Is it all about race?

It's not racism pure and simple. It's racism impure and complex. If it were, say, Al Gore pushing the same agenda, there would be protests and anger, just as there are now. And if it were General Powell in the Oval Office pushing, say, the same agenda as John McCain, there would be left wing protests and anger, but only racial to the degree of calling Powell an Uncle Tom, which is different than racism, though it still reflects a kind of bias.

However, all that said, there is obviously a racial component in the protests today. Not in all, not in everyone. I know many conservatives personally, and few if any of them are racists. But I don't live in the South or in a culturally backwards area. People who do live in such places report a strong racist component in the opposition to Obama, augmented by his perceived foreignness--last name, father being a foreigner, Islamic middle name, time spent abroad, long attendance in a racialist church, and politics considered by far right wingers to be unAmerican.

So when lefties claim it's pure racism, they're wrong, and in saying so they legitimize conservatives' desire to dismiss complaints about the protests.

And when righties claim there's no race involved whatsoever, it's purely about Obama's policies, and Pelosi and Reid are white anyway...they're also wrong.

I think this Obama-as-snob poster epitomizes what I call the New Racism. To someone who isn't a racist himself, this is just criticizing Obama for being smart--a crime to millions of Americans; hence Bush's Jim-Bob act on the campaign trail. But to a fellow racist, this poster says that Obama is worst kind of knee-grow: an uppity one. And that's probably the most intolerable way to be black for these people.

The Tea Party protestors:

The deluded,
attacking those trying to rescue them,
in defense of those preying on them,
led by the pundits & politicians who work for America's Aristocrats, who,
at their own tea parties,
are laughing at them.

You Lie!

There are several different issues involved in l'affair Joe Wilson:

(1) Is it OK for congressmen to heckle the President of the United States when he's addressing Congress?

(2) Was President Obama lying about whether "Obamacare" gives illegals new health bennies?

(3) Are Liberals the Spawn of Satan & Conservatives the Defenders of America...or vice versa?

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(1)--OK to heckle the prez?

The only possible opinion an actual conservative could have is to oppose violations of decorum in such circumstances, because conservatives believe in decorum, in established order, in respect for the office.

But also--the only possible opinion an actual liberal could have is to support letting the other side have its say. That's the essence of liberality.Not trying to shout him down and silence him, as liberals do to consersative speakers on campus regularly.

So when Republicans heckled Obama and when Democrats heckled Bush earlier in similar circumstances, both were violating their own principles in heckling their president.

And in both cases, what the hecklers actually reveal is that they're tribalists, just as primitive as members of some tribe living in the Amazon jungles. "My tribe good--because it's my tribe. Your tribe bad--because it's your tribe." Truth has nothing to do with it.

Simplest proof of whether you're a primitive tribalist: you excuse your side doing exactly what you condemn the other side doing.

-------------------------------
(2): Was Obama, in fact, lying?

Don't go looking for fact checking on right wing websites. That appears to be where most right wing ranters got their "information." Along with the radio voices, of course.

But I'm not recommending left wing websites either. Whirly eyes--Left and Right--are united in their disregard for objective truth.

Both extremes use faith-based thinking, deriving their view of reality from their ideas, instead of deriving their ideas from reality.

Instead, try looking at nonpartisan, knowledgeable, fact-checking sites like www.factcheck.org and www.politifact.com.

I've been following these sites for a while, and I've found that they criticize both parties' pronouncements and marketing whenever they find lies and spin.

So I looked up Obama's speech. According to these factchecking sites, which use sizable staffs to track down every claim, Obama generally told the truth--though not the whole truth.

Specifically, as regards the source of Wilson's outburst, Obama correctly stated that the current bills exclude illegal aliens from benefits.

However, the factchecking sites also noted that in their current state the bills lack new enforcement mechanisms [update: as of 9/15/9, enforcement mechanisms are being added].

So if the Demos enact healthcare reform with either the House or Senate bills as is, illegals will be no more or less able to purchase health insurance as they are now. They will receive no more benefits than they do now. It will be the status quo. They won't get any new free benefits.

However, enforcement mechanisms are often added to bills after the main outlines have been hashed out. So in this case, many on this forum are talking about a work in progress as if it's the final bill.

So if Wilson had yelled "You aren't telling the whole truth if the bill is passed and signed in its present form, though it wouldn't be any worse than it is now as regards illegal aliens getting benefits," that would have been factually defensible. "You lie!" is not.

--------------------------------------
(3): Which side is the Spawn of Satan?

Lefties and righties believe the world would OK if we could just make the other side go away. They're both wrong-o. We need both small "l" liberals & small "c" conservatives.

We always need to have some people urging caution and standing up for tradition, just as we always need some people eager to try new things, to experiment.

And we also need a third, pragmatic group to weigh what these two sides say.

All this should be obvious to anyone who doesn't treat politics as some kind of religion.

-----------------------
And to my fellow Democrats:

Don't get mad at stampeding cattle. Look for who's stampeding them.

And that would be the medical industrial complex, which has spent to date at least $370,000,000 to convince rank and file Republicans and Independents that Obama is an illegal alien teamed with a European Socialst Democrat Congress to steal our healthcare benefits and give them to bums and foreigners, then kill us off as soon as we get old.

The Republican Party leadership isn't conservative at all. It's just fronting for a small group of very, very wealthy people who plan to stay that way by hook or by crook.

They do it by stampeding the electorate, many if not most of whom lack the education and objectivity to see through all the fake conspiracies to the real one.

Oh, & part of their plan is to make sure Liberals and Conservatives hate each other. It keeps both sides' attention diverted from the ones who are exploiting us both.

--------------------------------
And to my Republican friends:

The stampeding cattle I'm talking about don't include thoughtful Republicans, of whom there are many. They've just been shut out of the public debate by the...well, stampeding cattle. Just the way Colin Powell was shut out of the Bush inner circle (along with George Bush Sr., interestingly). Just the way President Eisenhower--a former brilliant general--is never mentioned, while President Reagan--a former B movie actor--is lionized.

To you I say--just because a political leader dresses like you and acts like you when the cameras are on him (or her) doesn't mean they're actually like you. Plenty of Democratic leaders have been caught with their pants down and/or their hands in the cookie jar. But plenty of Republican leader have, too, and if you think the hypocrite scale of personal conduct tilts Democratward, you're dreaming.

