I’ve explained, probably too many times, how I think the modern conservative mind works on most issues, say climate change. It’s not happening, if it is happening it’s not because of human activity, if it is happening because of human activity there’s nothing we can do about it, if there is something we can do about it, that something isn’t what Democrats are proposing. Also too: Al Gore is fat (right-wing blogosphere), climate change doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, civility is more important (Bobo/Chunky Bobo).
With the Village things are slightly different, but much the same. The Democrats caused a huge deficit that is killing us, even if Democrats didn’t cause the deficit, it is killing us, if the deficit isn’t killing us we should still pretend it is so that we can use it as a pretext to make “tough choices”, even if the deficit isn’t killing us and the “tough choices” are all nonsense, it’s what voters believe. Also too, remember Walter Mondale, you don’t want to end up like him, and Greg Mankiw has some wonky stuff that supports something I said about this economically, I think.
You see the full range of this in just one exchange between newly minted Villager David Von Drehle and the angry, vituperative Michael Grunwald on Swampland. Von Drehle says the “debt warnings” from the bond vigilantes mean that Republicans are right to hold up the debt ceiling vote and possibly end Medicare. Grunwald points out that threatening to default on debt will make “debt warnings” that much more credible and dire. Von Drehle says “but 12 trillion dollars is a lot of money so Republicans are right”. Grunwald points out that most of the deficit problems were caused by Republican policies 2000-2008. Von Drehle says “so what, moderate voters don’t believe that”.
Notice Von Drehel’s shift from “I have THE math, so suck it hippie” to “maybe I don’t have THE math, but the people at the Applebee’s Salad Bar agree with me, so suck it hippie”.
In my view, a brief reign of terror would be well worth the costs right now.
Lurleen
All we need is to come pray to Jesus is Houston on August 6th and everything will be all right!
It worked with the rain, right?
Scott
The only reason I’m supporting a reign of terror is because I’ll be able to shoot Villagers without fear of any penalties.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
and if moderate voters don’t believe the republicans caused the deficit, we will make sure we don’t upset them, by informing them on our multiple platforms, because if the moderate voters want to believe something, we should respect that, because they are the real heroes.
Brian R.
The central problem here is that liberals tend to look at the evidence and then draw their conclusions, while conservatives start with their conclusions and then craft whatever bullshit array of evidence is needed to get them there.
We saw this early on with Bush — we’re running a surplus? Well then, we must need to cut taxes. We’re running a deficit now? Well then, we must need to cut taxes.
The Ancient Randonneur
I believe in this country we call that Second Amendment remedies. But, I’m feelin’ ya. Visions of Youtube videos of Villagers bawling like school kids is getting me all misty-eyed.
LGRooney
Not sure what you mean by this…
…but, referencing your earlier posts, I imagine you mean let debt default happen so we can well and truly blame the GOP and wake up the voters.
I would agree with you if we had both a public interested in being cognizant on these issues and a press corps willing to provide the necessary information with which cognizant voters could make informed decisions. Unfortunately, neither of those pieces is true as we all know too well.
A catastrophe of these proportions would, in my opinion, result in massive GOP victories because they talk the culture wars and people in distress cling even more tightly to those issues, i.e., looking for an enemy to blame and no one plays the blame game as well as cultural warriors.
What we need is a D-dominant Congress and a forceful president who will push through what is needed regardless the politics, the press, and the publicity machine of the right wing. It is only this that will rouse the public into accepting that the right is wrong and the Ds take care of things… at least in the short term, i.e., until our next Reagan appears and it all goes to shit again.
geg6
The Village is completely a creature of the GOP, full stop. There is no thought about the good of the nation, the most pragmatic path, or what is empirically true. It’s about an ideology, a belief, a religion that revenue is immaterial to any economic policy and only shoveling more money to the have-more-than-gods and cutting any and all government programs that aren’t for perpetual war or subsidies to their corporate friends must go and go now. They want a banana republic and too many Villagers and Americans are only too happy to give it to them.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal: If only this country had some constitutionally protected institution whose sole responsibility was to educate and inform the electorate. For the want of a nail.
PeakVT
I’ve explained, probably too many times, how I think the modern conservative mind works on most issues, say climate change.
