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Wednesday, December 08, 2010

You Can't Throw Teabaggers Under the Bus. There Is No Bus.

Many in the fact-based community seem to be deriving cold comfort from pointing out that the GOP insistence on ballooning the deficit to benefit the already filthy rich throws all deficit-obsessed Teabaggers under the bus. Presumably this has the consequence that the Teabaggers must be feeling very betrayed and may exact a terrible populist revenge come blah blah blah.

But, of course, the teabaggers don't care about "deficits" as a factual matter. Almost nobody does as it happens, but Teabaggers are economic illiterates, at best applying false analogies from household economizing to macroeconomic contexts to which they don't apply, but more usually just using the word "deficits" pretty much in the same way they use "welfare" or "socialism" or "United Nations": That is to say, as a way to signal their surreally misplaced resentment of imaginary black people somehow taking their imaginary country from them.

They don't know that what the GOP is doing will add to the deficit more than what most Democrats want to do. And those few who are paying attention will be told on Fox and by Rush that the opposite is true and they will believe it. Also, those very few who do know and who care a bit about it right about now won't still remember two weeks from now, let alone two years from now. Certainly no-one in the corporate media or among the Democrats will explain these things to them or remind them what happens -- the reasons? too hard, and too clueless, respectively.

And, through it all, Obama is blackofasclamicist, and that matters more than anything else.

Reality is not going to smack the Teabaggers on the forehead, and to the extent that it does it will translate to anger directed against those who are trying to help.

There is no bus. Stop waiting for the bus. We're on our own. And we have to walk from here.

6 comments:

jimf said...

> [The lumpenproletariat, the Volk] are economic illiterates,
> at best applying false analogies from household economizing
> to macroeconomic contexts to which they don't apply, but more
> usually just using the word "deficits" pretty much in the same
> way they use "welfare" or "socialism" or "United Nations":
> That is to say, as a way to signal their surreally misplaced
> resentment of imaginary black people somehow taking their
> imaginary country from them.

In the words of Tolstoy, "What then must we do?".

If it's true, then that does rather urge one to downplay the
supposed virtues of democracy, and hark back to some sort of
elitist theory of good governance.

So, leftists are tempted to throw up their hands because
the masses just can't see what's good for them.

Rightists (and "libertarian" rightists, like our friend
Peter Thiel, who says "I no longer believe that freedom and
democracy are compatible" http://www.slate.com/id/2271265 )
are tempted to treat the masses as losers in the great
game of life, to be exploited and discarded without guilt.

Does James Surowiecki's _The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are
Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business,
Economies, Societies and Nations_ really after all apply
only to guessing the contents of gumball machines, and not
to U.S. elections?

Oh dear, oh dear. What then must we do?

jollyspaniard said...

Taxes can be increased in the future and defence spending can still be cut. America is still a ridiculously wealthy country. Shave 500 billion a year off military spending and you'll save 5 trillion a decade and still be mighty militarily. No other country is in such a position.

I've had a quick scan of right wing blogs comments section and I don't hear a peep about deficits. So you're right about there being no bus.

If anything I'm disappointed by American progressives reaction. A lot of them are too shrill, sanctimonious and partisan for their own good. Obama's performed well for them and instead of being the wind in his sails they're behaving like an albatross around his neck.

jimf said...

> Reality is not going to smack the Teabaggers on the forehead. . .
>
> There is no bus. . .

Some people make quite a career out of evading reality, though for
some, of course, the bus does eventually crash.

From _Evil Genes: why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and
My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend_ by Barbara Oakley
http://www.amazon.com/Evil-Genes-Hitler-Mothers-Boyfriend/dp/1591026652/

Chapter 7, "Slobodan Milosevic, The Butcher of the Balkans"

p. 164

"As it happens, Milosevic showed impaired perception and reasoning
on a number of different occasions. For example, while international
outrage about the brutality of Serbian ethnic cleansing was
turning Yugoslavia into an outlaw state, [the] US [a]mbassador. . .
met with Milosevic one evening to attempt to negotiate a. . .
withdrawal from Bosnia. Shockingly, Milosevic denied that the
Serbs were even in Bosnia. [Adam] LeBor [, a Milosevic biographer]
notes: 'It is hard to know what Milosevic was thinking. Did he
really believe that the ambassador of the most powerful country
in the world, with extensive intelligence services, and spy satellites
that could read a numberplate, did not know what was happening
in Bosnia and who was responsible?'. . . Later, at The Hague,
Milosevic would smugly testify that 'the 1995 massacre of 7,000
unarmed Muslims at Srebrenica was carried out not by Serb
militiamen but by French intelligence.'

