Since I’m told we live in a democracy, I’d like to make a suggestion. With important financial reform currently being considered, I propose an immediate mandate that President Obama, his cabinet, and all members of the U.S. Senate and House assemble on the floor of the Capitol Building, lock themselves inside with three tons of Orville Redenbacher popcorn (that should cover Barney Frank), 552 sleeping bags (that should cover Barney Frank!), and watch the last two seasons of Survivor from start to finish uninterrupted. It’ll be just like that scene from Grease where are all the chicks are hanging around in their curlers and nighties, impromptu pillow fights and gossip galore, spontaneous outbursts into songs about boys and fiscal policy. Totally boss! Check your pulse if the image of a Pelosi/Clinton lingerie pillow fight doesn’t get your juices flowing.
So why Survivor? Well, for those of you who don’t watch it, it’s very entertaining and the last two seasons in particular have been off the charts fun. And with all the excellent work our representatives have been doing in Washington, I just thought they deserved a reward/break. But seriously folks… A guy named Russell Hantz is the reason the show’s been so great lately. And our representatives would be wise to familiarize themselves with this man as they consider financial reform.
To the uninitiated, the basic idea of the show is to be the last person standing. The way to do it, is to not get voted off by your fellow tribesmen, make the finals, and then get the people that have been voted off to award you a million bucks over the other finalist(s) sitting next to you. And that’s the real trick. How do you get the people who you kicked off to turn around and hand you a million bucks?
Don’t ask Hantz because he sure as shit couldn’t tell you. Having made the final two seasons in a row (an historic achievement), Hantz received only two votes last season and not a single vote for the million this season. That’s really bad.
Now for anyone who’s seen him play, Hantz not getting any votes is about as shocking as Rush reneging on his promise to move to Costa Rica if the healthcare bill passed. (I guess he hates brown people more than Socialism after all. But oh the poor Costa Ricans! How will they manage without his Royal Lardness seething at them over the airwaves betwixt ravenous potato chip and opiate binges? Pray for syndication compadres! On the flip side, it would have been fascinating to see how he handled issues of immigration in Costa Rica, considering he’d be one himself and the whole brown/white dynamic would be reversed. Maybe if Obama is successful in banning salt (or chubby unwarranted arrogance) we’ll get to find out. Probably a long shot though.)
But enough about fat assholes. The reason Russell Hantz didn’t get any votes is that he’s a gargantuan dickhole of the first order. Not only is he unable to disguise it, he’s downright proud of it! As I watched him take dirty play to depths previously unreached, even by Tonya Harding standards, I couldn’t help but feel that this guy reminded me of someone. Week after week he’d lie, bully, manipulate, and coerce adversaries and allies alike with a giant shit eating grin plastered across his smug troll face the entire time. So two years in a row he makes the final, and two years in a row he loses in a rout, seeing no love from those he so gleefully screwed over.
But man did he play hard. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to make it through another vote. No lie he wouldn’t tell, no promise he wouldn’t make, no ally he wouldn’t backstab. He bent every single rule the game had and violated every moral code known to man and was an asshole about it the whole time, but never actually broke any rules. And regret? Ahh, you gotta be kidding me, regret is for wimps. “I don’t regret anything I did in the game” said Hantz in an interview.
At a certain point during the season it all clicked for me. This guy IS corporate America incarnate. The game of Survivor is the United States, where the corporations come to battle it out with one another. Hantz is the reason I shiver when I hear guys like Paul Ryan call for the deregulation of markets. As it is these people have no issue breaking a law or skirting a regulation if the cost/benefit ratio is favorable. And you want to reduce the incentive they have not to fuck the rest of us over? HAS THE WHOLE WORLD GONE CRAZY?!
It’s tough to wrap your head around the fact that, anatomy aside, conservative, free market worshiping businessmen are in fact alien beings compared to anyone else. Apart from masturbating to Atlas Shrugged, they just don’t see the world or life in the same way that the rest of us do. To them, money is God, exalted to its full extent; life is a currency comprised of time; the world, the grid iron where the game is played out. You don’t live or grow, you win or lose.
To illustrate this point I’d like to call on my favorite subject to serve as an example. I remember watching a panel about political issue framing that featured, among others, my absolute favorite conservative cheesedick and everyone’s favorite butch lesbian pollster, Frank Luntz. During the introductions, Luntz notices George Soros sitting in the audience. Giddy as a schoolgirl, Luntz can hardly contain himself. Ignoring the purpose of the introductions entirely, Luntz is so excited he nearly pees his pants in front of the audience. Channeling his inner Rip Taylor, Luntz gushes, “Oh my God, George Soros! I’ve never been this close to so much money in my life!” Giggling nervously to himself, “Adopt me, please!” More fidgety giggling. Everyone watching feels dirty just having witnessed it.
When the goal is to make as much money as possible and life is approached as a game that’s played to win or lose, money is deified and anything goes in pursuit of it. For Luntz, Soros is a demigod because he has so much money. Indeed the conservative exaltation of capital trumps even their hatred for liberals! What does that tell you about the true nature of the ideology?
Guys like Hantz and Luntz are the reason we need strong regulations. Here’s how it works. We determine the rules of engagement, and the corporations –just like Hantz- do everything they can to win within the confines of that system (best case scenario!). The more you relax the rules, the further they’ll go. These people aren’t restrained by morality, they’re restrained only by regulation, and many times not even that. The universal truth is that when profit is exalted and greed glorified, competitors in the market will always play the game as hard as they can, pushing the rules to the absolute limits, violating moral and ethical conduct along the way (only because we can’t regulate it), and many of them downright breaking the rules when the risk/reward ratio calls for it. It’s how Hantz plays, it’s how Wall Street plays.
These guys are animals, killers, predators. They’re nothing like us. When you cage them, they hurl themselves against the bars trying to escape, but bound by the steel confines the zookeeper lives. Remove the cage, and the zookeeper’s hat will enjoy a pleasant cruise down a digestive tract.
So, like Hantz, they play as hard as they can, justifying any unsavory actions and alleviating any burdensome guilt by reminding themselves that it’s a competition, the goal is to win, and that they’re playing within the rules of it. They delude themselves further in their subscription to an ideology that tells them that to behave as selfishly as possible is the most noble of actions. That their selfishness will ultimately serve the greater good. Their justification is the same as Hantz’s. “It’s a game.”
And, like the US corporate sector, if the rules of the game aren’t to your liking, just lobby to get them changed! Hantz did just that on the results show after he found out he failed to receive a single vote for the million. “I believe there is a flaw in the system” he said, and then proceeded to make a transparent, feeble, self serving case to Survivor Host Jeff Probst to alter the entire structure of the game (in tact for twenty seasons) to better suit Hantz’s win at all costs style of play. Sound familiar? Luckily for fans of the show, the host of Survivor isn’t as stupid (or buyable) as the United States Government. Unlike the successes corporations have had lobbying for the repeal of Glass Steagall (among many, many others), Hantz was shrugged off by Probst who clearly found the plea pathetic and laughable. If only the Fed answered to the host of Survivor.
Capitalism is wise in that it respects the nature of humankind. We all have different goals and dreams and motivations, and ultimately we do act in our self interest (though that’s not necessarily synonymous with selfishness). Market economies and private ownership allow us to pursue those ends as we see fit. But relaxing regulations on markets is to ignore the nature of humankind. Sometimes, we can get carried away and become single minded in the pursuit of our objectives. The rules need to be there to discourage behavior driven by our darker nature. It’s naive to believe that we’re all identical and that we all have the same goals, but it’s equally naive to worship a free market system and believe that it somehow extracts the best from us while suppressing the worst. We’ve seen the extreme results of both, and neither is desirable.
In Hantz, we’ve been given a two season glimpse into the psyche of the modern businessman. Take a long, hard look at him when you’re considering legislation. This is the guy you have to legislate for. He’s the one you’re up against. He’s playing as hard as he can. He doesn’t care what he has to do to win. He doesn’t care who is in his way. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks about him. He’ll try to change the rules if they don’t suit him. He’ll do whatever it takes to achieve his objective. He has no conscience, no regret, no friends. “It’s a game” he’ll tell you.
Fine. Then Obama and crew need to make sure that the rules of the game are rigid and the police are awake and alert because we’ve seen the effects that game play like this has on lives and the environment when the rules are flaccid and the cops are asleep at the wheel. Enron? Halliburton? AIG? Goldman Sachs? Is any of this ringing a bell? So please do us all a favor and take a long look at Hantz. This is the dark side of man run amok. Regulate for it please.
And as with all reality shows there needs to be a shocking and dramatic finale, so here it is. What does Russell Hantz do for a living? He owns a multi-million dollar oil company! You can’t make this stuff up! Hey Russ, you wouldn’t have any rigs down in the Gulf that we should know about, would ya?
Friday, June 4, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The Lookout : A retelling of the boy who cried wolf for modern times
As I have long hoped, my brilliant friends have decided to contribute to the blog and I urge them to do so more! Inspired by the same topic of conversation from Copenhagen Hold Em poker night, below is a story written by Ben Pearson that I found to be pretty effing awesome. Enjoy!
The Lookout : A retelling of the boy who cried wolf for modern times
by Ben Pearson
There once was a small village living down in a valley lined by a mountain range on all sides. All along this range there were outposts, and at each outpost a member of the village was assigned to, among other things, keep a lookout for wolves. No wolf had ever entered into the valley before, but the villagers knew that if one did, it might eat most of the villagers very quickly. Some debated how many villagers a wolf could actually eat, but nevertheless all agreed it was a grave threat.
On one day many years ago, one of the outposts rang their alarm bell, sure that he saw a wolf descending into the valley. Another outpost nearby saw the same thing, and began to ring his bell too. Soon a third and fourth, fifth, six and seventh outpost were all looking in the direction of the supposed wolf. These later outposts however had a better view, and one of them happened to be an expert on very large deer that sometimes visited the valley. "Its just a large deer," he declared, and soon the others saw it too and all the bells stopped ringing.
A few years later a similar incident occurred - of the hundreds of outposts lining the valley- only a few rang their bells before others spotted the false alarm, reported their findings and the bells died down.
Then one evening a few bells began to ring once again. The other outposts went to their lookouts expecting to see a large deer, but low and behold it definitely wasn't a deer! Very slowly a large wolf-like shape was descending into the valley. None could see the wolf completely, as the sun was setting, but each could see enough to ring their bell. One outpost saw a long bushy tail, another could see clearly some very large wolf-like ears. One by one more and more outposts began to ring their bells until 13 of the 16 outposts were ringing their alarm bell. Incidentally, two of the three remaining outposts did not ring their bell because they could not see anything, and the third refrained because although he saw it clearly, he was not convinced that wolfs posed any real danger at all.
Down in the village Bob the hog farmer was very distraught. Plans had been made for this occasion to set loose most of his hogs onto various paths leading out of the valley. The idea was that this would lead the wolf out of the valley as it chased the hogs. At each path hunters were camped, so that they could easily shoot and kill the wolf insuring that it did not return.
