Laugher of Two Evils
The two best arguments that I’ve seen for voting for Democrats anyway this fall come from hilzoy on Obsidian Wings and Lenny Bailes in comments at Making Light. Lenny:
Not voting for Democrats means that cowardly, malleable Democratic sheep will be replaced in Congress by more intractable Republican assholes. If the sheep perceive themselves to be in the majority, they might be herded in the other direction and check the worst excesses of the Republicans — no matter what the recent Senate and House votes tell us about cowardice and lack of common sense.
In the long term, a majority of intractable Republicans might be removed by a desperate, angry populace that’s been stung by too much “heightening of contradictions.” But I don’t want to wait that long. Surely, it makes sense to try herding sheep in Congress to uphold law (in the short term) before abandoning our tax dollars, the U.S. Military, and our stockpile of nuclear weapons to a plurality of wild boars.
For one thing, does anyone here actually believe that if President Bush asked Democratic leaders to move this bill through, they would agree? Or that this nightmare of a bill would have made it out of a Judiciary Committee chaired by Pat Leahy or John Conyers? Someone clearly has the ability to make Arlen Specter cave on command; having briefly seen Leahy on CSPAN this afternoon, I can say: he was truly beyond furious, and if he ever caved on something like this, I would be very surprised. I’m not really up on Ike Skelton, but do you think that if Carl Levin were chairing the Senate Armed Services Committee, this would have just sailed right through?
No. Having control of one house of Congress would have stopped this in its tracks.
Moreover, thinking for the long haul: I think that if Democrats take either chamber, they will hold hearings. There is more than enough corruption to look at; I would nominate spending and contracts for Iraqi reconstruction as an obvious first step. I think that if those hearings exposed anything remotely approximating the level of corruption I believe to be present, it would not only have the immediate effect of helping deserving people to find a home in our nation’s correctional facilities and deterring future offenders; it would also do a lot to undermine the Republicans’ claims to be strong on security. The idea that Republicans can be trusted with national security is, in my opinion, ripe for collapse. They have screwed up all manner of things, and some of them, like Iraq, are incredibly obvious. There is, I think, a lot of skepticism of Bush that is — well, in my current state, the only analogy that leaps to mind is: it’s completely dissolved, like the sugar you dissolve in water when you’re making rock candy, and then someone drops in a paperclip, and it crystallizes.
Now for your happy thought of the weekend. Maybe enough of the country really is supersaturated with disgust particles, and dragging some old-fashioned corruption into the light will do it. It’s not as if there isn’t plenty to be found, not just monetary but sexual. Maybe the Feiler Faster Thesis continues to operate and we’ll experience American neofascism on an American schedule, meaning double-quick and “Reversing the Magna Carta is like, so twenty minutes ago!” Feiler Faster Fascism! Heck, maybe it all wrapped up while I was away from the internet today.
One more argument for supporting Democrats this fall is original to me. In discussions downblog I said that the crucial weapon henceforth would be comedy - satire, ridicule and that belly laugh which may be worth a thousand syllogisms. The Havel Plan, as it were. The only humane revolutions are not just nonviolent but comedic. Under the circumstances, the notion that either voting or Congress mean anything in particular to the Bush Administration is about as funny as it gets. Therefore, it goes on the list of things to do.
Comment by anodyne —
October 1, 2006 @ 12:34 am
“I said that the crucial weapon henceforth would be comedy - satire, ridicule and that belly laugh which may be worth a thousand syllogisms.”
And don’t forget to include irony:
“Maybe enough of the country really is supersaturated with disgust particles, and dragging some old-fashioned corruption into the light will do it. It’s not as if there isn’t plenty to be found, not just monetary but sexual.”
Comment by bad Jim —
October 1, 2006 @ 3:26 am
Bush has a comprehensive plan for an attack upon Iran.
(bada-bing!) Thanks, I’ll be here all week. Try the kangaroo flank steak and remember to tip the waitstaff.
