Everyone is goading me to mock Bobo’s ode to moderation, so I will. I’m not a Fisker by trade, so I’ll just give one particularly odious example of what’s wrong with it:
The moderate does not believe that there are policies that are permanently right. Situations matter most. Tax cuts might be right one decade but wrong the next. Tighter regulations might be right one decade, but if sclerosis sets in then deregulation might be in order.
Regulation is one issue where I have to think most people have to know what is being regulated and how it is being regulated before they decide whether they’re for the regulation. The 27 percenters probably oppose any and all regulation, but I have never met anyone who is reflexively for any and all regulation, much less someone who was for any and all regulation last decade but now believes in deregulating things.
I get that Bobo and some other narcissists get off on the idea that they’re bigger than the game, of no clique or party, bound neither to cause nor state and all that (even as they shill incessantly for some special interest or ideological movement). But sometimes I wonder: do they actually care about anything beyond the sanctity of their own beautiful minds? Does it bother Bobo that, for all his carefully reasoned moderate Burkean centrist thought, he spent years fellating a president who is now widely regarded as the worst of the last fifty years? That he supported a disastrous war?
I suspect it does, if only because it affected how others see him. That may be why he’s retreated from pure right-wing agit prop to the safer arena of meaningless musings and concern trolling. It’s riskier to take a political position than it is to take an inoffensive meta-position.
I’ve never understood the point of being conservative or liberal or moderate. I always thought the point was to advocate for certain policies, and against others, to advocate for certain candidates and political organizations, and against others.
What’s the point of patting yourself on the back for your supposed intellectual independence, then doing nothing while your nation burns?
jibeaux
I always say I’m unapologetically liberal, and the reason I don’t apologize is because I’m RIGHT.
TenguPhule
Why the cocktail weenies and being able to blow only the finest entitled pricks of course. What matters a nation when there are poor bastards to kick around? There’s always another host to move on to once the current one is a husk, provided you’re a rich enough parasite.
Another Halocene Human
DougJ, it’s simple, Bobo is offering yet another apology for Republican ideology. The idea that “regulations” as an abstract are “bad” is, as you state, meaningless. It’s a slogan used to cover the capture of government agencies by the industries they are supposed to regulate, not the mention the capture of the two houses of congress by powerful big business.
DMCA was a powerful piece of regulation which you don’t see movement conservatives railing against (and a terrible piece of regulation, too, imo).
Democrat Partisan Asshole
Ask a firebagger. They do it every fucking day.
At least Libertarians vote for the Republican. That’s “doing something”, rather than the nihilism indulged in by the small but inordinately vocal followers of St. Jane.
Chris
If that’s true, which it probably is, then the author of this sentence should be ragging on the right. They’re the ones who believe tax cuts are always, always, always necessary, no matter what the situation and no matter what the context, and tax hikes should never, ever, ever happen, no matter the situation and no matter the context.
eric
A moderate is one who believes that the current system needs adjustments only on the margins and only every so often and only in ever so small increments and only when there is consensus and only when the consensus is among the people that matter and only when the people that matter are other moderates.
Q.E.Fucking.D.
dr. bloor
Great FSM, he can’t even build a good strawman.
What a fuckwit.
Sarah, Proud and Tall
Wonderful.
ETA: David Brooks is a dickhead.
MikeBoyScout
I’ve never understood the point of being conservative or liberal or moderate. I always thought the point was to advocate for certain policies, and against others, to advocate for certain candidates and political organizations, and against others.
Right on brother!
There’s one side that would like it all to come down to labels to push a policy forward and there’s another side which looks around at those who push policies that make sense like them and takes the label or not.
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
BGinCHI
I don’t disagree, Doug, but what you’re missing is that what Bobo and all the other right wing pundits do (and several left-leaning ones) is defend the status quo.
They are The Establishment; they have high incomes; they do not have much experience working with anyone below their education and income level. So even if they advocate for what they think of as “moderation,” this is a disaster for people who are more vulnerable than they are.
The old saying really applies: if you aren’t part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.
Alexandra
Lump that in with Sully’s incessant mewling in the Widener Library, that Obama is a conservative, because Sully approves, it’s enough to drive anyone to distraction.
Screw them all. Can’t wait until election night. In my bones, I suspect that this is going to be a solid Obama victory which will hopefully shut a few people up, including my perennial wanker: Clive Fucking Crook.
danimal
[email protected]
It’s because you don’t think of politics as a game. You care about what the policies will do for you and your community. These insufferable pricks like Bobo just want to win the game. It’s team conservative vs. team liberal, and they don’t give a damn about the consequences.
Cassidy
It’s biological.
