The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

The DNC

People really, really, really want to be lied to.  And most progressive and liberal pundits are either so brain dead stupid they don’t remember the lies of the 08 convention and how Dems and Obama actually governed or are corrupt.

Evil?  Or Stupid?

A question not just for Republicans any more.

Previous

Some basics on the economy

Next

Bleg

102 Comments

  1. Lurker the Third

    People want fantasies with happy endings. The theatre that Obama and Michelle and the Dems are putting on is that they understand our problems and are actively solving them, that they’d have done more if only those Republicans didn’t keep getting in the way, and Romney is a bad guy who will take away what little they’ve got left, so be very afraid of that. Re-elect Obama and it’ll all be better this time. We promise.

    The bummer is that the enablers of these fantasies are liars. They could actually try to solve our problems, but doing so would prove exceedingly inconvenient for them and their monied backers, so it’s not going to happen.

    And thus our ongoing tragedy continues.

  2. Buh, buh, but he’s black, right? So he must be a liberal. And what about the Nobel Prize? Did the committee that gave him a Nobel Peace prize like being lied to also?

  3. The D’s don’t have to be very good to be better than the R’s.

    One might wish for something better than both.

  4. Ian Welsh

    Beelzebub doesn’t have to be very good to be better than Lucifer, yeah. Vote Beelzebub, because he’s not as evil as Lucifer.

    Yeah.

  5. But Beelzebub is Lucifer’s man, which I don’t think is the case here. Seriously, can you imagine the R’s putting the ERA in their platform? Oh, it’s easy to be for something that probably doesn’t have the votes, and there’s no downside if through some magic the ERA makes it through Congress. But still, the R’s would never even have done that.

    Unless the Presidential election gets close in this state, I’m planning a protest vote. No protests downticket, though; I don’t want a Scott Walker clone for my governor.

    Then too, look at the opposition to the Democrats. Charles Pierce, quoting family and friends on Michelle Obama: “Well, don’t you think she’s a racist?” one of them said. “A racist? What has she ever said or done to indicate that she’s a racist?” “She doesn’t have to say anything. You can tell by the look in her eyes.”

    Ya gotta watch out for those right-wing telepaths, I’m telling you.

    I think we know who the racists are, and which party they support. And we know who the sexists are, and which party they support. And we know the homophobes are, and which party they support.

    Now, we expect that a second-term Obama administration is going to do pro-bank things, do authoritarian things, and weaken the social safety net. But a Republican majority is going to explode the national debt, start a war in Iran, and shred the safety net completely. It is even possible that campaigning to the left will lead to modest policy moves to the left. In the current term we have seen that the hawks and the banksters refusing to take yes for an answer. These people have incredibly fragile egos. It is possible that even the very modest concessions to the left which the Democrats have made will alienate them, pushing policy a bit leftwards.

    Meantime, Brad Delong, of all people, quotes a nameless commentator (who?) “I would urge people to think of accountability as a generational project — this is how it has worked out in Chile, Argentina, South Africa… the thing that can be done now is create opportunities for more participants to tell their stories, put on record what was done and who did it and how, so that the record gets fuller rather than thinner over time.”

  6. madisolation

    “Well, the question, I think, that people have got to ask themselves when they get into that booth is not what Obama has become, but what have we become? That is, what’s left of our values if we vote for a person that we believe has shielded war crimes or violated due process or implemented authoritarian powers. ”

    Jonathan Turley
    http://shannynmoore.wordpress.com/2012/08/20/john-cusack-jonathan-turley-on-obamas-constitution/

    It’s sickening to hear people rationalize their decision to vote for Obama. One person wrote, as an example, that it’s crazy to vote for people we know are Nazis, instead of voting for people who might be Nazis. The trouble is, I couldn’t figure out which group was which, and the answer is, we vote for neither. Not that it means much to vote, but voting for neither does register disapproval, and it’s better than nothing, I guess.

  7. jcapan

    “People want fantasies with happy endings.”

    e.g. religion. Thank buddha in a riceball this motherfucking charade ain’t on my telly. NOTHING is more repellent than smug liberal hypocrisy. It’d take a drone strike on the convention or giving Digby the Bradley-Manning treatment to awake them to their bloody complicity. That they see themselves as superior to your average evangelical Palin-ite never fails to astonish me. Compared to the fine liberals of the past, they’re fucking replicants.

    “But Beelzebub is Lucifer’s man, which I don’t think is the case here.”

    No, they’re both Jamie Dimon’s bitches, complete with dog collars and filthy habits. Jesus Christ, I need another drink.

  8. Bernard

    the illusion that Obama is helpfull to Blacks, Immigrants, Women and the “other” goes unquestioned, when Obama is just as bad as or even worse than George Bush. How there is no protest on Obama’s Republican behavior/actions in office. things like drone behavior, his offering up of Social Security to cuts, attacking whistleblowers. A “D” llooter/thief is okay, while a “R” looter/thief isn’t? lol. Obama is just another aspect of our American Power structure. Obama is part of the problem instead of the solution, and how lots of people want to pretend about Obama, the Democratic/Republican Party that runs America for the Elites. and that Obama is actively returing Blacks to status of wage slave for the Elites. such irony. Not to mention the War on Drugs/the Poor/Blacks

    such willful ignorance on the part of those who are getting kicked in the gut by such pretending. that is the kicker, here. to see so many people, both Democratic and Republican, vote for Parties out of blind party loyalty. the stupidity is so mind boggling. the self abuse is so easily seen and yet, the stupidity/party loyalty continues.

    while these self same voters are harmed so viciously by these Democratic/Republican “parties.” proof that mass marketing works.

    the Democratic/Republican business of America is getting over its’ own working people. such willing lemmings, Americans

  9. Ian Welsh

    Seriously, what? You believe the Democratic platform means a damn thing when it comes to governing? The difference between Dems and Republicans is that the Republicans are more truthful about how evil they are.

    And it is not clear to me that Romney will start a war with Iran and Obama won’t. It is not clear to me that a Romney presidency, if the Dems control the House or Senate will be worse than an Obama presidency on many issues. It simply is not. Romney was a moderate Republican governor. His goddamn health care plan is the one Obama instituted.

    Obama is to the right of Bush on a vast array of issues. He is worse on civil liberties, he is worse on wistleblowers, he claims the right to kill American citizens w/o trial something Bush never claimed. Blah, blah, blah.

    Obama overruled the FDA on Plan B because “”I’m a father.” Yes, that was his fucking reason. He sold women down the river on HCR. Etc…

    Obama’s recovery is MORE unequal than Bush’s was. More. More money is going to the rich.

    Obama is a profoundly evil fucking man. If you do not know this, you do not want to know this. Nancy Pelosi has indicated, repeatedly, that she’s good with cutting Medicare and SS. She has become a profoundly evil women.

    The DNC is full of people lying to your face. And then progressive bloggers spew all over them, talking about how wonderful what they’re saying is.

    Well yes, Beelzebub is very, very good at lying.

  10. If you are flipping channels and happen upon the convention this week, as my husband did last night, if you can’t hide your eyes, re-imagine the scene. Imagine Rahm Emmanuel as the Stanley Tucci character in “The Hunger Games” complete with lavendar wig. Put Pelosi in another late 18th century Marie Antoinette kind of wig. I used to do this with the Sunday morning pundits when I was stupid enough to watch those shows thinking I was “following politics”. I put Cokie Roberts in a powdered wig and gave her a fan.
    “Oh, Master Will, you are so droll. You cause me to giggle in delight at the antics of Sir Boner and Mistress Pelosi.”
    Put all those sad folks wiping away tears and holding up signs in their donkey hats in smaller little periwigs and beauty spots on their foolish faces and you have the faithful also depicted in “The Hunger Games”. ( I was a delegate in 2004 and have much to say on the debacle.)
    Or picture them like rps said on a comment on Ian’s post reposted on Naked Capitalism:

    “Archaic religions, philosophies, ideologies, and tyrannical governance are hospice patients on oxygen.”

