I apologize in advance, both for another link to the Sullivan collective and for more wankery about conservatism versus liberalism, but I think this discussion is fairly telling. Somebody named Cletus wrote in to the Sullivan collective to brag about how he’s too busy with “intellectual growth, creativity, dedication, openness to new experiences etc.” to be envious and to condemn everyone who’s ever noticed that life is sometimes unfair. The idea is that if you think someone has something they don’t deserve, it just means that you are an emotionally stunted, envious inferior who doesn’t know the meaning of talent or hard work.
Personally, I am not very envious either, not because I care about intellectual growth and the like, but because I think that life is sad, life is a bust, no matter how great your job and six figure aquarium set-up are. But I’m not willing to play along with the delusion what we live in an awesome meritocracy where all success is earned. And I’m even less comfortable with the obvious corollary that the poor and unemployed deserve to be poor and unemployed.
I think this goes to the heart of the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals tend to believe that our system is imperfect, that the rich aren’t so deserving that we shouldn’t tax them, that the poor aren’t so undeserving that we shouldn’t give them a decent safety net, and that a fancy position may be the result of nepotism, system-gaming, or luck. Conservatives tend to believe either that our system is fair and societal status equals virtue or that our system used to be fair before the soshulists broke it (depending, of course, on whether Republicans or Democrats control the federal government at the time). Intellectual conservatives may not believe this but believe that it’s important the masses do believe it, in order to maintain traditional societal values.
Update. Cleek has a good example of the conflation of “ultrarich” with “best and brightest” from moderate Muslim Reihan Salam.
The Moar You Know
I don’t understand why those who have earned their suffering through their shortcomings must constantly whine about it.
beltane
In conservatism, it is wrong for a poor person to resent their betters for their wealth, but it is OK for the well-off to resent the poor for getting a new Honda Civic under the C4C program.
cleek
the rich are our best and brightest.
arguingwithsignposts
In a curious bit of cognitive dissonance, conservative “Christians” believe the world is fallen and filled with evil. Conservatives economically believe the world is just and they are at the top because they earned it.
This is a gross oversimplification, but it’s there.
MikeBoyScout
You’ve been on a roll lately Doug. Keep up the good work!
Southern Beale
Just heard Bernie Sanders on the Thom Hartmann show talk about how much money the corporate interests/conservative interests are spending on this election and suggesting our government is transitioning to oligarchy.
Gee, ya think?
Meanwhile the DSCC called me today to ask for … wait for it … a $1,500 donation.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!
I’ve never in my entire life donated that much money to the party. Anyway, I once again had to explain to one of these paid telemarketers why I’m not giving money to the party structure but instead will give to organizations and individual candidates who more closely match my ideals. The guys actually pleaded with me, just give us one more chance! Exact words, people.
If people have been so damn worried about corporate influence on elections then why the hell hasn’t someone tried to work on fixing it? Just asking.
peach flavored shampoo
A little too meta for my tastes. Also, cant take anyone named “Cletus” for anything but pure spoof.
David Brooks (not that one)
Furthermore, as was noted at the beginning of the current run-up of rewards to the rich: it’s a lot easier to make your second million than your first (i.e. it doesn’t mean that you are twice as good a person).
Unfortunately, as an economy, we tend to reward people more on the basis of an acknowledgement of how much leverage they have on the economy as a whole (Bill Gates has created trillions for us) than how hard they work (his gardener).
I’m all for a return to Fifties moral values if it also means a return to Fifties rich/poor wealth multiples.
Did I just make three points in one combox?
slag
It’s not just that we tend to “believe” this stuff. It’s that we believe the empirical evidence that shows this stuff to be true. I, for one, am not willing to toss science–even social science–in the belief system pile.
maus
@cleek: Protestant predestinationism is free market capitalism in a nutshell.
TuiMel
Whenever I get into a political argument with the conservative members of my family, one of their favorite tactics is to crow, “Life isn’t fair!” as if (1) I am neither bright nor experienced enough to notice and (2) that is the argument that trumps all others. They do not understand that, for me, that is where the philosophical roads diverge. It is hard to get them beyond it and to see that: It is true; life isn’t fair. What do you think should be done about that? They also seem to be incapable of acknowledging that many people born to the cat-bird seat will use the advantage of their birth to exploit others who are less fortunate – all in the name of further aggrandizing their personal cat-bird seats. Also, many who did scramble up the ladder to betterment seem willing to allow the ladder to be pulled up and closed off to others. They have a short memory of the assistance they have received along the way. IGMFU
Pancake
The words of a good Marxist.
Daveboy
I don’t think this is an idealogical thing. The thing is, I think most people are brought up to think like conservatives: that the USA is a meritocracy, that hard work is rewarded and the good people triumph. This is the sort of default lesson for kids growing up. I really don’t think most people tell their children, “Oh the system is quite rigged, little Timmy — if you aren’t born rich you probably aren’t going to make it, and you can’t be anything you want to be.”
When you actually get out in the real world, do you retreat into your ideology or actually deal with it on it’s own terms? (in the rare cases that you are extremely rich or lucky, your ideology is actually true and doesn’t need to be examined) I think the one thing that is fascinating to me is that conservative ideology factually doesn’t work, and yet people keep believing it. This is the same group that is also very religious. It seems that whatever this person is taught in their formative years, they keep believing it and become increasingly aggressive toward attempts to debunk it. Is there literally a type of brain that becomes a modern conservative? If so, it implies to me that we are in real trouble, as there is no way to go back in time and correct these people’s fallacies.
Mikeg
Doug, you’re glib.
Daveboy
addendum to my comment above: should have said “It’s not an ideological thing, it’s a cognitive thing.”
Martin
@beltane: Yeah, this is closer to what I see.
Liberals put the blame and burden up the power ladder – we blame the rich and the powerful, corporations, leaders. After all, they have the greatest means to prevent problems from happening.
