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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
That’s not the point I’m making here. Just because someone has to cope with something doesn’t mean that everything is fine as it is. A fair comparison would be to regulation of large and small firms, which I mentioned in the original comment (though I think The Reticulator quoted me as I was editing the comment).
Everyone has some form of government ID.
It could be the case that everyone has an ID, but if the laws were made stricter and something more would be required, then there are issues; however, I don’t think ID’s are as widespread as you think.
Bill Whittle had a rant today along similar lines.
I know what point you’re trying to make, but you’re missing my point maybe. Getting ID is in no way coping or suffering. Even poor people already need ID for many things. It is not piling compliance costs on them, and even if there is some real sense in which it is piling cost then it’s also true that the systemic risk is a cost born by the rest of us. Which cost is higher? Does it matter for something this important?
Everyone can afford a $250 tattoo.
Added: And I don’t mean the working poor, I mean those on Medicaid and SNAP with no jobs.
Perhaps it should be done, but the costs are going to fall on poor people harder, and in this time when the GOP base has shifted, we should not assume that it will hurt Dem voters the most.
Even if was guaranteed that stricter voter ID laws would hurt the GOP in critical races, I would still be against it.
Nobody is completely helpless, but a lack of enabling conditions does practically preclude the most effective options; hence Big Tech’s latest salvo this very night.
I don’t think that’s true, at least not in the sense that you mean it. Perhaps everyone could hand over $250 dollars to buy the tattoo, but that might make them unable to buy essentials.
Wrong.
I don’t care about hurting Democrats. I don’t think this will hurt anyone, in fact, except those who want as many cheating options as possible.
I am ok with Shawn Buell’s suggestion in comment #18, since I believe the government would bear the entirety of the cost mailing to everyone a new SSC, but I wouldn’t go beyond that.
Sorry. Let me less terse. Everyone can afford a twenty dollar ID once every four or five years. People who can’t afford it, well, if they exist (and they don’t) then make it free for anyone with a SNAP card.
But to say that people who get tattoos may not be able to buy food or other essentials misses a very important economic point: people decide what they want to spend money on, and if they would rather spend $250 per year on tattoos rather than an ID that’s their choice.
But the bottom line is that everyone already has a legal ID. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t have an ID. Perhaps a few poop-covered homeless guys (and I’ve known and had a few in my car) with only a blanket to their names don’t have ID but that’s by choice, and I’ll bet that they don’t care about voting (though the question never came up).
Do you know one person age 18 or above that doesn’t have an ID? Seriously.
No, but that doesn’t mean much. I don’t know very many extremely poor people.
That’s my point. Your theory doesn’t match up with, and isn’t based on, reality.
I’m sorry to be so terse, but I’m a little bit out of sorts today. Don’t know why.
I haven’t waded through all the comments yet, but thanks for writing this, Skipsul. For all the hatred cast at two-faced, spineless politicians, I feel like people are often unrealistic about the constraints and perverse incentives they operate under that comes from us, the electorate.
Ammunition- Switchfoot
This was something I always found very unnerving about the whole Trump saga these past four years. Again and again I’d see Trump appointing somebody previously generally well-regarded among conservatives, hear people praise the choice, and then when the appointee and Trump finally have a falling out, the appointee would suddenly become just another despicable swamp-dweller. Bolton, Mattis, Barr, now the conservative judges…the idea that all these people are compromised, corrupt slugs and the one true patriot and force for good in all of DC is Trump, that in every dispute over a policy or the Constitution Trump is always the one who’s correct…just…really?
I remember during the Obama years looking askance at the cult of personality I saw on the Left. The Trump years (and btw, I did vote for him both times) have disabused me of a lot of notions I had about the intellectual consistency and honesty of the Right versus that of the Left.
But who’s trying to hurt voters?
I just want everyone to see this.
(I hope you’re not being sarcastic. But they really are bottom-feeding swamp dwellers. For example, I’ve never heard of a Sec Def lying outright to his CiC about the size and nature and placement of combat troops in a war zone before. :)
For the record, I was being sarcastic.
Repeal was all that was needed. Eight little words and a number.
“Public Law 111-148 is hereby repealed in its entirety.”
The market would take care of the rest.
Repeal was all that was needed. Eight little words and a number.
“Public Law 111-148 is hereby repealed in its entirety.”
The market would take care of the rest. It’s a state matter anyway.
That’s an interesting development, and we’ll see how that plays out. The “suburbs” are an elastic concept, for starters; inner-ring burbs are different from outer-ring, and exurbs, and have different different compositions as post-war housing stock becomes affordable to new arrivals. It will be more difficult for the Left to excoriate suburbs for all the usual tired reasons when they’re increasingly Hispanic and Asian, particularly if those groups are protective of their own school systems and local rule.
If the Biden Administration jump-starts AFFR and uses the instruments of the state to alter the economic demographics of every zip code, as they’ve said they will, some of the comfy burbs may balk. Say, we wanted you to help Those People, but we didn’t mean we wanted them to live next door. C’mon, man.
I figured. But do you see the problem with all these guys who have great credentials, ignore the president and then bad-mouth him after they leave? You pointed it out yourself.
Added: And don’t forget that the CIA, FBI, DOJ, and the F-Is were plotting against Trump before he even won the election. You can’t blame Trump for not knowing he wasn’t supposed to win, for pete’s sake.
I’m not saying they’re all saints or above reproach either. But I’m skeptical of the notion that in all these instances of falling out between Trump and his appointees it’s the guy who floated the idea that Cruz’s dad was in on the Kennedy assassination, and who just tried bullying his own VP into overturning election results and acted like [heck, he may have even genuinely believed] there was an actual chance of that ever happening, that’s in the right.
I know many feel that in all these instances what’s really happening is that Trump’s just exposed the rotten true nature of all these previously well-regarded/respected individuals. But I think it’s plausible that maybe sometimes it’s Trump that’s the problem, and not everybody who disagrees with him. Like the old joke goes, “The only consistent factor in all your failed relationships is…”
It’s extraordinarily thin gruel. I’m sure you could have gone on quite well, but here’s my take on it. I think that Cruz’s father remark, and one this year — I forget who or what but I think it was a woman — are the two scurrilous remarks that he’s made. And he questioned Carson’s religion by saying something to the effect of “What’s that? I’m sure it’s alright,but I’ve never heard of it.” But that’s so thin as to be water. Sometimes you miss the backboard. But that’s two scurrilous remarks in five years! During the campaign he referred to “Little” Marco Rubio — a new political campaign tactic to be sure — and Rubio responded by leeringly saying, “Turmp has little hands, and you know what that means.” He made it sexual. And that ended Rubio’s run, I think. And then Pelosi — five years later! — says “We’re going to drag him out by his little hands and his feet.” Democrats weren’t above this kind of rhetoric, they embraced it, they just weren’t good at it.
And that brings us to recently when he clearly didn’t force Pence to violate his conscience. He may have tried mighty to convince him to do it, but bullying? In politics? In a contested election? That’s pretty thin, too. It’s not like LBJ actually assassinating anybody.
And as for your old joke, as appropriate as it is in this context, maybe it isn’t him. Maybe it goes back to 2014 and 2015 when he was a candidate and the Press, the FBI, the DOJ, and as we found out, the CIA and even the State Department went on a slander campaign, with daily equally scurrilous remarks. They Muellered him. They Ukrained him, and fallaciously and uselessly impeached him. They covidded him, though Pence was the point man on the project and Pence bought and propagated every lie that fauci and Birx trotted out. But Trump!
And then they stole the election: what is the reason that the Dems never allowed poll watchers to see the ballot counting, or the machines to be deeply inspected?
And even during the post-election fight, Pence said over and over again that We are going to fight this! But when it came time, Pence betrayed Trump. Which came first, and which is worse, betrayal or bullying? The answer to both is the betrayal.
And one more thing, speaking of rotten true natures. It appears that Pence was ready to ditch Trump back in October of 2016. Pence was so against Trump that he teamed up with Paul Ryan, adopted Trump’s winning campaign issues, and started the Pence/Ryan ticket, and even started a campaign web-site: Pence/Ryan.com. Oh, it’s deleted. Still it may be true or not.
But this fight goes all the way back to 2014, before Trump even declared.
Look at this program for poor people: https://www.fns.usda.gov/snap/facts
Maybe after reading that you can stop being so condescending and start treating people like human beings.
Well, you and I see things differently, but I appreciate you taking the time to respond. I am not convinced that Democrats stole this election. Pence rejecting state-certified electoral votes, would, I think, be a betrayal of the Constitution and sanity. I’ll take betrayal of Trump over that.
Yes, I appreciate the civility you brought to a generally contentious issue when (at least my) tensions are high.
The Constitution and the Amendments seem to speak vaguely and differently on this. There are I understand differing scholarly views. This actually may have been an issue for the Supreme Court.
:)
Oh, and also, this question could have been avoided if the Republicans in the Republican-run State legislatures had had the gumption to pass a bill voiding the delegating of the electoral selection process and taking it back to themselves, and presenting their own choices to Pence, then I think that would have been the only clearly and undeniably Constitutional way of voiding the false ballot counts. But they presented essentially opinion papers to Congress, and that was in my view never going to have any effect. And they probably knew that, too.
I gather (mostly from podcasts) that Pence does not have that sort of power anyway. From what I could tell, the state legislatures and the courts were the last resort.
I think it was stolen, but there was nothing to do this week except enter some facts about it in the federal public record.