That's why I try to see what leaders actually do, not what they claim to believe. How many former Republican congressmen are now very highly-paid lobbyists for industries they favored while in Congress? How many have exhibited personal conduct that you wouldn't find acceptable in a business associate or brother in law?

Now I know what you're thinking right now. "Democrats do it." Yes they do. So? That makes it OK? You don't think so in your own life. Congressmen should be held to an even higher standard than you'd accept in a relative or business associate.

Instead, when the Republicans took command of the whole shooting match in 2000, they replaced Tax and Spend with Borrow and Spend. That's better how? And they did nothing to fix our healthcare system. Instead they said, and still say, that it's great, and 85% of Americans love it. Speaking of lies, that a whopper with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

Americans are satisfied with their current healthcare system in direct proportion to how little they've had to use it, and in direct proportion to how unaware they are of how it's appropriated most of the raises they would have otherwise gotten in the past twenty years.

American satisfaction is also tied to how little they know about other wealthy democracies manage theirs. That's the only way the Republican leadership can have the gall to stand there and say, straightfaced, that ours is the best on Earth.

Not by standards like amount of administrative overhead and citizen life expectancy. And those are pretty important standards.

They also lie about rationing. Rationing is what we have now. Rationing is when your health insurance company cuts off payment just before you're due to have a kidney transplant because you didn't tell them you had gallstones you didn't know about before signing on. Rationing is when you lose your job and can't get insurance because you have a pre-existing condition, or when you can but at such a high price and with such a huge deductible that you can't afford it.
The Democrats' plans also involve rationing. But it's less rationing, and it's fairer than what we have now.

The healthcare crisis hasn't brought out the best in my former party.

There's a proper role for real conservatives to play with healthcare reform. But first you have to admit that it needs reform before healthcare comes to consume 40% of the economy, as it will in a few years if we don't reform it. Then you have to hold the Demos' feet to the fire on cost control and regulatory mechanisms to reduce waste and fraud. But you also have to face the fact that we can't reform it without moving the whole system from paying for procedures to paying for health care. That means putting doctors on salary, as they are at well-run private systems like Kaiser Permanente. And it means figuring out how to make general practice more attractive to med students. We have a shortage of them amidst plenty of specialists.

All the nonsense about granny dying and so-shul-ism and acting like we can't learn from any other country just makes Republicans sound like loons--and wastes time that could be spent on the real issues. Which are there.

Just ask yourself "What would Eisenhower do?"

Obamacare = Mexicare?

The GOP claims that the Democratic healthcare reform bill in the works give a free medical ride to illegal aliens. One GOP congressman shouted "You lie!" during President Obama's address to Congress when he said nothing in the healthcare reform bills permitted illegals getting in on the gravy train.

Thank heavens for factfinding nonpartisan organizations like www.Politifact.com, which read the whole bill in its present form in both the House and the Senate.

They said the President was correct, and it was the GOP that's lying about this.

But.

In its current form nothing in the bills includes any regulatory mechanism to prevent illegals from purchasing health insurance--private or, potentially, public--exactly the same as the status quo.

I note that the GOP did nothing to remedy this while they were in power. So while I want a regulatory mechanism in healthcare reform to exclude illegals (even when they have anchor babies), I see no reason to believe the GOP minds--except as a partisan ploy.

So we should disdain the lies the GOP is promoting--while at the same time urging our congressmen to add a regulatory mechanism to all social service legislation to exclude citizens of other countries who are here illegally.

The Republicans may have lost Congress in 2006 and the Presidency in 2008--but the shade-seeking billionaires they work for didn't lose then, and they aren't losing now.

We'll have a corporatist Supreme Court for decades, no matter how many aging Court moderates Obama and future Democrat presidents maybe replace.

And the billionaires' club is pouring a fortune into ensuring that even a Democratic Congress gives them the healthcare reform they want: nothing--or, better yet, a paper-thin patina of "something" stretched around the same old nothing.

Their class war against 95% of America continues unabated, staunchly supported by the many millions of Americans who have been duped into believing that they have anything whatsoever in common with their oppressors--Stockholm Syndrome, anyone?--and the political party that they imagine represents them.

Of course most of these are the same people who believe Obama is an illegal alien, the Earth is 5,000 years old, and Saddam Hussein planned 9/11 in conjunction with Mossad.

Best of all, these people totally distrust the only entity with the slightest chance of protecting ordinary Americans from these shadowy oligarchs: our government.

Their ablest mouthpiece, Ronald Reagan, kicked off this brilliant campaign with an implication that I'd only heard from Communists before him: that the American government is our enemy.

And now, after 40 years of announcing, every day of the week, every hour of every day, that you can't trust government, the oligarchs reap the benefits every time Congress tries to constrain the oligarchs' greed with any kind of reform of any kind of business they run.

And their man in the White House put the last two men in the Supreme Court needed to get the five votes they needed to protect the oligarchs' interests from Democratic lawmakers until the GOP (Greed Over Principles party) gets Congress back.

And so America comes to resemble the demographic composition of Russia and Mexico, making us unique among the world's richest, most advanced nations.

You have to admire the perfection of their efforts, just as you have to admire the supreme efficiency of the AIDS virus, which mutates constantly to defeat our body's immune system, even as its goal never wavers.

Kudos to the oligarchs and their eager servants in our courts and Congress.

Frankly, they honestly mean the opposite

How about a new word, "hypedar," to describe being able to tell when someone's trying to pull a fast one on you, using propaganda, demagoguery...you know the drill.

For example, take "honestly" and "frankly." In normal conversation these words mean you're going to follow them by saying something that differs from or even contradicts your position on something--politics, your dignity...some sort of reversal.

But when politicians say "honestly" or "frankly," 99% of the time they follow up with a statement that's anything but honest or frank. It's almost always a direct attack on the other side.

They're entitled to attack the other side, of course. But in putting these words in front of an attack--it's bogus. They're pretending to hand you a personal--perhaps embarrassing--revelation. Not an embarrasing revelation about the other side.

Republicans and Democrats both do this, and they do it all the time.

And the next time you hear these words, see if I'm not right about what always follows.

And then you can show off your hypedar to your friends.

I only have one request: Don't spare your side. We want honest political debate, not tribal warfare.