Conservatives put the blame and burden down the power ladder – the fault lies with the poor, minorities, gays, atheists and muslims, whoever has the fewest means to prevent problems from happening. The bankers who were writing and rating the CDSs didn’t cause the financial problems, it was the blacks wanting to buy houses, etc.
danimal
I agree with what you are conveying here, but I contend that you can not be truly intellectual at the same time that you are deceiving the multitudes.
catclub
@maus:
I think there is a kind of famous book by Max Weber
“The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”
RobertB
I’m in the middle of a Facebook pissing contest on this very subject. I’ve not noticed that facts have any particular sway.
Cat
This topic can suck the life out of me sometimes.
The only difference I see between the people I spent working minimum wage jobs with in college and upper middle class people I work with now is the income of their parents and if their skin color matches the their home countries majority.
I’ve met three US minorities in my 15 years working that were making an upper middle class living.
ONLY the best and the brightest are making it out of the lower class, but something is keeping the bright down.
My father didn’t make it out and my siblings didn’t and while they may not have been as smart as me, they are smarter then a lot of the people I’ve worked with.
asiangrrlMN
@TuiMel: I agree. Life isn’t fair, yes. But, that doesn’t mean we can’t work to even things out a bit and not exacerbate the situation. And, I notice that the same people who talk about life not being fair or whatnot are the very first to bitch and moan when other people are given ‘special’ rights–like the right to marry or the right to build a building where it’s legally fine for that building to be built.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
I’m not going to try to speak for liberals or conservatives, I’ll just say for myself that aside from the moral component that you obliquely touch on, it’s simply foolish social policy to have a permanent, large underclass of hopeless individuals. If conservatives are afraid of socialism they should read their history books and realize that there was an honest-to-god socialist movement in America in the first half of the 20th century and virtually nothing today. If they want to go back to the good old days when there were tens of millions of poor and ethnic minorities with no hope of a decent life, as well as destitute elderly with no old age pension, they’ll have a real socialist movement on their hands, not the faux one being ginned up.
Davis X. Machina
It’s simple, people. When you choose your parents, DON’T FUCK UP!
Jewish Steel
If I could afford health care, I would have this intellectual growth removed.
catclub
Conservative view: people are fallen and basically evil
Liberal view: people are basically good.
Conservative view: Business and the free markets are basically good ( self-correcting) and need no government regulation. (Note that businesses are organizations of fallen people).
Liberal view: Profit maximizing organizations need regulation to limit their rapacity.
Conservative view: The status quo is for the best, and the people on top are there by merit or accident.
Liberal view: The status quo can be improved, but those on top will cheat to maintain it as it is.
Conservative view: government is rapacious and seeks to control ( although it is also an organization of fallen people.)
Liberal view: ditto, hence constitutional limits on what it can do. Government can do some things better than any single actor.
Mike in NC
Here’s a High Five to all those at B-J who had words of encouragement about my job interview a few days ago.
I got the offer from my former employer today and start in ten days. It’s a consulting gig that should be good for at least a year. It also means we’ll be able to afford medical insurance once again (COBRA sucks!).
Davis X. Machina
@catclub: I’d debate the first one, catclub. Too much time on the clock, too much time with Augustine and the Federalist Papers not to conclude that people, at least in the aggregate, are shits.
Homo lupus homini. Which is all the more reason to hire good shepherds from the public fisc, and not rely on charity.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: Woohoo!
Stillwater
@beltane: ba-da-bing!
singfoom
Too bad meritocracy only goes so far. There’s no sense of utility in the current system. That’s great for Mr. Hedge Fund Manager when he makes $100 million a year and makes a bunch of already wealthy people even wealthier, but the contributions to society as a whole is basically zilch (negative if he’s ripped off investors faces with synthetic CDOs and so forth).
What I can’t wrap my mind around is how the entitlement comes into the picture for the ultra-rich. If you’re a CEO, you’re not magically piloting a fucking company with some kind of joystick, you benefit from interactions with other people, companies and government institutions and basic infrastructure that we all need.
But somehow, when it comes to paying their fair share of taxes, they act like they personally paved the roads to their corporate tower, built the damn thing itself and deliver all of the mail psycho-kinetically.
Maybe life isn’t fair, but the proportion of taxes to wealth should be more so at this point. Because we don’t live in a fucking vaccuum people. (Though I encourage would-be Galts to shoot themselves into space to escape the tyranny of having to live in an actual community.)
Cat Lady
@RobertB:
I thought I was close to joining FB when I realized I’m the last person in America to not be on FB, but I’ve heard nothing but complaints here and from other people about having to de-friend acquaintances due to their virtual assholery, and being in online “pissing matches”. I’ve had to whittle my meatspace contacts down over the past 18 months due to actual assholery, and the thought of having to arm myself for battle beyond BJ is too much. Facebook is going to have to soldier on without me. Also.
asiangrrlMN
@catclub: I like your list, but I would argue the first point. Conservatives are the ones who at least profess to believe that a free market will regulate itself (which is based on people being good). I think liberals are more likely to say, “People will fuck you up given the chance”, which is based on people being not so good.
@Mike in NC: A big woot-woot to you! So glad to hear some good news in BJ land.
@Cat Lady: Here’s an opposing view: You can block any person’s feed so you don’t have to see what that person is saying. I use FB, and I have very stringent control settings precisely so I don’t have to get into that kind of shit. Plus, I have no problem with defriending crazy nutters, especially those with no place in my present life. For example, a girl I knew in hs posted ‘Impeach Obama’ one month after the inauguration. Just like that–bam! Defriended.
cleek
@Mike in NC:
congrats!
and i just found out yesterday that my contract was extended till March (was set to run out in 2 weeks). no catfood for us!
catclub
@Davis X. Machina:
I think that ‘in the aggregate’ is a key qualifier.
It has become puzzling to me how corporations can be considered so _good_ by conservatives, when they are made up of people.