Culture of Truth
What’s the point of patting yourself on the back for your supposed intellectual independence, then doing nothing while your nation burns?
It pays pretty well.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Bobo’s not self-aware enough to answer this, so I’m going to answer it for him: It will cost him nothing if the world burns, so the entire point is to keep his lifestyle of getting paid to tell other people how awesome he is.
Joey Giraud
It’s impossible to be truly moderate, as a real moderate should be moderate with their moderation.
eric
@danimal: moderates are winning. conservative pundits are winning. they have no motivation to change the system so that they win less. “to the Pitchforks, Robin.”
danimal
@danimal: Oops, I’m wrong. It’s 3MDougJ, not DougJ3M. My point about conservatives looking at politics as a game most definitely stands.
Culture of Truth
What might be right for you..
may not be right for some
it takes diff’rent strokes…
Higgs Boson's Mate
Between qualifiers and weasel words Brooks could have saved himself some effort by simply writing, “I’m not always right, but I’m never wrong.”
reflectionephemeral
I always think of this post from Henry at Crooked Timber about Clive Crook:
I also always liked this old parody of David Brooks:
Bob2
Such a Manichean Monster you are DougJ!
amk
pundtwits = the bane of murka.
Snarki, child of Loki
Hey, those fiddles aren’t going to play themselves, you know!
SatanicPanic
It’s funny to me to hear Romney say “Government doesn’t create jobs” There’s no reason to say this besides ideology, because it’s so obviously false. Does the left even have an ideology anymore?
Just Some Fuckhead
It seems like all we ever do is fisk, argue, explain, analyze and agonize. Maybe we should just point and laugh. Laughter is good for you, agony is bad for you.
Just Some Fuckhead
@SatanicPanic:
Yep, the Republican agenda from 20 years ago.
Ben Cisco
Bobo write garbage, garbage get published, Bobo get paid.
Anything beyond that is just overthinking.
Bobo is simply Piss Boy without the charm, grace, wit, backbone, or moral core.
ranchandsyrup
Bobo and Noonerz may have both taken DougJ’s master troll seminar as well. They’re trolling the living hell out of me today. Fuckers.
drlemur
If he honestly believed what he wrote, he’d be neck-deep in the tank for Obama. Obama’s moderation is what drives the actual liberal/progressive people in the party crazy.
NonyNony
@SatanicPanic:
I’m sure it does, but since this country hasn’t had a functional Left in something approaching 40 years, I couldn’t tell you what it might be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I guess I should read BoBo’s whole column before commenting, but life is short, I have a few things to do today, I don’t think BoBo’s entitled to fairness, and I’m a nobody blog commenter, so I’ll comment:
I don’t think anybody whose opinion BoBo cares about, from Gail Collins and Mark Shields and EJ Dionne, to his neighbors in Totebagger Park, think any less of him for his support of Bush and the Iraq War. Those who think less of him are probably disappointed that he works for the Enemy, and hasn’t gone full spittle-flecked about the Kenyan Usurper. And most of those probably recognize his useful idiot value among upscale ‘socially liberal but fiscally conservative’ types.
I can’t decide if I think any less of him than I did pre-Bush. I knew he was a smug, superficial, two-faced fraud way back when I read the Atlantic excerpt of “Bobos in Paradise”. His support of the Iraq War was utterly predictable, as were his mewling self-romanticizing and self-aggrandizing attempts to couch it in terms of a humanitarian liberty crusade, all a lot of pious baloney (which phrase proves that even Newt Gingrich had a fleeting moment of utility in this marvelous and ever changing world)
Paul
@SatanicPanic:
I guess Mr Romney thinks that all those men/women in the military don’t have jobs. He must think they do it for free.
Villago Delenda Est
Proper regulation enables the invisible hand to function as Adam Smith described; Smith acknowledges this, while at the same time, deploring regulation designed by the 1% to make sure no one else can join them.
This is indeed a “moderate” approach, but it’s one that Bobo has no knowledge of, because like most Village vermin, he’s too stupid to have read and understood The Wealth of Nations. Smith was a Marxist before Marx was fucking born.
SatanicPanic
@NonyNony: The broader left- liberals, progressives, etc. I would call it make stuff better however you can, but that’s not really an ideology per se. Just weird to hear Republicans repeating things that are so out of touch with reality because their ideology dictates they must. It’s like listening to Communists.
Lurking Canadian
Sir William LucasMr. David Brooks had been formerly intradepunditry inMerytonNew York, where he had made a tolerable fortune… he had removed with his family to a house about a mile fromMerytonWashington denominated from that periodLucasBrooks Lodge, where he could think with pleasure of his own importance, and, unshackled bybusinessideology, occupy himself solely in being civil to all the world.The most excellent Miss Austen knew everything about everybody, even those of us born two hundred years after her.