Milosevic's chief of general staff, General Perisi, would later
describe Milosevic as 'not living in reality, rejecting "competent
opinions and proposals" and resorting to "fraud and lies... to change
and shape people's perception of reality."' . . .

The mayor of Belgrade. . . recalled telling Milosevic '"You really
have problems; there are one hundred thousand people on the street
demonstrating against you." [Milosevic] looked at me and said,
"You must be watching too much CNN. . ."' Congressman Rod Blagojevich [!],
a Serb American from Chicago. . . said that Milosevic reminded him
of 'a defendant who had prepared himself never to admit anything and
who had repeated his version of events consistently so that he
essentially came to believe in it'. . . Another former associate observed
that Milosevic 'decides first what is expedient for him to believe,
and then he believes it.' Biographer LeBor describes Milosevic's
thinking, which bordered on delusional: 'Confronted with. . . disastrous
reality. . . Milosevic reverted to denial, outright mendacity,
and fantastical talk of wonderful economic opportunities.' Even on a
personal front, Milosevic's thought processes could conflict notably
with reality: after his father committed suicide, Milosevic avoided
all mentioned of it, except for one occasion -- in which he denied
that the suicide had occurred."

And so it goes. . .

Dale Carrico said...

America is demographically browning but also planetizing -- coming to identify with the planet as a political entity of [1] savage economic disparities and military violence that p2p-networks facilitate taking personally and [2] under profound and urgent ecological threat. All three shifts are to the benefit of the secular sustainable social democratic left in the US. Democrats need to have the courage of their conviction and frame clear cases on the basis of these and repeat them to educate enough folks who are ever more open to these conviction to translate them into policy under the institutional constraints of the US government. Part of this involves more and better Democrats rather than dis-engagement or quixotic third-party bids and other narcissisms. Also, the rest of the world may marginalize the US and get on with the real problems at hand, with the benefit of removing US insulation from the consequences of our waste and exploitation, and quickening the pace of our education. Economic/ecologic problems may not be timed conveniently for Imperial Know-Nothing Spoiled Brat America's learning curve, but there's no point in worrying about what is truly beyond our control. The pressure points are domestic demographics and international blowback. Clarity on our convictions for education purposes and pragmatism whenever the institutions occasionally even slightly align for piecemeal progressive reforms (as happened the last two years and is no longer true for two years) are what is to be done by them as can do. Seems to me.

Dale Carrico said...

Progressive Americans are spoiled too -- so many Americans think we are exceptional rather than just brutal and lucky, so too many among even the best of us expect easy results and stamp our feet like infants when we don't get them. International marginalization to puncture our bubble and let real costs and risks do their pedagogical work would be a very good thing. Of course this would bring out the ugly worst of the white racist antigay patriarchal prick Republican reptile id, but demographic realities are such that that schtick is getting tired.

As for cutting military spending and cutting the waste of our still hilariously idiot healthcare system as well as shifting from magical economic thinking (taxcuts-deregulation-and wars-4evah) to Keynesian literacy, regulation, investment, insurance -- well, sure. America could easily turn things around and become a force for extraordinary good on both the environmental and social justice fronts. Given our resources and such, we could get the world back to three fifty, we could replace the IMF with the International Clearing Union, we could empower planetary institutions like the ICC, World Environmental Court, the UN Parliament, and so on. Somebody's going to do all these things after all. My bet's are on South America or the British Commonwealth, or the EU, the second they push back against the last gap of Anglo-American neoliberal policy dinosaurs the better. America seems incapable of doing what needs to be done in time, and so is probably better marginalized. But, hell, who knows?

I'm certainly going to keep doing my best -- here, in letters to my congress critters, in classes of students, and so on. That's what people of good will and good sense, such as we are, such as we are able. That's all there is.

Dale Carrico said...

Well, to the extent that the bus is reality -- resource descent and catastrophic climate change are real even when denied, looting trust and infrastructure while depending on them leads to collapse even when denied. But to the extent that the bus is the grasp of reality in time to move from denial into action, to direct one's resistance against the proper targets, I really don't see much hope for Movement Republican types.

I really do think registration as a Republican at this point is a mild to major public declaration of mental incompetence and criminal intentions. Republicans have long been mostly scoundrels but this is something new. These people need to be identified for what they are, educated where possible, and marginalized otherwise.

As I have said, demographics can do some of this, international pressures can facilitate some of this by re-introducing real costs of The Crazy back into the picture can do some of this also, but otherwise Democrats need to get much clearer about what we want, why we want these things, how to argue for these things in a compelling way we are willing to repeat endlessly as part of who we are, and how push forward through piecemeal reform processes while keeping our eyes on the prize.