It’s hard to joke when such an obviously absurd assertion - that they might actually have a plan - is likelier to evoke dread than a laugh.
Two freshman Republican congressmen approach the Speaker of the House. One counsels the other, “Promise him anything, but give him our page.”
(Nobody remembers that one. Sorry.)
Hitler was considered a pretty ridiculous character in his time. Laughter’s just another necessity.
With regard to Iraq, is this administration fixated on the old investment warning, “Severe penalty for early withdrawal?”
Comment by John Emerson —
October 1, 2006 @ 7:30 am
Also litotes.
Another grimmer argument is that if the Democrats go down, America goes down. There’s no backup political party that could do the job if the Democrats fail. Greens claim that they are such a party, and perhaps some Libertarians do too, and the rump of the Perot party makes a little noise now and then, and so on, but they’re all faking it. In our two-party system, it’s the Democrats or nothing.
The problem I see (from my POV) is that 30% or so of the population supports Bush fanatically, whereas most of the 70% remaining are less engaged and less committed. In other words, the American people effectively disagree with me.
Even if the hard-core anti-Bush numbers were as high as the hard-core pro-Bush numbers, there’s still 40% left who don’t know what they think, even if they don’t like Bush much any more.
And these 40% are not people who would quickly agree with me if I just were able to talk to them. To the extent that they’re engaged with what’s happening at all, they have a confused mix of good and bad ideas, and can easily flip back in Bush’s direction.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 1, 2006 @ 7:48 am
The basic problem is that we have become a decadent society — not in the stupid right-wing sense of decadence as sexual or personal morality, but decadence as in what happens to every overextended empire. We can’t assume that if people only knew what was going on, they would agree with us.
But in the short to medium term, this is a political problem. There are three basic routes of political change in a pseudo-democratic society: electoral, mass, and “other”. The U.S. electoral rules are set up so that, mathematically, there can really be only two large parties. Therefore, an electoral solution requires working through / taking over the Democrats. It is possible to leverage power so that a minority can shape national politics through capture of one of the parties — the Republicans have done it.
A mass politics solution — i.e., something like the Civil Rights movement — is impossible, because the electorate is decadent. The number of people who think that torture of suspects is never justified is about 32%, and they aren’t going to the streets any time soon.
The third track, which I’ve listed as “other”, starts with the observation that we have tortured people throughout American history, and that habeas corpus is a fairly meaningless protection for most people — a crossing of the i’s and dotting of the t’s, when all that someone has to do to put you away is plant drugs on you. And from there it goes through heightening the contradictions, etc. I don’t see how this does us any good, because if the system breaks down, there are far more people who want fascism than who want freedom, however defined.
So, for the short term, working through the Democrats is the only option.
For the medium-to-long term, I think that what’s really going to happen is that the world’s center of gravity is going to shift away from the U.S. Things could get pretty bad here, but people elsewhere will carry civilization on.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 1, 2006 @ 8:18 am
Things could get pretty bad here, but people elsewhere will carry civilization on.
By now I think that politics can’t be national any more. People keep telling me that America is majority middle class now and that populist concerns don’t work, especially because many of the non-middle-class are illegals. I’ve been fighting that idea, but I’m starting to give in.
At the more global level there seems to be more things going on.
The up-and-coming nations of East Asia, though, especially Singapore and China, are really savage on civil liberties, and they reduce political participation to an even lower level than here.
Comment by thoreau —
October 1, 2006 @ 8:20 am
I want to know how they made Specter cave. He’s old and not terribly healthy, so it’s not clear to me that he cares whether they sabotage his next re-election bid. I don’t know what his personal financial situation is, but it he’s old and not terribly healthy maybe that doesn’t matter so much.
Do they have a file on him? Most people have something to hide, maybe they found out what he has and it’s something they can work with.
I’m going to run for Congress in 10 years, once I have some life goals taken care of. I’ve decided it. My wife and I are quite happy as it is on our middle-class incomes, so I can’t be bought. The only skeletons that I can think of in my closet are somewhat embarassing but not life-changing, so I can’t be blackmailed. And I like the career that I have now, and I would be happy to return to it, so they can’t scare me by threatening to ruin my re-election ibd.