Paul
I don’t get why those pundits/village idiots who were wrong about the Iraq war still have jobs as pundits/village idiots. They squandered their credibility.
trollhattan
To be sure, environmental protection policies need to be revisited every few years or so, because the starburst of a “renewal and reflection” decade of relaxed regulation could spark a brushfire of extinctions; cancer cases; enhanced river, lake and groundwater toxicity and forest die-offs that every moderate can applaud. Also, too, how about occasionally closing down the FDA and CDC?
trollhattan
Also, too, I was among the throngs waiting for DougJ to get back to bidnez, since Benen, Pierce and Wang have all been getting into his mess recently.
Today’s Benen, here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/today-in-moderate-republican-denial.html
Dave
OT: were you trolling the WaPo editorial chat earlier today? http://live.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-2012-presidential-endorsement-obama-121026.html
Because frankly, half the questions had me snickering, sure that it was a DougJ plant.
Jewish Steel
What my esteemed colleague DougJ fails to mention is that we do live in a fallen, depraved world destined for the fire.
pseudonymous in nc
“Moderation” is a posture, no less ideological than any other political posture, and arguably more so, because it pretends to be something it’s not.
Redshift
Those who talk about “regulation” in general, like those who talk about “entitlements” are always anti-government types pretending to be “moderates.” With taxes, at least tax rates are vaguely reasonable to treat as a singular concept, but regulation? Treating, say, regulation of insurance companies, regulation of air traffic, etc. as part of an amorphous thing that is only to be judged on more vs. less, and furthermore, that more vs. less for all such things might depend on the decade is simply not a serious argument. It’s just cover for pretending not to take sides while still tarring the other side with a straw-man.
Bill E Pilgrim
It occurred to me reading today’s Bobo column that you could basically string together collections of sentences like this in almost infinite variations:
People have long argued about whether […] is better than not […], and this debate continues today. I recently read a book in which someone argued in favor of […] and pointed out that it’s part of human nature. In any case it’s clear that both sides have opinions about […] and choosing a moderate position which I define as “doing nothing” is clearly the wise choice, most especially in that it will allow […] to continue unabated.
And then fill every bracket with the phrase “letting Republicans grab all of the money for themselves”, and that would generate a David Brooks column that even his editors would believe he wrote.
Turgidson
Jesus fucking christ, if I have to read one more moderate/centrist/independent/libertarian bullshit artist high-mindedly explain that liberal orthodoxy believes in higher taxes and more regulation as end goals unto themselves…god dammit I hate reading that shit.
Fuckers like Bobo, who have spent their entire careers playing footsie with rightwing extremists who really do believe the opposite (lower taxes = ALWAYS good! less regulation = ALWYAS good!) and always always fucking ALWAYS siding with those crazies when the pressure is on, can go die in a fire while covered in flesh-eating termites and drinking Drano. Just because the team Bobo plays for is a bunch of know-nothing zealots doesn’t mean the other team is too. But that’s his whole fucking schtick and how he sleeps at night.
Maybe there’s a few dozen leftist fucks, somewhere, who really do believe that taxes should be as high as possible and everything should be regulated to the fullest extent. I’ve never met one. And I live in fucking San Francisco.
SatanicPanic
@Paul: Or the businesses that spring up next to military bases? It’s just silly. It’s like arguing “Capitalism always fails!” Uh not on a timeline the neo-communists are going to find convenient. I don’t know why the news doesn’t find this more remarkable. I mean I do know why, but, well, nevermind.
Roger Moore
I would take it one step further back. The point is to have an idea of the society you want to live in, and advocate whatever policies and candidates seem to be taking you in the direction of that society. In that sense, Brooks is probably right; you have to recalibrate the policies you’re advocating based on their actual effects on society. Of course, sometimes that will take the form of advocating a compromise position because it’s achievable rather than holding out for a perfect solution.
Marc
You missed the best sentence Doug:
“She’s probably going to have a pretty eclectic mix of policies: some policies from the Democratic column to reduce inequality, some policies from the Republican column to reduce debt. ”
Can you tell me what these Republican debt-reducing policies are? Because I haven’t seen any evidence that Republicans reduce debt, nor is there any specific evidence from the current Republican candidate that they will do anything but increase debt…
Redshift
@SatanicPanic:
It’s funnier to hear him say “Government doesn’t create jobs. Elect me and I’ll create 12 million jobs!”
Or it would be, if nearly half the country didn’t think it’s not funny at all.
