Pages

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

"Why Liberals Think What They Do"


Siren

Dear D, 

I apologize for my tardy reply.

Over time I have realized that, although I enjoy politics, I am not comfortable with merely political banter. I crave deep philosophical substrate, and at this level, Hanson does not nourish me.

C.S. Lewis's comment on ideological "tinniness" seems apt: "All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been blind as a bat not to have seen, long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. George MacDonald (the Scottish fantasist) had done more to me than any other writer; of course it was a pity he had that bee in his bonnet about Christianity. He was good in spite of it. Chesterton had more sense than all the other moderns put together; bating, of course, his Christianity. Johnson was one of the few authors whom I felt I could trust utterly; curiously enough, he had the same kink. Spenser and Milton by a strange coincidence had it too. Even among ancient authors the same paradox was to be found. The most religious (Plato, Aeschylus, Virgil) were clearly those on whom I could really feed. On the other hand, those writers who did not suffer from religion and with whom in theory my sympathy ought to have been complete -- Shaw and Wells and Mill and Gibbon and Voltaire -- all seemed a little thin, what as boys we called "tinny." It wasn't that I didn't like them. They were all (especially Gibbon) entertaining; but hardly more. There seemed to be no depth in them. They were too simple. The roughness and density of life did not appear in their books..... The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity. The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chanson --- "Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores."

Rightly or wrongly I am bored by right-wing politics.

Almost always I find it platitudinously "tinny."

***

Thanks for sending Hanson's "Why Liberals Think What They Do." 

It is admirable rhetoric... and mostly mistaken.

To begin.... life is a muddle, and in the midst of that muddle, my highest hope is progress, not perfection.

I forswear political judgments that predicate Impossible Purity.

I prefer dirt to sterility. 

A routinely overlooked truth is that The Final Solution was a quest for purity. 

Absolute purity. 

Uncompromising purity.

Intransigent purity. 

In a more general sense, it is true that impossibly pure principles generate theoretical enthusiasm while, in practice, castrating the enthusiasts who subscribe to them. (Note The Tea Party's meteoric rise followed by the suddenly real question: "Will The Republican Party survive?")

Too often the quest for perfection discourages people from achieving the good within their grasp. 

I recommend “Is Perfectionism A Curse? Paul Ryan Tells The Truth.”  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/09/paul-ryan-tells-truth.html

Like the lure of Sirens, "perfect ideology" tempts us to quit our posts here in the muddle, instead plunging to depths that seem profound but are functionally uterine.

Those who surrender to the embryonic calm of "uterine perfection" -- be it doctrinal or ideological -- tend to sideline themselves, to "feel" they're doing what's "best" when mostly they don't do much of anything... unless obstruction, obfuscation and adolescent opposition are considered achievements. 

"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice.  The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization.  We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal.  Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good.  The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” 
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Thomas Merton 

Pax on both houses

Alan

 PS "Modoc County: A Lesson In Republican Extremism and The Cult Of Freeloading." http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/modoc-county-lesson-in-republican_29.html

***

(Alan: My interlinear comments are in purple.)

