Wages Of Hysteria
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When many conservatives were jumping on the bandwagon declaring Sotomayor to be a racist/racialist, I marveled at the short-sighted, self-defeating nature of the attacks. Of course, the bigger problem was that these charges against Sotomayor were baseless and ridiculous, and conservatives who kept propagating them were discrediting themselves and were distracting from the legitimate objections to the nominee’s judicial philosophy. What was more striking about the campaign to derail Sotomayor, which failed yesterday as everyone knew it would, was how it opened conservatives up to the most absurd, baseless charges of racism and lowered the standard by which an idea, statement or action should be considered racist. Now Paul Krugman has managed to discern racial antagonism in the vocal, sometimes obnoxious opposition to Democratic health care legislation at town hall meetings. Krugman writes:
But they’re probably reacting less to what Mr. Obama is doing, or even to what they’ve heard about what he’s doing, than to who he is.
You might call this Krugman’s Hatchet: no matter how many other reasonable explanations may account for conservative behavior, the real cause is always racial panic.
The point is not that Krugman would not have made an argument like this had the opposition to Sotomayor not been centered around her non-existent racism, but that Krugman and the like always make these arguments and the attacks on Sotomayor have made it virtually impossible for the public to take conservatives seriously after they so cavalierly threw the same charges against Sotomayor. Conservatives will reject Krugman’s attack as the nonsense that it is, but every conservative who hallucinated Sotomayor’s racism/racialism doesn’t have much of a credible defense. Indeed, these conservatives will be reduced to saying that their outrage over Sotomayor’s non-existent racism was just as manufactured as Krugman’s claims are unfounded. If Sotomayor’s really unremarkable “wise Latina” statement is proof of abiding anti-white racism, as so many pundits on the right have claimed and as at least one of the Senators voting nay insisted during the floor debate, “code”-breaking liberals are going to have a field day with every anti-Obama statement any conservative makes. Having watered down what constitutes racism so much to try unsuccessfully to trip up Sotomayor, these conservative critics cannot credibly refute Krugman et al. when they impute motives to their opponents just as the critics foolishly imputed them to Sotomayor.
The clever thing in accusing someone of “racial anxiety,” as Krugman does to the protesters against health care legislation, is that it is as hard to disprove as a conspiracy theory. No matter what explanation one provides for the intensity of opposition to Democratic health care proposals, the “real” reason for such intense opposition must be found somewhere else. One simple explanation might be this: the protesters are die-hard partisans who want to thwart Democratic initiatives as much as they can. Another might be that they see the proposed legislation as another advance towards a socialistic system that they find unacceptable and un-American on an ideological level (which may also explain the cries of “This is America!”). (The importance of Americanism as the driving force of much of the right cannot be overestimated in all of this.) There may be a more mundane, practical reason for opposing the plan, such as having a strong desire not to pay for it. It is possible that Middle Americans who have seen wealthy and powerful interests saved in one bailout after another have reached their limit with the concentration of power in Washington and the collusion between government and corporate interests, and they are reacting reflexively against any new large government spending commitments. It could also be the case that protesters are acting on exaggerated or misleading information that was designed to inspire outrage, which could help account for the vehemence of some of the protests. Of course, none of this is sufficient for Krugman, who must always see everything on the right in terms of racial resentment. As usual when he writes about politics, he is making it all up and pretending to know something about what drives the other side of the debate, when it is merely what he prefers to believe are the motives of his opponents.
Filed under: politics
While I can certainly sympathize with the reductionist view that the “all opposition to Obama must be rooted in racism argument”, I’m afraid that I have to agree with Krugman that many of the protestors (fully acknowledging that they are not representative of the entire conservative movement) showing up to these rallies very much bring racially charged motivations with them. Have you seen the effagies? Have you seen the racial slurs attached to them? Did you see the Palin rallies during the campaign? Sure, it may also be tied into Americanism as you describe it, but racial resentment is a component in much of this.