Nylund
Certain people certainly act awfully close to that, but only in the abstract. Ask them if they like the regulation that prevents paint, children’s toys, and car exhaust from having lead in it. Ask them if they preferred the coasts of Santa Barbara back when the beaches were covered with oil derricks or when spilled oil from the sea coated the sand. Ask them if they like the regulation requiring car dealers to put MSRP stickers on the windows, or the ones that make sure the items at the grocery stores have their ingredients listed.
I’m of the opinion that most people actually like and support the vast majority of regulations. They just don’t really know it because the regulations work so well they never deal with the problem being prevented. Without having to deal with the problem, they aren’t even aware there is a problem to be concerned about. But hey, scrap the lead regulations and allow more lead-filled children’s toys from China to flood our toy stores and you’ll hear people scream, “Why didn’t the government prevent this and protect us!”
The only regulations ever discussed are the problematic ones. As such, when we think of “regulations” we only think of the ones that don’t work well and our thoughts suffer from a huge selection bias. We associate the notion of “regulations” with those problematic ones, not the multitude that work so well we never even notice or discuss. We just take them for granted. That is, until all of a sudden, you can set your tap water on fire.
Lurking Canadian
@Marc: Sure. All serious people agree that the first thing that needs to be done to reduce government debt is cut tax rates 20% across the board and eliminate taxes on capital gains and inheritances. That will immediately lead to deficit reduction of …
Hmmm… I seem to have misplaced a negative sign somewhere. I’ll try again.
Roger Moore
@Paul:
I think that if they were really pressed, they’d probably admit that people hired by the government really do have jobs. What they really mean is that there’s no way for MOTU parasites like Mitt to profit from Government jobs, so they don’t count.
Redshift
@Turgidson:
They have never existed. The idea that liberals believe that doesn’t come from anything said by any liberal, it comes from conservative “logic” that says “We believe X. Liberals disagree, therefore they must believe the exact opposite.”
Conservatives believe in cutting taxes for its own sake. Liberals don’t, therefore liberals must believe in raising taxes, unconnected to any purpose.
Conservatives hate regulation. Liberals don’t, therefore liberals must want to regulate everything just because they loooove having government interfere in your life!
Really, it says more about the shallowness of modern conservative ideas (and their inability to accept that anyone else could be otherwise) than anything else.
PeakVT
Remember, folks, Brooks’ job title is “Right-wing Turd Polisher.” Whatever he says or writes is an attempt to put a better gloss on individual policies and politicians, or the right-wing as a whole.
AA+ Bonds
I agree with this wholeheartedly which is why, given the brutally anti-factual ideology of conservatives and the sclerotic quarter-measure uselessness of liberals, the only correct choice in the United States is the Left
If the facts were different, I would be a liberal or conservative, but we have to deal with the situation as it exists
In different ways, the Left represents true moderation (adherence to the situation), true liberalism (the defense of liberal institutions that liberal elites refuse to defend), and true conservatism (the skeptical investigation of policies before they are implemented).
Dan
@reflectionephemeral: That McSweeney’s piece is gold.
Another Halocene Human
@Democrat Partisan Asshole: Don’t forget St. Jill, too pure for this world &cet.
These people need a cult to join. Are you listening, Larouchies?
Southern Beale
I just saw on Twitter that Cokie Roberts ate lunch at Applebee’s. I wonder if Bobo was with her. Or perhaps I have my Villagers mixed up.
Anyway, guess what you guys they TOTALLY found the whitey tape! Er, the blackey tape! Er, there’s this PROOF that Barack Obama was born in Kenya because someone found a Super 8 film of it, even though Super 8 wouldn’t be invented until 1965, 4 years after Obama was born. But pay no attention to details!!!
Turgidson
@Redshift:
Oh I agree. It doesn’t bother me when right-wing morans say things like that. They’re morans and part of their modern ideology is to believe, say and do things that piss liberals off. Did I mention they’re morans, also too?
It’s the faux-intellectual, wannabe above-it-all “look at me I’m so moderate and independent” crowd saying shit like that that drives me batty. Brooks is perhaps the most obnoxious in this regard, especially considering he’s every bit the GOP hack that some douche like Krauthammer is. Heck, one of the first posts our old pal ED Kain made here during his front page stint said more or less the exact same thing re liberals-love-taxes-and-regs (and was taken to task big time in the comments, of course).
I don’t know why this particular trope pisses me off so much, but I just can’t fucking stand it.
Another Halocene Human
@eric: I consider myself a moderate because I’m surrounded by people talking revolution and revolution favors the lucky and the vicious and harms the weak, the poor, women, the well-meaning, etc.
A few years ago I started calling myself a radical moderate, because I believe in radical change, but reject armed conflict as the means.
I don’t know what I call myself now. A Democrat? I think Obama and the grassroots progressives have shown us how the party can be saved… if we can keep it.