That’s just the rationalization, though. The actual decision-making process consists mostly of grunts, growls, and squeals, interspersed with some crotch-sniffing.
homerhk
I think President Obama’s slogan for 2012 is going to be “Yes you can….relieve me of this f**king job, please!”…
or
vote for President Obama cos literally everyone else in politics, including politicians, journalist, pundits and you the voters are utter morons.
bcinaz
DougJ, I’d agree with you except that if Republicans do pull the trigger, they will then do something (I don’t know what) even worse to cover their asses. (see Bush>9/11>Iraq)
artem1s
weirdly this was playing on Pandora as I was reading this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jdjtqu3XK4U
I dance around this empty house
Tear us down, throw you out
Screaming down the halls
Spinning all around and now we fall
Pictures framing up the past
Your taunting smirk behind the glass
This museum full of ash
Once a tickle, now a rash
This used to be a Funhouse
But now it’s full of evil clowns
It’s time to start the countdown
I’m gonna burn it down, down, down
I’m gonna burn it down
Doug Harlan J
I mean an actual reign of terror with guillotines and everything, not a debt default.
Amir_Khalid
@Lurleen:
Is that supposed to be a link? ‘Cause if it is, it don’t work.
Villago Delenda Est
If we start with the Villagers (see nym), then it might work.
But alas, they are just a symptom of a bigger problem of a parasite overclass that actively seeks, it seems, to see if there’s any way to get Homer to something something.
There doesn’t seem to be much hope on that front.
Guster
I’d never heard of Grunwald. Is he always this good?
Guster
DefargeJ.
Arrik
In my view, a brief reign of terror would be well worth the costs right now.
That was not very civil, Doug. But it does instill in me a certain poignant sense of longing.
WereBear
I took DougJ’s comment to mean tumbrils.
I don’t condone the French Revolution’s excesses; but boy, do I understand.
Elias Isquith
You know, it’s not even just climate change for conservatives. The source of any disagreement about policy between the left* and the right today seems to largely be reduced to people on the nominal left recognizing there’s a problem while people on the right go “nu-uh; I can’t hear you; nanananana” while plugging their ears. Of course, if they’re forced to recognize the existence of an issue then, as you say, the coincidental conclusion of their thinking is inevitably to respond in policy terms just as they would back when they denied there was a problem to begin with.
*Kind of a silly term considering American politics right now is best-described as being a contest between Right-wingers and Not right-wingers.
Carl Nyberg
Progressives in Congress should threaten to deny their votes for the debt ceiling unless it includes tax increases on the wealthy.
As long as we’re agreed that the Right can use the vote to make demands, why shouldn’t the Left play by the same rules?
Guster
@Carl Nyberg: Because nobody believes that progressives will kill the hostage.
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
I spotted some squealing pasty-puffy conservative jerk on CNN this morning whining about jobs for college kids and complaining that Obama was saving car manufacturing jobs. Even the nameless twit from CNN (Kiran Chetry’s co-chatterer) was irritated, so he started bringing up Mexicans.
If he’d have been standing in front of me, I’d have slammed my fist into his mouth, he was that obnoxious.
I think it may be the same level of overreach we saw with Shiavo, with truly nasty people trying to dominate from the conservative activist camp. I’m getting the same sort of vibe – that for them, objective facts don’t matter.
Ghanima Atreides
@Elias Isquith: no, its contest between social justice and market based capitalism/judeoxian american exceptionalism. And you and the rest of the glibertarians are on the wrong side.
No, that something isnt cost viable….we cant AFFORD TO do anything about global warming in a “free market” economy. Because anglo-saxon xian “dominion” and rapacious exploitation of planetary resources are what feeds the fucking Market.
The go-to guy for the climate change front of the conservative war on science is Dr. Jim Manzi– an expat american millionaire that retired at 43 and lives in FRANCE. He has french healthcare, his kids go to french schools and he glibly posts at NRO.
Like alla those libertarian assclowns including Elias above, he has nostalgie de la suzerainité and longs for the good old days when America leveraged her citizens SES by rapaciously exploiting the third world with globalized market based capitalism.
He got his.
brendancalling
@Doug Harlan J:
including heads on pikes, gibbets, and bodies hanging in front of the NYSE and the Washington Post?
I am SO down for that. I’ll go a step farther: make them dig their own graves first.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Since “just shoot me” is the essence of my instinctive reaction whenever think about (and thus admit the accuracy of) the concepts you describe about the conservative and the Village minds, I agree with your entire post, my boyfriend.
Indeed, literally:
sums it all up nicely. Thank you. (sigh)
Xantar
I found this Slate piece rather illuminating on the subject, especially this part:
They aren’t deniers because they’ve looked at the evidence and find it to support one theory over another. They are deniers because their fee-fees got hurt and they resent the people who have studied the issue and are completely secure in knowing that they are right. This could probably apply to a whole host of other issues besides climate change.
