Hillary is Conway

I felt a great disturbance in the Commonwealth, as if thousands of voices suddenly cried out in horror and were suddenly silenced. Kentucky just suffered an abysmal election. Less than a third of registered voters (30.7%) participated, which means that Matt Bevin (R), the victor for governor, won with a scant 16%.

This utterly stunned disbelief was just how many people felt when Ronald Reagan won in 1980. Reagan, like Bevin, was long considered a political joke as this 1969 Mad Magazine parody shows. Matt Bevin is a Tea Party extremist who his fellow Republicans call a pathological liar. He claimed to have graduated from MIT and denies ever saying he would pull out of Medicare expansion. Both lies are on video.

Kentucky’s participation in Obamacare and Medicaid expansion had rapidly halved the state’s number of uninsured. Indeed, the set up of Kentucky's health exchange, Kynect, went so smoothly that it was held up as a national example. (By contrast, the federal end of the roll-out was initially plagued with hiccups.) Now those folks - over 400,000 - will probably lose their insurance. I have many friends who briefly enjoyed the first insurance coverage they had in their adult lives. Bevin has pledged to disconnect Kynect; but Gregg Stumbo, the Speaker of the state legislature, has vowed to fight him.

Matt Bevin's electoral opponent, Jack Conway, had previously failed to unseat Tea Party darling Rand Paul for the U.S. Senate. In both cases, Conway tried to appeal to the right and alienated his base. It is the standard playbook Kentucky Democrats use to lose an election.

There are too many truisms that describe this week’s election results: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. Evil men succeed when good people do nothing. To those, I'd add that apocryphal Harry Truman quote on conservative Democrats: "If you run a Republican against a Republican, the Republican will win every time." This is why you do not betray your base and pander to your opponents'.

The majority of Americans are not Republicans – certainly not hardcore conservatives. In fact, Democrats have historically enjoyed a slight edge in party identification polls. But despite this Republicans frequently succeed at the ballot box because they always vote. Accordingly, they benefit from low voter turnout. It's an old joke in Kentucky that they pray for rain on election day. But what is more, is that Republicans energize their base. Democrats are different: They hold their base at arm's length.

I am going to go out on a limb and say that that this does not work. Yes, sometimes particularly charismatic Democratic candidates can overcome this self-inflicted handicap, but they initially get in office because they do not have it yet. Disappointment comes later. We all recall that Barack Obama ran on "hope and change" in 2008, but in 1992, Bill Clinton ran on hope too. "The Man from Hope" had energized the base because his campaign embraced liberalism's accomplishments and played up that boyhood footage of him shaking hands with JFK. Declaring "the era of big government is over" came later.

Would this be a good time to mention that Bernie Sanders does better than Hillary Clinton in match-ups against Donald Trump? As Sanders understands, you need to energize the base. 

EDIT 11/08/15:

It may be harder for Bevin to get Kentucky out than most people previously thought. Let's hope so.

Misogyny? Seriously?

I am amazed that anyone is calling Bernie Sanders supporters misogynists.

Are there any male chauvinists in their ranks? No doubt some. All groups have unwelcome members that need to seriously revisit their politics on one issue or another and they should be called out on it. But they hardly define the Sanders movement. Or should we judge Hillary Clinton by her racist 2008 PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) supporters? The suggestion is just absurd.

Why? Because Sanders had effectively inherited the draft Elizabeth Warren movement. After Warren firmly said "NO" several times, they finally took the hint.* If you want to see the average Sanders fan, look at the average Warren fan. They are the same people.

Full disclosure: I am a Sanders supporter, in case you have not already guessed. Indeed, I have a Sanders t-shirt that is a revamped version of a Warren t-shirt - same artist, same caption: "Time for some tough love on Wall Street. Minus the love." As the caption suggests, we want a candidate that will fight for economic equality and punish financial malfeasance. Hillary Clinton does not strike us as that candidate. In fact, progressives have been disenchanted with Clinton's safe establishment stances for quite some time. Indeed, Clinton has been chillingly conservative for a Democrat.

Recently, two dubious accusations were leveled against Sanders by Clinton and her surrogates.