I’m completely serious here. They can’t get to me, so as long as we still have free elections in 10 years I will run. By then, the cutting edge of civil liberties issues will be your right to fly without submitting to exploratory surgery, and rest assured that I will threaten to withhold funding for the surgical program!
Comment by John Emerson —
October 1, 2006 @ 8:25 am
During the Kerry campaign, secpecially during August, I wondered whether he had been intimidated in some way. His campaigning seemed half-hearted. Intimidation at that level would have to be pretty serious stuff, like death threats coming from within government.
Others tell me that Kerry is just like that, and can’t be bothered.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 1, 2006 @ 9:07 am
“The up-and-coming nations of East Asia, though, especially Singapore and China, are really savage on civil liberties, and they reduce political participation to an even lower level than here.”
Well, I think that it’s probably Europe’s turn again. If you actually *believe* in civil liberties — i.e., that you can’t have a creative, technologically advancing society without them — then you have to believe that China is going to hit a wall as its population gets richer and it becomes less possible to run the place on a mixture of peasant farming and cheap assembly-line labor. Singapore is just a tiny city-state that survives on trade.
Comment by hj —
October 1, 2006 @ 9:44 am
Rich Puchalsky: When you say “work through the Democrats,” what do you mean? How does someone “work through?” What kind of influence do you and the rest of your “we” have?
I assume most people are like me and have little to no influence on anything, pretty much just along for the ride. I have a hard enough time getting my dog to fetch, let alone influencing the actions of a ruling class.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 1, 2006 @ 10:14 am
hj, you seem to be reifying the Democrats at too high a level, or something. “The Democrats”, in addition to its formal definition as a political party, means a whole bunch of different things: a loose coalition of politicians, a network of linked interest groups, an idea in the minds of a large number of people, a historical set of loyalties, a place where all that is vaguely left-of-center is forced to go in American politics. The problem in influencing it is not that it’s a ruling class — that would be comparatively simple — but that it is somewhat inchoate.
But there is one critical element in which the Democratic Party differs from the Republican; it, like Soylent Green, is made out of people. The Republican Party is made out of money. (These definitions have blurred, but are in the main still valid.) One person alone can do almost nothing, that is true, but if a group of people who are Democrats decide that the party needs a different direction, the party responds. There are some recent changes of this type; Dean in the DNC, Leiberman out.
The answer is radicalization. People are dissatisfied and know not why or what to do; give them an articulation, so that they can come together around a common project. That’s why the netroots are so valuable.
Comment by Keifus —
October 1, 2006 @ 10:42 am
Did the 2000 third-party threat of the Nader campaign change the nature of the Democrats very much? As a casual observer, it looked like some bluster was directed to the alleged grassroots, and Howard Dean grew in stature as their unlikely representative. But what has that amounted to? If anything, they’ve become less effective as a bloc, with an even more garbled message, and the lot of them still cower from fear of seeming weak on something.
I’m asking, because even if third parties don’t win, they should, in principle, force the partisan behemoths to arc their filthy bulks in the direction of the disturbance. Radicalization should affect some response from the parties, even if it doesn’t overthrow them.
But I have to agree with Jim, laughing at them is better. Jon Stewart has surely helped the Democratic party far more than Howard Dean ever could.
Plus, humor is a fingerhold over despair.
K
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 1, 2006 @ 11:32 am
A third-party threat is the wrong kind of radicalization, because it is doomed to fail. Who is “threatened” by a third-party threat? Politicians — not the people who actually make up the voting part of the party. The rest, about most of them cowering in fear, is just the usual twaddle that I’d paraphrase as “So you’ve made some slight progress — why haven’t you won yet? I don’t think it’s worth doing anything until you’ve already won.”
As for humor being so great, I don’t think so. Too much of it is just a feeling that you can’t do anything, so why not laugh. The end result is that you don’t do anything.