Why Liberals Think What They Do

By Victor Davis Hanson 
October 30, 2012 


Note that Barack Obama is running not on his liberal record, but as a challenger against incumbent Mitt Romney who has done all sorts of terrible things like causing the 2008 meltdown (Alan: I have no memory of Obama accusing Romney of "causing the 2008 meltdown." Nor can I locate any web reference to this allegation. Hanson's statement seems a whole-cloth fabrication, close kin to Romney's accusation that Obama advocated “the politics of revenge.” ... Yeah. Right. Obama is a vengeful fellow. What else can we expect from an Islamic? ... Hanson might at least begin his argument with a statement of fact, not falsehood. While probing Hanson's claim, I came across the following allegation, also without merit. http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/09/fact-check-obama-had-more-to-do-with-2008-economic-meltdown-than-bush-ever-did/) and outsourcing jobs to China. (Alan: In a highly-finacialized, global economy, the whole thrust of capitalism is to outsource jobs. It's what our "economic system" does - and what predatory capitalists do even better.) In Obama’s view, given the supposedly tranquil world abroad, (Alan: We are living in the least violent time in history, although conservative alarmism believes otherwise.  http://paxonbothhouses.wordpress.com/2011/10/06/our-national-pastime-is-self-terrorization-violent-death-is-at-an-all-time-low/) we must try nation building at home, and thus concentrate on bold new initiatives like stimulus, infrastructure, green jobs, and federalized health care — none of which have been envisioned before, much less funded. (If Hanson took a wider view, he would see that every industrialized country - other than the United States - has not only envisioned "national" healthcare, but enacted it. As a result, the rest of the world spends half as much per capita while their citizens live longer than we Americans. At the following webpage, be sure you click to enlarge graphic http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2009/12/the-cost-of-care.html

 And to the extent Obama has a concrete example, he points to efforts of the private oil sector to find more gas and oil despite, rather than because of, his own efforts. (Solar energy IS the future. The more obstructionist we are now, -- and the more we re-focus fossil fuels -- the greater the damage inflicted on America's economy. While American "conservatives" ape Nero, every branch of the American military is now planning for unprecedented upheaval occasioned by Global Warming. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver   ///  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/31/pentagon-ranks-global-warming-destabilising-force) Conclusion? Obama himself apparently has given up on liberal ideas in lieu of Big Bird, binders, bull****ter, movie stars, and hip-hopsters, which prompts the question: does anyone believe in liberal ideology anymore — and if so, why? (To say that Obama’s agenda distills to "Big Bird, binders, bull****ters, movie stars, and hip-hopsters" is beyond absurd. The “White Right” would have nothing to fear from Obama if these were HUSSEIN'S issues. Surely Hanson is aware that Obama's real Issue is income redistribution, without which, ironically, the whole capitalist house-of-cards tumbles: You can not fuel a consumer economy when consumers receive starvation wages. Aware of this unavoidable fact, Henry Ford paid his line workers eye-poppingly high wages so they could afford the cars they manufactured, thus propelling "the virtuous cycle" of capitalist growth. The adverse results of income inequality - and the "vicious cycle" that accompanies it - are incisively probed by Reich and Kristof at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html) 

 Did California’s redistributive elite really believe that they could all but shut down new gas and oil production, strangle the timber industry, idle irrigated farmland, divert water to the delta smelt, have 37 million people use a highway system designed for 15 million, allow millions of illegal aliens to enter the state without audit, extend free medical programs to 8 million of the most recent 11 million added to the population, up taxes to among the highest in the nation, and host one-third of the nation’s welfare recipients — and not have the present chaos? (Oil and gas are doing fine: in fact they're booming. The timber industry is not strangled. Agribusiness is in good shape with the price of farmland at record highs. Yes, we need infrastructural improvement like the renovation of highways. And yes, in the short haul, these measures will be costly. But given current interest rates, there is no better time to undertake highway improvement than right now. If we delay, the relative cost of renovation becomes "magnitudes higher" - like "not fixing that leak in the roof" until the mortgage is paid off.  Admittedly, welfare is not a pretty picture but with globalization, automation, robotization and software enhancement converging to permanently eliminate "brawny" (and "brainy") "jobs," the choices are 1.) some kind of welfare or "make-work," 2.) enforced sterilization, 3.) remaking the United States in the image of Sudan, or 4.) The Final Solution. Yes, we are free to choose among these options, but let us consider them for what they are... Personally, I would priortize two years of "Obligatory National Service" - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/07/proposal-for-two-years-of-obligatory.html)


