(Matt Davies via GoComics.com)
Mr. Charles P. Pierce, as always, goes to the rotten heart of the problem:
… A largely unremarked element of the etiology of the prion disease currently afflicting the Republican party — and therefore, alas, the country — is the carefully cultivated, and by now deeply inculcated, sense of conservative victimhood that has been a prime element of conservatism’s emotional appeal since long before Richard Nixon rose to power on it. They are always beset. They are always besieged. They are always surrounded — by intellectuals, by scientists, by the all-powerful Left that exists primarily in their imaginations, because it certainly doesn’t exist in American politics, and hasn’t since the days of Joe McCarthy. Culturally, this always has been expressed partly by the endless conservative bleating that somebody, somewhere is getting laid. The Gospels tell us that the gates of hell will not prevail against Christ’s church. The Republicans find their faith imperiled by Barney Frank’s marriage. There is always a shadow on the wall, a monster in the closet, a mysterious rustling in the teeming underbrush of the conservative Id.
In my lifetime alone, I’ve seen Nixon play this like a violin, Goldwater delegates proudly chanting their sagebrush songs of rebellion, Agnew intimidate the media with their own intellectual achievement, as though an advanced degree was smuggling drugs, and now this bunch, the natural heirs to decades of conservatives who have fought the dragons in their own minds, and who, like Marlin Stutzman, seem mystified that they have not yet been awarded the Order Of The Legion Of Courage. Vainglorious louts, driving the nails into their own palms…
Waspuppet
Precisely so. For all their jokes about self-esteem and the everybody-gets-a-trophy mentality, conservatism is about nothing but feelings and a demand for an Intellectual Participation Trophy.
TriassicSands
No political party, in fact no group of people — large or small — has ever been as unfairly persecuted as the Modern Republican Party. It’s a wonder they have the courage to face each new, torture-filled day. Led by such heroic figures as Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, the Republicans are an inspiration to us all.
Mustang Bobby
We should get each one of them their very own crown of thorns.
Mino
I don’t know why Europe is importing Turks and Arabs for unskilled labor at nothing. Why not import Americans? We work for practically nothing. Don’t ask for healthcare or education either.
Botsplainer
@Waspuppet:
Correct. Not only must Conservatives be allowed to rule, they must be constantly praised in all things that they do, and their intellectual forebears must be praised, too. No mention of failure or corruption can be tolerated, their victims of policy or nastiness must go on their way and meekly accept the assholery as a natural consequence of life.
This is why Reagan bleated about States Rights in Philadelphia Mississippi in 1980.
This is why conservatives scream about the supposed leftism and anti-conservative attitudes (and seeming Soviet sympathies) among prominent African American civil rights leaders, musicians, writers and academics in the 40s, 50s and 60s. Apparently, like a cowardly, beaten dog licking the hand of the master who has put the club in the other hand, black folks shouldn’t be expected to look elsewhere for help.
This is why the Confederate rag wavers go nuts, and why they still name schools after the traitors.
This is why people with living memories of economic and political segregation aren’t encouraged to talk about it, with some oppressors still living.
Basically, conservatives are Jeeter Lester (Tobacco Road) recklessly running down a black man’s mule cart, killing him, all while claiming that the death comes at the hands of a cold, impersonal universe (the actual line being something like “ni**ers will die, and there’s nothing anybody can seem to do to stop it”).
amk
.
fixt.
bin laden would be so happy. screw the 27 virgins. who needs them, when his life goal is being achieved from within.
JPL
Mike Luckovich has an appropriate cartoon, link. The fine folks from GA won’t understand it, because it’s the president’s fault for not compromising.
WereBear
You know how, in Monty Python and also Fawlty Towers, John Cleese would always be called upon to play the ranting authority figure?
It is my intuition that he was channeling his own father, and this is how he was raised.
A very large part of modern Republicanism is how they were, and are, damaged and miserable people whose culture does not let them admit it or address it.
This is why they want to hurt others so much. This is why they are bullies.
This is why they make no sense.
agrippa
They do consider themselves to be victims. Many do seem to enjoy complaining ( whining) and gossiping ( backbiting). Both seen to be major features of their lives.
Boring.
JPL
Someone is on my tv in tears because they can’t get into a local national park. People died for the right to go into the parks. I always thought that Theodore founded the national park system but who knows really. Maybe it was a ghost of a dead soldier who told him to.
WereBear
I have four siblings and we are split into two liberals and two wingnuts.
And mind you, we had loving parents; just trying circumstances.
But I have always tried to fix my issues, and operate out of my humanitarian convictions, and this has worked for me. My wingnut siblings never let go of grudges and cling to their attitudes even when they are clearly wrong and not-working.
The unexamined life… turns you wingnut.
Aimai
@WereBear: beautifully put.
danielx
@Mustang Bobby:
Win.
geg6
@WereBear:
This. Though, thank FSM, all my siblings are at varying points at the same end of the political spectrum as I am. But among my old friends from childhood, it seems to be the incurious, easily frightened and credulous who turned out to be wingnuts. It is who they are.
Tommy
@JPL: I am a huge camper/hiker. I might cry that I couldn’t go to a park.