First, they mis-characterized Sander's stock comment that people "shouting" over the gun issue does nothing. He has been saying this for years, but Hillary Clinton spun it as Sanders trying to silence her. It may be a misunderstanding, but I doubt it.

Second, Clinton supporters said that it was a "condescending insult" for a Sanders aide to say they would consider her for vice president. If so, then it was a condescending insult when the Clinton campaign said the very same thing about Obama in 2008. The Obama camp's response was, "We're not running for vice president." But perhaps the Clinton camp does not remember 2008. (I doubt that too.)

Of course, polling shows that any gender gap between the two camps is statistically insignificant. The real differences between the two campaigns' supporters are age and race. The Sanders campaign is not a boys club populated with "Bernie Bros."

Let's not kid ourselves: I love Bernie Sanders and I hope he wins, but we all know that Elizabeth Warren was the progressive movement's first choice. We all know that if Warren had decided to run, nobody would be talking about Sanders today except in the same way they talk about Martin O'Malley, Lincoln Chafee, and Jim Webb. Who? Exactly. Sanders would be in the single digits and I would be wearing the Warren version of the t-shirt. Perhaps she would have tapped him to be VP. It would have been a dream ticket.

Obviously that did not happen, but settling for Sanders has proven to be surprisingly exciting. A lot of us underestimated him and went into this only hoping to nudge Hillary Clinton to the left. (And it has indeed worked!) But it turns out that grumpy grandpa appeals to more people than me. Who knew? Now Sanders looks like he has a real chance. Indeed, the fact that he is getting such shoddy, desperate flack, suggests that another 2008-like upset might occur. And I'll happily take that.

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* In defense of those who persistently pestered Warren to run for president, she also repeatedly demurred to endorse Clinton (this video suggests why), so they read too much into that. Likewise, when Obama first ran in 2008, he promised to pull troops out of Iraq and redeploy them in Afghanistan. Doves had presumed this was just talk because although the Afghan War's popularity was falling, it was still over 50%. They had persuaded themselves that Obama would pull out of both once approval dropped below 50 - if not before. Obviously, that did not happen. In both cases, the political figures meant exactly what they said, but their supporters' wishful thinking rationalized something else. But, hey, a lot of politics is reading between the lines. Otherwise, what would we bloggers have to write about besides our cats?

The Right is Always Wrong. Usually.

I am going to say something both controversial and obvious: Conservatism is always wrong.

Liberals are pretty hesitant to say that anything is always right or wrong. Such black and white claims are recklessly unrealistic and too easily disproved. Life just isn't like that. There are too often shades of gray. Moreover, such overconfident claims are fundamentally at odds with the liberal temperament which tends to look for the good in everyone. We look for commonalities in the human family and emphasize them in order to build compromises on common ground. It has frequently been President Obama's Achilles Heel. We are admittedly generous to a fault in that regard.

Of course, conservatives think we are generous to a fault in all regards.

Conservatives are often the opposite. They embrace a binary, us-vs-them mindset and try to frame issues in terms of moral absolutes with Jehovah on one side and Lucifer on the other. They ignore or disbelieve their leaders' scandals but instantly accept any groundless accusation made against the other side's - hence the endless conspiracy theories and imaginary non-scandals they level at the Clintons and Obama. I have been highly critical of the Clintons betraying the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society, but I do not think that they had Vince Foster whacked and made it look like a suicide, as Rush Limbaugh perennially insists. Of course, no political stripe is immune to subscribing to conspiracy theories, but the binary mentality is more prone to them because the world is complex and it ironically has to be made more complex to fit a simplistic worldview.

Even when conservatives recognize that individuals or situations have shades of gray, black and white absolutes still define their value spectrum, regardless of circumstance. Everything is framed in terms of opposite poles. For example, they are not going to listen to Paul Krugman's Keynesian argument that deficit spending is sometimes beneficial and necessary.(1) To the conservative rank and file, deficits are always bad; thus raising the national debt ceiling to avoid default on the national debt is a species of treason. Conservative politicians therefore strive to prove their purity by out crazy-ing each other and playing chicken on the budget. Today, the Tea Party movement imposes a Reagan Test of ideological purity that not even Ronald Reagan could pass. But don't expect rank and file Republicans to admit it.

