Archive for March 4, 2009

Yes, Yes, Only Republicans Understand Individual Potential, Blah, Blah

I'm torn: strip-club owner or Mann's Magician?

So Rush Limbaugh said this during his CPAC address last week:

[W]hat is so strange about being honest to say that I want Barack Obama to fail if his mission is to restructure and reform this country so that capitalism and individual liberty are not its foundation?  Why would I want that to succeed?

Bobby Jindal had a similar refrain in his limp response to Obama’s quasi-state-of-the-union:

[Republicans] believe the way to strengthen our country is to restrain spending in Washington, to empower individuals and small businesses to grow our economy and create jobs.

The implication is Democrats and liberals, in general, want to stifle individual potential and pigeon hole citizens in a Soviet-style command economy. This, of course, is a heaping bowl of bullsh*t. So, too, is the disingenuous Republican mantra of individual liberty and empowerment. Empowerment is always in the form of tax cuts for the wealthy, and individual liberty is only for those who are not homosexual or who do not want unfettered access to birth control.

The liberal platform is very much interested in individual empowerment and liberty. Liberals recognize American society promises much opportunity but also possesses some serious structural obstructions that prevent its citizens from fully exploiting their talents and intellects. Bully for Horatio-Alger-rags-to-riches success stories, but (1) they are few and far between, even in the freest of free markets and (2) money is not an absolute measure of individual worth.

Republicans do not like to admit these two points. They also do not like to admit that being poor is an extremely expensive proposition. Poverty has financial, physical, and emotional costs. In the May 31, 2007, edition of The New York Review of Books, Nicholas Kristof wrote a piece concerning poverty around the world.

No interview haunts me more than a conversation with a Cambodian peasant, Nhem Yen, in 1996. She was … living with her family in a clearing in the Cambodian jungle. The area was notorious for malaria, but the family members were ambitious and industrious and figured that it was worth the risk to make more money by cutting wood for sale.

Nhem Yen’s eldest daughter, who was twenty-four and pregnant with her second child, promptly caught malaria. There was no money to get medical treatment (effective drugs would have cost less than $10), and so she died a day after giving birth. That left Nhem Yen looking after five children of her own and two grandchildren.

The family had one mosquito net that could accommodate about three people. Such nets are quite effective against malaria, but they cost $5—and Nhem Yen could not afford to buy any more. So every night, she agonized over which of the children to put under the net and which to leave out.

….

That is the real face of poverty: it is not so much the pain of hunger or the humiliation of rags, but the impossible choices you face.

Granted, the U.S. is not a malarial zone, but guess what can alleviate some of the “impossible choices” of poverty, ultimately promoting individual liberty in America: expanded unemployment benefits for part-time workers and universal health care.

With respect to the former, the decision of several Republican governors (led by Jindal) to refuse stimulus-bill monies to expand unemployment insurance disproportionately affects women (and their children). For instance, Louisiana is an impoverished state. Nationwide, 16.2% of families with children under age five live below the poverty level. In Lousiana, 23.4% of these families live in poverty, but Louisiana’s extreme poverty is exemplified by families headed by women: Nearly 58% of female-householder families with children under age five live below the poverty level; nationwide, 45.5% do.

So many more people lose out in Republican rhetoric … after the jump.

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Obama Derangement Syndrome?

Several years ago, conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer accused “liberals” of exhibiting the signs of “Bush Derangement Syndrome,” namely, “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency — nay — the very existence of George W. Bush.” It was a snide, derisive way to downplay legitimate criticism of Bush’s post-9/11 policies, just what we’ve come to expect of people like Krauthammer.

Now, unlike Krauthammer, I won’t begrudge Republicans their legitimate criticisms of President Obama. I’m excited about the stimulus, glad that we’ve ended torture, and counting down the days until Guantanamo has to close (it’s around 330), but insofar as their positions are consistent, I respect the Republicans for taking a principled stand on issues they care about. Dissent and debate keep American democracy alive.

However, I have no respect for the anti-Obama lunatic fringe, an unusually large and eclectic group of gullible, angry, tin-foil hat wearing web dwellers. Praying for Obama to fail, for example, is not a respectable position, but it finds adherents everywhere from Facebook (one, two) to WorldNetDaily. In such dire times, no sane American should wish failure upon a president. Being unsurprised by failure – as I was with Bush – is something else entirely. These individuals I would characterize as less than reasonable.

The few remaining groups that honestly believe Obama to be a Muslim speak for themselves (like Conservapedia). As do those who, knowing the falsity of the rumor, still try to benefit from it. I’m looking at you, Michael Savage.

Where the smart kids hang out on Facebook.

Same goes for the varied groups continuing to litigate the repeatedly failed idea that Obama is somehow not a “natural born citizen,” despite being born in the United States. These groups – which now include state legislators and soldiers, and count nearly 300,000 citizens as members – have created a cottage industry premised on delusion and denialism. “Dr.” Orly Taitz, the correspondence-school lawyer shepherding some of these suits along, has even gone so far as to encourage military officers toward sedition and ask them to disobey orders from the President. If any group can be fairly called “deranged” for nothing more than their political ideas, “Dr.” Taitz’s little cult is definitely it. Such a disconnect from reality is certainly unhealthy.

The question is, more than a month after President Obama’s inauguration, why do these groups persist? Why does Obama inspire such unreasonable, reckless hate? Part of it I blame on the internet. As I’ve argued before, the internet allows fringe movements to persist. By making it easier to find people who agree with you, fringe groups on the internet can quickly gain the requisite “critical mass” that their insanity would typically deny to them, where they forced to operate only in any individual community. But it’s more than that. While Bush inspired a firestorm of criticism on the internet, even the colorable, very real claim that his victory in the 2000 election was a mistake dropped out of the mainstream after a while. And the 9/11 “Truthers” were never that big. Why do conspiracy theories of Obama’s ineligibility persist?

I hesitate to play the “race card,” but let’s face it: for these groups, it fits. Most anti-Obama hate groups have, as a common thread, some conviction that Obama is inherently “other,” either Muslim, un-American, or “different” in some other significant way. Conjuring specious accusations of “other-ness” is a handy way to hide racism in plain sight. Again, I would not begrudge honest political commentatotrs their policy disagreements with the President. But for these groups on the lunatic fringe, I suspect the dominant alternative diagnosis for “Obama Derangement Syndrome” is just plain, simple, garden variety racism.