    But no way should you fall for their fake propaganda of putting things in their platform like the ERA. Ha. Ha. And stop with the whole Lily Ledbetter farce. That minor bill did not establish equal pay. It said you can sue them if they screw you. But they can still screw you first.
    The Dems using the weasel word “progressive” use women, unions, and minorities to do the grunt work while they sip champagne in the back rooms and chortle at the naivete of the schmucks out front.

    If you feel compelled to participate at the presidential level, vote for Jill Stein or Gary Johnson of Mike Check. Putting sand into the wheels of this machine makes sense to me.

  11. I think so, yes. The Democrats would have a very hard time walking back their positions on race, women’s rights, or gay rights. They also want to cut corporate taxes, so I don’t claim their platform is an unmixed good. But look at the Republican platform!

    Obama might lead the USA into a war with Iran. So far, his administration has been avoiding it, but we know they can be pressured. However, there is no uncertainly with Romney: he given the chance, he will do it.

    Do you really believe that a McCain administration would have done better than the Obama administration on any of the issues you mention? And then consider a Palin administration.

    Considering how powerful the Presidency has become, how even a comparative weak President like Bush II was able to lead the USA into a war, considering that there is every reason to believe that Republicans will hold the House and may gain the Senate, yes, there is great reason to be concerned with what a Romney administration can do.

    Let us grant, for the moment, that Obama is “evil.” Is Mitt Romney, a man who tells contradictory stories depending on his audience, who made his fortune by destroying US companies and sending American jobs overseas, or Paul Ryan, apparently a compulsive liar, and obsessed with a sociopathic philosopher, less evil? I think you are letting your disgust with the Obama administration override your disgust with the Romney/Ryan.

    That said, reading the speeches makes me want to retch, too. I know it’s advertising, I know it’s campaigning, and I’m still disgusted.

  12. Notorious P.A.T.

    “Obama might lead the USA into a war with Iran. So far, his administration has been avoiding it”

    Actually, the Obama administration has already committed an act of war against Iran.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/01/world/middleeast/obama-ordered-wave-of-cyberattacks-against-iran.html?pagewanted=all

    “even a comparative weak President like Bush II was able to lead the USA into a war”

    Yes, W. Bush conned everyone into believing Iraq was a threat so they would vote to give him authority to enforce a UN resolution etc. etc. etc. While Obama lead the USA into a war by simply ordering his military to attack Libya.

    “Mitt Romney, who made his fortune by destroying US companies and sending American jobs overseas”

    Barack Obama, who negotiates and signs free-trade agreements that make it possible for American companies to send jobs overseas.

  13. David Kowalski

    The problem has worsened because these schmucks are so far from reality that now the Democrats and the Republicans believe their own lies. Obama really is going to run on “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” The Republicans really believe that tax cuts for the rich and corporations will balance the budget?

    ERA and abortion are two sides of the same coin. Fairy tales meant to freeze a constituency behind one of the legacy parties.

    Once more, alas, I’m voting Green.

  14. Z

    Evil, but too unprincipled and egotistical to fully realize what they’ve become.

    Z

  15. Ian: “Obama is a profoundly evil fucking man”

    Sigh…I recently got booted off the Common Dreams comments board for pointing out this very fact in a somewhat more diplomatic manner. One knucklehead commenter even asked me how much the Republicans were paying me to make my comments.

    I’m done with all of them. Fuck the Democrats…fuck the smug ass liberals and progressives. I am now actually rooting for a huge Romney win. As you said, I would almost prefer the Republicans’ sort of, kind of honesty about their evil ways to the Democrats’ utter hypocrisy since in the end the country is going to hell either way.

  16. Z

    Romney winning would probably be a better outcome. As nauseating as it would be to see the liberals/progressives rediscover their “principles” and listen to their hair splitting reasoning as to why what Romney is doing is reprehensible when Obama did the same damn thing when he was in office, the fact of the matter is at least the idiot left would be re-energized and we would likely see more resistance to our rulers’ agenda.

    The sorry fact of the matter is is when you live in a country in which the majority of the people are immoral idiots, you’re going to need some of these immoral idiots to create an effective resistance to the evil people that rule us.

    Z

  17. Ian Welsh

    A friend points out that the evidence is that Democratic party members are only slightly less likely to be racist than Republican party members:

    http://montclairsoci.blogspot.ca/2012/08/where-to-find-racists.html

    I will note, that as a FACT Obama has deported far more Hispanics than George Bush did.

    Nor have blacks done well under him.

    Republicans use more racist rhetoric, that much is clear.

  18. Obama’s problem is that he has no “great enemy” to fear monger against since he made the dreadful blunder of killing bin-Laden. The oligarchy needs the “great enemy” to keep the hoi poloi in line and to prevent rebellion in whatever form. We had communism, and then we had terrorism, and now we have… What purpose does our massive “national security state” serve?

    And so this president more frantically than ever preserves state secrecy and punishes whistleblowers, because the loss of secrecy reveals that he is fighting against shadows, against an enemy that does not actually exist. He is doomed in his bid to preserve the imperial power of his office if it ever gets out that this nation faces no actual threat to its security.

    Remember that Orwell’s “Big Brother” had as its background the unending war against Eastasia, the threat against the state that preserved the power of the state. Obama is engaged in the ultimate dishonesty, not using a threat to magnify his position of power as Bush did, but enhancing his power by touting a threat that does not actually exist.

    Obama will engage us in war in his second term; in Iran, in Yemen, in Pakistan or somewhere in Africa. As Afghanistan wanes and the people of this nation lose interest in “terror” he will have to do something to preserve the imperial presidency.

  19. The War on Terror (TM) is permanent. It’s meant to be. Obama — or whoever is in office — can and will trot it out whenever it suits him.

    Meanwhile, the United Sheeple of America just keep bleating.

  20. someofparts

    Anyone old enough to hold down a job and drive a car should have learned to trust what people DO instead of what they SAY, if the two differ.

    I’m past caring why they do it. Tell me what they did and I will tell you what we need to do, if we can.

  21. dandelion

    The white-collarization of liberalism and so-called progressives has utterly bankrupted what passes for the left in this country. Liberals get to feel good for their apparent broadmindedness but that doesn’t actually extend to content — to real policies that might cost them their privilege. Over at Shakesville Melissa is “blubbing” about a Rosie Riveter poster of Michelle Obama with the slogan “Yes, We Can,” a slap in the face to the real content of “Yes, We Can” given its roots in the farmworker’s strike and given the DNC convention taking place in a right-to-work state. But it’s “ugly” to point that out.

    This aestheticization of politics is one of the hallmarks of fascism. All form, no content. And the “creative class” progressives have contributed mightily to this.

  22. Bolo

    The Raven:

    I think we know who the racists are, and which party they support. And we know who the sexists are, and which party they support. And we know the homophobes are, and which party they support.

    Actually, I know several openly racist people (who say blacks are gorillas, regularly use the term wetbacks and the n-word, think that the black prison rate is appropriate and due to genetic inferiority and low intelligence, etc.) who regularly vote Green Party. And I know some very racist people (won’t go to black owned businesses, make fun of how Asian immigrants talk, etc.) who vote Dem. Racism is pretty much universal in the US–the difference is that one of the two major parties just pretends that they’re better than the other.

  23. someofparts

    Gore Vidal described Obama as “an odious little man”.

  24. Kropotkin's Beard

    Baudrillard’s “Simulacra and Simulation” comes to mind when I listen to these speeches. All meaning has been drained out of our discourse. There is no there there. Meaningless pap is what we have, and worse. Sad thing is, only a tiny minority can see through it, hence the effectiveness of the propaganda. And even when that tiny minority endeavors to show the duped majority that they are being lied to, the response is almost always anger and befuddlement. I don’t know what it is going to take to wake folks up. I speculate it will be mass starvation/poverty. But then, it may be too late to change things.

  25. someofparts

    This is a different topic. Comments are just the best way I know of to bring the question to Ian’s attention.

    I noted at Agonist that Pauline Marois has been elected the new premier of Quebec. Could you talk about what you think this will mean going forward?