Ghanima Atreides
@Elias Isquith:
No. Its war on science, and war on reality itself.
Conservatism and libertarianism are anti-empirical.
Free Market theory is an EPIC FAIL.
Science is TRUE.
Go back to the LoOG with the rest of glibertarian bulshytt talkers where you belong.
cleek
@Doug Harlan J:
i’d prefer a reign of terroir.
let us all savor the variations that micro-climates impart to our favorite beverages!
Elias Isquith
Oh thank goodness BJ’s resident bag-lady has finally noticed
me!!!!
Ghanima Atreides
@Doug Harlan J:
exactly.
Chris
@Xantar:
The climax of “my fee fees are hurt” IMO wasn’t actually a matter of belief, if was the explosion of outrage when Obama did his “apology tour” (translation: acknowledging that we hadn’t always done the best things for other people).
Like, never mind the way an entire country was torn to shreds with over a million of its citizens killed (Iraq). Never mind that the Iran coup he mentioned ended one of the only democracies around and directly led to the 1979 revolution. Never mind that virtually everyone we support in the region is an unelected thug maintaining power via secret police…
No, the real story here is that he made them feel unexceptional and un-perfect, and now everyone’s bawling. Even for Goopers, that was probably the sickest demonstration of narcissism I’ve seen in a very long time. Examine our actions, search our conscience and possible admit fault? Heaven forbid! We’ve got feelings at stake, you monsters!
Third Eye Open
@Guster: He wrote my second favorite non-fiction book: The Swamp. I read this in my first year of grad-school and I recommend all my students read it. It brings the history of the Everglades into full focus by speaking to the politics and the personalities of historical Florida. The section on the lead-up to the 2000 election, and how the politics of the Everglades may have set the stage for Gore’s loss was amazingly simple to understand.
OzoneR
@Carl Nyberg:
Because progressives actually WANT to raise the debt ceiling.
grandpajohn
@Villago Delenda Est: @Yevgraf (fka Michael): Don’t you kn ow that watching CNN causes brain rot?
dedc79
the problem with a “brief reign of terror” is that it will not be brief. Look at what republicans are doing now to cement their state majorities — they are making it more difficult for supporters of the political opposition to vote. We can’t afford to let them run things, even for 2 years.
Guster
@Third Eye Open: Thanks. I’ll check it out. (Odd that he ended up at Swampland.)
What’s your favorite nonfiction book?
Third Eye Open
@Guster: It has to be American Theocracy,by Kevin Phillips. Although Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam always gets a read in my house.
If you can find one of the later printings of The Swamp he does a nice wrap-up on where we are with the CERP project.
Shalimar
@WereBear: Some of the excesses were visited on people who deserved it, and the vast majority weren’t. And some of the excesses visited on evil bastards who deserved it, like Marat, led to much worse excesses against everyone else. It is impossible to know in advance how something like a reign of terror will go, but really badly is usually the best guess.
Ghanima Atreides
@Elias Isquith: go back to the LoOG with your glibertarian homies, jesus boi
In my taxonomy of types of of libertarians, you are the VERY WORST kind…..Elias Isqueef. An xian triumphalist libertarian and a fucking missionary of western “values”.
/spit
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Doug Harlan J:
aren’t you worried that which robs pierre pays talleyrand paul?
we are all thermidorians now.
WereBear
@Shalimar: Exactly.
As I said, I’m no fan of Reigns of Terror no matter who does it.
But the impetus is better understood by me of late; when I see how people are ground down and destroyed for rich parasites to get a few more shekels, it creates a kind of primal rage.
And a shoutout to whomever recommended Bloodlands. I can only read it a little bit at a time; but it’s highly thought provoking and casts a whole new light on the era.
burnspbesq
You were doing fine until that last sentence, which is a variation on “we had to destroy the village in order to save it.” we all live in the village you are proposing to destroy, and from where I sit what you’re proposing doesn’t look like salvation.
Ghanima Atreides
@Elias Isquith: pardon, I misspoke.
I meant a fucking EVANGELIST of western “values”.
And a JAFI.
Villago Delenda Est
@burnspbesq:
It’s being systemically destroyed right now for the benefit of a very tiny minority.
Who imagine that they will survive, in their gated little burbclaves, the results of their own actions.
The rest of us have a better chance of surviving this if we jettison the very tiny minority.
Corner Stone
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
We’re all lobsters now?
