House of Eratosthenes

Yesterday I discovered a blog more articulate and interesting than most, and worthy of being sent off to the sidebar. The way I discovered it was through the Sunday paper. Of course, there is one sure-fire way a blogger, or for that matter anybody else, can catch the attention of the newspaper culture — and that is to “grow” into hard-left positions after a lifetime spent being reasonable and moderately conservative.

Especially if you claim your new leftist set of values, is more enlightened than what came before. Just as the Wayward Son in the Book of Luke gets his huge party, you’ll get your huge attention…not that I think that’s what motivated this fellow, it’s simply the way things are…

Why I’m Voting For Obama

On Saturday night I was watching the Presidential debates and I made one of the more significant decisions of my life. I chose to go with Barack Obama. And believe me, this decision was not an easy one. It came the moment I joined the Support Obama page in my Facebook account. I remember the moment before pressing it and saying, “Do you know what you are doing?”

I’ve always been a lifelong Republican. I can’t honestly remember voting for a Democrat in my lifetime, although I’m not overtly political over the last ten years. I think much of this has to do with the home I grew up in, which was always Republican. We didn’t really have very many conversations about it. Its just the way it was, never questioned.

And I realize now that this decision has been a lifetime in coming. I can’t honestly say what it was that swayed me. I know that is had to do with growing up in the multicultural world of east side San Jose, CA. I know it had to do the frustrations I’ve had with Bush. I know it had to do with who Barack is. I know it has to do with the significance of his race as part of history. I know it has to do with my desire to take part in something that will change the world. Each of these reasons is significant.

For reasons that, to some, will be obvious — the comments that came in response to this ultimately demonstrated to our new blogger friend the need to put up a second post:

Why I’m Voting For Obama 2

Recently I was asked to explain my decision for why I was voting for Barack Obama. It seems I wasn’t articulate enough, which is cool given that this was a major decision and the post was a stream of thought. I really didn’t write that post for other people. It was more of an announcement to myself. But Matt and Rachel asked me to help him understand why I made that choice. So I’ll give it another shot.

Matt stated in the comments,

“You didn’t really give any real reasons why you’re voting for him. I think the reason is that Obama isn’t running a platform on issues as much as he is on emotion. If you compare Clinton’s website with Obama’s you’ll see that on every issue Clinton states her position on the issue and how she is going to implement the program to fulfill her position (and in many cases how she’s going to pay for the program). However, on Obama’s website, you’ll see no substantial concrete plans for the implementation of the programs that he wishes to put in place. He simply wants to play on the emotions of the voters. I’m not saying that Clinton is better, I actually support Ron Paul, I’m saying that at least I know she has a plan.”

I agree with what Matt appears be implying, to a certain extent. On paper, Clinton might be the better political candidate. She has more experience, is deeply connected in Washington circles, has created a plan that she will attempt to implement. She is very aware of the issues and wants to seek change. In fact if she were elected President, that moment would be another momentous occasion in American history, another glass ceiling broken.

I highly disagree that Obama has not clearly outlined his position on issues. As example. His website lists 19 different categories like this. But the issues are not what swayed me. I didn’t put all of the issues on a scale and weighed the pros and cons. It wasn’t simply an analytical choice for me. It’s deeper than that.

Jonathan Brink strikes me as bright and articulate (he seems to have misspelled Sen. Obama’s first name at the time the Sacramento Bee discovered him, and irritatingly, gone off and fixed it on his own before I could point it out).

At this point, I’m pretty sure one of the following two apply to Mr. Brink:

One, when his ideas are challenged, he writes his responses in such a way that his mood is represented as something more peevish and negative than it really is, which is something people do a LOT in the blog-world;

Two, like a lot of people who decide with emotion instead of intellect, he doesn’t like having it pointed out — and the thought of someone else, using reason to decide the same issue, gets him a little torqued.

I say one of those must apply because he’s taken, now, a lot of opportunities to explain why he’s supporting Barack Obama for President; in addition to the two posts linked above, there are comments underneath those. So far, everything I’ve seen deals in emotion — save for one reference to Obama’s website that we should go check.

See, when I hear these decisions are made out of intellect, the standard I have in mind is something like conservatives arguing about supply-side economics. Maybe that’s a poor example because ever since Reagan’s second term, the conservatives have done a thoroughly crappy job of getting the message out, and the catchphrases have been made derogatory through simple repetition. But the facts are on the side of supply-side economics, which — to the extent that matters practically — simply says, when a tax rate on something is 5% that tax policy has the potential, and even the likelihood, to raise more money than it would raise if it was 7.5%.