MattF
I think a lot of the resentment is inherited– if you’ve grown up with the cultural assumption that education is the road to Hell and that educated people are your enemy, you’re probably not going to do all that well economically. And I’d guess that some of the resentment is quite personal– if you’re smart and creative and have managed to leave that all behind– the people in your cohort that you leave behind probably aren’t going to have positive feelings about you.
tybee
@JPL:
well, i understood it. you understand it. all we need is raven and we’ll have a quorum.
JPL
@tybee: He went to the mountains yesterday and will return in time for the game. There’s a lovely state park system in GA so he has an opportunity for a nice walk.
Tommy
@MattF: I went to school a lot. I was taught it was cool to go to school. You know get a degree or two. My parents are actually Republicans, but I am not allowed to be “stupid” in their household. A few years ago my brother married into a family. At Thanksgiving her father told me Obama wasn’t born in he US. I wanted to go. My dad put his arm on my arm and said I got this. It was both hard to watch and nice.
Emily68
Here’s something nice I’ll say about the wingnuts in the spirit of bipartisanship: They give us good advise with their Gadsden flag, and the hikers all know it. DON’T STEP ON A SNAKE!!
hoodie
@WereBear: I think you’re on the right track, I think that a lot of people have difficulty processing negative emotions and that often expresses itself in destructive political views because that has fewer ramifications than directly action out on those immediately around you. It’s not necessarily restricted to the right, it’s just that’s the more accepted and, thus, dominant mode in this society. It seem to me that most of the radical views you see on either the right or the left stem from some deep seated fears, resentments and feelings of inadequacy.
Ramalama
@WereBear: My parents were liberal Catholics – sort of activist and regular church going. Raised us like that. I have one evangelical sibling who’s die-hard everything I abhor politically & godly but this sib is also very smart and funny and successful and caring.
My other siblings hail from the church of radical to liberal loudmouths.
It might be a personality thing. We each stake out so much territory in being X that there might not have been psychological room for the bible thumper to be anything but a bible thumper.
JPL
A few years ago tea bag people were holding keep the govmint out of my medicare signs. If the repubs default on the debt, what will happen to those very folk who discover that medicare is a government plan? I fear for their health.
WereBear
Heck, my father was a Republican, but he was never mean or cruel; quite the opposite, in fact. He treasured learning, and was actually quite “feminist” in his support of me, his lone daughter.
I swear the first symptom of his impending vascular dementia was when he would park himself on the couch, watch Fox News, and became an angry, ranting, puppet.
Ramalama
@MattF: Does Ted Cruz have Confederate ancestors? If not, did he perhaps absorb the air in the south, the lingering effects of the Civil War, which should really inform War hawks about the US policy in supporting despots? They have no long range vision and yet are mired in the past even today.
MattF
@Ramalama: Cruz has an ancestry issue, but it’s not about the Confederacy:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ted-cruz-s-dad-suggests-obama-is-a-muslim-audio
See also Mel Gibson’s father, and, of course, Rand Paul’s father.
Linda Featheringill
@WereBear:
Yeah. Deterioration of the brain leading to an actual change in personality. Scary, isn’t it?
In defense of your dad, let me say that it’s difficult to remain calm and optimistic in the face of deteriorating abilities. Anger is an attractive reaction in those circumstances.
[And I wonder why my family thinks I am a curmudgeon. :-)]
debbie
@WereBear:
I think the height of this was when Santorum called Obama a snob for wanting to provide every child the opportunity to go to college. How anti-American Exceptionalism was that?
WereBear
@Linda Featheringill: Yes, I totally realize, now that I’m dependent on reading glasses and can’t stay up half the night like I used to, the creeping compromises of old age.
The last way to handle it is denial, yet I see so many go down that road. It leads to bitter irrationality and a further reduction in one’s quality of life.
An instructive example is my beloved paternal grandmother, who reached her 90’s and went into an assisted living situation. She was fiercely independent, but it was hysterical how her weekly calls so quickly changed to, “Guess what, honey? I didn’t do dishes today, and I’m not doing them tomorrow!”
There are joys in every stage of life. Honest.
debbie
@Mustang Bobby:
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/tomwaits/comeonuptothehouse.html
PaulW
@Waspuppet:
By people who think intellectuals are scheming socialists, no less. It’s interesting how this GOP between 2001 to 2006 were so eager to have members and cheerleaders of the Bush / Cheney regime get the Nobel Peace Prize (for, you know, WAGING WAR).
I’ve said it elsewhere: these are people who crave affection and worship not only from within their own circle but from their victims as well. They’re waiting to be recognized as Holy Warriors for the Pax Reaganicus era. They’re Self-Idolaters, making themselves into Golden Calfs every night on TV. And if you don’t give them the respect they haven’t earned, they’ll dismiss you and move on to another network that will stroke their egos better.
gene108
@TriassicSands:
Actually the most oppressed people in America are white heterosexual Christian men. They get no special benefits!
JPL
@PaulW: They also want to return to the good old days of the fifties when people knew their places but without the taxes necessary, to support education and road improvement.
nobadcats
Driving nails into their own palms?
Don’t do it man! You can never put the last nail in yourself, I’ve tried! As Neil from the Young Ones would say.