    My impression is that the province decided against independence already, so I’m guessing such a thing won’t happen even though Mme Marois is in charge. Still, it does sound like her election has elbowed the liberal party aside, which seems promising.

    So, I was just wondering what, if any, consequences Ian sees forthcoming from this election.

  26. Notorious P.A.T.

    Personally, I’m hoping for an Obama win. That way, more people will see how hollow the Democratic Party currently is and abandon it. I don’t think there would have been an Occupy movement if McCain had won in ’08; too many people would be sitting around daydreaming about what the Democrats would do if they got into office.

    >>Gore Vidal described Obama as “an odious little man”<<

    Gosh, you indiscriminately fire missiles at civilian funerals and hope one or two of the people you kill are terrorists and people get all up in arms!

  27. Glen Ford over at http:www.blackagendareport.com takes on the Michelle O. myth. OUCH!

    ” Most people don’t want to be a perceived as party-poopers – which is why the principled folks that have protested the evil antics of the corporate, imperial parties, in Tampa and Charlotte, are so much to be admired. Frankly, who wants to be the one to point out, in the middle of the festivities, that Michelle Obama was just a Chicago Daley machine hack lawyer who was rewarded with a quarter million dollar a year job of neutralizing community complaints against the omnivorous University of Chicago Hospitals? She resigned from her $50,000 seat on the board of directors of Tree-House Foods, a major Wal-Mart supplier, early in her husband’s presidential campaign. But, once in the White House, the First Lady quickly returned to flaking for Wal-Mart, praising the anti-union “death star” behemoth’s inner city groceries offensive as part of her White House healthy foods booster duties. “

  28. StewartM

    The conundrum of the past 30 years is this:

    1) When the Democrats win, they betray the people who voted for them and enact right-wing legislation.

    2) When the Republicans win, and push the Overton Window further right, the Democrats give thunderous speeches on how awful what the Republicans are doing. However, despite Republican minorities actually DOING things to gum up the works and slow/down or prevent such awful things from occurring, the Democrats roll over and play dead insofar as meaningful resistance. The Democrats also conclude that they lost because they weren’t enough like Republicans in “a center-right nation”.

    3) When the Democrats win again, they repeat 1) and 2) they make the Republican awfulisms the new “normal”.

    And I’ve yet to see anyone propose a way to break this cycle. When the Dems win, we lose, and when they lose, we lose.

    StewartM

  29. dandelion

    The Democrats gave Todd Akin $2 million and enabled his place on the stage to spout his misogynistic bullshit. This then enables the Democrats to beat women over the head with fear of the evil Republicans. All while Obama codifies the Hyde Amendment into the ACA and restricts access to Plan B because “he’s a father,” which is a very pure expression of patriarchal thinking and power. Then people like Digby praise the Democrats for finally recognizing the need for women to control their own fertility.

    Kabuki is really too polite a word for it — it’s all one big circle-jerk.

  30. jcapan

    I’m with Notorious PAT, hoping that Obama wins (not that I’d go so far as to vote for him) but the dems deserve ownership of the coming storm. Voters of all kinds, especially the flock of comfortable sheep swallowing DNC kool aid, need to understand that neoliberalism is a colossal mindfucking failure, that like the GOP’s twisted strain of conservatism it too can only lead to dystopic fascism. Let’s see a dem administration dismantle the last vestiges of the New Deal, war on Iran and continue the imperial presidency into its death knells. This is what the party deserves for their naked complicity, greed and exploitation of the weak. I’d like them to be in power when the wheels fall off.

    A Romney victory, especially in a closely contested race, would just sustain the Gore martyrdom that’s nauseated the genuine left for a generation. It wouldn’t animate self-deceiving “liberals”–they’d immediately shift their attn. to the next village idiot, projecting their quaint, thoroughly corrupted notions of liberalism onto some other sell out cypher.

  31. Notorious P.A.T.

    Calling for back-up here: how did Don’t Ask Don’t Tell get repealed? Was it because lawsuits by the Log Cabin Republicans forced the government’s hand?

  32. Alcuin

    Some wisdom from Eric Hoffer:

    “The truth seems to be that propaganda on its own cannot force its way into unwilling minds; neither can it inculcate something wholly new; nor can it keep people persuaded once they have ceased to believe. It penetrates only into minds already open, and rather than instill opinion it articulates and justifies opinions already present in the minds of its recipients. The gifted propagandist brings to a boil ideas and passions already simmering in the minds of his hearers. He echoes their innermost feelings. Where opinion is not coerced, people can be made to believe only in what they already ‘know.’

    “Propaganda by itself succeeds mainly with the frustrated. Their throbbing fears, hopes and passions crowd at the portals of their senses and get between them and the outside world. They cannot see but what they have already imagined, and it is the music of their own souls they hear in the impassioned words of the propagandist. Indeed, it is easier for the frustrated to detect their own imaginings and hear the echo of their own musings in impassioned double-talk and sonorous refrains than in precise words joined together with faultless logic.”

    The True Believer pp. 105-106

  33. What Obama Has Wrought
    by Glen Ford
    Editor, Black Agenda Report

    Most people don’t want to be a perceived as party-poopers – which is why the principled folks who have protested the evil antics of the corporate imperial parties, in Tampa and Charlotte, are so much to be admired. Frankly, who wants to be the one to point out, in the middle of the festivities, that Michelle Obama was just a Chicago Daley machine hack lawyer who was rewarded with a quarter-million-dollar-a-year job of neutralizing community complaints against the omnivorous University of Chicago Hospitals? She resigned from her $50,000 seat on the board of directors of Tree-House Foods, a major Wal-Mart supplier, early in her husband’s presidential campaign. But, once in the White House, the First Lady quickly returned to flacking for Wal-Mart, praising the anti-union “death star” behemoth’s inner city groceries offensive as part of her White House healthy foods booster duties . . . .

    http://blackagendareport.com/content/what-obama-has-wrought

  34. Radical Livre

    StewartM, I think you got it precisely backwards. It’s the Democrats who push the Overton window to the right. Clinton, with his tough-on-crime laws, welfare cuts, NAFTA, deregulation, and imperial militarism, forced the Republicans rightwards to maintain their niche. This rightward momentum led to George II. And now Obama rivals the latter, forcing the Republicans to adopt a much more virulently reactionary rhetoric to keep their brand different from the Democratic brand (perhaps so much that it may not be worth it).

  35. Ian Welsh

    Inasmuch as the PQ got a minority, I don’t think it means much that isn’t good, honestly, SomeOfParts. The PQ is left wing, I don’t think they can really push hard for independence or Sovereignty, because they campaigned on it deliberately to get a mandate and didn’t. So, overall, possibly the best possible outcome, though I’d have preferred the Liberal party get drubbed more.

  36. Celsius 233

    Reminds me of the old Hollywood; glamour, glitter, the myths, and the shiny.
    Michelle’s statement regarding jobs, good jobs, jobs that will support families is an utter fabrication, fashioned out of the thin air aimed at the vacuous millions.
    Human’s, go figure…

  37. someofparts

    Thanks for the perspective Ian.

    Alcuin, that Hoffer passage rings true.

    When Reagan won that first landslide, I could see the truth of that in the people all around me. Those awful views and practices weren’t forced on them. It seemed more like they were relieved, bordering on jubilant, to finally say openly what they had already been thinking.

  38. Celsius 233

    Americans and the 2012 election = circular firing squad…

  39. John Puma

    “Evil? or Stupid?”

    Either or both – to the extent they describe tribalism.

    I refer readers to a series of articles on this tpoic by Arthur Silber for whom help was recently solicited on this site:

    http://tinyurl.com/9mnojxo

  40. John Puma

    PS:

    More Silber on tribalism: the start of a second series the later installments of which I’m not not sure have yet been written:

    “Tribalism and the Destructive Politics of Demonization (I): The Largely Unrecognized Possibility for a New Coalition”

    http://tinyurl.com/8nyx9mq

  41. someofparts

    Kropotkin’s Beard – I’ve started reading Thompson’s history of the English working class – http://www.amazon.com/Making-English-Working-Class/dp/0394703227/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346932720&sr=1-1&keywords=thompson%2C+history+of+the+english+working+class#reader_0394703227

    As a kind of mirror-opposite correlate to the meaninglessness you observe, I’m finding Thompson to have incredible insights into what living, breathing political consciousness looks like when it emerges. Here’s a bit from the first pages of the preface –

    “I emphasize that it (class) is an historical phenomenon. I do not see class as a ‘structure’, nor even as a ‘category’, but as something which in fact happens (and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships.