Sorry Daniel, but Americanism which defines itself using crude attacks (Obama is a Muslim, Obama isn’t one of us, Barack the Magic Negro, etc, etc, etc…) is still racism, even if that may not necessarily be the root cause.
Let me be clear here: There are plenty of reasons to oppose the current healthcare legislation being debated in Congress, but we’re not seeing many of these protestors doing that. Instead, we’re seeing mobs. Full stop.
I love your blog (I’ve been reading it since its launch and this is my first comment), but I have to seriously disagree with you here. If conservatives ever hope to regain any credibility in America, the movement is going to have to acknowledge some additional, albeit, unsettling truths about many people who have attached themselves to this movement.
I’d agree with your general point that Republicans have a hard time refuting these kinds of criticisms due to their being guilty of even worse in the case of Sotomayor. But as for Krugman’s criticism being otherwise baseless, I have to disagree. Certainly there are specific policy and ideological criticsms one can make of Obama’s health care plan. I could make them from the left as well. But what we are seeing from the right is simply unhinged. There’s a blatant focus on Obama’s “un-Americaness” that bleeds into every aspect of those criticisms, and one can’t help but see it as a primary motivation in many cases, not just some secondary flavoring.
Many of these protesters seem actually to be going against their own self-interest, as many of them are exactly the kind of people – lower middle class, having a hard time getting by, unable to pay for health insurance and medical costs, dependent on government help in all these things – who would actually benefit from Obama’s plan. On the one hand, they may rightfully protest the bailout of banks and big businesses, on the grounds that this does little to directly help the average Joe, but when he tries to bail out the health care system by proposing subsidies for those average Joe’s, they call it Nazism or socialism. As some protesters say, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare!”
This reminds me of the actual “Joe the Plumber” who prostested Obama’s tax plan, even though he would have benefited from it. When faced with those facts, Joe couldn’t come up with a rationale for his opposition. His only response – and Palin’s in suing Joe as a symbol – was to attack Obama as “unamerican” as a socialist, a terrorist, a possible muslim, and “other”. It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that the actual motivating force behind even the policy disputes we see in these areas, including health care, is a visceral emotional rejection of Obama himself for reasons that have little to do with the policies in question. Certainly that seems to be the focus of late in grass-roots GOP opposition to Obama, as witness the insanity of the birther movement, which is now becoming not a fringe view in the GOP, but it’s dominant belief system, taking on an almost theological status within the party.
I certainly wish that Krugman were wrong, and that the GOP was not motivated by racial, ethnic, and identity politics in opposing the Democratic health care plan. I just see too much evidence that he’s right about a sizeable part of the GOP, and the most vocal elements within it, to dismiss it as mere distortion on a part with what the GOP tried to do to Sotomayor. Sotomayor’s remarks really were fairly innocent and did not mean she was a racist. Much of what is coming out of the GOP these days, unfortunately, really does seem to come from that kind of inner, visceral ugliness.
You are absolutely right about the self-defeating nature of the Sotomayor-as-racist attacks. But that doesn’t mean that Krugman is wrong.
You go through a long list of coulds, mights, mays, and possibles, but at the end, I have to agree that “of course, none of this is sufficient.” The only way you could convince Krugman, or your readers, of the merit of your argument is to offer evidence for it. I don’t see any here.
Plus, Krugman “must always see everything on the right in terms of racial resentment. As usual when he writes about politics, he is making it all up” is unfair. The people making things up are those that see no racial aspect to the current protests.
Awesom0, good comment and love the screen name. Welcome!
Why mention that many of these protestors are (or could be) going against their own self-interest? That doesn’t seem to be a very convincing argument that they’re motivated by hatred or fear. It’s not always irrational to oppose a federal policy, or anything, that’s in your own immediate self-interest.