Comment by hj —
October 1, 2006 @ 2:16 pm
Rich:
Republicans are made out of money? Good to know - I’ll give my uncle Bob to the cashier next time I’m at Wal-Mart.
Seriously, though, I think you misunderstood my question. I know what Republicans and Democrats are (a bunch of pinko carnies, every last one of them). I’m asking what, exactly, you consider “doing.”
Let’s say I went to you, asking what can I do to make things “better.” Specifically. I come home from work, I’ve got about an hour a day to do your bidding. I’ll try not to “reify” or “radicalize” or laugh at the retardicraticans.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 1, 2006 @ 3:40 pm
Let me guess — you’re a libertarian or some varient, is that it? If I’m a pinko carnie, then why are you asking me what to do?
But there’s no ten easy household tips for a better society that I can give you. I don’t want you to do my bidding, what I’d really like is for you to grow up, and start to pursue political goals in conjunction with other people. You will work out what to do together. Eisenhower: “Plans are nothing; planning is everything.”
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 1, 2006 @ 4:18 pm
“The number of people who think that torture of suspects is never justified is about 32%, and they aren’t going to the streets any time soon.”
This is simply untrue, Rich. What’s your cite for the claim?
Here is mine to refute it.
Incidentally, for fascinating latest stats on what Iraqis think of stuff, see here.
“The third track, which I’ve listed as “other”, starts with the observation that we have tortured people throughout American history, and that habeas corpus is a fairly meaningless protection for most people — a crossing of the i’s and dotting of the t’s, when all that someone has to do to put you away is plant drugs on you.”
I’m yes-and-no on this. “Yes” that you have a serious point, but “no” in that nonetheless, the line drawn by access to courts, a guarantee of even an incompent lawyer, and other flawed rights as developed over the past pick-your-number-of-decades, has made an immense difference in the lives of countless people, and in how our system has, until recently, largely judged what is fair and just and right.
hj: “I’m asking what, exactly, you consider ‘doing.’
Let’s say I went to you, asking what can I do to make things ‘better.’”
The possibilities are near-infinite, but they could include, for instance, being active in your local precinct, and working upwards from there. “Working within the system” has limits, and can be unbelievably boring, but it also can ultimately accomplish some things, in point of fact. Like actually electing, say, Russ Feingold, or Barney Frank, and even sometimes having a majority that actually does things that wind up with concrete results that help people, whether by giving them money, or freedom, or whathaveyou.
It’s all very big and slow and seemingly rather amorphous, depending on what scale you choose to look at it from, but it is, in fact, quite real.
It’s how the Republicans have accomplished, god help us, real things.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 1, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
thoreau: “I’m going to run for Congress in 10 years, once I have some life goals taken care of. I’ve decided it.”
I hope you start with lower office, sooner, so as to considerably up the odds of actually getting into office.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 1, 2006 @ 4:21 pm
“Like actually electing, say, Russ Feingold, or Barney Frank,”
Or Ron Paul, if you prefer.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 1, 2006 @ 5:00 pm
As far as “What do we do now?” goes, I’ve been baffled about that one for decades. Bush made it easier for me by being so bad. But a lot of the time I have a diagnosis and no prescription.
Comment by hj —
October 1, 2006 @ 7:47 pm
Rich -
You’re only a pinko carnie (and I mean that in the nicest way) if you’re a politician.
I’ll take the “grow up” comment, as I certainly do tend to come off as an immature prick. I like to call it witty charm, but you’re probably right.
It’s the “pursue political goals” thing I don’t get. What are you suggesting?
At one time I would have considered myself a libertarian, but the definition has changed to something I don’t identify with. I don’t think anyone else is using Individualist right now, so I got dibs.
I think Jim is right - mockery is the best way to go. Taking carnies seriously is how they get you to spend money throwing darts at balloons to win a giant pink teddy bear you don’t need and have to carry around with you for the rest of the day diminishing the whole experience of the carnival which, if this run-on sentence hasn’t made clear, is a metaphor for life. Go on the rides instead.
