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This was the sight that greeted my eyes as I was trying to watch a video on YouTube today. It’s rare to hear Obama attacked for being too pro-Wall Street except in the most progressively liberal–or is that liberally progressive?–circles. But, as far as I am aware, the liberal progressives have no viable candidate in this election. Obama being the more liberally progressive, one assumed they would all line up behind him.

So, I went to the website of the outfit that paid for the ad: “American Future Fund“. Their website says they are “Advocating Conservative, Free-Market Ideals.” So, no Progressive Liberals are these, but Free-Market Conservatives!

They say they’re worried about Money corrupting the political system. Well, so am I. But what is their solution to this problem? How would the free market fix it? There is potential for corruption even in a free market. You need a regulatory body to guard against that sort of thing. But, as Juvenal asked, “who shall guard the guardians?” It’s a good question. Unfortunately, the only answer that a free-market ideology seems to provide is “Government is too big. Get rid of all the guardians.”

This ad is pretty obviously targeted at low-information voters. Whenever you hear people who are not with the “Occupy” movement or some such attacking Obama for being too friendly to Big Business, you have to wonder what’s going on.

(Here is a 2008 story about this group for some further reading.)

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In the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup, there’s a scene where Chico’s character, Chicolini, is on trial. The prosecutor asks, “Chicolini, when were you born?” Chico answers: “I don’t remember. I was just a little baby.”

I’ve though of this line while reading about the latest installment in Breitbart.com’s “vetting” of the President. It seems a 1991 pamphlet from his literary agent described him as “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii.” Almost everyone is saying it’s a simple fact-checking error. Even Breitbart.com doesn’t claim it as evidence he actually was born in Kenya; rather, they say:

It is evidence–not of the President’s foreign origin, but that Barack Obama’s public persona has perhaps been presented differently at different times.

First of all, this is almost certainly true, as it is true of every other politician. How often have you seen a Presidential candidate, on a visit to Pittsburgh say “Go Steelers! I’ll fight for you in Washington as hard as Hines Ward blocks.” and then the next day in Wisconsin say “You know, my mother’s best friend’s brother had a cousin from Wisconsin, and I’ve always had a soft spot for those Packers. How ’bout Aaron Rodgers, huh?”

So, it’s kind of a waste of time to say “hey, look; this guy presents himself differently according to the situation! He is unfit to be President!” They all do that. Even if this isn’t a typo–and it probably is–it’s not important.

I hate the phrase “dog-whistle” used in regards to politics. It’s often used as a cheap excuse to say “well you didn’t say [awful, usually racist thing], but it’s what you meant.” That’s dishonest debating. But in this case, it seems almost like Breitbart.com is actually saying (aside, to conservatives) “Here’s evidence he was born in Kenya.” (aloud, to world in general) “We’re not saying this means he was born in Kenya; we just think he’s a liar!”

Although, at least the allegation that he was born in Kenya, crazy as it is, would be important if true. (Which it isn’t.) It relates to an actual legal issue of his eligibility to be President. The stated allegation from Breitbart.com, in contrast, is a stupid bit of minutiae even if it’s true.

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Amused at This Ruthless World (thanks for liking my last post, BTW) wrote a really good post awhile back in response to an essay written by one “John J. Wall”. I’d never read Wall’s piece before, but I have heard the idea advanced within it many times in the past. It is this: that the “liberals” and “conservatives” are so deeply divided on all issues that it would be better for both if each group formed separate countries. Amused’s post inspired me to write something of my own on the matter.

Of course, if you’re a reader of this blog, you know that there are actually three groups: materialists, nationalists and cosmopolitans. But still, let that not dissuade us from this engaging in this thought-experiment. It is still only a simple matter of dividing the country into three instead of two.

The nationalists may have the southeast–the old Confederacy minus Virginia. The materialists may have the West; that is, the area extending from California to east Texas. A vast area to be sure, but one which they will no doubt set about harvesting every inch of for resources. And the cosmopolitans shall retain the Northeast and parts of the Midwest. Everything east of Kansas and north of Tennessee would remain in cosmopolitan hands. Cosmopolitans would also get Hawaii, and Nationalists would hold Alaska.

(Oddly enough, this division into regions mimics a similar scheme by economic historian Douglass North. But he was writing only about the United States internal trade flows in the early 1800s. And then, evidently, something happened around 1861 to fundamentally alter the structure of the country.)

As part of the deal, suppose everyone starts with the same governmental structure and Constitution as we have today.  so, now we just go ahead and simulate to see where it will all go.

