== You cynics aren't helpful! ==
Finally,
someone (else) is making a key point — that liberals and progressives sabotage
themselves with gloom, by proclaiming that no past reforms or interventions
have done the slightest good. Nothing
has improved, everything is worse and none of the past measures that we strove so hard to achieve has ever
worked!
This reflex is not only counterfactual and kind of sick-minded... it is also spectacularly counterproductive, playing into the hands of those who proclaim: “Yep! Progressive ‘solutions’ never work, and progressives are the first to say so!”
Finally,
someone (else) is making a key point — that liberals and progressives sabotage
themselves with gloom, by proclaiming that no past reforms or interventions
have done the slightest good. Nothing
has improved, everything is worse and none of the past measures that we strove so hard to achieve has ever
worked! This reflex is not only counterfactual and kind of sick-minded... it is also spectacularly counterproductive, playing into the hands of those who proclaim: “Yep! Progressive ‘solutions’ never work, and progressives are the first to say so!”
In Progressives Lost the Election, but Their Ideas are Winning, Richard V. Reeves offers statistical evidence that the poor and middle class
aren’t doing quite as badly in the U.S. as many have been railing. Does that
make him an enemy of progress? Not when he shows relentlessly that:
(1) it was
successive liberal interventions that prevented a plummet into poverty for tens
of millions and
(2) we still have a long way to go. Indeed, bragging about
their product’s past successes would be the first thing done by any sane
salesperson! Suggesting that many of our left-wing friends are not especially,
well, sane.
“For progressives, doom and gloom
will be a self-defeating political strategy, since it adds steadily to the
sense that government doesn’t work. This will be especially true in 2016 after
occupying the White House for two terms. The subtext of downbeat progressive
rhetoric is, by implication: "Yes, we have already done all these things
(the Great Society, tax credits, welfare reform, food stamps), but honestly,
nothing has really worked, look how terrible things are becoming," writes Reeves, continuing:
“What
they should be saying instead is: "Look at all these government
initiatives that have really worked to reduce poverty, improve workplaces,
lessen inequality, weaken racism, boost women’s chances, and improve wellbeing.
So let’s do more of it! What’s the next problem that we can help to
solve?"
Lest you
right wingers crow, at this point, fie upon you! If you had had your way for 70 years, this
society would be a festering feudal cesspit of poverty, simmering on the edge
of revolution. And you HAVE had your way in the US for 2 decades, and things
ARE getting worse for the middle classes! Your oligarchs, in contrast, are doing great. Still, the aversion of our news media - of all kinds - to ever mention good news, is stunningly consistent, almost to the point of evil.
Just one example. Since the Department of Health & Human Services began a campaign, three years ago, to eradicate fatal hospital errors, there has been a plummet in Hospital Acquired Illness. Had you heard of this? Of course not.
Just one example. Since the Department of Health & Human Services began a campaign, three years ago, to eradicate fatal hospital errors, there has been a plummet in Hospital Acquired Illness. Had you heard of this? Of course not.
All of this riffs along with Steven Pinker’s important book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, wherein he shows absolutely that average per capita rates of
both violence and poverty have plummeted, worldwide, every decade since humanity hit its nadir in 1943.
I take head-on the fury that these facts arouse in people of the left, and the blindness of the right, in my TedX talk, Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be mad as hell? (Follow the slides on Slideshare!)
I take head-on the fury that these facts arouse in people of the left, and the blindness of the right, in my TedX talk, Indignation, Addiction and Hope: Does it help to be mad as hell? (Follow the slides on Slideshare!)
All of this shows that - although the Neo-Confederacy is
our worst problem today — a froth of insanity and treason, incited by foreign
petro-sheiks who mean us nothing but harm — there certainly is a fair amount of
crazy, also, on the other side.
The New Age Bullshit Generator randomly generates
hilariously plausible, touchy-feely psychotech-quantum babble! Farm-out man! Right-arm!
For a more compact version of this much-deserved satire, see: The Enigmatic Wisdom of Chopra.
But I recommend delving into the intellectual grand-daddy of
New Age/postmodernist satirical debunkery, the "Sokal Hoax."
Okay, I am having some fun skewering the ditzy far-far-left, this time. But let us never forget, cesspits thrive near all fanaticisms.
And although the biggest threat right now to our rational enlightenment is the
"bullshit mountain" of the Fox'd right, there is definitely a far
wing of the other side that wallows in insipid fantasy.
If you cannot turn your head and acknowledge this, then you have Fused Political Spine Disease and you are part of the problem, not the solution.
If you cannot turn your head and acknowledge this, then you have Fused Political Spine Disease and you are part of the problem, not the solution.
Get an ideological chiropractor. Re-learn how to turn your head and see that
dangers lie in all directions. Only then will you earn the credibility (as I have done) to say: "I am very aware of my own side's crazies... and that qualifies me to say, unequivocally, that the other side is worse!"
== Health Care ==
...before the GOP went completely bonkers and disowned its own… damn… plan. Simply because Barack Obama had the utter gall – the nerve – to … agree to it! That gave their own damn plan cooties, it appears.
George
Monbiot sarcastically asks (in The Guardian) “Why
stop at Isis when we could bomb the whole Muslim world? Humanitarian arguments, ifconsistently applied, could be used to flatten the entire Middle East.”
Monbiot
leaves out the biggest allegation against that desert kingdom — that it
meddles in U.S. governance. Not just with bribery and blackmail and the usual tools, but above all by supporting and maintaining Rupert Murdoch’s
propaganda empire which has deliberately destroyed politics in America, pitting
one half of the country (a re-ignited Confederacy) against the other half.
The Bush family, virtually a branch office of that R’oil House, (holding hands with them and calling Prince Bandar “Uncle Bandie"), plunged us into so many calamities that every single metric of U.S. national health plummeted under the watches of George Senior and George Junior, plus Dick Cheney — losses that measure many trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Should we not consider all of that an “act of war”?
In any event, remember this in 2016. That McCain and Romney distanced themselves from the accursed Bush clan... but surrounded themselves with factotums from the entire Bush-GOP 'brain trust' that delivered the worst governance seen in at least 80 years. Do not believe that anything has changed, till the whole house has been disinfected and cleaned. And finally hope for sane conservatism when that whirring sound goes away... the spinning of Goldwater and Buckley, in their graves.
The Bush family, virtually a branch office of that R’oil House, (holding hands with them and calling Prince Bandar “Uncle Bandie"), plunged us into so many calamities that every single metric of U.S. national health plummeted under the watches of George Senior and George Junior, plus Dick Cheney — losses that measure many trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Should we not consider all of that an “act of war”?
In any event, remember this in 2016. That McCain and Romney distanced themselves from the accursed Bush clan... but surrounded themselves with factotums from the entire Bush-GOP 'brain trust' that delivered the worst governance seen in at least 80 years. Do not believe that anything has changed, till the whole house has been disinfected and cleaned. And finally hope for sane conservatism when that whirring sound goes away... the spinning of Goldwater and Buckley, in their graves.
== Bush and more Bush ==
And why not? As we've seen, the Bushes are so intimately tied to one of the Middle Eastern royal families that W said "Uncle (Prince) Bandaar just about raised me." A family also co-owns Fox.
So yes, by all means Jeb, run! If the Confederacy succeeds in imposing another Bush rule over the United States, then we in the loyal, Blue half will deserve what we get. And our nation's 200 year Civil War will be over, for good.
P.S. and BTW.... I am still looking for a guerrilla performance art coop who might do a piece of political humor that would far out-do Jib-Jab's famous 2004 "This Land" sketch.
It might even put the kibosh on this "dynasty" thing, once and for all.