    More than this, the notion of class entails the notion of historical relationship. Like any other relationship, it is a fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at any given moment and anatomise its structure.

    . . .

    ‘It’, the working class, is assumed to have a real existence, which can be defined almost mathematically … Once this is assumed it becomes possible to deduce the class-consciousness which ‘it’ ought to have (but seldom does have) if ‘it’ was properly aware of its own position and real interests.”

    I don’t have time to organize my own thinking about this right now because it’s time to go to work. I just thought it might be an interesting addition to the conversation- so there it is.

  42. someofparts

    apologies to everyone for not having taught myself to use hyperlinks yet

    I’m sure it’s ridiculously easy

    I plead geezerhood. It’s a reason, not an excuse.

  43. Afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you, just like last time around—it isn’t that they necessarily “want to be lied to”. I mean, some do, of course. It’s that they recognize that this is where American society is.

    You blow off the consequences of a Republican victory too easily. The fact is, very many Americans, quite enough to tilt the entire political pinball machine, actively want eviller than the evils of which you (assuredly rightly) accuse Obama. So at every election, people have to decide whether they want to emotionally and politically validate those people (which has real consequences) and take a huge risk on either hastening collapse—always a very risky thing to do—or test the theory that the Dems are punishable by would ultimately be a small rump of genuinely leftist voters…

    That’s why I don’t hold with being too judgemental about left-wing Obama supporters.

  44. Kropotkin's Beard

    Someofparts–

    Thank you for the link. Heady stuff. Need to examine it more closely. One other thought: the anarchists (or some anarchists) acknowledge that most of our problems originate from the flawed social relationship we have with each other. Sure, class is an economic construct; but it is also social/cultural. The human mind is obsessed with separating itself off from the Other. If mankind is to progress, we must shake off this barbaric tendency. Ours is a spiritual crisis, a crisis in the dysfunctional way we relate to each other.

  45. Theo

    My conscience won’t allow me to vote for Obama. People for the American Way called last night for money in behalf of his re-election. I told the man I wasn’t voting for Obama or for Romney and gave him the short list of Obama’s criminal acts, all of which your readers know. I will write in Jill Stein (as she is not yet on the ballot in my so-called blue state) in protest or leave it blank.

    Voting for the lesser of two evils (e.g., Carter, Clinton) hasn’t helped us in the past and won’t now. The state’s superstructure is massive and now joined with that of the corporations and both are girded for war against the nation’s citizens as well as the world.

    Whatever we learn of Obama in the years to come, we know now that he is stubborn, rigid, identifies with the elite, resistant to understanding their true nature an, wants to be among their number, and has served their interests well. We have evolved even further into an evil empire at home and abroad as a result of his actions. A case can be made that every president since WWII is a war criminal and that would include Obama and Romney, if elected (or if he steals the election).

    The understanding of what it means to be of the Left has gone out of America, disappeared except in the minds and hearts of the relatively few. Capitalism and the state have killed it. Authoritarianism appeals now to persons on both the Right–and I can’t bring myself to say Left because most Leftists are not and were not authoritarian by nature, although some were (e.g., in Russia)–and what passes for the Left in America, the so-called Progressives and Liberals before them, many of whom acquiesce to authoritarianism judging by their voting records and failure to speak out against war, the militarizing of the police, the use of coercive weapons and surveillance against the population, the destruction of unions, jobs, pensions, benefits, the environment, racism, sexism, the meagerness of the social safety net, stripping welfare of any meaning, failure to adhere to the constitution, and the stripping of public institutions in service of private gain–and the betrayal of the Democratic party. And racism and sexism were always at home among many on the Left as well as they are among those with no political philosophy .

    The past and present leaders of America who called or call themselves Liberal, who are now Neoliberal, were and are center rightists who didn’t and do not hesitate to walk on the dark side in war making, militarism, and protector of elite interests. And now, as everyone knows, center right is very right. By design, they are now deaf to the interests of everybody else and, even when not deaf, in most cases ineffective in making changes for the better. Their sops to the people are just that. They change little in actual practice in view of what goes on and in almost every job site and institution in the country and when basic rights are denied in most courts of the nation, including the Supreme Court and the criminal “justice” system.

    The minority of us now have knowledge of the great evil that resides in the state and always has (but not always in government, which has and can work in behalf of the common good) and sits triumphant behind the facade of government and all our institutions. Others of us believe that the government can and should do nothing for us. At least for so-called Progressives perhaps the truth is too brutal, so they cannot come to grips with it.

    Is the first cause the psychopathy as well as the authoritarianism of most of our leaders and so many of our citizens? Anyone who has read the literature on both, especially psychologist Bob Altemeyer’s research into the character traits of authoritarian leaders and followers, might easily think so. Is evil almost always found in the disordered brain of each? A brain formed by both nature and nurture (the family and the culture)? I’ve come to believe that we are not all equally capable of discerning the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, not all of us capable of seeing the manipulations behind the propaganda with which we are constantly bombarded by the media and the institutions of the state, the corporations, the political parties, and the received notions that have come down to us from earlier generations. Not all of us equally capable of nuance, insight, compassion. Perhaps most of us accommodate ourselves to the ruling zeitgeist without question. Perhaps this is the true nature of human nature.

    Can this be changed? Psychopaths can’t change, only on the surface. Altemeyer has shown that when authoritarian followers are shown the proof of their biased thinking some people can change for the better. The problem is how to reach them. When such people come into intimate contact with those they despise sometimes minds and hearts can change. As a people we are fragmented, atomized, removed from each other due to the size and organization of modern life and this makes such change illusive if not impossible and the work of the propagandist easy.

    I first came in contact with the character traits that make a person a Rightist, an authoritarian, in my own family, as did Charles Pierce recently, as related by one commenter. The most important thing I noticed, and this is now obvious in studying the statements and tactics of the American Right and other Rightists, and many others have noticed it, is the sense of threat they experience from those who are different from themselves. They really do believe that they cannot be safe unless their enemies are vanquished and they see enemies everywhere. And, as a result, I believe they believe, most or all of them probably not consciously, that anything becomes permissible to them, any lie, any illegality, any act of discrimination, any injustice, any war, any sin, to achieve that end. The other trait that stands out is that they must think of themselves as uniquely superior to others (if only those others would do what I have done, a common refrain), a natural aristocracy.

    If this is true, then are those who do evil incapable of thinking of it as evil and less culpable than those who do see the evil but are afraid to face it? Does responsibility lie with those whose brains as less disordered and is it impossible for us to effect change in the face of such depravity, authoritarianism, and confusion on the part of so many millions of us?

    In my blackest moments, I think we are doomed as a species. We stand senseless in the face of global warming. As soon as something changes for the better, individuals or groups formed on the Right work to destroy it. It seems we have all become useless and we will all pay the price for our fecklessness in the face of such evil.

  46. In surveying the cycles of the history of the American “experiment,” it appears that electoral democracy works just fine when the things are going (relatively) smoothly, but goes off the rails and becomes no better than useless in times of real crisis. That’s not to say that the process, as constituted in this Republic, doesn’t ratchet itself towards said crisis, even in “good” times, but its faults certainly become eminently clearer in days like these.

    (I was going to say that it is particularly corrupted by the suffrage of money influence, but if you look at the political contretemps of the early 19th Century, which enabled all sorts of nastiness and led to the Civil War – not to mention the odious imperialism that was birthed in that era – we see that financialization and corporatism (which was just beginning to root) has only exaggerated the problem.

    Sorry for that inexcusably clumsy compound sentence, but it just wanted to come out that way.)