The California schools — flooded with students whose first language is not English, staffed by unionized teachers not subject to the consequences of subpar teaching, and plagued with politicized curricula that do not emphasize math, science, and reading and writing comprehension — scarcely rate above those in Mississippi and Alabama. (California’s budgetary problems date back to Proposition 13, enacted in the late 1970s when I lived in The Golden State. Even so, to say that California’s schools “scarcely rate above those in the conservative states of Mississippi and Alabama, is, at best, grandstanding. "Red" states have always had their heads up their ass, and nothing has changed except the amplification of stupidity. Mark my words: California will roar back while "The Bible Belt" continues to lag the field in everything but ideological bravado. http://www.kansascity.com/2012/11/15/3918200/californias-budget-shows-signs.html  Now that Jerry Brown has led California to the brink of budgetary surplus, I see California's imminent resurgence.)


Do Bay Area greens really believe that they that will have sufficient water if they blow up the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir? [1] Did Barack Obama think that the Keystone pipeline or new gas and oil leases in the Gulf were superfluous, or that we do not need oil to make gasoline, wheat to make flour, or to cut timber to produce wood? (The Keystone pipeline will produce a piddling 5000 permanent jobs, simultaneously doing nothing to lower the cost of gasoline. When "boom times" resume, the price of gas will go through the roof propelled by unprecedented demand from China and India. http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2011/12/14/143719155/just-how-many-jobs-would-the-keystone-pipeline-create I do not know “the green plan for Hetch Hetchy" but California’s liberal government is NOT going to jeopardize the Bay Area’s water supply. It will not happen and Hanson's back teeth are turning brown. However, if we want to play the “really believe” game, consider what happened the last two times America elected a Republican president. Fact: There is a lockstep relationship between Republican administrations and economic catastrophe. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html Although both parties are guilty of sensationalism, freaked-out alarmism is Republican mother's milk. As Mencken put it: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.")

Did liberals (and their hand-in-glove employer supporters who wished for cheap labor) think that letting in millions from Central Mexico, most without legality, English, or a high school education (and in some sense at the expense of thousands waiting in line for legal admission with capital, advanced degrees, and technological expertise), was not problematic and that soaring costs in law enforcement, the criminal justice system, the schools, and the health care industries were irrelevant? (My judge friend, AC, who also served as North Carolina state senator in the 1970s, says that as soon as vigorous recovery kicks in “we will beg Mexicans to come back, whether they’re legal or illegal." Inconvenient Truth: Big Money – mostly Republican -- lusts after cheap labor like a horny teen turned loose in a whorehouse on Daddy's credit card.)

What, then, are the motivations that drive so many to such absurdities? Note here that I am talking of the architects of liberalism, not of those who receive generous entitlements and whose desire for bigger government is thus existential and elemental.


Equality of result 
(I know no one who wants "equality of result." What "we" do want is less plutocratic inequality. Ironically, reduction of inequality is indispensable to economic health because plutocracies are, by nature, stagnant or suicidal. Plutocrats are spiritually and psychologically shrunken people who neither foster, nor tolerate, the boisterous creativity that is the sine qua non of vital western economies. You may wonder: How do we quantify income inequality? Here's how... CEO compensation increased $725% between 1978 and 2011. During that same period, the average worker’s compensation increased 5.7%. Not only does this discrepancy suck, it defaces the American body politic in any recognizable form. To quote Bill Moyers: "I will believe corporations are people when Texas executes one." Sure, we can argue that folks have "the right" to keep every goddamn penny they "earn." But in the process, they will -- as night follows day -- slit the nation's economic throat. Henry Ford would toss his cookies.  http://articles.latimes.com/2012/may/02/business/la-fi-mo-us-ceo-pay-231-times-more-than-average-workers-20120502  Again, I recommend Robert Reich and Nicholas Kristof’s articles at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/politics-and-economics-101-curricula.html)  