This argument doesn’t achieve very much in bumper-sticker-slogan land, but in the theater of ideas, it draws very high marks. For one thing, there is human nature — we tend to flock toward economic avenues that present us with a minimum of resistance, to the point where a “merchant” (or government) can make more money by giving us a better deal. If this were not true, nothing would ever go on sale, right? And then there is precedent for lowering a tax rate, and raising more money by doing so; lots and lots of precedent. And finally, there is the Laffer Curve which, at 100%, nosedives into the zero axis like a lawn dart. Now, that is just simple math, right? You charge 100% tax rate on a stream of income, nobody will do it, and you’ll raise nothing or next to nothing.

I don’t mean to argue supply-side economics here, I’m just trying to demonstrate what a solid argument looks like. Jonathan Brink — I think he himself would agree with this, although at this point I’m not sure — has presented arguments that are in a completely different class from this…

So when Barack comes along, he doesn’t just represent an opportunity to vote for change. We’ve heard enough of that word. We’re looking for someone who gets the problem, not the rhetoric. And the problem is that the American people are simply willing to accept the problem. Change is really hard. One of the significant things that has shown up for me is Barack’s willingness to tell the public that they have to join the change. He’s not interested in doing it for us.

See, the supply-side argument, cited as an example, talks about economic realities and hard numbers. This argument in favor of Obama is very heavy on mood and temperament, when it isn’t supposed to be.

And I’m having a lot of trouble finding the central pillar to this one person’s shift to Obama. It’s a little like nailing Jello to a tree. Someone like myself, or Matt, or “lc smith” will take a dissenting view based on what we think we’ve read, and the answer seems to consistently come back as some variation of “no, you have the wrong understanding of my motivations here.” Well, what’s the right one? I have to at least consider the possibility that Mr. Brink doesn’t really feel that good about his decision — not to the point where he can defend it, in the presence of persons not initially inclined to echo it. Some folks disagree with him about it, and simply coming into proximity with them, if it doesn’t immediately make him feel bad, defeats a feeling of euphoria and increased self-esteem he was supposed to be drawing out of this.

Well, there’s lots of different candidates at this time, and lots of different opinions. I’m certainly not going to condemn someone for voting for someone who isn’t getting my vote.

But Obama scares me in the same way John Kerry scared me. I don’t know what exactly he’s going to do after his hand comes off the Bible, I don’t think anybody else knows either, in fact, I have serious doubts that even Obama knows.

He’s a personality-driven candidate. A “rock star” candidate. His selling point is this feeling of euphoria. Nobody knows what he’s all about, anti-war silliness aside, and nobody seems to care. In a year, he might be the most powerful man in the world, and nobody can even begin to describe what he’s going to do.

To the extent you can glean some flavoring of what he’s all about, it seems to be a bundle of statements about this-or-that cultural item or value being better than that-or-some-other one. Ban racial profiling, rehabilitation over incarceration, etc. Hey, great arguments can be made for and against such things. But we aren’t inspecting those arguments, and for a guy who’s supposed to be working to bring us together and inspiring us to dig in and “sacrifice,” Obama is curiously disinterested in motivating us to do that inspecting. He seems to be a “leap but don’t look” candidate. And that is not a unifying candidate.

Update: With my dialog with Mr. Brink fresh in my mind, I was doing some more reading-over of the recent reasonable criticism by Becky toward the National Organization of Women…and that got me to thinking about NOW’s obsession with women and girls deciding, as individuals with choices to make, and the power to make those choices, to mop floors and scrub toilets as opposed to going out & getting a job. And that got me to thinking about a similar screed delivered up a couple months ago by cranky flog Feministing.

Here’s the problem consistent between those last two examples. A is a woman. B is a woman who is a feminist. A makes the decision to be a homemaker. B finds out about A’s decision. B blows her stack and scribbles down a bunch of acrimonious gibberish.

Fine by me.

But then…unbelievably, incredibly…B will declare herself…in prospect as well as in hindsight…to be a champion of individual choice.

This is lunacy. But it is running epidemic throughout our society now, and it is further foundation for my idea that Obama is a decidedly bad candidate — as are all candidates who draw their strength from feeding and channeling the mood in any given room, instead of from articulating their plans step-by-step and helping to organize those who would support those plans.