Of course, so was soylent green. Which was delicious.
arguingwithsignposts
@cleek:
@Mike in NC:
Congrats to you both!
asiangrrlMN
@cleek: Way to go, cleek! Smiles, everyone, SMILES!
cleek
@catclub:
corporations are better than the government because corporations cannot use the “threat of violence” to make you do what they want you to, which the government can.
sure, corporations can use the government as a tool (by way of lawsuits, one-sided contracts, purchased regulations, legal monopolies, etc.) to threaten you with violence. but that’s completely different.
wengler
So conservatives are crazy Calvinists and American liberals are empiricist humanists?
Makes sense to me.
Cat Lady
@asiangrrlMN:
Well, I’m not convinced. I have actual friends (I know, right?), and really don’t care about anyone else’s opinion on anything since the smartest funniest people are already right here (!), so if the only feeds I care to see are from people I’m already talking to/seeing/emailing, then what am I missing? Random brain droppings from acquaintances long since out of my life?
Oh, and get off my lawn/
Davis X. Machina
@singfoom: We need to make it an honor to pay.
The idea of a graduated tax is as old as ancient Greece, and the leitourgia, when the wealthy of the polis were ‘honored’ by being ‘asked’ to undertake a public office or provide a public service, such as the equipment and maintenance of a trireme, or funding a tetralogy of plays at the Greater Dionysia.
In exchange they got fame, glory, naming rights, good seats, — in Rome, a fancy purple band on their togas and tunics — and above all the privilege of not having their throats slit in the night.
Stillwater
@catclub:
I would add
Conservative: Capitalistic markets are based on free and fair competition in the market.
Stillwater (Liberal): the first rule of capitalism is to eliminate competition and begin rent-seeking.
Corner Stone
Well, DougJ I envy you. I wish I was as drunk as you are right now.
morzer
What does not kill me disappoints my righteous oligarchic supervisors. At least, I seem to remember German Freddie saying that, in a galaxy far far away….
Sentient Puddle
Yeah, this has gotten too meta for me. I read through what Cletus wrote, and all I could think was “Me, I lack envy because I honestly don’t give a fuck about any of these things other people have.”
Really, I don’t think it’s that hard…
Tom Levenson
@cleek: Corporations can’t use violence/threat of violence to get what they want?
I beg to differ. For just one historical example from our host’s home state: http://www.wvculture.org/history/minewars.html
catclub
@Tom Levenson:
I think cleek was partly joking.
Tom Levenson
@Sentient Puddle: Hell, Cletus’s self-absorbed dribble was posted by Conor Friedsdorf, a poster child for the subtle bigotry of low expectations on the right, which in itself makes it a legitimate target IMHO….;)
(Grumpy, much. Oh yeah.)
singfoom
@Davis X. Machina:
I consider it an honor and a duty to pay my taxes. I also consider it an honor and a duty to vote.
If only we could get a reasonable set of judges on the Supreme Court who would finally and decisively say the following:
1)Corporations are not people. They have some rights akin to that of an actual person, but since they are made up of individuals, they cannot have their free speech rights violated, since those people can speak their mind how they want.
2)Oh, and yeah, money != speech.
A boy can dream.
morzer
@Tom Levenson:
Well, what can one say, except “Heh, indeedy”?
asiangrrlMN
@Cat Lady: Oh, I know. I’m not trying to sell FB (and I resisted it for a long time). I’m just saying it’s possible to use it without getting into pissing contests.
/scampers off your lawn.
mcd410x
If I were a Republican, I’d outlaw being unemployed. That would stop that shit.
slag
@asiangrrlMN: Abso-frickin-lutely! And, while I know it’s en vogue right now to be disenchanted with the Democratic Party, my patience is fairly limited with those who claim there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. While there may not be as much distance between them as there is between liberals and conservatives, there is a lot of distance.
I mean, the Democratic Party elected a black man for President in 2008, for fuck’s sake! And expanded health care coverage in 2009. And began implementing stricter regulation of the financial sector, including the credit card industry, which preys on poor people to the extreme.
Do I wish the Democratic Party were a lot more liberal? Hell yes. Nonetheless, I’m proud of my party for all the progress we’ve made and the progress we’re going to continue to make. All while Republicans are busy getting their hate on for the minority group du jour.
Cat Lady
@Tom Levenson:
Saw you on TV yesterday about Einstein- you’re not bad looking for a science nerd, and my husband would envy your hair. Cheer up – someone envies you!
Nick
“I think that life is sad, life is a bust, no matter how great your job and six figure aquarium set-up are.”
A man called Christ once allegedly commented on materialism versus spiritual development. Ironic, that today real Muricans follow the Gospel of Prosperity, in their efforts to emulate the Christ.
Blessed are the meek is so, 1 A.D.
licensed to kill time
@Cat Lady:
I must be the next-to-last person not on Facebook, then. I have resisted the siren song of the FaceBorg but still people reach out and try to find me through my kids, which I think is just tacky. And it’s always the last people in the world you ever wanted to hear from, it seems. It’s kind of creepy, really.
Nutella
This argument comes up in professional contexts too. This article pointing out that people who got to practice computer programming as children were beneficiaries of exceptional privilege got some interesting responses. Some of them insisting that poor people could have provided home computers for their kids too but didn’t because the parents or children were lazy and unmotivated. Some of them (undoubtedly all comfortably-well-off white men) I imagine replying to the article by shouting “There is no luck. THERE IS NO LUCK!!’
Chad N Freude
Cletus (the Roman word for smug, self-satisfied narcissist) expresses admiration for H L Mencken:
Unfortunately, Cletus does not tell us whether he also enjoys Mencken’s antisemitism and complete disregard for Judaism.
BiggusCletus
I lack envy because I am not a white male right-winger. Some would call it my tragic flaw, I consider it my redeeming feature.
