It is always worthwhile to read through the back archives of the now defunct Kung Fu Monkey.
Today’s relevant post is on shame as a constraint. It was written in 2007 responding to the US Attorney firing scandal as they weren’t willing to railroad people for non-existent voter fraud. I think it is a relevant structural analysis today as well:
This just hammers home my realization of what the Cheney Administration — and yes, damn you this is the first time I’ve indulged in that neologism, and the first time I think it perfectly appropriate — what the Cheney Administration has discovered. They have found the “exploit” within the United States Government. As I watched Congressmen and Senators stumble and fumble and thrash, unable to bring to heel men and women who were plainly lying to them under oath, unable to eject from public office toadies of a boot-licking expertise unseen since Versailles, it struck me. The sheer, simple elegance of it. The “exploit”.
The exploit is shame.
Our representatives — and to a great degree we as a culture — are completely buffaloed by shamelessness. You reveal a man’s corrupt, or lying, or incompetent, and what does he do? He resigns. He attempts to escape attention, often to aid in his escape of legal pursuit. Public shame has up to now been the silver bullet of American political life. But people who are willing to just do the wrong thing and wait you out, to be publicly guilty … dammmnnnn.
We are faced with utterly shameless men. Cheney and the rest are looking our representatives right in the eye and saying “You don’t have the balls to take down a government. You don’t have the sheer testicular fortitude to call us lying sonuvabitches when we lie, to stop us from kicking the rule of law and the Constitution in the ass. You just don’t. What’s beyond that abyss — what that would do to our government and our identity as a nation — terrifies you too much. So get the fuck out of our way.”
The Moar You Know
That was ten years ago. This is largely not the case any more. “I do what I want” is the new national mantra.
ETA: people still don’t know how to handle it, even though they’re dishing it out themselves dozens of times per day.
efgoldman
Wow is this relevant!
Chris
Whatever did happen to that blog? It was fantastic.
Raoul
Pretty much exactly Trump. And also Ryan and McConnell.
Though Yurtle is aware of some inner gleam of conscience, so he does the tight lipped on-camera shamewalk sometimes, then takes a in-office jolt of Bourbon with a side of baby blood and goes out to dance on the shamelessness hustings.
Ryan is too Ayn Rand enraptured to bother with shame, it gets in the way of perfect ‘freedom.’
Trump, of course, has multiple moral defects, shamelessness being just part of his noxious personal stew.
Hungry Joe
Re rules: I’ve been involved in two bizarre events in which rules were suddenly ignored, trivialized, trampled upon. I’ve mentioned at least one of them before so I won’t repeat it, but in short, I was playing 1) pickup basketball and 2) many years later, doubles tennis when one of the participants just started shredding the rules. To a man (yes) we figuratively froze; none of us had seen such behavior since we were about nine years old. The audacity, the sheer brazenness stripped gears in our brains. We had no tools available to deal with the situation … or rather, we were so deeply in shock that we were unable to summon any. It was only later, upon reflection, over beers, and after much re-hashing that we came up with workable What We Shoulda Done scenarios. Trump’s been shredding the political rules for almost two years now; maybe we’re finally emerging from shock and getting our collective wits together.
Chris
@Hungry Joe:
This is what you shoulda done!
Ruckus
@Hungry Joe:
When I worked in professional sports my job was rules enforcement. There is some segment of the population that has to break rules. No rhyme or reason, it’s just in their nature. (or upbringing, but I’d bet just how they see life) It’s not difficult to catch them, they just don’t give a fuck. If the penalty costs them though all you will hear is how they don’t cheat. I think I know a major elected official like this.
Chris
@Ruckus:
Just the one?
debbie
Corporate America has more than its fair share of these clowns, too.
oldster
As with most of this shit, it goes at least back to Reagan. Utterly shameless in his lies, and the press ate it up.
Don’t get me started on Oliver North, who lied through his teeth on Capitol Hill and was treated like the new incarnation of Mayberry RFD.
Curiously, Nixon was a failure at this game. He tried to lie shamelessly, but at some level you could always see the shame. Not so with the Reaganites.
And of course, not so with the creeping things that sheltered under Nixon’s bulk. Cheney, Roger Stone, Rumsfeld: they watched Nixon go down, a victim of his own vestigial shame. And they decided that shame itself must be sacrificed to the Republican lust for power.
Jeffro
@oldster:
Yes indeed. How were they ever going to get anywhere, if shame was still operative? You can’t cut people’s health care and make the tax system even MORE regressive if shame is still operative.
The thing that’s mind-boggling to me is that they don’t understand the difference between shamelessly trying to make rich people richer, and abetting an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. THAT, you think, might bring some shame. But nope…they just look the other way and hope that big tax cuts get passed quickly, and oh well, if Trump goes down Pence will just keep the party rolling.