Brachiator
@Paul:
Too easy. William Safire established the principle that a pundit does not ever have to be correct about his or her judgments.
Punditry is like an Oxford Debate, a forum for intellectual masturbation disconnected from facts or reality.
It’s kinda like newspapers and web sites which publish psychics’ predictions for the year. Inevitably, they are almost totally wrong. And inevitably, editors come back to them for their next round of predictions.
A modest proposal: any pundit, or blogger, who is significantly wrong about his or her major predictions should be prohibited from publishing anything for the following year, and if they are high profile, should be banned from speaking gigs for the same term.
SatanicPanic
@Redshift: Well yeah, he’s going to create those jobs by adding who knows how much to the military budget. The military that is somehow not part of the government. I’m just tired of listening to these robots parroting the same stupid lines.
AA+ Bonds
@Democrat Partisan Asshole:
Oh shit it must be 2007, I’ll have to correct my calendar
If liberals are going to attack the left they might as well muster the courage to avoid made-up slurs
handy
@Southern Beale:
LOL. And just what in Gaia’s earth is that?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
From the WaPo chat with Kaplan Uber-Douche Fred Hiatt, and I don’t think this is parody. My favorite part in italics, beacuse that could come from David Gregory of Glenn Kessler:
I’m still reeling from the moment in the first debate. “No economist can say my plan will increase the deficit if I say it won’t!”
Another Halocene Human
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Bobo’s not self-aware enough to answer this, so I’m going to answer it for him: It will cost him nothing if the world burns, so the entire point is to keep his lifestyle of getting paid to tell other people how awesome he is.
A-ha-ha-ha, you’ve missed the point of his whole shtick. Bobo is a courtesan. He’s paid to tell other [that is: rich and comfortable] people how awesome they are.
Bobo’s in Paradise was all about how genius, sensitive, imbued of good taste, beautiful, and loveable wealthy boomers are and how they are God’s gift to the world and the US economy.
muddy
I have a friend who frequently tells me I am the smartest person she knows. My reply to this is that she must just know a lot of stupid people then. Also she says how much she admires me for doing research on political issues, and not just picking some BS on the radio. These compliments are so nice…
And then my head explodes. Because she votes Republican. So according to her, I am the smartest, and I do the most research of anyone she knows, but I am entirely wrong. WTF
Joel
@reflectionephemeral: Crook is also proud to flog his phony-baloney blue collar aesthetic while mentioning that he went to Oxford in the same breath. He is less than worthless.
AA+ Bonds
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Gregory knows this is a lie and does not care; elections turn Democrats and Republicans alike into willful idiots and we have entered an era where the election cycle never ends
Another Halocene Human
@reflectionephemeral: His tribalism is one of the center rather than the partisan left or right, but it is perhaps more pernicious for being completely unselfconscious.
Pretty words, but it’s really quite simple. Rich, privileged people resent the passion of those whose lives will be profoundly affected by the careless roll of the rich, privileged people’s juggernaut. How annoying (and unserious). Hence the mansplaining, whitesplaining, heterosplaining….
NonyNony
@Southern Beale:
No you’ve got it. I wonder if Cokie ate at that world famous Applebee’s Salad Bar that Bobo liks so much.
Jeebus – these guys will fall for the most basic grifts. I wonder how much that guy got paid for that video.
And that reminds me – where’s my goddamn whitey tape? I’ve been waiting four years for a whitey tape and I still don’t have it.
Southern Beale
BTW there is something funky going on with Cokie Roberts’ Twitter feed. Girl wants some Applebee’s but baaaad.
Check it out.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Another Halocene Human: True, but he is part of that set. You probably could have fixed my text by ending it with “at giving blowjobs to the wealthy.”
Steeplejack
@Jewish Steel:
That never gets old.
Southern Beale
@NonyNony:
Also the “baby” is big enough to be a 3 year old but cover him in vaseline and you’ve got yourself a ginormous newborn.
Seriously, as gullible as these twits are I can’t believe someone hasn’t tried to pwn them BIG time on this.
Another Halocene Human
@drlemur: If he honestly believed what he wrote, he’d be neck-deep in the tank for Obama. Obama’s moderation is what drives the actual liberal/progressive people in the party crazy.
I had this very argument last night! Dude claims Obama has the same power as Bush, so why didn’t he fire all of Bush’s hires in the DOJ?
A) No, Obama does not have the same power as Bush. Jesus.
B) Obama doesn’t believe in continuing the executive overreach. He’s de-escalated the hysteria and abuse of power.
B totally sailed over this dude’s head. (But he’s totally voting Obama so I don’t care.)
trollhattan
@handy:
Actual answer would require a preamble, such as, “When dinosaurs roamed the earth, with Kentuckians on their backs….”