For example, I could benefit a lot from a certain pill now, and suffer kidney damage later on that’s a lot worse than my current problem. I could possibly (but hope not) find it very much in my financial self-interests to allow a woman to have an abortion, but I’ll never support its legality – it’s not in my moral, spiritual, or emotional self-interest. I may get a better deal on health insurance today w/Obama’s plan, and that would be in my self-interest; but the deficit grows, my taxes go up, inflation explodes, and I end up in worse shape.
If that’s not what’s going to happen with Obamacare, then maybe Obama should explain so more convincingly. But if he can’t, or if these fears are well-founded, then that’s at least one reason for a poor town hall protestor to go against self-interest that doesn’t involve racism. At any rate, unless there’s real evidence that these are “mobs full stop” and that they’re really, truly racist, it seems unfair and unkind to call them so.
Sorry if that comment sounds a little combative – it wasn’t meant to be.
DDanicic, no need for apologies, your comment was fair. It’s certainly true that going against one’s own self-interst can make sense, but one has to find the sense in order to close the gap. Obama’s plan is paid for by taxes on the upper 1%, which these people are not a part of. Nor is it true that the taxes on the upper 1% are higher than previously. In fact, effective tax rates on these people have gone down. So it’s hard to see that this plan results in either a burdensome tax on the rich, any taxes at all on the middle and lower classes, or increased deficits. One can still rationally oppose it on grounds of ideological preference, but that is not what is fueling the fervor and frenzy of the movement. I’m not suggesting anyone opposing Obama’s plan is a racist, but one doesn’t have to look very hard to see that craven identity politics is a powerful part of the movement, and fuels a great deal of the resentment towards Obama.
Generally, self-interest explains 99% of politics. And I’m not suggesting that opposition to Obama isn’t a matter of self-interest. What I’m saying is that the self-interest being voiced by many who oppose his policies is actually a form of racial, ethnic, and identity self-interest. These people see their own self-interests as tied to having people in power who are just like them, who share their racial, ethnic, and identity politics. I’m just saying that this can often conflict with their economic self-interest. In the case of Joe the Plumber, for example, explaining to him that his taxes would actually go down, rather than up, as he tried to assert, doesn’t turn him into an Obama supporter. Why? Because he conceives of his own self-interest not purely in economic terms, but in ethnic, racial, and ideological identity politics. And that same conception of self-interest is what is driving upposition to Obama’s policies, not the policies themselves.
Look at Bush, who these same people supported vigorously as he was busting the budget and putting in place 32 trillion dollars in unfunded entitlement programs. They didn’t protest that, because they could identify with Bush as “one of them”. But when Obama does something much more sensible and budget-conscious, he gets labelled an un-American Nazi socialist. I detect a little hypocrisy there which can only be explained by ractial, ethnic, and identity politics. If you have a more reasonable explanation, please, offer it up.
I don’t think that’s completely fair– at the time of the actual incident, Joe, in the face of Barack Obama actuallly talking to him, demurred. He only found his voice again when he went viral and McCain decided to put him on a plane and get him a book deal. There are very concrete rewards for people with an ounce of credibility and fame to claim Obama is the devil. Witness Palin today, claiming that Obama will literally murder Trig, a la the T4 Euthanasia Program. That’s not racism, that’s just opportunism. The galley slaves waving the swastikas outside school gymnasiums have their own reasons, like racism, but they wouldn’t dare show their faces with such ridiculous display without the members of the elite cadre like Palin signalling approval in this way.
That’s a completely valid point, but we’re not getting anywhere with people being encouraged to bring firearms to town hall mettings and claiming their children with cerebral palsy will be euthanized. If you think a trillion dollars over 10 years is a bumb deal for this reform, great! However, you’re going to have to show me how the unreformed system will do any better over the next 10 years, without metaphorically murdering anyone, which appears to be very difficult, and so the resistors get out the crosses and nails.
“There are very concrete rewards for people with an ounce of credibility and fame to claim Obama is the devil.”