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Right there with you. That’s why I cannot get behind the ‘let Palin win’ in 2012 meme that is emerging from some quarters of the left. None of what got done in the past two years would have even been a twinkle in the eye of a Republican president. Indeed, much of the shit we are dealing with now would be eleven-billionty times worse (McEstimation). I am pretty far-left liberal in ideology, but I find that I am much more of a centrist in terms of execution. Dems are trying to do something for the better of the country–Reps are not. Indeed, many Republicans are actively working to roll back the progress we’ve made (yes, with full support of some Dems, but not all). Look at the shit they want to do–repeal the 14th Amendment; papers, please laws; repeal Roe v. Wade; constitutional ban same-sex marriages; eviscerate the 1st Amendment. That’s why I get frustrated with Obama is the same (or worse) than W. It’s simply not true.
@Nutella: For some reason, “THERE IS NO LUCK” cracks me up. I don’t know why, but thanks for the laugh.
rootless_e
Great Dkos diary
———–
We expected a complete overhaul of the nation’s economy two days after the election. But two days after inauguration, it still hadn’t happened. It is now two YEARS after the election and corporations are still making profits.
————
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/8/27/896729/-I-Want-to-be-on-the-Rec-List-Too.-My-Anti-Obama-Diary.
jwb
@Nutella: But once you recognize the situation, you have to try to do something about it or admit to yourself that you are an asshole. Given that choice, it’s no surprise that most prefer delusion.
Cat Lady
@licensed to kill time:
Same thing happened to me – I’m listed under the same name in every phone book ever printed in the last 30 years in the one state I’ve lived in for the vast majority of that time, and yet somehow an acquaintance I haven’t seen in a few years “couldn’t find me”? Had to contact one of my kids to let me know about something? Not just tacky, but WTF?
Davis X. Machina
I rather think he does share Mencken’s attitude towards democracy, to wit: “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it — good and hard.”
HyperIon
@peach flavored shampoo wrote :
I’m thinking Cletus IS DougJ.
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: “That’s why I cannot get behind the ‘let Palin win’ in 2012 meme that is emerging from some quarters of the left.” I agree. Not to go all Godwin here, but that’s also exactly the sort of thinking on the German left that helped put Hitler in power.
grendelkhan
Or, perhaps, the Frosts’ granite countertops, the homeless dude’s cellphone, or the soup kitchen’s arugula?
I maintain that lefties are cheap hacks compared to modern conservatives when it comes to material resentment.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I think you give a lot of conservatives too much credit. I had an argument with one about helping children in school and he just kept asking where it would stop: if we help pay for lunches, then we’ll have to pay for breakfast, and then we might have to consider helping take care of their shots, and then …
These people cannot see farther than their bank account. And how they claim to be Christian I’ll never know.
RobertB
@Cat Lady
9 times out of 10 I’d have taken a pass on teh stoopid, but this one time I was kind of bored. So now it’s about 1000 words or so with some teatard – one of my brother’s Facebook friends who, frankly, I couldn’t give a shit less about. He popped up on one of my brother’s wall posts, I jumped in with my $0.02, and we went from there. I cleared it with my brother (“I don’t want to make your life any more difficult than it already is, so I’ll shut up if you want me to.”). He didn’t have a problem, so away we went.
I do hear where you’re coming from, though. I have a couple of work friends; wonderful people, biggest right-wingers on the planet. That’s a lot of cognitive dissonance for me to deal with, so to help myself out I just don’t talk politics these days with them.
asiangrrlMN
@jwb: And without even Godwinning the thread, if Palin or Huckabee become president, we are gonna see some seriously fucked up repercussions, even if it’s just one term. You think W. was bad? Those eight years would be a day in paradise compared to the havoc a President Palin would unleash. I DO NOT want to have to deal with the aftermath of that shitstorm, I can tell you that much.
ETA: I am not saying Palin will run, much less win–I am just using the worst example I can think of. Let’s throw Bachmann on the ballot as VP just to double the shudder.
morzer
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Christianity isn’t a religion to those people. It’s a social grievances club, political rally, and down-payment on a sundown town in heaven.
13th Generation
@Cat Lady:
Good on you..I dumped FB some time ago and have made it a kind of mission to convince others to do the same. Twitter too. Also.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
And then you go and quote Spinal Tap. Honestly. Are you stalking me?
Also, too: Yes.
I think that the weirdest thing about the difference between conservatives and liberals is that they accuse us of being unrealistically altruistic toward our fellow humans, whereas they are the genuinely unrealistic ones.
Many conservatives seem to honestly believe many patently untrue things about human nature. As but one example, they seem to honestly believe that if you just yell at teenagers long enough and loudly enough that premarital sex is a bad thing, they’ll stop having it. Which indicates a startling faith in humans to live up to a particular definition of moral behavior. Whereas we keep insisting that no, actually, young people tend to the horny, and if they’re going to be horny, we should at least give them condoms in order to see to it that they make fewer babies in the process.
This is why marital affairs and/or comings-out among the conservatives (hi Ken Mehlman! Isn’t the breathing easier on this side of the closet door?) are so much more newsworthy than ours — they keep insisting that IT CAN BE DONE. Whereas we know that people are actually people.
RSA
Nice insights, DougJ.
@TuiMel:
That’s my experience as well (though not with my family). Some treat “Life isn’t fair!” as the endpoint of the discussion, but really it’s the beginning of a different one, given that we’ve come to a point of agreement: “What should we do about it?”
Roger Moore
@TuiMel:
This. I think the biggest difference between Liberals and Conservatives is how they respond to the idea that life isn’t fair. Conservatives say, “Life isn’t fair; deal with it.” Liberals say, “Life isn’t fair; let’s see how we can make it more fair.” It’s a profound difference in world-view.