Speaking of film [hah!] James Lipton has another go at finding the real Willard today.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/10/james-lipton-human-search-for-real-romney.html
JoyfulA
@Dave: I never saw Fred Hiatt’s picture before. I thought he was at least twice that old.
Another Halocene Human
@NonyNony: I’m sure it does, but since this country hasn’t had a functional Left in something approaching 40 years, I couldn’t tell you what it might be.
Corporations aren’t people.
Stop climate change.
Universal health care.
Economic policy as if people matter.
Land rights/sovereignty for indigenous peoples worldwide.
I could go on. There are a number of fairly uncontroversial, strongly-held left positions. Of course, there are plenty of lefties who believe weird things like “End the Fed” and “Chemtrails” and so on and so forth. The best organization is in single-issue advocacy and most of those groups tend to reach across the ideological spectrum to advance that issue, so from what I can see there isn’t much of an organized Left per se. Plenty of progressives are plugged into Left voices, and the progressives do organize and fundraise and vote. I hope that continues because somebody needs to push back against the corporate-sellout, medieval death porn wanking Religious Right.
Lurking Canadian
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
\
This point is actually sufficiently complicated that it requires some thought and some actual mathematics, which is probably why it’s beyond the ken of most pundits.
It is not impossible that government revenues went up after Bush and Reagan cut taxes. Suppose that the GDP in year 1 is G1, and the GDP in year 2 is G2, and between years 1 and 2 there was a rate cut from R to r. Then, this is only a claim that RG1 < rG2, which is entirely possible, depending on the relationships of R,r,G1 and G2.
It's meaningless, though. The interesting question, which is counterfactual and therefore subject to all sorts of ideological wanking is how much revenue would the government have had if they hadn't cut rates (R G2'). And that hasn't even gotten into the question of what it does to the government's fiscal position, which also requires us to know something about the inflation rate, the government’s spending patterns and the economic conditions.
To me, the kicker is that the Bush era tax cuts were sold as “the government has too much of your money” and “we’re paying back the national debt too fast”. Pretty fucking obviously, they were not designed to increase government revenues.
Amir Khalid
Here’s what I make of David Brooks’ column. Our friend appears to believe that all issues can be resolved by political negotiation. Taking into account of the current fads in political thinking, one pulls together preferred solutions from the left and the right to form a politically moderate whole that is pleasing to David Brooks.
But running a national economy, managing the environment, budgeting for a nation’s defence, these are technical issues. A lot of governing issues are. With technical issues, you don’t negotiate a solution; you work one out. Then you take it to the boss and say, “This is what we gotta do.” A solution is the right one because it’s what the math (or the science) says to do, not because it’s ideologically or politically “moderate”. Politicise that process, reject an approach that doesn’t suit your ideology/politics, and the solution can get compromised or FUBARed.
Lordwhorfin
“He decided . . . to wear his Thorn of Clows . . . ”
With apologies to Echo and various Bunnymen.
Another Halocene Human
@Paul: I guess Mr Romney thinks that all those men/women in the military don’t have jobs. He must think they do it for free.
Considering what non-active duty used to get paid when I lived in Virginia near the bases, that’s practically true.
ETA: erg, maybe I mean active duty but non combat. Whatever, you know something’s wrong when there’s a payday loan industry dedicated to extracting every last penny out of struggling military families.
Another Halocene Human
@Paul: I don’t get why those pundits/village idiots who were wrong about the Iraq war still have jobs as pundits/village idiots. They squandered their credibility.
Haven’t we already transitioned to a system where TV news is not profitable and is instead a corporate-funded propaganda program?
ericblair
@Another Halocene Human:
It’s a hard job. You’ve got to hold a just-out-of-high-school E1 upside down in one hand and shake every last nickel out of his pockets, while waving an oversized novelty American flag in the other. Tiring work.
I’ve only seen a couple of people on the Intertubes who were for blindly increasing spending and increasing regulation, and it was fairly obvious that these were just anti-wingnuts as opposed to progressives. There is no real opposite position to the Wingnut Standard Creed, because that’s as stupid as the wingnut one is.
Another Halocene Human
@Turgidson: Maybe there’s a few dozen leftist fucks, somewhere, who really do believe that taxes should be as high as possible and everything should be regulated to the fullest extent.
They’ve all switched to being neocons or religious reich-ardes because they’re authoritarian followers who need Daddy or Mommy’s asphyxiating embrace and the fall of Communism ruined leftyism for them.
Lurking Canadian
@Amir Khalid: But Comrade! Surely the dialectic has the answer to all of our problems!