Eric
I think the pathology goes something like this: i want to be the most popular boy\girl in high school and if i cant be then i will rewrite the criteria so that “you” cant be and it must be me by default. That is why DC sounds sobmuch like school yards. They have stunted emotional growth for a variety of reasons. Some grew up in households that stunted them. Some were in a place in the birth orfer that they are atunted even if te rest of the family is not. Just get a child psyche text book an read along as they babble.
Higgs Boson's Mate
I heard, on the radio, some female GOP Rep. give a tearful floor speech about how children with cancer have been turned away from the NIH and we’ve all heard about the shenanigans involving closed parks and monuments. They’re even victims of themselves now.
Republicans have become habituated to throwing shit on every one and every thing they can then whining publicly about the stench.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy:
So am I. But I wouldn’t cry. I would just go someplace else.
JPL
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: I cry about the uninsured with preexisting conditions being denied insurance coverage.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@JPL:
I cry for a nation where being delusional and militantly stupid has become a pre-qualification for office in one of its two political parties.
hoodie
Speaking of victimology, morning paper has a bunch of letters from folks complaining how their insurance premiums went up under the new exchanges. The theme throughout was these were folks who really didn’t have insurance, either literally or in the form of catastrophic policies with really high deductibles and other lack of coverage. You get the sense that just about every one of them was a car wreck or cancer diagnosis away from being wards of the state. A choice one was a 50 year old woman complaining how she didn’t need insurance for pregnancy, as if that had more to do with her rates than the fact she’s fifty years old. I suspect we’re going to see a lot of that in the upcoming months, and this looked like it was orchestrated.
Huggy Bear
Crybaby-Jackoff syndrome. Infectious and it rots the brain.
WereBear
I’m sure this is orchestrated, because I’m seeing a lot of “I don’t want to pay for mental health coverage!” and the like, which is flat stupid, since these whiners really do need it…
Tokyokie
We joke that Marvin, our Siamese, is the most maltreated cat in history, the way he melodramatically screeches like he’s being eviscerated every time he considers his space being violated by somebody giving him the slightest nudge. But apparently despite all the love and attention we’ve given him, we’ve raised a Republican cat.
MattF
@hoodie: In the real world, on the other hand:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/05/opinion/pent-up-demand-for-health-insurance.html?hp
It’s imperfect and it’s got glitches, but it’s filling a real need. A real need that, somehow, is a big surprise. Hoocudda guessed?
Cacti
What’s going on now is the culmination of 50 years of elected Republicans growing increasingly reactionary and revanchist.
Nixon was well to the left of the Tea Party on domestic policy issues. Even Reagan the government hater was less of an extremist.
scav
And yet all those simple pious weepers about park closures would pour out their perfected indignation, rancor and bile over any endangered critter and effort to set aside some land for it in an instant.
Hillary Rettig
@WereBear: I agree completely. In fact, I now think many of them are motivated by deep shame, probably brought on by childhood trauma. I think shame is what drives the fear, the greed, the cruelty, the contempt for others, the deep lack of empathy, and the general psychopathology.
When I think of the people I know who are right wing they all seem so limited and un-self-aware. Most derive much of their income from the federal govt, and in some cases 100%, but decry government programs. One has effed up his life every which way – you would think common sense, if not human decency, would tell him to shut up and not judge others, but he does, constantly. Plus their very conservativism shuts them off from coping mechanisms, like self-analysis and therapy. (There is a whole literature of books by conservatives decrying therapy.)
In trauma theory there are three participants: victim, perpetrator, and witness. Kids who are victimized often grow up to enact one of those three roles.
I look forward to the day when authoritarian personality is recognized for the disorder it is.
Also, I think Dunning Kruger explains a lot of conservative malignancy.
Randy P
@MattF: From the article:
I have nothing to add. A campaign to encourage young people to be uninsured. I’m just… I can’t finish that sentence.
NotMax
For crucifixion, nails are driven into the wrists, not the palms.
Bozos cannot even do that right.
Pablo
@nobadcats: You could use your forehead. So it’s not totally impossible to drive in that last nail.
Ramalama
Cafeteria Americans.
Cassidy
The party of Lincoln is now the party of Nugent. Cowardice and a victim complex should come as no surprise.
WereBear
That’s the sick thing about being afraid of change, isn’t it? You wind up being unable to change the things you don’t like!
Joey Maloney
@WereBear: I wouldn’t have posted about this, but…my great-aunt, the last survivor of her generation in my family, lived on her own well into her 90s, but then had a fairly rapid progression of dementia and had to go into care. I visited her one time after that point. She came into the lounge, big smile, cheerful as ever, sat down next to me and said, “Well, they tell me you’re my family but I’ve forgotten all that, you’ll have to forgive me, but tell me who you are?” The staff at the facility said she was cheerful and upbeat all the time, despite being well aware of her cognitive deficiencies.
Elizabelle
Enough about these Tea Party losers/New Confederates.
Here’s an LA Times profile of Larry “Sissy” Goodwin of Wyoming, who refuses to be a victim.
He’s been cross dressing for years. And he’s still getting beat up, from time to time.
Also married 45 years, father of two, Viet Nam vet, and teaches machine science at a community college.
His students showed up with pink ribbons in their hair once, in solidarity.
The Tea Party cannot hold back Larry/Sissy, or health insurance, or gay marriage, or equal pay for equal work, or contraception.
They can just make it real difficult for us all.