Of course, as George Orwell wrote in his famous essay "Notes on Nationalism," this binary thinking is found on both the left and the right. He uses the term "nationalism" broadly, taking it beyond a blind loyalty to nation-states, but ideologies as well. On atrocities, he wrote:

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. For quite six years the English admirers of Hitler contrived not to learn of the existence of Dachau and Buchenwald. And those who are loudest in denouncing the German concentration camps are often quite unaware, or only very dimly aware, that there are also concentration camps in Russia. Huge events like the Ukraine famine of 1933, involving the deaths of millions of people, have actually escaped the attention of the majority of English russophiles. Many English people have heard almost nothing about the extermination of German and Polish Jews during the present war. Their own antisemitism has caused this vast crime to bounce off their consciousness.

But the mentality of a Marxist and a liberal are pretty different. On the contrary, liberals have the opposite problem because they are too quick to accept the conservative narrative. They almost reflexively believe conservatives' most outrageous anecdotes only to caution that the story in question is an isolated incident and not really representative of the program or policy being attacked. You see this played out on every pundit debate show. Only very rarely does an establishment Democratic pundit reply, "Wow. I had not heard about that, but I doubt that it actually happened the way you describe it - if at all. Almost all your examples turn out to be grossly distorted or outright urban legends. So I cannot go along and give you guys the benefit of the doubt anymore." That would be rude. Instead, they say, "Well, I certainly don't support that but -" The upshot is that the conservative has told a vivid story (which often trumps boring facts and figures with most audiences) and the liberal has failed to call bullshit and therefore comes off as weak and equivocating.(2) Clearly, Orwell don't apply here, conservatives' red menace fantasies not withstanding.

I have a handful of Republican friends, but they are more libertarian than conservative. For example, they support gay rights, a woman's right to choose, and marijuana legalization. Yes, we disagree on some things (mostly economic) but we agree on others. They do not have that binary, black and white mindset that I mentioned. Some are better and some are worse, however the worse ones have a more black and white mindset. Ironically, how black and white your worldview is falls along a gray-scale continuum.

So, in that spirit, I am going to make a highly qualified claim: Conservatism is always wrong.

The qualification is that I am talking about the ideology rather than the individual voter or politician. There are almost no issues where conservatives are uniquely correct about anything. They are only correct when they agree with liberals and everyone else. Doubt me? Name an exception:

Opposing Stalin? Liberals and leftists did too. Indeed, a lot of Marxists soured on Stalin, mostly because he was trying to kill them. Does any sane person think that Cold War era Democratic presidents like Truman, Kennedy, or Johnson were closet communists? I said sane: Obviously members of the John Birch Society and the KKK don't count. Nor do Glenn Beck fans. But I repeat myself.

Finding and fighting Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden? Um, yeah, that was not a big priority for the Bush administration despite the outgoing Clinton administration's warnings. Not before 9-11 and actually not much after either. One reason why Obama got Osama was that Bush was not really trying. Bush was much more interested in Saddam than Osama. Indeed, the fact that Obama got bin Laden torpedoes not only the conservative conspiracy theory that Obama is a secret Muslim who hates America but the broader one that liberals are weak on defense. You have to be a paranoid nut to believe either conservative canard.

But if a particular position or perspective is inherently conservative in character, it is probably spectacularly wrong whether we are talking about the economy, foreign policy, morality, or law enforcement. To rattle off a few: Conservatives opposed Social Security - wrong. They opposed Medicare and Medicaid - callous. They opposed the Civil Rights Act - bigoted. They opposed the Clean Air and Water Acts - senseless. Their economic policies caused the Great Depression and the crash of 2007 - catastrophe. They launched the War on Drugs and the prison industrial complex - an absolute disaster. They are on the wrong side of history on LBGT rights (in part because they oppose recognizing rights in general). They think sex ed classes promote teen pregnancy unless the curriculum is abstinence only. Obviously, it is the opposite. From the micro to the macro their notions of how the world works are just cruel jokes. These are the same people who said that listening to rock or smoking pot would turn you into a violent maniac. These are the same people who said playing Dungeons & Dragons would make you commit suicide.(3) They have been predicting the End Times since language was invented. As Benjamin Franklin gently mocked them, "The golden age is never the present age." I remember when The Late Great Planet Earth was in movie theaters in the late 1970s. Growing up, Sunday morning television was composed almost exclusively of televangelists warning of Armageddon and demanding money. The sole sane exception was "Star Trek" reruns. Why should anyone be surprised that they still think we found WMDs in Iraq or that Obamacare has "death panels"?