Sly
If someone thinks they’re “bigger than the game,” all that says about them is that the results of “the game” are inconsequential to them on practical terms. It’s all ego and personal identity. Their opinions, therefor, should warrant absolutely no consideration from people whose lives will be meaningfully impacted by those results.
And I wonder why it is that people who lack any and all interest in retail politics and its effects on public policy, particularly as it relates to the everyday lives of actual human beings, never developed the skills needed for, or the inclination toward, political organization. Also, too, why aren’t there any 300 lb. racehorse jockeys?
Another Halocene Human
@AA+ Bonds: In different ways, the Left represents true moderation (adherence to the situation), true liberalism (the defense of liberal institutions that liberal elites refuse to defend), and true conservatism (the skeptical investigation of policies before they are implemented).
Depends what you mean by “the Left”. I guess if you mean “intelligent people who aren’t paid 7 figures to be mandarins to the MIC on the teevee box,” then, yes. But if you mean the self-identified left, I see a lot of people who think vaccines are a corporate conspiracy that removes their real blood and replaces it with something unpure and who will happily consume mycotoxins because everyone knows that organic food is better and who waste their moral outrage on human beings eating meat because I guess suffering and mortality are optional if you are pure and spiritual enough. Meh.
Roger Moore
@Turgidson:
I sometimes wonder if it might be a good idea to tax the highest incomes at above the revenue maximizing rate as a way of discouraging excessive concentration of wealth. Maybe it would be better if you applied that rule only to capital gains, rather than to ordinary income, since that’s the main way that people get to be ultra-wealthy in the first place. It’s not something I’m sure about, but I think it’s at least worth considering as a social policy.
AA+ Bonds
@Another Halocene Human:
Yes, all those people with straw tumbling out of their shirtsleeves and pants legs
AA+ Bonds
Absolutely bitchin’ stealth-evangelical Libya-conspiracy top headline on FoxNews.com right now, with Ambassador Stevens cast as Christ and Obama cast as Peter
(Link is to a capture, not the site)
This is matched by a FoxNation headline that attempts to pit Clinton voters against Obama over Libya and I am wondering if they have completely lost sight of who reads FoxNation
Another Halocene Human
@Roger Moore:
Or just bust up these estates at death. Of course you would need to tax before that point because once these families become powerful enough they have their own way to shut that whole intergenerational wealth transfer tax thing down. Like those Alaska trusts. Only for very special robber-baron era richie rich families.
I agree that the wealth concentration is harmful. In fact that shouldn’t be controversial. Just look at the evidence. Even the Founding Fathers (argument from authority here) looked at the European experience and were quite suspicious of wealth concentration.
Another Halocene Human
@AA+ Bonds: Yes, all those people with straw tumbling out of their shirtsleeves and pants legs
You’re right, that whooping cough outbreak never happened and even if it did, it was caused solely by mouthbreathing right wing Christianist fundies. No highly educated, upper middle class, I’m-so-special-my-farts-smell-like-strawberries parents involved in the slightest.
You can tell by the zip codes affected.
Chris
@AA+ Bonds:
American liberalism, what America calls “the left,” was a moderate compromise from the start. It took from both sides of the Democratic/Republican divide (economic populism from the Dems, civil rights from the GOP) and from the capitalist/socialist divide (keep all the wealth-generating engine from capitalism but temper it with a humanist ethic borrowed from socialism) in an effort to create something that wasn’t guided by ideology so much as by looking at what worked and applying it no matter which part of the spectrum it came from.
The ultimate result was FDR/Truman and the thirty years of “liberal consensus” that followed, which was still noticeably to the right of the social-democratic consensus you had in Europe (which was itself plenty moderate and centrist compared to what the Communists and the hard right on either side of it were, with significant public support, still calling for).
What America calls its “left,” or increasingly its “extreme left,” are the people who want to defend and build on that moderate/pragmatic tradition. What America calls its “conservatives” are the people who want to tear it all down and impose an ideological dogma as rigid and blind as Soviet communism, for reasons better left to psychologists than political scientists to explain.
So yes, Brook’s column is unintelligible gibberish to anyone who knows shit from peanut butter (as all here have already said).
Kerry Reid
For some inexplicable reason, BoBo is giving the economics lecture at the Chicago Humanities Festival this year. The only way I’d see that is if he were delivering it over a dunk tank.
Chris
@AA+ Bonds:
So who’s Judas?
schrodinger's cat
Bobo is a charlatan, he is not a voice of moderation, he was always out there schilling for Bush when he was the President.
I am sure he will do the same if Romney is the President, everything else, the paeans to moderation, the polite and reasonable demeanor is just a smoke screen to fool the gullible totebaggers. Remember that he got his journalistic start at the neocon publication The Weekly Standard. He is much more dangerous than the Limbaugh, because many are fooled by his oh so reasonable schtick.