Suffice it say, Bob was not happy. He had worked his whole life to raise pigs and his herd of them was only so large because of his great sacrifice and ingenuity over the years. Hogs was all he knew, and to release so many was like to loose a part of himself. A few of the villagers too were unhappy, because they enjoyed eating bacon more than anything else, and were sure that the price of it would go up after this evening.
As villagers began to surround Bob's farm, Bob stood firmly at his gate.
"Remember a few years ago, when we thought it was a wolf but it was a deer? How do we know that its really a wolf?" Bob asked of the approaching villagers.
"Almost all the bells are ringing this time Bob," one villager answered. "Last time only a few rang before the others quieted them down," said another.
"I already donated 2 hogs last winter to be delivered to another valley and keep the wolfs there," Bob reminded the villagers. "So surely I take this threat as seriously if not more than any of you. I'm just not convinced that a wolf is approaching," he continued.
The villagers were unimpressed. "You must release your hogs!" one shouted impatiently.
"If I release my hogs, many in the village will be hungry this winter," Bob said in return. "You think you want me to release them now, but you will likely regret it this winter, especially if there is no wolf!"
There was a moment of silence at this, as some of the larger villagers rubbed their bellies and considered a winter with no hogs. Finally a cousin of one of the lookouts spoke, "There is a wolf. They have seen its bushy tail and it long wolf ears and two of its hind legs. You must release the hogs now!"
One of the larger villagers replied, "A tail and ears? Is that all? Surely we should not go hungry until we see the entire wolf."
Another large villager added, "Look at us, we are acting crazy. In the past we have thought there were wolves but they were only deer. Because of our fear, we are not thinking this through carefully."
The alarms along the mountain range continued to ring, and the wolf entered the village and quickly ate an old woman who was hard of hearing and had not heard the warnings.
"See there, it is a wolf for sure, now release the Hogs," cried the villagers.
Bob, convinced now that it was a wolf, turned toward his the pen to release his hogs. Just then one of the largest villagers grabbed Bob's arm.
"Bob, think of what your doing, we all may go hungry this winter," he said. "Anyhow there is no proof that releasing the hogs will work as planned."
Bob nodded but looked confused.
"We have already seen for sure that the wolf likes to eat old women," the villager continued, "and many of our old women are soon to die anyhow. Perhaps we should send our old women to the path leading in and out of the valley."
A few of the villagers agreed, but others did not and began to shout protests. In turn the ones who agreed began to shout even louder. By now the alarm bells along the mountain range were ringing so loudly, and so many villagers were shouting, that it became hard to hear exactly what anyone was saying at all. In the midst of all of this shouting and confusion, the wolf arrived at the villagers and ate them all very quickly.
The Lookout : A retelling of the boy who cried wolf for modern times
by Ben Pearson
There once was a small village living down in a valley lined by a mountain range on all sides. All along this range there were outposts, and at each outpost a member of the village was assigned to, among other things, keep a lookout for wolves. No wolf had ever entered into the valley before, but the villagers knew that if one did, it might eat most of the villagers very quickly. Some debated how many villagers a wolf could actually eat, but nevertheless all agreed it was a grave threat.
On one day many years ago, one of the outposts rang their alarm bell, sure that he saw a wolf descending into the valley. Another outpost nearby saw the same thing, and began to ring his bell too. Soon a third and fourth, fifth, six and seventh outpost were all looking in the direction of the supposed wolf. These later outposts however had a better view, and one of them happened to be an expert on very large deer that sometimes visited the valley. "Its just a large deer," he declared, and soon the others saw it too and all the bells stopped ringing.
A few years later a similar incident occurred - of the hundreds of outposts lining the valley- only a few rang their bells before others spotted the false alarm, reported their findings and the bells died down.
Then one evening a few bells began to ring once again. The other outposts went to their lookouts expecting to see a large deer, but low and behold it definitely wasn't a deer! Very slowly a large wolf-like shape was descending into the valley. None could see the wolf completely, as the sun was setting, but each could see enough to ring their bell. One outpost saw a long bushy tail, another could see clearly some very large wolf-like ears. One by one more and more outposts began to ring their bells until 13 of the 16 outposts were ringing their alarm bell. Incidentally, two of the three remaining outposts did not ring their bell because they could not see anything, and the third refrained because although he saw it clearly, he was not convinced that wolfs posed any real danger at all.
Down in the village Bob the hog farmer was very distraught. Plans had been made for this occasion to set loose most of his hogs onto various paths leading out of the valley. The idea was that this would lead the wolf out of the valley as it chased the hogs. At each path hunters were camped, so that they could easily shoot and kill the wolf insuring that it did not return.
Suffice it say, Bob was not happy. He had worked his whole life to raise pigs and his herd of them was only so large because of his great sacrifice and ingenuity over the years. Hogs was all he knew, and to release so many was like to loose a part of himself. A few of the villagers too were unhappy, because they enjoyed eating bacon more than anything else, and were sure that the price of it would go up after this evening.
As villagers began to surround Bob's farm, Bob stood firmly at his gate.
"Remember a few years ago, when we thought it was a wolf but it was a deer? How do we know that its really a wolf?" Bob asked of the approaching villagers.
"Almost all the bells are ringing this time Bob," one villager answered. "Last time only a few rang before the others quieted them down," said another.
"I already donated 2 hogs last winter to be delivered to another valley and keep the wolfs there," Bob reminded the villagers. "So surely I take this threat as seriously if not more than any of you. I'm just not convinced that a wolf is approaching," he continued.
The villagers were unimpressed. "You must release your hogs!" one shouted impatiently.
"If I release my hogs, many in the village will be hungry this winter," Bob said in return. "You think you want me to release them now, but you will likely regret it this winter, especially if there is no wolf!"
There was a moment of silence at this, as some of the larger villagers rubbed their bellies and considered a winter with no hogs. Finally a cousin of one of the lookouts spoke, "There is a wolf. They have seen its bushy tail and it long wolf ears and two of its hind legs. You must release the hogs now!"
One of the larger villagers replied, "A tail and ears? Is that all? Surely we should not go hungry until we see the entire wolf."
Another large villager added, "Look at us, we are acting crazy. In the past we have thought there were wolves but they were only deer. Because of our fear, we are not thinking this through carefully."
The alarms along the mountain range continued to ring, and the wolf entered the village and quickly ate an old woman who was hard of hearing and had not heard the warnings.
"See there, it is a wolf for sure, now release the Hogs," cried the villagers.
Bob, convinced now that it was a wolf, turned toward his the pen to release his hogs. Just then one of the largest villagers grabbed Bob's arm.
"Bob, think of what your doing, we all may go hungry this winter," he said. "Anyhow there is no proof that releasing the hogs will work as planned."
Bob nodded but looked confused.
"We have already seen for sure that the wolf likes to eat old women," the villager continued, "and many of our old women are soon to die anyhow. Perhaps we should send our old women to the path leading in and out of the valley."
A few of the villagers agreed, but others did not and began to shout protests. In turn the ones who agreed began to shout even louder. By now the alarm bells along the mountain range were ringing so loudly, and so many villagers were shouting, that it became hard to hear exactly what anyone was saying at all. In the midst of all of this shouting and confusion, the wolf arrived at the villagers and ate them all very quickly.
Monday, May 17, 2010
Copenhagen Hold Em
Hours into a recent, and far too infrequent, poker game with four of my best friends in the world, the wife of my buddy who was hosting came home. Upon hearing ten seconds of the topic of conversation she remarked astutely that we sure don’t talk about the things we used to talk about on poker night. Thankfully it’s true that what seemed important in our twenties seems embarrassingly unimportant in our thirties. So involved were we in our discussion about the proper role of the state in the control of fossil fuel emissions that over the first hour or so we had only played about ten hands. We had to establish a rule whereby the dealer was held responsible for the fluid progression of the game--read, crack the whip--just so we’d remember to play.
One of the interesting things about growing older with a tight knit group of childhood friends is that you get to see them develop their own political outlooks, and not all of them develop along the same trajectory of political ideology. If nothing else, this makes for more interesting and spirited discussions on poker night.
This particular night the discussion revolved mostly around climate change. When an exciting flop didn’t rudely intrude, we discussed the severity of the issue at bay and debated the merits of different political solutions.
Unsurprisingly, for a poker game held amongst residents of Southern California, most participants agreed that climate change is a very serious problem that should be addressed swiftly and directly. But one of our buddies took the counter position. Despite tendencies towards more conservative political positions, when the evening was over he admitted that while he didn’t feel the urgency that the rest of us did about climate change he was largely playing devil’s advocate for shits and gigs. In addition to serving as the key ingredient in what would have otherwise been a more mundane discussion where all conversants agreed with one another (yawn), he enabled us to respectfully challenge each other’s positions while engaging in an important and crucial dialogue. I could only hope that similar poker games were being held across the country.
As the night progressed we challenged one another more and more. As can happen, as the empty beer bottles accumulated the conversation grew livelier, to the point that the devil’s advocate actually began to feel ganged up on. After we date raped him- sorry, different poker night. And don’t worry, we all learned a valuable lesson… just like on Different Strokes, but I digress. Anyway, he felt ganged up on. Admittedly, my own emotions ran hotter as what I perceived to be reasonable and logical points were largely discounted; and no doubt vice versa. But what really stuck with me was an argument he made that I had heard before from Dennis Miller along the exact same lines. It must be orbiting through the Republican cosmos which means soon it’ll be rattling through the right wing echo chamber like oxycontin and hatred through Limbaugh’s bulbous belly or crazy trying to escape from Beck’s vapid porcine noggin like Tim Robbins in Shawshank… New game, the never ending simile.
Anyway, the argument goes something like this:
“Okay, here we are facing what some so called experts contend is a catastrophic challenge. But in a situation that affects the great masses, isn’t it always beneficial to maintain some semblance of healthy skepticism? And why, when I try to impart some healthy skepticism into the discussion am I shouted down and made to feel ostracized by those who have obediently swallowed whatever information the scientific community has spoon fed them? None of us are climate change experts, so we shouldn’t just accept the present current of scientific contention as gospel. It’s like the believers in climate change are some sort of pagan cult that vehemently shout down the opposition at the slightest inkling of dissent. To curb your collective hysteria, you need a sober voice like mine; someone who doesn’t jump the gun whenever someone tells you that they think the shit’s hitting the fan.”
When I heard this argument from Dennis Miller it bothered me. When I heard it from my buddy it bothered me more. At the time I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but after thinking about it for awhile, I think I figured it out.
First and foremost, no one who calls themselves a friend wants their buddy to feel ganged up on, ostracized, and unable to speak his mind amongst his own pals. Dennis Miller I give two shits about, upsetting one of my closest friends is a different story.
Second, it’s an annoyingly effective argument. Astounding as it no doubt sounds to conservatives, liberals like to think of themselves as the sober voice of reason in the national political discussion. When you tell them that they’re acting like members of a hysterical pagan cult it catches them off guard. In their minds, that’s how the other guys act. The argument momentarily demolishes their self identity and they’re immediately forced to rethink their position and reflect on their behavior. It’s just in the liberal DNA. Most conservatives aren’t stricken with the burdensome ailments of self reflection and it can make for a stronger, if less logical, debate style.