(I know – I was hearing this from my RWNJ relatives all afternoon today. They’re still sticking with “innocent until proven” guilty. You know, just like they said with Hillz)
Ruckus
@Chris:
Good catch.
This one is the worst case I’ve ever seen, not that others don’t have the same issues.
dimmsdale
I will just say that I sometimes traffic through the Kung-Fu Monkey archives when I need a little bracing up. Rogers is an amazing writer and his moral center is huge and certain. Though I’m a huge fan of anything he does in the entertainment field (e.g. “Leverage”) I sure miss his blogging voice, as your citation here reminds me.
Davis X. Machina
@Chris: John Rogers, the guiding spirit of the place, got busy, first with Leverage, and then Librarians.
He was significantly….. under-employed in the blog’s heyday
Elizabelle
I wonder if you could get the Kung-Fu Monkey guys to guest post here, from time to time. No pressure on them, but maybe they’d love to do some blogging and not have to maintain and update their own blog.
Not like there isn’t a target-rich environment this year.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
Once you switch off the shame, it’s off. There may be a level at which shame will be a resistive force at some point but I doubt it. Especially if you gain an advantage with the off switching.
Another Scott
@Chris: That scene was genius.
Cheers,
Scott.
Another Scott
Great find, David. Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Jeffro
@Ruckus: I can only see it working if it could be demonstrably proven that some GOP policy is getting our troops killed. Not ‘just’ Americans (as we’ve already seen with the AHCA). I mean, I think that’s the only thing that might give them even a moment’s pause.
Ruckus
@Jeffro:
You really think so?
I don’t. Conservatives have morphed from people who don’t want change or at least want to go forward at a glacial pace, to people whose only constant is “FUCKING LOWER TAXES, at least on the rich.” I used to think it was bigotry, but I think that’s only an affliction, I think they really see life as only a zero sum game, where the only gain is at someone else’s expense. Don’t get me wrong, they can be massive racists, and many of them hate that anyone that doesn’t look like them is getting ahead, because that of course means they are losing. They always need to look at someone else, anyone else, everyone else to blame for their not being as rich as Bill Gates. All of their problems are caused by anyone but them and they will condemn any group they don’t belong to lay that blame on. And those tax cuts will bring back the steel mills and the coal mines and…….. If it wasn’t so pathetic and dangerous it would be funny.
Luthe
@Jeffro: One word: Iraq.
Nicole
Never forget, it was Kung Fu Monkey that gave us the Crazification Factor. Great post, that was.
Hungry Joe
@Chris: I’m afraid that in that situation, were it in real life, although I’d like to be Walter and I imagine myself to be the Dude, in my heart I know I’m closest to Donnie.
Aleta
This video at the link so chilling, what kind of creature is this dictator that Trump invited, calling the visit his “great honor.”
https://mobile.twitter.com/joshdcaplan/status/865310629934112768
Josh Caplan @joshdcapla
New video shows Turkey’s Erdogan watching members of his security detail attack Kurdish protesters outside of the Turkish embassy in D.C.
Gator90
I miss Kung Foo Monkey. And the Poor Man Institute (what would the Editors have made of Trump!), and Fafblog (what would the Medium Lobster have made of Trump!). And Sadly No when it was in its heyday.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Hungry Joe: What was the solution of your doubles scenario? As a player/coach, I’m curious. Never even dawned on me to consider that kind of a scenario.
TenguPhule
And this is why Cheney’s head should have been swiftly removed from his body after a fair trial and conviction.
TO STOP SHIT LIKE TRUMP FROM FOLLOWING HIM.
No more heroes. Just a never ending cast of villains in the wings.
WaterGirl
@Hungry Joe: What you have described here reminds me of the one debate that Barack Obama did not do well in against Romney. I felt at the time, and still believe now, that Barack was so totally flabbergasted as lie after lie after lie came out of Romney’s mouth that he was kind of in shock.
Dmbeaster
American culture has a very very long tradition of an utter lack of political shame.
The real point is to be as ugly as necessary and kick them back in the balls. Being caught off guard by it is a rookie move. You dont expect to change the behavior of the shameless — change the behavior of the audience making decisions about these people at the ballot box.
lurker dean
i hadn’t seen this piece before, but it makes sooo much sense.
fuckwit
Nah, there’s nothing new about this, it’s Bullying 101.
Every bully has done this for tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of years.
The bully bets on nobody having the balls to call him out. And so he wins by default.
gogiggs
@Chris: Leverage got picked up he stopped talking politics and switched to show-related content. When Leverage ended, The Librarians started and the focus shifted there. I’m glad he’s doing well, but I do miss the old blog.
Elizabelle
From the immortal crazification thread: Kung Fu Monkey: Lunch Discussion #145: The Crazification Factor. February 2005:
Barry
@Jeffro: that would not work – see the Iraq War.
Spikester
KFM also gave us this brilliant observation: