cmaukonen's picture

    Why don't they get it ?

    By cmaukonen on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 2:22am |

    I have heard over and over on various blogs etc. people on the left - very intelligent people - ask in one way or another "Why don't these people (meaning generally those on the right and some in the middle) Get It ?  How can they be so ignorant ? So naive ? Don't they see what is happening to this country ? How can they still support failed policies ?"  Europe and Scandinavia and other places get it.

    Well it has to do with life experiences. Both individual and collectively. This country as a whole and people thmeselves here in this country do not have the same experiences that the rest of the world has had.  Face it we have lived a very charmed life here. I would even go as far as to say we here in this country are spoiled rotten. We have never had a major situation that physically and emotionally traumatized it every.  And no 9/11 and Pearl Harbor do not count.  I mean we have not ever been invaded by anyone and had our cities and country side bombed and trod upon by other armies. We have never had some tyrannical oppression that effected the majority of the people. Except those who have served in some major conflict over seas, most people in this country have never had anything more  devistaing happen to them than loosing their dog or cat.

    Most people in this country go ballistic over inconsequential situations simply because the have never had the experiences necessary to prepare them mentally  for anything more intense than that. And culturally not much more.  We don't even want to hear about it. I watched the Ken Burns documentary WAR on PBS. One of the things that really struck me was when those who had been held captive by the Japanese on the Philippines returned home after finally being rescued attempted to tell about their ordeal, nobody wanted to hear it.  People in this country cannot even handle this stuff second hand.

    We have the seemingly crazy Tea Party people and the Glen Becks and Micheil Bachmanns because these people have lived their entire lives in nearly complete isolation of the rest of the world and have had little or no major inconvenience, let alone trauma,  in their lives to relate to.  There is a vast difference between those who have had such experience and those who have not as to how they deal with the world and view it.  They react to things that are scary to them do to inexperience with them and pounding them with facts will not change their minds. You simply cannot argue emotions with data. Just ask any parent of a 2 year old child who is going to the dentist for the first time.

    This is in no way an excuse for their actions. Simply an explanation.


    Comments

    Yes, it's like George W. Bush never having the curiosity to travel abroad. They are happy and content and completely without the desire to learn or understand anything that is not in complete alignment with their sheltered view of the world.


    by MrSmith1 on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 3:20am

    When you say...people have lived their entire lives in nearly complete isolation of the rest of the world...it's really about all Americans not just the tea-baggers and GOPers.

    While Europe isn't all that thrilled about high tax rates, they know it's for the common good of all and there will be times where they will need to use social safety net. They know the high price for gas is the tax necessary to pay for road maintenace and other maintenance activities, such as wind, water or snow removal and clean up. Taxes are a necessity of life one must accept. Whereas in the US, any tax is the work of the devil and must be avoided at all costs.

    So Americans are sitting in their own self made bubble and chose to ignore the realities of life the rest of the world acknowledges and deals with on a dialy basis. But when they have to face reality that doesn't afford them an option to sidestep the consequences of their decisions it's going to hit the fan and there will be some serious breakdown in civility until everyone comes to grips the bubble has burst and the free ride is over.


    by Beetlejuice on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 6:05am

    We've got a pretty damn big country. I mean simply visiting the major areas of Texas - if you are from Texas - requires as much traveling as visiting several European countries. How many Asians our Europeans could tell you a single difference between North Dakota and South Dakota? Or Oklahoma and Kansas for that matter? Hell, could they even nail that Green Bay and Chitown are big rivals? If not, wouldn't t that make them isolated, unworldly clods too?

    The formula is America = EU not America = Luxembourg. We were once a republic, not a nation-state.

    I have no idea how the Europeans view taxes. But aside from those asshats Fox news and MSNBC follow around perpetually (two different justifications - same damn people getting focus), most people in America view taxes much like you describe - from conversations I've had. You act like "Americans" are the "1% of wealthy Americans who just screwed everyone else by refusing to pay their taxes". There is a pretty big difference in my mind. That's the only reason we're fucked right now - we could even have absorbed getting hung with all their *#@$^ toxic assets if they just started paying taxes again.