Corner Stone
Speaking of DougJ’s desire for “I mean an actual reign of terror with guillotines and everything”, can anyone recommend a book or books that detail/capture/describe/illuminate the events we’re referencing?
OzoneR
@burnspbesq:
you’re getting destroyed either way.
Chris
@WereBear:
I was going to say something like that. Most people know that revolution’s ugly, and don’t want revolution because it would mess up and put at risk even the little they have right now. That’s why revolutions are so rare and you’re often left wondering “what took them so bloody long?”
Revolutions happen when people have been getting crushed into the ground for ages, and finally lash out because as bad as the chaos, anarchy and violence looks, it actually looks better than the status quo… because that’s how bad the status quo has gotten.
It’s academic in this context: violent revolution in 2011 America isn’t in the cards. But if you were a Russian in 1917, your choices were limiting to starving in Russia or dying on the German front, and someone tried to warn you about “chaos and anarchy,” you’d just laugh in their face. What more can the world throw at you? Anything‘s gotta be better than this.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
We’ll lure the giant lobsters away from the cities with tubs of drawn butter!
Chrisd
@Chris:
Agreed, no revolution is in the works, but a sustained deep depression can radicalize enough Americans to press for some serious change, like it did in the 1930’s.
As to the original post, I forget who first came up with it, but liberals want to govern while conservatives want to win. That’s the difference.
Bulworth
I’m gonna go out on a limb here and boldly hypothesize that in no case does our Media Village associate making “touch choices” with raising taxes.
danimal
Calling for the murder of the aristocracy? Guillotines and tumbrils? Maybe the blog should be renamed Genocide Juice.
I demand the immediate retraction of this posting and the removal of DougJ as a front-pager.
Ohhhhhh, you mean a reign of terror for the Beltway villagers? Well OK, wipe ’em off the face of the earth like the cancerous growth that they are, then we can get back to warm, happy thoughts. Carry on.
DB
You forgot one:
alwhite
This is not new – it is exactly what happened with tobacco
It is good for you
It isn’t bad for you
Its does not cause cancer – we have studies (we paid for) that prove it
You can quit if you want to
OK, we knew it caused cancer since at least the 1950s and we intentionally modified it to make it more addictive but that is all in the past and we shouldn’t have to pay for that now
The difference is, with tobacco they could only kill a few thousand every year, with the climate we can get that number into the millions and, if we work it just right, maybe into the billions.
Judas Escargot
@Guster:
One thing in favor of “the Keyser Söze option”: Nobody ever fucks with you again.
alwhite
@DB:
Good catch!
Also:
The Earth has been much warmer in the past, there were trees in Antarctica.
alwhite
@Chris:
You don’t have revolutions in places with a solid, viable, middle class. You get revolutions when the poor see no benefit from playing by the rules. Without the middle class to aspire to there is a huge contingent of people who are ready, willing and able to overthrow the current situation in the belief it couldn’t be worse and might actually be replaced by something better.
1776 is the only exception I can think of to this rule. I see a lot of similarities between today & the Weimar Republic. That is not a good thing.
Bender
2000? Really? The last Clinton year? The simplest facts elude you. Your posts should come with the South Park “mormon” theme: “Dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb-dumb!”
Every single line of Mike The Molester’s conveniently fact-free article is indeed a simple-minded, propaganda-filled leftoid fan-fiction and the main idea — those Filthy Republicans are at fault and We Democrats Are Blameless! — is childish and anti-historical… and even this fourth-grade puff-piece (which doesn’t even cite a single statistic! Amazing!) can only make the claim that “Republicans Did It, TOOOOOOOOOO!”
Yes, Dimwit, and they got voted out in 2006, largely because a chunk of their voters stayed at home due to their overspending. The GOP got voted back in 2010 under the Tea Party flag to stop the overspending, and the Democrats have fear-mongered them at every step (because when your only platform plank is FREE GUBMINT MONEY!!!, you have limited options).
The main problem is that the author is a simpleton. He doesn’t acknowledge what is clearly the greatest ideological shift in American politics in the last 30 years. These Republicans may still have an ( R ) after their names, but they have a different mandate than Bush’s Compassionate Conservatives who grew social programs by 20%. For these Republicans, fiscal discipline isn’t hypocrisy, it’s progress. And if they don’t progress, they’ll get booted by their own party, too.
Ghanima Atreides
@Bender:
No, retard. Midterms were the triumph of Distributed Jesusland™ or localized mob rule as Dr. Manzi describes it.