Obama pushes priorities, not plans. But it isn’t just Obama. All across the fruited plain, we have lots of folks energized into championing this system of values over that one. Not even “values”; I think the most precise word I could find, is “subcultures.” Twenty-somethings on snowboards, being superior to forty-somethings on skis. Yuppies driving enormous SUVs to evening showings of “An Inconvenient Truth,” being better than cranky right-wing guys like me that sneer at the Climate Change Scripture, driving 18-year-old cars that get 37 miles a gallon. Rock-n-roll being better than pop.

My point is, in 2008 we have this tendency to do such divisive things right after declaring ourselves to be all about “unity.” The problem has gotten so bad, that if I could put my finger on one single human desire that motivates us to participate in elections before & above all other motivations, that one motivation would have to have something to do with identifying differences between ourselves & other folks, and declaring ourselves the winner. So that the other guy has to convert to our way of doing things, or somehow go away.

We’ve become kind of a continent-wide…non-lethal…sort of soft, squishy, “soft jihad.”

We vote on things we all damn good ‘n well know oughtta be private things, as if they are public things.

I imagine we are perilously close to doing truly asinine things. Like voting in a national referendum that the official music genre ought to be Country Music instead of Jazz. Or vice-versa. We are in danger of, to summarize it, putting the identity politics thing into actual policy — and that would be an unprecedented disaster.

We’re losing our ability to choose chocolate ice cream over strawberry, look some other fellow in the eye who made the opposite choice for himself, and call him a friend. Our elections are becoming charades in which we aspire to triumph over that other fellow…mash his face into the ground, in some nebulous way nobody wants to define…but we all want to do the triumphing. This is my objection to Barack Obama — he stands for this, because he truly has spent his efforts standing for absolutely nothing else. Choosing something different as a matter of personal taste, giving a smile and a thumbs-up to the neighbor who chose differently, and going separate ways, remaining friends, seems to be an everyday gesture moving, slowly, one year at a time, out of our grasp.

Part of the problem in this case seems to me to be that this guy never understood the issues in the first place. You can’t think critically about issues that you don’t understand. I think the mere fact that Obama has gotten so much popular support demonstrates that the majority of Americans have lost the capacity to reason, and therefore the ability to govern themselves. I’ve heard people oppose Obama for completely irrational reasons too. Just because people support good candidates doesn’t mean that they support them for the right reason. But there are no right reasons for supporting candidates like Obama.

Many people, now and throughout history, have claimed that people in general are too irrational for self-government. Plato and many others since have used that idea to dismiss democracy, but democracy is not the problem. It’s not that “people” are too irrational; it’s that Americans have become too irrational. It wasn’t always this way, but we’re reaping the rewards of the anti-reason culture of the sixties. The growth of interdependency has produced a growth in personal irresponsibility, because every problem is someone else’s fault.
- JohnJ | 01/14/2008 @ 11:23
It wasn’t always this way, but we’re reaping the rewards of the anti-reason culture of the sixties. The growth of interdependency has produced a growth in personal irresponsibility, because every problem is someone else’s fault.

Whoah, hey…great point John. And well said.

I’ll probably be thinking all day on that one.
- mkfreeberg | 01/14/2008 @ 11:28
I know it had to do with who Barack is. I know it has to do with the significance of his race as part of history. I know it has to do with my desire to take part in something that will change the world. Each of these reasons is significant.

All of the language is feely-feely. No specifics. Typical.

Knowing what I know about people and how they communicate — I’d be willing to bet that all “three” of those reasons amount to one reason and one reason only. This person is for Obama based upon the color of his skin and not the content of his character. He/she wants to vote for the first black president and sees it, thus, to be a part of changing the world.

As far as changing the world goes, people would do well to be careful what they ask for. They might get it.

A direct hit by a large asteroid would change the world, too.

I’d have no qualms about Condeleza Rice if she were running and were the nominee. It’s got nothing to do with race or gender or rendering my vote “important” in the history of the country or the world.

I’m not here to toot my horn. I just want to make sure I get to keep my horn, to be able to say it’s my horn, and not be told when and where I can play it or what I can play on it.

As far as I can see, that goes against the whole Donk platform.
- philmon | 01/14/2008 @ 16:25
[…] This is a renunciation of logic and common sense. A sickening one, because it renders us so incapable of doing things for ourselves, ever again. Once we do this, we have no choice but to make our choices in life by feeling instead of thinking. We haven’t retained the tools and resources required to engage the alternative. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 02/03/2008 @ 16:13

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Brink for ObamaMonday, January 14th, 2008

Brink for Obama
Monday, January 14th, 2008