 Quotation: “In 1985, the top five percent of the households – the wealthiest five percent – had net worth of $8 trillion – which is a lot. Today, after serial bubble after serial bubble, the top five per cent have net worth of $40 trillion. The top five percent have gained more wealth than the whole human race had created prior to 1980.” Elsewhere in this same CBS “60 Minutes” interview, Mr. Stockman describes America's obsession with tax cuts as "religion, something embedded in the catechism," "rank demagoguery, we should call it what it is," and "We've demonized taxes. We've created... the idea that they're a metaphysical evil." And finally, this encompassing observation: "The Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves." Reagan Budget Director, David Stockman, who oversaw the biggest tax cut in the history of humankind  - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7009217n&tag=contentMain;contentAux


Keen minds from Aristotle to Montesquieu and Tocqueville have lamented that the proverbial people sometimes prefer equality under authoritarianism to inequality accompanied by personal freedom. As long as there was grinding poverty, the liberal agenda of “leveling the playing field” made sense enough — Social Security, disability insurance, the 40-hour work week, and Medicare. But once modern mass production and consumption arose, energized by globalization and the entry of billions of new foreign workers into the equation, and high technology extended the appurtenances of the aristocracy to the poor (today’s ubiquitous smart phone is 100 times more versatile than yesterday’s $3,000 primitive suitcase cell phone), how could you keep promoting government-sponsored equality for the less well-off? Ensure no one has to drive a Kia? Petition on behalf of those who do not yet have an iPad? (Wow! Hanson must have x-ray vision. Right now -- at this very moment1 -- all my friends are circulating that petition!  Fact: The playing field is less level in the United States than anywhere in the developed world.  Inequality and lack of social mobility are existential dangers to The Common Good, or, as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it “The General Welfare.” ... No wonder the American Right rarely mentions the Preamble (except for "We the People...") "General Welfare?" Yipes! The Commies are coming! Nevertheless, the Preamble, with its bedrock insistence on the "General Welfare" is America's "Mission Statement." Of course, we don't have to be "America" any more. The Sudanese Option is open. In fact, the economic equivalent of "Sharia Law" is increasingly popular with "patriots" who think coddling "job creators" is the only way to prosperity. Behind the bafflegab however, American magnates have never been so coddled as during Smirk-and-Snarl's eight years. The result? Financial ruin and a jobless catastrophe. (Oh... And rich people who grown fabulously richer than ever. Meanwhile,the typical American's net worth down has plummeted 40% since 2007. http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/11/news/economy/fed-family-net-worth/index.htm And it would have been a LOT worse if Obama hadn't stanched the hemorrhage.)

Rep. Ryan’s Undeserved Reputation for Fiscal Responsibility: His Votes in Congress Added $6.8 Trillion to Our Nation’s Federal Deficits


“Republican Rule and Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html   

Republican Spendthrifts: The Fallacy of Fiscally Conservative Republicans  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/romney-ryan-and-fallacy-of-fiscally.html


***


Weighing over 250 pounds, not rickets, is a national plague. (Alan: Yes! And it is precisely this plague that needs the Nanny State to "enforce" a modicum of healthy choices which American couch potatoes will not undertake on their own. If we were serious about reducing Medicare and Medicaid costs, we would tax sugary sodas out of existence. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/lamentably-nanny-state-is-necessary.html  ///  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/12/sugary-soda-gateway-to-unhealthy-eating.html)  Riots target sneaker stores, not food bins. Sandra Fluke naturally become the epitome of frustrated liberal-mandated equality. We are to believe that an upscale white law student, who by choice enrolls at a Catholic university, is deprived because her university will not pay for her condoms or abortion pills. Her cell phone no doubt costs more than a year’s supply of prophylactics [2]. The result is psychodrama, not class struggle, as liberals strain to find ways in which America is Les Misérables rather than the Kardashians, plagued by this obsession to step in and make everyone (except themselves) the same. (This line of reasoning is not only trivial but reveals the puerile Right's fondness for "cutesy exemplification."  If conservatives were honest with themselves, they would acknowledge their preference that “these people” not reproduce. In fact, given their worldview, free distribution of contraceptives is a no-brainer.  If conservatives were still capable of "thinking things through" -- instead of abject reliance on Impossibly Pure Principles -- they would mandate "The Pill" as a “coded line item” on electronic food stamp cards. Not only would this render welfare queens infertile, but liberals like Fluke would diminish their own reproductive capacity... What's not to applaud?  In passing, I must mention the inconvenient datum that insurance always covers the cost of Viagra. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/10/mitt-romney-flip-floppier-than-rush.html  I wonder how the GOP's "new majority" is "coming along" now that The Sanctimonious have pissed off women, Asians, blacks, Native Americans, Muslims, Hindus, Hispanics and civilized white people?)