Don't we?

---------------------------

Hypedar lesson #2:

"In fact," "in reality," "the truth is."

These aren't the sure signs of hype that "honestly" and "frankly" are. Sometimes a politician will follow up with an actual fact. But it's equally likely that they'll then make an assertion that they don't substantiate. This means what they've actually done is ask you to trust them, without saying so. When you say "in fact," state a supposed fact, and don't back it up--the only reason you have to believe them is their word, which they're implying is worth something.

Now I'm sure there are honest politicians out there. I've even seen a few that I thought were pretty honest--on both sides, too. That's why I'm saying that these catchprases aren't always hype.

Just most of the time.

Note that providing substantiation isn't good enough--the substantiation has to be an impartial authority.

Bogus authorities include, for the left, advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and La Raza. For the right, it's supposed think tanks that are actually advocacy groups, and polling organizations that are actually owned by someone with an axe to grind.

----------------------

Hypedar lesson #3

"media bias" --Yes, there is media bias. However, far too often "media bias" means "someone who disagrees with me." The far right think the mainstream media is in the tank for the Democratic Party, and take as proof the fact that most reporters vote Democrat.

Amusingly enough, the far left think the mainstream media faithfully serves the interests of the multinational corporations who own the mainstream media.

Both sides are often totally unaware of what the other thinks about the mainstream media, because they never read or listen to or watch any source of information that differs from their own ideology.

And both sides generally lack the intellectual tools required to objectively assess the objectivity of a news source.

---------------------------------------

Hypedar lesson #4:

"The American people" --actually, this almost always means "whatever % of Americans agree with me; anyone who doesn't isn't really American, so they don't count." This is a version of flagwaving--trying to associate your side with America in the most tribal way possible. Because if they can make your allegiance tribal, you'll forgive all the nasty stuff they do to you, because otherwise you'd be supporting the other tribe.

Healthcare reform woes partly the Demos' fault

Across America many millions of Republicans await anxiously to see whether their champions in Congress can defeat what they see as the foreigner in the White House and his European Socialist cohorts in Congress trying to bankrupt them and then kill them when they're old and useless.

It's such an irony that it's their heroes who want to bankrupt them and then kill them (when they can't pay their premiums any more).

But it's not just the $1.4M/day the healthcare denial industry is spending to defeat any kind of reform that might reduce their profits. It's not just the Republican partisans whose loyalty is more tribal than principled.

It's also Obama's fault, and the Democratic Congress--they've let the other convince a majority of Americans of one central point: that the Democrats plan to transfer some of their healthcare to others--bums and foreigners mainly. They've allowed this to happen by harping on the need to help those without insurance. Yet most voters have insurance, which they'll have until they actually need it. And then they won't. But that's not now. Now they need to hear about what Obama is going to do for them. And how what most pay for their insurance has zoomed up, but mostly out of sight.

Time after time the Democratic Party manages to sound like it cares about every ethnicity on Earth except for European-Americans, to use a phrase they never use.

I voted for Obama to get healthcare reform, even though, like most Americans, I'm concerned about illegal immigration--especially since I live in the part of America that's being overrun, far from the Beltway.

What happened to the realistic Democrats who knew how to win back Congress and the White House? Did they think the Republican Party's paymasters would just go away quietly? There's waaay too much profit involved. And Democrats must remember that the Blue Dog Democrats are blue dogs because more liberal demos couldn't have gotten elected, and without them the Demos couldn't have taken back Congress, and if the Blue Dogs appear to lose faith with their constituents they won't get re-elected, and then the GOP (Greed Over Principle) party will regain Congress. Do you want that to happen?

You can't get in the ring wearing gloves and talking about altruism when the other guy's stepping in wearing brass knucks and talking about what the majority of Americans most care about--their own healthcare.

Whining about how dirty the Republican leadership fights won't help either. Of course they fight dirty. They've been fighting dirty at least since Reagan painted the government as all bad all the time--a long-term investment in deregulation that has paid off handsomely for the Angry Billionaire's Club. If they fought fair they'd lose. So they don't (see my definition of G.O.P.).

Obama doesn't have to lose his cool. But he does have to deal with the Republican Party he's got instead of the one he wants. And he has to face the fact that this is only going to work if doctors get paid salaries instead of for piecework (procedures); and if the insurance industry profits get scaled back to those of ordinary businesses--and if the pharmaceutical industry's profits go likewise.

Obama's getting the poked hornet's nest attack anyway, no matter what he does. Might as well try to actually accomplish something.

--As long as he keeps making it clear that his beef is with the Republican leadership and their padrones--not the Republican rank and file.

Suffering under Britain's socialized healthcare

In citing reasons for sagging public support for healthcare reform, not one right wing shill has noted one itsy bitsy fact: the $1.4M/DAY the healthcare denial industry is spending to defeat any kind of healthcare reform whatsoever.

At the same time the healthcare denial industry's shills and spokespeople pretend to support various denatured versions of reform.

At the same time its black ops specialists spread one vicious lie after another (according to nonpartisan sites www.politifact.com and wwww.factcheck.org), using anonymous chain emails and whisper campaigns, followed up by right wing radio and TV propagandists.

The other thing the shills fail to note is our nationwide parochialism. Most of us, left and right, seem to have almost no idea that other industrial democracies exist, all with universal healthcare, all spending less than us, all with greater life expectancy.

Sure, the right wing propagandists bring forth individuals from Canada and Britain who say what you might expect.

But those countries are all democracies. And in none of them will you find the money and power vested in the status quo as America has. So if their systems (highly varied, some socialistic, some regulated capitalistic, most a mix) all suck so badly--why aren't their voters clamoring for America's fabulous system?

They must just be anti-American...

Well, I have a friend in Scotland--a high tech businessman who has traveled here fairly often. I asked him if the Brits longed for our system. Here's what he said:

"That's easy - the NHS isn't perfect but it is very, very good. The Palin stories are about as accurate as you'd expect from someone who thinks the earth is 5000 years old. I would resist in the strongest possible terms any attempt to dismantle the public health system.

I can tell you first hand that the elderly - vis my parents - get astounding treatment without the slightest hesitation. My father collapsed at our Christmas lunch - we had a paramedic on site in under five minutes from calling 999, our emergency number. An ambulance was at our door in 10 minutes and he was in a high-dependency unit within 20. He was recovering rapidly, but they kept him in over night after moving him to a lower care level ward. No forms, no charge, just fantastic service.