  47. Notorious P.A.T.

    “Voting for the lesser of two evils hasn’t helped us in the past and won’t now”

    When the “greater” evil keeps getting more evil, so does the lesser evil, after all. There was a time recently when Republicans wanted cap-and-trade, an individual insurance mandate, and a payroll tax cut. Today those are Democratic policies, which the Republicans have of course disowned as they continue moving rightward, taking the Ds with them.

  48. Kropotkin's Beard

    Theo–

    Many Leftists are authoritarian.; and liberals, often nakedly so. This is the crux of the problem I have with American social democracy (if you can call it that). It is dogmatic and jingoistic, and is generally averse to self-examination. This is why it is so damn difficult to convince Obamians that their man is an autocratic warmonger. They choose not to see it because they share the same beliefs as their Naked Emperor. This is depressing to me. It means we really don’t have many folks who understand what’s happening. People wonder how Hitler rose to power. Well, look at the Weimar liberals. Aren’t they analogous to our Obamabot progressive is many startling ways?

  49. Ian Welsh

    The people I’m seeing are buying what the Dems are selling at the RNC. They aren’t saying “Obama is fucking evil, but he’s less fucking evil than I think Romney will be.”

  50. The people I’m seeing are buying what the Dems are selling at the [DNC]. They aren’t saying “Obama is fucking evil, but he’s less fucking evil than I think Romney will be.”

    Michelle O’s speech was so apple-pie-ish, it was hard to resist the urge to tear up. When she said she loved her husband even more, four years on, the only thought that crossed my mind though was, “Really? The extra-judicial murder bit doesn’t give you pause?”

    But then again, I am shrill.

  51. Alcuin PERMALINK
    September 5, 2012
    Some wisdom from Eric Hoffer:
    etc.

    For confirmation of this — the effectiveness of propaganda, especially with those already predisposed to believing it — see this good (and depressing) article on the near-impossibility of getting people to respond to logic and empirical evidence. I have it bookmarked because I refer to it so often. In some ways it’s a relief: it explains a phenomenon I’d observed for years but never understood:

    How facts backfire
    Researchers discover a surprising threat to democracy: our brains

    http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/07/11/how_facts_backfire/

    Also agree with Radical Livre that it’s the Democrats and their “lesser of two evils” enablers that have moved the Overton window to the right.

  52. Radical Livre

    It’s unrelated to this article, but related to the overall tone of the blog: This.

    After the US-backed coup the Honduran government went off the deep end, and it now decided to create PRIVATE CITIES with their own laws, police, etc.

    We’re getting closer and closer to Neuromancer every day. All we need now is AIs and cyborg arms.

  53. The people I’m seeing are buying what the Dems are selling at the RNC. They aren’t saying “Obama is fucking evil, but he’s less fucking evil than I think Romney will be.”

    That’s because they’re psychologically adjusting to the median expectation.

    Also agree with Radical Livre that it’s the Democrats and their “lesser of two evils” enablers that have moved the Overton window to the right.

    And that’s where I part company with the rest of the Ian Welsh commentariat. As long as a huge portion of the American population really actually wants something even eviller than the “greater evil”, the “lesser evil” has no incentive whatsoever to become less evil. Don’t vote for them? OK, you get the greater evil. Learned your lesson now? No? OK, have the greater evil again.

    The end result of this, of course, is collapse of some form…

    But when? How? Who?

  54. Wow, Radical Livre – that there’s some high creep-factor shit. Fascism, 21st Century-style. Gated-community wet-dream. I am sure there will be no homeless on those avenues. Brazilian-style favelas will spring up and satellite these “cities” to handle that “refuse.”

  55. Democrats will spend the week raucously applauding the violence and killing continuously unleashed by their strong, tough, resolute Democratic president – whom they’ll hail as their “commander-in-chief” whom we’re so blessed to be led by, even though most of them are not in the military and therefore, by definition, have no “commander,” chief or otherwise. And they will keep cheering for such acts even as the bodies of his latest innocent victims go unburied. And if any of this bothers any of us, we’ll be drowned out by stirring and deeply emotional tributes to the kindness and goodness of this great man, which will make all these unpleasant thoughts about the reality of his actions blissfully disappear.

    As the Nation’s Jeremy Scahill, who has spent considerable time in Yemen with the families of Obama’s drone victims, wrote last night on Twitter, as he watched all of this unfold:

    . . .

    Persecuting and abusing whistleblowers. Indefinitely imprisoning people with no charges. Due process-free assassinations of citizens, even teenagers. Continuous killings of innocent people in multiple Muslim countries.

    This isn’t just what Democrats do. It’s what they now boast about, what they campaign on, what they celebrate. That, as much as anything, is the Obama legacy.

    Obama campaign brags about its whistleblower persecutions
    Excuse me if I don’t join in Democrats’ sycophantic cheerleading for an Obama presidency that has shredded laws and liberties

    by Glenn Greenwald

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/05/obama-campaign-brags-about-whistleblower-persecutions

  56. Notorious P.A.T.

    The party is bragging about that, and so are many Democrats I’ve talked to this week.

  57. Notorious P.A.T.

    Although, to be fair, many Democratic partisans are simply utter fools, such as Scott Lemieux who somehow doesn’t know that Obamacare is based on Romneycare, which was based on a plan by the right-wing Heritage Foundation:

    http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2012/09/the-baseline-for-presidential-evaluations

    Maybe people like that would rethink their support–maybe–if they weren’t so sadly ignorant.

  58. amspirnational

    The GOP Elite might “use more racist rhetoric” by the definition of multicult
    lib-progs, but any Elite selling out the economic interests via outsourcing and deregulation of Finance of “its own” (fastly diminishing) ethnic working-middle “Majority” is an Elite which does not represent that (fastly diminishing) Majority and does not wish to represent it.

  59. Maybe people like that would rethink their support–maybe–if they weren’t so sadly ignorant.

    Alas, if only that were true. But research — and experience — prove otherwise. The people on my mailing list, about whom I’ve written in general terms here several times, aren’t ignorant. They know what’s going on. They just choose denial. And the more highly educated they are, the worse they are. Sure, some of them will give you the standard “lesser evil” argument. But most of them simply choose to stick their heads in the sand. Frankly, I think this behavior is more damning.

  60. Mary Mac

    That is so true, Lisa. I have a fairly close friend who I have known for years who is the head of Obama’s campaign in an eastern state. I have never seen such a state of denial. You would think that Obama was Jesus Christ, John Lennon and Gandhi all in one. This woman is very well educated, smart and is so viscerally attracted to Obama that it is sickening. I haven’t even attempted to have a discussion with her about the evils that Obama has committed. I would hit a wall so high and so hard that it is not worth it.

  61. jcapan

    And that’s where I part company with the rest of the Ian Welsh commentariat. As long as a huge portion of the American population really actually wants something even eviller than the “greater evil”, the “lesser evil” has no incentive whatsoever to become less evil. Don’t vote for them? OK, you get the greater evil. Learned your lesson now? No? OK, have the greater evil again.

    The end result of this, of course, is collapse of some form…

    For the record, voting democrat will also lead to collapse of some form right? As will voting for the GOP, not voting, voting Green or for your mom? I mean, really, we’re fucked regardless, it’s only a question of the hastening. The type of immediate, radical change that’s required is simply impossible. And we’re talking about mostly educated people here–for their mindnumbing denial in the face of reality, they deserve all the contempt we can muster.

  62. Radical Livre

    <quote.Wow, Radical Livre – that there’s some high creep-factor shit. Fascism, 21st Century-style. Gated-community wet-dream. I am sure there will be no homeless on those avenues. Brazilian-style favelas will spring up and satellite these “cities” to handle that “refuse.”

    I actually hope you’re right, because I was thinking more along the lines of an unholy combination of Feudalism and Fascism. I mean, now that corporations can own cities, with their own laws, their own police force, their own immigration policies, their own trade agreements… There’s very little difference between a Corporation and a State. And if those private cities in Honduras are sufficiently profitable, I doubt they’ll be limited to Honduras for much longer.

    I knew something like this would happen eventually, but I thought it would take a few more decades. Things are going downhill much faster than I expected.

