dagblog - Comments for "Bring on the Lepers"

Appreciate the long response.

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 17:52:00 +0000

In reply to Very interesting post, PP.

Appreciate the long response.

Perhaps the GOP way can be seen as cloaking proposals in vague attire with an audacious proposition and a win-if-I-win/win-if-I-lose outcome preordained - either I get my way or have a new rallying cry against "the left" or both - and they're always ready to carry through.

Republicans are always trying to *compromise* even as Dems undermine the Constitution and the Founding Fathers and original intent. Dems dare traitors trying to destroy our values, and even though we tried doing X tjey cooked the books and cheated to do Y. Give up? Hell no, George Washington depends on us...

Try writing a few pages or paragraphs of conservative rant to see how eay it is. I meant to do this already, but I'll post an open thread with a bring-your-jingo-lingo contest.

The fake new paid agitprop is to sow suspiscion, to weaken the foundations, not win outright. Your Bernie friend is par for the course - if they're accepting you they must see a kink, an advantage - no one is sincere, they're all vulture neolib/neocon capitalists. If you're rejected, you're on the right road so complain some more. And that's the better side on the left. The right is straight out of Absurdistan.

Anyway, we need to still find a way for those who need help.

Very interesting post, PP.

Peter Schwartz — Sun, 08 Jan 2017 16:55:34 +0000

In reply to Bring on the Lepers

Very interesting post, PP. Not sure I can wrap my arms around it enough to make a lot of sense, so I'll settle for some observations.

A year or so ago, Chait wrote this article that I thought was very perceptive. It was about the difference between conservative and liberal policy proposals (in general). Liberal proposals are specifically designed to do something or change something. Thus, if they don't do that something, they're judged a failure. Sometimes, the failure is excused by resorting to "good intentions," but still results are what counts.

Conservative proposals are also designed to do something, but their rationale is rooted in principles. What they would call timeless principles that appeal to a certain kind of common sense. So even when they don't work as advertised, the principle survives and serves as a rationale even in the face of failure.

So, for example, and I'm sort of making this up: When the War on Poverty didn't eliminate poverty and poverty got worse afterward, the WOP is judged to be a failure. It didn't eliminate poverty, and things are much worse now. However, flawed this judgment may be, you'll find many, many conservatives, not just pols but regular folks, who believe this to be true. It's even become common sense wisdom.

It's conservative companions are numerous, but take this one: It's wrong to take my money and give it to someone else. I worked for it; they didn't. Why can't they work for their own money. I came up the hard way; why can't they? The WOP might have made sense as an example of America's widely acknowledged spirit of generosity and looking out for the downtrodden--the "deserving poor"--but the thing didn't even work. So, you're taking my money and throwing it away.

There's a lot more to this, but here's what I'm getting out: When the WOP is judged to be a failure, there is no reason to continue with the policy. Yes, it was "the right thing to do," but it doesn't keep being the right thing to do when it isn't even achieving its own goals. OTOH, the idea that it's wrong to take one person's money and give it to someone else is a principle that makes sense to everyone. It's not judged by whether it works; it's judged as a principle; and most people would, leaving aside all other things, agree with it.

So even when tax cuts don't help the economy or produce more revenue than they cost, it's hard to argue with giving the people back some of their own money, which I believe was GWB's rationale for his first or second big tax cut. This led to many wags, including myself, saying that for conservatives, tax cuts are ALWAYS a good idea in any circumstance. They may not have produced economic growth, but you can't go wrong giving people back their own money. In fact, that's Ron Paul's rationale for bringing home pork: He was simply getting back his constituents' money for them.

So, I would argue, this is one of the inherent strengths of conservative proposals vs liberal ones.

The Democrats' brand & message keep running into America's brand (not just the GOP's), and while we can tune the 2 to be roughly compatible, we're having trouble with the simple expression of it, both in words and practice. We don't fight uniformly for rights and justice, we do judge a helluva lot, we frequently have as nasty a tone as Republicans, we do get caught up creating class grievances and money grudges when what we should really want is enough prosperity and funding spinoff to handle our agenda. (We talk about jobs and minimum wage but more or less condemn the entrepreneurship and mechanisms that create them, except for very tightly forgiven circumstances). We stiffarm those on the top from playing a positive expansive role - our vision rises only so high. We offer to feed and care for the poor, but less so the struggling (especially if not in our demographics).

So conservatives, for the most part, root their proposals in over-riding, timeless principles. One of the others is the Constitution. They've essentially absconded with the Constitution. Liberals TRY to root our proposals in the Constitution, but somehow, it falls flat. (So one guy told me once that "promote the general welfare" doesn't mean "provide for the general welfare," just to show you the verbal lengths this is taken.)