    What exactly is this free ride the rest of us have all been on? I must have f'n missed it.


    by kgb999 on Tue, 02/22/2011 - 6:41am

    Fix the price for a barrel of oil in Euros, then figure out how much it will cost as the value of the dollar drops...it's not pretty. Americans have been pampered with the dollar being the world reserve currency so we've never had to calculate the real cost of an item. The value of the items aren't changing...it's the value of the currency being used that determine the cost. And the value of the currency is a reflection of the value other countries give us. Once the dollar is replaced as the world reserve currency, Americans are going to find out the real cost of living. It'll make taxes look cheap.


    by Beetlejuice on Tue, 02/22/2011 - 12:59pm

    I mean we have not ever been invaded by anyone and had our cities and country side bombed and trod upon by other armies. We have never had some tyrannical oppression that effected the majority of the people. 

    In our past we have been invaded. Britain comes to mind, others include the French and the Spanish. 

    In modern times we don’t need bombs or invading armies to subjugate the people. To enslave them to serve. 

    PUBLIC CREDIT .......“As a very important source of strength and security, cherish public credit. One method of preserving it is to use it as sparingly as possible, avoiding occasions of expense by cultivating peace, but remembering also that timely disbursements to prepare for danger frequently prevent much greater disbursements to repel it, avoiding likewise the accumulation of debt, not only by shunning occasions of expense, but by vigorous exertion in time of peace to discharge the debts which unavoidable wars may have occasioned, not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear. The execution of these maxims belongs to your representatives, but it is necessary that public opinion should co-operate. To facilitate to them the performance of their duty, it is essential that you should practically bear in mind that towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant; that the intrinsic embarrassment, inseparable from the selection of the proper objects (which is always a choice of difficulties), ought to be a decisive motive for a candid construction of the conduct of the government in making it, and for a spirit of acquiescence in the measures for obtaining revenue, which the public exigencies may at any time dictate.”http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp

     Tax cuts for the rich, while the poor lose they’re homes? 

    Taxing the poor and middle class with higher interest rates to support wars; that enrich the merchant class.  

    Stupid Americans buying cheap imported goods, with NO Tariffs, because the merchant class doesn’t like taxes. 

    If you don’t like tariffs, stop the wars. Pay off the debt.

    Paying off the debt lowers interest rates, something the rich don’t want......Lower interest rates doesn’t help the greedy rich.     

    The Tyrannical oppression by a Federal Reserve, which serves the banker class’ love of higher returns on their investments; in the form of higher interest rates. The rich benefit from the debt cycle .

    The Representatives of Washington who serve the merchant class, have no intention to ever pay off the debt through taxation; only through tyrannical oppression, can they assure a slave class to serve the merchant class.

    Bombs destroy infrastructures, the rich don’t want to rebuild, because it takes away capital they want to hoard.

    If the rich can raise money through higher interest rates, the rich don’t need to take the risks of creating jobs in America.

    Stupid Americans, will borrow money to buy cheap foreign goods, selling themselves into slavery. 

    The American worker will still fight the wars to protect the merchant classes interest abroad. The American slave will still purchase the imported goods, cutting their own throats (who needs bombs)   

    Why should manufacturing jobs and industries ever return to America?


    by Resistance on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 6:12am

    Interesting comment.  Many members of the political and economic elites did not come from such backgrounds but have had to overcome major obstacles along the way.  Consider Senator Scott Brown of Masschusetts, the current governor of Connecticut, and our President, as 3 examples of political elites for whom this is true.  One question that is interesting to me is why so many of them appear either to have "forgotten their roots", or misinterpreted the reasons and the factors accounting for their current positions?  I don't know whether this is more prevalent among elites of our day than earlier days. 


    by AmericanDreamer on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 1:55pm

     One question that is interesting to me is why so many of them appear either to have "forgotten their roots"

    Because they are Galtian ubermenchen?


    by EmmaZahn on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 2:20pm

    I loathe Ayn Rand...


    by MrSmith1 on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 2:28pm

    I loathe her acolytes more.


    by EmmaZahn on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 3:25pm

    "Donal laughed."