Finally, it’s logically fallacious. Being emotional about something doesn’t mean that you’re wrong about it. Being a member of a group of people who are emotional about something doesn’t either.
I wanted to understand why I was more emotional over this particular issue than I was over others that I feel just as strongly about. There’s no shortage of hysterical, angry liberals who’ve earned the caricatures bestowed upon them by their conservative counterparts, but I pride myself on being able to hold a polite conversation about volatile issues amongst even the most fervent members of dissenting ideologies. Why was I getting worked up?
Sometimes it’s easier for me to work things out through analogy (read, LSD trip), so I gave it a go here and it helped clarify things for me. Hopefully it translates.
Imagine that you live in a house with only one other person; a roommate. (Awesome so far, right?) Okay, one of the stipulations of your living arrangement is that in order to make any decision about the house, you both have to agree to it. (Just go with it.) So one day you’re in the kitchen and you begin to smell smoke. You tell your roommate that you smell smoke and he says, “Yeah, maybe”. You tell him that you think you should call the fire department, but he says not to be hasty. (In this fantasy scenario, it costs money to call the fire department and he doesn’t want to incur the costs if it’s just a false alarm.)
Now, in addition to this, you live in a neighborhood comprised solely of neighbors who are professional fire inspectors. (What are the odds?!) Slowly, they begin to gather on your front lawn. After a while, they begin to get agitated and start shouting to you that your house is on fire and that you should call the fire department. You look to your roommate who looks undaunted. He calmly points out to you that of the dozens of fire inspectors screaming at you, one or two don’t really seem too concerned. (They must be the smart ones!) He reminds you of the time a couple of years back when some fire inspectors encouraged a neighbor to call the fire department only to find out that there was no fire. He cautions you that it could be that these inspectors benefit in some way each time the fire department gets called and that he doesn’t want to jump the gun. (‘Cause people join the fire department to make money, just like scientists, see?)
So, every possession you care about is in this house. It seems ludicrous to you to ignore, not just the fire inspectors, but the smoke that you can smell as well, just to protect against a nominal fee or a chance that the inspectors might be getting kickbacks. Rational as you normally are, you start to get a little worked up. Minutes pass. Hours go by as you debate with your roommate about whether or not to call. You get more excited. As smoke begins to billow from your vents you get even more worked up. When the inspectors jump and down on your lawn like chimps on meth, stopping just short of flinging their own feces at you as a warning, you can’t take it anymore and you lose it. “Hey dipshit, it seems pretty clear that our house is on fire! You might not give a shit about this house but I sure as hell do! WE NEED TO CALL THE FUCKING FIRE DEPARTMENT.”
He looks at you calmly but sternly and then hits you with it. “Hey, I’m just maintaining healthy skepticism here. I don’t know why every time I suggest that we think about this more and not act hastily, you get so emotional. It’s like you’re a brainwashed member of some pagan cult.”
(Okay, how good was that?!)
To my buddy who played devil’s advocate I offer my apology. You deserve a calm and respectful discussion regardless of anything else. But for guys like Dennis Miller and anyone else who has a role in swaying national sentiment and a hand in generating political capital, try to understand. We’re emotional because we’re pretty sure that our house is on fire. Sadly and obviously it would seem that we can’t call the fire department without your say so. Most issues discussed at the national level have some measure of urgency to them, but the stakes of climate change couldn’t be higher. The urgency with which the vast consensus of credible experts demand we address this issue ensures that it will continue to be an emotionally charged one so long as some of us think all of our shit is about to go up in flames WHILE THOSE WITH THE POWER TO MAKE THE F%@$ING PHONE CALL THAT WILL EXTINGUISH THE GODD%@$ED FIRE CONTINUE TO PLAY KEEP AWAY WITH THE MOTHER@#%@ING TELEPHONE!!!!!
And I’m spent…
One of the interesting things about growing older with a tight knit group of childhood friends is that you get to see them develop their own political outlooks, and not all of them develop along the same trajectory of political ideology. If nothing else, this makes for more interesting and spirited discussions on poker night.
This particular night the discussion revolved mostly around climate change. When an exciting flop didn’t rudely intrude, we discussed the severity of the issue at bay and debated the merits of different political solutions.
Unsurprisingly, for a poker game held amongst residents of Southern California, most participants agreed that climate change is a very serious problem that should be addressed swiftly and directly. But one of our buddies took the counter position. Despite tendencies towards more conservative political positions, when the evening was over he admitted that while he didn’t feel the urgency that the rest of us did about climate change he was largely playing devil’s advocate for shits and gigs. In addition to serving as the key ingredient in what would have otherwise been a more mundane discussion where all conversants agreed with one another (yawn), he enabled us to respectfully challenge each other’s positions while engaging in an important and crucial dialogue. I could only hope that similar poker games were being held across the country.
As the night progressed we challenged one another more and more. As can happen, as the empty beer bottles accumulated the conversation grew livelier, to the point that the devil’s advocate actually began to feel ganged up on. After we date raped him- sorry, different poker night. And don’t worry, we all learned a valuable lesson… just like on Different Strokes, but I digress. Anyway, he felt ganged up on. Admittedly, my own emotions ran hotter as what I perceived to be reasonable and logical points were largely discounted; and no doubt vice versa. But what really stuck with me was an argument he made that I had heard before from Dennis Miller along the exact same lines. It must be orbiting through the Republican cosmos which means soon it’ll be rattling through the right wing echo chamber like oxycontin and hatred through Limbaugh’s bulbous belly or crazy trying to escape from Beck’s vapid porcine noggin like Tim Robbins in Shawshank… New game, the never ending simile.
Anyway, the argument goes something like this:
“Okay, here we are facing what some so called experts contend is a catastrophic challenge. But in a situation that affects the great masses, isn’t it always beneficial to maintain some semblance of healthy skepticism? And why, when I try to impart some healthy skepticism into the discussion am I shouted down and made to feel ostracized by those who have obediently swallowed whatever information the scientific community has spoon fed them? None of us are climate change experts, so we shouldn’t just accept the present current of scientific contention as gospel. It’s like the believers in climate change are some sort of pagan cult that vehemently shout down the opposition at the slightest inkling of dissent. To curb your collective hysteria, you need a sober voice like mine; someone who doesn’t jump the gun whenever someone tells you that they think the shit’s hitting the fan.”
When I heard this argument from Dennis Miller it bothered me. When I heard it from my buddy it bothered me more. At the time I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why, but after thinking about it for awhile, I think I figured it out.
First and foremost, no one who calls themselves a friend wants their buddy to feel ganged up on, ostracized, and unable to speak his mind amongst his own pals. Dennis Miller I give two shits about, upsetting one of my closest friends is a different story.
Second, it’s an annoyingly effective argument. Astounding as it no doubt sounds to conservatives, liberals like to think of themselves as the sober voice of reason in the national political discussion. When you tell them that they’re acting like members of a hysterical pagan cult it catches them off guard. In their minds, that’s how the other guys act. The argument momentarily demolishes their self identity and they’re immediately forced to rethink their position and reflect on their behavior. It’s just in the liberal DNA. Most conservatives aren’t stricken with the burdensome ailments of self reflection and it can make for a stronger, if less logical, debate style.
Finally, it’s logically fallacious. Being emotional about something doesn’t mean that you’re wrong about it. Being a member of a group of people who are emotional about something doesn’t either.
I wanted to understand why I was more emotional over this particular issue than I was over others that I feel just as strongly about. There’s no shortage of hysterical, angry liberals who’ve earned the caricatures bestowed upon them by their conservative counterparts, but I pride myself on being able to hold a polite conversation about volatile issues amongst even the most fervent members of dissenting ideologies. Why was I getting worked up?
Sometimes it’s easier for me to work things out through analogy (read, LSD trip), so I gave it a go here and it helped clarify things for me. Hopefully it translates.
Imagine that you live in a house with only one other person; a roommate. (Awesome so far, right?) Okay, one of the stipulations of your living arrangement is that in order to make any decision about the house, you both have to agree to it. (Just go with it.) So one day you’re in the kitchen and you begin to smell smoke. You tell your roommate that you smell smoke and he says, “Yeah, maybe”. You tell him that you think you should call the fire department, but he says not to be hasty. (In this fantasy scenario, it costs money to call the fire department and he doesn’t want to incur the costs if it’s just a false alarm.)
Now, in addition to this, you live in a neighborhood comprised solely of neighbors who are professional fire inspectors. (What are the odds?!) Slowly, they begin to gather on your front lawn. After a while, they begin to get agitated and start shouting to you that your house is on fire and that you should call the fire department. You look to your roommate who looks undaunted. He calmly points out to you that of the dozens of fire inspectors screaming at you, one or two don’t really seem too concerned. (They must be the smart ones!) He reminds you of the time a couple of years back when some fire inspectors encouraged a neighbor to call the fire department only to find out that there was no fire. He cautions you that it could be that these inspectors benefit in some way each time the fire department gets called and that he doesn’t want to jump the gun. (‘Cause people join the fire department to make money, just like scientists, see?)
So, every possession you care about is in this house. It seems ludicrous to you to ignore, not just the fire inspectors, but the smoke that you can smell as well, just to protect against a nominal fee or a chance that the inspectors might be getting kickbacks. Rational as you normally are, you start to get a little worked up. Minutes pass. Hours go by as you debate with your roommate about whether or not to call. You get more excited. As smoke begins to billow from your vents you get even more worked up. When the inspectors jump and down on your lawn like chimps on meth, stopping just short of flinging their own feces at you as a warning, you can’t take it anymore and you lose it. “Hey dipshit, it seems pretty clear that our house is on fire! You might not give a shit about this house but I sure as hell do! WE NEED TO CALL THE FUCKING FIRE DEPARTMENT.”
He looks at you calmly but sternly and then hits you with it. “Hey, I’m just maintaining healthy skepticism here. I don’t know why every time I suggest that we think about this more and not act hastily, you get so emotional. It’s like you’re a brainwashed member of some pagan cult.”
(Okay, how good was that?!)
To my buddy who played devil’s advocate I offer my apology. You deserve a calm and respectful discussion regardless of anything else. But for guys like Dennis Miller and anyone else who has a role in swaying national sentiment and a hand in generating political capital, try to understand. We’re emotional because we’re pretty sure that our house is on fire. Sadly and obviously it would seem that we can’t call the fire department without your say so. Most issues discussed at the national level have some measure of urgency to them, but the stakes of climate change couldn’t be higher. The urgency with which the vast consensus of credible experts demand we address this issue ensures that it will continue to be an emotionally charged one so long as some of us think all of our shit is about to go up in flames WHILE THOSE WITH THE POWER TO MAKE THE F%@$ING PHONE CALL THAT WILL EXTINGUISH THE GODD%@$ED FIRE CONTINUE TO PLAY KEEP AWAY WITH THE MOTHER@#%@ING TELEPHONE!!!!!