The only area in which conservatives are arguably correct is the second amendment. In theory. But no right is absolute, so they wind up always wrong in practice. As I wrote in my book, gun ownership is a personal right, but gun control is constitutional too. For gun owners, the only way around the "well-regulated militia" stumbling block is to argue that the phrase was only thrown in as an example and not the sole reason. From there, they must argue that the founders were vitally concerned with individual liberty generally. But to do that, they must also support birth control, abortion, gay rights, pornography, pot, and everything that cultural conservatives have historically opposed. Logically, you cannot argue for a broad interpretation of the second amendment without embracing a broad interpretation of the first. Therefore, there is a plausible libertarian argument for gun rights, but there is not a conservative one. So, yeah, conservatives are still always wrong.

Excuse this footnoted cri-de-coeur, but calling Republicans "The Party of No" is just too generous. (See? We are generous to a fault.) They are the Party of Wrong. They are always wrong because they are perpetually at war with liberty, equality, and democracy.

And to that we must add modernity and reality.

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(1) Deficit spending was just one way that Reagan broke the faith, but it was spectacularly damaging. Franklin D. Roosevelt ran deficits as well, but his government borrowing differed from Reagan's in two immense ways. First, FDR borrowed from American banks. Such domestic debts do not harm the overall economy because they are like borrowing from yourself: When the money is paid back, it goes right back into the American economy. Indeed, that money goes back into the American economy as soon as Uncle Sam spends it, stimulating the economy immediately. But when the rich sit on their money the economy is anemic. By contrast, Reagan borrowed from foreign banks. It also stimulated the economy as soon as it was spent on defense. But as the money gets paid back it leaves the U.S. economy. Second, FDR borrowed to pull us out of the Great Depression and fight WWII. These are what most historians call "damn good reasons." Reagan just wanted to claim he lowered your taxes. Of course, he didn't because borrowed money has to be paid back - with interest. He actually raised our taxes, only he did it during subsequent administrations. Reagan lambasted "tax-and-spend Democrats," but at least their programs were paid for. Reagan was a borrow-and-spend Republican. Also, the Reagan Administration deliberately ballooned the deficit to crowd out social spending. Their goal was hosing the poor, not fiscal responsibility. So I suppose that makes three big differences.

(2) Of course, there are good reasons for such caution. Sure, conservatives are usually lying, but you don't want to say that the one time they are not. For example, Ronald Reagan's Cadillac-driving "welfare queen" was a real person. But she was a genius con-artist who ran countless scams under countless names. Most aid recipients are honest and most cheaters get caught. And eventually even she got nabbed; so not only was she an outlier, the system worked. Conservatives certainly wouldn't say we should close banks because they get robbed and they definitely would not take that tack on fraud by defense contractors. You cannot call bullshit as reflexively as bull-shitters fabricate. On the other hand, a lot of establishment democrats don't like to call themselves liberals, so they are timid about defending liberal positions. That is a separate, but longstanding problem - hence these links to old articles. MSNBC is a relatively new thing.

(3) Mind you, "60 Minutes" swallowed the D&D panic too - which shows how quick the mainstream media (MSM) is to give conservative cranks legitimacy. Veracity does not really figure into their decision making. Being chronically wrong is no barrier to access. The MSM still think that Thomas Friedman is a genius and that Paul Ryan is a serious thinker on the budget. They still solicit Dick Cheney's and Henry Kissinger's opinions on foreign affairs. But advocate Canadian style single payer to fix our country's healthcare mess and you are written off as a crank. No public platform for you! The MSM eventually drops these things once they become embarrassing, but conservatives keep running with them.

Don't Act Dumb

Few things prove white privilege quite like a racist Halloween costume. It's not just the costume's concept, but the dishonest defense afterwards. The wearer knows in advance that it is going to offend people - that's why they think it's cute. So why do they act surprised when people get offended?