Voters


Romney almost forfeited the election when a video was leaked about his honest, though inexact, admission that 47% of Americans would, by needs, be unsympathetic to any agenda that cut spending and taxes, given their dependence on government “stuff.” Borrowing money to pay for more entitlements for the liberal mind is good politics, killing two birds with the proverbial one stone. The less well-off are indebted to those who gave them subsidized food, health care, shelter, even cell phones and will vote accordingly to ensure the liberal political class remains in power. And as deficits grow, the calls for higher taxes on those who “didn’t build that business” and are “fat cats” and never knew when they should stop profiting only increase. Liberalism is about power and influence, impossible without millions of dependent constituents. (It is emblematic of Republican stupidity that they modeled their entire presidential convention on a backfired rhetorical flourish. The entire intent of Obama's "You didn't build that comment" was "You didn't build that on your own in ruggedly individualistic isolation." Lamentably, American conservatives are ever more reliant on deception-through-decontextualization, a practice that will not serve them well, a practice that could even be their undoing.)


“Them”


Liberals believe that there are lots of crass and greedy one-percenters who live to profit, and as refined Greeks expect grubby Romans to work while they think and plan. Like cockroaches, you cannot get rid of the one-percenters, given their elemental grasping. They will always get up at a 5 a.m. to chase the next superfluous buck in carbon-polluting oil exploration, Wall Street speculation, smoky trucking, or unsustainable farming. They are sheep with inexhaustible fleece. (True, they do not have inexhaustible fleece. But they are so heavy with their recent growth that it is time for shearing. Such an abundance of fleece occurs at regular intervals and when it does, Apply the Scissors! In fact, sheering is currently overdue. More than that, failure to shear would be catastrophic. See Ford, Reich and Kristol.) So liberals do not really believe that anyone will stop working due to Obamacare or a 40% income tax rate. (When Eisenhower presided over the Golden Days of the 1950s, the highest marginal tax rate was 91%. In light of this fact, why is 40% as terrifying as the Twin Towers coming down?) Jerry Brown (who is on the verge of getting California back in “the black”) might say of overtaxed Californians, should his 13% income tax rate pass, “Where else could they go?” (I lived in California for 11 years and it is clear to everyone with a folded cortex that the Golden State's troubles are disproportionately attributable to Proposition 13 which fixed property tax, forevermore, at 1% of real estate’s sales price.) For those who cling to their profits, you could tax them at 90% and they would still scheme to find a way to have more than others — so what does it matter if they pay more? (Not a person on the left side of the side aisle has mentioned 45% much less 90%. Not even in their wet dreams. Sure, 90% made Ike cum. But hey, Dwight was a Republican war hero... None of this B-actor and rhinestone cowboy stuff like Reagan and deserter.)