This is quite true, and may go part of the way to explaining Joe the P’s and Palin’s swinging to the far right, as well as Limbaugh, Coulter, and their ability to fire up the base. My point would be, however, that many in this “base” are being fired up against their own economic and political self-interest. Even if they have legitimate ideologial grounds for disagreeing, the way in which they are being fired up actually tends to destroy their political legitimacy, in precisely the ways that Daniel points out. So it’s kind of lose-lose for them.
But this explanation can’t close the cognitive dissonance gap. I don’t see what other than playing on people’s identity politics, race, and ethnic fears, etc., does that. As mentioned, these same people support social security, medicare, medicaid, George Bush’s 32 trillion dollar unfunded drug benefit, the Bush deficits, etc. It’s a little hard to see why they suddenly take to the barricades when Obama does health care reform.
The point about abortion is valid. And it would certainly make sense that if Obama were actually proposing a euthenasia program for seniors and the chronically disabled, that these kinds of protests would be justified. There are moral reasons to go against one’s own pure self-interest. But the fact is, these charges are being invented out of nothing, with not a shred of a basis other than a provision in the bill to help people have living wills, which everyone should have anyway, and which cannot possibly lead to the consequences stated. No living will can allow the state to kill trig, or anyone else.
“That’s not racism, that’s just opportunism. ”
The opportunity wouldn’t exist without the racism already lying under the table, ready to be played.
As for your arguments about the health bill, they are at least attempts at rational opposition. I can point out that they are not unfunded, that they lead to savings, not deficits, that they put us on the road to controlling health care costs, which are spiralling out of control in the private sector and eating away at paychecks worse than any government program could, and that would be a decent debate. But that’s not what these protesters are having, they can’t be reasoned with, because their protest does not spring from rational differences in our sense of what is in our self-interest, it springs from paranoia and fear and identity politics, the sense that their “country” is slipping away from the control of conservative white peope. It is presumed by them that anyone who is not one of them is against them, and is acting against their interests. This is demonstrably false, but is believed with religious fervor anyway.
I chuckle when folks label citizens against ObamaCare as mobs.
What does that make the ObamaThugs who have been called out in the last day or two to counter citizens against ObamaCare?
Jonah Goldberg might say — Liberal Fascists. . . .
For the record I would actually like to hear your opinions on insurance reform Daniel, and I think we could all have a civil discussion on here about it.
It’s amazing how quickly Republican’s have aped the worst bits of the New Left, and there really has become no difference between ISO people waving signs about Mumia Abu Jamal at every possible chance and the guys throwing around Nazism and socialism around with abandon.
“Jonah Goldberg might say — Liberal Fascists. . . .”
I rest my case.
The whole “trig being killed” meme is amusing, if for no other reason than it is programs Republican’s love to hate (Medicaid, SSDI, Voc. Rehab, DDSN) that almost exclusively form the income and/or the benefits of most people with down syndrome for the majority of their lives. Outside of families like the Palin’s, who have at the very least a fair amount of money, most individuals cannot afford, nor could they by virtue of aging, take care of many of these individuals without the assistance of the state.
Like healthcare and other welfare programs in general theres a presumption that, if dismantled, that maybe some sort of community initiated support, grounded in family would occur. Maybe. But I wouldn’t roll the dice on it.
Dan
I think you are guilty of wishful thinking here. After Bush/Cheney/Rove destroyed the country and the Republican Party much of what is left is the fruit of the Southern Strategy. I see this in my own family. Even out here on the left coast many of my family members jumped from the Democrats to the Republicans after the Civil Rights Bill. My 86 year old mother was convinced that it was the end of the US after Obama was elected. I think Krugman is right – it’s not what Obama does they object to it’s who he is.