Are they surprised that there are social consequences now? Probably not because there has been push back about this for years. Indeed, here is Jet magazine criticizing Joan Crawford for doing a song in black face back in 1954. Of course, whites were a lot more insulated from criticism back then. In fact, that was the point - hitting those who cannot hit back. Well, now minorities can and racists say it is sad and unfair.

Moreover, I imagine a lot of these people whined about "political correctness run amok" even before they got their 15 minutes on the news. So that is another reason not to buy their surprise.

Likewise, prefacing a racist statement with the words "This is going to make some people mad, but -" is the new "I'm not a racist, but -" The speaker is setting the stage by suggesting the response. Logically, mock shock is the only kind of shock the speaker can follow up with when the audience does not respond with universal approval. That is unless he or she is a complete moron with the memory of housefly.

In short, the clueless excuse is past its expiration date. The costume isn't cute and your innocent act isn't cute. What really shocks you - if you are shocked at all - is that you could not handle the blow back.

Womprat Love

It has been quite a week for political geeks.

Easily, the biggest geek event this week was the release of the new Star Wars trailer. It introduces two new heroes; but to the outrage of racists and sexists, neither is a white guy. Said bigots have declared that this is advocating “white genocide” despite a) the new heroine being white and b) the return of most of the original white cast members. Update: Harrison Ford is still Caucasian, albeit a bit grizzled. I checked.

And since Lando Calrissian is not in the trailer and Mace Windu is dead, this likely makes the new hero the token black guy in this trilogy. Nevertheless, the racists see this as an unprecedented new intrusion which ruins the franchise – as if Ewoks and Jar-Jar Binks had not already accomplished that.

Likewise, these racists had similarly missed the fact that the storm troopers in Star Wars are a cross between klansmen and, well, storm troopers. If the standard issue armor was too subtle, the snow trooper armor should have been an additional hint. What do they need to see it? The Confederate battle flag? Also, the Empire's black uniforms look like they were designed by Hugo Boss.

So what is their brilliant strategy? How will they resist this mongrel, alien invasion? Why, by duplicating the immense success of the Mad Max: Fury Road boycott, of course! Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) epically failed to grasp that the Mad Max movies had critiqued toxic masculinity and blasted the film as “feminist propaganda.” Of course, their campaign actually backfired spectacularly.

But that was not the only reactionary reinterpretation of Star Wars this week. As if on cue, Neo-Con pundit Bill Kristol defended the Empire as a desirable form of government. Because of course he did. Sure, they are a fascist regime that casually practices genocide, but that does not make them the bad guys.* But, hey, at least he knows what side he is on and is honest about it. That's more than I can say for National Review editor Jonah Goldberg.

And today I hear that Conservatives are upset that Captain America is now a black progressive. Steve Rogers, the WWII era Cap., is retiring and handing the shield over to his partner in fighting crime, the Falcon, who had fought alongside Cap since 1969. Neither of these things should surprise.

First, in comics, there is ample precedent for white characters passing their mantle to black ones. And yet each time it happens conservatives are shocked. John Stewart joined the Green Lantern Corps in 1971. James Rhodes first donned Iron Man's armor in 1983 when Tony Stark was battling alcoholism.

Second, Captain America has always fought for America's liberal traditions of liberty, equality, and democracy. He understood the difference between patriotism and nationalism and battled a false Captain America who did not. The false Cap was a jingoistic McCarthyite who had discovered the super-soldier serum after the original Cap was lost at sea in 1945. Later, in 1964, the Avengers found the original Cap frozen in ice and revived him. The two Captains clashed and the original one won. Thereafter, the character has frequently been a vehicle for looking at America's inner conflicts. This predictably meant political issue-oriented stories that critiqued bigotry and nationalism.

What is the difference between patriotism and nationalism? Patriotism is a loyalty to the aforementioned three ideals of liberty, equality, and democracy. By contrast, nationalism is anchored in some territory or ethnicity. Consequently, patriotism is not marked by hostility to foreigners. Nor does it adore authority and hierarchy, as nationalism so often does. As I noted in my book, the American and French Revolutions were, by definition, internal conflicts rather than external ones and American and French patriots cheered each other's revolts. In 1776, an Anglo nationalist would have sided with the crown. While patriotism encourages freedom, nationalism breeds fascism. And we all know where Captain America stands on those.