I imagine the taxation issue would quickly cease to be of interest to the nationalists, once they are no longer trying to destroy a cosmopolitan government. Presumably, they would focus their immediate efforts on bulking up their immigration laws. They would also probably raise tariffs in order to keep their manufacturing sector strong. It might even be a mini-boom along the lines of the 1950s auto-industry. Naturally, in the Nationalist State, minorities and foreigners would be viewed with suspicion until their Nationalist-credentials had been soundly proven. I imagine congressman Allen West would make a successful career in this place, as would Sarah Palin. The political structure would change to be based more heavily on charismatic authority. No doubt the social structure would closely resemble that of 1950s America for the most part, with women being encouraged to be housewives and men being seen as heads of house. Gay marriage, the issue under so much discussion at present, would be utterly unthinkable, as would Civil Unions etc. Gays would also likely be barred from military service, but it is likely that this country would reinstate the draft, so there would be no problem with lack of personnel.  Fashion and art would both become considerably more conservative, quite possibly up to the point of introducing government censors.

In the materialist West, meanwhile, it is likely that the world would come to resemble the United States as a whole in the 1870-90s. Almost all environmental regulations would be removed, and worker safety laws would be scaled back. Unions would cease to exist. Tariffs would also be very low or nil, so as to encourage foreign investment. Immigration laws, likewise, would be quite lax so as to gain a cheap labor force. Military force would assume the character of a highly-paid internal security outfit, and be largely defensive in nature. (One imagines the Erik Princes of the world would have to think long and hard over whether his fortune lay to the South or the West.) Social issues would be non-existent; societal mores being relaxed to please the fancies of the wealthiest. Indeed, the city of Los Angeles as it exists today, would probably go on functioning as if nothing had happened under the new arrangement. Art and fashion would all go as the popular will dictated; thus movies, for example, would be solely of the “summer blockbuster” variety all year round.

Of the cosmopolitan North, there is less to say; perhaps because the area is well on its way to being that already. It is probable that taxes would be raised, of course; as it would no longer be so politically abhorrent to do so. A massive influx of public money go to support higher education, which would likely lead to the Academy being the primary institution in the country. Other than that, however, things would change less, principally because the cosmopolitan sees diversity as a strength, and would need to undergo less modification to suit its philosophical beliefs. The military would be fairly small, and probably what there was of it would be based heavily on technological superiority, not man-power.

It would be interesting to see how long this state of affairs persisted. It would not be long, surely, before each country recognized that there was much to be gained from the others. The materialist sector, in particular, might look an inviting target for conquest; though of course it is questionable whether it would be profitable to do so. Also, the nationalist and cosmopolitan states by their nature invite comparison to ancient Athens and Sparta.

Ultimately, the optimal move for each country would be strategic alliances with its neighbors, as each would have something to provide to the others. However, there is also the dark possibility that two would form an alliance against the third, and thereby destroy it either militarily or economically.

And there I conclude this experiment, but you are welcome to add thoughts of your own.

For myself, I see this as rather a gloomy idea. I believe each type has something to contribute to the country. But then, I would, wouldn’t I? I’m a cosmopolitan.

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Jonah Goldberg, of Liberal Fascism fame, has a new book out entitled The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. I love reading Goldberg, because when he is wrong, which is very often, it is quite funny. And when he is right, it is usually not in the way he thinks he is right, but very important nonetheless. So, I really will have to read this book of his at some point.

In the meantime, here are some excerpts from an NPR interview with him. [Goldberg’s words in red]:

“What you have often in American political discourse are appeals to clichés that steal territory, steal terrain unearned by argument. And all I want is an argument. I don’t care that liberals have an ideology. I want them to have an ideology. I want to have a contest of ideas. What bothers me is when they come in and they say, ‘Oh, you guys are the crazy ideologues with your labels and all of the rest, and we’re just pragmatists who care about sound science and the numbers and the facts’ and all that.’ “

What becomes rapidly apparent from listening to Goldberg is that he is not, in fact, against cliches. He is only against liberal cliches. Well, to paraphrase Nietzsche: “he who fights clichés should take care that he does not himself become a cliché”. And indeed:

On the response that conservatives also have their own clichés

“Yeah, and some of these things I absolutely agree. I think that there is something endemic — one of the reasons why some of these cliches appeal, why they have power, why they move men, is because they appeal to the hard-wiring in our human nature. We’re all built from the crooked timber of humanity; we all want to live in groups; we all want to live in tribes; we all want to, you know, band together and do good things.”