And I’m spent…
Monday, May 3, 2010
Back
So it's been awhile since I've posted anything. The last entry was The Trust Deficit Part II. Since then, two things have conspired to delay a follow up.
First, I found out last week that I was accepted into UCLA and I’ve been consumed with trying to figure out how to make their color scheme more masculine without having to overhaul it entirely. Tradition has its place you know. I thought at first that the blinding radiance of my gruff machismo would have a photosynthetic effect, and that the colors would grow manlier just by basking in my potent virility. But then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that my masculinity actually ranks somewhere between that of Ellen DeGeneres and George Will.
National Masculinity Rankings (2010 U.S. Census Bureau)
645,942: Ellen DeGeneres
645,943: Ryan Fisher
645,944: George Will
Deck me out in baby blue and canary yellow and I fall closer to Elijah Wood.
National Masculinity Rankings (2010 U.S. Census Bureau)
245,695,320: Dakota Fanning
245,695,321: Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
245,695,322: Elijah Wood
So that plan’s shot to shit.
Then I thought about calling one of the D.C. public relations firms employed by our two political parties but came to my senses when I realized that if they’re worth anything close to what they’re paid then our elected officials must actually be entirely corrupt, glue sniffing, hobo molesters instead of the mostly corrupt, alcoholic, hobo molesters we’ve been led to believe they are. Plus I don’t have any money.
Plan C involves calling Erik Prince and convincing him to adorn the Blackwater (now known as Xe) mercenaries in Bruin blue and gold. While this would no doubt toughen up the soft image the colors currently connote, I (unlike our President apparently) am concerned about potential blowback from Iraqis and Afghanis whose families have been inconvenienced (read raped and murdered) by Blackwater security forces operating in the Middle East. After last season’s limp college basketball performance we have enough on our hands without having to worry about a makeshift dirty bomb detonating at Pauley Pavilion.
So as of now there is no plan, but I’ll come up with something.
The other thing was that I didn’t really have anymore to say on the subject of The Trust Deficit for now, but since I tailed the last one with “Part III coming soon”, I felt obligated to come up with something. But most trilogies suck and I’m not gonna force a Matrix Revolutions out just for the sake of symmetry. So I’m moving on but reserve the right as master of my own little slice of cyber space to revisit the issue as I see fit.
This has also taught me a valuable lesson. The beauty of the blog is that there are no rules but the ones that you make for yourself. But an environment completely devoid of structure isn’t conducive to attracting or keeping readers. So I’m committing to a minimum of one new post every week from here on out and adding a couple of new features to the blog. Since I love to share little tidbits of pop culture with anyone who’ll humor me, I’m adding a “Song of the Week”, “Quote of the Week”, and “Moment of the Week” to the blog. Hopefully I can share a little beauty, humor, and knowledge this way as well.
Thanks for continuing to read. I hope you enjoy the new-ish format.
First, I found out last week that I was accepted into UCLA and I’ve been consumed with trying to figure out how to make their color scheme more masculine without having to overhaul it entirely. Tradition has its place you know. I thought at first that the blinding radiance of my gruff machismo would have a photosynthetic effect, and that the colors would grow manlier just by basking in my potent virility. But then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and realized that my masculinity actually ranks somewhere between that of Ellen DeGeneres and George Will.
National Masculinity Rankings (2010 U.S. Census Bureau)
645,942: Ellen DeGeneres
645,943: Ryan Fisher
645,944: George Will
Deck me out in baby blue and canary yellow and I fall closer to Elijah Wood.
National Masculinity Rankings (2010 U.S. Census Bureau)
245,695,320: Dakota Fanning
245,695,321: Ariel (The Little Mermaid)
245,695,322: Elijah Wood
So that plan’s shot to shit.
Then I thought about calling one of the D.C. public relations firms employed by our two political parties but came to my senses when I realized that if they’re worth anything close to what they’re paid then our elected officials must actually be entirely corrupt, glue sniffing, hobo molesters instead of the mostly corrupt, alcoholic, hobo molesters we’ve been led to believe they are. Plus I don’t have any money.
Plan C involves calling Erik Prince and convincing him to adorn the Blackwater (now known as Xe) mercenaries in Bruin blue and gold. While this would no doubt toughen up the soft image the colors currently connote, I (unlike our President apparently) am concerned about potential blowback from Iraqis and Afghanis whose families have been inconvenienced (read raped and murdered) by Blackwater security forces operating in the Middle East. After last season’s limp college basketball performance we have enough on our hands without having to worry about a makeshift dirty bomb detonating at Pauley Pavilion.
So as of now there is no plan, but I’ll come up with something.
The other thing was that I didn’t really have anymore to say on the subject of The Trust Deficit for now, but since I tailed the last one with “Part III coming soon”, I felt obligated to come up with something. But most trilogies suck and I’m not gonna force a Matrix Revolutions out just for the sake of symmetry. So I’m moving on but reserve the right as master of my own little slice of cyber space to revisit the issue as I see fit.
This has also taught me a valuable lesson. The beauty of the blog is that there are no rules but the ones that you make for yourself. But an environment completely devoid of structure isn’t conducive to attracting or keeping readers. So I’m committing to a minimum of one new post every week from here on out and adding a couple of new features to the blog. Since I love to share little tidbits of pop culture with anyone who’ll humor me, I’m adding a “Song of the Week”, “Quote of the Week”, and “Moment of the Week” to the blog. Hopefully I can share a little beauty, humor, and knowledge this way as well.
Thanks for continuing to read. I hope you enjoy the new-ish format.
Monday, April 12, 2010
The Trust Deficit - Part II
If you haven’t read Part I yet, you can check it out beneath Part II. You really should read it first, one coming before two and all.
The Trust Deficit – Part II
So how did we get here? Where did the trust deficit come from? It stems from a combination of things.
First and foremost, a well funded effort to obfuscate any claim at all that threatens to upset the interests of those who hold wealth and power.
That effort has been frighteningly effective. Take climate change. It really is the perfect example because it demonstrates the impressive scope that the obfuscation effort is capable of spanning. It’s one thing to take credible science or some sort of quantifiable data that people accept as trustworthy and flip it on its head by providing contrarian science and data. That’s not too difficult. You just need to find or hire dissenting scientists. Finding a dissenting voice isn’t tough; there are always those who go against the grain. Take this numb nuts with the impressive sounding credentials and substitute a flat Earth for climate change skepticism.
“In 1956, Samuel Shenton, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Geographic Society took over the Universal Zetetic Society and helped to found the International Flat Earth Society, which he ran, as "organizing secretary" from his home in Dover, in Britain. When satellite images taken from outer space showed the Earth as a sphere rather than flat the society were undaunted; Shenton remarked: "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye."
Or, you hire them. Like big tobacco did/does, and pay for junk science. Again, easy. All you need is money.
And both are very effective means of providing the contrarian “evidence” needed to obfuscate a debate based solely on data. Once you have contrarian data you feed it to the pundits who saturate the airwaves with the new data, and only the new data. You never hear Hannity or Beck reference any piece of information that doesn’t support their narrative, infinite as that information may be.
If you’re successful in poisoning the data reservoir, the objective is to sway the general public, now completely befuddled by which facts it can trust – the real ones or the manufactured ones – towards your side of the aisle by reinforcing the contrarian data that you’ve manufactured with “common sense” talking points. Once again the pundits are called in, and since nobody can be sure which data is accurate, an appeal to common sense is made.
But what if common sense is overwhelmingly and inherently aligned against your cause as it is for the conservatives in the so called climate change debate? Is it possible to influence people’s minds to the point that they’ll not only reject trusted data – like consensus amongst the scientific community that include esteemed groups like the National Academy of Sciences - but reject common sense as well? You bet your ass.
Think about it. What makes more intuitive sense?
• That climate change consensus is the result of a broadly organized and centralized international conspiracy amongst money grubbing scientists or…
• An epidemic of group think has suddenly begun plaguing a group of people (scientists) who have been trained their entire lives to reject group think and established theory, and who use doubt as a fundamental pillar of methodology within their discipline or…
• That entrenched wealth and power - big oil in this case - are intentionally obfuscating the issue in an attempt to maintain wealth and power?
It’s utterly ridiculous. And there’s plenty more.
We can see the effects of fossil fuel emissions every day with our own eyes in the form of smog above our cities. A simple Google search will provide you all the video of melting glaciers you can handle. It makes intuitive sense to infer that the giant plumes of smoke we see shooting into the sky from factories cause the giant clouds of smog we see hovering over Mexico City, Los Angeles, and industrial China, places with tons of factories. And it makes sense that the dramatic increase in carbon emissions as a result of rampant global industrialization is the cause of increasing temperatures and melting ice caps. It doesn’t require a leap of faith. Pollution wasn’t a problem, but then we started burning tons of shit, and as the population exploded we burned even more shit, and low and behold the planet got sick. A child could put these things together.
The experts reinforce such obvious and natural conclusions. It makes sense to trust our experts; we trust them with our lives every single day. This is the same group of people who using the exact same methodology have figured out how to put a man on the moon and fight disease. If the top ten thousand doctors in the world diagnosed you with cancer would you ask for another opinion or start treatment?
It all adds up. You have to be taught not to reach these conclusions because not reaching them is counterintuitive.
But here we are. Day by day less and less Americans are convinced of man made climate change in spite of the facts. We’ve just learned that the last decade was the warmest on record. We’ve just learned that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, the first was 2005, and all of the next warmest years have occurred since 1998. The Greenland Ice Sheet is going bye-bye, which means I’ll probably have to move because the ocean is estimated to rise 21 feet once it’s all melted away. Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire just broke a record that’s stood for 132 years when the ice melted earlier than ever before, a result of temperatures in Concord seven and a half degrees higher than normal. These aren’t wing-nut sources of science straddling the fringe, this shit comes from NASA.
If all of the data coming from the sources we have historically trusted are saying the same thing, and if what’s being said is directly in line with what we witness with our own eyes, and if every fiber of common sense engrained in us is aligned with the data and the visual evidence, then why are we increasingly skeptical?
Why does increased skepticism seem more prominent amongst conservatives than among liberals?
And why is this increasing doubt a phenomenon unique to Americans? (We don’t even register on the poll. Only 49% of Americans believe that global warming is the result of human activities according to this Gallup poll. South Korea and Japan top the list at 92% and 91% repectively.)
Poll
Is it a coincidence that the people whose skepticism has increased most dramatically are those most likely to frequent American conservative media outlets? Of course not.
It’s the obfuscation stupid. Contrarian data bought and paid for by entrenched wealth and power and drilled into our skulls by the pundits they hire, whom we trust. It’s how political capital is purchased in America today, plain and simple.
Maybe the overwhelming data supporting man made climate change is just the result of a global conspiracy amongst the nefarious scientific community or perhaps it stems from a worldwide epidemic of group think suddenly plaguing a discipline historically rooted in doubt, and maybe burning shit really doesn’t cause smog, and even if it does maybe smog isn’t dangerous to humans or the environment, and maybe the ice caps melting is just a coinciding correlation of exploding industrialism and not the result of it, and maybe the planet getting warmer is just the planet cycling, and maybe all of the scientists have gone collectively stupid at the same time.