    (I’ll stop talking about that. Don’t want to derail the thread.)

  63. StewartM

    Radical Livre:

    StewartM, I think you got it precisely backwards. It’s the Democrats who push the Overton window to the right. Clinton, with his tough-on-crime laws, welfare cuts, NAFTA, deregulation, and imperial militarism, forced the Republicans rightwards to maintain their niche.

    I’m not so sure, a lot of Clinton’s Third-Way crap had been propagandized by the Right long before. Not to say that Clinton *had* to give into them, but like Obama he tells his fellow Dems about all those Republican “good ideas”

    (Can you friggin’ imagine a *Republican* saying that about a Democratic idea? Can you envision a group like the NRA selling out its constituency to be good soldiers for the Republicans like “leftist” groups do for the Dems?)

    But the point is, the Clinton-Obama presidencies show the power of what a minority determined to gum up the legislative process can do if they so want. Now notice that despite all those thunderous denunciations by CPC members, they never manage to do likewise when the Republicans are in charge? Jane Hamsher at FDL once snorted: “Primary Obama? Talk about taking down Bernie Sanders instead”. And she’s right–if Bernie and his ilk had broken ranks on health care, on the debt ceiling, and any other egregious Obama betrayal of his base and actually joined Republican filibusters then none of that would have passed.
    If the CPC had stood firm on its pledges of “no health care reform without a public option” then Obama wouldn’t have gotten Romneycare through nor that stupid “grand bargain” debt ceiling fiasco of a deal. And why couldn’t they? They’re larger than the Tea Party caucus, and look what they have achieved.

    The point is, the problem with the Dems goes beyond Obama, but also to those “progressives” who may give good speeches but always seem to manage to deliberately lose important votes.

    That being said, the best scenario for me is:

    1) the Dems to capture Congress (ends the stupid debt ceiling threats which makes it harder for Obama’s grand bargaining). I care more about that than Romney-Obama.

    2) Obama wins, but the Tea Party zealots find out some silly reason to impeach him (not for the legitimate reasons, of course, but something silly). In other words, a repeat of Clinton’s presidency, where Clinton was secretly planning a deal with Gingrich to privatize Social Security in a “grand bargain”, but that got derailed by the Monica Lewinsky scandal which forced Clinton to tack back to the left to save his presidency.

    -StewartM

    StewartM

  64. Lex

    I will not vote for a dog catcher with a D (or an R) next to his name. I understand the consequences. They’re the same as voting for any of these aspiring nomenklatura at any level.

    And, Ian, i don’t think it’s an either or choice if we define “stupid” so as to include short-sighted in a way that your decisions will make matters worse in the future. In that case, they get to be both evil and stupid.

  65. Rob Grigjanis

    Obama is a profoundly evil fucking man.

    I don’t agree, but it’s irrelevant. The US political system is profoundly evil. Shit, the Canadian system is only moderately evil. “How can it be changed?” is the hard question. Calling individuals “evil” is too easy, and a cop-out.

  66. Jill

    A Romney win will not make the financial collapse come sooner or later than an Obama win. Why? Because the financial policies and goals which are tearing everything to pieces are held by both men and parties.

    I also wonder if people who once opposed Bush, then embraced Bush’s policies when Bush became: DBA, Obama, will change back if the policies become the property of DBA, Romney. (Reminds me of how Blackwater keeps changing its name!) I hear some very impassioned arguments in favor of imprisonment without trial and the necessity of Obama killing people to keep us safe. It occurs to me that this could be their real belief.

    I’m going with David Swanson on the matter. He writes: “But civil rights were not gained by avoiding the responsibilities of citizenship in order to pretend that every day is election day. Today is not election day. Today is an opportunity to communicate a message to the holder of an office that has been given unprecedented power (again, by allowing Bush to walk free). Women did not vote themselves the right to vote. The labor movement was not built by the current strategy of funding a corporate political party with working people’s hard‐earned pay. In that moment of voting, vote as you see fit. But censoring your criticism of your government, cheering as a spectator for one half of a corrupt government, treating government of the people as a spectator sport is working against what has always done the good you are intending to do here. We don’t need well‐meaning props in electoral commercials so much as we need activists, organizers, mobilizers, educators. If we reject any cuts to our Social Security and Medicare, if we insist on an end to all the killing, we will move the culture of the country and with it all the politicians. That’s what’s worked for centuries. Avoiding ugly facts has never gotten us anywhere.”

    http://warisacrime.org/content/obamobedience

  67. Ian Welsh

    No, Rob, it’s not. Obama had choices, real choices, and he chose the evil ones. The BS that people have no choice when in power is a cop out, and letting them off the hook is cheap and easy.

    And anyone who doesn’t think a man who arrogates the right to kill citizens without a trial isn’t evil is someone whose opinion on ethical or political matters means less than nothing to me.

  68. Ian Welsh

    You sure haven’t been reading my posts the last year, have you Mandos. I have repeatedly said that Americans are getting what they deserve. Nonetheless, if no one will even offer good, who the fuck knows if Americans would vote for it? It hasn’t been offered in a well over a generation.

    And opinion polls show, in fact, that most Americans are less evil on a lot of subjects (like universal health care) than their elites. There is a real elite/citizen divide on opinion you seem incapable of acknowledging. If the Chefs won’t offer anything but evil/more evil, and you can only choose those two chefs, you’re kind of fucked.

    That said, yes, the American people are massively complicit and I have said so repeatedly, and been exorciated for it.

    No, you simply refuse to admit that people who know better are lying or completely delusionally self-deceiving. I know they know better, because I know these people. I have met many of them, I have talked with them extensively, I have listened to them talk to other people. I know what they know, and I know they know the facts they are overlooking. Remember, I was in the goddamn industry. Prog bloggers like Kos, to name a name, or David O Atkins at Digby, to name another, know. They know.

  69. Alcuin

    @someofparts (and anyone else who is interested) –

    To embed a link using HTML, follow this format:

    {a href=”URL”}word that you want the URL to be linked to{/a}

    Replace the { and } symbols with the left chevron (). Be sure to include the quotation marks in the link – it won’t work without them. The URL is what is in the address bar of your browser (copy and paste works best).

  70. Alcuin

    Boy, I tell you — those chevrons are tricky critters!! Replace the { symbol with the left chevron and the } symbol with the right chevron. The chevrons are the “upper case” of the comma and the period.

  71. dandelion

    Thank you Ian. Just commented over at Shakesville that I was baffled by the emotional “blubbing” about the Obamas given the cognitive dissonance between that response and a supposed commitment to social and economic justice and pointed out Obama’s kill list and detainment policy.

    And just got an email back from Melissa herself stating that she “liked some things about Obama and not other things. It’s not that difficult.”

    So killing people and indefinite detention falls under the rubric of “some things” and his cute family falls under the rubric of “other things.”

    She knows. She absolutely knows. But she doesn’t care — that is, she doesn’t care enough. And this holds true for the other prog-bloggers you name.

    I asked if she’d have “blubbed” for Pat Nixon as Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia. I’m old enough to remember liberals taking to the streets over that one.

    But this community of liberals and progressives are very very deep into situationl ethics, which is a polite way of saying unprincipled.

  72. Rob Grigjanis

    Obama had choices, real choices, and he chose the evil ones.

    Nobody who aspires to leadership in the US has real choices. Who was the last non-evil President? That’s not an excuse for Obama, but an attribute of the existing system. My point is that ascribing emotive adjectives to an individual is a distraction. It doesn’t matter who knows the game is rigged (well, if everyone knew, it might). It matters that the game is rigged. That’s where the focus should be, and goddamned if I know the answer, but I refuse to get distracted by personality.

  73. Rob Grigjanis

    The BS that people have no choice when in power is a cop out

    Of course they have a choice; stay in power, get kicked out to make way for someone more acceptable to the kingmakers, or, in some jurisdictions, get assassinated.

  74. Rob Grigjanis

    Ian, never mind. Whether I agree with your wording or not, you’re always worth reading. Frankly, I’m sick of arguing the small stuff.