Comment by hj —
October 1, 2006 @ 7:57 pm
Gary -
See above. Me “getting involved” as you suggest, would be quite a sight. I would probably do more harm to any ideals I’d be fighting for than good.
Hey, that might be a good idea - all of the morons like me should get together and support whoever we want to fail. Here’s my first campaign:
“Torture is good! Look at me! I have a chicken on my head! Whooopeeee!”
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 1, 2006 @ 9:11 pm
Gary at #15, Pew did a poll earlier this year, one of whose questions was, Is Torture of Terrorist Suspects Justified?: 15% “often”, 31% “sometimes”, 17% “rarely”, 32% “never”.
hj, the point is that first you start working with a group of people, then the group of you figure out what you want to do. No one can give you a list of things to do that is seperate from who you’re doing them with, or if they do, you’ll just look at them as chores. It’s like telling people that they should get together, as strangers, to do something, rather than getting a group of friends together and then having them decide what they want to do.
But I suspect that you can’t really imagine what political goals are and how to pursue them because of your “individualism”. Changing the system back so that torture is no longer legalized might be a political goal, for instance. It’s not like no one can do anything about it — people just changed it, and it can be changed back, through a variety of legal and electoral means, all of which could be helped by people cooperating to work on them. But your “individualism” is really, I think, just another word for the decadence that I referred to upthread. What does it really get you, besides a feeling of helplessness?
I do think that one of the casualties of these eight years of Republican rule is going to be the U.S. libertarian dream. So that I don’t pick on hj, I’ll relate it back to something that Jim Henley writes, about how liberals want people to be engaged in the political system all the time, and how some people just don’t want to have to continually bother with it just to secure what they have. There’s also the dislike of property taxes, because they seem to make it that you don’t really own your property — that you have to continually pay the state to keep it. Well, that’s the way it is. “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom” if you want to be all pompous about it. Basically, no one can opt out of politics and trust the legal system to keep everything OK. More and more people feeling that this is possible is one of the things that has let politics proceed to where we are now.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 2, 2006 @ 12:20 am
“Gary at #15, Pew did a poll earlier this year,”
Although it’s slightly bothersome when people make me look up their cites for them, it only took a few seconds, with that clue, to find this, which I’m guessing is what you have in mind.
The context you offered was this:
I don’t think the figures support this conclusion, and I suggest that it may be unhelpful to offer that conclusion from such a basis, rather than pointing to the fact that “a majority (53%) say torture is rarely (21%) or never (32%) justified” and organizing around that. Majorities, last I looked, are actually larger than minorities, for one thing. (I prefer, Jim, to think of this as dryly making my point, but if it’s condescending bs, instead, I apologize.)
Moreover, PIPA is, so far as I know, just as credible as Pew; polls, as we know, are affected by context, phrasing, timing, and other factors, and are also simply snapshots of a given moment, in any case.
I suggest that putting forward the notion that it’s all futile and useless, because “the electorate is decadent” isn’t going to get anyone anywhere, unless your suggestion is that we all just kill ourselves now, or resign to being good Nazis.
I doubt that’s what you have in mind, so I’m merely suggesting that looking at what can be done might be more useful.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 2, 2006 @ 6:55 am
Rich, I think there is indeed a contradiction that Gary’s identified here. You upbraid hj and by extension me and other libertarians for our presumed quietism; you even argue that humor can be an excuse for quietism. And yet, the whole “Dude, don’t blame the Democrats in office; only 31% of the country really opposes torture,” can itself be read as an excuse for quietism.
To make it official, I don’t recommend universal quietism in the face of the present circumstance. Influenced by the history of Communist rule in Europe, I also see humor as having powerful political value.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 2, 2006 @ 8:09 am
I don’t think that torture can be the issue to bring people out on the street. (People who think that torture is “rarely justified” aren’t going to be militants; I think that Rich is right there).