Why must we have health care reform this instant? It can wait a year or two. It is the furious pace of “change” without regard to the consequences that has me very afraid. Most of the anger we are witnessing is an expression of underlying fear that we are embarking on obscenely expensive ventures of “change” at a time when we are BROKE. We are bleeding jobs at a rate of a million every sixty days, yet we are churning out programs that are utterly dependant on a healthy economy and a robust employment situation. It seems incredibly foolish to attempt to change a major portion of our economy at a time when we haven’t fully recovered from it’s near demise. Those in power don’t have a clue to the amount of pain that we at the ‘bottom’ are feeling. My wife and I are both unemployed now with unemployment benefits recently exhausted and we are in our late fifties. There are very few jobs available to us. We want health care reform more than most, but not at any cost. We want job opportunies and a healthy economy first. Contrary to what many in the press would believe, not all Republicans want Obama to fail or are racists. We NEED for him to succeed, but we are certain he cannot do it by emulating the ways of Wall Street and feverishly spending while America is in Chapter 11.
Why must we have health care reform this instant? It can wait a year or two. It is the furious pace of “change” without regard to the consequences that has me very afraid. Most of the anger we are witnessing is an expression of underlying fear that we are embarking on obscenely expensive ventures of “change” at a time when we are BROKE. We are bleeding jobs at a rate of a million every sixty days, yet we are churning out programs that are utterly dependant on a healthy economy and a robust employment situation.(bold mine)
And presumably losing their health care as well, which will further spiral personal debt, foreclosure, and bankruptcy as individuals will no longer be able to afford mounting medical bills, which will trigger yet another slump. There is a fair amount of criticism, both from the left and the right, about the nature of the bailouts, the stimulus, so on and so forth, but there is little disagreement, when there is a contraction of spending power across a country, that the government and the central bank are the only actors whom have the ability in which to serve as a buffer.
When similar crises have happened before, the attitude of the IMF towards other countries is not unlike many Republican’s; slash spending, cut the deficit, etc. etc. And they cause extreme if not debilitating contractions that wipe out whole entire industries and markets in a country. When the economies, a number of years later, finally recover the IMF and others crow over the remains about their success. If you want America to become like Aregentina in the early 2000’s, then yes, we should go the contraction method.
Bill, I don’t see how doing helath care reform hurts people in your position, nor do I see how putting it off helps. The economy needs more money pumped into it, not less. Feverishing spending is exactly what helps in times like this, as Herbert Hoover found out the hard way. Do you want to turn this into a real depression?If anything, Obama isn’t spending enough money fast enough. But the rate of job loss is at least declining, and looks to reverse itself at least by next year. And the GDP figures look to be positive next quarter for the first time in a year. So it isn’t for naught.
The kind of reform Obama is proposing would at least give you and your wife health care so that if you get sick during this vulnerable time you can still get the treatment you need. The kind of change Obama is proposing would not disrupt the health care system, or endanger the economy. To the contrary, it would help stimulate the economy, and begin to provide the stability we need. If anything, in my view, it’s not radical enough, but I understand that the idea is to create gradual changes that slowly transform the system without any upheavel. So again, I’m not sure what your objection is in reality, other than a generalized fear of any change at all.
conradg:
Mr. Pot calling Mr. Kettleblack on line 1.
It’s all identity politics, all the way down. Me, the Sarah Palin supporters, Paul Krugman, and you, too, mon ami. Us and them; who, whom. I say, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, except when it’s middle-class whites, in which case it’s time for a full-on moral panic.
No, it’s not all identity politics. A good health care plan benefits one’s health, not one’s identity. I’m not even in a position to oppose middle-class whites, since I am one. My whole point is that most middle-class whites would benefit from Obama’s plan, but some perceive the opposite, because they are stuck in identity politics, and can’t see beyond it.
Isn’t it possible that people who are already scared of socialism can be even more scared of socialism when it comes from a black man? Just because something is going to be scary no matter what doesn’t mean it can’t be more scary when it comes from an “other”.
I think it’s quite possible that race is having a catalytic effect on the anger in that Obamas race serves to further heighten the concern over “socialism” and ratchets it up to the level of panic.