It might have been good to notice that before you wrote the book. So, he certainly is willing to allow as how conservatives also have clichés. But whatever, it’s okay, because everyone does. But liberals, when they do it, do it wrong and perniciously. Got it?

But when an actual instance of something thought to be a conservative cliché is raised, Goldberg is skeptical of its status as “cliché”:

On the saying, “Government is the problem”

“No, I’m not against having a government. I don’t know if that qualifies as the kind of cliché that I am talking about … The mainstream media never talks as if government is the problem — you never hear that repeated over and over again. Even on Fox, to a certain extent, you won’t hear that sort of thing. It’s a catchphrase, to be sure, and it’s a glib catchphrase that oversimplifies things, but the context in which I was talking about it was that Ronald Reagan had said, ‘In the current situation, government is the problem, not the solution.’ And that is the beginning of a serious argument.”

Yeah, but the point is, when you just start quoting that line of Reagan’s all the time when talking about the government, then it becomes a cliché. That’s how clichés work, Goldberg. Remember; every cliché was an original thought once.

At bottom, though, his point is correct. Clichés in politics are a problem, like I wrote about in this post. As I see it, both Democrats and Republicans use clichés all the time, and it does, as Goldberg says, hinder productive argument.

But as far as I can tell, without having read the thing yet, Goldberg’s book is just a compilation of liberal clichés. I haven’t heard anything to suggest he offers a solution to our cliché-filled politics. Which is fine, but how would one go about fixing it?

George Lucas once said “Don’t avoid the clichés–they are clichés because they work!” And he proved it, too, by making billions of dollars off of a movie franchise built around some of the oldest clichés of all. It works the same with political clichés.

Like I said in the other post, people learn their communication through imitation. Why should political communication be immune from this? Think about the effort involved in figuring out how to not think in political clichés: you’d have to be willing to ignore all the slogans and ideas told to you by your friends, family, colleagues, political analysts, writers and the politicians themselves. The you would have to try to reevaluate everything about politics. And even then, there’s no guarantee of success. You might just become Alex Jones.

Back to what Lucas said: “clichés work”. They sure do. It’s a cliché to say the Republicans are defenders of the super-rich, and indeed, that is oversimplifying things greatly, but even so it’s still a pretty good synopsis that gives you a decent idea of their behavior. It’s not the whole story, but it’s part of it, and if you go around operating on that assumption, it will be awhile before you notice anything that makes you question it.

It goes back to what I’ve talked about before lots of times on this blog: people are too busy to get really involved in politics beyond following the leaders of their parties. And it’s not because people are lazy or stupid; it’s because really thoroughly understanding politics is a full-time job.

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David Wong, writing in Cracked, lists “5 ways to spot a B.S. Political Story”. He highlights certain words that appear in political headlines, and what they often signify. It would be easy to blame this on lazy journalists; however, it’s really very easy to find yourself repeating the same phrases that are familiar to you. And it’s a huge hindrance to writing about politics. George Orwell famously advised in his essay Politics and the English Language:

Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

Great advice, and so naturally very difficult to heed. I’ve probably fallen back on time-worn phrases countless times in writing this blog. As people acquire language largely through imitation, it’s only natural that we fall easily into imitation when using it.

Wong also laments how stories often couch everything purely in terms of political points scored. He writes of the headline “Slowdown in U.S. jobs growth deals a blow to Obama.”:

How about the millions of people who are out of work? Hey, guys, I don’t know if you realize this, but the world actually exists. Those numbers on the screen represent actual humans who are actually suffering. No, really! It’s not a video game!

The reason the press has to couch everything in this manner is simple: otherwise, they get called for political bias. Wong talks about stories that treat, for example, the healthcare law as merely a political “horse-race” issue, but the poor writers have only two other options:

  1. Write headlines like “Supreme Court to render millions uninsured”–a headline which would cause all the Republicans to gripe even more than usual about “liberal bias”, and whine that this was “value-laden language”.
  2. Capitulate to the Republicans entirely and write headlines like “Supreme Court to free millions from yoke of socialism”.

The first thing will never happen, because hell hath no fury like a Republican who is mad at the press. The second thing is out at every news source that has some interest in the truth. So, all that’s left is the horse-race approach. After all, no one can complain that it’s biased.

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How did I not hear about this sooner?

Curses! They knew my one weakness! Now I’ll have no choice but to vote for Ron Paul. Even if he’s not actually running as an independent come November, I’ll still have to write his name in.