Makes sense I guess and I hope it’s true because I don’t want to move. But on the off chance that there is such a thing as man made climate change, I’d like to suggest that we set up filtration systems in the homes of those promulgating the skepticism and funnel all carbon emissions through them before environmental exposure. If it really is harmless, they shouldn’t mind.
Part III to be posted soon.
The Trust Deficit – Part II
So how did we get here? Where did the trust deficit come from? It stems from a combination of things.
First and foremost, a well funded effort to obfuscate any claim at all that threatens to upset the interests of those who hold wealth and power.
That effort has been frighteningly effective. Take climate change. It really is the perfect example because it demonstrates the impressive scope that the obfuscation effort is capable of spanning. It’s one thing to take credible science or some sort of quantifiable data that people accept as trustworthy and flip it on its head by providing contrarian science and data. That’s not too difficult. You just need to find or hire dissenting scientists. Finding a dissenting voice isn’t tough; there are always those who go against the grain. Take this numb nuts with the impressive sounding credentials and substitute a flat Earth for climate change skepticism.
“In 1956, Samuel Shenton, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Geographic Society took over the Universal Zetetic Society and helped to found the International Flat Earth Society, which he ran, as "organizing secretary" from his home in Dover, in Britain. When satellite images taken from outer space showed the Earth as a sphere rather than flat the society were undaunted; Shenton remarked: "It's easy to see how a photograph like that could fool the untrained eye."
Or, you hire them. Like big tobacco did/does, and pay for junk science. Again, easy. All you need is money.
And both are very effective means of providing the contrarian “evidence” needed to obfuscate a debate based solely on data. Once you have contrarian data you feed it to the pundits who saturate the airwaves with the new data, and only the new data. You never hear Hannity or Beck reference any piece of information that doesn’t support their narrative, infinite as that information may be.
If you’re successful in poisoning the data reservoir, the objective is to sway the general public, now completely befuddled by which facts it can trust – the real ones or the manufactured ones – towards your side of the aisle by reinforcing the contrarian data that you’ve manufactured with “common sense” talking points. Once again the pundits are called in, and since nobody can be sure which data is accurate, an appeal to common sense is made.
But what if common sense is overwhelmingly and inherently aligned against your cause as it is for the conservatives in the so called climate change debate? Is it possible to influence people’s minds to the point that they’ll not only reject trusted data – like consensus amongst the scientific community that include esteemed groups like the National Academy of Sciences - but reject common sense as well? You bet your ass.
Think about it. What makes more intuitive sense?
• That climate change consensus is the result of a broadly organized and centralized international conspiracy amongst money grubbing scientists or…
• An epidemic of group think has suddenly begun plaguing a group of people (scientists) who have been trained their entire lives to reject group think and established theory, and who use doubt as a fundamental pillar of methodology within their discipline or…
• That entrenched wealth and power - big oil in this case - are intentionally obfuscating the issue in an attempt to maintain wealth and power?
It’s utterly ridiculous. And there’s plenty more.
We can see the effects of fossil fuel emissions every day with our own eyes in the form of smog above our cities. A simple Google search will provide you all the video of melting glaciers you can handle. It makes intuitive sense to infer that the giant plumes of smoke we see shooting into the sky from factories cause the giant clouds of smog we see hovering over Mexico City, Los Angeles, and industrial China, places with tons of factories. And it makes sense that the dramatic increase in carbon emissions as a result of rampant global industrialization is the cause of increasing temperatures and melting ice caps. It doesn’t require a leap of faith. Pollution wasn’t a problem, but then we started burning tons of shit, and as the population exploded we burned even more shit, and low and behold the planet got sick. A child could put these things together.
The experts reinforce such obvious and natural conclusions. It makes sense to trust our experts; we trust them with our lives every single day. This is the same group of people who using the exact same methodology have figured out how to put a man on the moon and fight disease. If the top ten thousand doctors in the world diagnosed you with cancer would you ask for another opinion or start treatment?
It all adds up. You have to be taught not to reach these conclusions because not reaching them is counterintuitive.
But here we are. Day by day less and less Americans are convinced of man made climate change in spite of the facts. We’ve just learned that the last decade was the warmest on record. We’ve just learned that 2009 was the second warmest year since 1880, the first was 2005, and all of the next warmest years have occurred since 1998. The Greenland Ice Sheet is going bye-bye, which means I’ll probably have to move because the ocean is estimated to rise 21 feet once it’s all melted away. Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire just broke a record that’s stood for 132 years when the ice melted earlier than ever before, a result of temperatures in Concord seven and a half degrees higher than normal. These aren’t wing-nut sources of science straddling the fringe, this shit comes from NASA.
If all of the data coming from the sources we have historically trusted are saying the same thing, and if what’s being said is directly in line with what we witness with our own eyes, and if every fiber of common sense engrained in us is aligned with the data and the visual evidence, then why are we increasingly skeptical?
Why does increased skepticism seem more prominent amongst conservatives than among liberals?
And why is this increasing doubt a phenomenon unique to Americans? (We don’t even register on the poll. Only 49% of Americans believe that global warming is the result of human activities according to this Gallup poll. South Korea and Japan top the list at 92% and 91% repectively.)
Poll
Is it a coincidence that the people whose skepticism has increased most dramatically are those most likely to frequent American conservative media outlets? Of course not.
It’s the obfuscation stupid. Contrarian data bought and paid for by entrenched wealth and power and drilled into our skulls by the pundits they hire, whom we trust. It’s how political capital is purchased in America today, plain and simple.
Maybe the overwhelming data supporting man made climate change is just the result of a global conspiracy amongst the nefarious scientific community or perhaps it stems from a worldwide epidemic of group think suddenly plaguing a discipline historically rooted in doubt, and maybe burning shit really doesn’t cause smog, and even if it does maybe smog isn’t dangerous to humans or the environment, and maybe the ice caps melting is just a coinciding correlation of exploding industrialism and not the result of it, and maybe the planet getting warmer is just the planet cycling, and maybe all of the scientists have gone collectively stupid at the same time.
Makes sense I guess and I hope it’s true because I don’t want to move. But on the off chance that there is such a thing as man made climate change, I’d like to suggest that we set up filtration systems in the homes of those promulgating the skepticism and funnel all carbon emissions through them before environmental exposure. If it really is harmless, they shouldn’t mind.
Part III to be posted soon.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The Trust Deficit - Part I
I’m trying to keep these entries accessible. Most people these days, me included, don’t have the time or patience to read 3,000 words in one sitting. So I’m breaking this piece up into several parts which cover what I believe is the most important issue facing us today and truly sits at the heart of everything that’s wrong with our democracy. The trust deficit.
The Trust Deficit – Part One
If you didn’t see Jon Stewart skewer Glenn Beck like a Kalua pig Thursday night, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It was a bonafide dipshit luau and it was all I could do to not throw on my grass skirt and fire dance around my living room like a bone-in-nose Tongan warrior. Stewart brought his A game and it was perhaps fifteen of the greatest minutes of political satire the world has ever seen.
And it’s a nice segue for me because I’m gonna take the Glenn Beck route on this one, common sense being so en vogue these days and all. Not to mention, there’s a galactic deficit of trust in this country, which means that in the current climate any article that attempts to use data to substantiate its claims is ironically less trustworthy than one that just makes good intuitive sense to people. For example, I just saw Stephen Moore – a giant lactating milk-toast Randian Reaganite – argue against CBO backed data that states that the current healthcare bill will save $1.3 trillion by 2029 by saying that it can’t because the bill covers more people. See? Fuck everything else in the bill geared towards cutting costs and fuck the CBO estimates. If it covers more people it has to cost more, facts be damned! Of course if he’d had the facts or the CBO on his side he’d have argued both at the top of his lungs. But he doesn’t, so we get the Beck treatment.
Sadly, plenty of Americans are far more amicable to such a style, and it’s not entirely unclever, if wholly bereft of legitimate content. When I heard Moore make his moronic, fact absent, data obstinate argument I cringed, envisioning millions of Americans staring vacantly at the boob tube and nodding in unison. And I get it. It sounds right, even if it isn’t. And in this day and age, where data is no longer trusted, people go with what sounds right.
This deficit of trust in the information we’re provided is, I think, the single greatest threat facing our democracy today and here’s why. We live in a world drowning in rhetoric. Fact is the one thing we can rely on to help us sort truth from bullshit. If we throw fact out the window, we’re left with persuasion and coercion as the driving forces behind our actions. And that begs the following question. In this day and age, of the people and institutions we have regular access to that provide us our information, who’s best positioned to persuade and coerce us? In other words, in a world full of rhetoric, where fact is irrelevant, who do we trust to guide us?
Certainly not the politicians, who relentlessly let us down and are plagued and mired in scandal after scandal. They’re beholden to campaign contributions in order to keep their jobs and so beholden to those who control access to media channels and campaign funding. And certainly not representatives from big business who have demonstrated without exception that they’ll screw anyone at anytime for anything so long as there’s a buck in it for them. And if you listen to the Right, you can’t trust science or the CBO or anything you learn in our liberally eschewed collegiate system. And if you listen to either party, you can’t trust anything that comes out of a think tank because they’re all partisan propaganda machines staffed by ideologues and zealots. Even organizations that were founded to be a solution to this very problem, as unbiased non-partisan hubs for information, aren’t trusted. The right will tell you that factcheck.org is a liberal outlet.
For every credible study, report, poll, piece of data, chart or graph that’s accessible, there is either another contradicting it or a trusted figure, be it pundit or politician, telling you that it can’t be trusted. It’s too much for anyone to handle. Most people who try to mine information on their own give up because there is no definitive trusted source anymore. Everything has to be vetted. This is all relatively new to us and we simply don’t have the proper equipment or training to trudge through this blizzard of bullshit on our own. In the Age of Information, with the vastness of the internet at our disposal as a resource, it’s truly more difficult than ever to find credible information.
Add to that, that Americans – those who still have jobs anyhow – work more hours per year than anyone else in the industrialized world, and that our average work hours per week has gone up consistently over the last half century. So even if we knew how to sift through all the nonsense, we don’t have the time to.
It really is the perfect storm.
We can’t trust facts and we can’t trust our leaders. So who do we turn to? The pundits! And why? Because they act and sound like they understand all the shit that we can’t. They sound like they’ve done the legwork and reached rigid conclusions based on hard data. The more convinced they sound, the more popular they are. It’s why Glenn Beck is popular.
And here’s the proof. In the drum up to the Iraq War in 2002, Fox News carpet bombed the airwaves with talk of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. It was so effective that even in the wake of the 9/11 Commission’s report, which was released almost two years later in the spring of 2004 and stated flatly and outright that there was no link whatsoever between them, fifty percent of Americans still insisted that the link existed. You just can’t battle spin with facts when people have been corralled into trusting the former over the latter.