Obviously not everyone sees things the same way all the time. Our inclination to make life more fair often depends on whether it’s unfair in our favor. It’s amazing to watch how fast a Conservative can go from “deal with it” to “we’ve got to do something” when he discovers that he’s gotten the short end of the stick.
slag
@asiangrrlMN:
Are you kidding me? I didn’t used to believe actual lefties could be this stupid, but apparently, I wasn’t born under an election year star. I would say these people have the memory span of gnats, but they seem to remember every wrong done to them by either Rahm Emanuel or Howard Dean, so clearly that’s not true.
I don’t know what the overarching problem is, but it’s obvious that Republicans aren’t the only ones who have forgotten all about George W Bush.
Corner Stone
@jwb:
me
@peach flavored shampoo: Do you think he’ll eat a skunk?
Corner Stone
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
Where mayhap can I find these younguns ready to tend to me?
kmoore
Of course the rich would not have made so much money in the first place (especially the inherited type) without employing tens, hundreds or thousands of people working minimum wage (or go back further in history, sub-standard wages) to produce the products and services that proved so profitable.
Yeah, yeah, commie talk. But you don’t have to be a marxist to recognize that our economy is built upon the exploitation of cheap labor.
Corner Stone
@peach flavored shampoo:
This whole fucking site has gone Orders of Magnitude Meta ™ recently.
morzer
@Corner Stone:
Well, if you define “young” as pushing 50, I believe there are a few Young Republicans available….
asiangrrlMN
@slag: Well, to be fair, it’s mostly said out of frustration at how slowly things are changing and with the belief that Obama is as bad as W. I don’t know if anyone seriously would root for a President Palin.
Cat Lady
@RobertB:
Go get ’em RobertB. I’m choosing my battles carefully too, but it’s face to face. I’m trying hard to keep it from being hand to hand, and seriously, just about everyone I’m in contact with lately needs a good punch in the neck. This country has lost its collective shit. I thank the FSM for this place, where I KNOW I’m not crazy and alone. Also.
slag
@RSA: If I remember correctly, whenever Rachel Maddow and that idiot Republican, Joe Scarborough, were on television together, that is exactly how their conversations would go.
Rachel: This [whatever the issue is] sucks.
Idiot Republican: Rachel, clearly you don’t know how the world works. This [whatever the issue is] is how it is.
Rachel: I know that this is how it is. I’m saying it sucks and we should fix it.
Idiot Republican: Rachel, when you gain as much experience as I have, you’ll know that this is how it is.
Rachel: I know how it is, you freakin moron, I’m saying it sucks!
Idiot Republican: Rachel, Rachel, Rachel…at some point in life, you’ll come to learn that this is how it is.
…
Thank the baby jesus I don’t have television or watch MSNBC clips anymore.
jl
Rather than generalize excessively, it might be better to prioritize, and go through high priority examples.
A high priority item is Social Security. The mass of people paid taxes on hard earned wages that represented real goods and services forgone. The tax money went into an insurance fund (not an investment plan, or get rich quick scheme, or welfare for parasites fund, but an insurance plan).
Should those people get the insurance they paid for, or not?
If not, why not?
Start with high priority items, and see whether the response amounts anything other than that the powerful not only do, but should do, what they want to do, and weak not only must, but should, suffer what they must suffer.
And whether or not the bottom line for the anti-fairness conservatives is that might makes right, and worth, and talent and beauty, or not.
It might also be instructive to track what the conservative promises were over time. Remember Bush with his four dollar bills, and talking about how his tax plan would allow us bigger and better lives? Same with financial deregulation, and unregulated free market mortgages.
Now that the plan has been shown to be a grotesque failure, they change their tune. Now wanting bigger and better is just envy. Now suddenly misery and want is good for spiritual growth.
These people change their tune as needed to get whatever they want. Often they say completely contradictory things, depending on the topic, at the same time.
Need to call them on their con game.
someguy
Readers Digest Condensed Version: Liberals good, conservatives evil. And stupid.
I should charge money for my briefing services.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Cat Lady: You and I can remain on the outside of the march to Zukerberg World Domination together, then. I salute you Cat Lady, and I pull up my chair.
Chad N Freude
Cue Alan Simpson: “Ooh! Mistah Kottah! Mistah Kottah! I know!!”
slag
@asiangrrlMN: Oh I understand the frustration. I get it.
But when you’ve reached the point where you can put the word President next to the word Palin in a sentence without experiencing the irresistible desire to saw both of your own arms off before you hit the Submit button, you’ve lost your mind. End of story.
Gus
@singfoom: Really? I don’t like paying taxes. I know that some portion is paying for wars, weapons and a pension for Alberto Gonzales. That shit pisses me off.
rob!
Nice working in a line from “Buckets of Rain” there, Doug. Your posts are like a Dylan equivalent of “Where’s Waldo?” Most fun.
Mark S.
OT (I found Cletus so boring I clicked some other Atlantic blogs) but WWE doesn’t provide health insurance to its wrestlers? I know it’s fake but these guys do get hurt pretending to piledrive each other. Unbelievable.
djork
Nice Spinal Tap reference, DougJ.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
Congrats to those that got jobs.
The IRS said that they would let me know whether or not I got the position in Boston sometime in August. They have two business days left. Given that the position starts some unspecified time in September, it’s also possible that they could offer me the position and I’d have to tell them that there’s no way I can make arrangements to move in that amount of time.
A recruiter is playing the same games with me that they all do. She called last Thursday after “finding my resume on Monster” about a financial analyst position with TCF. I read the job description and said I’d be interested. She said she was busy the rest of the day and would be out all day Friday, so she’d call me Monday morning. She sent me an email with specific questions to answer.
Monday morning came and went with no call. So did the afternoon. So I called her Tuesday morning. She was late for a meeting, but said she’d call me back that afternoon.