But Distributed Jesusland™ can never again win a general election (Senate 60+ or the WH), and will become less and less able to win local (House) elections as the demographics shift away from white conservative christians.
The Teabaggers are only 27% of the electorate max.
And the demographic timer goes tick……tick…….tick……..
Carl Nyberg
@OzoneR:
So, if Republicans don’t want to raise the debt ceiling, what’s their plan to increase revenue or cut spending so raising the debt ceiling in unnecessary?
If the Republican plan is to complain a bunch about raising the debt ceiling, they want to raise the debt ceiling too.
Ghanima Atreides
@Bender:
ow ow ow make it stop!
haha, you’re hilarious. There has been NO ideological shift in freemarket capitalism conservatism/libertarianism.
Teabaggers are just conservatives trying to scrape the horrorshow of Bush off their shoe so they can get a do-over.
slag
The only response bender is worthy of: http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/during_the_clinton_administration_was_the_federal.html.
And I agree that the argumentation processes you’ve described here, DougJ, are both prevalent and pernicious. I abhor seeing those arguments take place, in the Village and elsewhere.
And, like Cornerstone, I would appreciate a good recommendation for French Revolution reading material. Especially since pretty much everything I know about the French Revolution I learned from Oscar Wilde.
Chris
@Bender:
“Keep Your Government Hands Off My Government Programs!” If that was true, there’d be a lot more support for, y’know, actual reductions in spending. (Even the Ryan Plan doesn’t cut spending, it simply replaces spending on individuals with spending on corporations).
2010 election = independents pissed off about the economy. That’s all there is to it. Given your record at fixing economies and the popularity of your current prescriptions… yeah.
El Cid
At the time of the ascension of the Bush Jr. regime, the argument was (look it up in the intergoogle time machine) that surpluses were immoral and had to be destroyed because it meant that people had been robbed of too many taxes and therefore it had to be given back.
So now mainstream conservative ideology is opposed to the revenue side of the budget situation entirely: there can never be a time period in which the US budget is in the black, it must at the very maximum be zero; and anything which actually increases revenue intake — including giving the IRS the ability to collect the taxes currently owed under existing law (funding such has been refused by the GOP) must be denied.
Therefore there is no revenue side to the budget, it must always be smaller and smaller because any taxation is immoral, so any programs conservatives oppose must be cut or eliminated.
And yet there can still be no balance settlement, because revenues collected must not exceed current expenditures.
It’s a creative new way of balancing the books; if government were to be run ‘as a business’, it would be a business constantly dedicated to avoiding profit so as not to be gouging consumers, and committed only to shrinking costs as well as revenue.
Chris
@alwhite:
Right. Which is another way of saying you don’t have revolutions in places where the majority of people are well off enough that they see no interest in risking it in conflict.
Weimar, I believe, ended in fascism not because of angry poor people but because of angry people afraid that the poor people would become angry and take their stuff. In that sense, the parallel works.
dj spellchecka
Von Drehle says “so what, moderate voters don’t believe that”.
since moderates [except in the deep south and a few other places] now vote for democrats at a 55-60% clip, i suspect she’s wrong about this, too
Judas Escargot
@Ghanima Atreides:
Voting in the US is locally administered: Those “localized mobs” happen to control the polling places in their Districts. And the archaic Electoral College only amplifies the mass insanity.
Expect to see a long series of “surprisingly close elections” and Wisconsin-esque “oops, found some more votes!” antics over the next few decades.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
simon schama’s book on the french revolution is hefty enough for most people, but readable enough not to bog you down with needed reference material breaks to fully grasp it.
the criticism is that he may recreate things for narrative sake that are impossible to document.
i am sure others have better suggestions.
Groucho48
@WereBear:
Actually, executions declined during the “Reign of Terror” as compared to what the Aristos were doing to everyone else for decades previously.
It’s just that the privations of the Aristos were sympathetically covered by the Villagers of the times.
Some things never change.
dadanarchist
I have to oppose a Reign of Terror because it will be folks like Von Drehle and Richard Cohen and other Villagers who maneuver their way on to the Committee of Public Safety. They’ll send the shrill to the guillotine and continue on their merry way to disaster.
Remember, sh*t rises.
dadanarchist
Schama’s book is good and readable but his politics are somewhat reactionary. A book I like, partly because it would infuriate wingers, is Arno Mayer’s “The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions.” Mayer argues that the Terror was somewhat necessary to defeat the counterrevolutionary terror unleashed by the nobility.
And he shows how Lenin and the Bolshies learned the lesson of the Jacobins and totally annihilated their opponents.