Illustrations like this – and there is no shortage of them – make one thing pretty clear. When media has such a dramatic impact on public opinion, and that media acts irresponsibly and only in their own interest, and facts are considered by the populous to be malleable and untrustworthy, your democracy is begging for a serious beat-down. Right now, we’re that guy in the bar whose had nine too many and keeps hitting on the lady friend of the no-neck beef stack checking ID at the door.
Part II of The Trust Deficit will be posted within the next few days.
The Trust Deficit – Part One
If you didn’t see Jon Stewart skewer Glenn Beck like a Kalua pig Thursday night, you owe it to yourself to check it out. It was a bonafide dipshit luau and it was all I could do to not throw on my grass skirt and fire dance around my living room like a bone-in-nose Tongan warrior. Stewart brought his A game and it was perhaps fifteen of the greatest minutes of political satire the world has ever seen.
And it’s a nice segue for me because I’m gonna take the Glenn Beck route on this one, common sense being so en vogue these days and all. Not to mention, there’s a galactic deficit of trust in this country, which means that in the current climate any article that attempts to use data to substantiate its claims is ironically less trustworthy than one that just makes good intuitive sense to people. For example, I just saw Stephen Moore – a giant lactating milk-toast Randian Reaganite – argue against CBO backed data that states that the current healthcare bill will save $1.3 trillion by 2029 by saying that it can’t because the bill covers more people. See? Fuck everything else in the bill geared towards cutting costs and fuck the CBO estimates. If it covers more people it has to cost more, facts be damned! Of course if he’d had the facts or the CBO on his side he’d have argued both at the top of his lungs. But he doesn’t, so we get the Beck treatment.
Sadly, plenty of Americans are far more amicable to such a style, and it’s not entirely unclever, if wholly bereft of legitimate content. When I heard Moore make his moronic, fact absent, data obstinate argument I cringed, envisioning millions of Americans staring vacantly at the boob tube and nodding in unison. And I get it. It sounds right, even if it isn’t. And in this day and age, where data is no longer trusted, people go with what sounds right.
This deficit of trust in the information we’re provided is, I think, the single greatest threat facing our democracy today and here’s why. We live in a world drowning in rhetoric. Fact is the one thing we can rely on to help us sort truth from bullshit. If we throw fact out the window, we’re left with persuasion and coercion as the driving forces behind our actions. And that begs the following question. In this day and age, of the people and institutions we have regular access to that provide us our information, who’s best positioned to persuade and coerce us? In other words, in a world full of rhetoric, where fact is irrelevant, who do we trust to guide us?
Certainly not the politicians, who relentlessly let us down and are plagued and mired in scandal after scandal. They’re beholden to campaign contributions in order to keep their jobs and so beholden to those who control access to media channels and campaign funding. And certainly not representatives from big business who have demonstrated without exception that they’ll screw anyone at anytime for anything so long as there’s a buck in it for them. And if you listen to the Right, you can’t trust science or the CBO or anything you learn in our liberally eschewed collegiate system. And if you listen to either party, you can’t trust anything that comes out of a think tank because they’re all partisan propaganda machines staffed by ideologues and zealots. Even organizations that were founded to be a solution to this very problem, as unbiased non-partisan hubs for information, aren’t trusted. The right will tell you that factcheck.org is a liberal outlet.
For every credible study, report, poll, piece of data, chart or graph that’s accessible, there is either another contradicting it or a trusted figure, be it pundit or politician, telling you that it can’t be trusted. It’s too much for anyone to handle. Most people who try to mine information on their own give up because there is no definitive trusted source anymore. Everything has to be vetted. This is all relatively new to us and we simply don’t have the proper equipment or training to trudge through this blizzard of bullshit on our own. In the Age of Information, with the vastness of the internet at our disposal as a resource, it’s truly more difficult than ever to find credible information.
Add to that, that Americans – those who still have jobs anyhow – work more hours per year than anyone else in the industrialized world, and that our average work hours per week has gone up consistently over the last half century. So even if we knew how to sift through all the nonsense, we don’t have the time to.
It really is the perfect storm.
We can’t trust facts and we can’t trust our leaders. So who do we turn to? The pundits! And why? Because they act and sound like they understand all the shit that we can’t. They sound like they’ve done the legwork and reached rigid conclusions based on hard data. The more convinced they sound, the more popular they are. It’s why Glenn Beck is popular.
And here’s the proof. In the drum up to the Iraq War in 2002, Fox News carpet bombed the airwaves with talk of links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. It was so effective that even in the wake of the 9/11 Commission’s report, which was released almost two years later in the spring of 2004 and stated flatly and outright that there was no link whatsoever between them, fifty percent of Americans still insisted that the link existed. You just can’t battle spin with facts when people have been corralled into trusting the former over the latter.
Illustrations like this – and there is no shortage of them – make one thing pretty clear. When media has such a dramatic impact on public opinion, and that media acts irresponsibly and only in their own interest, and facts are considered by the populous to be malleable and untrustworthy, your democracy is begging for a serious beat-down. Right now, we’re that guy in the bar whose had nine too many and keeps hitting on the lady friend of the no-neck beef stack checking ID at the door.
Part II of The Trust Deficit will be posted within the next few days.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Paul Ryan - Nationalizing Industry to Save the Free Market
Republicans and Libertarians alike are smitten. They’ve spent the last few weeks falling all over themselves for a guy that they hope is the next big thing for the Right, Congressman Paul Ryan.
A couple of weeks ago, their dream hunk gave a very interesting and very revealing response when asked by Benjy Sarlin from the Daily Beast about yes votes cast by Ryan for both TARP and the auto bailouts – both Bush initiatives - that seemingly contradict his professed ideology. “I'm a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP... represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral," he said. "I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system."
Holy Santa Claus shit, where do I start? I’ve never seen this much stupid crammed into two sentences before.
First a little background on Ryan. He’s a congressman from Wisconsin who has received millions in Wall Street contributions, no surprise there. It also bears noting that he is Sarah Palin’s favorite young Republican, also shocking. Palin loves him so much she went so far as to suggest that he aim for the presidency in 2012. Thankfully, for those of us not interested in an American future that resembles the Mad Max environment, Ryan, in a seldom witnessed act of sanity, ignored advice from Sarah Palin and has ruled out a presidential run. Although this has led some to speculate that the ticket might instead be Palin/Ryan Beyond Thunderdome. Really. God help us.
Let’s also note that Ryan voted yes for the fraudulent bank handout, aka TARP, whose investigators have opened 86 criminal investigations, 77 of which were ongoing as of December 31, 2009. As the inspector general’s report states, “These investigations include complex issues concerning suspected TARP fraud, accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bank fraud, mortgage fraud, mortgage servicer misconduct, fraudulent advance-fee schemes, public corruption, false statements, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and tax-related investigations.” Yeah, TARP was awesome. Who could have foreseen that hurling bags of cash with virtually no strings attached at the very criminals who had just completed the greatest robbery in American history would result in more fraud? Not Ryan apparently. He still believes it saved us from a second Great Depression. Oh boy…
Then he votes no, like almost every single other Republican, against the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka economic stimulus package, which according to a report issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office helped create up to 1.6 million jobs as of Fall 2009 and stoke real GDP up to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been without it. Unlike his beloved TARP, Ryan called the ARRA “wasteful spending” and then, in a story that’s getting pretty old, requested funds from it for his district in a not so shocking act of blatant hypocrisy.
Also, and as quoted above, Ryan throws down the new favorite GOP/Libertarian buzz word, “statist”, which we should take the opportunity to define because we’re going to be hearing it a lot from now on from guys like him. It incorporates the conflicting ideologies of fascism and socialism under one umbrella, conveniently skirting the issue Conservatives were having with labeling Obama as both. In fairness to the Right, Obama has only been serving in the federal government for thirteen years, which clearly isn’t enough time to ascertain whether his goal is to turn this country into present day Finland or Nazi Germany, but they know he’s up to something.
And how. At one point during the interview, Ryan attributes his votes for TARP and the auto bailouts to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, a book about the supposed liberal origins of fascism and the Nazi Party. It’s been received more as historical fantasy than a work to be taken seriously, but I guess nobody’s mentioned that to Ryan who saw a looming second Great Depression as the perfect opportunity for the conniving Obama to enact his liberal-fascist-Nazi-socialist agenda.
Lost on Ryan apparently is the all too obvious. If Obama really did have a motive to sweep through a huge statist agenda, why would he have proposed, fought for, and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which by all accounts kept the second Depression at bay? The economy was headed off a cliff. The ARRA effectively spoiled any opportunity for Obama to enact his “real” agenda by saving the economy from collapsing under the weight of free-market fueled greed and deregulation. So why would he do it? And these are the same guys supposedly proposing the “common sense” solutions to our problems. Right now they’re sitting in a room somewhere trying to figure out why Obama sabotaged his own master plan and how it’ll enable him to enact his “new real” agenda somewhere down the line. For someone who they don’t believe has enough sense to effectively lead this country they sure do give him a lot of credit for concocting multi-stage schemes that would make a super villain proud. They can’t decide whether he’s Forrest Gump or the unholy love spawn of Bobby Fisher and Lex Luther.
And here’s the best part. Ryan’s preventative strategy for blocking what he believed to be an impending Obama secret master plan to control the state was – wait for it - to nationalize companies from the financial sector and bail out the auto industry! So genius- a preemptive strike! He stopped Obama’s huge statist agenda by beating him to the punch and enacting one on his own!
Oh how it must have stung. If Ayn Rand gave a shit about anything but herself she would have rolled over in her grave. He admits it was the only move for him because, if there were a collapse, the citizens would have stormed the streets ready to lynch a free-market system that had just Godzilla’d the American economy as if it was Odo Island, and that’s true. But here’s the big question. How bad has free-market ideology let down its disciples when die hard Friedmanites like Ryan have to vote to nationalize industry to save their hallowed free-market? And why on Earth would any sane person want to resurrect such an obviously destructive system so clearly at odds with their supposed core values?
Like most ardent free-marketeers, Ryan probably isn't willing to acknowledge that the principles of free-market ideology - deregulation, exaltation of greed, win at all costs profiteering, etc. - were quite obviously, to anyone who isn't a blind ideologue or hasn't been deluded by the corporate fueled spin machine, at the absolute core of the economic collapse. But this guy is on a whole different level of denial.
If he really is a true believer, he’s delusional. If not, he’s a shill. Either way Sarah Palin’s right, he really is the perfect presidential candidate for the GOP. Bring him on.
A couple of weeks ago, their dream hunk gave a very interesting and very revealing response when asked by Benjy Sarlin from the Daily Beast about yes votes cast by Ryan for both TARP and the auto bailouts – both Bush initiatives - that seemingly contradict his professed ideology. “I'm a limited-government, free-enterprise guy, but TARP... represented a moment where we had no good options and we were about to fall into a deflationary spiral," he said. "I believe Obama would not only have won, but would have been able to sweep through a huge statist agenda very quickly because there would have been no support for the free-market system."
Holy Santa Claus shit, where do I start? I’ve never seen this much stupid crammed into two sentences before.