  75. Radical Livre

    I’m not so sure, a lot of Clinton’s Third-Way crap had been propagandized by the Right long before. Not to say that Clinton *had* to give into them, but like Obama he tells his fellow Dems about all those Republican “good ideas”

    But that was exactly Clinton (and Obama’s) genius. They stole the Republican talking points right from under them. Clinton ended an era when Democrats were thought to be “soft on crime”. Obama did the same for “soft on terrorism”. Now Democrats accuse Republicans of not loving the military enough. Now Democrats accuse Republicans of being fiscally irresponsible. Now Democrats sneer at Republicans because George II wasn’t man enough to order a hit on Ibn Ladin. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

  76. Radical Livre

    I’m not so sure, a lot of Clinton’s Third-Way crap had been propagandized by the Right long before. Not to say that Clinton *had* to give into them, but like Obama he tells his fellow Dems about all those Republican “good ideas”

    But that was exactly Clinton’s (and Obama’s) genius. They stole the Republican talking points right from under them. Clinton ended an era when Democrats were thought to be “soft on crime”. Obama did the same for “soft on terrorism”. Now Democrats accuse Republicans of not loving the military enough. Now Democrats accuse Republicans of being fiscally irresponsible. Now Democrats sneer at Republicans because George II wasn’t man enough to order a hit on Ibn Ladin. It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

  77. BlizzardOfOz

    @dandelion

    So killing people and indefinite detention falls under the rubric of “some things” and his cute family falls under the rubric of “other things.”

    The smallness of Americans, the petty decadence. They feel free to form their opinions based on caprice, as if their civic duty is mere chaff, oblivious to the horrible reckoning that’s coming to us.

  78. Everythings Jake

    Sigh.

  79. Celsius 233

    My friends in the states sound like Lisa S.’s friends; they’re fawning over Michelle, Bill, and Obama’s speeches. They are so impressed. I’m dumbfounded, gobsmacked by their thoughtless acceptance of the lies, obfuscation, and ignorance of facts; much less a tacit refusal about the country they live within and what it’s doing to the world at large.
    These people (my old social) are the last vestiges of the true middle-class; acting as though they weren’t an endangered species.
    I have no answer for that and frankly; I gave up looking or caring.

  80. Z

    Celsius,

    It’s obviously all about the entertainment/presentation, it’s not about the reality/truth. It’s basically ‘just make me feel good for supporting you’.

    It’s quite amazing actually. The fact of the matter is that if you get people to buy into a belief the vast majority of them will place an emotional investment in maintaining that belief becoz to change it would mean that they’d have to admit that they were wrong. It’s pride-based, willful stupidity. And it’s extremely childish, egocentric and selfish becoz no one is right about everything … we all should vet our beliefs … we are all wrong at times. But most would rather stay wrong than admit they were wrong.

    Z

  81. Celsius 233

    Z PERMALINK
    September 7, 2012
    Celsius,
    It’s obviously all about the entertainment/presentation, it’s not about the reality/truth. It’s basically ‘just make me feel good for supporting you’.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Agree; these speeches were all delivered with cold, calculated professionalism, hiding the nasty operational cynicism of the powerful.
    I find it astonishing, that I can be so astonished at my fellow citizens behavior and my increasing distance (philosophical/political/social) from them.
    The fact I’m an expat probably contributes somewhat to my apparent radicalization.

  82. The fact I’m an expat probably contributes somewhat to my apparent radicalization.

    That’s actually a very interesting question. While I remain in the belly of the beast, I have been “outside” of (“psychologically disenfranchised” from) this country’s delusional self-image for a long time (having endured the negative social consequences of not saluting the flag or reciting the allegiance pledge in the classroom at the tender age of 11 back in 1968, tho I did stand up). Indeed, what comes first, the alienation or the objectivity? Can’t imagine an 11-year-old feeling true alienation… so maybe it’s OK to take credit for objectivity…

  83. Addendum: Then again, there were family issues that may have bled over into my assessment of the wider world.

    (Sorry to have glommed onto Celsius’ passing speculation, but psychology is my catnip. OT or no, I’d be delighted if any other afficiandos – groo? 🙂 – would weigh in on this question.)

  84. jcapan

    All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps

    -The English Patient, Michael Ondaatje (my favorite Canadian)

    Almásy’s stay with the Bedouins allows him to ‘erase’ his identity, his sense of a
    nation, and he ‘sinks’ into anonymity. Nationness and nationality are tantamount to sins in Ondaatje’s work. They are reasons for conflict and for wars, and they stop people from assimilating. Almásy becomes another Kip; he devoted his life to chart the desert for the Royal Society thus turning it into a war field. However, like Kip, he has a turning point. He becomes the English patient who refuses to admit his identity and who wishes to live on a land that has no maps.

    Ahmad M.S. Abu Baker

  85. Z

    It’s quite amazing actually. The fact of the matter is that if you get people to buy into a belief the vast majority of them will place an emotional investment in maintaining that belief becoz to change it would mean that they’d have to admit that they were wrong. It’s pride-based, willful stupidity. And it’s extremely childish, egocentric and selfish becoz no one is right about everything … we all should vet our beliefs … we are all wrong at times. But most would rather stay wrong than admit they were wrong.

    And demonize the folks/tribe that tell(s) you that you are wrong and most often folks won’t even listen to the other side’s arguments. They’d rather self-righteously bask in their feelings of moral superiority.

    Z

  86. StewartM

    Celsius 233:

    These people (my old social) are the last vestiges of the true middle-class; acting as though they weren’t an endangered species.

    The evil genius of Reagan was that he decoupled the middle class self-identification from one where it had been aligned with the poor (one of the effects of the Great Depression) to being aligned to that of the rich.

    And it’s amazing after seeing the prospects of the poor being trashed, and seeing people once in the middle class falling into the ranks of the poor (all it takes is one layoff or one plant closure or one illness to fall from even a $150,000 income to destitution) to maintain this identification, and to speak of the poor as “thems”, strange unusual “not normal” creatures akin to Martians or three-legged dogs.

    But the whole neoliberal doubleplusgoodspeak depends on maintaining this illusion in the face of this reality.

    StewartM

  87. Notorious P.A.T.

    “I will not vote for a dog catcher with a D (or an R) next to his name. ”

    “Stray dog annihilated by drone-fired Hellfire missile, film at eleven.”

    “Nobody who aspires to leadership in the US has real choices. ”

    Of course, our system stinks. No doubt about that. But how can one say Obama had no choice when he does things that no other president ever–EVER–has done? How could he have no choice about assassinating American citizens when that’s never been official policy before? How could he have no choice about paring back Habeus Corpus rights when those have been accepted law for nearly a millenium? How could he have no choice about signing a law to allow indefinite detention when that is a radically new policy for American government?

    Obama has to breathe, he has to eat and drink, and he has to sleep. He doesn’t have to fire missiles at funerals in hopes of killing a terrorist or two.

  88. Alcuin

    @Z –

    “They’d rather self-righteously bask in their feelings of moral superiority.”

    I had a run-in with a long-time friend (a hardcore left-winger) over just this when I objected to the e-mails she sent me that excoriated a long list of enemies. I suppose those objections challenged her “moral superiority” – she doesn’t send me e-mails any longer. No loss, no loss at all. I’m so tired of the finger-pointing, bigotry and hatred on both sides. And I’m tired of the hand-wringing and despair. It’s time to get to work and build the society we’d like to see. It starts with community …

  89. Z

    Notorious P.A.T.,

    “No doubt about that. But how can one say Obama had no choice when he does things that no other president ever–EVER–has done?”

    Exactly.

    Alcuin,

    “It’s time to get to work and build the society we’d like to see. It starts with community …”

    I couldn’t agree more.

    I’ve gone through the same shit – fruitless run-ins with people that really have no intention at getting at the truth – with my so-called left-wing friends who are actually nothing more than demo-zombies … after 8 years of fall-out with my right-wing friends during the Bush era.

    The republicans in politics lie like hell … so do the democrats in politics … but as far as comparing conservatives to liberals outside of politics, in my experience liberals lie more.