Okay, I’m just kidding. Don’t worry. But really, this is bizarre. It figures to easily surpass Deus Ex as the best video game for Ron Paul fans, I’ll say that much. I don’t know if it’s a joke or not, but in my opinion, it doesn’t really do wonders for the Paul’s image as a “serious” candidate.

Read more about it here.

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Yesterday, President Obama said: “I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress”. He also apparently added that the Supreme Court is “unelected”.

Republican writers have been attacking him for this, laughing at how stupid this statement is. After all, Supreme Court Justice is by design an unelected position, and to complain about this is to complain about the whole system. More to the point, it is not in the least unprecedented for the Court to overturn a law passed by Congress. That’s what it’s there for.

So, why did Obama say that? Republicans would have you believe it’s because he’s an idiot, and a sham Constitutional lawyer. But they are, of course, wrong.

This statement of Obama’s is calculated for the ears of low-information voter. The people who don’t pay much attention to politics, or have much knowledge of the system. The statement is calibrated to inflame animosity among this demographic towards the Supreme Court. (Which, by the by, indicates he’s concerned they’re going to overturn it.)

Now, a cynic would say the President is lying to stupid people to win their votes. But this is an unduly bleak way of putting it. As I have said, merely because a person is not well-informed about the political system does not mean that person is stupid. And both sides try to court the low-information vote. Indeed, when any part of the political system is not presently working to the advantage of one party, that party will demonize that part of the system, and the other will praise it. Yet, when circumstances change, and the party that had benefited now suffers from this part of the system, the situation will be reversed. This happens frequently with the filibuster.

In other words, this is a non-story, Obama is not an idiot, and you Republicans will just have to think of something else. Just another day in politics.

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Two good pieces on Slate today; one about sociologist/philosopher William Graham Sumner and one about apocalyptic campaign ads. I’ll tackle the latter first.

It’s a good list, but I disagree with the claim that “when candidates get desperate, they try to scare you.” Was Nixon really desperate in 1968, or Johnson in 1964? Scaring people is always an effective tactic, whether they’re desperate or not. All attack ads either try to frighten or ridicule, and those that ridicule usually carry an undercurrent of frightening, as the idea of such a buffoon as the target of the ad taking office is scary by implication.

By the way, it didn’t make the list, but in my opinion the best political attack ad ever is this one, from Nixon’s 1968 campaign against Hubert Humphrey:

That ad is purely visceral. There’s not even any language in it until the very end, which is as it should be. The effective advertisement must appeal to instincts and base, gut feelings, not sophisticated reasoning. Trippy and weird as it is, this ad is psychologically effective.

On to the second piece, about William Sumner. His anti-socialist, “leave the rich people alone” philosophy sounds to me pretty similar to the ideas of his contemporary, Herbert Spencer. And it seems that Sumner was who coined the phrase “the Forgotten Man”, which, as my readers will know, has formed the theme of many a ham-fisted Jon McNaughton painting.

So, I skimmed some of the Sumner essay “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other” that the Slate article talks about. I confess, I could only skim because it was quite dull; most of the ideas in it are old hat by now, but it’s important to remember that they must have seemed novel at the time.

Sumner begins the essay by complaining:

We constantly read and hear discussions of social topics in which the existence of social classes is assumed as a simple fact. “The poor,” “the weak,” “the laborers,” are expressions which are used as if they had exact and well-understood definition. Discussions are made to bear upon the assumed rights, wrongs, and misfortunes of certain social classes…

He does not like the phrase “the poor man” one bit:

There is no possible definition of “a poor man.”.. The “poor man” is an elastic term, under which any number of social fallacies may be hidden.

And then:

There is an old ecclesiastical prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich.  In days when men acted by ecclesiastical rules these prejudices produced waste of capital, and helped mightily to replunge Europe into barbarism. The prejudices are not yet dead, but they survive in our society as ludicrous contradictions and inconsistencies. One thing must be granted to the rich: they are good-natured. Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one. It is not uncommon to hear a clergyman utter from the pulpit all the old prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich, while asking the rich to do something for the poor; and the rich comply, without apparently having their feelings hurt at all by the invidious comparison.

Well, if I were rich, people could denounce me as much and as viciously as they damn well-pleased and I wouldn’t complain.

But beyond that, it’s like Paul Graham wrote:

Most philosophical debates are not merely afflicted by but driven by confusions over words. Do we have free will? Depends what you mean by “free.” Do abstract ideas exist? Depends what you mean by “exist.

Same problem here. Sumner gets bogged down trying to define things, or show that they can’t be defined, in order to make some point; and it all becomes nearly meaningless.