This concept of them choosing not to treat people on age is simply invented by the nutjob right wingers.

At the end of the scale, one of our staff has been diagnosed with bowel cancer - she was operated on within 5 days and was retained in hospital for a full 2 weeks for recover with excellent care and access to all the latest medication etc etc.

BTW you can ask my American friends living here for their views - it's identical to mine!

And I think the vast majority of the rest of the country would agree - I think you'd get at least 95% if not 98% support. As someone said 'everyone knows someone whose life was saved by the NHS.'"

Nova ScienceNow provides a textbook example of propaganda

Nova ScienceNow is the video magazine spinoff of Nova, the eminent public television science series. Nova ScienceNow recently re-aired a segment on Dr. Quiñones, a brain surgeon who had emigrated to America illegally. The segment played up his contributions, his "American dream," the poverty of his childhood in Mexicali--and of course his illegalness.

As is true of most such anecdotal propaganda, it was left to the viewer to draw the intended conclusions, to wit:

1. One (1) of the millions upon millions of illegal immigrants became a brain surgeon. Therefore all the illegal immigrants who become strawberry pickers or hotel maids or ruthless gangbangers must be given citizenship.

2. One (1) person's heartrending/heartwarming story is more important than all those dry statistics about how immigrants depress working class Americans' wages below the poverty level, the numbers of illegals in state and federal prisons for horrible crimes, the havoc wreaked by endemic identity theft. the contribution to rich peoples' profits while the immense social costs are outsourced to ordinary taxpayer--none of that matters if this one person is a nice guy who's an asset to our country.

Right wing propaganda usually takes the form of inciting fear and anger. Left wing propaganda works more on middle class guilt, sob stories, special pleading. The biggest victims of right wing propaganda are working class folk who support right wing politicians. The biggest victims of left wing propaganda are the same. The middle class Democrats who support illegal immigration are rarely victimized by their support--since the main victims are working class folk, whether right or left wing. So for affluent lefties it's a freebie, with the social cost outsources to someone else. Guilt was never so free.

Political Propaganda 101

A friend of mine got sucked in by the "Obama's not an American citizen" scam. I showed him how it couldn't be true. Then he asked me why so much smoke if there's no fire. I tried to give him a brief answer but it evolved into the following piece:

The underlying goal of a political party is to defeat the other side and either get back in power, or to stay in power.

Power enables a party to reward its patrons. The goal of the patrons is those rewards. The goal of the party is power and its cut of the take, distributed in various ways, from lunches and travel to unbelieveably lucrative jobs—usually for lobbying—on behalf of the patrons’ businesses, acquired after a politician retires from Congress or the Executive Branch.

Many of these reward paths aren’t spelled out in a memo (which could be leaked, after all). They’re just understood.

Often you have to betray your voters in order to reward your patrons. This is best accomplished by making your side so tribal—and so antagonistic to the other side—and so fearful of what will happen if the other side wins—that your side votes your way, betraying themselves and their loved ones, because you’ve convinced them that it’s that or the deep blue sea.

And people tend to be swayed by appearances. As long as your side looks and speaks like the epitome of your-side-ness, many won’t believe that you’re robbing them blind. Likewise, you need to make the other side look and speak unlike your base.

That was why, for example, the Republicans repeatedly ran ads showing John Kerry windsurfing, showing clips from when he was a young longhaired war protestor, showing him speaking in the Senate in long, convoluted senatorial sentences, showing his African wife acting all foreign. Bush, on the other hand, concealed his Harvard MBA by talking like bubba down the block—as if he’d grown up as a cowhand on a ranch (he bought his ranch after winning the presidency), instead of being the scion of an immensely wealthy, well-connected family..

Gaining or retaining power is best achieved by a multipronged, multilayered approach: tactically, you fire up your base, persuade the middle to lean your way, and make the other side depressed and confused, depressing their vote and their advocacy for their side. Strategically, you define every potential presidential candidate as untrustworthy and belonging to the Other Tribe—the one with bad morals, disrespect for everything good and pure, and on the take from Special Interests (well, neither side has to make that one up). Layered under that, on the Republican side, is a campaign that has been going on since FDR was president to make Americans distrust and dislike government; then this is tapped whenever the Democrats have a chance of reregulating any business the Republicans’ patrons own. Conversely, the Democrats have been trying to paint the Republicans as the Party of the Rich for the same length of time—defining G.O.P. as meaning Greed Over Principles.

Come time for the actual campaign—once each party is close to having a candidate---the following steps are applied:

First you have to fire up your base. Those are the people who will win primaries for you. Psychologically these people see the world in sharp divisions and bright colors. White hats, black hats.

Each side has a core constituency that will vote your way—if they vote. You don’t need to convince this group to vote your way. You just need to get them to the polls. They’ll go if they’re mad and/or scared. So you need to enrage/terrify them.

Outside that core constituency is a group that’s inclined to vote your way but who aren’t as tribal as the hardcore constituency. They will treat what you say more critically, and if you go too far with what’s used on the core group, you run the risk of turning them off or even driving them to the other side. So to fire up the core group with the real red-meat stuff that won’t hold up to close scrutiny, you make sure the wild stuff comes from “friends,” not your party, not officially.

This is the “clean hands” approach.

In America today, it’s a snap to set up superficially independent advocacy groups, directed and financed by the same special interests that contribute lavishly to the party. Then for the less-committed, the party fronts its own peeps, speaking more reasonably—or at least sounding more reasonable in terms of tone of voice and general deportment. Then they do the denial-affirmation dance. That is, they disavow any connection to the crazies saying the crazy thing (whatever it is). But then they go on to say that, however, maybe there’s fire where there’s smoke. Maybe responsible people should look into these claims. Maybe there’s some substance to them, somehow. Not really, of course. But…

So in this way the Party keeps its hands clean while continuing to stir the pot, while not alienating its own zealots, while at the same time sowing distrust and confusion about the other part to the less-passionate-middle and those in the other party who are susceptible to these sorts of manuverings.