Cervantes
@WereBear: Your intuition re John Cleese “channeling his own father” may be right (I don’t think it is) but John himself is left of center and has supported Obama — so the Republicans need to find some other excuse for their misbehavior!
TAPX486
Over on CNN there is a Q@A bit with John King and Candy Crowley. One of John Kings answersd’Sometimes at the bleakest moment is when something can be pulled — a rabbit you pull out of a hat, if you will. However, when you talk to people in both parties and top aides close to all of the people involved, from the White House to the Republicans and the Democrats on Capitol Hill, most just don’t see an environment because of the distrust, because of the looming political calendar of 2014 for a big grand bargain that does Medicare, Social Security, tax reform, other entitlements, other spending cuts in the government.
Is there a possibility of a smaller bargain that gets some of the things Republicans want in terms of savings in Medicare and Social Security, some other spending cuts? That is possible in these separate budget agreements.
The question is can you get the government re-opened, raise the debt ceiling and then do those things? Will the Republicans trust the Democrats to do that? Or because of the suspicions, will you have the revolt?’
‘
Now the interesting thing is he totally buys into the idea that reopening the government and raising the debt ceiling is a concession by the GOP which the Democrats have to meet with further spending cuts and other GOP goodies.
He is also .concerned’ that the GOP can’t trust the Democrats but seems to assume that the Democrats should blindly accept everything the GOP says.
Would someone please explain to me, again, that famous ‘liberal media bias’ . King and Crowley might as well be reading from one of Rancid Pribus’s press releases. The entire narrative is in the GOP ballpark. I have a simple solution, rather than going thru these shutdowns to cut gov’t on a piecemeal basis, lets just leave the government shut down forever. See how well that works out for everyone.
If I was traveling overseas, I think I would claim my German heritage. Would be embarrassed to admit to being an Americanm
RevRick
Ugh!
Folks, all this speculation about what makes conservatives tick is pointless masturbation on our part now! Our country and Constitution are at stake. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation and we need to reach out to the general public and inform them of what’s going on: that this is nullificationism, an extra-Constitutional attempt to throw out the rule of law, overturn the election results, reduce the Presidency to a figurehead office and turn us into a tyranny of the minority.
Have you written a letter to the editor of your local paper yet?
We need to stop this attempted coup d’etat in its tracks. Now!
RaflW
@amk:
Totally blows my mind how, if what the GOP was doing was perpetrated by anyone other than the GOP, we’d be well past Orange Alert and all the barricades would be mounted.
But since an all-ass no-hat Texan is leading the charge to shut the gov’t and tank the markets, then it’s patriotism.
Flumoxes me like nothin’ else can.
WereBear
@Cervantes: John Cleese also has been open about seeking therapy with life issues, and perhaps it was his mother who was the bully… I just have a hunch his ability to scream at people so convincingly came from some early modeling. English schools of his time, just as Southern schools in the 60’s and 70’s, were notoriously harsh environments.
RaflW
@TAPX486:
Historians may yet note the role that the GOP-felating press played in the demise of the American Experiment.
Democracies fail. Ours may be right up at the brink. And King and Crowley will be there to show us the burning police cars, but will be utterly unable to explain how we as a society got there.
shelly
How else to explain Victoria Jackson, with a straight face, demanding that we need a White History Month.
TAPX486
@RevRick: It’s a coup w/o the tanks. Only thing I would disagree on, is this behavior is the highest form of patriotism only when the White House is occupied by a Democrat.
WereBear
I agree. But the local rag will not print such letters. And we only have the one.
Elizabelle
Put a sign in your car window (or your home window):
Take it down while you’re parked, if need be, so someone does not key your car.
But others on the road will see your message.
Suffern ACE
@RaflW: if only the president would negotiate while showing leadership.
Folks like Cantor will be disappeared from the books.
Elizabelle
I am going to wear my Obama pin(s) throughout this debacle.
I support my president and the Democrats. I do not support the New Confederates.
TAPX486
I keep hoping that Boehner is playing 3 dimension al tic-tac-top and wants to die on only one hill – the debt limit but when a GOP insider says his primary concern is the ‘House Republican Conference,”, then I’m not so sure. I don ‘t remember the words ‘House Republican Conference’ being part of the Constitution that he swore an oath to defend and uphold.
Baud
Republicans have become the caricatures of liberals that they’ve always claimed to be fighting against.
Ramalama
My partner – Canadian – recalls military roaming the streets in Montreal not too too long ago over french / anglo nationalism. Last summer – or was it the year before that – tens of thousands of Montrealers protested for months hikes in tuition fees at Canadian universities. I myself almost drive into a street demonstration of anti Iraq war protestors one Saturday. There were 500,000 people out that very day.
My partner wonders what it will take to get the Americans out on the streets if not this shutdown.
Elizabelle
Paul Krugman’s blog: Hapless and Hopeless
lamh36
This restaurant is giving a 10% discount to workers in DC who have been furloughed. President Obama decided to take a walk from the White House to that restaurant to buy some lunch and thank the establishment. It’s also a good bit of political theater. Obama does seem like an approachable pol that people seem to like when they meet. And contrary to what certain people like to say about Obama and aloofness he always seems pretty at ease around the “common” folk outside the beltway bubble. He seems to have a comfort that GWB just didnt seem to have outside his beltway circle.