Exemption


Liberals believe that abstract caring allows them seclusion and cocooning in the real, material world. Private schools, tony upscale suburbs, nice Volvos and Lexus SUVs, jet travel to Tuscany, a fine Napa $100 wine, Harvard or Stanford for junior — all that reeks of privilege and exclusivity, and can prompt remorse. (The presumption that all hard-working capitalists are conservatives conveniently overlooks the liberal politics of Buffett, Gates and Costco founder, James Sinegal, not to mention that most of California’s successful entrepreneurs are, like the rest of the state, are actually fond of civilization. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2008/06/wage_against_the_machine.html) In some sense, Costa del Sol and Martha’s Vineyard, like John Kerry’s yacht or John Edwards’ home, are antithetical to the entire liberal value system. (John Kerry’s fortune is not his but his wife’s, the liberal heiress of Heinz Soup. Not that I feel need to defend any of "the pitiable rich." "In some sense" any allegation can be made about anyone or anything. There are enough exceptions in anyone's life story to devise an interesting indictment or two. That said, "exceptions to rules" do not -- as the conservative psyche assumes -- constitute "new rules." Exceptions are exceptions. And rules are rules.) But if one is loudly for “pay-your-fair-share” higher taxes, or for affirmative action, or for more deficit spending, then one feels absolved from guilt over his isolated privilege — and can enjoy it without lamentation. And if one makes enough money not to worry about a few more taxes or fees, then a mind at peace is a pretty good deal. Lots of those who now reside in Portola Valley and the Berkeley hills helped to promote policies whose deleterious results fell on distant others, out of mind, out of sight, far away in Porterville and Stockton.  Liberalism is an elite person’s psychological investment in enjoying a guilt-free affluence. (How can Hanson continually hit the nail on the head?!? Just today, at the marina, I was bubbling over with my fellow yactsmen about how much we enjoy guilt-free affluence! That said... nearer The Real World... Even economically, Democratic Liberalism "works" better than Republican "Conservatism."  See “Republican Rule and Economic Catastrophe: A Lockstep Relationship” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/republican-rule-and-economic.html  Also see “Personal Irresponsibility in Red States” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/05/personal-irresponsibility-in-red-states.html)

Naiveté


Large percentages of the population now work for government [3] — federal, state, or local. Millions more are divorced from the tragic world of mining or drilling where nature is unforgiving. That distance has allowed Americans in droves to disengage from both the private sector, where one either makes a profit or goes broke, and the grimy processes by which we live one more day. A San Francisco professor, a Monterey lawyer, and a Sacramento bureaucrat do not know how hard it is to raise beef, grow peaches, find and pump oil and gas, and haul logs out of the forest and into Home Depot as smooth lumber, or what it takes to build a small Ace Hardware business. The skills needed to keep a 7-Eleven viable in a rough neighborhood, I confess, dwarf those of the classics professor. (Liberal Europeans raise beef, grow peaches, pump oil and haul logs. They do these things well and more cleanly than we.  Sure, a few Mediterranean latecomers to the European Union created a mess. But, by and large, Europe is plenty profitable. Her standard of living, on average, thumps ours. American yahoos are obsessed with the fact that -- over time -- Europe grows at 2% whereas the United States grows at 3.5%. So what? This meaningless growth differential is paralleled by the difference between "civilization" and chest-thumping barbarism. Hey! I'll take civilization any day. I know a great many Europeans and they all laugh – out loud – at the prospect of moving to the United States. Inconvenient Truth: Lazy-ass capitalist paper pushers lodge most of the complaints about “lazy liberals” because most capitalist magnates – as opposed to small-scale entrepreneurs – have never raised beef, grown peaches, pumped oil or hauled logs. They certainly have not done the hard research that would elucidate the ways in which anthropogenic global warming is already evoking economic havoc.  I would bet dollars-to-donuts that the author of this article is not a real entrepreneur but “the guy” in the suit at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/brilliant-new-yorker-cartoon.html )


In the elite liberal mind, there is instead a sort of progressive Big Rock Candy Mountain. Gasoline comes right out of the ground through the nozzle into the car. Redwood 2x4s sprout from the ground like trees. Apples fall like hail from the sky; stainless steel refrigerator doors are mined inches from the surface. Tap water comes from some enormous cistern that traps rain water.  Finished granite counter tops materialize on the show room floor. Why, then, would we need Neanderthal things like federal gas and oil leases, icky dams and canals, yucky power plants, and gross chain saws — and especially those who would dare make and use them?  (Nice rhetoric… but bullshit. In general, Democrats have a much clearer idea of real production than slob-fat, red-state layabouts who are not one whit smarter than their Know-Nothing fundamentalist, slave-holding, parasitic ancestors. I live in The Bible Belt. I know. Scarlet O'Hara was only worth diddly after her world of ill-gotten wealth fell apart.)