Remember, in the world of politics, the parties are the outward manifestation of power, but the real power is often in the shadows, because its goals are so antithetical to yours that exposure does it no good. For the Left, it’s trade unions, organizations representing hyphenated groups (Latin-Americans, African-Americans, Catholic-Americans as far as illegal immigration is concerned, etc. For the Right it's the inversion of Socialism--those who believe business should control government--mainly the bulk of the wealthiest 1/2 of 1% of the country.

But what falsehoods should you peddle?

Answer: those that give concrete expression to your base’s deepest fears and anxieties—while at the same time giving the base plausible deniability that any of these concrete expressions are related to anything that’s indefensible in polite society.

Thus you can’t oppose a candidate because he’s a she, or not white, or too smart, or not a Christian (or perhaps a Jew). But that’s no problem. If he’s a she you accuse her of being tough/combative—implicitly a ball-buster. If he isn’t white you accuse him of being foreign—of only pretending to have American values/heritage. If he’s smart you accuse him of having foreign ideas, of looking down on ordinary people (this can work even if the person comes from low-to-middle class circumstances and the opponent is filthy rich, as long as you manipulate appearances appropriately). If he’s a Christian you can accuse him of being a bad Christian, liking a controversial Christian pastor, or being Christian in a way that’s different from familiar white Christianity.

In each case you must be very, very careful to never say what you want them to think. You just link what the opponent actually is to something that sounds plausible that gets them to think what you want them to think.

For example, a majority of Republicans came to believe Saddam Hussein pretty much planned 9/11 and provided logistical support for it. Bush never said this. But every time he mentioned 9/11 or Bin Ladin he then mentioned Saddam Hussein. It was artful. Then when he was accused of claiming Saddam did 9/11, he could honestly say “I never said so.” Which is true. But he knew that what he did say would make his followers think that. So he wasn’t a liar. He was a deceiver. That’s better, right?

Of course there are a multitude of tricks I haven’t mentioned here, but which both sides use to make you think Good Things about what they want you to agree with and Bad Things about what they want you to oppose.

For example, during his election campaign Obama said we have to grant illegal immigrants some sort of amnesty because it would be logistically impossible—and unkind—to round up and deport so many millions of people. This is what’s known as a False Choice Fallacy. He never mentioned the simple fact that if we change the way we do things so they can’t make a living here, they’ll go home the same way they came—on their own hook. Whether you advocate for or against illegal immigration, you should recognize that this was a patently false and misleading argument.

There’s also sarcasm, which both sides use constantly. For example, Sean Hannity, part of the right wing noise machine, commonly refers to Obama as The Anointed One. The propagandists who give Hannity his talking points use this to make Obama’s popularity seem like a bad thing, and his supporters like dazzled dopes.

And of course the campaign goes on after the election, because there’s always the next election, and even if the president isn’t up for reelection, a good chunk of Congress is.

So even though Obama’s citizenship will never be challenged successfully in court, the birther campaign serves to delegitimize him and allows those who don’t like his race, his foreign father, or that father’s religion, to attack Obama’s race, foreignness and not-religion without having to do any of those things explicitly. Again, plausible deniability. So the Republican Noise Machine will flog this issue on the down low as long as they can, using the AIDS virus model that worked so with with the Swift Boat Campaign.

The great thing about being on the Republican side of this is that there’s always money to finance the innumerable right wing radio stations and the TV network and the push polling (fake polling designed to plant rumors) and the whisper campaigns and the astroturf organizing. Sometimes the Democrats have to scramble for funds. And though most journalists are registered Democrats, their livelihood depends on chasing scandal, so they’ll gallop off after anything that promises juicy headlines. Clinton’s peccadilloes got spread all over the mainstream media, leading to his very testy relationship with the press that was supposedly in the tank for him. Most reporters like Obama but that didn’t stop them from running after everything the Republican Noise Machine put out there.

There’s also the art of omission. You ignore something you'd said previously was crucial. Thus when it was Clinton vs. Bush I, character was why you should vote for a president, because Clinton was a womanizer and Bush I was a loyal family man. Obama is a loyal family man, while McCain cheated on his first wife flagrantly, then dumped her after she was crippled in a car accident. Plus, Obama's and his wife and children are America’s darlings. They did take a whack at Michelle, calling her an Angry Black Woman, but she blew that one into bits on the campaign trail. So in that campaign, character--at least of the family variety--no longer mattered a bit. The issue just vanished.

Normally you attack the other guy’s strengths as well as his weaknesses, if you can find a cleavage line to drive a wedge into. Thus Kerry’s war record, which was vulnerable because Kerry is such a stiff, and because so many old veterans loathed him because of his vocal opposition to the Vietnam War, which they’ve revised in their memories so they can think we were winning but were forced to lose by the Democrats. Kerry played into that unintentionally. With Clinton his home life was vulnerable mostly because of his womanizing, but also because Hillary is smart—which lots of men find threatening—and his daughter was homely (ironic, since she’s gorgeous now). So they attacked his whole family, though only the most hardcore took the bait about his daughter’s ugliness (Rush Limbaugh being the best example).

But another feature of propaganda campaigns is that you try lots of stuff and see what sticks. As long as the attempts don’t come from party officials you can always dislaim them if they don’t work.

I hope all this answers your question as to why the birther business has been pursued to diligently.

Republican gun nuts vs. Democrats' whiteguyphobia

I entered the following passage as a comment on the latest op-ed piece by liberal New York Times columnist Frank Rich. In it he decried the gun nuts attending rallies outside town hall meetings on healthcare reform, then went on to talk about Republican perfidy in promoting an array of out and out lies about healthcare reform.

The New York Times editors censored this comment, refusing to run it. Feel free to let me know why you think they did that.

An honest originalist reading of the Second Amendment would guarantee all American citizens in state militias the right to carry flintlocks around (which take a minute or so to reload between each round). And in this case at least I agree with the Rich's assessment of the dangerous direction the Republican Party leadership has taken, abetted by the voices on the radio and the raging faces on Fox TV, well-funded by the Angry Billionaires' Club. Their inflammatory language fuels the paranoid fantasies of the deluded pawns we see screaming at Town Hall meetings.

That said, however, the Democratic side has helped feed these paranoid fantasies. Nobody has clean hands in this mudslinging.