Tom Q
Okay,OT, but could this be a more perfect contrarian Slate headline?:
“Democrats Look Strong in Senate Races — and That’s Terrible for Them”
sherparick
I would note that the 27%, for that matter Brooks and Douthat, are all for regulating women body parts and what they do with them and for that matter what adults of all sexes do when it comes to sexytime.
trollhattan
@Tom Q:
“Penelope Cruz demands I date her; what could be worse?”
Yeah, something like that.
Brachiator
@muddy:
Just because you are the smartest and done the research, doesn’t mean that you are right. Your friend may be offering you a backhanded compliment.
What’s the erroneous assumption that people make, that if someone understands you perfectly, then they must agree with you?
If your friend is not being disingenuous, she may be saying that if she can count on you to bring the best counter-argument and not shake her position, then she must be right, not you.
@Amir Khalid:
The math and the science are rarely as clear as people like to make out, and the boss is the contentious, often truculent mass of the people (in a presumed democracy). This makes the process of articulating and implementing solutions inherently political, not technical.
Also, there is rarely a single best solution to a problem, and there are solutions that please no one.
But the worst solutions are often authoritarian, and wrapped with a false cover of urgency or inevitability or supposedly neutral technical necessity.
Paul
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How Fred Hiatt still have a job is beyond me.
Bush cut taxes and the surplus from Clinton went to a gigantic deficit under Bush.
Hell, if Fred Hiatt’s logic was correct, John Mccain would have been President in 2008.
By the way, using Fred hiatt’s own logic for idiots; Obama has already said that his plan won’t increase the deficit and we already know Romney’s will.
Chris
@muddy:
Intelligence isn’t the only thing people factor in when deciding their politics.
Again, one of the most insightful parts of “To Kill A Mocking Bird” for me was the moment after the trial when Atticus explains to his kids that the reason Ewell’s so mad is that he realizes everyone in that courtroom knew he was full of shit, knew everything he said was a lie, and they hold him in even deeper contempt than they did before.
And yet, all of them still support him when push comes to shove. Because he’s white, and you can’t side with a black man against one of your own.
That part of the book comes to my mind every time I see the Republican base apparently swallowing some doublethink crap from Palin or Romney that’s so egregious a five year old would catch it. Moral of the story – 1) don’t assume the “rubes” are as dumb as they seem, but 2) don’t assume that just because they’re not that dumb, you can win them over.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Did Political Observer get banned, or just not get his contract renewed?
Chris
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Try and turn out the lights, stand in front of a mirror and say his name three times.
priscianusjr
@Joey Giraud:
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Might work in Ohio. I was thinking maybe whatever political consulting firm bills him out as a “social media expert”, for got told to send him where he might actually make a difference.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
She could still admire your rigor in deciding what you believe politically but disagree with you.
Hard to change your political beliefs late rin life. Firstly, she’d have to admit she was wrong in previous elections, that people she might have mocked were right.*
And it would mean a change in self-image, from a rugged individualist GOPer to a bleeding heart liberal. Hard to do that beyond a certain age.
Plus, she might be voting based on core beliefs (e.g. religion) where she’s got different axiomatic beliefs from you. Further, changing one’s political views has consequences socially. We’ve had three decades where, post-Reagan, we’ve been encouraged to see voting as an aspect of our aspirational lifestyle, or voting based on our fears of the other, rather than voting for either our true self-interest or for what we think a Good Society would look like. Politics might not matter to her much relative to the disruption changing her views would have on her social life.
I used to come to Balloon Juice and wonder how John could be so amazingly insightful on film and art, but still be be a kinda a douchebag in his politics. He changed, but it’s rare for anyone north of 30 years old to change their views as profoundly as he did.
* This is a big issue I think with current GOP thinking on climate change post-GW Bush – as they now repudiate Bush as not really a conservative, they have to find additional reasons to despise Gore. If they had to admit Gore (and 98% of climatologists) are right on climate change, then they’d have to admit they backed the wrong man in 2000.
Brian
Omg that jackass was on NPR spouting his Obama took a nasty turn at the end bullshit. Fuck you Bobo, its because people like you focus on and ask him about the stupid ass shit Republican Senate canidates say. Obama is a bad bad man for answering a question about what some idiot said about rape.
Chris
Could you imagine what kind of a person would _actually_ believe that regulations were “good” one decade and then “stifling” the next? The amount of cognitive dissonance needed to say, “Well, it _was_ nice that we had clean water, but now that it’s clean, those nasty regulations are preventing people who want to pollute it again.” Holy whiplash, Batman.
Chris
insert “would be staggering.” Thanks.