And, seriously, what are the odds that those who loathe Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal are going to simultaneously understand and admire Captain America? 

Combining all of the above with the Hugo Award imbroglio and Ted Cruz garbling Star Trek, conservatives have repeatedly proven that they simply do not understand the things they think they love - neither Geekdom, nor America either. Their willful - even militant - misunderstanding is simply epic, which makes my job of picking off their arguments too easy. 

It's just like Beggar's Canyon back home.

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* Star Wars fans have made humorous imperial recruitment posters for years. This one copies James Montgomery Flagg's famous 1916 WWI "I Want You" poster, substituting Darth Vader for Uncle Sam. But this was not limited to fandom. Indeed, in the original Star Wars role-playing game there was a two-page spread fake ad that parodied the Army's 1980s "Be All that You Can Be" campaign. I never imagined that a famous pundit would ever take the idea of praising the Empire seriously, but politics imitates satire.

The Wolf's Dictionary

Surprise, surprise!

Rand Paul thinks it should be okay to fire LBGT people because other people could hire them.

This is actually not surprising because, in the Paul family's flavor of libertarianism, individual liberty fares poorly if you are a minority or vulnerable in any way. And that's because they believe that everyone is a free agent and thus equally free. Real world power imbalances are not acknowledged in their theoretical model, therefore every dispute is a fair fight and we don't need government to referee. As many others have already mentioned, he similarly objected to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

It's even less surprising since it is a standard argument in many libertarian circles. Penn Jillette made the same argument about the abortion pill on Glenn Beck's show "The Blaze." The pharmacist's conscience trumps yours, so just go to another pharmacist. Never mind if there are not any nearby. Never mind that it is your body. I blogged about that broadcast before in my post "Hobby Lobby Horse Hockey."

It was also the same reasoning behind Kim Davis' recent refusal to issue marriage licenses to LBGT couples. The only two differences are that: 1) Kim Davis is an actual individual rather than a corporation and 2) She is a government official and we have a little thing in this country called the separation of church and state. But the basic attitude is the same across these examples.

And if such "libertarians" like Paul, Beck, and Jillette think people in these gatekeeper professions should be allowed to discriminate, small wonder Paul thinks that any employer should be allowed to.

Obviously, this paleo-libertarian reasoning is a boon for bigots and bullies of all sorts because it lets them redefine private oppression as  personal freedom. Don't want to sleep with the boss to keep your job or get that promotion? Go work someplace else. Accordingly, it has been embraced by conservatives parroting "libertarian" rhetoric. Conservatives are temperamentally authoritarian in their political outlook, but they like to pretend to be libertarians so this argument is rhetorical catnip for them.

But this is a familiar situation. Abraham Lincoln had once pointed out that the wolf and the sheep have very different definitions of liberty - which is why slave holders called him a "tyrant."

The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatable things, called by the same name—liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatable names—liberty and tyranny.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated.

It has been repeatedly repudiated, but it's still in print because there are always new editions.

Conservatism is a Constant

I was recently rereading The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell's book about poverty. It suggested to me that conservatism really has not changed much since he wrote it in 1937. (Of course, I suppose that is appropriate for conservatism.) He was writing about England in the depths of the Great Depression and their class system is still more rigid than ours is today, but the attitudes are still comparable:

Every middle-class person has a dormant class-prejudice which needs only a small thing to arouse it; and if he is over forty he probably has a firm conviction that his own class has been sacrificed to the class below. Suggest to the average unthinking person of gentle birth who is struggling to keep up appearances on four or five hundred [pounds] a year that he is a member of an exploiting parasite class, and he will think you are mad. In perfect sincerity he will point out to you a dozen ways in which he is worse-off than a working man. In his eyes the workers are not a submerged race of slaves, they are a sinister flood creeping upwards to engulf himself and his friends and his family and to sweep all culture and all decency out of existence. 

The notion that the poor have got it good is not gone. The idea is routinely lampooned in Ruben Bowling's "Tom the Dancing Bug" comic. He has a reoccurring character that he renders in a 1930s funny animal strip style called Lucky Ducky, "The Poor Little Duck Who's Rich In Luck." Despite his poverty, Lucky seems to turn every calamity to his advantage - or so thinks the infuriated millionaire Hollingsworth Hound who sees the system as rigged against the rich. Bowling created the strip in response to a 2002 Wall Street Journal editorial about those "lucky duckies" who are too poor to pay taxes.