1. The Democratic Party has for 40 years worked hard for the benefit of everyone but working-class whites--even subordinating them to the needs of citizens of other countries residing here illegally. This has driven down the wages of those whites--and working-class blacks and browns, for that matter--some 5% to 25%, depending on job category and region. Yet the Democratic Party tries to sweep this under the rug as it trolls frantically for the votes of every American it can hyphenate and promise special benefits to.

2. In this media age you can't tailor your message to each special interest you run after; your "special favors" message will reach the ears of those you've disfavored, usually within hours. It's not like the '50s, when you could get away with this. Remember George Allen's "macaca" blunder? The demos have plenty of their own as well.

3. The Democrats have failed--flagrantly failed--to make it clear they're against the Republican leadership, not their actually conservative rank and file. Continually branding Republicans as "racist" and other epithets enrages them, racist and non-racist alike, driving them into the eager arms of self-described conservative leaders who are actually shills for the Angry Billionaire's Club, and laughing at them behind closed doors. But the Democratic Party has done yeoman work at forcing these people into the GOP's deathgrip.

4. Affirmative action is a bone in the throat of the white working class. We're paying a heavy price for this form of reparations for the slavery practised in the 19th century. That's exactly how working-class whites see it, and every time they have to deal with indifferent-verging-on-downright-rude civil service bureaucrats "of color," it reinforces their sense of aggrievement.

5. Private sector unions have declined greatly since their heyday in the 1950s. But public sector unions are in heaven--across the nation their workers enjoy lifetime security, fat pensions, terrific healthcare plans, and a total compensation of around 43% more than their private sector counterparts. Moreover, declining public services--right down to bridge and street maintenance--are happening in part because money is being diverted into lavish pensions as public sector workers retire. It's not just Senators--this advantage extends right down to manual laborers at City Hall. And working-class Americans are starting to wake up to this fact--and to the fact that this disparity is stoutly supported by the Democratic Party.

Just how long can you ask people who are behind in their mortgages to keep sacrificing to groups of people who appear to spit on them? It forces the white working class into the sort of tribalism, the "only we are true Americans" the Republican leadership wants them to believe.

In the propaganda war the Demos keep acting as deer-in-the-headlightsey as John Kerry did. But in reality as well, the Democrats keep stiffing the working stiffs who they once worked for.

A majority of Americans may let the foxes back in the henhouse if this keeps up. Democrats can't keep pandering to every special interest without paying a price in the voting booth. And we may lose healthcare reform over these simmering issues. Which will be a dirty shame.

Healthcare reform needs 80 Senate votes?

From 2000 to 20006 the Republican Party ruled Congress, the Executive, and the Judiciary. It do so as strict majoritarians.

Majoritarianism means treating the slimmest majority as a total mandate, and treating the other side as losers who were entitled to no say whatsoever in the legislative process. This is a matter of record, not of any one person's opinion. You can validate this fact easily.

The Republican Controlled Supreme Court is run this way to this day--and will be run for the next several decades, regardless of who's president, to the contrary of what Justice Roberts promised in his nomination hearings. The proof is the number of issues decided by 5-4 votes.

So when these strict majoritarians now say any healthcare reform bill should pass with 80 Senate votes "because it's so important," either they're saying that no legislation they passed in six years of Congressional control was important--quite an indictment of their priorities--or that when Republicans are in power 51 votes will suffice, but when Democrats are in power you need most Republicans' agreement. This is pure tribalism.

Tribalisim means basing your opinions on who's voicing them instead of what they are. It's the basis of the Arab saying "My brothers and I against my cousins; my cousins and I against the strangers."

Which makes sense, since the Republicans' appeals to their consitutents are generally based on tribalism, not principle.

"That's not funny"

A remarkably vulgar animated sitcom, "Family Guy," did an episode about abortion that didn't get aired, but which is legendary in some circles. The Washington Post talked about this episode in an article. The article garned several letters griping about WaPo publishing the article that discussed the episode. Here's the comment I posted about the letters:

People without a sense of humor alway hotly deny it. They'll say "Why, I read 'Family Circus' daily" along with edgier stuff like 'Peanuts.'"

But in most regards they're deeply humor-impaired, and because, like those with Asperger's Syndrome, they don't understand its wellsprings or its social functions, they almost always criticize humor they don't like...while almost always thinking the humor's target is what they're obsessed with, while the target is actually...them.

They aim for a world in which no one ever says anything anyone might take offense at under any circumstances.

For these letter writers, it's abortion. For millions of Muslims, it's Mohammed. For gun nuts, it's their Glocks and AK-47 assault rifles. For peaceniks, it's war.

So for that last group, for example, the bumper sticker "Visualize whirled peas" is offensive because they think it trivializes war, when it fact it mocks their target fixation and general looniness.

For most people, living in such a neutered world, overflowing with teary sentimentality, would be like having died and gone to Hell.

So of course the target of abortion jokes isn't abortion itself--it's the abortion nuts who endorse the murder of obstetricians who include abortion among the services they offer pregnant women.

It's the abortion nuts who believe the Bible and/or Jesus said anything against abortion (they didn't), or that a ball of two dozen cells is a human being with a soul (ignoring the fact that identical twins and chimeras aren't formed at the moment of conception, thus making the moment of conception not the moment of soul-implantation--and as far as the Bible is concerned, it could be as late as the last trimester or even the moment of birth of a viable fetus.)

It's the abortion nuts who ignore the fact that innumerable fertilized ova are not nascent human being because of genetic defects such as anencepaly, that mean nothing with the substance of a human being is possible from that ovum--ever.

It's the abortion nuts who ignore the fact that forcing a 12 year old girl raped by her own father to carry the resulting fetus to term is regarded by a majority of Americans as pure evil, despite it being routine in nations controlled by the Catholic Church.

It's the abortion nuts who ignore the fact that their obsession with fetuses' imagined rights comes at the expense of actually born children.

But most of all, it's the abortion nuts who ignore the fact that the world's population exploded from 1 billion people in 1900 to nearly 7 billion people today--vastly more people than the world can sustain without destroying the ecologies we depend on for sustenance, such that if we took our responsibilities seriously we'd support free abortions, contraception and sterilization for everyone everywhere, and impose a 2 child limit here and if possible everywhere else, until the world's population went back to a billion.

So in response to the immoral consequences of anti-abortion nuts' efforts, despite their obviously thinking that they're way more moral than the rest of us--we make jokes.