Anyway, here is the WH video if the “excursion”…
President Obama takes a walk
scav
Companies expressiong their Religious Values by weaseling on pensions. Gimme that Old Time Gimme Gimme Religion! Law Shields Churches, Leaves Pensions Unprotected (because of course, churches means hospitals, other health-care companies, publishing companies, . . . Feel the JEEbus!)
Baud
And the shutdown just got even dumber (via TPM):
Happy for the workers, however.
fuckwit
@RevRick: thzanks for this! Yep we have a cicle-jerk going on, the lefty intellectual tendency to look inward and analyze and study things and understand them. Not a bad thing in itself, but you’re right, the time now is for action, education of others, and reaching out.
I live in the perhaps deepest blue district in a very blue state, so there’s not much point to a letter to the editor from me, but anyone who lives in or near a R district should be scribbling away about this serious danger.
Put another way: a million federal employees, their famillies, their towns, and women who depend on WIC and children who depend on NIH, are all suffering while we are psychoanalyzing conservatives. We need to take action to stop the suffering, not sit back and analyze it.
Felonius Monk
@Elizabelle:
But only if we let them. That is, IMO, one of the biggest problems within the liberal/left —- we oftentimes make it too easy for the wingnutters to make our lives difficult.
Mark S.
DissidentFish
@Hillary Rettig:
Or, possibly, they are just assholes.
rachel
@hoodie: I guess that’s one of the places those dudes at Insureblog get their information; that and the Daily Caller, Breitbart.com, and the like.
rdldot
@lamh36: He seems at ease with real people because he is. It’s the DC crowd and the MSM press that he can’t stand. That’s why he gets the press he does.
Tokyokie
@Randy P: In a class I have to take for a second degree, we had a discussion about this, and one 20-something kid was whining about why should he have to pay $157 a month when he’s perfectly healthy and a self-described “risk-taker.” He pointed out that over 30 years, that’s like $56,000. I tried pointing out that the whole point of insurance, any insurance, is to spread risk to as wide a pool as possible, because if only the people in Texas who bought homeowners insurance were those on Galveston Island whose homes were whacked by Hurricane Ike, the coverage would be prohibitively expensive, and that the homeowners in San Antonio are in effect partially subsidizing the coverage for those in Galveston so that everybody has protection in the case of a catastrophic event. He could only see the $157 he’d have to pay, the $56,000 over 30 years (falsely assuming that his rate would remain stable) and not realizing that one uninsured hospitalization can easily surpass that $56,000, and that his chances of not requiring hospitalization over the next 30 years are extraordinarily small — especially if he’s a “risk-taker.” But being a “risk-taker” apparently excludes him from being able to recognize a bargain when he’s offered one.
scav
@Baud: Some of those workers and their affiliates were way too close to the bubble, not to mention TV cameras. What’s that catchy phrase about surrounding them? But yes, good for the workers although I doubt memories have been wiped and it only adds to the impression that they hadn’t quite thought things out when they started. Duh.
Baud
@Tokyokie:
And he’s not really a risk taker, since he has had automatic access to every emergency room in the country for his whole life. And if he doesn’t want insurance, he can pay the penalty, which is only $95 next year, and is more than reasonable to cover his emergency room access.
Baud
@scav:
They gave workers back pay last time, but there was some risk that they wouldn’t do it this time because they are so much crazier. It’s a big relief.
However,….how in the world do you justify paying workers who want to work for not working if you’re the Republican. So they’re not going to hurt federal workers, but they’re going to through the rest of the American people under the bus?
It’s the same problem the Republicans had last time, and it’s going to be even worse for them this time around.
Chris
@Ramalama:
You don’t need Confederate ancestors, you just need to have grown up in a Confederate-friendly context. (The old immigrants-adapting-to-their-new-country thing).
The most archetypical Confederate “friend” I have has no ancestry in the South – her entire family was Midwestern and only moved there in the last thirty years or so. Heck, her ancestors probably fought on the other side. But she grew up in all-white gated communities in Louisiana and Florida, so, South Will Rise Again it is.
Chris
@PaulW:
Yep, I’ve never understood that. I understand that that’s what they think, I mean, I just don’t understand how a person’s brain gets that fucked up.
I suppose they’re craving that moment where the villain of the movie recognizes his worthy adversary with a “you’re an exceptional man, Mr. Bond! Why not forget queen and country and swear allegiance to me?” speech, so they can get on with their “I will NEVER join you!” heroic moment of badass.
Woodrowfan
@Cacti:
Not really, it’s just that he knew it was political suicide to attack popular programs like Social Security. And he was constrained by a somewhat liberal Democratic Congress. Give him a Tea-Party Republican Congress and he’d be Cruz’s best ally. No one did resentment politics like Dick.
Baud
@Woodrowfan:
They’re kind of like small children. Much better behaved when their isolated from their own kind.
Matt McIrvin
@hoodie: A friend of mine noted a little while ago that, in the arguments he’d been having over the ACA and the insurance mandate, many of the people he was arguing with seemed to be opposed to the entire concept of insurance.
I got into one of these arguments recently: the guy was railing against Obamacare saying that health care used to be cheap in some imagined past when everyone just paid out of pocket, but once companies started offering health insurance as compensation, that’s what made it expensive, and the government getting involved just made it worse. And the guy himself had, I think, VA coverage. He was already getting his health insurance from the government!
