[Kjorteo]

Psudo wrote:

Is it any wonder that the Constitutional Convention was held in strict secrecy? It completely thwarts politicians' ability to grandstand in front of their constituencies. You put someone on TV and most feel compelled to perform. Especially egotists like your average politician.

...

I admit I didn't see the whole thing, but my impression is that Obama wanted to broadcast that appearance to a national audience; if he'd really wanted by-the-issues debate, it would have been held without live broadcast.

The problem there is that he had already been slammed hard by pretty much everyone for trying to have the process by which the House and Senate health care bills were merged behind closed doors--which, admittedly, was a major campaign promise that he therefore broke, giving almost limitless ammo to everyone even vaguely against him until he finally rectified it by having this one on CSPAN. And even then, certain Republicans like John McCain couldn't resist the urge to get in a quick snipe with a "thank you for having us here and for televising this, if only it'd been like this last time..." type remark before getting into their main point. I think having a televised summit this time was a good move--just the fact that it was transparent and the repeated mentions of Republican ideas that managed to make it into the bill were good for silencing his critics on those two points, at least--though it came with the obvious drawback of serving as a perfect opportunity for meaningless grandstanding.

It reminds me of an issue that was actually brought up and addressed several times within the summit, which is that there is a ton of wasteful spending in Medicare (in fact, it was Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, who was the very first to point it out that day) and that many on the right wanted to reform it and cut down on waste, but once Obama's plan actually tried to do just that, it got slammed for "cutting Medicare." Someone on the left (I really want to say it was sen. Chuck Schumer, D-NY, but I could be wrong--I did watch the whole thing, but it was seven hours and there were a lot of speeches, so cut me some slack here) tried to point out the difference between eliminating fraud and waste and cutting benefits, and ended up with a speech that was almost embarrassingly patronizing, like he was talking to a room full of Kindergarteners ("we're trying to cut the bad stuff and preserve the good stuff!") but the biggest tragedy of all is that it was actually necessary to spell it out like that.

Thus, I conclude once again that political theater is an extremely damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't deal. It's always been like that (if you get a funding bill with a distasteful rider attached, you're basically choosing whether you'd rather have your opponent in the next election say that you voted against funding our troops or that you voted for raising taxes or something) but I really think it's getting worse these days, especially with the way the extreme right has made it a sin to associate with Obama in any way at all--so much as agreeing with him that 2 + 2 is 4 = agreeing with Obama = primary challenge.

[Kento]

JJ wrote:

There was a significant anti-American element to some of the anti-Bush / anti-war protestors; people who though the US government was an illegitimate bloodthirsty war machine motivated only by killing and oppression (and the profits to be gained from killing and oppression).

But the thing is, there is also a significant anti-American element to much of the right-wing protests of today, namely among those who believe the US government is an illegitimate entity controlled by traitors and zionists and satanists and the Bilderberg group and other evil people plotting to round up and exterminate huge chunks of the citizenry.

It's interesting how the 9-11 Truth movement was once seen as a leftist thing, but it's now sort of morphing into a right-wing thing, as the ideology of Washington changes. The only consistent theme is hating government and hating your country. Just about any pseudo-ideological rhetoric can be dreamed up to justify it in either direction.

I don't think either is anti-American so much as a rejection of part of the (sometimes real, sometimes not) American tradition. I, despite being in some ways very much a product of it, hate the United States's imperial tradition (McKinley!!!), but I am so proud of some parts of the intellectual tradition. It's tempting to say imperialism isn't part of the American tradition, and I could say I'm protecting what America is "really" about, but I just need to come to terms with the fact that my country is profoundly self-contradictory.

Conspiracy theories are a great way to figure out why things aren't going your way!

[Psudo]

Kjorteo wrote:

political theater is an extremely damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't deal. [...]if you get a funding bill with a distasteful rider attached, you're basically choosing whether you'd rather have your opponent in the next election say that you voted against funding our troops or that you voted for raising taxes

I've gotta concede to this. It's just too perfectly true.

Kento wrote:

Conspiracy theories are a great way to figure out why things aren't going your way!

I hope that's a joke.

[Zipperfish]

Newsbot wrote:

Filibuster Cartoons
Title: How to hate the government (click to view)
Date: February 24, 2010
"Government = bad" seems to be the main mantra of the American conservative movement these days. It's a message we saw repeated again and again at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference, and it's the one consistent note of the otherwise fairly incoherent Tea Party movement. Republicans, sensing the direction the winds are blowing, have tried to co-opt as much of the anti-government tide as possible, hoping to cruise to victory in November by making "government vs. freedom" the crux of all talking points.

The problem, though, is that not all anti-government agendas are created equal. There's the mainstream, beltway Republican style of anti-government activism, pushing for lower taxes and less regulation and the like, but then there's also the kook style, going on about the NWO and martial law and the Bilderberg group all the other nonsense that thrives in the shadier corners of the internet. There is evidence that the lines between respectable anti-government and kook anti-government are becoming increasingly blurred in the modern discourse, due in part to the uncritical legitimacy a lot in the former camp are offering the latter, for strategic, short-term partisan reasons.

Scott Brown, for instance, made some statements recently that treaded dangerously close to expressing sympathy for the crazed lunatic who flew his plane into the IRS last week, talking about the legitimate mood of frustration sweeping the country. Then you have people like Debra Medina, the Tea Party-endorsed Republican candidate in the Texas gubernatorial primary, who have gone on record expressing calculated doubt in the "real story" of the 9-11 attacks. And of course Sarah Palin famously gave the keynote address at a recent activist conference that, among others, featured speakers raising all sorts of conspiratorial junk about Obama's birthplace and religion.