First a little background on Ryan. He’s a congressman from Wisconsin who has received millions in Wall Street contributions, no surprise there. It also bears noting that he is Sarah Palin’s favorite young Republican, also shocking. Palin loves him so much she went so far as to suggest that he aim for the presidency in 2012. Thankfully, for those of us not interested in an American future that resembles the Mad Max environment, Ryan, in a seldom witnessed act of sanity, ignored advice from Sarah Palin and has ruled out a presidential run. Although this has led some to speculate that the ticket might instead be Palin/Ryan Beyond Thunderdome. Really. God help us.
Let’s also note that Ryan voted yes for the fraudulent bank handout, aka TARP, whose investigators have opened 86 criminal investigations, 77 of which were ongoing as of December 31, 2009. As the inspector general’s report states, “These investigations include complex issues concerning suspected TARP fraud, accounting fraud, securities fraud, insider trading, bank fraud, mortgage fraud, mortgage servicer misconduct, fraudulent advance-fee schemes, public corruption, false statements, obstruction of justice, money laundering, and tax-related investigations.” Yeah, TARP was awesome. Who could have foreseen that hurling bags of cash with virtually no strings attached at the very criminals who had just completed the greatest robbery in American history would result in more fraud? Not Ryan apparently. He still believes it saved us from a second Great Depression. Oh boy…
Then he votes no, like almost every single other Republican, against the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, aka economic stimulus package, which according to a report issued by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office helped create up to 1.6 million jobs as of Fall 2009 and stoke real GDP up to 3.2 percent higher than it would have been without it. Unlike his beloved TARP, Ryan called the ARRA “wasteful spending” and then, in a story that’s getting pretty old, requested funds from it for his district in a not so shocking act of blatant hypocrisy.
Also, and as quoted above, Ryan throws down the new favorite GOP/Libertarian buzz word, “statist”, which we should take the opportunity to define because we’re going to be hearing it a lot from now on from guys like him. It incorporates the conflicting ideologies of fascism and socialism under one umbrella, conveniently skirting the issue Conservatives were having with labeling Obama as both. In fairness to the Right, Obama has only been serving in the federal government for thirteen years, which clearly isn’t enough time to ascertain whether his goal is to turn this country into present day Finland or Nazi Germany, but they know he’s up to something.
And how. At one point during the interview, Ryan attributes his votes for TARP and the auto bailouts to Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, a book about the supposed liberal origins of fascism and the Nazi Party. It’s been received more as historical fantasy than a work to be taken seriously, but I guess nobody’s mentioned that to Ryan who saw a looming second Great Depression as the perfect opportunity for the conniving Obama to enact his liberal-fascist-Nazi-socialist agenda.
Lost on Ryan apparently is the all too obvious. If Obama really did have a motive to sweep through a huge statist agenda, why would he have proposed, fought for, and signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which by all accounts kept the second Depression at bay? The economy was headed off a cliff. The ARRA effectively spoiled any opportunity for Obama to enact his “real” agenda by saving the economy from collapsing under the weight of free-market fueled greed and deregulation. So why would he do it? And these are the same guys supposedly proposing the “common sense” solutions to our problems. Right now they’re sitting in a room somewhere trying to figure out why Obama sabotaged his own master plan and how it’ll enable him to enact his “new real” agenda somewhere down the line. For someone who they don’t believe has enough sense to effectively lead this country they sure do give him a lot of credit for concocting multi-stage schemes that would make a super villain proud. They can’t decide whether he’s Forrest Gump or the unholy love spawn of Bobby Fisher and Lex Luther.
And here’s the best part. Ryan’s preventative strategy for blocking what he believed to be an impending Obama secret master plan to control the state was – wait for it - to nationalize companies from the financial sector and bail out the auto industry! So genius- a preemptive strike! He stopped Obama’s huge statist agenda by beating him to the punch and enacting one on his own!
Oh how it must have stung. If Ayn Rand gave a shit about anything but herself she would have rolled over in her grave. He admits it was the only move for him because, if there were a collapse, the citizens would have stormed the streets ready to lynch a free-market system that had just Godzilla’d the American economy as if it was Odo Island, and that’s true. But here’s the big question. How bad has free-market ideology let down its disciples when die hard Friedmanites like Ryan have to vote to nationalize industry to save their hallowed free-market? And why on Earth would any sane person want to resurrect such an obviously destructive system so clearly at odds with their supposed core values?
Like most ardent free-marketeers, Ryan probably isn't willing to acknowledge that the principles of free-market ideology - deregulation, exaltation of greed, win at all costs profiteering, etc. - were quite obviously, to anyone who isn't a blind ideologue or hasn't been deluded by the corporate fueled spin machine, at the absolute core of the economic collapse. But this guy is on a whole different level of denial.
If he really is a true believer, he’s delusional. If not, he’s a shill. Either way Sarah Palin’s right, he really is the perfect presidential candidate for the GOP. Bring him on.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
True Fiscal Conservatives Vote Democratic
True fiscal conservatives vote Democratic. It’s a piece that pops up every once awhile but not nearly enough (that’s what she said). This is evident because, by and large, the conventional wisdom says that if fiscal prudence is most important to you, then you should vote Republican. As it turns out though, not so much.
The idea makes enough intuitive sense I guess. Republicans have engrained well their supposed dictum of fiscal responsibility into the collective consciousness of American society. And they’ve done an equally admirable job of fostering the self-contradictory image of Democrats, who are at the same time portrayed as both lazy, incapable, whiny cry babies who couldn’t compete in the harsh throws of the business world and a rigidly disciplined army of unstoppable malignant liberal hobos who must be stayed at all costs. A bipolar Robin Hood; on the one hand meticulously orchestrating cooperative partisan efforts on schemes to steal money from the rich and on the other acting in reckless and careless discord, tossing the stolen loot over their shoulder to any freeloader from the ghetto who can catch. While it may be said that the Democrats have done their fair share to merit their caricature, the same cannot be so easily said for the Republicans.
And for many voters who, for whatever reason, don’t have the time or inclination to dig deeper, providing anything that passes upon first glance as a logical causal explanation in support of the caricature is more than enough to keep them loyal. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are the foremost virtuosos of this technique. Their preferred tactic is to stack ad hominem attacks - which reinforce the existing party caricatures in the viewer’s mind - atop straw men arguments that sound enough like the real thing to pass for it, and wrap them up succinctly in a package of folksy appeal by stating matter-of-factly that, “It just makes good sense”. Content with the result as if they’d just finished alphabetizing their Ronald Reagan biographies, they wipe their hands with the given issue and move on in a gesture that says, “Well, that’s settled, what’s next?”
The sense that is supposed to be made is of course predicated, not from evidence or empirical data, but from the caricature itself which has no logical value whatsoever. It only seems to make sense because it's reinforced by the images we have in our heads of what Democrats and Republicans are supposed to be. This bundle of bullshit posing as logic falls apart quickly however with the most ginger tug at the strings struggling to contain it. And when it all comes apart, there in plain sight for the discerning eye is the reality, that not only are the caricatures inaccurate, but the data proves the opposite true.
Michael Kinsley, updating a previous piece that he had done for the Los Angeles Times, wrote an article for Slate in September 2008 that illustrates this point nicely. In it, Kinsley correctly points out that the metrics the report uses to define fiscal responsibility are those that Republicans themselves would define as most important. It excludes the typical so called “class warfare” metrics like income gap or real wages - which are of course completely relevant - and focuses instead on very straightforward data like per capita GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, federal taxation, federal spending, and today’s most overused buzz metric, the deficit. Or as Kinsley puts it, “There is nothing here about how clean the air is or how many children are growing up in poverty. The only point is that if you find the Republican mantra of lower taxes and smaller government appealing, and if you care only about how fast the economy is growing, not how that growth is shared, you should vote Democratic.” That the indictment can be unequivocally made based solely on the results of examining hand picked Republican data nuggets allows it to stand that much more resolutely on its own merit.
The report considers data compiled between 1959 and 2007 and factors for potential biases like lag time. Lag time is the idea that a newly inaugurated president is normally not as responsible for the state of the economy his first year in office as he is for the following four years. That’s because the policies of the previous administration tend to overlap with the new one and more strongly affect economic performance, and so on with the next administration. As we saw in 2009 when President Obama inherited an economy teetering on the brink of disaster and reeling from the late 2008 economic actions implemented by President Bush, like the galactically irresponsible TARP, lag time is legitimate.
Aside from unemployment and inflation, which can be accurately compared over time between administrations using traditional methods, Kinsley uses Change in Real GDP per Capita as his gauge for the other metrics. As he explains:
The most important measure of a nation's economic strength is gross domestic product. But comparing GDPs among various presidents would be unfair. Since the economy does tend to grow over time (or always has), more recent presidents would enjoy an unfair advantage. And every president inherits a situation; the question is what he does with it.
So the measure I use is "Change in Real GDP Per Capita," which corrects for inflation and also for population growth.
Factoring for lag time as a legitimate bias, the report yields the following results. (Detail available via link).
1. The economy grows substantially faster under a Democratic administration.
2. Unemployment is much lower under a Democratic administration.
3. Federal spending is reduced when Democrats have the presidency.
4. The federal deficit grows much faster under a Republican administration.
5. Inflation and defense spending is not strongly correlated to either party.
6. Republicans tax on average under 1% less annually than Democrats do as compared to GDP.
To anyone who hasn't been in a coma for the past thirty years these results shouldn’t be the least bit surprising. Since 1980 we’ve witnessed vast growth in the national debt under Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Only the detested tax and spend liberal Bill Clinton was able to reduce debt whatsoever. The big government Socialist was so effective in fact that he left a budget surplus to his successor. Bush, for his part, of course wasted no time squandering every penny of it and drove up the debt once again as a testament of his dedication to modern Republican fiscal policy.
In addition to the results from the report, everything we’ve witnessed in the last thirty years has unambiguously demonstrated that there is one party who has been fiscally responsible and another whose experimentation in implementing never before proven economic theories has had disastrous effects on our economy. How we’ve managed to confuse which was which is a tribute to the effectiveness of modern image spin.
The Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility only because they tell us that they are. They tell us every day, all day long, and through every channel imaginable. Their pundits try to prove it to us everyday and use "common sense" because if they had to use empirical data they couldn’t convince anybody.
When you peak through the facade that is image and spin, the hard facts expose Republican fiscal policy for what it is. True fiscal conservatives vote Democratic. It's just common sense.
The idea makes enough intuitive sense I guess. Republicans have engrained well their supposed dictum of fiscal responsibility into the collective consciousness of American society. And they’ve done an equally admirable job of fostering the self-contradictory image of Democrats, who are at the same time portrayed as both lazy, incapable, whiny cry babies who couldn’t compete in the harsh throws of the business world and a rigidly disciplined army of unstoppable malignant liberal hobos who must be stayed at all costs. A bipolar Robin Hood; on the one hand meticulously orchestrating cooperative partisan efforts on schemes to steal money from the rich and on the other acting in reckless and careless discord, tossing the stolen loot over their shoulder to any freeloader from the ghetto who can catch. While it may be said that the Democrats have done their fair share to merit their caricature, the same cannot be so easily said for the Republicans.