(There was a bit where he railed against the UK’s National Health Service, saying he knew it wasn’t any good because he had lived in the UK for a few years. I always like it when the argument goes in that direction on the Internet, with people bashing the Canadian or British system, because there’s almost always someone currently living in Canada or Britain who jumps in and calls them on it. It’s like having Marshall McLuhan right here.)
Heirn
@Baud: It is all about trying to soften the blow-back they are going to face. If they went hard-line and didn’t give the federal workers back pay, they would lose a large amount of the support that they have from them. That is the way they do politics.
The Other Chuck
@NotMax: Using nails at all would have been very uncommon. Generally they just tied people to the cross and let them die of exposure. It was actually an act of mercy to break a crucified person’s legs so they’d die sooner of asphyxiation from the extra pressure.
I wouldn’t break these scumbags’ legs.
TAPX486
@Felonius Monk: I wonder how many liberals/progressive/moderate democrats regret staying home in Nov. 2010 because Obama wasn’t pure enough. I remember more than a few comments on this blog about the terrible blue dog democrats. Well everyone stayed home (or enough at least) and we no longer have blue dog democrats. I for one (and I voted) kinda miss those blue dogs. They didn’t always vote the way I wanted but at least they put Nancy in the speakers chair. Half a loaf is better than none
Angela
@WereBear: this. The I examined life turns you wingnut.
Thanks WereBear. Semms so true.
Angela
@WereBear: this. The I examined life turns you wingnut.
Thanks WereBear. Semms so true.
RSA
Kevin Drum points to some interesting sociological research that involved interviewing a (tiny) sample of people who are fans of “outrage-based programming”. From the paper:
I can’t help seeing a connection. There’s the obvious one of conservatives not liking to be reminded that most are not actually victims in reality. Another may be that they don’t like the tables being turned. There are lots of stereotypes about people of color made by conservatives that carry a sting; the reverse is rare and perhaps surprising to them.
Tokyokie
@Matt McIrvin: Years ago, while I was living in Norway as a lad, I dropped an acetylene bottle on my finger and had to have it stitched up. Mind you, I wasn’t a Norwegian citizen and wasn’t really paying into the Norwegian healthcare program, but when I went into the emergency room, they stitched up my finger straight away. And when I asked where do I pay, they looked me like I was daft.
And you’ll never hear a single complaint from me about socialized medicine as it’s practiced in Norway.
LittlePig
@nobadcats: Ha! Thank you. I thought of that but couldn’t remember where it was from. I think Brother Carlin said that sometime as well.
Angela
Ugg. I’ll quote WereBear correctly here.
“The unexamined life…turns you wingnut. “
Bubblegum Tate
@Ramalama:
Brilliant. Stealing this.
Graham Shevlin
@Randy P: This is equivalent to asking people to vandalize their health and future. This is so utterly effing irresponsible, I don’t know where to start.
Suffern ACE
@Heirn: there was some Congressman who actually said out loud that they weren’t going to guarantee the back pay-so back pay for workers would be another bargaining chip used to force concessions.
I hope those republican voting federal government workers in Virginia aren’t fooled by this. But who knows? It really takes a literal beating sometimes to make certain voters realize that no, the Republicans really aren’t into you.
Baud
@Heirn:
I’m sure it’s all about politics. But no one is going to understand paying federal workers for not working, when the GOP’s stated reason for shutting down the government is because they think government needs to be cut.
But I’ve long stopped trying to figure that party out.
jonas
@Higgs Boson’s Mate: or, more to the point, the old joke about the young man who kills his parents, and then begs the judge for mercy because he’s an orphan.
scav
@Baud: Remember, they’re now guaranteeing backpay to those they’ve insisted ad nausea were teet-sucking vampires that didn’t work, esp. given the govt doesn’t actually provide like real jobs or anything. Not following that chain of neuron — dot of neuron, technically? — is probably a wise move.
TAPX486
@Matt McIrvin: Company provided health care got a big boost in WWII when they could not raise wages but could offer health care. I’m old enough to remember those ‘good old day’s’ when health care was cheap. If I remember correctly, I only cost $65.00 in 1946 to bring home from the hospital. You could replace our family doctor with doc Adams from the TV western Gunsmoke and never notice the difference. . Of course a ticket to the Sat. Matinee was only 15 cents (Disney was an outrageous 25 cents). four to 8 person semi-private wards were the hospital norm. Hip replacement, bypass surgery, cataract surgery, chemo and radiation therapy, if available at all were expensive and involved long hospital stays. In 1940 my Dad spend 3 weeks in the hospital to have his appendix removed. Cataract surgery involved having your head sandbagged for a couple of weeks. It really is an apples and oranges comparison.
The same folks will rant and rave about how bad the British health care system is, but even the Iron Lady didn’t dare to privatize that.
Suffern ACE
@Baud: they weren’t just going to not pay the furloughed employees, but also the ones working without pay. And they were going to use paying those workers as a means to get more concessions.
Keith G
@Elizabelle: Thank you that’s a marvelous idea. I’m going to Cafe Press to have that printed on a car magnet.
Origuy
They don’t need to drive nails into their palms. If they get a hangnail and it bleeds, they think it’s a stigmata.
