Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Lying to Ourselves
We have a problem with our federal government, but it’s not exactly the one we’re used to thinking about. Frankly, we don’t want to think about it all – better to deny the reality entirely. Easier to lie and lie and lie, and blame our problems on everyone else. Easier to blame Liberals, or Wokesters, or (the current favorite among the increasingly reality-averse folks who still cannot face that Trump has immolated himself once and for all time) traitors and sabotage. It is, of course, all lies. Mind you, lies can be useful – especially when trying to avoiding hurt feelings (our own not the least), but they’re still lies. At one time rebellions against ruling monarchs favored the lie “We’re not really rebelling against the King, he’s just the victim of bad advisors.”
The lie we all tell ourselves today is that we are the helpless victims of “The DC Establishment” (or whatever other term you want to use). Synonyms for this include “Wall Street,” “Big Tech,” and a host of others. They are the “bad advisors” we blame for manipulating Congress, for stealing elections, or for disloyalty to Trump (fact check here: the only consistent disloyalty in the Trump administration came from Trump – watching his cabinet members go from vaunted heroes to filthy traitors and sellouts in the commentariat was much akin to studying Soviet photography for disappearing faces alongside Stalin). We are very good at lying to ourselves about why Trump lost this or that political battle, about why Congress is a dysfunctional mess, and about why the “authoritarian ratchet” is inexorable. The truth we cannot confront about it is all is simple, and we all bear the shame of it. We do not really want any of our congress critters, our president, or our courts to lead us out of our morass, we want them to follow us into the pit of our own making. And follow they blithely do.
Why should anyone really attempt to lead? Why should anyone take any campaign rhetoric seriously? I’m not even speaking for the Left here, I’m just talking about the entire right half of the political spectrum. Think of all that we demand:
Repeal Obamacare! But get me my pills cheap! And you’d better not slash Medicare because Granny will be out on the street! Cut my taxes! But don’t touch Social Security, that’s my retirement! Slash regulations! But raise the minimum wage! And punish those rich Wall Street fat cats! No more bailouts! But bail out small businesses! No more stimulus checks… after the next one (and send a chaser too)!
Any time anyone in Congress actually tries to show real leadership he gets savaged. Paul Ryan was sent to Congress and proclaimed a hero as a fiscal wonk. Paul Ryan is now disgraced as a heartless fiscal wonk. Well? Which is it? He was the same Paul Ryan that entered as left – the truth is he violated the will of the voters, and the will of the voters is that the gravy train run to them, but not to other people they don’t like. We hailed the Tea Party a decade ago for demanding fiscal accountability, and then it all wilted when we realized everyone would take a hit, not just the “bad guys”. We wailed about Obama’s fiscal profligacy, then ignored Trump’s (even pre-COVID) because that spending was just better because it went to the right people.
We blame the Republican congress of 2017-2018 for not having a Repeal and Replace plan from Day 1 (nevermind that Trump promised he had his own too – and we never saw any of it). Why would any sane and safe Republican bother to come up with a health care reform plan? Any real plan would gore everyone’s ox, but not equally, and that would be seized on as evidence of favoritism towards whoever was hurt less than someone else – and we would be as happy to denounce it as the Left, just for different reasons. Why bother with specifics? Why bother to stick your neck out? Easier to campaign on an issue and then blame the other side when nothing ever happens later. Keeps the issue alive for a few election cycles, until the voters fixate on something else for a few cycles.
It’s no wonder Congress is stuffed with hacks, charlatans, grifters, sell-outs, and bench warmers. It’s no wonder both parties spend like drunken sailors. It’s no wonder the debt keeps growing and growing – hardly anyone there dares to change the game. When they try, they’re denounced as traitors, or Elitists, or uncompassionate eggheads, or accused of being in some group’s pocket (which, while true, is a problem only because it’s the “wrong” group), and so turfed out. Besides, they know what the voters really want better than the voters themselves: having someone else always around to blame.
It’s no wonder that both sides refuse to actually address electoral reforms too – that’s the gift that keeps giving. That way you never have to take any blame on your side for nominating cultists and loonies. That way you never have to take any blame for running a terrible campaign. Even if you lose, you win! After all, you were cheated! And martyrs are always more beloved than Darwin-award winners, giving you a leg up on fundraising for the next round (that’s where the real money is made – paying your friends and relatives for “consulting fees” while you expense first-class flights). Both sides play the game, and the money rolls in.