Anger, envy, and the primordial emotions (Alan: Review The Seven Deadly Sins and notice that Cowboy Capitalism relies on the nurturance of them all. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins)


For some, especially those who are well-educated and well-spoken, a sort of irrational furor at “the system” governs their political make-up. Why don’t degrees and vocabulary always translate into big money? Why does sophisticated pontification at Starbucks earn less than mindlessly doing accounting behind a desk? We saw this tension with Michelle Obama who, prior to 2009, did not quite have enough capital to get to Aspen or Costa del Sol, and thereby, despite the huge power-couple salaries, Chicago mansion, and career titles, felt that others had far too much more than the Obamas. (“And thereby felt that others had far too much more than the Obamas.”  Karl Rove did the dire disservice of pimping irrational allegations as gospel truths and, in the process, taught an entire generation of "conservative" politicians to demagogue their addelpated constituencies with similar horse crap. One Big Lie after another they have been rendered witless. Take a look at Karl now…  “Avalanche On Bullshit Moutain” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/john-stewart-karl-rove-fox-news-and.html)  “Never been proud,” “downright mean country,” “raise the bar,” etc., followed, as expressions of yuppie angst. (Yuppie angst? Isn’t it time Hanson got out of his 1980s condo and met some real people? Yuppies? This guy's as current as a beatnik.) The more one gets, the more one believes he should get even more, and the angrier he gets that another — less charismatic, less well-read, less well-spoken — always seems to get more. (This sentence impresses me as a description of the conservative psyche, not the liberal. In any event, I do believe that Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and most other people who are better read and more eloquent than Donald Trump actually deserve more than that asshole. But I do not see them - nor myself - as envious, or inclined to "push the point." Mostly, we experience a sense of pity. It is an inconvenient truth that “half the time, shit floats." If Republicans are such smart people, why did Trump, Adelson and Romney conduct laughably inept campaigns, assiduously bamboozling themselves with self-induced delusions? These dickheads couldn’t find their way out of a condom. Most intelligent Americans don't want to imitate these jerks nor their "success."  Yes, many Americans believe they should get a bigger piece of the pie, for one reason because they "should," and for another reason to shove plutocracy back in the dark place from which it slithered forth. Check out George McGovern’s “Defense of Liberalism” - http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/01/george-mcgovern-case-for-liberalism.html  

 "The merely rich are not rich enough to rule the modern market. The things that change modern history, the big national and international loans, the big educational and philanthropic foundations, the purchase of numberless newspapers, the big prices paid for peerages, the big expenses often incurred in elections - these are getting too big for everybody except the misers; the men with the largest of earthly fortunes and the smallest of earthly aims. There are two other odd and rather important things to be said about them. The first is this: that with this aristocracy we do not have the chance of a lucky variety in types which belongs to larger and looser aristocracies. The moderately rich include all kinds of people even good people. Even priests are sometimes saints; and even soldiers are sometimes heroes. Some doctors have really grown wealthy by curing their patients and not by flattering them; some brewers have been known to sell beer. But among the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it. G. K. Chesterton )

Ooh! I feel my envy welling now!

