House of Eratosthenes

Was going to keep this thought to myself, but I came across a smug, holier-than-thou editorial about that goofball Todd Akin in USA Today. I have no problem with it in terms of the facts it cites or the conclusions to be drawn from them, my beef with it comes in the form of a question: What, exactly, are we to do with this information?

Ponder that question awhile, and you will have the answer to another question that has been agitating us in the last several years. Why have American politics become so damn contentious? I’ll give you a hint: What really clinched the decision to go ahead and write this up, was the opening paragraph in which the author uses a quote from H.L. Mencken to equate “enlightenment” with…well, he doesn’t come out and say what, exactly, although it is clear that he thinks voting for Claire McCaskill, the Senate seat incumbent and Akin’s opponent, is the enlightened thing to do.

Here is the epicenter of the problem. Such a vote cast, as a result of reading this column (let us assume for sake of argument that the Missouri voter was undecided prior to reading the column) would be based on an idea not of enlightenment, the way I define it, but on sheer lunacy. Let’s see if I can summarize it: Akin’s comment proves he is a sexist pig, that in turn proves there are still some sexist pigs out there, and we have to keep them out of the Senate. Is that the thinking? Because if it is, it does not work very well, does it…we’ve had sexist pigs in the Senate for as long as we’ve had a Senate. If the Senate is to be kept under its current democrat-party leadership — which, to date, suffers from a dearth of tangible achievements it can carry into election season — solely to broadcast some message of goodness about the voters who elect those senators, about the most flattering message we can manage to achieve at this point is “we give a fig about sexism in the Senate, once in awhile.” This is not a trivial point; the underlying foundation for the editorial, its whole reason for being, is that the politics involved in deciding Senate leadership are motivating the Republicans to behave inconsistently. That is the point to this column. It has nothing else to say, other than reporting on the relevant events (idiotic things said by Akin) to buttress that observation. Leaving the question effectively unaddressed: What to do with the information?

Of course it is not the columnist’s job to resolve it for us. But it’s hard to respect the train of thought upon which he has launched us, if there’s no potential in it. Let’s see…we could elect only democrats, who are known for rising above the inconsistency that tends to result from political forces? Eh, that doesn’t work. Is there something else we can decide?

What really sums up the problem here, is a gem I was jotting down early this morning in a discussion with someone about the Affordable Care Act. I’m quite pleased with it, if I dare say so myself; it is not bumper-sticker quality, but it might be plaque-quality.

A lot of this “regulate and tax ’em so they know how much we think they suck” remedy would work just great, in a universe where everything with a problem could be fixed by simply lowering a beatdown on it…I envision teevee and appliance repairmen wouldn’t exist there, everybody would fix their refrigerators & furnaces by giving ’em a good kick. But we live in this universe not that one, cause-and-effect is a bit more complicated here.

…and this, I submit, is the great brain-fart of the modern times in which we live. The elections, just like a weekly business meeting, offer us an opportunity to solve problems incrementally and cyclically, revisiting the results of our previous work at regular intervals. It is, therefore, an opportunity to self-test on our ability to think things through rationally. We aren’t doing so hot. Election after election after election, we are discouraged, demoralized, disgusted…

…I notice the people who are most vocal about this disgust, are also the ones most vocal about some kind of “change” which is not distinguishably different from the change that went into effect in the previous cycle. We should face facts: If this was the weekly business meeting rather than the biannual election, then the project manager would by now have dismissed the whole team and put together a new crew. His boss would insist on it. We stink at this.

Why do we stink? Because the vocal ones are living in that other universe. For all the talking they do, they don’t really have much to say, it’s all an appeal to throw the boot at the teevee. My favorite example is, higher taxes and more strict regulation on the rich, greedy, evil corporations who gouge the consumers with their high prices and offshore the jobs. Time after time we see: What do those corporations do in response, do they say “Everyone thinks we suck, we’d better keep the jobs at home and lower our prices so they change their minds”? Eh, no. Nobody even says so. Everybody understands that is not what is going to happen. What is going to happen is, the rich, greedy, evil corporations will say “huh, so it looks like we have some new operating costs.” They’ll slim down their services or their manufacturing to accommodate as best they can — read that as, offshoring the jobs — and then, whatever increased costs they can’t absorb in this way, they’ll pass on to their customers. Precisely the opposite of what we wanted.

Every time. Unavoidable. It is the very definition of suck-ass problem-solving, as suck-ass as you can get, right? If you’re making more of what you wanted to eliminate, complete ineffectiveness would be a dramatic improvement, since a zero is always greater than a negative…so that’s pretty bad. And yet we keep doing it. Well, politics is a great place to repeat mistakes, since all the problems are always caused by that other fellow.

Can’t find the “line tool” in the new version of Microsoft Visio — give the computer a good kick, that’ll fix it.

Lord knows, I can identify with the feeling and the desire. But the simple fact of the matter is, feelings and desires don’t fix things. Deep down we all know this to be true, and we know that if expressing frustration and resentment was all it took to solve these problems, they’d have been solved quite awhile back.