The truth of the matter is, Americans of all stripes really do not want reform. They do not want leaders. They do not want any hard choices. They want the status quo, but also want the moral high ground of blaming it on everybody else. And the government they claim to hate so much? It’s just following along. If we really wanted reform, we’d stop blaming the “swamp”, or whatever other excuses we have at hand. Instead, we would admit to ourselves that, like losing weight we are the ones who have to change first.
Published in Politics
I can’t go there. He’s a politician for sure, but so are the rest of the politicians. Including current popular favorites like Crenshaw and others. Cruz mostly says the right things and seems to mostly vote that way too. That’s good enough for me.
His lack of a chin makes him a lovecraftian monster by itself.
Well written assessment of who we are and what went wrong. Very hard on Trump and us stalwart conservatives; an all too clear picture of who we are and who we think we are, a painful look in a mirror. In a nutshell, Trump’s actions would have had him on Mt. Rushmore, but his unnecessary blathering corrupted it all.
But, against any Democrat I’d vote for him again.
It’s a a real handicap. That’s why I’ve grown a beard.
He also lacks a neck.
At least that renders him unable to grow a neckbeard.
There is probably some disgusting substitute which we can’t even imagine.
They have merkins for those.
No thank you.
Hmmmnn. Please elucidate.
Specifics, please.
In other words, he’s a politician. Shocking.
There are two reasons why I think this might be the case:
In the past, these voters facing high compliance costs voted more with Dems. That is not the case now.
Cruz is indeed a gifted debator. Why condemn a man for an important skill in the real world? Wasn’t Reagan also good at playing to an audience? You need to come up with something a bit less ad hominem, or you will be hoist on your own petard here, methinks.
No, Cruz is the polar-Pence. He’s opposite in style, but on the same sphere.
Thank you. Couldn’t we just let them take a selfie and send it to a gummint office who would then send the thing back? There must be some way to make it a lot easier. Don’t the poor folk you describe have the ID already, to buy beer or drive a car? How many don’t have a driver’s license? A credit or debit card? A bank account? (Not being sarcastic, I don’t know that world very well.)
I don’t know the answer to these questions. All I can say is that voter ID laws are felt to harm the poor. If the GOP voters are poor, as many of the Trump voters are, and the GOP has lost the suburbs and those with bachelors degrees and above, then I would think that the costs of voter ID laws, no matter how low, will fall most heavily upon the GOP base.
Do you need two photo IDs to open a bank account these days?
Amen brother preach it. Well said
It is more than playing an audience, it is that his persona itself shifts. In 2015 he was playing and talking like an old timey revival preacher to crowds, then shifting his accent and body language when in the senate, then another character entirely at a fundraiser. That was more than playing an audience, it was a personality shift. Lately he has been play acting for the Trump die hards.
Which Cruz is the real one? Are any of them?
The Voter ID is a fake issue. It is too bad people fall for it. Have you noticed that they only dismiss IDs for voting? Want into a government building? Want I to a school building? Want to see a doctor and pick up a prescription at the pharmacy? Want to open a bank account? Cash a check? Drive? Buy a gun? Get a cell phone account? Democrats fought voter IDs even when states offered them for free. Even a poorer country like Mexico has voter ID. In fact, they have a separate picture ID with hologram specifically for voting. Everyone can afford a voter ID.
Even if there are free, there are compliance costs, as I mentioned. If voter ideas laws were to become even more strict, the costs would go up and fall most heavily upon the poor, regardless of their absolute burden among the electorate.
You don’t know much about poor people, do you. Or any people at all.
You cannot pile compliance costs upon compliance costs and expect poor people to absorb them just as a rich person would, just as many on the right howl when regulation upon regulation is piled on small firms and cry that they can’t be expected to absorb the costs as a large firm would.
I have a very high opinion of Cruz. Every time Trump did something cringeworthy, I’d think “If only…”
@jamesofengland was a supporter of Ex-Im, i.e. welfare for Boeing. Ted Cruz was against it. Donald Trump tried to reform it and stuck to that agenda very well, but his base didn’t have his back and he finally, after the cause was hopeless, relented. I’m opposed to Ex-Im and the lame reasons that jamesofengland used to defend it.
Yet we do that in every other walk of life and they cope with it. And we don’t even need to make it as difficult as you are making it out to be.
So what? A veteran who gets is his legs blown off copes with it by using a wheelchair. A mother that loses her children copes with the fact. It doesn’t mean that such suffering should happen.
80-80
Oh brother. Getting an ID that they probably already have anyway isn’t suffering, and it certainly isn’t the same kind of suffering as someone whose legs have been blown off or a dead child. C’mom man.