So do not discount the envy of the sophisticated elite. The unread coal plant manager, the crass car dealer, or the clueless mind who farms 1000 acres of almonds should not make more than the sociology professor, the kindergarten teacher, the writer, the artist, or the foundation officer. (No left-winger I know proposes “income equality.” To allege otherwise is as absurd as saying "the College of Cardinals banged Mother Theresa twice a week." What we do propose is a living wage because, as Henry Ford realized before productive capitalism morphed into paper-pushing financialization... if workers don't make enough to purchase the cars they manufacture, then consumer-driven industry will never prosper. And so,  Ford paid his employees unprecedentedly hefty wages. Have you seen "Inside Job?" http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-dose-october-152011.html Contemporary capitalists are "in it" for themselves, only for themselves -- even if it means their vile economic practices kill the goose that lays the golden egg. Once globalized, it became completely inconsequential to these predators whether the United States survived in any recognizable form. Why not plutocracy? Why not theocracy? Why not Sudan? Why not the Christian equivalent of Sharia Law?) What sort of system would allow the dense and easily fooled to become better compensated (and all for what — for superfluous jet skis and snowmobiles?) than the anguished musician or tortured-soul artist, who gives so much to us and receives so much less in return? What a sick country — when someone who brings chain saws into the Sierra would make more than a UC Berkeley professor who would stop them. (Alan: The next “chapter heading” epitomizes the previous sentence. When country bumpkins with chain saws earn as much as Cal Berkeley professors, the end will be near --- and Mogadishu will be the new template for Washington D.C. Does Hanson realize that his aspiration is to collapse civilization? Again, we can “go there.” But it is good to be honest about our goals. Again, I recommend “Inside Job” for a quick survey of how Cowboy Capitalists nearly trashed it all during the Bush-Cheney Enlightenment. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2011/10/daily-dose-october-152011.html)

Nihilism


Finally, we come to a small subset that simply does not like America’s wealth and capitalism, supremacy overseas, and ubiquitous global culture — or at least believes that anything not his own must be far better (an oikophobia [4] or hatred of one’s own household). He bores us with lectures on the wonderful EU, the superior La familia romance of Latin America, the “it takes a village” values of Africa, or the Cairo speech mythologies of the Middle East.  Because America is so affluent, it allows so many the luxury to dream of how our wealth is so ill-gotten — as long as quiet others in the shadows ensure that life remains pretty good in San Francisco and Madison. Contrarianism is an innate characteristic, but one indulged without risk, only when the larger tribe is safe and secure. (Predatory capitalists, reduced to paper-pushing financialization, shun nuts-and-bolts productivity. http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/06/kevin-phillips-financialization-of.html)  In short, twenty-first century elite liberalism has become a psychological condition, not a serious blueprint on how to solve real problems. The president knows that — and so without ideas has been reduced to name-calling and sermons on Big Bird. (It was Romney who made an issue out of Big Bird. All such trivialization – whether it's the slutification of Sandra Fluke, Grover Norquist’s “Tax Pledge,” or insanely disproportional attention to the Benghazi tragedy -- is the work of ideological diversionists in the pay of plutocrats.  http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/11/not-content-with-just-one-suicide.html


Footnote: “(California’s) Proposition 13, the initiative that froze property taxes and made it nearly impossible to raise taxes in our state, went into effect in 1978, two years before California's former governor Ronald Reagan won the presidency, in part by catering to greed. Prop 13, as it came to be known, went into effect when California was still an affluent state with the best educational system in the world, including some of the top universities around, nearly free to in-staters all the way through graduate school. Tax cuts have trashed the state and that education system, and they are now doing the same to our country. The public sphere is to society what the biosphere is to life on earth: the space we live in together, and the attacks on them have parallels. What are taxes? They are that portion of your income that you contribute to the common good. Most of us are unhappy with how they're allocated - though few outside the left talk about the fact that more than half of federal discretionary expenditures go to our gargantuan military, more money than is spent on the next 14 militaries combined.”


Article printed from Works and Days: http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson




URLs in this post:


[3] now work for government: http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/6677.html
[4] oikophobia:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704147804575455523068802824.html

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)