I’ll try to read more of this essay, but right now my eyes are glazed over. Sumner’s writing is like Ayn Rand’s without any of the animating passion.

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I apologize right now to all the readers who don’t get this reference–which will be most of you–but I had to write it: After seeing his “Obamaville” ad, I believe Rick Santorum thinks he is going to be like Father Grigori from Half-Life 2. Am I right?

I mean, look at this thing:

 

I guess the title is supposed to evoke both The Amityville Horror and the same idea as “Hoovervilles“. But they clearly decided to take the apocalyptic survival/horror theme and run with it. I’m frankly surprised they didn’t call it “President Evil“. (A survival horror game in which Chris and Jill are replaced by Rick and Sarah. Dammit, I should stop giving them ideas.) Jon McNaughton would have done that; if you’re going to be unsubtle, you may as well be as unsubtle as possible.

My cinematographic problem with the ad is that it mixes and matches filming styles. Mostly it looks like a gritty, zombie-apocalypse/slasher flick, but every now and again a little touch of more sophisticated horror seeps in–there are a couple shots that evoke The Shining.

Then of course there’s the pseudo-subliminal linking of Obama with Ahmadinejad at around the 40 second mark. Why didn’t they just go all-out and throw in Captain Howdy as well? It seemed like they were putting every other trope in.

Here’s the other problem with this piece of propaganda: it seems sort of comical. I mean, I don’t like high gasoline prices either, but when you couch it with Hollywood apocalypse imagery, it comes off as unserious–like whining, in other words. But the production values are so high that it doesn’t seem like the ad is trying for just a cheesy “Obama is like a monster!” gag. It seems pretty serious, except it can’t really be serious, because it still looks like a horror flick.

And then of course there’s the fact that I disagree with all of the political ideas underlying the ad. So, all in all, I’d have to say that I think it sucks.

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Conservative painter Jon McNaughton, whose painting The Forgotten Man I blogged about before, has a new piece out entitled One Country Under Socialism. You can see it here. It depicts a sinister-looking President Obama holding a burning U.S. Constitution.

As a painting, I personally think this one is poorer than his previous efforts. Setting aside my political disagreements with him, this one seems pretty unambitious to me.  What’s really interesting about this piece to me is the article he posted on his blog about the painting, wherein he says:

Our federal government has been moving in the direction of socialism for over one hundred years.  Many presidents and politicians have compromised the Constitution as we have given away our freedoms under the guise of entitlements and government intervention.

“Over one hundred years”, eh? That’s interesting; as that puts us at least back in 1912, when Taft was President. Well, no doubt McNaughton thinks the corporate income tax was a step towards socialism, so that’s one thing. Even more interesting is his next claim:

In the history of the world, never has there been a recorded example where Socialism has led to the betterment of the human condition or improved the liberty of the people.

Well, to paraphrase Ronald Reagan: “are you better off than you were 100 years ago?” If we have been trending that way this past century, than surely the remarkable progress of the U.S. is something of a point in Socialism’s favor.

Ah, but what a simplistic argument! Maybe all this has happened in spite of our Socialist tendencies.

But what is this socialism, anyway? Again, McNaughton has an answer:

Socialism uses the illusion of offering fairness and justice for everyone by redistributing the wealth of the nation; picking and choosing winners and losers.

“Redistributing the wealth of the nation”. I see. Well, then, McNaughton is understating the sheer staying power of Socialism in this country.

As I’ve said before: if a State collects taxes to provide for defense, law enforcement and a legal system, then it has already admitted that it is necessary to redistribute the wealth of its citizens for the greater good. The rest is mere detail–a question of what actually serves the greater good and what doesn’t.

This allows for all manner of variation, but, at the end of the day, is really still about socialism. Most governments in history have been socialistic by this definition, because taxation of any kind amounts to redistributing wealth. And taxation has been done for rather a long time. Think of the Biblical phrase “Render unto Caesar”, for example.

The point is that redistribution of wealth is what the State does. After that, it is all merely a question how much wealth the State shall direct and to what ends. under the McNaughton definition, all States are Socialist.

In a way, Conservatives these days sometimes seem to attack the State merely for being the State. The libertarian Albert Jay Nock wrote in the 1930s in Our Enemy, the State that “the invariable characteristic of the State is the economic exploitation of one class by another”, and gave a long history of the State which demonstrated its tendency to transfer wealth. Nock may have been a paranoid anti-government kook, but at least he understood what he was opposing, unlike today’s paranoid anti-government kooks, who think they are only opposing an ideology.