Tuesday afternoon came and went with no call. She did finally call Wednesday morning. I told her that I had done analysis with Citi, but not the specific type of analysis that is involved in this job. She said she’d still submit my resume to TCF. It became apparent that she had found an old resume of mine, not the current one. So I emailed her the correct one, that actually has my master’s degree on it. She said she’d call back if she had any questions.
Every single person working for one of these recruiting firms has done the same thing: told me multiple times that they’d call me, and then not done so. It must be some sort of method they get taught. I guess they’re trying to find out who has the assertiveness to call them back.
Like other elements of the hiring business, I consider this to be institutional rudeness. If the only way you can tell whether or not someone is going to be a good employee is to violate basic norms of decent behavior, you must not be very good at your job.
So I called her back today to ask if she had any questions. I haven’t heard from her.
Don’t bother replying, Corner. All I know is that you like pie.
DougJ
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):
Good luck with the job hunt. I know it sucks to be unemployed so don’t let it get you down no matter what happens.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther: Oops. “Zuckerberg.”
And here I was proud of myself for not calling him “Zuckerman.”
singfoom
@Gus:
True. I don’t get to choose what my taxes are spent on, but I recognize that taxes pay for a lot of good things. Does it upset me that I’m probably paying for things I disagree with, yes.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I view it as a duty and an honor. The idea of the citizen is quote powerful to me. I wish more people were more concerned about the duties of citizenship than the benefits.
Roger Moore
@Nick:
FTFY.
Cat
@Nutella:
This is probably why I have run into so few US minorities programmers and jives with my experiences growing up pretty well.
I was lucky my parents were poor at managing their finances or had the foresight to make such a huge investment in my future by purchasing a home computer in the early 80’s.
I doubt we could have afforded it at the time.
jwb
@asiangrrlMN: I’m not sure Huckabee would be a complete disaster. We’d get plenty of weird and deranged policies, to be sure, but I sense a thought process at work in him, and I think he is still within the limits of those who could be reasoned with. I don’t “like Mike” by any stretch of the imagination, but there are many on the right I fear much more than him. Palin, on the contrary, has morphed into pure theater, and I can see her deciding to bomb, say, Iran, just because she thinks it would be fun to see things blow up on TV—or because she’s mad at Levy.
jwb
@Corner Stone: I think the site is going Meta because reality has become too fucking depressing to deal with directly.
Brachiator
I think this is a very well stated view of contemporary liberal and conservative views, but the differences have become more polarized in the past 20 years or so.
Many religious conservatives, even fundamentalists, used to recognize that people had a duty to the poor (it’s in the Bible even), but only recently has this idea been stomped into the ground and replaced by a nasty, backbiting notion that people who are poor have failed both the Baby Jesus and the Founding Fathers.
And one other difference here is that while conservatives believed (perhaps unrealistically) that private acts of charity are sufficient or should have priority, liberals are insistent that you absolutely must use the resources of the state to provide relief to the poor, and if you don’t agree you are obviously a bad, selfish person so STFU.
There is something a bit sanctimonious in the liberal view (as stated here) of talking about either the rich or the poor in terms of “quien es mas deserving,” because ultimately it’s not very relevant to questions of tax or social policy, and implies a false sense of moral superiority.
Console
I’ve always sort of reduced this debate down to feelings on people. If you think people are for the most part the same, its easy to come to the conclusion that injustice is systematic. If you view people as being inherently different then you are more likely to place the problem for injustice on people.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with either of these things, except that reality tends to force us to recognize that sometimes differences don’t just fall along individual lines, they easily fall along group lines… so one has to come up with a rationale for why a group is at a disadvantage and combine that with their view of injustice being caused by inherent differences. You can see where those two things are going to lead to. The argument doesn’t just apply to rich verses poor, it applies to anywhere privilege has to be justified by the conservative mind.
I love the Niebuhr quote on the issue: “Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.”
The fanciful conservative view of america perhaps makes it easier to come to this defense of privilege in america, but i think the quote above explains even why conservatives take to this strange view of a place whose history is loaded with oppression.
Omnes Omnibus
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): I once had the managing partner of a mid-sized law firm ask me my religion during an interview. I did not get the job. Later, through the course of my practice, I discovered that the firm culture encourage and rewarded pushing the boundaries of ethical behavior right up to the edge. I am glad, in the end, that I did not end up at that firm. Crappy hiring practices can be a window into the company general MO. Best of luck with things though. I know what its like; I am in the sitting and waiting phase after several interviews myself.
thefncrow
@Mark S.: Nope. All their wrestlers are independent contractors. The conditions for a worker in that environment are actually really, really awful. No health insurance and a pittance for transportation and accommodations for a profession that spends most of their time on the road. Except for the top guys, the guys that actually want to make money out of the whole thing talk about driving from place to place, carpooling with 3 other wrestlers to split the rental car fees, and sleeping 3, 4, or 5 to a hotel room with 2 beds.
As I understand it, the WWE will pay for medical treatment in some cases, but it’s basically entirely at their discretion.
You’d be hard pressed to find wrestlers that actually have employer-provided health insurance. I think Ring of Honor, a small-ish Northeast-based company, actually did this for their employees, at least for a while. If you’re not big enough to work as a wrestler full time, it seems one of the more popular options is to work a regular job during the week at some place that provides health insurance, so that if you get hurt working shows on the weekend, at least your medical bills are covered.
There have been a few attempts at forming a wrestlers union to improve worker conditions, but the McMahons have been very successful at swatting all such organization activities.
There’s a famous story from the 80s when Jesse Ventura was attempting to organize the workers. He was trying to get people’s opinions and was going to go to Vince McMahon with a bunch of support and try to get a union through. His big mistake was that he sat down with and talked to Hulk Hogan. Hogan told him he thought it was a good idea, and that he wanted to be part of the group that took the union to McMahon. Then he went to McMahon and told him that Ventura was trying to organize a union under his nose, and that he wouldn’t be a part of it. McMahon then called everyone together, said he’d heard about the union organizing effort, and told them all bluntly: Hogan’s the only one here who can’t be replaced at the drop of a hat, and he’s told me personally he’s not going along with it. And thus was sunk the best shot at organizing wrestlers to improve their working conditions.
jwb
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, if a company doesn’t take care to do its hiring right, it probably doesn’t take care to do anything else right either.