    Z

  90. Alcuin

    @Z –

    Your choice of words, “self-righteous” and “moral superiority” fascinated me so I put them into a search engine, along with the word “left” and came up with this article, by David Brin. Ouch!!! I think everyone here should read it – I had no idea that feelings of self-righteous moral superiority could trigger brain chemicals that result in pleasure. Fascinating.

  91. Alcuin

    HTML screw-up – it’s been a long week! Here is the article I wanted to link to.

  92. I had no idea that feelings of self-righteous moral superiority could trigger brain chemicals that result in pleasure.

    This is probably the scientific explanation for the smugness trap that enlightenment acolytes are cautioned against.

  93. Celsius 233

    Petro
    September 7, 2012
    The fact I’m an expat probably contributes somewhat to my apparent radicalization.
    That’s actually a very interesting question. While I remain in the belly of the beast, I have been “outside” of (“psychologically disenfranchised” from) this country’s delusional self-image for a long time (having endured the negative social consequences of not saluting the flag or reciting the allegiance pledge in the classroom at the tender age of 11 back in 1968, tho I did stand up). Indeed, what comes first, the alienation or the objectivity? Can’t imagine an 11-year-old feeling true alienation… so maybe it’s OK to take credit for objectivity…
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    I think my radicalization began in the 60’s with the war in Vietnam; further with what I believed was blow-back on 9/11; and finally with the invasion of Iraq, March 19th, 2003.
    Prior to that date I swore if Bush did it I would leave the U.S. having no idea how that would happen. Eight weeks later, having secured a job in Thailand; I left.
    Ten years in, I think my objectivity has been honed and I no longer value borders, nationality, or any identity of separation/division.
    Americans are among the worlds greatest provincials; at least the equal of the average Thai, or most (but certainly not all) citizens of the developing world.
    The hubris of 1st worlder’s just exemplifies their own ignorance and narrow mindedness when discussing the world at large.
    If it’s not Thais, then it’s Muslims, or Africans or, or, or…
    That pretty much wraps it up for me.

  94. Z

    Alcuin,

    Interesting article.

    The core reason for the self-righteousness/moral superiority addiction is simply selfishness.

    I’m using broad generalities based solely upon my personal experiences, but the reason that I think that liberals lie more than conservatives is that they lie to themselves that they really care about other people … the poor, the disadvantaged and humanitarian causes … when in fact they are just posturing that they do so just so that they can get their self-righteousness/moral superiority buzz.

    In my opinion, this subject is very relevant to the Obamabot’s aggressive-defensive behavior against those that criticize their hero. I wrote a little bit about it in one of Ian’s essays a while back: https://www.ianwelsh.net/obamas-personality/#comment-14830

    Z

  95. Kim Kaufman

    “Evil? Or Stupid?” Or third choice: both

    @Notorious Pat – “Calling for back-up here: how did Don’t Ask Don’t Tell get repealed? Was it because lawsuits by the Log Cabin Republicans forced the government’s hand?” You’re not reading Ian carefully enough. It’s because gays withheld $$ and votes in 2010. Simple.

    As for Pelosi, et al. – that’s why Obama is the more effective evil, as Glen Ford calls him. Obama can — and does — twist the arms of the so-called mor progressive Dems to vote with the Blue Dogs — not the other way around. If a Republican is president, then the Dems oppose those policies slightly more. Or some Dems — not that hag Dianne Feinstein, for example. Only a Democrat can get rid of Social Security. Obama already started with the “payroll tax holiday” which is the beginning of defunding Social Security. When George Bush wanted to make the middle class feel good with a tax cut, he wrote them a check out of the general fund. Unless we do something, Very Bad Things will happen to Social Security right after election in lame duck session.

  96. @Alcuin
    @Z
    Thanks for the David Brin link. Boy does that describe a lot of my “liberal” friends. Smugness giving one “a buzz” makes some kind of weird sense.

  97. Notorious P.A.T.

    “Smugness giving one “a buzz” makes some kind of weird sense”

    Many Obama-ites these days certainly write as if they are high:

    tbogg.firedoglake.com

  98. @Notorious, you got that right. His snarky post yesterday moved me to post a rare excoriation (which I usually avoid as his reactionary minions are insufferable). I think I might have struck a nerve this time, as his response, while predictably defensive, was muted and lacking the usual sarcasm.

  99. Deckard

    @Notorious P.A.T – looking at that LawyersGunsMoney blog piece made me want to pull my hair out. Besides not being willing to admit that ObamaCare =RomneyCare = Heritage Foundation Plan, they also had a fundamental misunderstanding of Quantitative Easing. I have never seen someone say such stupid things in my life on such a topic before and with such confidence. To say that the banks hate QE is like saying water isn’t wet; something that can be disproved rather easily. That and the constant bitching about how if you criticise Obama you MUST be a rabid right-winger. Ugh.

  100. Formerly T-Bear

    When did the DLC metastasize into DNC?
    Were there any changes of the Democrat’s national finance committee involved?
    What is the provenance of the members of that committee, who or what do they support?
    Who controls the money?
    Are they actual Democrats? or DINOs?
    One cannot be too careful this day in age.

  101. Ian: this reply is very late in coming, because I started over several times. In truth, my desire for blogospheric battle-royales has waned of late. So I’ll keep it short and simple.

    You may know more of these people personally than I do, but you also know that I lived for a significant length of time at the periphery of the culture dish that once spawned the whole phenomenon. And I met no shortage of people who “knew” and were able to condemn the whole (D) establishment 50% of the time, and the other 50% able to look and talk in admiration at their leaders. I don’t doubt that for the big guys it’s become a cynical game, which is often what happens to people who become too big.

    But I don’t think it makes any sense to go all Lambert and wag my finger dramatically at they who have at least achieved some measure of success at the ballot box. If they’re “delusionally self-deceiving” or “lying”, they are merely following the greater mass of American liberals in their conception of what is possible or impossible. If Kos didn’t exist, someone would have invented him. He didn’t steal some sort of giant political movement that would have otherwise been in the keeping of the Real True Left or mislead some otherwise innocent flock.

    And I don’t condemn the bulk of American liberals for their sense of limits. No one will “offer good,” because it’s hard to tell in advance that good would be voted for, especially considering past history. That is because the following is not relevant:

    And opinion polls show, in fact, that most Americans are less evil on a lot of subjects (like universal health care) than their elites. There is a real elite/citizen divide on opinion you seem incapable of acknowledging. If the Chefs won’t offer anything but evil/more evil, and you can only choose those two chefs, you’re kind of fucked.

    What people believe they want, and what they will vote for, are two completely different things. Voting is akin to purchasing a product and is better studied using the techniques of market research. There are many interdependent variables that convert a given voter’s desiderata into their voting intention, a large number of them emotional, and the sort of candidate that I would define as “good”, at least, would make demands of American society that it would not emotionally be able to bear.

    I gave up the election prediction game given my failure the last time around, but I point out that even given Romney’s obvious deficiencies, he retains a nontrivial finite chance of winning, even though it’s patently obvious that whatever deliberate banker-propitiating failures Obama has had, Romney would be worse. Worse, the House and Senate retain a nontrivial chance of staying/becoming (R), which is even scarier considering that this is where the real looneys are.

    So, you seem to think that if “good” were offered, it would have a strong chance of winning or even changing the debate. And I find this very doubtful.

    And, by the way, it’s not a question of condemning the American public. It only requires a minority of Americans, about 25% or perhaps less, to tilt the pinball machine. Then anyone who wants to offer “good” must count on the votes of 2/3rds of the remainder. Offering a consistent programme that wins over a reliable 2/3rds is not easy. That’s why, even if there weren’t a giant conspiracy of silence suppressing the correct policy choices in elite discourse, “good” would still be quite risky. The main weight of moral fault lies upon a slice of American society—which coincidentally is the “bogeyman” group of mainstream liberal organizations, for good reason.

    And yes, some of the blame lies at the feet of the people who designed the American political system, who didn’t anticipate the problems that would arise, and quite possibly would not be on the side of “good” even if they knew.

  102. That was, btw, still shorter and simpler than what I had originally intended to write 🙂

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén