Last Sunday David Gregory interviewed the Nation’s new House Majority Leader Eric Cantor on Meet the Press. I was pleasantly surprised to see him appropriately aggressive in trying to extract answers from Leader Cantor. It’s not that the responses Cantor provided were notably more off point than many other politicians might deliver. It was simply more noticeable to me because I was listening - primarily because I happen to live in the District which has the ignominious honor of placing Cantor in Office.
Fortunately I happen to have a memory of inconceivable depth and, with only minor paraphrasing, can reconstruct the entire interview for those of you who missed the show. So here it is; Rep Eric Cantor (R-VA) meets the press, January 23rd 2011:
MR. GREGORY: Welcome back to MEET THE PRESS.
REP. ERIC CANTOR: Good morning, David.
MR. GREGORY: Everybody's talking about the State of the Union address, and the president is already previewing it. Being competitive, in his mind, also means some additional targeted spending in some areas to make America competitive, as well as cuts, as well as dealing with the deficit. Is that a vision you can support?
REP. CANTOR: David, you know, I'm, I'm really interested to see and hear what the president has to say. I heard him in a news conference talking about cutting back on the White House menu. I believe he was introducing some low cost Kenyan dishes. We applaud his thrift, yet still have no disagreement with some spending to comply with his ethnic leanings.
MR. GREGORY: But he's saying now there's got to be a combination of some spending to keep America competitive, and also cuts dealing with the deficit. Is that a vision you can support?
REP. CANTOR: What we've said is our Congress is going to be a cut and grow Congress; if you want to grow asparagus, David, you know you have to cut them to the root for the first 2 or 3 years.
MR. GREGORY: Right.
REP. CANTOR: When the president talks about competitiveness, sure, we want America to be competitive. But how does that equate to jobs jobs jobs? If we can’t eliminate Obamanistic regulations every pool boy in the nation, so to speak, could find themselves out of work.
MR. GREGORY: Right. Well, well, let's just be clear. You don't believe that there's a balance that you have to get right in terms of investing in the economy to help it innovate, to become more competitive. That's not a vision you agree with.
REP. CANTOR: David, where--what I would say is the investment needs to occur in the private sector. Doesn’t it make sense to end the egregious taxes on the wealth builders of the nation…say those with net taxable income of $500,000 and over, who are struggling to make America the land the of Free? Wouldn’t it make more sense instead to have a national sales tax on food and strike a blow against obesity?
MR. GREGORY: Right. OK, well, let's, let's pick up where Republicans have left off. Cut and grow, that's the mantra. You campaigned on a pledge to America last September, and this is a part of what you said "We will roll back government spending to pre-stimulus, pre-bailout levels, saving us at least $100 billion in the first year." And then you came into office and you said, "Well, we're not going to hit that $100 billion figure."
REP. CANTOR: David, let, let's step back a minute and look at sort of the whole sort of continuum of the spending challenges. We're, we're going to really have three bites at the apple here as far as approaching reducing spending and the size of Washington. I mean apples are apples.
MR. GREGORY: Right. But $100 billion, or not $100 billion?
REP. CANTOR: And, and we've committed to say $100 billion in reductions. We are intent on making sure, on an annualized basis, that we are hitting the '08 levels or below.
MR. GREGORY: It seems like it's a straightforward question, though. Are you going to live up to the $100 billion pledge? I assume you've put a lot of thought into that...
REP. CANTOR: David...
MR. GREGORY: ...$100 billion figure. Can you make it or not?
REP. CANTOR: Absolutely. On an annualized basis, we will cut spending $100 billion. Did you hear me: ANN-U-AL-LIZED.
MR. GREGORY: Which means what exactly?
REP. CANTOR: It’s simple David. You take the savings on the first day times 365, add in potential savings projected over the remaining term of this Congress, subtract all non-budgetary defense spending, multiply by the percentage of homes in foreclosure relative to the number of housing starts, and divide by 11.
MR. GREGORY: Right. You talk about the debt, its passing $14 trillion. This is what you said in The Washington Post: "`It's a leverage moment for Republicans. The president needs us. There are things we were elected to do. Let's accomplish those if that the president needs us to clean up the old mess.” I want you to be specific here. What's the leverage moment?
REP. CANTOR: Well, let, let me be clear, David. Republicans are not going to vote for this increase in the debt limit unless there are serious tax cuts, and some damned impressive spending cuts as well.
MR. GREGORY: Like what?
REP. CANTOR: I mean--and, and that is just the way it is, OK?
MR. GREGORY: Right. But you don't have--if you say serious spending cuts, you clearly have--don't have something specific in mind, right? You--in other words, you'll, you'll know it when you see it, is that the approach?
REP. CANTOR: No, no, that's not true. When my grandmother used to make pies during the holidays, any cutbacks in fruit didn’t detract from the joy of the season.
MR. GREGORY: But let's deal with the--you're not tackling entitlements. What about defense? Is defense on the table, defense cuts on the table? Do they have to be?
REP. CANTOR: I'll get to entitlements in a second if you want.
MR. GREGORY: OK.
REP. CANTOR: But I can tell you, we've always said this, too: We put everything on the table; glasses, silverware, napkins…no one sets a table like the Young Guns.
MR. GREGORY: Including defense cuts.
REP. CANTOR: I said Young Guns, didn’t I?
MR. GREGORY: OK. But look at The Wall Street Journal, the piece by Dick Armey of Freedom Works, the tea party group. He said "Let's scrap the Departments of Commerce and Housing and Urban Development, end farm subsidies, and end urban mass transit grants, just for starters." Would those be on the table?
REP. CANTOR: Everything, David, is on the table. Salt…pepper…
MR. GREGORY: Cancer research is on the table.
REP. CANTOR: …table cloth, condiments…I can’t be more clear.
MR. GREGORY: Let's talk about Social Security. Are you prepared to raise the retirement age, means test benefits or, in another way, seriously tackle the entitlement of Social Security?
REP. CANTOR: David, what we have said is we've got a serious fiscal train wreck coming for this country if we don't deal with these entitlements. Let’s face it. We have to get these people off the gravy train. Now, for me, the first entitlement we need to deal with is the healthcare bill, is the Obamacare bill, you know.
MR. GREGORY: All right, we'll get to health care. I asked you about Social Security, though.
REP. CANTOR: Absolutely.
MR. GREGORY: Well, what are you willing to do? Means test benefits, raise the retirement age?
REP. CANTOR: David, we've got plenty of old Republicans in Congress right now receiving Social Security. This is not an issue that doesn’t hold potential sacrifice.
MR. GREGORY: Mm-hmm.
REP. CANTOR: Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy and I wrote a book together, and in that book we reserved a chapter for a discussion about Social Security, about Medicare, and how we can begin to at least discuss to do that. It’s called The Young Guns and it’s available on-line at Amazon and all national bookstore chains or can be purchased directly from my website at ericcantor.gov.
MR. GREGORY: But what are you for? Leader, I'm asking you what you what you're for.
REP. CANTOR: Well, what, what I'm telling you we're for, is we're for an active discussion to see what we can come together and do. We’ve written it all down. In fact, here’s a copy I brought for you…
MR. GREGORY: How long do we need to discuss Social Security and what is happening? It's been discussed for years.
REP. CANTOR: David, please…read the book. I suggest you ask your friends to buy a copy for themselves as well.
MR. GREGORY: All right, let, let's, let's move on to health care because House Republicans did repeal the president's healthcare reform plan, but the real question is what Republicans are prepared to replace it with and whether you have a serious plan. The truth is, Republicans do not have a serious alternative to covering more Americans, do they?
REP. CANTOR: I disagree with that, obviously, David. First of all, you know, we believe you can do better in health care. I mean, we want to try and address the situation so more folks can have coverage, can, can have the kind of care that they want. Obamanistic socialized government control of doctors, where panels of Kenyan and Mexican bureaucratic green card holders decide if Grandma is ready for the Ice Flow is hardly the American way of doing things.
MR. GREGORY: But, Leader, you're talking about bringing down costs. If you were serious about this, why not negotiate with Democrats in areas where you could deliver Republican votes?
REP. CANTOR: David, the problem is if we're all really desirous of trying to deal with people who are in need and want to improve the healthcare future for this country, you, you can't start with a Washington-controlled system. That's the structure of Obamacare. It’s not Americare. They don’t put the word “free” in free-enterprise for no reason at all.
MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you a little about politics. Do you think, as 40 percent in our recent poll thought, the president's become a moderate. Do you agree with that?
REP. CANTOR: Well, I think actions speak louder than words. Let’s just see how enthusiastically he supports our positions before we call him a moderate.
MR. GREGORY: There's been a lot of talk about discourse, about how you all can get along a little bit better and do it a little bit more civilly. And I wonder, this is the leadership moment here, OK? There are elements of this country who question the president's citizenship, who think that it--his birth certificate is inauthentic. Will you call that what it is, which is crazy talk?
REP. CANTOR: David, you know, I mean, a lot of that has been an, an issue sort of generated by not only the media, but others in the country. Most Americans really are beyond that, and they want us to focus...
MR. GREGORY: Right. Is somebody bringing that up just engaging in crazy talk?
REP. CANTOR: Well, David, I, I don't think it's, it's nice to call anyone crazy, OK?
MR. GREGORY: All right. Is it a legitimate or an illegitimate issue?
REP. CANTOR: And--so I don't think it's an issue that we need to address at all. President Obama being fathered by a Kenyan national, born under mysterious circumstances, supposedly in Hawaii, has no place in Congressional debate.
MR. GREGORY: I mean, I feel like there's a lot of Republican leaders who don't want to go as far as to criticize those folks.
REP. CANTOR: No. I think the president's a citizen of the United States.
MR. GREGORY: Period.
REP. CANTOR: So what--yes. Why, why is it that you want me to go and engage in name-calling? I think he's a citizen of the United States…as far as I can tell.
MR. GREGORY: Fair enough. Is the tea party a difficult crosscurrent in the Republican Party to manage right now?
REP. CANTOR: Perhaps. I've always said this. The tea party--first of all, the acronym for ‘Tea’ is "Taxed enough already" and the acronym for ‘Party’ is “People assisting Republican tax yodeling”. So the tea party has come in and said enough taxing already.
MR. GREGORY: So you think the tea party's here to stay?
REP. CANTOR: Absolutely. Do the carnivals still show up every Independence Day weekend?
MR. GREGORY: Right. Leader, more to do but we're out of time.
REP. CANTOR: Thanks, David.
MR. GREGORY: Thank you very much for being here.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
The Game of Concentration
Sunday I successfully managed to absorb the better part of six hours watching the professional football conference championships. The previous weekend I could claim nearly double that amount of time watching four playoff games. As a football game is only 60 minutes, which includes much of the players standing around time, huddling, and forming at the line of scrimmage, etc., it makes one wonder just what holds my attention so well? Now I like pro football a lot, and there are numerous moments of excitement or potential excitement in every game…but six hours is six hours.
I have watched two or three football games at one friend’s house. As we watch them he has the strategy of muting the TV during most commercials. I generally found this action mildly annoying and I’m guessing that a lot of people might immediately nod their heads in agreement. However, as I later thought about it, I became curious as to why such action should bother me at all. You see, I generally and deeply dislike commercials. If they were all like the E*TRADE baby ads, well…then my opinion might be different, but they’re not, far from it. Commercials utilize methods as those that now dominate television, movies, and (in an interactive way) video games. They employ a rapid fire change of visuals done in such a way as to make the viewer unaware that it is happening at all. Increasingly televised sporting events are adopting it, often making comprehension of the live action dependent on the instant replay.
It wasn’t always that way. In its first couple of decades television programs tried to emulate live theater, as it had neither the technology nor resources to reproduce what was being done in the film industry. In fact, a majority of early television was live and that style carried on for some time after the development of economical taping. Something changed since then and it was probably driven by advertising. Now to hold a view’s attention the visual field has to be constantly changing. I don’t believe people needed that assistance, but it works. More likely advertisers figured out that if they lost a viewer’s attention during a one minute commercial they'd lose money. This dilemma was only magnified when commercials became predominantly 30 seconds, then 15 seconds.
What is even more fascinating is how this dynamic spilled over into television programming and movies. Expectations changed. People changed. Now more and more, those that conclude what people like in these mediums use these techniques. For example, not only do we see rapid visual changes in movies, but some film makers have determined that viewers like the idea of unsteady visuals, where the camera image flies around like it’s being videotaped by somebody’s grandmother. Although they argue that such scenes are supposed to make the film appear more realistic, what’s really happening is that visuals are being converted into a nearly constant flow of change. How many people walk around and view the world that way with their eyes. Our sight doesn’t work that way, even as we look around. It’s as realistic as love on The Bachelor.
Sometime when you’re watching almost any program or commercial on television (but especially if you’re watching “reality” TV), count out loud each time the visual field changes on the screen. The numbers you’ll pile up in a given minute is eye opening. If you do it during a political commercial it’s a bit like trying to count corn kernels popping in a microwave.
So why is it when the sound was turned off during a commercial did I react negatively? I thought it might be just the logistics of turning it on and off and monitoring when to do it. No, that wasn’t it. I concluded it was because I continued to stare at the soundless flashes of scenes, but found my media concentration was compromised by the lack of commentary which acts like a glue. For those minutes, I was stuck between two realities, that which controls my concentration and everything else that exists in the present moment outside the screen. Stuck between the two of anything can be annoying, or at the very least uncomfortable.
Many a parent has berated their offspring that the television they watch is a mindless activity, even as the parents install televisions in nearly every room of the house. I’m sure I said such things too, even without the extra sets. But now I believe that television as it has developed, along with other types of media, actually immerses the viewer into extraordinary levels of concentration. Commercials in particular mesmerize the viewer. Try to face a room full of television watchers during a commercial break and you might as well be staring at the eyes of born-again Baptists watching a pole dance. This is not the lack of concentration, just the opposite; our thought patterns become those of the commercial. It’s much more akin to a Vulcan mind-meld…and it’s addicting.
It has been suggested that the increased use of machine gun images, which as I mentioned includes video games, corresponds with the unexplained national increase in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and that there might be a connection. Perhaps...it kind of makes sense. However, what I believe we do know is that the contentment we feel when we surrender our endless and often concentrated thoughts to the actions we perform (losing ourselves into the moment of our activities) is given up to our media watching…even if it’s just in time alone. Further, the ease in which this concentration takes place temporarily relieves us of the natural anxiety that comes from wasting our time.
To concentrate is defined as to focus one’s attention. We all struggle to keep that focus rewarding. However, when it comes to the game of concentration, winning is stacked in favor of the house…or should I say set.
I have watched two or three football games at one friend’s house. As we watch them he has the strategy of muting the TV during most commercials. I generally found this action mildly annoying and I’m guessing that a lot of people might immediately nod their heads in agreement. However, as I later thought about it, I became curious as to why such action should bother me at all. You see, I generally and deeply dislike commercials. If they were all like the E*TRADE baby ads, well…then my opinion might be different, but they’re not, far from it. Commercials utilize methods as those that now dominate television, movies, and (in an interactive way) video games. They employ a rapid fire change of visuals done in such a way as to make the viewer unaware that it is happening at all. Increasingly televised sporting events are adopting it, often making comprehension of the live action dependent on the instant replay.
It wasn’t always that way. In its first couple of decades television programs tried to emulate live theater, as it had neither the technology nor resources to reproduce what was being done in the film industry. In fact, a majority of early television was live and that style carried on for some time after the development of economical taping. Something changed since then and it was probably driven by advertising. Now to hold a view’s attention the visual field has to be constantly changing. I don’t believe people needed that assistance, but it works. More likely advertisers figured out that if they lost a viewer’s attention during a one minute commercial they'd lose money. This dilemma was only magnified when commercials became predominantly 30 seconds, then 15 seconds.
What is even more fascinating is how this dynamic spilled over into television programming and movies. Expectations changed. People changed. Now more and more, those that conclude what people like in these mediums use these techniques. For example, not only do we see rapid visual changes in movies, but some film makers have determined that viewers like the idea of unsteady visuals, where the camera image flies around like it’s being videotaped by somebody’s grandmother. Although they argue that such scenes are supposed to make the film appear more realistic, what’s really happening is that visuals are being converted into a nearly constant flow of change. How many people walk around and view the world that way with their eyes. Our sight doesn’t work that way, even as we look around. It’s as realistic as love on The Bachelor.
Sometime when you’re watching almost any program or commercial on television (but especially if you’re watching “reality” TV), count out loud each time the visual field changes on the screen. The numbers you’ll pile up in a given minute is eye opening. If you do it during a political commercial it’s a bit like trying to count corn kernels popping in a microwave.
So why is it when the sound was turned off during a commercial did I react negatively? I thought it might be just the logistics of turning it on and off and monitoring when to do it. No, that wasn’t it. I concluded it was because I continued to stare at the soundless flashes of scenes, but found my media concentration was compromised by the lack of commentary which acts like a glue. For those minutes, I was stuck between two realities, that which controls my concentration and everything else that exists in the present moment outside the screen. Stuck between the two of anything can be annoying, or at the very least uncomfortable.
Many a parent has berated their offspring that the television they watch is a mindless activity, even as the parents install televisions in nearly every room of the house. I’m sure I said such things too, even without the extra sets. But now I believe that television as it has developed, along with other types of media, actually immerses the viewer into extraordinary levels of concentration. Commercials in particular mesmerize the viewer. Try to face a room full of television watchers during a commercial break and you might as well be staring at the eyes of born-again Baptists watching a pole dance. This is not the lack of concentration, just the opposite; our thought patterns become those of the commercial. It’s much more akin to a Vulcan mind-meld…and it’s addicting.
It has been suggested that the increased use of machine gun images, which as I mentioned includes video games, corresponds with the unexplained national increase in Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and that there might be a connection. Perhaps...it kind of makes sense. However, what I believe we do know is that the contentment we feel when we surrender our endless and often concentrated thoughts to the actions we perform (losing ourselves into the moment of our activities) is given up to our media watching…even if it’s just in time alone. Further, the ease in which this concentration takes place temporarily relieves us of the natural anxiety that comes from wasting our time.
To concentrate is defined as to focus one’s attention. We all struggle to keep that focus rewarding. However, when it comes to the game of concentration, winning is stacked in favor of the house…or should I say set.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Irresistibly Dumb
For about 25 years, with some minor gaps in time, I have had a full beard. For no particular reason every 7 or 8 years I might shave it off for a brief period or modify it in some fashion. Each time I would be fascinated that, upon arriving at my office, people who worked closely with me would not initially notice its absence. Conversely, those I saw infrequently would pipe right up and usually register an exclamation of sorts (maybe fright). My wife once went weeks without grasping that I had reduced my full beard down to a goatee, only realizing it when my daughter arrived from out of town and pointed it out. “Did you do that this morning?” she observed matter-of-factly. “No dear…3 weeks ago”. “Oh…”
Now I suppose one might assume I am an individual (or husband) who doesn’t cast a shadow. As my girth has expanded over the years, that’s actually an appealing thought. However, regardless the occasional periods of invisibility, I believe for the most part my existence is recognized (even by my family, albeit with mortification at times). I would prefer to consider that as we get to know someone well, outer appearances, especially those that rarely change, do become somewhat invisible. It’s not the beauty in the eye of the beholder concept, which incorporates a bunch of subjectivities. I actually think it is something less tangible, somewhat behavioral, and actually taps into the metaphysical; an ability to become aware of the true individual, outside our senses.
Perception is not reality, regardless what the business people may tell you, although that certainly works for business. I recall someone suggesting that an alien viewing the earth from space might conclude that dogs ruled the world; how else could they lead people around by leashes and have them pick up their poop. Perception by definition (at least Merriam-Webster’s definition) relates to concepts and cognition. We take in information then cognitively draw conclusions. Yet how we view someone else, by recognizing their inner being (if you will), results in conclusions that are more identifiable by our own behavior. Generally our thinking mind makes mincemeat of the awareness that might naturally emerge in its absence. There are, though, obvious situations that can be seen through the clutter.
All this relates to topics that have been written and reflected on for three thousand years, give or take, i.e.; the branch of philosophy we call metaphysics. There is, though, one menial aspect of it that peaked my interest lately, that being how we find another person attractive (or unattractive) without consideration of their physical appearance. What are we really seeing, if not the beard or goatee?
Aren’t you joyfully amazed at the many stories told of individuals with coarse physical handicaps who are able to find mates and social acceptance? I took upon myself to conduct a massive survey on the subject of attractiveness….I asked four people two questions (I’m still waiting for my grant). I asked them to tell me what three things they find most attractive in an individual without regard to how that person looked. Happily I got a 100% common response on two characteristics (what… they predict elections with that kind of return from 4 people!). One characteristic was humor, and the other (in so many words) was confidence. No big surprise on either. I followed up with a question of how they defined confidence (which is what I was shooting for from the beginning). The response was the same (again in so many words). They explained that it was confidence that person had in themselves and in what they knew. I have my doubts.
No mystery that confidence is extraordinarily attractive. However, my observations have led me to believe that there are individuals who are extremely confident in what they know who are hardly attractive. In extreme cases such people may take on the ignominious title of bull shitter, even if much of what they espouse contains truth. Why do such individuals fail to exact magnetic appeal if confidence normally creates the opposite polarity? Does confidence need to be silent? I don’t think so, how can it be? Does it even need a deep knowledge base at all? Perhaps not.
I have tried to gauge my feelings about other individuals in the light of this contradiction and have concluded thus. Those individuals whose understanding of the world makes them attractive are those who have a deep seated comfort in what he or she doesn’t know, not in what they do know. It’s not easy to do, but it does happen in varying degrees with a lot of people. This might explain reverence for some older individuals, since wisdom as a result of age often relates to an understanding of limitations and temporality.
So I’ve concluded it’s the confidence of what you don’t know, moreover being confident with the insignificance of your knowledge that exacts the attraction. Essentially the dumber you comfortably feel with yourself the greater the draw. Now I wouldn’t suggest that my son take the position that to score with chicks he needs to point out how little he reads. It really has very little to do with knowledge at all. We can absorb great quantities of information, but unless we can embrace that what we absorb doesn’t represent a quarks worth of what exists outside our senses and thoughts, I’m afraid we run the risk of having the intellectual equivalent of bad breath.
Now I suppose one might assume I am an individual (or husband) who doesn’t cast a shadow. As my girth has expanded over the years, that’s actually an appealing thought. However, regardless the occasional periods of invisibility, I believe for the most part my existence is recognized (even by my family, albeit with mortification at times). I would prefer to consider that as we get to know someone well, outer appearances, especially those that rarely change, do become somewhat invisible. It’s not the beauty in the eye of the beholder concept, which incorporates a bunch of subjectivities. I actually think it is something less tangible, somewhat behavioral, and actually taps into the metaphysical; an ability to become aware of the true individual, outside our senses.
Perception is not reality, regardless what the business people may tell you, although that certainly works for business. I recall someone suggesting that an alien viewing the earth from space might conclude that dogs ruled the world; how else could they lead people around by leashes and have them pick up their poop. Perception by definition (at least Merriam-Webster’s definition) relates to concepts and cognition. We take in information then cognitively draw conclusions. Yet how we view someone else, by recognizing their inner being (if you will), results in conclusions that are more identifiable by our own behavior. Generally our thinking mind makes mincemeat of the awareness that might naturally emerge in its absence. There are, though, obvious situations that can be seen through the clutter.
All this relates to topics that have been written and reflected on for three thousand years, give or take, i.e.; the branch of philosophy we call metaphysics. There is, though, one menial aspect of it that peaked my interest lately, that being how we find another person attractive (or unattractive) without consideration of their physical appearance. What are we really seeing, if not the beard or goatee?
Aren’t you joyfully amazed at the many stories told of individuals with coarse physical handicaps who are able to find mates and social acceptance? I took upon myself to conduct a massive survey on the subject of attractiveness….I asked four people two questions (I’m still waiting for my grant). I asked them to tell me what three things they find most attractive in an individual without regard to how that person looked. Happily I got a 100% common response on two characteristics (what… they predict elections with that kind of return from 4 people!). One characteristic was humor, and the other (in so many words) was confidence. No big surprise on either. I followed up with a question of how they defined confidence (which is what I was shooting for from the beginning). The response was the same (again in so many words). They explained that it was confidence that person had in themselves and in what they knew. I have my doubts.
No mystery that confidence is extraordinarily attractive. However, my observations have led me to believe that there are individuals who are extremely confident in what they know who are hardly attractive. In extreme cases such people may take on the ignominious title of bull shitter, even if much of what they espouse contains truth. Why do such individuals fail to exact magnetic appeal if confidence normally creates the opposite polarity? Does confidence need to be silent? I don’t think so, how can it be? Does it even need a deep knowledge base at all? Perhaps not.
I have tried to gauge my feelings about other individuals in the light of this contradiction and have concluded thus. Those individuals whose understanding of the world makes them attractive are those who have a deep seated comfort in what he or she doesn’t know, not in what they do know. It’s not easy to do, but it does happen in varying degrees with a lot of people. This might explain reverence for some older individuals, since wisdom as a result of age often relates to an understanding of limitations and temporality.
So I’ve concluded it’s the confidence of what you don’t know, moreover being confident with the insignificance of your knowledge that exacts the attraction. Essentially the dumber you comfortably feel with yourself the greater the draw. Now I wouldn’t suggest that my son take the position that to score with chicks he needs to point out how little he reads. It really has very little to do with knowledge at all. We can absorb great quantities of information, but unless we can embrace that what we absorb doesn’t represent a quarks worth of what exists outside our senses and thoughts, I’m afraid we run the risk of having the intellectual equivalent of bad breath.
Monday, January 10, 2011
It Isn't About the Fringe
The fact that Christine Taylor Green was born on September 11, 2001 is purely coincidental to the tragedy that took her life in Tucson, Arizona. And yet the relevance of those two events is so compelling that it is difficult not to think of the end of her short life as some kind of dark metaphor.
In the round table discussions that are part of the Sunday news circuit, the conversations were the same from show to show and, further, they explored ground that has been so trampled on at this point that it might as well be concrete. Pundits and officials of varying political persuasions resurrected the usual dialogue on how polarized and vitriolic the social and political views of the nation have become. They talked about how leaders need to “tone down the rhetoric” so that this kind of thing “won’t happen again”. Their focus was on the tragedy itself, including the assault on high officials of the US Government, and for good reason. It’s because focusing on the event itself is just so, so easy to do. Those discussing the problem of “polarization” speak as if elimination of the lunatic fringe would solve the problem. Politicians and pundits alike don’t want to face the real dilemma. To do so would be like asking Homer Simpson to give up his doughnuts.
The shooting in Tucson was not unlike other similar events that have occurred (and in a practical sense forgotten) over the past couple of decades. They have simply been responses from the lunatic fringe to a much greater uncoordinated conspiracy, and should be expected. The major response to this event will probably be the same as with prior events; huge analysis of psychiatric resources, lots of finger pointing, and increased security, even though the specific event has little impact on safety of the nation. Virtually nothing will be done, or even suggested (at levels that would make a difference) about the real problem. The tragic event is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.
It is already clear, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, that Jared Lee Loughner was mentally imbalanced and burdened with (among other things) a consistent torment; that the Government (the United States or otherwise) represents a malevolent force separate and in conflict with his perception of a free individual. In his world undoubtedly, being free meant not being in a state of torment. In Arizona he will receive the death penalty instead of life imprisonment because, incredibly, he will not be considered insane.
Loughner, like other displays of insanity from people like Timothy McVeigh, are the top of a sponge like iceberg, soaking up the relentless and aggressive rhetoric of pundits and politicians of post-Reagan Conservatism. It is born of an acceptance by both Conservative and Liberal extremes that freedom of communication means an absence of public control over the means of communication. It is fed by mercantile powers that ultimately control those means and stand to benefit from a lack of diversity. Today it is the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, Rupert Murdocks, and dozens like them who are driving the frenzy. It could have been some radical left wing nuts turning the screw on the nation’s psyche (as some try), but today the big nuts are turning right.
The tragedy in Tucson is heart wrenchingly unfortunate, but the real damage from an iceberg is caused by what’s below the surface and this current iceberg is getting huge.
Interestingly we can actually identify a date when this began. As an aftermath of World War 2 the Truman Administration, with bipartisan support, recognized that unregulated control of public communication was the very thing that allowed the special interests to effectively limit information in a large industrial society. The then compelling example was of the Nazi Party’s influence over public communications in Germany in the 1930s. In 1949 the Fairness Doctrine became part of the FCC’s operation, passing judicial muster along the way. It was not a law, but a policy or regulation over public airways. It required that in order to have a license to broadcast a station must present contrasting viewpoints on matters of public interest. Under the guise of freedom of speech the Reagan Administration directed its FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, to end the policy in August 1987. By August 1988 Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting his anti-Government sputum daily, soon joined by others, making hundreds of millions of dollars. Those who found enjoyment in the mindless vitriol could happily listen or watch nothing else.
With only some minor exceptions, our political leadership has not addressed the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, or something like it. Most are content to preserve their jobs by not risking the label of being anti-First Amendment. Few, if any, are willing to address the extraordinary power of mass communication over a largely unsophisticated and uneducated population of 300 million people. For 38 years our leaders and our nation saw and accepted the advantages of regulation requiring diversity. Conversely, since then, the advantages of unregulated uniformity have been accepted and enjoyed by a relative few. The similarities to an unregulated financial system are profound, and how many lives will end or be ruined, totally unnoticed, by our inane for-profit healthcare system because the lies perpetuated about it can continue unchallenged? Is it possible the recognition that the American people and the American Government are an inseparable whole been lost? Maybe so.
The tragedy of the September 11th attack in New York and Washington was indisputably the result of myopic brainwashing within the Muslim world. The vast majority of Muslims would not have participated or condoned the attack, but they are more than comfortable with listening to the endless condemnation of the United States and other non-Muslim nations as their antagonists. The lunatic tip of their iceberg is pretty big. But make no mistake about it. The insanity that destroyed the Trade Center in New York and that which killed Christine Taylor Green grew from the same seed. Perhaps this little life might become a window to see the truth.
In the round table discussions that are part of the Sunday news circuit, the conversations were the same from show to show and, further, they explored ground that has been so trampled on at this point that it might as well be concrete. Pundits and officials of varying political persuasions resurrected the usual dialogue on how polarized and vitriolic the social and political views of the nation have become. They talked about how leaders need to “tone down the rhetoric” so that this kind of thing “won’t happen again”. Their focus was on the tragedy itself, including the assault on high officials of the US Government, and for good reason. It’s because focusing on the event itself is just so, so easy to do. Those discussing the problem of “polarization” speak as if elimination of the lunatic fringe would solve the problem. Politicians and pundits alike don’t want to face the real dilemma. To do so would be like asking Homer Simpson to give up his doughnuts.
The shooting in Tucson was not unlike other similar events that have occurred (and in a practical sense forgotten) over the past couple of decades. They have simply been responses from the lunatic fringe to a much greater uncoordinated conspiracy, and should be expected. The major response to this event will probably be the same as with prior events; huge analysis of psychiatric resources, lots of finger pointing, and increased security, even though the specific event has little impact on safety of the nation. Virtually nothing will be done, or even suggested (at levels that would make a difference) about the real problem. The tragic event is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself.
It is already clear, thanks to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, that Jared Lee Loughner was mentally imbalanced and burdened with (among other things) a consistent torment; that the Government (the United States or otherwise) represents a malevolent force separate and in conflict with his perception of a free individual. In his world undoubtedly, being free meant not being in a state of torment. In Arizona he will receive the death penalty instead of life imprisonment because, incredibly, he will not be considered insane.
Loughner, like other displays of insanity from people like Timothy McVeigh, are the top of a sponge like iceberg, soaking up the relentless and aggressive rhetoric of pundits and politicians of post-Reagan Conservatism. It is born of an acceptance by both Conservative and Liberal extremes that freedom of communication means an absence of public control over the means of communication. It is fed by mercantile powers that ultimately control those means and stand to benefit from a lack of diversity. Today it is the Rush Limbaughs, Glenn Becks, Rupert Murdocks, and dozens like them who are driving the frenzy. It could have been some radical left wing nuts turning the screw on the nation’s psyche (as some try), but today the big nuts are turning right.
The tragedy in Tucson is heart wrenchingly unfortunate, but the real damage from an iceberg is caused by what’s below the surface and this current iceberg is getting huge.
Interestingly we can actually identify a date when this began. As an aftermath of World War 2 the Truman Administration, with bipartisan support, recognized that unregulated control of public communication was the very thing that allowed the special interests to effectively limit information in a large industrial society. The then compelling example was of the Nazi Party’s influence over public communications in Germany in the 1930s. In 1949 the Fairness Doctrine became part of the FCC’s operation, passing judicial muster along the way. It was not a law, but a policy or regulation over public airways. It required that in order to have a license to broadcast a station must present contrasting viewpoints on matters of public interest. Under the guise of freedom of speech the Reagan Administration directed its FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, to end the policy in August 1987. By August 1988 Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting his anti-Government sputum daily, soon joined by others, making hundreds of millions of dollars. Those who found enjoyment in the mindless vitriol could happily listen or watch nothing else.
With only some minor exceptions, our political leadership has not addressed the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, or something like it. Most are content to preserve their jobs by not risking the label of being anti-First Amendment. Few, if any, are willing to address the extraordinary power of mass communication over a largely unsophisticated and uneducated population of 300 million people. For 38 years our leaders and our nation saw and accepted the advantages of regulation requiring diversity. Conversely, since then, the advantages of unregulated uniformity have been accepted and enjoyed by a relative few. The similarities to an unregulated financial system are profound, and how many lives will end or be ruined, totally unnoticed, by our inane for-profit healthcare system because the lies perpetuated about it can continue unchallenged? Is it possible the recognition that the American people and the American Government are an inseparable whole been lost? Maybe so.
The tragedy of the September 11th attack in New York and Washington was indisputably the result of myopic brainwashing within the Muslim world. The vast majority of Muslims would not have participated or condoned the attack, but they are more than comfortable with listening to the endless condemnation of the United States and other non-Muslim nations as their antagonists. The lunatic tip of their iceberg is pretty big. But make no mistake about it. The insanity that destroyed the Trade Center in New York and that which killed Christine Taylor Green grew from the same seed. Perhaps this little life might become a window to see the truth.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Economic Fundamentalism
It is not hard to intellectually give fundamentalism a bad rap. Generally fundamentalism refers to an individual’s strict obedience to a specific set of theological doctrines. It can be found in behaviors ranging from Jihadist terrorism to Sarah Palin bromides. All it really means is that individuals apply certitudes to beliefs that are neither provable nor universally shared. That doesn’t make them necessarily wrong; however, the inflexibility can create a whole host of conflicts, and historically has contributed to human tragedy on a massive scale from time to time. Certainly the ability to compromise one’s fundamental position can be a virtue in a world where the population of diverse believers has grown to nearly incomprehensible levels.
The same could be said of secular issues as well, in fact even more so. After all, fundamental theological or philosophical beliefs are based on axioms which are ultimately subjective or personal, while secular issues deal more with the nuts and bolts affecting everyday living…of everybody. The issues might include things like safety or education, but mostly they have to do with economics or, in other words, survival in this world, rather than the next. For people, or more importantly politicians, to take immovable positions on issues based on their fundamental economic beliefs (taxes bad, growth good, rich bad, equality good, etc) creates an inability to deal with dynamic changes and begs for common ground. So why do I find myself in such disagreement with President Obama’s recent pronouncement of a negotiated “compromise” with the Republican caucus?
The President angrily (angry for him anyway) derided his fellow Democrat critics for not understanding the importance of compromise. Although Obama’s agreement may at first blush appeared inconsistent with his pronouncements both as a candidate and President, for anyone who read The Audacity of Hope he did what one might have expected him to do. Obama essentially declared in his treatise that the supreme value of leadership is when it breaks down intractable competition and in doing so moves the ball forward. His pragmatic approach to the Presidency (with congressional majorities) has been painfully consistent with his book. I believe, unfortunately, he got it backwards. Leadership that seeks to and ultimately unifies has value only after the fact, after it's got the job done...not before. It is the old Neville Chamberlain predicament…what sounds like a duck isn’t necessarily a duck. I suspect a few clever Republicans read Obama’s book and put two and two together.
The divisiveness of the Obama compromise was immediately apparent and I feel de facto evidence of failure to meet his proclaimed goal of moving the ball forward. The Democrats in Congress have been as fractured in their approach to governing over the last four years as the Republicans have been eerily solidified. Reacting as they did made them appear like a colony of meerkats all popping up and suddenly looking in the same direction with equal surprise. That doesn’t happen often for Democrats. Are they wrong? Am I wrong in agreeing with them? Just what is wrong with this compromise?
Don’t believe for a second that the Republican line-in-the-sand on taxation of the wealthy was anything other than political. The sound bite which says returning the top bracket to Clinton era levels would adversely affect employment (which was woefully embraced by the conservative uninformed) boarders on lunacy. There is virtually no evidence (nor educated speculation) that such would be the case. Democrats suggested raising the threshold to a million dollars which the Republican leadership immediately rejected. It could have been raised to a billion dollars of taxable income (which actually only effects a handful of people) and the Republicans wouldn’t have budged, even if every affected billionaire lined up in support of the tax. The so-called fiscally responsible Republican conservatives, whose number one stated goal is to make Obama a one-term President, wanted tax increases tagged to the Obama Administration..period. It was win-win for the Republicans as far as they were concerned, “compromise” or not. If the plan goes through as agreed upon Obama will have to campaign as a President who, if elected, will spearhead tax increases. Christmas came early for the GOP.
Obama’s real choice was also a real opportunity to salvage his Presidency, which I have reluctantly come to believe needs salvaging. He had the opportunity to tell the truth. A position does not fall under the general heading of fundamentalism when there is universal agreement. We don’t know specifically what the consequences of running continuous and mountainous deficits and compiling astronomical debt will be. However, we can all agree that they will be very bad and we as a nation will regret that we didn’t do anything about it. As such Obama was in a unique position to earn his Nobel Prize by risking his Presidency and telling the nation (and therefore the world) that it has to spend less and it has to pay currently, through taxes, for what it is spending (on everything including entitlements and wars of every kind). He should have embraced the termination of the Bush tax cuts, not just for the rich, but for everyone. That’s what a unifying President would have done, instead of arguing that the goodies we got are equal to the goodies they got. The published fears that the short term result would have stalled the “recovery” were speculative at best and not worthy of compromising the truth. I don’t believe it at all. By opposing both Republicans and Democrats on taxation and spending and demanding an era of national responsibility he had the prospect of being the unifier he truly wants to be. Instead, he has become an instrument of continued divisiveness.
The most important thing I took out of my studies as an Economics major in college was that Economics is a social science, not an exact science. Because it is merely an accounting of human behavior the ability of Government to affect it directly is very limited. What this economy needs more than anything else is to regain predictability. That will probably happen when the housing market stabilizes, if the national debt doesn’t do us in first. Predictability is always enhanced by the truth. The near-term economy will not be significantly improved or worsened by increased taxation or reduced spending. Consumer Confidence is the index that trumps them both. However, the long term health of our Economy will be significantly affected by how we apply both taxes and spending. The fights and compromises regarding social support or the widening gap between the haves and have-nots could have waited. For this round it was Economic Fundamentalism 1, Truth 0.
The same could be said of secular issues as well, in fact even more so. After all, fundamental theological or philosophical beliefs are based on axioms which are ultimately subjective or personal, while secular issues deal more with the nuts and bolts affecting everyday living…of everybody. The issues might include things like safety or education, but mostly they have to do with economics or, in other words, survival in this world, rather than the next. For people, or more importantly politicians, to take immovable positions on issues based on their fundamental economic beliefs (taxes bad, growth good, rich bad, equality good, etc) creates an inability to deal with dynamic changes and begs for common ground. So why do I find myself in such disagreement with President Obama’s recent pronouncement of a negotiated “compromise” with the Republican caucus?
The President angrily (angry for him anyway) derided his fellow Democrat critics for not understanding the importance of compromise. Although Obama’s agreement may at first blush appeared inconsistent with his pronouncements both as a candidate and President, for anyone who read The Audacity of Hope he did what one might have expected him to do. Obama essentially declared in his treatise that the supreme value of leadership is when it breaks down intractable competition and in doing so moves the ball forward. His pragmatic approach to the Presidency (with congressional majorities) has been painfully consistent with his book. I believe, unfortunately, he got it backwards. Leadership that seeks to and ultimately unifies has value only after the fact, after it's got the job done...not before. It is the old Neville Chamberlain predicament…what sounds like a duck isn’t necessarily a duck. I suspect a few clever Republicans read Obama’s book and put two and two together.
The divisiveness of the Obama compromise was immediately apparent and I feel de facto evidence of failure to meet his proclaimed goal of moving the ball forward. The Democrats in Congress have been as fractured in their approach to governing over the last four years as the Republicans have been eerily solidified. Reacting as they did made them appear like a colony of meerkats all popping up and suddenly looking in the same direction with equal surprise. That doesn’t happen often for Democrats. Are they wrong? Am I wrong in agreeing with them? Just what is wrong with this compromise?
Don’t believe for a second that the Republican line-in-the-sand on taxation of the wealthy was anything other than political. The sound bite which says returning the top bracket to Clinton era levels would adversely affect employment (which was woefully embraced by the conservative uninformed) boarders on lunacy. There is virtually no evidence (nor educated speculation) that such would be the case. Democrats suggested raising the threshold to a million dollars which the Republican leadership immediately rejected. It could have been raised to a billion dollars of taxable income (which actually only effects a handful of people) and the Republicans wouldn’t have budged, even if every affected billionaire lined up in support of the tax. The so-called fiscally responsible Republican conservatives, whose number one stated goal is to make Obama a one-term President, wanted tax increases tagged to the Obama Administration..period. It was win-win for the Republicans as far as they were concerned, “compromise” or not. If the plan goes through as agreed upon Obama will have to campaign as a President who, if elected, will spearhead tax increases. Christmas came early for the GOP.
Obama’s real choice was also a real opportunity to salvage his Presidency, which I have reluctantly come to believe needs salvaging. He had the opportunity to tell the truth. A position does not fall under the general heading of fundamentalism when there is universal agreement. We don’t know specifically what the consequences of running continuous and mountainous deficits and compiling astronomical debt will be. However, we can all agree that they will be very bad and we as a nation will regret that we didn’t do anything about it. As such Obama was in a unique position to earn his Nobel Prize by risking his Presidency and telling the nation (and therefore the world) that it has to spend less and it has to pay currently, through taxes, for what it is spending (on everything including entitlements and wars of every kind). He should have embraced the termination of the Bush tax cuts, not just for the rich, but for everyone. That’s what a unifying President would have done, instead of arguing that the goodies we got are equal to the goodies they got. The published fears that the short term result would have stalled the “recovery” were speculative at best and not worthy of compromising the truth. I don’t believe it at all. By opposing both Republicans and Democrats on taxation and spending and demanding an era of national responsibility he had the prospect of being the unifier he truly wants to be. Instead, he has become an instrument of continued divisiveness.
The most important thing I took out of my studies as an Economics major in college was that Economics is a social science, not an exact science. Because it is merely an accounting of human behavior the ability of Government to affect it directly is very limited. What this economy needs more than anything else is to regain predictability. That will probably happen when the housing market stabilizes, if the national debt doesn’t do us in first. Predictability is always enhanced by the truth. The near-term economy will not be significantly improved or worsened by increased taxation or reduced spending. Consumer Confidence is the index that trumps them both. However, the long term health of our Economy will be significantly affected by how we apply both taxes and spending. The fights and compromises regarding social support or the widening gap between the haves and have-nots could have waited. For this round it was Economic Fundamentalism 1, Truth 0.
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Mannequin Candidate
I wondered recently what would be born of combining the suspense thriller The Manchurian Candidate with the Old Navy commercials featuring the “talking” mannequins. The story The Manchurian Candidate, made famous by a bestselling Cold War novel in 1959 by Richard Condon and later into a 1962 John Frankenheimer movie (with a 2004 re-make), combines the ruthless ambitions of a politician and his wife with their brainwashed son in a plot to catapult themselves to national political power. The Old Navy commercials, on the other hand (which I hope you’ve seen), allow dummies to engage in pithy conversation without any moving parts (each time I’m unfortunate enough to see one I’m compelled to grumble – Go Army!). Merging those two concepts together, however, I was awakened to something which is far more real than the sum of its fictional parts, namely: the yet again candidacy of Eric Cantor.
Cantor has climbed the ladder of political power almost entirely unnoticed, even by the constituents in his own Virginia 7th Congressional District (which happens to be mine as well). Like Lawrence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Cantor was picked, planted, and pruned for a specific purpose. In Eric's case it was advancement in the Republican Party. He has succeeded by happily remaining in the shadows, displaying unswerving loyalty, and not adding a ripple to a Congressional sea beset by frequent political maelstroms. He has risen nose cleaning to an art form.
In his nearly 10 years in Congress he has individually sponsored only 39 harmless and non-descript bills, 5 were taken semi-seriously and made it out of Committee, and only 2 became law. What were those laws? One was allowing the use of the Capitol Rotunda as part of a Holocaust commemoration; the second was having a Richmond, VA Post Office building named after his retired benefactor Rep Tom Bliley. That’s about as close as you can get to an Old Navy commercial in the US House of Representatives.
It now appears, however, that he may be ready to make his move, and not simply by looking over John Boehner’s shoulder during some “Hell NO” soliloquy. He has made the bold move of trying to distance himself from the Republican establishment, that establishment which is under fire by a hodgepodge of extreme positions by Christian Conservatives and Libertarian wannabes. He and a couple of Congressional supporters have labeled themselves the Young Guns in an attempt to be the bridge that crosses the murky sludge of the Bush Administration linking the land of Ronald Reagan with a Krispy Kreme Republican future – all puffy and sweet. If he succeeds and overthrows the establishment Boehner, he could end up Speaker of the House and be just two heart beats away from the White House. Only in America.
It is altogether appropriate that Eric Cantor chose to name his “gang” the Young Guns. At age 47 he more or less qualifies for the “young” part of the title, especially if you place him next to Mitch McConnell for example. It’s the “Guns” part I find intriguing…and revealing.
I can almost see Cantor bursting into the House of Representatives, followed by Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) walking abreast, all three sporting black leather motorcycle jackets with the arched name YOUNG GUNS emblazoned on the back…maybe beneath it a picture of teacup filled with bullets and the phrase Death To Taxes. They march down to the front of the assembly, pull out their paintball pistols and announce that the People can no longer wait to be heard. In seconds the opposition is left cowering in a pool of Republican red paint and the Young Guns stride away to quickly check their poll numbers.
I have lived in Virginia’s solidly Conservative and Republican 7th Congressional District for 29 years and therefore have been witness to the evolution of a politician who epitomizes the absence of substance in today’s political environment. Eric Cantor has worked his entire adult life in politics with the single aim of personal advancement. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, as long as his constituents know that’s all they’re electing – public service be damned.
As an undergraduate student in college his family connections got him the job as intern and later as driver for his predecessor’s (Thomas J Bliley, Jr.) during Bliley’s second campaign for Congress in our district. Immediately after Cantor’s extensive schooling (one undergraduate and two graduate degrees) he began his first campaign running for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, with the help of his mentor Bliley (by then a popular Congressman), at the age of 28. There he was tucked away until Bliley’s announced retirement and the official anointing of Cantor.
Cantor was easily elected to the House in 2000 and entered Congress pre-ordained. Roy Blunt (R-MO) made the new younger gun Chief Deputy Republican Whip in only his second year, a laurel almost unheard of in a rookie’s career and for no particular reason, except perhaps that young Cantor was sufficiently dashing and by 2002 was the only Jewish Republican in Congress (a fact that persists still).
He has spent the decade successfully working the Republican establishment like a Roman column, providing a lot of internal support even while his presence was inert. It’s doubtful he could have done it any other way since despite his American Dad smile, tanned features, and artful coiffure he’s a terrible speaker. The grooming of Eric Cantor has worked flawlessly…provided he didn’t open his mouth. Unfortunately his delivery sounds a lot like a whiny car salesman, the hearing impaired reading closed captioning of his interviews are probably far more impressed.
So, establishment Republicans, like John Boehner, are in a bit of a sticky situation. On one side they have allowed in grizzly bears (mama and otherwise) who appear content to eat red meat as well as blue, and on the other side they face competition within their own family, from those like Eric Cantor et al, who have concluded that the only real winners in the French Revolution were those who didn’t get their heads chopped off.
Alas, Eric Cantor is no Napoleon Bonaparte, except perhaps like the one that resides in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Like the evil politician in The Manchurian Candidate, who is eventually foiled by his nutso son, it is unlikely that Cantor will rise to national prominence, but it likely will be by his own inanimate doing.
In the opening chapter of his recent book Young Guns Cantor writes (with his two underlings) a verbatim recollection of a conversation the three of them had over “diet cokes and bottled water” in the commissary specifically on March 11, 2010 (I guess they always have the tapes rolling). In it Cantor says; “I think enough members finally realized that the level of frustration among the public is at a fever pitch right now that we had no choice. We had to say enough is enough.” They talk about “…corruption in the Republican Party when we had the majority”, and “We have to declare our principles (which) are the Nation’s founding principles”, a prophetic “We have new blood coming in here”, and (of course) Greek mythology. It could all be howling good copy for a John Stewart skit, but I see it more as a painfully extended Old Navy commercial with perhaps Eric’s last line being “...oh and Kevin, I just love the elephants on your tie.” It’s just too bad that the people of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District have to keep rerunning it every two years.
Cantor has climbed the ladder of political power almost entirely unnoticed, even by the constituents in his own Virginia 7th Congressional District (which happens to be mine as well). Like Lawrence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, Cantor was picked, planted, and pruned for a specific purpose. In Eric's case it was advancement in the Republican Party. He has succeeded by happily remaining in the shadows, displaying unswerving loyalty, and not adding a ripple to a Congressional sea beset by frequent political maelstroms. He has risen nose cleaning to an art form.
In his nearly 10 years in Congress he has individually sponsored only 39 harmless and non-descript bills, 5 were taken semi-seriously and made it out of Committee, and only 2 became law. What were those laws? One was allowing the use of the Capitol Rotunda as part of a Holocaust commemoration; the second was having a Richmond, VA Post Office building named after his retired benefactor Rep Tom Bliley. That’s about as close as you can get to an Old Navy commercial in the US House of Representatives.
It now appears, however, that he may be ready to make his move, and not simply by looking over John Boehner’s shoulder during some “Hell NO” soliloquy. He has made the bold move of trying to distance himself from the Republican establishment, that establishment which is under fire by a hodgepodge of extreme positions by Christian Conservatives and Libertarian wannabes. He and a couple of Congressional supporters have labeled themselves the Young Guns in an attempt to be the bridge that crosses the murky sludge of the Bush Administration linking the land of Ronald Reagan with a Krispy Kreme Republican future – all puffy and sweet. If he succeeds and overthrows the establishment Boehner, he could end up Speaker of the House and be just two heart beats away from the White House. Only in America.
It is altogether appropriate that Eric Cantor chose to name his “gang” the Young Guns. At age 47 he more or less qualifies for the “young” part of the title, especially if you place him next to Mitch McConnell for example. It’s the “Guns” part I find intriguing…and revealing.
I can almost see Cantor bursting into the House of Representatives, followed by Rep Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Rep Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) walking abreast, all three sporting black leather motorcycle jackets with the arched name YOUNG GUNS emblazoned on the back…maybe beneath it a picture of teacup filled with bullets and the phrase Death To Taxes. They march down to the front of the assembly, pull out their paintball pistols and announce that the People can no longer wait to be heard. In seconds the opposition is left cowering in a pool of Republican red paint and the Young Guns stride away to quickly check their poll numbers.
I have lived in Virginia’s solidly Conservative and Republican 7th Congressional District for 29 years and therefore have been witness to the evolution of a politician who epitomizes the absence of substance in today’s political environment. Eric Cantor has worked his entire adult life in politics with the single aim of personal advancement. There’s nothing wrong with that per se, as long as his constituents know that’s all they’re electing – public service be damned.
As an undergraduate student in college his family connections got him the job as intern and later as driver for his predecessor’s (Thomas J Bliley, Jr.) during Bliley’s second campaign for Congress in our district. Immediately after Cantor’s extensive schooling (one undergraduate and two graduate degrees) he began his first campaign running for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates, with the help of his mentor Bliley (by then a popular Congressman), at the age of 28. There he was tucked away until Bliley’s announced retirement and the official anointing of Cantor.
Cantor was easily elected to the House in 2000 and entered Congress pre-ordained. Roy Blunt (R-MO) made the new younger gun Chief Deputy Republican Whip in only his second year, a laurel almost unheard of in a rookie’s career and for no particular reason, except perhaps that young Cantor was sufficiently dashing and by 2002 was the only Jewish Republican in Congress (a fact that persists still).
He has spent the decade successfully working the Republican establishment like a Roman column, providing a lot of internal support even while his presence was inert. It’s doubtful he could have done it any other way since despite his American Dad smile, tanned features, and artful coiffure he’s a terrible speaker. The grooming of Eric Cantor has worked flawlessly…provided he didn’t open his mouth. Unfortunately his delivery sounds a lot like a whiny car salesman, the hearing impaired reading closed captioning of his interviews are probably far more impressed.
So, establishment Republicans, like John Boehner, are in a bit of a sticky situation. On one side they have allowed in grizzly bears (mama and otherwise) who appear content to eat red meat as well as blue, and on the other side they face competition within their own family, from those like Eric Cantor et al, who have concluded that the only real winners in the French Revolution were those who didn’t get their heads chopped off.
Alas, Eric Cantor is no Napoleon Bonaparte, except perhaps like the one that resides in Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum. Like the evil politician in The Manchurian Candidate, who is eventually foiled by his nutso son, it is unlikely that Cantor will rise to national prominence, but it likely will be by his own inanimate doing.
In the opening chapter of his recent book Young Guns Cantor writes (with his two underlings) a verbatim recollection of a conversation the three of them had over “diet cokes and bottled water” in the commissary specifically on March 11, 2010 (I guess they always have the tapes rolling). In it Cantor says; “I think enough members finally realized that the level of frustration among the public is at a fever pitch right now that we had no choice. We had to say enough is enough.” They talk about “…corruption in the Republican Party when we had the majority”, and “We have to declare our principles (which) are the Nation’s founding principles”, a prophetic “We have new blood coming in here”, and (of course) Greek mythology. It could all be howling good copy for a John Stewart skit, but I see it more as a painfully extended Old Navy commercial with perhaps Eric’s last line being “...oh and Kevin, I just love the elephants on your tie.” It’s just too bad that the people of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District have to keep rerunning it every two years.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Der Fuhrer Obama?
My 88 year old mother believes Obama is this century’s Hitler. I don’t argue the point with her…well, that’s not exactly correct. I have attempted to take issue with her conclusion but very quickly realized I was hurling jello at concrete. However, I did ask and she was quite willing to tell me why Barack and Adolf are kindred spirits. She only gave me one reason, but she claims to back that reason up with first hand validation, as she lived in Germany until 1937, leaving just before she turned 16:
“I heard Hitler speak.”
“Yes, and so?”
“Obama speaks too well, he’s too smooth…just like Hitler”.
Funny, but in old newsreels I don’t recall Hitler’s style looking like something one might call smooth. Regardless, he was obviously an effective communicator and from that standpoint I suppose commonalities might be found. Still, to mom it appears content doesn’t carry much weight. Maybe something else is going on. Perhaps when she looks back she feels duped. Isn't that the result of listening to smooth people?
When she made the comment that “Hitler wasn’t all bad” I began to think she was struggling with the history. Well, she left Germany in 1937 at a time when Hitler was immensely popular with the great majority of the German people. He had been Fuhrer for almost 4 years. She mentioned such things as trains running on time, full employment, mandatory sports, and his frequently quoting the Bible (something I wasn't aware of) among others. There was a new, generally pervasive feel-good factor that replaced the Depression (both economic and mental) which had plagued the German people since WWI and new enemies in their midst. That was most of what she remembered as a young girl. Still, hindsight is 20-20 and I can’t see the badness of a larger than life malevolence such as Hitler charted out like some kind of bell curve. But I didn’t live it either. Still, the bad stuff, the phantom enemies, had started long before she left and I wondered just how it could have remained so transparent.
There are things people have difficulty seeing when they’re living in the middle of it. Most of us know this, but it appears the knowing doesn’t help much. Those situations or attitudes that might seem logical now can appear like a collective insanity when reviewed historically. In most cases it involves the desire to protect and preserve identity. No one today disputes that the Communist panic of the late 40s and early 50s, which ruined careers, lives, and resulted in some unattractive executions (both public and private) was a bit of collective insanity…but not so at the time. Communists were seen as a direct threat to how Americans viewed themselves and their way of life…but that threat didn’t exist. Now take the recent simple event where an Islamic organization wants to build a community center two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center tragedy. What is insane and what isn’t?
When I first heard about a local city official protesting the construction I thought why the hell is that guy getting any press? His point seemed petty. Now it is a national and political controversy, and fodder for 20 million blogs such as this one. A televised poll has (supposedly) 67% of all Americans opposed to the proposed construction. Harry Reid, the dynamic and swashbuckling titular head of the Senate majority, came out against it without giving much reason, hoping to nudge himself slightly to the right no doubt, and Sarah Palin blamed it on Muslim insensitivities (Reid & Palin - strange bedfellows). Newt Gingrich pointed out a Neo-Nazi cannot hang a swastika outside the holocaust museum, making an obvious comparison. Conservative talk show celebrities are viewing this controversy like Homer Simpson views doughnuts. None that I’m aware of have publically commented on similar public efforts to thwart the construction of Muslim mosques and other buildings around the country over the past few years, which has been the case.
To tie the controversy to the World Trade Center tragedy and its many direct victims is a travesty all by itself. The political and economic powers that have used the World Trade Center attack as a reason to wage “war” have, by necessity, created an enemy to enact policy, perpetuate power, and extract profit. Were the policies that have resulted in the deaths of 4000 US soldiers in Iraq, 106,000 Iraqi civilians, 1900 coalition troops in Afghanistan, and 28,000 Afghan civilians (with many, many more injured) really all about just Al Qaida? Much of our leadership, which so stealthfully draws a distinction between a good faith and a bad faith serves up that insanity like it was health food. I shouldn't wonder that the number of people in our beloved, free democracy who would gleefully pack up every person of Islamic faith in the country and ship them off to the Middle East is probably in the tens of millions…or perhaps frighteningly more.
Even Obama has taken a stand, making an eloquent speech during a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan where he supported the Islam center, but he rests his position on the heritage and constitutionality of religious freedom in America. Religious freedom has nothing to do with the issue. Those tens of millions of good Christians who are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder against the Islamic horde carry no animosity toward Muslims practicing their faith. They believe they’re all going to hell anyway. Rather they simply perceive Muslim people as a threat to the sanctity and security of their Christian/American identities. They have taken the motives and actions of a few terrorists, extrapolated that rationale to Islamic extremists, and then finally applied Islamic extremism to every one of the Muslim faith…baddest, badder, and just plain bad. The tragic irony is, of course, that is precisely what the Al Qaida terrorists were hoping to accomplish.
Sorry mom, Obama is no Hitler, but no matter. The powers that guide public policy and private opinion don’t need a Hitler. They can extend fear and hatred so skillfully that even something as innocuous as building a religiously sponsored civic center can rally the troops nationwide. Perhaps it can’t be seen now, but I somehow think we’re in for a world of feeling duped in a couple of decades or less.
I wonder, what would happen to the terrorists if we collectively refused to be terrorized? Perhaps feeling good about a new civic center in lower Manhattan would be a small step in the right direction.
“I heard Hitler speak.”
“Yes, and so?”
“Obama speaks too well, he’s too smooth…just like Hitler”.
Funny, but in old newsreels I don’t recall Hitler’s style looking like something one might call smooth. Regardless, he was obviously an effective communicator and from that standpoint I suppose commonalities might be found. Still, to mom it appears content doesn’t carry much weight. Maybe something else is going on. Perhaps when she looks back she feels duped. Isn't that the result of listening to smooth people?
When she made the comment that “Hitler wasn’t all bad” I began to think she was struggling with the history. Well, she left Germany in 1937 at a time when Hitler was immensely popular with the great majority of the German people. He had been Fuhrer for almost 4 years. She mentioned such things as trains running on time, full employment, mandatory sports, and his frequently quoting the Bible (something I wasn't aware of) among others. There was a new, generally pervasive feel-good factor that replaced the Depression (both economic and mental) which had plagued the German people since WWI and new enemies in their midst. That was most of what she remembered as a young girl. Still, hindsight is 20-20 and I can’t see the badness of a larger than life malevolence such as Hitler charted out like some kind of bell curve. But I didn’t live it either. Still, the bad stuff, the phantom enemies, had started long before she left and I wondered just how it could have remained so transparent.
There are things people have difficulty seeing when they’re living in the middle of it. Most of us know this, but it appears the knowing doesn’t help much. Those situations or attitudes that might seem logical now can appear like a collective insanity when reviewed historically. In most cases it involves the desire to protect and preserve identity. No one today disputes that the Communist panic of the late 40s and early 50s, which ruined careers, lives, and resulted in some unattractive executions (both public and private) was a bit of collective insanity…but not so at the time. Communists were seen as a direct threat to how Americans viewed themselves and their way of life…but that threat didn’t exist. Now take the recent simple event where an Islamic organization wants to build a community center two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center tragedy. What is insane and what isn’t?
When I first heard about a local city official protesting the construction I thought why the hell is that guy getting any press? His point seemed petty. Now it is a national and political controversy, and fodder for 20 million blogs such as this one. A televised poll has (supposedly) 67% of all Americans opposed to the proposed construction. Harry Reid, the dynamic and swashbuckling titular head of the Senate majority, came out against it without giving much reason, hoping to nudge himself slightly to the right no doubt, and Sarah Palin blamed it on Muslim insensitivities (Reid & Palin - strange bedfellows). Newt Gingrich pointed out a Neo-Nazi cannot hang a swastika outside the holocaust museum, making an obvious comparison. Conservative talk show celebrities are viewing this controversy like Homer Simpson views doughnuts. None that I’m aware of have publically commented on similar public efforts to thwart the construction of Muslim mosques and other buildings around the country over the past few years, which has been the case.
To tie the controversy to the World Trade Center tragedy and its many direct victims is a travesty all by itself. The political and economic powers that have used the World Trade Center attack as a reason to wage “war” have, by necessity, created an enemy to enact policy, perpetuate power, and extract profit. Were the policies that have resulted in the deaths of 4000 US soldiers in Iraq, 106,000 Iraqi civilians, 1900 coalition troops in Afghanistan, and 28,000 Afghan civilians (with many, many more injured) really all about just Al Qaida? Much of our leadership, which so stealthfully draws a distinction between a good faith and a bad faith serves up that insanity like it was health food. I shouldn't wonder that the number of people in our beloved, free democracy who would gleefully pack up every person of Islamic faith in the country and ship them off to the Middle East is probably in the tens of millions…or perhaps frighteningly more.
Even Obama has taken a stand, making an eloquent speech during a White House dinner celebrating Ramadan where he supported the Islam center, but he rests his position on the heritage and constitutionality of religious freedom in America. Religious freedom has nothing to do with the issue. Those tens of millions of good Christians who are ready to stand shoulder to shoulder against the Islamic horde carry no animosity toward Muslims practicing their faith. They believe they’re all going to hell anyway. Rather they simply perceive Muslim people as a threat to the sanctity and security of their Christian/American identities. They have taken the motives and actions of a few terrorists, extrapolated that rationale to Islamic extremists, and then finally applied Islamic extremism to every one of the Muslim faith…baddest, badder, and just plain bad. The tragic irony is, of course, that is precisely what the Al Qaida terrorists were hoping to accomplish.
Sorry mom, Obama is no Hitler, but no matter. The powers that guide public policy and private opinion don’t need a Hitler. They can extend fear and hatred so skillfully that even something as innocuous as building a religiously sponsored civic center can rally the troops nationwide. Perhaps it can’t be seen now, but I somehow think we’re in for a world of feeling duped in a couple of decades or less.
I wonder, what would happen to the terrorists if we collectively refused to be terrorized? Perhaps feeling good about a new civic center in lower Manhattan would be a small step in the right direction.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Education Be Damned
For several years, starting perhaps after 1998, I began having problems sleeping. It wasn’t so much a problem of getting to sleep. Rather it was waking up, sometimes quite early in the evening, and not being able to get back to it. Not a particularly uncommon malady. I found my best answer to this problem was the radio. I would plug a single earphone in and listen to talk stations. Often within an hour or so I’d be back to sawing logs.
The difficulty with my solution was that our radio market in Richmond, VA had no FM talk shows in the evening, or anytime that I’m aware of. Further, AM reception was so bad that my radio could only pick up two AM stations; the local major ultra-Conservative talk/news station and a sports network. Well…it was what it was. Not being sports savvy I’d listen to Conservative commentary earlier in the evening and talk about space aliens and Bigfoot if I awoke in the wee hours. I mean, what the hell, the object was to get to sleep, right?
It was sometime around then that I started listening to this guy named Glenn Beck. He did me no favors toward my goal of slumber. I’d actually started paying attention to his mostly run-on commentary. I would find myself participating in a phantom dialogue with Mr. Beck trying to get him to explain any of the outrageous pronouncements that flowed unceasingly from his microphone. That was not good in the quest for rest. I was literally amazed that this guy was on the radio at all and thought he was possibly just the opening act to discussions about animal mutilations and crop circles that would air soon after his signoff. I had heard Rush Limbaugh during the daytime, again because he was the only (talk radio) act in town, and felt that Beck was much like Limbaugh, minus the crude but clever humor. Cancel out Limbaugh’s humor and you’d might as well be listening to captured conversations down at the bus station.
As my sleep problem improved I more or less lost touch with Glenn Beck, although I’d hear his name from time to time. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve been forced to become aware that Beck has joined Limbaugh as the preeminent spokespersons for Conservatives in the US today. I found that awareness mind-boggling and not a little disturbing. How could it be? His commentary, as I recalled it, was unintelligible regardless of the content. His presentations made any Dr. Seuss book read like a Harvard doctoral dissertation in Sociology. Beck now lives in a $5 million mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, has his own TV show and churns out bestselling books and other publications like he was Isaac Asimov. Who is this guy?
There is a serious problem in our country which I have commented on in previous postings (see The Most Evil Man in America 3/4/10). It is part of the current landscape so rooted that few can escape its effect. It’s so socially disabling that I’m waiting for the term “war” to be applied to it (which is America’s best solution to the seemingly unsolvable). It is the Conservative verses Liberal social debate, although I view it more accurately as the Conservative verses Non-Conservative social conflict. The point of this posting, however, is not to engage in the debate, rather to examine its de facto leaders and ask the question: why is education considered by Christian Conservatives to be socially debilitating? It occurred to me, as I considered Glenn Beck, to examine the leaders of ideological commentary and see if there is something to be gained to answering that question.
Beck and Limbaugh are arguably the current standard bearers for Christian Conservative commentary (Sarah Palin is coming on strong). Limbaugh has been for years and Beck the most recent messiah. It is the huge We Love Glen Beck posters that one sees at the Tea Party gatherings. I don’t think it is the least bit coincidental that the debut of the Glenn Beck TV program took place the day before Obama’s inauguration. There are two “liberal” media commentators that have been the most frequent targets of Conservative ire, and also labeled as the prime examples of mindless left-wing counter rhetoric by some considered moderates. They are Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. Let’s take a look at these folks.
Rush Limbaugh barely graduated from high school, his mother describing him as “flunking everything”. After two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University, he dropped out to pursue a career in radio, eventually making himself one of the richest men in America. Glenn Beck also barely graduated from high school, did not attempt college, choosing to work in radio even before he finished high school. A self-confessed abuser of alcohol and drugs till he was in his mid 30s, he struggled to survive until he found “salvation”, first from AA, then in the Mormon Church. Both men proudly proclaim themselves as self-educated, which is something to be proud of in most cases.
Keith Olbermann, unlike Limbaugh who came from a well-to-do family, was the son of a pre-school teacher and commercial architect. He was accepted into Cornell University at the age of 16. Graduating with a degree in Communication Arts and Journalism he began his career as a sportscaster in radio, given his love for baseball, and later evolved into political commentary. Rachael Maddow came from a middle-class military family and attended Stanford University. She was made a Rhodes Scholar and eventually received a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford University. From there she went into radio. Are we seeing a contrast here?
It isn’t necessarily the education, and arguably cerebral fire-power, that Olbermann and Maddow represent that make them better than Limbaugh and Beck. In truth, Limbaugh and Beck are better at the business they're in. What bugs me is the Conservative argument that such education makes them (Maddow and Olbermann) incapable of understanding the purity of the Conservative message and, in fact, essentially makes them (and those like them) subversive. It is the same ethereal argument leveled universally by Conservatives against college and university faculty across the country. Glenn Beck is not a plumber or insurance salesman. The reality that Conservatives will not even consider is that all these people, including Beck, are in the business of selling ideas, and when it comes to determining the quality of an idea education counts. It doesn’t count to sell an idea though, no matter how inane, as one uneducated, army corporal named Adolf could have attested.
The reason Beck and Limbaugh are so much better than their counterparts is that education gets in the way of certitudes. It is so much easier to argue with Tarzanian certainty “Government bad…Freedom good” than to get into the nitty-gritty of how to make things better, which carries with it a plethora of uncertainties. Maddow spends almost all her commentary debunking absurd generalizations by Conservative leaders or commentators. It doesn’t resonate…it doesn’t sell, and eventually it gets boring. Too many people want to hear from John Boehner that “we have the best healthcare in the world” instead of getting bogged down in those nasty “subversive” facts to the contrary.
Education has become a paradox in the Christian Conservative marketplace. They want their children to obtain education, however they really don’t want them to be educated. You could possibly trace this problem back to ancient Greece and the conflict between the city states of Athens and Sparta. One proclaimed the purity of ideas, the other the idea of purity. Sparta won by the way. Education be damned.
I still have problems sleeping on rare occasions. Now, however, I just turn to the sports station and listen to them talk about all these players, coaches and teams I hardly know. Glenn never could drop any sand in my eyes anyway. I suppose that’s a good thing.
The difficulty with my solution was that our radio market in Richmond, VA had no FM talk shows in the evening, or anytime that I’m aware of. Further, AM reception was so bad that my radio could only pick up two AM stations; the local major ultra-Conservative talk/news station and a sports network. Well…it was what it was. Not being sports savvy I’d listen to Conservative commentary earlier in the evening and talk about space aliens and Bigfoot if I awoke in the wee hours. I mean, what the hell, the object was to get to sleep, right?
It was sometime around then that I started listening to this guy named Glenn Beck. He did me no favors toward my goal of slumber. I’d actually started paying attention to his mostly run-on commentary. I would find myself participating in a phantom dialogue with Mr. Beck trying to get him to explain any of the outrageous pronouncements that flowed unceasingly from his microphone. That was not good in the quest for rest. I was literally amazed that this guy was on the radio at all and thought he was possibly just the opening act to discussions about animal mutilations and crop circles that would air soon after his signoff. I had heard Rush Limbaugh during the daytime, again because he was the only (talk radio) act in town, and felt that Beck was much like Limbaugh, minus the crude but clever humor. Cancel out Limbaugh’s humor and you’d might as well be listening to captured conversations down at the bus station.
As my sleep problem improved I more or less lost touch with Glenn Beck, although I’d hear his name from time to time. It’s only been in the last two years that I’ve been forced to become aware that Beck has joined Limbaugh as the preeminent spokespersons for Conservatives in the US today. I found that awareness mind-boggling and not a little disturbing. How could it be? His commentary, as I recalled it, was unintelligible regardless of the content. His presentations made any Dr. Seuss book read like a Harvard doctoral dissertation in Sociology. Beck now lives in a $5 million mansion in New Canaan, Connecticut, has his own TV show and churns out bestselling books and other publications like he was Isaac Asimov. Who is this guy?
There is a serious problem in our country which I have commented on in previous postings (see The Most Evil Man in America 3/4/10). It is part of the current landscape so rooted that few can escape its effect. It’s so socially disabling that I’m waiting for the term “war” to be applied to it (which is America’s best solution to the seemingly unsolvable). It is the Conservative verses Liberal social debate, although I view it more accurately as the Conservative verses Non-Conservative social conflict. The point of this posting, however, is not to engage in the debate, rather to examine its de facto leaders and ask the question: why is education considered by Christian Conservatives to be socially debilitating? It occurred to me, as I considered Glenn Beck, to examine the leaders of ideological commentary and see if there is something to be gained to answering that question.
Beck and Limbaugh are arguably the current standard bearers for Christian Conservative commentary (Sarah Palin is coming on strong). Limbaugh has been for years and Beck the most recent messiah. It is the huge We Love Glen Beck posters that one sees at the Tea Party gatherings. I don’t think it is the least bit coincidental that the debut of the Glenn Beck TV program took place the day before Obama’s inauguration. There are two “liberal” media commentators that have been the most frequent targets of Conservative ire, and also labeled as the prime examples of mindless left-wing counter rhetoric by some considered moderates. They are Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow. Let’s take a look at these folks.
Rush Limbaugh barely graduated from high school, his mother describing him as “flunking everything”. After two semesters at Southeast Missouri State University, he dropped out to pursue a career in radio, eventually making himself one of the richest men in America. Glenn Beck also barely graduated from high school, did not attempt college, choosing to work in radio even before he finished high school. A self-confessed abuser of alcohol and drugs till he was in his mid 30s, he struggled to survive until he found “salvation”, first from AA, then in the Mormon Church. Both men proudly proclaim themselves as self-educated, which is something to be proud of in most cases.
Keith Olbermann, unlike Limbaugh who came from a well-to-do family, was the son of a pre-school teacher and commercial architect. He was accepted into Cornell University at the age of 16. Graduating with a degree in Communication Arts and Journalism he began his career as a sportscaster in radio, given his love for baseball, and later evolved into political commentary. Rachael Maddow came from a middle-class military family and attended Stanford University. She was made a Rhodes Scholar and eventually received a PhD in Political Philosophy from Oxford University. From there she went into radio. Are we seeing a contrast here?
It isn’t necessarily the education, and arguably cerebral fire-power, that Olbermann and Maddow represent that make them better than Limbaugh and Beck. In truth, Limbaugh and Beck are better at the business they're in. What bugs me is the Conservative argument that such education makes them (Maddow and Olbermann) incapable of understanding the purity of the Conservative message and, in fact, essentially makes them (and those like them) subversive. It is the same ethereal argument leveled universally by Conservatives against college and university faculty across the country. Glenn Beck is not a plumber or insurance salesman. The reality that Conservatives will not even consider is that all these people, including Beck, are in the business of selling ideas, and when it comes to determining the quality of an idea education counts. It doesn’t count to sell an idea though, no matter how inane, as one uneducated, army corporal named Adolf could have attested.
The reason Beck and Limbaugh are so much better than their counterparts is that education gets in the way of certitudes. It is so much easier to argue with Tarzanian certainty “Government bad…Freedom good” than to get into the nitty-gritty of how to make things better, which carries with it a plethora of uncertainties. Maddow spends almost all her commentary debunking absurd generalizations by Conservative leaders or commentators. It doesn’t resonate…it doesn’t sell, and eventually it gets boring. Too many people want to hear from John Boehner that “we have the best healthcare in the world” instead of getting bogged down in those nasty “subversive” facts to the contrary.
Education has become a paradox in the Christian Conservative marketplace. They want their children to obtain education, however they really don’t want them to be educated. You could possibly trace this problem back to ancient Greece and the conflict between the city states of Athens and Sparta. One proclaimed the purity of ideas, the other the idea of purity. Sparta won by the way. Education be damned.
I still have problems sleeping on rare occasions. Now, however, I just turn to the sports station and listen to them talk about all these players, coaches and teams I hardly know. Glenn never could drop any sand in my eyes anyway. I suppose that’s a good thing.
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Crabgrass in the Sand
I’ve been deep into a war to protect and defend green grass for more years than I can recall, or want to recall. My use of the term “war” is cynical, of course. The term “war” in post WWII America seems to be applied to practically every endeavor where the path to success is illusive or unknown, and yet success is deemed inevitable. To relate it to my lawn seems reasonable, right? However, it occurred to me today while I was out on the front lawn fighting forces that seek to attack my grass that my efforts may relate more closely to war than I previously thought.
I discovered a few things over the years on how to grow and maintain a decent looking lawn, the full disclosure not worth repeating here. One thing I learned though is that a thick healthy lawn will protect itself fairly well without much input from me. It essentially crowds out its enemies. I also learned that by simply attacking botanical invaders as they pop up does a nice job of keeping them at bay. This worked particularly well with dandelions since I started a strategy of reaching down as I walked or mowed and pulling off their little yellow heads (that the mower didn’t get) before they could go to seed. Granted, I could have used a strong herbicide, but I’m just not into weapons of mass destruction (environmental sensitivities and so forth). Even without chemicals my lawn has been nearly free of that particular springtime weed for several years.
Now it is summer and the enemy isn’t weeds, but fellow members of the grass family. The first year crabgrass invaded my lawn it basically took it over in a few weeks. I chose to let the whole mess die under the summer sun, the crabgrass being the last to go. The second year was a repeat of the first, but this time I used a lawn fork to pull up the crabgrass. I was left with huge sprawling patches of naked dirt, looking like the battlefield it was. Then, over the past few years, I decided to employ Operation Dandelion to the insidious crabgrass infiltration. To my pleasure I discovered that it works…sort of.
You see, the dandelion method worked well on dandelions because it occurred in the spring, when rain is normally plentiful and the grass healthy. The crabgrass chooses its time to invade when the grass is stressed and weakened during the heat and dryness of summer. So I began to spend a few minutes each day walking about, reaching down and pulling new stalks of crabgrass from the lawn at an early stage in their development. The result was that the overall appearance of my lawn looked good…but I realized one thing. Unlike the dandelions, the crabgrass couldn’t be beaten, not entirely. It became so pervasive and entrenched in some outlying areas that it just wasn’t worth the effort to try and eliminate it completely…and so I haven’t.
It occurred to me that this country (you and me) has been conducting the War in Afghanistan in much the same way. The War was initiated, of course, as a reaction to the September 11th terrorist attack, with the legitimate goal of eradicating the precipitators, Al Qaida. Failing that, it became a war to build a government and support a social order in Afghanistan that would act as natural barrier to the ousted Taliban, and what they represent. Moreover, it is about winning - to be able to gaze upon something and call it “healthy”.
Our policy and/or strategy in Afghanistan is to walk about the country, at great expense and sacrifice, pluck out pockets of Taliban influence, and then wait for the indigenous population to grow and root deeply in freedom and democracy. What? The fact of the matter is that the Taliban will not go away, no matter how many are uprooted from this place or that, nor are there any seeds of democracy remotely close to germinating. The Taliban, radical Islamics, and endless sects of Jihadists remain covering the mountains that are part of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their seeds will continue to be carried west. They (the Taliban) were never the “enemy” in the first place. By our standards they were a socially repressive regime and international outcasts, but they weren’t our regime. The reality is that we are incapable of creating a fertile enough base by which the Afghan people will grow and flourish in our image, nor should they.
Our country is perfectly capable of obtaining the knowledge and taking proactive initiatives to attack assembled terrorist encampments as existed in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. We knew of the Al Qaida camps that were maintained in Afghanistan, but chose not to militarily enter a sovereign nation for reasons part political and part relating to international law. Given what occurred, that reluctance is not likely to happen again. There is no need, nor should we expect that a nation must be an ally of the United States in order to aggressively address sheltered terrorists. You might as well commit to clearing crabgrass from the entire neighborhood.
Obama, in an attempt to be consistent with his campaign positioning and with his debilitating pragmatism, has adopted the failed Bush strategy of nation building as the primary bulwark against terrorism (dare I say it – the War on Terrorism). The rest of the world that joined in the initial hunt for Al Qaida and Bin Laden is quickly accepting the failure of that strategy and pulling out. Obama’s participation to advance this “War” is the only Administration policy that has received unqualified support from the Republican Party. Why wouldn’t they? It’s the only Obama policy that has nothing but downside to it politically. Continued on the same course it will, in my opinion, be the only issue that will turn a decisive Obama victory in 2012 into a narrow defeat. Republicans may deride Michael Steele for his comments now, but come 2012 they will all be calling it Obama’s War.
We somehow feel the Afghan front yard should look like our front yard. We like nice tall fescue, or maybe cut short and dense…like on a putting green. Shouldn’t everybody? John Boehner would say “HELL YES”! Actually, I don’t think God or Nature singled out tall fescue as a blessed plant to contrast with an evil and sinfully hardy crabgrass. It is our growing and tragic legacy at the beginning of this century that we sacrifice our honor, our treasure, and a select group of lives in the misguided attempt to cultivate our landscape in foreign fields.
I also know that if I stop watering the lawn and stop yanking the crabgrass it will likely take over. Undoubtedly other things would begin to grow as well, crowding out some of the crabgrass, or simply living contentedly with it. I kind of like my grassy lawn, but I don’t mind the crabgrass that grows in pockets on the periphery; after all it’s still green. Sure I continue to fight back against the creeping crabgrass, but the lawn is mine, not my neighbor’s. If crabgrass grows well in distant sands…so it is. We would do better to maintain our own lawns and let the grass itself cast its seeds to the wind.
I discovered a few things over the years on how to grow and maintain a decent looking lawn, the full disclosure not worth repeating here. One thing I learned though is that a thick healthy lawn will protect itself fairly well without much input from me. It essentially crowds out its enemies. I also learned that by simply attacking botanical invaders as they pop up does a nice job of keeping them at bay. This worked particularly well with dandelions since I started a strategy of reaching down as I walked or mowed and pulling off their little yellow heads (that the mower didn’t get) before they could go to seed. Granted, I could have used a strong herbicide, but I’m just not into weapons of mass destruction (environmental sensitivities and so forth). Even without chemicals my lawn has been nearly free of that particular springtime weed for several years.
Now it is summer and the enemy isn’t weeds, but fellow members of the grass family. The first year crabgrass invaded my lawn it basically took it over in a few weeks. I chose to let the whole mess die under the summer sun, the crabgrass being the last to go. The second year was a repeat of the first, but this time I used a lawn fork to pull up the crabgrass. I was left with huge sprawling patches of naked dirt, looking like the battlefield it was. Then, over the past few years, I decided to employ Operation Dandelion to the insidious crabgrass infiltration. To my pleasure I discovered that it works…sort of.
You see, the dandelion method worked well on dandelions because it occurred in the spring, when rain is normally plentiful and the grass healthy. The crabgrass chooses its time to invade when the grass is stressed and weakened during the heat and dryness of summer. So I began to spend a few minutes each day walking about, reaching down and pulling new stalks of crabgrass from the lawn at an early stage in their development. The result was that the overall appearance of my lawn looked good…but I realized one thing. Unlike the dandelions, the crabgrass couldn’t be beaten, not entirely. It became so pervasive and entrenched in some outlying areas that it just wasn’t worth the effort to try and eliminate it completely…and so I haven’t.
It occurred to me that this country (you and me) has been conducting the War in Afghanistan in much the same way. The War was initiated, of course, as a reaction to the September 11th terrorist attack, with the legitimate goal of eradicating the precipitators, Al Qaida. Failing that, it became a war to build a government and support a social order in Afghanistan that would act as natural barrier to the ousted Taliban, and what they represent. Moreover, it is about winning - to be able to gaze upon something and call it “healthy”.