That's Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I don’t disagree with this, but what I described is universal, at least among the recruiting agencies. Every single one has done this. As far as I can tell, if I decided that I wasn’t going to work for someone, or at least have them help to get someone else to hire me, whose hiring practices were unethical, I’d pretty much be declaring that I never intend to have a job again.
Omnes Omnibus
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): I have no real response to that one, except that it is one sh*tty job market out there.
Cacti
For anyone who still clings to the illusion of the US of A being a meritocracy, I have two words for you…
Ben Quayle
slag
@Cacti: Three words: George W Bush.
Cat Lady
@Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther:
I’ll be honored to be in your company. Bring your sharpened stylus and a clay tablet, and together we’ll march arm in arm into the maw of the borg as we sing the Internationale accompanied by a Klezmer band, while all around us the FB drones try to shut us up by defriending us, but they can’t cuz that’s not the way we roll. They’ll envy us! Hah!
chazbet
What was wrong with noblesse oblige, updated with confronting the noblesse who don’t live up to their obilgations with a tax bill?
Mnemosyne
@thefncrow:
I always knew Hogan was an a-hole.
Mark S.
@thefncrow:
That doesn’t surprise me about Hogan. I always wondered how the worst wrestler from a technical standpoint always got to be champion.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
Three more words: George Walker Bush
maus
@Cacti: Dude has the fratty look of the Girls Gone Wild creep mixed with gaunt serial killer and sociopathic stare.
gex
Conservatives also think that the social safety net should be reduced/eliminated because some people cheat the system and are willing to punish everyone for the few.
But if you find military contractors that cheat… Oh that’s just a few bad apples.
burnspbesq
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):
If they want you, you’ll be able to work something out.
Nutella
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN):
The vast majority of recruiting agencies and their agents are useless hacks. The more you can do to find out about companies and jobs from your professional and personal contacts the more you can avoid those damn agents.
Best of luck to you in your job search.
Belvoir
I think i’m not alone in sort of liking Sully for some things, and recoiling when he does another nutty loop-de-loop of logic to blather about Burke or something. He’s infuriating but not dull I suppose.
I honestly can’t stand his guest bloggers though. Conor Friedsdorf has never done anything for me, ever. Yesterday he posted this long-ass email from someone describing themselves as a Baptist minister. This person went on about how he preached (some, conditional, lets-not-kill-them) tolerance for “the homosexuals” to his flock, even though they are damned sinners. Apparently he wanted a medal for this, because our tetchy snitty man of God declared with sadness in his heart he no longer can feel any sympathy for “the homosexuals” because they seem to have a problem with his insistence they are still after all, hell-bound. And so ungrateful for his telling his flock they shouldn’t be murdering homos!
So Friedersdorf prints this email ithout comment, and without a comment system there. Oh, just infuriating.
Like our saintly boy without Envy, “Cletus”. Feeling so superior, so above an ancient human emotion that’s the basis of endless dramas from the Greeks and Shakespeare and beyond. He seems to be saying, people who have a problem with relentless hypercapitalism throttling us = H8Rs!
I knew Cletus was an ass when he wrote, “As I wrote long ago in an essay on the topic..” Oh, go fvck yourself, Clete. No one cares about your essay on the virtues of selfishness.
Shalimar
I personally think most people are basically good, but the top 1% wealth-wise are mostly complete scumbags. We have a society governed by rules, and the people who get ahead the furthest aren’t the innovative people who help society the most. The richest of the rich are mostly amoral sociopaths like Rick Scott who get ahead by not being bound by the restraints against screwing over our fellow human beings that most people have. And then you get to their kids, a decent portion of whom have the same level of sociopathy, they’re just more lazy and restless than the generation that made the money.
So that is my bias, and why I could never join the current crop of Republicans. IMO, they exist entirely to serve people who are a cancer on our society.
gex
@RSA: You see that as a starting point. The people who note that life isn’t fair and then stop the discussion do so because they are one of the luckier ones.
suzula
This is what leads to Bill Gates worship.
DFH no.6
@Cacti:
Sitting here in my Phoenix office, which is actually located in the very congressional district the Quayle-spawn is running for. This smarmy, entitled, privileged punk gets my bile up more than any of the other pricks and assholes who won their primary races this past Tuesday.
Just looking at him makes this old pacifist want to punch his face, and keep punching, punching, punching till the smug is reduced to bloody pulp.
Does that make me feel wrong, or guilty? Sadly, no.
Sadder still is the high likelihood that this evil douchebag will win the seat in the November general election. Life is unfair – indeed it is.
Backwards-ass AZ has been represented by all manner of low, reptilian types over the years. None lower than Ben Quayle. None.
Emily L. Hauser/ellaesther
@Cat Lady: Cat Lady, my friend, I envy us. (Do you see what I did there? Do you see?)
(Also, too: I LOL’ed, I did!)
Corner Stone
@That’s Master of Accountancy to You, Pal (JMN): Meh.
DFH no.6
@maus:
Ben Quayle doesn’t just look like that, he was that exact thing.
Under the pseudonym Brock Landers (one of the porn actor names in Boogie Nights – clever little snot, isn’t he?) he “worked” for a web-site called “dirtyscottsdale” or somesuch, and cruised the local bars taking pictures of nubile things to post.
I’m sure all the little old Republican church ladies of District 3 will be so proud to be represented by such a fine young specimen of Christian virtue.
And now I gotta stop even thinking about this consummate asshole at all.
jl
@gex:
“But if you find military contractors that cheat… Oh that’s just a few bad apples.”