And for many voters who, for whatever reason, don’t have the time or inclination to dig deeper, providing anything that passes upon first glance as a logical causal explanation in support of the caricature is more than enough to keep them loyal. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are the foremost virtuosos of this technique. Their preferred tactic is to stack ad hominem attacks - which reinforce the existing party caricatures in the viewer’s mind - atop straw men arguments that sound enough like the real thing to pass for it, and wrap them up succinctly in a package of folksy appeal by stating matter-of-factly that, “It just makes good sense”. Content with the result as if they’d just finished alphabetizing their Ronald Reagan biographies, they wipe their hands with the given issue and move on in a gesture that says, “Well, that’s settled, what’s next?”
The sense that is supposed to be made is of course predicated, not from evidence or empirical data, but from the caricature itself which has no logical value whatsoever. It only seems to make sense because it's reinforced by the images we have in our heads of what Democrats and Republicans are supposed to be. This bundle of bullshit posing as logic falls apart quickly however with the most ginger tug at the strings struggling to contain it. And when it all comes apart, there in plain sight for the discerning eye is the reality, that not only are the caricatures inaccurate, but the data proves the opposite true.
Michael Kinsley, updating a previous piece that he had done for the Los Angeles Times, wrote an article for Slate in September 2008 that illustrates this point nicely. In it, Kinsley correctly points out that the metrics the report uses to define fiscal responsibility are those that Republicans themselves would define as most important. It excludes the typical so called “class warfare” metrics like income gap or real wages - which are of course completely relevant - and focuses instead on very straightforward data like per capita GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, federal taxation, federal spending, and today’s most overused buzz metric, the deficit. Or as Kinsley puts it, “There is nothing here about how clean the air is or how many children are growing up in poverty. The only point is that if you find the Republican mantra of lower taxes and smaller government appealing, and if you care only about how fast the economy is growing, not how that growth is shared, you should vote Democratic.” That the indictment can be unequivocally made based solely on the results of examining hand picked Republican data nuggets allows it to stand that much more resolutely on its own merit.
The report considers data compiled between 1959 and 2007 and factors for potential biases like lag time. Lag time is the idea that a newly inaugurated president is normally not as responsible for the state of the economy his first year in office as he is for the following four years. That’s because the policies of the previous administration tend to overlap with the new one and more strongly affect economic performance, and so on with the next administration. As we saw in 2009 when President Obama inherited an economy teetering on the brink of disaster and reeling from the late 2008 economic actions implemented by President Bush, like the galactically irresponsible TARP, lag time is legitimate.
Aside from unemployment and inflation, which can be accurately compared over time between administrations using traditional methods, Kinsley uses Change in Real GDP per Capita as his gauge for the other metrics. As he explains:
The most important measure of a nation's economic strength is gross domestic product. But comparing GDPs among various presidents would be unfair. Since the economy does tend to grow over time (or always has), more recent presidents would enjoy an unfair advantage. And every president inherits a situation; the question is what he does with it.
So the measure I use is "Change in Real GDP Per Capita," which corrects for inflation and also for population growth.
Factoring for lag time as a legitimate bias, the report yields the following results. (Detail available via link).
1. The economy grows substantially faster under a Democratic administration.
2. Unemployment is much lower under a Democratic administration.
3. Federal spending is reduced when Democrats have the presidency.
4. The federal deficit grows much faster under a Republican administration.
5. Inflation and defense spending is not strongly correlated to either party.
6. Republicans tax on average under 1% less annually than Democrats do as compared to GDP.
To anyone who hasn't been in a coma for the past thirty years these results shouldn’t be the least bit surprising. Since 1980 we’ve witnessed vast growth in the national debt under Presidents Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II. Only the detested tax and spend liberal Bill Clinton was able to reduce debt whatsoever. The big government Socialist was so effective in fact that he left a budget surplus to his successor. Bush, for his part, of course wasted no time squandering every penny of it and drove up the debt once again as a testament of his dedication to modern Republican fiscal policy.
In addition to the results from the report, everything we’ve witnessed in the last thirty years has unambiguously demonstrated that there is one party who has been fiscally responsible and another whose experimentation in implementing never before proven economic theories has had disastrous effects on our economy. How we’ve managed to confuse which was which is a tribute to the effectiveness of modern image spin.
The Republicans are the party of fiscal responsibility only because they tell us that they are. They tell us every day, all day long, and through every channel imaginable. Their pundits try to prove it to us everyday and use "common sense" because if they had to use empirical data they couldn’t convince anybody.
When you peak through the facade that is image and spin, the hard facts expose Republican fiscal policy for what it is. True fiscal conservatives vote Democratic. It's just common sense.
Friday, February 26, 2010
The Republican Puppet Master
As is often the case, the Republicans spoke with one resounding voice at yesterday's Health Care Summit, and that voice said, "Start over". From the Daily Show to Hardball, news outlets picked up on this and spliced together clip after clip of the Republicans invited to partake in the ceremonies yesterday employing the tried and true method of:
1. Testing issue framing and language.
2. Crafting a simple message based on the results of that testing.
3. Repeating it over and over again.
John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lamar Alexander, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and the rest of the creepy talk bots all got in line and parroted the preselected and well rehearsed party message, “Start over”.
Anyone familiar with Frank Luntz's work immediately knew what the score was. A quick Google search for "Frank Luntz Start Over" directs to his October 2009 memo detailing "Words That Work" for the ongoing healthcare debate. It is the updated version of his original piece, "The Language of Healthcare" from May 2009 which was responsible for such catchy 2009 phrases as "Washington bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor" and "Washington takeover of healthcare". Over the last year Americans have heard these phrases and many like them--all of which emanated from the Luntz doctrine-- repeated ad nauseum by Republican politicians and pundits alike in an attempt to sway public opinion, and thus the actual scope of the bills, while Congress was attempting to craft legislation on the issue.
That yesterday's talking points came from Luntz was a lock, they just had to be located in the updated playbook. Sure enough, on page 7 of the Luntz memo in the "Words That Work" section, yesterday's mantra was outlined. (The words and phrases in bold type below were those regurgitated and repeated most often at the Summit).
"Most Americans wanted to hear the president tell Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the rest of Congress that it's time to start over on a common-sense, bipartisan plan focused on lowering the cost of health care while improving quality. That's what I've heard over the past several months, in talking to thousands of my constituents."
Unsurprisingly, the message incorporates a pot shot at President Obama, attempting to take him down a peg by alluding that he doesn't have the courage to stand up to the right's favorite punching bags, Pelosi and Reid, and thereby grouping him with the hated liberal Congressional leadership.
Also particularly interesting is the part about “hearing it” from thousands of their constituents over the past several months. Identical verbiage was repeated tirelessly by the right yesterday during the meeting. This is no doubt true of course, so long as you replace "heard in talking with thousands of my constituents" with "read in a memo that I got from Frank Luntz".
Why this isn't trumpeted through the megaphones of the liberal news outlets is perplexing. Exposing the right for what they are, as a consortium of politicians so hopelessly out of touch with the people they purport to represent that they need to be told what to say, and so spineless that they can be told what to say is powerful stuff; especially when the marching orders are based on the results of focus group testing and orchestrated from on high by some porky little schlub like Luntz. The notion itself is incongruent and inimical with the Republican image of strength and individualism.
MSNBC should be running a split screen picture of Luntz on one side and clips of Republican congress members parroting Luntz’s words on the other. Luntz’s words should be streaming across the bottom of the screen with a little white ball bouncing over them like in the old Cal Worthington commercials as they’re regurgitated by the GOP talking heads. And they should run it twenty hours a day as if Luntz were Jeremiah Wright with a giant caption across the top of the screen that reads, “The Republican Puppet Master”.
This is the hammer that shatters the sacred stained glass window of Ronald Reagan that watches proudly over the Republican Party. Someone needs to pick it up and start swinging. Now.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21886488/Frank-Luntz-Memo
1. Testing issue framing and language.
2. Crafting a simple message based on the results of that testing.
3. Repeating it over and over again.
John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, John McCain, Lamar Alexander, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, and the rest of the creepy talk bots all got in line and parroted the preselected and well rehearsed party message, “Start over”.
Anyone familiar with Frank Luntz's work immediately knew what the score was. A quick Google search for "Frank Luntz Start Over" directs to his October 2009 memo detailing "Words That Work" for the ongoing healthcare debate. It is the updated version of his original piece, "The Language of Healthcare" from May 2009 which was responsible for such catchy 2009 phrases as "Washington bureaucrats standing between you and your doctor" and "Washington takeover of healthcare". Over the last year Americans have heard these phrases and many like them--all of which emanated from the Luntz doctrine-- repeated ad nauseum by Republican politicians and pundits alike in an attempt to sway public opinion, and thus the actual scope of the bills, while Congress was attempting to craft legislation on the issue.
That yesterday's talking points came from Luntz was a lock, they just had to be located in the updated playbook. Sure enough, on page 7 of the Luntz memo in the "Words That Work" section, yesterday's mantra was outlined. (The words and phrases in bold type below were those regurgitated and repeated most often at the Summit).
"Most Americans wanted to hear the president tell Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the rest of Congress that it's time to start over on a common-sense, bipartisan plan focused on lowering the cost of health care while improving quality. That's what I've heard over the past several months, in talking to thousands of my constituents."
Unsurprisingly, the message incorporates a pot shot at President Obama, attempting to take him down a peg by alluding that he doesn't have the courage to stand up to the right's favorite punching bags, Pelosi and Reid, and thereby grouping him with the hated liberal Congressional leadership.
Also particularly interesting is the part about “hearing it” from thousands of their constituents over the past several months. Identical verbiage was repeated tirelessly by the right yesterday during the meeting. This is no doubt true of course, so long as you replace "heard in talking with thousands of my constituents" with "read in a memo that I got from Frank Luntz".
Why this isn't trumpeted through the megaphones of the liberal news outlets is perplexing. Exposing the right for what they are, as a consortium of politicians so hopelessly out of touch with the people they purport to represent that they need to be told what to say, and so spineless that they can be told what to say is powerful stuff; especially when the marching orders are based on the results of focus group testing and orchestrated from on high by some porky little schlub like Luntz. The notion itself is incongruent and inimical with the Republican image of strength and individualism.
MSNBC should be running a split screen picture of Luntz on one side and clips of Republican congress members parroting Luntz’s words on the other. Luntz’s words should be streaming across the bottom of the screen with a little white ball bouncing over them like in the old Cal Worthington commercials as they’re regurgitated by the GOP talking heads. And they should run it twenty hours a day as if Luntz were Jeremiah Wright with a giant caption across the top of the screen that reads, “The Republican Puppet Master”.
This is the hammer that shatters the sacred stained glass window of Ronald Reagan that watches proudly over the Republican Party. Someone needs to pick it up and start swinging. Now.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/21886488/Frank-Luntz-Memo
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