You probably have examples of your own. Or not. Talk about it in the forums by clicking on the link below.

One thing I never understood is why the right-wing parties lust so for government power when they explicitly despise government. I first noted this with Reagan, though I was only a teenager back then. Here's a guy who was elected to power on the premise that he couldn't stand government. Well, if I wanted a job as, say, a bartender, I don't think I'd start the interview with a treatise on how much I hated bars.

In Canada, the Conservatives are in power. This current batch of Conservatives is probably further right than any we've seen in the past. And now that they are in power, you can see how uncomfortable they are. They act like they are in the Opposition, constantly launching smear against campaigns against the Liberals--the actual Opposition.

They can't stand the people that work for them--the civil servants. There was that lady from the nuclear commission and the diplomat who tried to raise issues with the treatment of detainees.

[ShepherdsDog]

Quote:

constantly launching smear against campaigns against the Liberals--the actual Opposition.

yeah, it's not like the Liberals aren't doing a good enough job themselves.

[Kento]

Psudo wrote:

Kento wrote:

Conspiracy theories are a great way to figure out why things aren't going your way!

I hope that's a joke.

One of my better ones this week, if you'd believe it.

[Zipperfish]

ShepherdsDog wrote:

Quote:

constantly launching smear against campaigns against the Liberals--the actual Opposition.

yeah, it's not like the Liberals aren't doing a good enough job themselves.

Quite correct, I'd say. What do you do when the government acts like the Opposition? Act like the government. That's what the Liberals should be doing. The Conservatives are implicitly sending the message that they'd rather be the Opposition.

[ShepherdsDog]

well, isn't it more fun and easier, to criticize something rather than actually work? That's how the Liberals used to be successful. While in opposition they talked/criticized from the Left and once they got into power, they ruled from the Right.

[Kjorteo]

Not that I know anything about Canadian political history except what I learned from Filibuster, but assuming JJ's view is accurate, then I presume that would be how Paul Martin got his reputation for having Machiavellian ambitions for power notably not paired with the first clue what to do with it once he actually had it.

[Zipperfish]

Shepherd's Dog wrote:

well, isn't it more fun and easier, to criticize something rather than actually work? That's how the Liberals used to be successful. While in opposition they talked/criticized from the Left and once they got into power, they ruled from the Right.

Yup, can't argue with that.

Kjorteo wrote:

Not that I know anything about Canadian political history except what I learned from Filibuster, but assuming JJ's view is accurate, then I presume that would be how Paul Martin got his reputation for having Machiavellian ambitions for power notably not paired with the first clue what to do with it once he actually had it.

Well, I think it had a lot to do with Paul Martin being the heir-apparent for so long. Jean Chretien, like the vast majority of political leaders, did not leave until forced to go. BY that time, Martin's best-before date was long past and the Liberal party--at least the Quebec wing of the Liberal party--was so corrupt it stunk up the whole country.

Martin reminds me a bit of John Kerry--a blue-blood bred to govern who was perhaps a little unprepared for the bloodsport of politics.

[Psudo]

I think the problems Zipperfish has brought up are largely the result of using the 'left/right' terminology. In one sense, 'right-wing' means the establishment rulers and 'left-wing' means the opposition party. In another, 'right-wing' means one who believes in enforcing morality more than controlling money, whereas 'left-wing' means one who would rather control money than regulate personal behavior. There is no particular reason the latter pair of definitions should correspond to the former.

Neither of those definition pairs refer to the big government vs. small government issue, which can be described as 'conservative' and 'liberal' in the form "We should be _____ in the creation and size of government agencies." Or, perhaps, libertarian vs. authoritarian.

By the first pair of definitions, Reagan was a left-winger -- that is, he wanted to change the way government operated and how it was run. But he wanted to do so precisely because he was right-wing by the second definition pair (fiscal freedom/moral order) and conservative/libertarian by the third (government powers taken for powers' sake only should be repealed) and the US government had not been either for so long.

I don't think any political party in North America is right-wing by the first definition -- is there any party that believes everything is on the right track and government is doing exactly what it should exactly how it should? Perhaps Bloc Quebecois if you believe the accusations that they prefer tax subsidies to true independence. That's what you're noticing: every party would rather be the opposition, because it's easier to criticize the rulers than to rule, especially with the press constantly searching for mistakes to sensationalize.

It's one of the complications of living in a liberal society: everyone's left-wing because everyone wants change for the better. They're just left-wing in different ways.

If I may use Judaism as an metaphor, no one in our politics is Orthodox. The cultural argument is between Conservative and Reformed.

[Kjorteo]

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read."
— Food critic Anton Ego, Ratatouille

I like that quote for anyone who does anything creative (I write stories, for example) and the power that reviewers tend to hold over any creative work, but I suppose it's not entirely out of place in this discussion either.

[Psudo]

Profound and appropriate, Kjorteo.

[Quantum_Wizard]

Psudo wrote:

The unstated, implied end of Limbaugh's "I hope he fails" quote is "to destroy what I love." That is what Limbaugh believes Obama seeks. Can anyone refuse to hope that what they love endures?

When I first heard this quote, my interpretation was that he actually wanted Obama's governance to have dire results. Perhaps because he would fear that governance with good results would make Democrats more popular or perhaps because he would just plain dislike to see a Democrat succeed. Something like this would be a very unreasonable position to take. However, I guess that your interpretation is much more likely what he meant.