But you know, the years come & go, and I never fail to be surprised with the difficulties that supposedly mature, thoughtful adults have, channeling that basic, basic understanding into their actionable thinking.

Of course, the extended irony of it is that Akin is not, in fact, anything like a sexist pig. His “sin” his believing that abortion is wrong (as many women believe — most of his most ardent supporters I know are women who *also* think abortion is wrong), and he exposed himself when making a point that is irrelevant to that belief and using a dubious “fact” to back that irrelevant point up …

The libs run right to the “rape” argument, and he was very clumsily making the point that very few rapes result in pregnancy and went on to speculate with a dubious “fact” as to one of the reasons that might be. So he’s about as educated in stress-related reproductive issues as the left is in climatology or Austrian school economics. In the big picture, it doesn’t make him any worse a representative. His voting record is consistent and as good as you can expect as a conservative from a 10 year representative. I’ve got no problems voting for the guy, *especially* considering the butt-kissing closet Marxist he’s running against.

The libs and their cohorts in the media, of course, further exacerbate the problem with his comment by intentionally taking it out of context to make it sound like he was saying there is such a thing as rape that is ok — when what he was really distinguishing was what Whoopie Goldberg meant when she said that what Roman Polanski did wasn’t “rape rape”. Yeah, she caught a little flack for that, but not much, since most libs have a soft spot for their fellow Hollywood lib Polanski and they’ll run cover for their own.
- philmon | 10/02/2012 @ 09:23
Let’s see if I can summarize it: Akin’s comment proves he is a sexist pig, that in turn proves there are still some sexist pigs out there, and we have to keep them out of the Senate. Is that the thinking? Because if it is, it does not work very well, does it…

This is leftist Manichaeism in a nutshell… and I keep wishing there were a better term for this, as it sounds esoteric, but there it is — anyone who believes as we do must be correct on all things; anyone who disbelieves any point of our dogma is incorrect in toto.

The conservative would argue that even if Akin is wrong about all gender-related stuff, it has little to no bearing on his economic decisions… or his foreign policy decisions… or his…. whatever. A liberal, by contrast, would argue that his deviation from orthodoxy on any point whatsoever renders every though the man has ever had invalid. He’s either with us or against us, in everything, all the time.

Leftists believe that the “correct” attitudes are a carte blanche. If a leftist politician does it, it must be right, because how could a guy who supports gay marriage be wrong about the proper security posture in the South China Sea?
- Severian | 10/02/2012 @ 12:55
How can any party that ran John Edwards for vice president be taken seriously?

The problem is this: we do not and should not be electing people to office based on how politically correct they are. We should not be disqualifying otherwise excellent candidates based on an occasional stupid statement. Otherwise we get slick, insipid candidates that are incompetent. We should be voting only for candidates that are capable of doing the job. I swear, there are days when I think that giving women the vote was a mistake.
- teripittman | 10/02/2012 @ 18:52
I can’t begin how to express the frustration.
I log on the ‘puter, full of piss and viniger from entirely unrelated issues, ready to tear someone, ANYONE, a new “access”, and right off the top, three seperate folks have just about covered it all.

Maybe there’s something to this “hope” stuff after all.
- CaptDMO | 10/03/2012 @ 12:35
Oooo…RE: The new photo at top.
I don’t get it, both of them are traditionally seen chuckling and grinning, with their mouths ALWAYS open.
PLEASE tell me that was a simultanious split screen capture and not a mere compilation that was um..”taken out of context………”, right after an exausting plane ride-in “coach”.
bwaaaaAAAAAAA ha ha ha ha ha ha. Unlike Mr. Mahers show/guests, THAT’S hilarious.
- CaptDMO | 10/05/2012 @ 05:28
I couldn’t say, I wasn’t watching. Looks like a split screen taken in one moment.

I like it when a message is distilled down into a single image, and the message of this one is unmistakable: Obama never was anything more than one big party, and it’s over now.
- mkfreeberg | 10/05/2012 @ 06:52
I am a Missouri voter, and while Todd Akin(R) was not my first choice for senator, Claire Bear(D) is darn sure the worst choice. Why? The impression of Claire Bear’s face on Obama’s backside says it all.

That being said, I’ve never understood this expectation that the political class be gems of brilliant humanity – or morality. Just as those who can’t – teach; those who can’t manage – legislate. A few generations ago, Will Rogers made a career illustrating such debacles.

Being a drunken, profligate, fornicating sot turned Ted Kennedy’s(D) name into a verb, yet he was the darling of limousine liberals everywhere as the poster boy for the liberal cause, and was rewarded with 35 years of re-election to the Senate.

As such, I can’t get too excited about some Missouri wooden-head who dribbles nuggets of excrement too stupid for words that the press throws back in his face. But excrement too stupid for words won’t raise my taxes or advance the nanny state. Claire Bear(D) has, and will.

Todd Akin(R) is a small govt., hardcore conservative and he has my vote.
- locomotivebreath1901 | 10/05/2012 @ 10:43

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Tuesday, October 2nd, 2012