LittlePig
@Tokyokie: Norway, being a civilized country, took you by surprise.
JGabriel
Charles Pierce (via Anne Laurie @ Top):
I assume the prion disease Mr. Pierce is referring to is most likely Kuru, caused by cannibalism.
In other words …
(wait for it …)
GOP Will Eat Itself!
.
Matt McIrvin
@Woodrowfan: Reagan cut a propaganda film, the sort of thing that was shown in church basements, arguing that Medicare was the first step on the road to socialist tyranny. He’d probably mellowed on that by the time he was President, but he could be an ideological hardliner to beat any Tea Partier.
Baud
@LittlePig:
That’s not fair. If the U.S. were as white as Norway, the GOP would be all for universal health care.
beltane
It seems that the dreamland quality of post-WWII American suburban life has finally taken its toll on the nation’s sanity. The planned faux-communities, the isolation, the reliance on television for knowledge of the outside world, and a national identity formed on the basis of Hollywood movies are factors that are coming home to roost. Republicans are pampered, sheltered people who have no clue as to how soft their lives are compared to their ancestors’ lives or to the lives of the overwhelming majority of humans on the planet, including those living in their own country. Living in a bubble of privilege has created a tribe of monsters, the “evil of banality”. When you’ve lived your whole life on sugar mountain, you don’t know that it’s possible to live anywhere else.
MikeJ
@Baud:
I’m pretty sure they’d just find a different line to cut on. In their world view, somebody’s got to be on top and somebody’s got to be on the bottom.
mai naem
Bill Maher had Matt Kibbe on last night, and Carl Reiner. You can see where Rob Reiner gets his coolness from .
I wish Bill Maher would ask Matt Kibbe what he would want to happen if he got catastrophically injured(severe burns, quadriplegia) and used up all his benefits under whatever private insurance he’s bought, what he would want to happen to him? Assuming he didn’t take any SSI and any of the government funded programs, would he just want people to throw him out in the streets?
Anoniminous
Ref: resentment
I can understand the resentment the Fundie/Cons (aka TeaBaggers) have in one respect. Since 1975 American workers have not been receiving any benefit from the wealth they produce. I have little sympathy for them since they insist on supporting Public Policy that caused and ensures it continues.
MattF
@beltane: Ah, but you’re talking about the Golden Age. Now (except for some enclaves) the suburbs are in decline. Drugs, those people, deteriorating infrastructure, aging populations, banks buying up foreclosed properties for rentals. And those blessed enclaves, where everything still works, are very expensive.
Matt McIrvin
@TAPX486: Appendix surgery is a great yardstick. The kid’s book Madeline is all about an appendectomy in 1939 Paris (the girls’ doctor is named “Dr. Cohn” and I don’t like to think of what may have happened to him a few years later). Anyway, the girls from the boarding school visit her in the hospital after ten days, she has an apparently impressive-looking scar on her stomach, and it isn’t implied that she’s really close to coming home yet.
When I was in college in the 1980s, my roommate got appendicitis and had his appendix out. I think he was in there for two or three days. Tiny scar on his back.
Now, it often seems to be an overnight stay.
beltane
@Baud: I’m not so sure of that. These are people whose only motivation to keep on living is hatred and fear of the other. If we didn’t have racial divisions, we’d have religious divisions, etc. The problem with the GOP is that they are in the thrall of a diseased Calvinist worldview where envy and greed are virtues and where a smug self-righteousness is the only pleasure they are capable of experiencing.
Thlayli
The vote on the back-pay bill was 407-0. That means 28 non-votes. Without looking at the roll, my guess is the real hardcore TP assholes abstained.
MikeJ
@Thlayli: They could have been out on the Mall yelling at rangers when they took the vote.
WereBear
@Felonius Monk: Hey, we’re smart. We can do both.
JGabriel
Baud @ 112: :
No, they wouldn’t. They’d just find some other group to demonize like the Irish, or the Italians, or the Polish, or the Jews.
We know they would do this, because they did it in past. Hell. they’re doing it in the present. Most Mexicans and Latinos are pretty white, despite the “brown” appellation. They’re certainly no darker than many southern Europeans.
In fact, if you look at the make-up of four of those ethnicities (Irish, Italian, Mexican, Polish), you see a common thread running them: anti-Catholicism.
.
MattF
@Thlayli: In fact, it looks like the non-voters were just odds and ends:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2013/roll525.xml
beltane
@MattF: That’s why they’re so shrill right now. The fake world they grew up in is turning into rubble around them, and the ones who can afford it are driven deeper and deeper into their gated-community bunkers. These people really believe that their whiteness entitles them to a certain status in society whether they have done anything to earn that status or not. The thought of being deprived of this special status is something they simply cannot tolerate, and they would prefer to blow the country up than live in a country where they are just one demographic group among many.
Gex
@Mark S.: This makes me think of my hick relatives. My grandfather was a farmer, but none of my aunts or uncles wanted to take over the family farm. None of them bothered to do more than get a highschool diploma or GED in the era of heavily subsidized and affordable higher education.
Now they sit around and bitch about the Mexican workers in their community. And I just want to scream at them. These folks are doing the work my relatives refused to do. My relatives still expect cheap food at the grocery store, how do they suppose that happens? And hey, it is not the fault of the Mexican workers that spoiled idiots who had every advantage of growing up in a wealthy America with lots of educational and training opportunities didn’t bother to acquire skills that give them an advantage over unskilled migrant laborers who barely speak English.