    by Donal on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 3:30pm

    It is sad, but I read once that successful people know which bridges to burn and which to keep open.


    by Donal on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 3:34pm

    Maybe the answer is that a driving motivator for these people is running away from their roots in pursuit of joining the ranks of the elite?


    by kgb999 on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 6:04pm

    Your comment reminds me of a SNL sketch during the '08 campaign where Kevin Neelan plays Biden.  Neelan has Biden talking during a debate performance about what a hard place Scranton, Pa. was to grow up in, declining industrial era town, etc., the outward apparent purpose of which is to burnish his working class, ordinary-person credentials for the viewers.  Neelan follows this remark by also verbalizing the scriptwriter's take on what Biden is privately feeling as he talks about his hardscrabble upbringing ("I'm the only one who made it out of there", or words to that effect.) 


    by AmericanDreamer on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 6:32pm

    Not buying it. These same factors apply to pretty much all Americans.

    Americans support failed policies because they are exclusively focused on hating/defeating the rival party rather than holding their leaders to account for policies enacted. If challenging a failed policy can be construed as damaging a politician's future prospects ... the partisan will always err on the side of shit policy and protecting their football star.

    Seriously. How many people around here have given a balanced justification for doing stuff that Democrats have fought against since I was born? Everything they have argued in support of - from KFTA to tax cuts for the wealthy to keeping Goldman Sachs bankers in charge of our regulatory organs to rendering "terrorists" for "interrogation" - are totally failed policies. Now totally supported by the "smart" ones - lifetime Democrats with all the "I'm so liberal I've been feeding orphans and eating nothing but organic eucalyptus leaves while capturing my farts so I don't contribute to global warming" credentials to prove it.

    There is something priceless about these "smart" folks supposedly trying to understand why Americans act against their own self interest ... at the exact same time supporting policies that clearly do just that. It sure isn't a "right wing" phenomena. It's a partisan one.


    by kgb999 on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 5:53pm

    Well here is where I disagree. As I said in a comment to another blog here.

    The problem is that those on the right and most on the left still believe that the system - economic, political and to an extent social - still works. It just needs to be fixed is all. Left wants it fixed their way and the right wants it fixed their way.

    I - on the other hand - believe that the system is broken to the point of being unfix-able by anyone. That any fixing needed to be done 40 years ago. It's too damn late now. The parts have failed or are failing and there are not longer any replacements to be found. Not even on eBay.

    The only thing I can add to that is.

    Elephant is soft and mushy.


    by cmaukonen on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 7:38pm

    That's not entirely a disagrement ... I think we just took different paths to get there ... but I should probably re-read the original post to be sure.

    (LOL BTW).


    by kgb999 on Tue, 02/22/2011 - 6:49am

    Europe has its share of crazies, too. Ever follow the right-wing xenophobic parties over there? Scary stuff, and they've had real national influence in places like Switzerland and Austria.

    The difference is that the Euro-nuts haven't joined up with the anti-government libertarians. They're following more of a classic fascist model. (They are, however, anti-EU.)

    The reason the American nuts are so much more anti-government and anti-welfare than the European nuts is because the Republicans co-opted them with the myth that our government only cares about minorities. It goes back to the 1970s.


    by Michael Wolraich on Mon, 02/21/2011 - 8:20pm

    That's ironic. It just occurred to me that they are talking about killing off Fannie and Freddie ... which means we're about to eat whatever toxic slop they crammed into that though their backdoor bailout. (what, capped at something insane like $24 trillion, right? Or was it lower ... that feels high. regardless.)

    With the ACORN thing and all, the narrative is totally set that minorities are behind the problems at Freddie and Fannie. It sure looks like a total setup. We're going to eat their crap ... and they're going to blame the whole damn thing on the "coloreds" and be all like "it wasn't us, dude. ACORN." Thank goodness we've had Geithner at the helm. Imagine if someone had handled things poorly.

    Man, it's hard not to burst into a ball of flaming cynicism sometimes.

    And yeah ... some of those Euro-racists make our neonazis look like girlscouts.


    by kgb999 on Tue, 02/22/2011 - 7:04am

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