Habeus corpus much more so, except that so many Americans only think about things when they happen, in concrete terms, so it will always be personal rather than principled: “Did X deserve to be stripped of habeus corpus just now” . (Oddly, even law professors seem to have no concept of “bad precedent” any more.)
And an enormous proportion of conservatives think in terms of good people and bad people, so they’re libertarians about laws when good people are impacted (e.g. seat belt laws, or airline inspections), and fascists about laws when they impact bad people (PATRIOT Act, waterboarding). This is the opposite of “a government of laws”, of course, but again, professors Althouse and Instatwit seem to think this way.
And of course, Bush is a good person so he needs no institutional checks and balances, whereas Clinton was a bad person.
Someone joked about “What if Hitlery ends up with all this power in her hands? Those people will shit!”. But in fact Hillary really can not be trusted on this kind of issue; she’s a strong-government corporate liberal.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 2, 2006 @ 8:42 am
Jim, acknowledging facts is not an excuse for quietism. That Pew poll, which I linked to a thread or so back, joins with others, and with observation of the current political situation: not that many people really care. It’s easy to get an echo chamber effect on a blog where everyone agrees about something, but if you’re planning on actually taking action, you have to do so on your best information about reality. You may not like it, but “don’t blame the Democrats in office, only a third of the country really opposes torture” is, well, a judgement in the first half of the sentence supported by a true statement in the second half.
That shapes proposed actions in response. If I thought that most people really opposed torture, but didn’t know what was going on, I’d be calling for more of the same failed “get the word out” efforts that people usually call for when they, e.g., call for large protests, or ads based on the issue. Instead, I think that the best chance relies on taking over the Democratic party, since the levers of power there are actually quite available to a relatively small group.
Comment by Jim Henley —
October 2, 2006 @ 9:06 am
Rich, thanks for the clarification.
Your polls actually seem to be in contradiction with Gary’s, and Gary makes good points about timing. Even taking your polls into account, as a guide to what WE should do, I’d say:
A third of the country is rock solid. Another sixth of it has a VERY guilty conscience about torture - that’s how I view the rarelys. Another sixth of it is “soft” on its pro-torture stand. We can’t reach all of them but we can reach some.
We won’t reach the final third. In a democracy we wouldn’t need to. In one-party rule they are the only third that, in the short term, counts. But single-party systems collapse when everyone but them deserts. So even in the present situation we don’t need to.
The GOP has accomplished a lot, in raw political power terms, by counting on an unshakeable 33% bedrock and reaching out from there. We need to view the 31% not as a beleaguered fringe, but as a foundation. Despite all the bullshit and fearmongering of the last five years, a third of the country has an unshakeable memory of who we are supposed to be. That’s a strength, if we’ll treat it as such.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 2, 2006 @ 9:50 am
Well, I basically agree. “Taking over the Democratic party” means using that foundation of 1/3 of the electorate to seize control over the party that, by the mathematics ordained by the U.S. electoral system, must represent a little more or less than 1/2 of the electorate. That gets you the guilty sixth. Then you fight it out over the last sixth — but really, *if* the party has been taken by strong anti-torture advocates, then it’s likely that we only need to win once.
Because *if* the people elected know that this is something they have to do for their base, then when we win, we have a big ceremony repealing the law, repudiating torture, and denouncing it as uncivilized. If it becomes tied into the American self-image, that makes it much harder (though not impossible) for the Republicans to start torturing again later.
That’s why I don’t think it makes sense to blame the current Democratic pols for this. Politicians are basically followers, not leaders. That is just as true on the Republican side. If they aren’t doing what we think they should be doing, the problem is with the American people. If the Democrats aren’t doing what their base thinks they should be doing, the problem is with that base. And I think that quietism is a large part of all this. The whole overextended-empire thing is based around “relax, the troops will import bread, watch the circuses”.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 2, 2006 @ 11:35 am
People say that blaming the media is a cliche and a copout, but most information that people get (especially passive or ambient voters who are not actively engaged) has been carefully filtered at a high corporate level. And some of it has been filtered at the church level, or by conservative think-tanks.
