhere in life, you figure out how much money you have and fit your budget to that. If you’ve got less to spend, well, you’ve got less to spend.”
I was stuck at a red light the other afternoon behind a guy with a "This is my Peace Symbol" bumpersticker--the graphic was a reticle, perhaps better known as "crosshairs"--a few inches above his In God We Trust license plate.
Okay, so I read a little into that, and those plates--they're the sort of thing Daniels thinks the government should be doing with the dollars it seizes--aren't Christian, but merely a tribute to Our Selectively Semitic Heritage. It's perfectly possible to be a monotheist and routinely solve problems at 900-1200 meters. It's just that, well, there's Philosophy, and there's the things that Philosophy is used to justify, and somehow we refuse to acknowledge both at once, preferring to tout our own, while pointing out the shortcomings of others.
He treats waste in government as a moral offense. “Government isn’t a business, and it shouldn’t be run as a business,” he said. “But it can be more like business. It has a lot to learn from businessmen.” Government operates without the market pressures that produce efficiency and increase quality. The challenge for government leaders is to produce those pressures to economize internally, through an act of will. “Never take a dollar from a free citizen through the coercion of taxation without a very legitimate purpose,” he said in an interview last year. “We have a solemn duty to spend that dollar as carefully as possible, because when we took it we diminished that person’s freedom.” When you put it like that, overspending by government seems un-American.
No, Andrew; when you put it like that government seems un-American. After you've declared that Taxation=coercive seizure, how do you justify taxes at all?
Is this the root cause, or just a symptom, of the modern rhetorical syndrome which requires the hearer to fill in any pertinent information the speaker can't be bothered with? (Watch the nightly news, your choice of network, or any half-hour chunk of CNN. Count the number of stories where you come away knowing less about it than when you went in. Note how many times language is used to convey to you the emotion you're supposed to take away, or the emotion you're already supposed to have, rather than the information that's supposed to be at the heart of the thing. It dates to Nixon's assault on the Press, and the Press' hasty retreat into Happy Talk once it took fire.)
Of course with Daniels this isn't just sloppiness; he's even older than I am, he remembers all this stuff, it's just that he was on the other side, and instead of reviling it these past decades he's been honing his skill. The blank we're supposed to fill in here is that Taxes are Confiscation, Unless They're Going for Something Mitch Daniels Supports. Meaning, at least to someone educated in the previous century, that the proper question for debate is "So fucking what?" Is this supposed to close off discussion or something? It's "seizure" when our "overlords" address skyrocketing health care costs, but it's the proper function of government when we spend a trillion dollars, or, off the top of my head, roughly a trillion dollars more than Mitch "OMB" Daniels predicted it would cost, to overthrow a tin-horn strongman in Iraq because none of the top Bush administration officials could get laid in high school?
Suppose we simply agree, arguendo, that Defense is the only legitimate communal function of a Randian Superparadise. That settles the argument? It's not seizure when you build eight more carriers than you need? Where are the weapons systems Big Brain Mitch has called for us to eliminate? What did we eliminate when he was at OMB? (The Bush administration cancelled three--the Crusader artillery system, the Comanche reconnaissance helicopter, and the Navy Area Missile Defense system--in its first four years, for a net savings of…zero. We spent the money on other Bright Shiny Penis Replacements.)
So if we divide both sides of the equation by What We Buy we get…zero. Tax=Seizure. Or divide by Tax and we get Shit You Approve Of vs. Shit I Approve Of. I understand why the argument doesn't get treated that way at The Weekly Standard, but what about elsewhere? Over the past thirty years the Federal Government didn't shrink during Republican administrations and expand during Democratic; still, the argument gets phrased as Wanton Spending Democrats vs. Good, Practical Republican Stewards of The Public's Money Who Are Sadly Required To Spend Sixty Cents of Every Dollar On The Defense Industry, And Who Are Really, Really Certain That The Invisible Hand Will Take Care Of Any Future Problems If We Just Let It. And not only are both those premises demonstrably False, but it's not even the way Republicans act when they get the chance.
When Daniels took office, in 2004, the state faced a $200 million deficit
Are we back to using the original number now, Andrew, or did you get some out-of-date figures? Damn thing had ballooned to $500 million just before the 2008 election.
and hadn’t balanced its budget in seven years.
Though, again, it had; it just hadn't bothered (or obsessed with, for partisan political purposes) squaring all accounts at the end of every fiscal year. Really, again, it's fucking Indiana; it's not like we pass out free Government Jumbo Tenderloins and heroin to all unwed mothers. It's not like the one real constant over the past twenty years hasn't been that every budget deal has to win the approval of a state senate which is two-thirds Republican. The first Bush II recession (Mitch Daniels, Enormous OMB Brain-director; see, I can play that game, too) hit Indiana particularly hard, and, like everywhere, was particularly long-lived, unless your source of income was buying and selling derivatives, or providing secondary-market armoring for US military vehicles. We could have "solved" it the way we had for seven years previous, without, y'know, declaring State Bankruptcy or having a huge Statehouse Yard Sale; that is, we could have squeezed some here, cut some there, raised this tax or that fee, amortized some expenses, and fudged some others. Not pretty, but lawmaking never is. Instead we elected a guy who wanted to use Big Brained Budget Balancer on the logo for his next two campaigns, and we gave the GOPers a majority in the House to match the Senate, and they turned the whole thing into one big Republican PR Fest, which is precisely where we are today. They took the Debits column, sliced it to match the Income column, and declared Mitch Daniels a genius. Nothing to it, provided you have the political power, the political will, and the temerity to assume it won't blow up on your watch, or if it does you'll be able to finesse it, given that your base consists of backwoods RV gawkers with atrocious eating habits.
And yet "cut here, squeeze there, raise some taxes, and pass other expenses down the line" is precisely what we did, while giving it a spiffy new wrapper that tested well with the vital Don't Know No Better demo.
Let's say you are among Indiana's 10% (counted) unemployed. Wait, better yet, let's say you're a Heroic Indiana Jobs Creating Entrepreneur, not like Mitch Daniels. Your business drops off 30% in the present economy. Do you take a list of everything you spend money on and cut it all by 30%, thereby solving the problem and becoming Profitable again? Well, if you cut your hours by 30%, you might lose even more business. You cut employee hours 30% your customers might not get the personal attention they crave and shop elsewhere. You're not going to dim the lights 30%, or switch off the AC for two-and-a-half hours every day. You're going to look at all your options and make informed decisions. You're not going to destroy your business to save it. You're not going to pawn your wife's jewelry, or her Toll Road, without getting her permission first, and when you do, you're not going to spend that money on more jewelry and more Toll Roads. This is yet another way business is different from government.
Oh, and if you do, you're not going to be able to convince some guy at the Weekly Standard that you're actually open longer now, and that at 95% it's still 20% cooler inside than it is in Michigan stores. Unless, of course, he's desperate for a candidate who talks shit because he needs to, not because it's all he has for brains.
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