I think that is a very envious, resentful, s * s h * l * s t slant. That, my friend is the necessary and ultimately, but counterintuitively, very beneficial creative destruction of the marketplace.
Matt Osborne
@The Moar You Know: First of all, fuck you. Second of all, fuck you.
Right now I’m helping a 56-year old woman make the transition to a life on disability. She was a passenger in a car wreck. After working her ass off for 37 years, her career is over and she gets too much disability for food stamps, but barely gets enough to cover her COBRA and mortgage. She was already taking care of a disabled husband. Her daughter and I have a small business that doesn’t have capital to grow; we’ve managed to make ends meet after I lost my job in the bad economy, but we may not last. The 20% disability I get for the slow-advancing spinal problems caused by my military service doesn’t even cover MY rent.
So which part of this story should I feel ashamed about?
Last of all: fuck you.
maus
@catclub:
I missed this the first time around, but I don’t agree with this at all. “Good” can be defined in multiple ways, I believe they should have the opportunity to succeed and not be hungry whether it’s squandered or not.
I do see some exploiters of the system and hardcore grifters (Larry Sinclair, for example) but I believe they should be taken on an individual basis rather than punishing the whole.
maus
@Matt Osborne:
I think he might have been using snark, especially if it was a throwaway line.
@DFH no.6: Oh yes, I mean they even look alike, aside from their sleazeball habits. Such a cute wife too :( I hope they’re both as miserable as the other.
DFH no.6
@Matt Osborne:
Matt, dude, you have to turn that sarcasm-detector switch to the “on” position.
And you don’t have to feel ashamed about any of that, of course. Quite the opposite.
Liberals think you, and others like you, should have more help from society than you’ve received. It’s only right, and the least that civilization should do for those in unfortunate (read: “unfair”) situations.
But the Ben Quayles and Sarah Palins of the world would consider you a whiny-ass loser who should just STFU and be grateful for any private charity that may deign to come your way. Or not — too bad, so sad.
That, children, is the difference between liberals and conservatives. The Golden Rule, in action, versus “I’ve got mine — fuck you”. That’s the foundation, the bedrock. All else is commentary.
doctorpsycho1960
I consider it an honor and a duty to pay my taxes. I also consider it an honor and a duty to vote.
Someone once dropped into a conversation the statement, “I’ve never voted. I never had any interest in it.”
I didn’t say anything at the time, but if it had been a blog post, I might very well have commented, “That strikes me as being as incomprehensible — and almost as reprehensible — as an able-bodied adult saying they have no interest in work.”
TuiMel
@gex:
Or those are brilliant entrepreneurs making the most of what the free market gives them. Shame on the fleeced for allowing the fleecing.
Martin Gifford
The assumption behind the “talent or hard work” idea is that we have a level playing field.
In reality, the system suits some people. For example, if you think simply, you will be confident, and confident people succeed. If your thinking is complex, then you are probably sensitive. Complexity and sensitivity don’t get rewarded in this system, even though it indicates higher evolution. This is ironic because Darwinism is supposed to reward higher evolution.
Martin Gifford
@catclub:
Corporations can be categorised as one of the institutions that are needed to stop the worst behaviour of inherently evil humanity. So if corporations do the wrong thing, it’s to stop the badness of socialism, for example, so it has good intentions and is therefore good.
Mumphrey
Something that’s often puzzled me is how so many conservatives who froth at the mouth when somebody talks about how poor people have it hard here (“That’s class warfare!” “You’re just a lazy bum looking for a handout!”), and go on about how awful envy and resentment are, are the same assholes who lose sleep over the thought that somebody, somewhere, no matter how poor, no matter how downtrodden, might be getting a little help that they don’t deserve. It eats them up inside, and it all has to do with envy and resentment, but when they seethe over somebody’s measly unemployment check, or, say, the help that Graeme Frost got a few years ago, well, hey, envy and resentment are just the most Christian and patriotic things ever. They bubble over with envy and resentment even when they don’t lose anything over the help the other gets. It’s weird. I can’t understand what makes people like that think the way they do. My wife tells me I should just forget about it, since I’ll never understand, but I want to understand all the same: Why are they like that? What happened to them? How did they end up that way? Is there anything anybody can do to help them?
thomas Levenson
@Cat Lady: I think that’s the nicest thing that anyone’s said to me in weeks. As for the foliage, hair today, goon tomorrow.
maus
@catclub:
Corporations are made up of PRODUCTIVE people not parasites, and their profits always trickle down to the middle-class.
Acharn
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s called “Calvinism.” Very popular in Switzerland in the early 17th Century. Later became known as “Puritanism.” Brought to Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower. See Cotton Mather. Also Salem Witch Trials.
Mr Furious
@cleek:
I hear you, guys. The sense of relief of climbing back onto the shore after being on a sinking ship or out in the water is unbelievably profound. I had to leave N.C. and return to Michigan—of all places—for my new job, and we are finally settling in after months of upheaval, but it is all worth it.
Congratulations to you both, and I’m happy it worked out for you to stay put as well.
Martin Gifford
@Mumphrey:
Maybe it’s like sibling rivalry. As kids, they were having it good for a while, but then mum’s and/or dad’s attention switched to somebody else. So they want things to go back to the way they were – back to the golden time when they were the most important thing in mum and/or dad’s eye.
4jkb4ia
I think what Cletus is getting at is that the objects of these people’s envy simply disclose their materialism. These people would never say something like “I envy Ta-Nehisi Coates because he got Lorin Stein to guestblog for him” because Lorin Stein probably doesn’t make enough money.
(Not envying other people’s material possessions was the object of a shiur I attended some years ago)
4jkb4ia
@Southern Beale:
Really? The DCCC wanted me to give $5. I felt very sorry for them, but I was not giving Travis Childers the money.
4jkb4ia
@Mike in NC:
Mazel tov!
RockingJamboree
@cleek: Tell that to Paris Hilton.