Our policy and/or strategy in Afghanistan is to walk about the country, at great expense and sacrifice, pluck out pockets of Taliban influence, and then wait for the indigenous population to grow and root deeply in freedom and democracy. What? The fact of the matter is that the Taliban will not go away, no matter how many are uprooted from this place or that, nor are there any seeds of democracy remotely close to germinating. The Taliban, radical Islamics, and endless sects of Jihadists remain covering the mountains that are part of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and their seeds will continue to be carried west. They (the Taliban) were never the “enemy” in the first place. By our standards they were a socially repressive regime and international outcasts, but they weren’t our regime. The reality is that we are incapable of creating a fertile enough base by which the Afghan people will grow and flourish in our image, nor should they.
Our country is perfectly capable of obtaining the knowledge and taking proactive initiatives to attack assembled terrorist encampments as existed in Afghanistan prior to 9/11. We knew of the Al Qaida camps that were maintained in Afghanistan, but chose not to militarily enter a sovereign nation for reasons part political and part relating to international law. Given what occurred, that reluctance is not likely to happen again. There is no need, nor should we expect that a nation must be an ally of the United States in order to aggressively address sheltered terrorists. You might as well commit to clearing crabgrass from the entire neighborhood.
Obama, in an attempt to be consistent with his campaign positioning and with his debilitating pragmatism, has adopted the failed Bush strategy of nation building as the primary bulwark against terrorism (dare I say it – the War on Terrorism). The rest of the world that joined in the initial hunt for Al Qaida and Bin Laden is quickly accepting the failure of that strategy and pulling out. Obama’s participation to advance this “War” is the only Administration policy that has received unqualified support from the Republican Party. Why wouldn’t they? It’s the only Obama policy that has nothing but downside to it politically. Continued on the same course it will, in my opinion, be the only issue that will turn a decisive Obama victory in 2012 into a narrow defeat. Republicans may deride Michael Steele for his comments now, but come 2012 they will all be calling it Obama’s War.
We somehow feel the Afghan front yard should look like our front yard. We like nice tall fescue, or maybe cut short and dense…like on a putting green. Shouldn’t everybody? John Boehner would say “HELL YES”! Actually, I don’t think God or Nature singled out tall fescue as a blessed plant to contrast with an evil and sinfully hardy crabgrass. It is our growing and tragic legacy at the beginning of this century that we sacrifice our honor, our treasure, and a select group of lives in the misguided attempt to cultivate our landscape in foreign fields.
I also know that if I stop watering the lawn and stop yanking the crabgrass it will likely take over. Undoubtedly other things would begin to grow as well, crowding out some of the crabgrass, or simply living contentedly with it. I kind of like my grassy lawn, but I don’t mind the crabgrass that grows in pockets on the periphery; after all it’s still green. Sure I continue to fight back against the creeping crabgrass, but the lawn is mine, not my neighbor’s. If crabgrass grows well in distant sands…so it is. We would do better to maintain our own lawns and let the grass itself cast its seeds to the wind.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Just Another Shot in the Foot
I worked in the Tax field for 17 years, mostly managing a staff of tax accountants and their support. During that period I either completed, reviewed, researched, or had responsibility for the preparation of about 74,000 tax returns. These included returns for individuals, trusts (lots of those), estates, partnerships, private foundations, and occasionally, small corporations. Although I ended my participation in taxation almost 16 years ago some things stuck with me, things about the nature of taxation in the United States.
Like many in that field, once my expertise had been elevated to the level of being humble, I arrived at a conclusion contrary to popular opinion. I concluded that the massive body of law known as the Federal Tax Code (which includes Tax Regulations) is generally logical. There are actually a manageable number of themes that form the basis for the Federal Tax Code (the Code) from which most all tax law (fine tuned by the Courts) run consistent. State and local tax codes are less so, but most take their lead from los Federales. Once you have a grasp of the basics, when faced with a specific tax issue you can usually reach an accurate conclusion, even before you research case law (Court interpretations).
Opponents to the Code, moreover opponents to taxes generally, hold copies of the Code above their heads like dumbbells (no pun intended) shouting "look at this massive intrusion into our lives". However, for the vast majority of the American population the Code is relatively simplistic, even for businesses. I would venture a percentage of…say…95% are affected in a way that should be perfectly understandable by your average middle school student. Admittedly, inconsistencies are more prevalent on the State and local levels.
Our Federal tax system is mostly complicated (especially in volume) by use of the Code for social engineering and providing benefits to those who have the legislative clout to tweak it. Instead of just giving money to special interests, the Code is used as the vehicle for distribution - which provides a stealth element to the transfer. How easy would it be for a Congressman to hide behind a vote setting up a multi-billion dollar trust fund for oil companies? Credits and deductions are way easier. Arguably, many such laws in the code have positive intentions and outcomes. However, the inequitable or equitable use of the Code, which is really about appropriations, is not my theme here. It has to do with who is paying the bills and who doesn’t want to.
There is a huge faction in the US, mostly Conservative and frequently of limited income and wealth, who have been brainwashed and programmed to believe taxation, by definition, is evil. Although they may understand the collective requirements of funding a country, their emotional response to taxation is more closely aligned with the Roman tax collectors found in the New Testament. Taxing is the 2nd most prevalent target of the Tea Party set, right after Obama and right before Government, period. They have been successfully led (by whom?) to believe that the answer to the national fiscal quagmire is the elimination of Federal taxes combined with the elimination of Federal government spending, or as close as you can get to both. Even informed, educated Conservatives will respond in a similar fashion, which is both fascinating and frightening. What they fail to understand is, along with the vote, taxation is one of the few tools, weapons really, that the general population has to defend itself. These Conservatives are taking their beloved pistols in hand and emptying the barrel into their tootsies.
The evidence of wealth concentration in the United States is undeniable and has reached levels without precedent, in both extent of wealth and concentration. Personally I believe the primary facilitator of this lack of precedent is the demographics of population growth, which is also without precedent. Edward N. Wolff, a PhD at New York University and noted authority on the accumulation of wealth, calculates that 38% of all wealth in this country is owned by 1% of American households. If you take individual home ownership out of the definition of “wealth”, then the ownership of the top 1% increases to 50% of all asset value (property, stocks, bonds, cash, businesses, other real estate, commodities etc. etc.). Anecdotally, you just need to compare the net worth of Tiger Woods to Jack Nicklaus, or the level of Bernie Madoff’s larceny. The bottom 20% of households (about 60 million people) own nothing, their debts exceed their assets or they have no calculable assets at all (yard sales don’t count). My guess is that there are quite a few of those bottom 20% folks holding up signs at Tea Party conventions.
In order to eliminate our deficits, Wolff suggests substituting an annual tax on wealth (Property or Asset tax) instead of a tax on income (as income is an inaccurate representative of net worth). By starting at a level of $250,000 (eliminating 80% of the population from the tax entirely) and applying a progressive tax starting at 0.2% and rising to a maximum of 0.8% (for the numerically challenged: that’s eight-tenths of one percent, or 80 cents for every $100 of value) he believes we would be out of the red, all other things being equal. The very wealthy would bear the majority of the tax, but just how onerous would a tax be that diminished one’s multi-million or multi-billion dollar wealth by less than one percent annually? Could this happen in this country? Not likely.
Who would be hurt by such a system and who is helped? Answer that and you’re befuddled why such a method of taxation never even rises to the level of a discussion, while regressive taxes such as the “flat tax” or “value-added” tax are bounced around regularly. The streets outside the US capital are not filled with protesting multi-billionaires holding signs showing a Hitler mustached Obama and slogans about creeping socialism. They don’t have to. They have convinced their Conservative surrogates in the tens of millions that taxation, along with Government and Obama, is in direct opposition to their own well being. They know the general population has a gun in its hand, but the powers of wealth are chuckling mightily. With Pavlovian certainty, they know it has been trained to only shoot straight down.
Like many in that field, once my expertise had been elevated to the level of being humble, I arrived at a conclusion contrary to popular opinion. I concluded that the massive body of law known as the Federal Tax Code (which includes Tax Regulations) is generally logical. There are actually a manageable number of themes that form the basis for the Federal Tax Code (the Code) from which most all tax law (fine tuned by the Courts) run consistent. State and local tax codes are less so, but most take their lead from los Federales. Once you have a grasp of the basics, when faced with a specific tax issue you can usually reach an accurate conclusion, even before you research case law (Court interpretations).
Opponents to the Code, moreover opponents to taxes generally, hold copies of the Code above their heads like dumbbells (no pun intended) shouting "look at this massive intrusion into our lives". However, for the vast majority of the American population the Code is relatively simplistic, even for businesses. I would venture a percentage of…say…95% are affected in a way that should be perfectly understandable by your average middle school student. Admittedly, inconsistencies are more prevalent on the State and local levels.
Our Federal tax system is mostly complicated (especially in volume) by use of the Code for social engineering and providing benefits to those who have the legislative clout to tweak it. Instead of just giving money to special interests, the Code is used as the vehicle for distribution - which provides a stealth element to the transfer. How easy would it be for a Congressman to hide behind a vote setting up a multi-billion dollar trust fund for oil companies? Credits and deductions are way easier. Arguably, many such laws in the code have positive intentions and outcomes. However, the inequitable or equitable use of the Code, which is really about appropriations, is not my theme here. It has to do with who is paying the bills and who doesn’t want to.
There is a huge faction in the US, mostly Conservative and frequently of limited income and wealth, who have been brainwashed and programmed to believe taxation, by definition, is evil. Although they may understand the collective requirements of funding a country, their emotional response to taxation is more closely aligned with the Roman tax collectors found in the New Testament. Taxing is the 2nd most prevalent target of the Tea Party set, right after Obama and right before Government, period. They have been successfully led (by whom?) to believe that the answer to the national fiscal quagmire is the elimination of Federal taxes combined with the elimination of Federal government spending, or as close as you can get to both. Even informed, educated Conservatives will respond in a similar fashion, which is both fascinating and frightening. What they fail to understand is, along with the vote, taxation is one of the few tools, weapons really, that the general population has to defend itself. These Conservatives are taking their beloved pistols in hand and emptying the barrel into their tootsies.
The evidence of wealth concentration in the United States is undeniable and has reached levels without precedent, in both extent of wealth and concentration. Personally I believe the primary facilitator of this lack of precedent is the demographics of population growth, which is also without precedent. Edward N. Wolff, a PhD at New York University and noted authority on the accumulation of wealth, calculates that 38% of all wealth in this country is owned by 1% of American households. If you take individual home ownership out of the definition of “wealth”, then the ownership of the top 1% increases to 50% of all asset value (property, stocks, bonds, cash, businesses, other real estate, commodities etc. etc.). Anecdotally, you just need to compare the net worth of Tiger Woods to Jack Nicklaus, or the level of Bernie Madoff’s larceny. The bottom 20% of households (about 60 million people) own nothing, their debts exceed their assets or they have no calculable assets at all (yard sales don’t count). My guess is that there are quite a few of those bottom 20% folks holding up signs at Tea Party conventions.
In order to eliminate our deficits, Wolff suggests substituting an annual tax on wealth (Property or Asset tax) instead of a tax on income (as income is an inaccurate representative of net worth). By starting at a level of $250,000 (eliminating 80% of the population from the tax entirely) and applying a progressive tax starting at 0.2% and rising to a maximum of 0.8% (for the numerically challenged: that’s eight-tenths of one percent, or 80 cents for every $100 of value) he believes we would be out of the red, all other things being equal. The very wealthy would bear the majority of the tax, but just how onerous would a tax be that diminished one’s multi-million or multi-billion dollar wealth by less than one percent annually? Could this happen in this country? Not likely.
Who would be hurt by such a system and who is helped? Answer that and you’re befuddled why such a method of taxation never even rises to the level of a discussion, while regressive taxes such as the “flat tax” or “value-added” tax are bounced around regularly. The streets outside the US capital are not filled with protesting multi-billionaires holding signs showing a Hitler mustached Obama and slogans about creeping socialism. They don’t have to. They have convinced their Conservative surrogates in the tens of millions that taxation, along with Government and Obama, is in direct opposition to their own well being. They know the general population has a gun in its hand, but the powers of wealth are chuckling mightily. With Pavlovian certainty, they know it has been trained to only shoot straight down.
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