But this reactionary fantasy is not just limited to the topic of economic inequality. This attitude can be seen in many absurd arguments conservatives make. Think of every straight, Christian, white man who imagines he is persecuted because he can no longer persecute. There are whites who think that affirmative action is "reverse discrimination." Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) claim we live in a matriarchy today. Kim Davis' supporters think that legalizing gay marriage will result in death camps for Christians. The list goes on.

On the same page, George Orwell added:

The notion that the working class have been absurdly pampered, hopelessly demoralized by doles, old age pensions, free education, etc., is still widely held; it has merely been a little shaken, perhaps, by the recent recognition that unemployment does exist. For quantities of middle-class people, probably for a large majority of those over fifty, the typical working man still rides to the Labour Exchange on a motor-bike and keeps coal in his bath-tub: 'And, if you'll believe it, my dear, they actually get married on the dole!'(emphasis original)

The only difference is, today in America, they say that welfare is breaking up families. But both then and now, conservatives claim that welfare encourages the poor to make more babies. Of course, if the poor use birth control or have abortions, conservatives complain about that too.

But, either way, they think it is easy living.

Latest Nazi Analogy Update

If I posted every time a conservative made another ass-backwards Nazi analogy, it would be about once a month, if not weekly. Their reflex is simultaneously outrageous and ordinary now. Your jaw only drops as part of a yawn. But two examples stand out this past summer.

The first is National Review writer Kevin Williamson calling Jewish U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders a Nazi because he is an unapologetic socialist which conservatives routinely conflate with the Nazis' oxymoronic "national socialist" - a label that was just as absurd in the 1930s as it is today.

The second is the Holocaust comparison made by Kim Davis' lawyers and supporters. Check out the rally photo in that last link and roll around in the irony. In it, one supporter is holding up a sign predicting an anti-Christian Holocaust, while another is flying the confederate battle flag. No doubt both would hotly deny the "Stars and Bars" has anything to do with white supremacy and thereby deny any mixed message.

But recently a new wrinkle has emerged. It is not a Nazi analogy per se, but it is definitely Nazi-related. Heretofore, I had thought that the staff of Reason magazine had distanced itself from the racist crackpots of the Ron Paul crowd. After all, they investigated who wrote the infamously racist articles that appeared in Paul's newsletters in the late 80s and early 90s. Well, it turns out that they once flirted with that element as well by defending South African Apartheid in the 1970s and giving a platform to Holocaust deniers.

Now, their prickly reaction to this revelation does not necessarily mean they have not made a clean break since. But it is interesting to see that they share similarities beyond calling themselves "libertarians."

Promises, Promises

Good news, everyone!

Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has recently threatened to resign and await ‘nuclear holocaust’ if the Senate approves Obama's deal with Iran. Senate Republicans have just failed to invoke closure to block the treaty, which means it is getting approved. So, so long Louie!

Only probably not.

Unfortunately, conservatives are not, by and large, an honorable lot. They are given to swearing great, highly dramatic oaths only to not follow through. On the premise that waterboarding is not really torture, Fox News blowhard Sean Hannity said he would endure it for charity. It hasn't happened. Radio host Rush Limbaugh swore he would move to Costa Rica if Obamacare passed. He's still here. And NRA board member/artless draft dodger Ted Nugent swore he would either be dead or in jail if Obama got reelected. Alas, Mr. Nugent is neither. And all of these oafish oaths are several years old now.

I am really starting to not trust these guys anymore.

UPDATE - 09/29/15:

In a predictable yet unanticipated meta development, Sean Hannity has also said that the Iran deal will result in a holocaust. Except he means the Nazi kind rather than the nuclear kind.

To Boldly Goof

I was thinking that my blog could benefit from a light post, but writing about the Trump campaign seemed too easy. Fortunately, Ted Cruz provided an irresistibly geeky opportunity that ties-in nicely with a topic I have touched on a few times before.