When conservatives criticize the U.S., they criticize it for straying from the Constitution. We do that, too, but somehow, we end up sounding like we "hate America." Or else, it is easy to paint us as hating America, and make it stick. So if all conservative proposals are somehow rooted in timeless principles we can all agree on and rooted in the Constitution, this gives them a unity that Clintonian proposals famously lack. This unity also gives them a strength and simplicity that makes them memorable. Cutting through to their hollow core often takes a lot of egg-head-ery which, even when valid, isn't memorable.

"Make America Great Again" was far more memorable than anything Clinton came up with (not to pick on her). It was a critique of America as she is now, but in the vein of having strayed from the principles (the Constitution) that make her great and that are generally admirable.

The exception, maybe, of "Change You Can Believe In," we have a devil of a hard time encapsulating what we stand for in simple, memorable phrases. It's not just a matter of communications, though it is, but of enabling people to "get" what it is you stand for and what it is you plan to do.

Turning the page...

When you talk about condemning the entrepreneurship we need to fund our proposals, you are pretty much summarizing the Clintons' key insight that has driven the Party since 1992 and is now, but only now really, being condemned as corporatist, etc. And it ran headlong into Bernie's approach. And--ironies of ironies--ran headlong into Trump's appeal to the working class, etc. Trump, though, seems to have glued this populist approach to a business-friendly approach in a way that you ALMOST might agree with. So, some on the right have talked about using the extra revenue from repatriated cash that gets taxed, albeit at a lower rate, to pay for the spending, whether on infrastructure or the safety net.

Somehow, we have to resolve the conflict between the Clinton and Sanders wings of the party. Interestingly enough, Bernie himself has no problem resolving this conflict himself, and neither do others. So I read that Andrew Cuomo was on stage with Bernie to unveil his plan to offer free tuition to state colleges to in-staters making less than $120,000. Ironically, as the article noted, this proposal was closer to Hillary's proposal than to Bernie's...but who would ever know that outside of a few Hillary nerds?

Anyway, I pointed out this great news to someone whom I'd call a "Bernie XXX," that is, someone who may be more Bernie than Bernie, and his first response was to wonder whether Andrew was doing this to cop some Sanders cred in an ultimate bid to become DNC chair. I honestly couldn't believe what he was telling me. Given that Bernie lost... and lost in the primary...this has to hold the record for a losing proposal being adopted by the governor of a large who didn't support the losing candidate in the primary. And yet, he was ready to toss it into the trash. I dunno.

Learn to live with paradox,

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 05:41:22 +0000

In reply to PP, I took my time reading

Learn to live with paradox, contradiction and uncertainty. Throw them off by mstly doing what you say you will even tho no one else does. But don't rely on them knowing that - more bread and circuses. The slogans are important - just don't put too much stock in your own, just placeholders for intentions turned into deeds. And son on. Turn discouragement into kerosene.

Well, the Job story is about

moat — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 02:27:06 +0000

In reply to Bring on the Lepers

Well, the Job story is about who are you going to listen to when the shit hits the fan.
The wager part between God and Satan is not an explanation as much as a description of facts on the ground. The situation might as well be created by opposing super people. You are not going to their parties so you don't get to know what they wagered upon.
Job blows off all of his interlocutors and sticks with his own understanding of the events.
We need a lot more of that sort of thing. The element obviously has the danger of being wrong but nothing happens without it.

PP, I took my time reading

CVille Dem — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:41:53 +0000

In reply to Bring on the Lepers

PP, I took my time reading this, because every paragraph was thoughtful and true.

Bottom Line: We need to run on something like, "Make America Great Again." Sure, they'll believe us. We just need to tell the lies they want to hear and then do the right thing once elected!!!!

But this brought back memories of what we used to say in nursing school:

See, American exceptionalism is built on a mashup of countervailing ideas. We're the greatest because God deemed it that way, but if we're not on God's path he will spit us out, but then God doesn't work on deeds, but faith alone, and while it's easier to fit a camel through a needle than get a rich man into heaven, it's much better to be rich here on earth even if you can't take it with you, and despite there but for the grace of God go I, those that aren't going to well are slackers or guilty of some other sin, fault, defect...

When we would sit around and gripe about our boyfriends, we would all chant:

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder.....Out Of Sight Out Of Mind,,,

One can always find a simplistic phrase that will appeal to the masses, but actual effective policy plans -- too boring. I am so discouraged.