Humor lets humans bear the unbearable, so we aren't paralyzed with grief but can actually do something about the situations that confront us.

Fox News

I've been watching Fox News lately--not just the pundits' shows but the Fox News equivalent to straight news programs.

Every so often someone will say somethng that supports President Obama. Bill O'Reilly did so recently, praising Obama's actions in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

But 99% of the coverage could be subtitled "What Obama Did Wrong Today." And it's not just their conservative pundits saying this. Nearly every sentence uttered by the attractive young female newsreaders and their manly--in a highly mainstream sorta way--co-hosts, express shock and horror at the terrible things Obama, every Democrat on Earth, and class traitors like George Soros, are doing to our country.

They look like real news programs in the same way that Hamas news programs--which I used to watch regularly--look like regular news programs.

I have seen signs of left-wing bias in mainstream news outlets. But they rarely rise to the level of of one-sidedness achieved by Fox News.

Barney Frank Prangs a Pawn

Today Barney Frank went off on a Town Hall Meeting goon-ette who was comparing the Demos to Nazis.

I can understand Frank taking offense at being a Jew being denounced as a Nazi. Hard to resist squishing the peabrained ranter, as he did.

But. Just to be Mr. Buzzkill...the lady's a pawn, albeit a noisy one. The real question is what hand moved this pawn--and many millions of other pawns who have acquired similar beliefs--and did Frank's response do anything about the hand guiding the pawns?

I suspect not.

Moreover, though the pawn's conclusions endanger society, her sense of endangerment is quite real.

The genius of the Republican Noise Machine, the most visible arm of the Angry Billionaire's Club, is to strip Americans of many of the protections and security they once had, then persuade people like Pawn-lady that the people trying to save them are actually the ones who put them in danger.

Meanwhile the Democrats, entangled in their own extracurricular obligations, fight the Noise Machine about as effectively as John Kerry did. Maybe Obama has a brilliant game plan he's executing, but so far he seems to be replicating Kerry's deer-in-headlights response--perhaps stunned, as Kerry was, by the sheer no-holds-barred antipatriotic viciousness of the attacks. I'd hoped for a better streetfighter.

What makes conservatives tick

At President Obama's healthcare town hall meeting about healthcare in Bozeman, Montana, one of the questioners in the audience challenged the President about how he was going to pay for everything, speaking slowly and clearly in a thick Western accent, bluntly telling him he and his people were lying about where the money was going to come from, namely, out of this guy's pockets.

Most liberals haven't the foggiest about what goes on in the mind of someone like this. They dismiss him as an ignorant hick and his concerns as racist. He, in turn, bristles at the total invalidation of his existence and concerns by Lib-er-uls, confirming the Republican accusation of "class war."

I'll help.

Everyone--whatever their politics are--wants self respect. Dignity. A sense of being in control of his life. No one wants to be a helpless slave who can't even figure out what's going on, much less have a say in it. And beyond his own individual concerns, everyone wants his tribe to have what the Germans call lebensraum--a place in the sun.

From this guy's viewpoint, the Democrats promise to strip him of all of that, and hand over his rights to people who neither look nor act like him.

And unfortunately the Democrats have played into this vision. Of course it doesn't help that the Democratic president isn't white and isn't (in these people's minds) American. But even if he were a white all-American guy, it is a fact that the Democratic Party has done everything in its power to confirm the picture the GOP paints of them. Support for illegal immigrants coupled with chasing after every group that isn't white guys from small town America has confirmed the GOP stereotype.

This distrust of a Democratic president was established long before Barry Obama was even a candidate.

How to fight fair--and make the other side fight fair as well

Watching politics is like watching a no-rules cage fight. Even if you want to fight fair, the other side's tactics are likely to rile you--to want to fight fire with fire.

But. You have to decide whether you want to win debates or change people's minds. I can win debates--I'm verbally agile, and I'm not easily daunted. But so what? What good is it to win a debate if the other side goes away seething? If they do, they'll only rationalize away what just happened, and tomorrow they'll vote the way you don't want them to, and they'll help persuade others to vote that way as well.

On the other hand, if you get in the ring with bare hands against someone with a baseball bat, you won't be happy with that outcome either.

The Way is to keep the other side from getting away with playing dirty--without playing dirty yourself. Then you have a chance to change minds, to at least get them to recognize your side as having some kind of validity.

As it stands, much of what is said between Left and Right comes across as an attempt to invalidate the worth and meaning of the other side. Each side constantly uses language and makes accusations that the other side finds deeply offensive, one-sided, and unfair.

You have to validate the other side's world up front. Otherwise you might as well just talk to yourself and those who already agree with you. That doesn't mean you have to agree with their world. But if you can satisfy the other side that you understand where they're coming from; understand the fears and desires that generate their politics--then there's a chance that they'll listen to you.

It's not easy to validate someone you disagree with deeply. Frankly, most people just can't do it. They feel like they're being a traitor to their own side if they do so. But I put it to you that you're being a traitor to your own side if you don't. After all, we are just one nation. All those blue state-red state maps are misleading--you'll find that each side has substantial minorities, even in each other's bastion. I live in one of the bluest parts of one of the bluest states in America--yet I'm acquainted with hundreds of Republicans living here.

You may have noticed that I haven't talked about this from a "lets whup those Republicans" or "let's whup those Democrats."

That's because I want both sides to fight fair. I believe the Republicans play dirtier than the Democrats, but my Republican spouse is equally convinced that the Democrats play dirtier than the Republicans. What any rational observer should agree with, though, is that both sides fight dirty, which the heinousness of it is subject to disagreement.

Here I'm going to list words and phrases used by one side to defeat the other side. This should be equally useful to Democrats and Republicans. You may learn how the other side reacts when you use certain loaded terms you're fond of--and should give up in "interfaith" discussions at least. And you may learn how to defend yourself and your side against the loaded terms they're fond of.

Trick term What it really means, and how to combat it

anti-immigrant --What the Left calls anyone who opposes illegal immigration or
chain migration, or who wants the anchor baby loophole eliminated,
or who favors any limits on legal immigration, such as favoring those
with skills we need and those fluent in English.
This is conflation. You discredit your opponent's position by lumping it in
with something that's less popular.