The Republican presidential hopeful/clown car passenger opined in a New York Times interview this week that Star Trek's Captain Kirk would be a Republican. "I think it is quite likely that Kirk is a Republican and Picard is a Democrat." My initial reaction to the MSNBC headline was "Um, because Kirk did not honor the Prime Directive and thus the rule of law?"

Well, no, not exactly. Cruz reasons this is because, "Kirk is working class; Picard is an aristocrat. Kirk is a passionate fighter for justice; Picard is a cerebral philosopher."

I could quote Thomas Frank at length about how conservatives have not only duped many working class Americans into voting against their own economic interests, but counterfeited the working class banner as well, but I won't. Of course, Frank is right; but I want to keep this light.

Senator Cruz prefaced this observation with a little "psychoanalysis." His use of the word prompted me to pop some popcorn before reading any further:

Let me do a little psychoanalysis. If you look at ‘‘Star Trek: The Next Generation,’’ it basically split James T. Kirk into two people. Picard was Kirk’s rational side, and William Riker was his passionate side. I prefer a complete captain. 

The Internet isn't having it. Actual fans were quick to point out that Cruz had forgotten Mr. Spock who represented reason to Kirk's passion. And how could any true Trekker have forgotten Spock? Poser!

Both shows bifurcated passion and reason into two separate characters. The only difference is Next Generation flipped who sat in the captain's chair. And, of course, both shows were soap boxes for their liberal creator Gene Roddenberry. Indeed, the Federation is a socialist utopia. Cruz's interpretation was pretty blinkered. Even actor William Shatner nixed the notion. I think Senator Cruz is perhaps confusing Captain Kirk with Shatner's Denny Crane character on "Boston Legal."

This is hardly the stupidest thing that Ted Cruz has ever said. Nor is it an isolated instance of his missing the whole point. When filibustering against Obamacare, Cruz had quoted Dr. Seus' Green Eggs and Ham, a book whose central message advocates trying new things. And Cruz's Kirk comparison pales with his saying that John F. Kennedy would be a Republican today - a widely recycled talking point made by Rush Limbaugh and many other Republican pundits.

Indeed, Ted Cruz is just one example of a larger pattern of reactionaries getting things ass-backwards. Likewise, racist Ted Nugent has compared himself with Civil Rights Movement heroine Rosa Parks and religious "libertarian" Glenn Beck has claimed that the infamously anti-religious Thomas Paine was a Creationist. As I wrote before, I cannot wait until homophobes try to co-opt Harvey Milk.

Of course, the right's selective attention is nothing new. Consider conservative Christians who do not turn the other cheek, judge not, or give to the poor. My book likewise argues that conservatives scorn everything America is supposed to stand for - liberty, equality, and democracy. I suggest this may explain why they are so quick to question others' patriotism. I also noted other parallels:

Robert Bork’s constitutional “Originalism” is a great deal like religious fundamentalism. Both insist on a “strict literal interpretation” of sacred texts while twisting them into pretzels. Both promote fervor over consistency and group loyalty eclipses any political principle.

Examples are legion, but we are seeing a lot more of them in popular culture - particularly science fiction and fantasy as these geeky genres become increasingly mainstreamed. 

Consider the coup at the Hugo Awards where conservative activists gamed the vote because they thought these genres had been taken over by "political correctness." They forget that science fiction has been teaching tolerance since at least the 1950s. It has always been a vehicle for critiquing social problems. By taking us to future worlds, it invites us to look at our present one with new eyes - the more objective and less defensive eyes of outsiders. The reactionaries' absurd platform prompted Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin to marvel in disbelief, "I mean, we’re SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY FANS, we love to read about aliens and vampires and elves, are we really going to freak out about Asians and Native Americans?" (emphasis original) Likewise, earlier this year, Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) boycotted Mad Max: Fury Road, because they thought it was "feminist propaganda." Never mind that the film franchise had always critiqued toxic masculinity.

Nor is this the first time that conservatives have misinterpreted Star Trek. Almost a year ago, I blogged in this post about a clueless, homophobic Trekker who objected to a lesbian scene in a Star Trek novel. As I wrote then, "If you have a problem with any form of tolerance, you are in the wrong fandom." To that, I should add, "You are also in the wrong country."

There are serious issues here. But, for now, I am just going to nosh on popcorn and enjoy the show.