The word “socialism” becomes virtually meaningless in this context. The same people who love medicare and social security suddenly call government regulation and supplementation of private health insurance “socialism”? Come off it. What exactly is scary about medicare? What is scary about extending it to those younger than 65? My father was a rock-ribbed Goldwater Republican, but he was also Chief of Medicine at a VA Hospital, and he came to the conclusion that extending that kind of care to the whole country, not just veterans, was the only sane way to solve the health care problem. He wasn’t scared of it, didn’t care if you called it socialism or not, it just worked. What Obama is proposing is far, far, less comprehensive than that. This rampant fear of government-run health care doesn’t seem to apply to the actual government run health care systems we have, such as the VA and medicare, so what exactly is going on other than the manipulation of people’s fears in order to distort the issues beyond recognition and thus paralyze any efforts for reform? We’ve seen this already, haven’t we? We had an election about this last fall, as I seem to remember.
Ddanicic I tried reading your post but couldn’t find any credulity past the “I could…allow a woman to have an abortion” point. Since when does a woman need permission from you regarding her body? I sincerely hope you misspoke and meant to say support and not allow.
Advocacy is all about identity politics, save perhaps for the tiny core of people with real expertise, and of course they too are all heavily emotionally invested in the outcome of their projects. You’re not arguing with strangers on the internet for your health. You just happen to despise the identity politics you believe you can pin on your opponents. For my part, I’m entirely unconvinced that white racism is the mainspring of resistance to health care reform. I recall that blonde-haired, blue-eyed Hilary Clinton’s health care reform was vehemently opposed, too, and in similar terms as socialist, as rationing, as radical, etc. At the same time, her blue-eyed, pale-skinned WASP husband was accused of turning the country over to the UN and/or the Chinese.
Are there racists who oppose Obama’s initiatives because he is black? Of course. That they outnumber those who support him precisely because he is black, and who see in him either racial redemption or, in the case of the 97% of blacks who support him, a source of racial pride, is far from clear. I suspect not, but who knows? I don’t care, so long as violence doesn’t erupt, who hates whom.
This business of imputing motives is an uncertain one, that is if one is interested in actually discerning them. If one is rather looking to use that ultimate smear, “(white) racist,” against one’s opponents – other forms of group antipathy struggle even to be recognized as racism, let alone be taken seriously – then it hardly matters. Anything derogatory said against a black man or his policies can be tortured into an expression of racism. Even if the words don’t denote racism, even if the speaker or writer doesn’t intend a racist meaning (did you forget the death of the author?), some racist somewhere could be drawing succor from them; some racist stereotype could be reinforced. This is Krugman’s, and Kathleen Parker’s, and Chris Matthews’, and Philip Kennicott’s, and MoDo’s style of argumentation. It’s dishonest, but the intent is to silence and intimidate on one hand, and express the good character of the speaker and those who agree with him (there’s identity again) on the other.
I must be lost. I thought this was The American Conservative, not TPM.
“You’re not arguing with strangers on the internet for your health. You just happen to despise the identity politics you believe you can pin on your opponents.”
I’m so glad to have met someone who can read minds. At least you aren’t uncertain about imputing motives to your opponents. Of course, as it happens, I’m a white, middle-class male, so shouldn’t I hate Obama and oppose his health care plan? What’s wrong with me?
Look, if you want an example of a dishonest style of argumentation, just read your own post. There’s not an honest sentence in it. It’s just an attempt to confuse a fairly simple matter.
I have nothing against identity politics per se, as long as it doesn’t distort reality and become a form of cult membership with all the liabilities of cognitive dissonance to reinforce its illusions. No one is suggesting that the sole, or even the primary rationale behind opposition to Obama or his health care plan is race. What I’m saying is that much of the far right is devoted to an idea of its own identity which ensures that all its opponents will be labelled as un-American foreigners who are traitors to their country and feared as if they represented some ultimate form of betrayal of all that is good and true. This embraces all kinds of nasty and disturbed human evils and pettiness, from racism to sexism to ethnicism to ideological nationalism, each justified and rationalized from a visceral emotional position that is virtually immune to reason and only marginally able to offer rational arguments in support of its views.