But there's an even subtler piece of trickery here. They never say you're
"anti-immigration," since that invokes principle. Instead they personalize
it by stating that you're "anti-immigrant." The implication: you hate these
people. Probably because they aren't "white." Whereas if you're "anti-
immigration" that could lead to discussing how CEOs exploit illegal
immigrants to drive down wages and bust unions. It's hard for a leftist to
argue with that, whereas it's easy to focus on those poor, needy Mexicans
who are just trying to feed their families, yada yada.

So when you're discussing/arguing immigration, don't let them pull this
trick. Challenge them on it before letting them go on. You could do so by
saying "I never said I was anti-immigrant. So why are you putting words
in my mouth?" Make them explain how they jumped to this conclusion
instead of trying to defend yourself. They are fighting dirty, and deserve
to called on that.

racist --What the Left calls anyone who opposes unlimited immigration,
illegal immigration, too much immigration by those with neither training,
education, English language skills, or money, use of languages other than
English for official government business (including on ballots), elimination
of race-based quotas and preferences, affection for traditional American
culture, any and all resistance to replacing American culture by others
within America, and any discussion of overpopulation.

This is usually effective, so it's usually used. People get so unhinged by
being accused of racism that they immediately forget the actual topic of
the argument and allow the Leftist to switch the topic to whether you're
racist. You must resist this and say "'Why are you trying to change the
subject? Can't you defend your position?"

You can legitimately raise the issue of someone's character if their
argument is some version of "trust me." If it's not--if it's based on reason
and externally verifiable facts--then it's irrelevant. Say you are a racist.
And you claim "Most illegal immigrants are Mexicans." Does that prove
that most illegal immigrants aren't Mexican? It does mean that I can't
take your word for it. But if you follow up by citing various polls and
surveys that enjoy widespread legitimacy among knowledgeable
observers, then the test of your argument isn't who you are but whether
your sources are solid.

So if you want to be nicer, you can say "You have a right to question my
character if my argument depends on my character. You don't if my
argument depends on sources and logic that anyone can verify. And I
haven't asked you to trust me. So you don't have a right to attack my
character as a way to discredit my argument. Have you conceded that my
side is right about [whatever you were discussing], and now want to
change the subject to my character? Or to your assumption that you are
morally superior to me?

The Left abandoned overpopulation as an issue when most overpopulation
started coming from non-Anglo/European groups. So now when you bring
it up as a desperately important issue, you're likely to be called a racist for
doing so. You can use the approaches I just described, but in addition you
can point out that the most suffering caused by overpopulation is
experienced by non-Anglo/European groups. So avoiding the topic can
be attacked at racist--of Volvo Liberals, enjoying their advanced nation
comforts, inadvertently making things worse.

nativist --the Left uses this term to describe anyone who dares to like Anglo-
American culture, and who objects to its wholesale replacement across
swathes of the Southwest by Mexican culture.

Back in the 19th century, the original nativists objected to the new waves
of non-Anglo Protestant immigration coming from southern Europe,
Ireland, and, in the West, from China. The objections included physical
attacks on members of these groups.

Today's traditional American culture includes elements adopted from all
these waves of immigration. Is pizza really foreign food any more? Is St.
Patrick's Day a foreign festival? America may well be the world's most
genuinely multicultural country today.

So what's wrong with adding a few honest, hardworking Mexicans to the
mix, the Left says. Some go on to exult in whites probably becoming a
minority in a few decades, and how wonderful that will be, and how evil
whites are (whites who aren't them at least), and thus deserve to die out.
I've seen this first-hand.

People who oppose anything not of their own traditional culture are
nativists, & you can find people like that everywhere, though more in
ethnically pure provincial enclaves than in urban areas. I suppose the
ultimate nativists are the Taliban and Al Queda.

It's one thing to call the Taliban nativists--it's another to call those who
object to ethnic cleansing nativists. And what's going on in areas of the
Southwest are just that, with the main victims being lower-class blacks
and whites.

So if someone calls you a nativist as a way to refute your arguments,
the main argument is not to let them change the subject. Your motives
are a different topic. If they want to change the topic to both side's
motives, well, that could be an interesting conversation. I've long
wondered whether the most dedicated leftists had tyrannical parents,
and it would be interesting to explore that. And also why people who are
so quick to call the other side names like racist, nativist etc., practically
worship an organization whose name translated into English means "The
Race."

Socialist --what the Right call any involvement of government in business.
Actually it means ownership of business by government. What I want to
know is what do you call ownership of government by business? Because
that seems to be what the far Right stands for.

more later

Why Americans distrust government

Americans distrust government because of King George.

I got this off some show on NPR. America was founded on distrust of government, courtesy of a crazy king out of touch with his people in America.

Our own first government was essentially a confederation--the least amount of government possible. Turned out it was less than possible, however. So we reluctantly settled on the current setup. But that strain of distrusting government is in our DNA--especially in the South, thanks to the Civil War--and that's extra government-distrusting DNA for Southerners, with the vast majority Republican, and the dominant force in today's Republican Party.

Plus, when our Republic was founded the average American was a farmer with little need of government, apart from fighting foreign wars.

Um, that's changed somewhat. But when you hear protestors at Town Hall meetings expressing their distrust of government, they've got historical reasons for their distrust.

The problem today is that government always needs to be strong enough to protect individual citizens from being oppressed, but no stronger, lest it become the oppressor, as is true in many third world countries.

That said, if the gangbangers invading your neighborhood are toting assault rifles and wearing bulletproof vests, the police won't have a chance with service revolvers and blue shirts. If the entity taking advantage of you is a bank or a corporation polluting your groundwater...or a local city with a yellow light trap (intersection with a camera and yellow lights timed to produce lawbreakers)...you need more government to protect you than a rural 18th century farmer needed. Not just better-armed, but more sophisticated as well.

Right wing pundits keep evoking the independent farmer of two centuries ago. Such farmers wanted nothing more than for King George to get off their backs. It's a powerful message for Americans. But today the true nature of this powerful message is to get you to voluntarily renounce all forms of protection against everyone who seeks to rob you, whether by "six gun" or "fountain pen."

Conservatives need to acknowledge the fact that they simply need more government than we used to. Liberals need to acknowledge that this desire for self-sufficiency and independence has honorable roots, even if it isn't as possible now.