This is still a free country, we still have free speech, and the truth can be found — but the ambient information is tendentious, misleading, crap.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
October 2, 2006 @ 12:42 pm
I don’t think that torture can be the issue to bring people out on the street. (People who think that torture is “rarely justified” aren’t going to be militants; I think that Rich is right there).
I think the people who think it’s “rarely justified” can be fired up if you shake them out of their hope/denial that it’s only being used, carefully, on people who are really, definitely bad. The sort of people who weren’t really bothered by segregation, but were shocked by the use of Bull Connor tactics on civil rights workers.
Comment by Gary Farber —
October 2, 2006 @ 1:45 pm
Rather than disagreeing with some earlier statements of Rich’s, I’ll point to Jim’s #26 and Rich’s #27, to agree with, and declare: comity!
One quibble: “Politicians are basically followers, not leaders.”
While a true observation as a rule, it hardly is always so, and equally obviously isn’t as it always shall be.
Not that wanting to be swept up by a Great Leader isn’t essential to fascism, as well, of course, but nonetheless, genuine leadership in a good cause is also obviously a Good Thing. And we could use some ‘a that.
Have I left any banality behind?
John: “And an enormous proportion of conservatives think in terms of good people and bad people, so they’re libertarians about laws when good people are impacted (e.g. seat belt laws, or airline inspections), and fascists about laws when they impact bad people (PATRIOT Act, waterboarding).”
That’s an excellent point, though, typically, I’ll express some skepticism that this is a phenomenon particularly limited to “conservatives,” though I wouldn’t venture to guess precisely how the trait might divvy proportionally by political leaning. But it’s certainly a remarkably prevalent piece of Stoopid Thinking.
“This is still a free country, we still have free speech, and the truth can be found — but the ambient information is tendentious, misleading, crap.”
90% of everything is….
And I entirely agree with Eric the .5b.
One has to break through people’s assumptions that it’s only the Khalid Sheik Muhammads that are affected by the removal of habeas corpus, and the possibility of indefinite confinement, or Cold Room, but that it could accidentally, in fact, happen to their mother, their brother, their niece, their mailman. We have to move that from “unthinkable” to what it is: quite possible, now.
And all that’s required is to tell the truth.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 2, 2006 @ 2:58 pm
“90% of everything is….”
90% of what you or I read is not crap.
But passive low-information ambient whim voters / citizens do not or cannot sort through the crap.
Some of the hard right may be in the misled catagory, but I’m mostly thinking of the moderates, centrists, undecideds, that provide Bush with his winning margin even though they might not do so if they knew much about him. I don’t know how to get past the media wall in order to talk to these people. Even face-to-face one-at-a-time isn’t very effective.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
October 2, 2006 @ 4:01 pm
But John, are those people really fooled? Or have they decided that they don’t care? The two are different. And deciding not to care about torture is an expression of values, like any other.
That’s why I don’t think that there’s really a media wall, and why I’m not surprised that face-to-face one-on-one conversation isn’t very effective. Sure, the media are filtered, but the people who watch those media also want them to be filtered.
Comment by John Emerson —
October 2, 2006 @ 4:18 pm
I’m not talking about the 30-35% hard right. I mean the 30-35% in between who really have no idea what they think and put not effort into keeping informed. You seem to think that they’ve made a deliberate, well-informed existential choice to be political nulls and windsocks, but they haven’t. They just have failed to pay attention because they’re willing to leave politics to others — except they do manage to amble in to the polls to vote.
A fair number are just overwhelmed with work, maybe two jobs, and family, and maybe health problems or physical isolation, and snatches of TV is all they have.
The passive (free and nearly-free) media is not politically random at all. It’s center-right to hard right. And a lot of people depend entirely on free media.
The difficulty I have one-on-one isn’t so much any kind of hardened political views, but just a lack of any political understanding at all, with dozens of random prejudices bobbing around in the soup.