If you analyzed this in depth you would not find “white racism” at its root, but a simplistic form of narcissism. If it were merely racism, or some neurotic symptom of repressed fear, it would at least be workable. But as Freud said, narcissism is virtually untreatable, locked off as it is in a world of its own creation. The only real hope, I think, is for the narcissist to come to see how self-destructive his path is, and that doesn’t usually come about until they really have destroyed themselves. This movement is well on its way to destroying itself, and its pathologies are becoming increasingly evident even to many on the right itself. Daniel has certainly been aware of this pattern for quite a while. Conservatism itself as a philosophical and political orientation is not inherently wedded to this narcissistic form of pathological identity politics. But it has become so intertwined with it that separating itself from it is going to be very difficult and costly. And yet, necessary also.
Daniel: “You might call this Krugman’s Hatchet: no matter how many other reasonable explanations may account for conservative behavior, the real cause is always racial panic.”
Bullsh*t – most of his posts blame right-wing behavior on economic grounds, followed by (IMHO) more tribal explanations; racism would be third, at best.
Bill Royston, on August 9th, 2009 at 10:15 am Said:
“Why must we have health care reform this instant? It can wait a year or two”
It’s waited since the early 90’s, when the right killed the Clinton reforms, and said ‘job well done’. The only reforms the right has supported is putting more money in the pockets of their campaign contributors.
There is a fair amount of criticism, both from the left and the right, about the nature of the bailouts, the stimulus, so on and so forth, but there is little disagreement, when there is a contraction of spending power across a country, that the government and the central bank are the only actors whom have the ability in which to serve as a buffer.
Little disagreement, except of course, from the sort of people who write for The American Conservative.
On the issue of race vs. healthcare, interestingly enough, Lawrence Auster suggests that there are good, race-related reasons why national health care would work poorly in the U.S. In short, he somewhat agrees that there are racial (what Krugman would call “racist”) reasons for opposing national healthcare, but he thinks that they are justified.
This was rather unclear. For the first, leaving posts in comboxes isn’t effective advocacy, it doesn’t directly benefit one’s health, and it isn’t earning us money, fame, or respect. It is an exercise in self-assertion. For the second, you do have your own identity, and it informs your politics. You naturally believe that yours is not objectively nasty, while you believe that of your opponents is. Granting for the sake of argument that you are a perfectly decent fellow, I can’t agree with the broader point that the particular wickednesses expressed in left-wing politics, different as they may be in some respects from those expressed on the right, are less nasty, or that leftism is more “rational.”
How should I know? Nothing? If something is wrong with you, I wouldn’t presume to speculate. I try not to play internet psychologist. You’re the judge of your own interests.
You hadn’t actually said that yet. It’s fair enough. The right has its besetting sins. I think you’re blind if you won’t see a visceral, prerational emotional basis underlying all forms of impassioned, mass political activity. Some men are rational, though rationality is not itself a univocal concept. Man is only a barely rational creature, and insofar as mass politics depends on putting bodies in the streets, depending on rationality to motivate crowds is foolish, and excoriating the masses for their irrationality is a category error.
Is this concern trolling? Social and demographic trends have reduced the relative size of the Nixon coalition on which the modern GOP was built to a point where it can not reliably win national elections. But for those trends, the intellectual and class incoherence would go mostly unnoticed. But for those trends, the intellectual incoherence and interest group cleavages in the Democratic coalition would be as obvious as those in the Republican party. This all has much less to do with ideas than it does with chance on one hand and the relative sizes of the groups to which your party’s pitch is likely to appeal on the other. You don’t sell politicians and policies with philosophy any more than you do detergent or cars.
You’re putting yourself in the ridiculous position of defending a ridiculous claim – that all advocacy politics is identity politics. The Nixon coalition exploited identity politics and white racism, but that’s not all that it was about. It was also about advocating policies that had nothing to do with identity politics. Nixon advocated a national health care plan that was more comprehensive and “socialistic” than the one Obama is now advocating, and if Democrats hadn’t been so set on getting more they could have had universal health coverage 35 years ago. He also advocated all kinds of social spending plans that make Obama look positively cautious and conservative. His wage/price controls were far more socialistic than anything Obama has even imagined doing. He got the support of many southern democrats not only because of identity politics, but because they liked these policies. Many other people supported Nixon’s policies even though they couldn’t stand the man. The policies themselves were not designed merely to benefit those whose identity politics he appealed to – they were simply of help iin getting elected and selling them.
Since that time, Republicans have tried to exploit identity politics to get elected and to implement all kinds of policies that don’t help the identity groups being exploited, or that even hurt them. Again, Joe the Plumber is case in point. He attacked Obama’s tax plan under the mistaken assumption that it would have cost him more than McCain’s plan. When it was clearly pointed out that the opposite was the case, he refused to acknowledge this, and continued to complain that it would hurt him. Facts didn’t seem to matter, because in his case identity politics certainly trumped all other consideration. Joe certainly could have opposed Obama on other policy grounds, but instead he just went into denial about Obama’s actual tax plan and how it compared to McCain’s.
For other people, the opposite was and remains the case. I supported Obama’s tax plan because it clearly seemed best for the country, not because I somehow identify with black men from Chicago. In fact, the whole reason Obama got elected is because a huge number of people voted for him who don’t share his personal identity. His election was a demonstration that identity politics don’t rule the day. A whole lot of white people voted for him simply because they agreed with his general policy approach, temperament, sense of fairness, etc. And plenty of people voted against him for sound and rational reasons as well. But there’s a significant number of people, who seem to be the most vocal opponents of Obama, who make emotional appeals to the most crass forms of identity politics their central appeal. In many cases, their arguments don’t even make sense on a practical level, and go against their economic self-interest (as in Joe’s case) because in the end, for these people identity politics really is everything.
These are the people I’m addressing, not the entire Nixon coalition. Unfortunately, these are the people who have also claimed the mantle of “conservatism” in our time, when conservatism itself isn’t their primary motive or interest at all, identity politics is. In many cases they could care less about conservatism itself, but simply use it as a reinforcement of identity politics, rather than the actual polticial, philosophical or social orientiation that could properly be called “conservative”. And in so doing they have warped conservatism beyond recognition, and the GOP has essentially gone along with this program, rather than disciplining it. The result is a party without any meaninful policy agenda at all, other than identity politics. They are simply incapable of governing anything. They live in a dream world of their own creation, doing the bidding of fantasy leaders like Rush, Ann, Palin, and anyone with a loud and confident sense of their own identity.
Bill Royston, on August 9th, 2009 at 10:15 am Said:
“Why must we have health care reform this instant? It can wait a year or two.”
Gee, when did I hear that last? Oh, back in 1993. Since the GOP trashed healthcare reform back then, they haven’t done jack sh*t on it for 16 years.
” It is the furious pace of “change” without regard to the consequences that has me very afraid. Most of the anger we are witnessing is an expression of underlying fear that we are embarking on obscenely expensive ventures of “change” at a time when we are BROKE. ”
Lie. The right just loved the furious pace of change under Bush, and had no problem with him and his cronies looting the country. It’s only now that you’ve rediscovered your alleged principles.
Americanism is such an inane ideal. It just seems to be another word for Republican talking point du jour. Nothing sums up the stupidity at the core of the whole fraud as well as Medicare recipients shrieking and howling about the horrors of government run healthcare, just as their stupid worthless parents shrieked and howled when Medicare itself was created.