You’d think they’d be too ashamed to admit they have nothing to offer over the people they hate except for demands for higher pay and being lazier workers. But nope. It doesn’t phase them a bit.
One day I am going to lose it at family dinner and point out that of all the dozens of grandchildren (Catholic family) only three of the grandkids got college degrees. All three are part Asian. The 100% white grandkids? They’re the ones who have poor job prospects and thus have to hate on the Mexicans. They won’t work as hard or as cheap as the Mexicans, they won’t bother to work hard to acquire a degree or training to have more value on the job market like their Asian cousins. No, what they excel at is having bypass surgery before the age of 50, taking Lipitor, smoking, eating tons of red meat, and drinking.
All Republicans of the Teabagging variety. Every last stupid one of them. One day I am going to snap and scream. It will be awesome and horrible all at once.
beltane
@JGabriel: Yep. Although the GOP is perfectly happy to exploit the prejudices of white “ethnic” Catholics, the true driving force in the party is the notion that the United States of America is the white, Protestant homeland. And the strain of Protestantism that is ascendant here is the one where God shows his favor by bestowing lots of filthy lucre on his chosen ones.
Lori
Silly, didn’t you know you can’t be in the GOP if you aren’t a Christian. Naturally they’re persecuted, all Christians are persecuted in this country. They’re also delusional too. You have to give them some leeway for being ill. Poor things — where’s your empathy!! Sorry, just choked a bit there.
aimai
@Gex: Mostly awesome. Please plan ahead and bring a friend with a video camera.
Gex
@beltane: This. My friend’s mom owns a town house in a suburb of St. Paul. Retired in her mid 60’s, has her retirement and her husband’s pension from being a school teacher. Goes on cruises and vacations several times a year. Vastly overweight but Medicare will be paying for her diabetes treatments and two replacement knees.
She feels poor. She feels over taxed. It’s just mind boggling how out of touch white suburbanites can be. She owns everything, has all the luxuries, gets tax payers to cover her medical expenses, doesn’t have to work until the day she dies, but she’s POOR. Talk about having zero clue. Of all the lives lived by humans on planet Earth, hers is one of the more luxurious ones and she thinks she has it bad.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cassidy:
They all constantly shit their pants, too, so that explains that.
Matt McIrvin
@RSA: The paper argues that being a liberal merely gets you characterized as naive, which is a lesser stigma than being considered racist… but I think that claim of asymmetry is neglecting all the gender-role/gayness/feminism aspects. The most powerful accusations against liberals, in a sexist society, were always that they were a bunch of girlymen and ugly, hairy-legged viragos, which were things you did not want to be; and I don’t think that’s over at all. Though I think that the way the push for LGBT rights has started to deflate the power of accusations of homosexuality or genderqueerness is deeply disturbing to these folks.
Suzanne
@Waspuppet: oh my Lord….THIS.
Some of my Facebook friends from high school who barely graduated and certainly never even finished any degree or certificate at community college nevertheless consider themselves climate science experts.
Villago Delenda Est
@lamh36:
I saw a clip of that on the CBS evening news (which was in full “both sides do it” mode) and they did not mention WHY Obama chose to walk to that restaurant for lunch.
Naturally.
The MSM needs to be annihilated.
fake ted & helen
@Matt McIrvin: it was actually an LP
RSA
@Matt McIrvin: Nice observations; I hadn’t thought about that angle. You’re right about the LGBT part, too.
VOR
@Matt McIrvin: Sadly no, he had not mellowed on that point. From “The Triumph of Politics” by Reagan OMB Director David Stockman, page 310, describing a Defense budget meeting with President Reagan.
“In future, I would never use the word Medicare again unless it was absolutely unavoidable. It had always started the President on a discourse about how the whole $60 billion program had been a big mistake. And it did so now.”
“It used to be that doctors had a charity list,” the President said. “they knew who couldn’t afford the regular price and charged them what they could afford.” Once the federal government had gotten into medical care, all that had gone by the wayside. “We warned about this at the time,” he continued. “Supported another bill that only helped the needy.”
TAPX486
@Matt McIrvin: Yep. When I had mine out in the mid-50’s it was an 8 day stay.
Jebediah, RBG
@Baud:
I wonder if that would be the case, or if they would find some other arbitrary way to divide people up into “good, deserving, real Norwegians and filthy moochwegians.”
ETA: and I see MikeJ got there first…
Ruckus
@beltane:
Some who have lived in some of those countries that have a hard life still think it’s normal for the “less privileged” to have to work shitty jobs till they die. I’m related to one. OK I was related to him.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
Had hernia surgery 9 weeks ago. Have a somewhat impressive scar, it was outpatient surgery. Had to lay about the house for 4-6 weeks though. Still, home in about 5 hours.
Ruckus
@Gex:
Don’t kid yourself. You will like it. Why? because it feels good. And it really is the thing to do.
Now of course you know the downside of telling people the truth they know but don’t want to hear. You will be an outcast in your family. The black sheep as we used to say. But I find it refreshing and liberating to be myself.
StringOnAStick
@WereBear:
Whoa. So true, so true….