House of Eratosthenes

Thinking some more about this spectacle I saw last night. I find it particularly bewildering what I’m continually told, throughout the years, about democrats and the support they somehow pick up from people who don’t lean left politically, but just want to make sure the poor are, uh…well…I guess we disagree about the verb that follows that. “Independents” who want to make sure someone is looking out for the poor, poor, pitiful poor, and somehow that can’t be managed outside of government.

It’s completely obvious that across time, the definition of the “poor” is changing. You can live in a two-story house with a garage with two nice cars in it, and if the payments and the mortgage cause you some indigestion then that means you need to vote in some politicians who “care” about you and will give you some perks so you can “make ends meet.” I hear a lot of complaining about a “vanishing middle class” and it seems to me the people doing the complaining are the people who are doing the vanishing: If you’re not rich you must be poor, in the sense that you need this government to give you material things it forcibly took away from other people, otherwise you’re boned.

And the definition of “looked after” or whatever, likewise, is changing. In my world, you’re either making it or you’re not. We use this as information, to figure out whether or not we’re on the right track. This mindset of mine seems to have swung out of date by, oh I dunno, maybe as much as a century…and I’m not sure exactly when, how or why. But it isn’t a bowl of soup or a hunk of bread anymore. Obama gonna buy you a cell phone. Obama gonna put gas in your car and pay your mortgage. Obama gonna send you back to school. Subsidies, grants, loan guarantees, deductions, exemptions, ObamaCare waivers, targeted tax cuts, the sky’s the limit. Everyone bitches up a storm about the tax code being too complicated but very few people seem to genuinely care about it.

Speaking of things people are supposed to want, but don’t care enough about it to insist on it: Nice-ness. I’m reminded of the notorious interview conducted back in ninety-nine, by she who was called back then “The Queen of Nice”:

How this pertains to the veep debate last night: Throughout all these years, as the question comes up “Who’s being snookered by these craven democrats, and why?” it has been repeatedly explained to me that maybe the logic and rationality of their methods is a bit hard to see at times, and maybe it isn’t there at all, but you know what? Perhaps that isn’t what people want when all’s said and done; perhaps these guys win elections, and deserve to, simply because they put forward the impression that they care. They’re nicer. They’re working to put together a world that works for everybody, in which everybody has a part to play and a place to be, not just the very, very fortunate among us.

Um, then it has to be explained to me…how come it is, that a “performance” such as what we saw last night, doesn’t shed votes and support? On a massive scale?

Quite to the contrary, I heard on the radio that while the independent vote didn’t move much one way or another, among self-identified democrats there is an intense and enormous expression of positive approval for Crazy Joe’s above-mentioned — and scare quotes included again — “performance.”

Can any Republican anywhere, ANYWHERE, state a better case as to why these people should not be running anything? Blogger Friend Phil said it best so far: “If that wins arguments, we’re in deep trouble.” That really says it all, there’s nothing that has to be added to that.

And yet, add I shall. Like for example: The conservatives. I’ve been hearing from the conservatives, throughout the years, arguments for civility and compromise. We don’t want to do X. That would make us like those other guys. We don’t want to be like those other guys. Let them do that.

And it seems, to me, from those very same people I’m hearing: Congressman Ryan made a mess here. He shouldn’t have taken the high road. He let Joe Biden get away with murder. He lost the debate because he was too nice. Hmmm…these people want to be respected in the arguments they’re making, they want to be taken seriously. That must mean, they do not want to be looking like me the way they look to me right now.

I have the impression that, among the people who declare Joe Biden the winner, there is a lot of overlap with the phony-deficit-hawk set. These are the people who want “the rich to pay their fair share” because, deficit. But they can’t tell you to the nearest trillion how much debt there is, whereabouts the annual federal budget deficit is, or even the difference between deficit & debt. They don’t know and they don’t care. Can’t even define “rich” and “fair share.” They just want a beatdown lowered on people who are better at making money than they are. They don’t seem ready to offer any numbers on much of anything, other than reciting some talking point that they picked up from ThinkProgress that happens to have a number in it.

We need to come up with a motto for these people. We could start with the song from Ten Years After:

Tax the rich; feed the poor; ’til there ain’t no rich no more.

More like: Tax the rich, borrow from China, use it to buy votes from the poor, when Paul Ryan calls you out on your bullshit then just talk over him like the overbearing, condescending rude jackass you are.

These people, like Rosie O’Dingbat, are supposed to be “nice.” They’re supposed to be building a world that works for everybody and that is supposed to obviate the need for them to illustrate any kind of point or counterpoint that relies on logic, reason, soundness of fact or common sense. Whether you’re into facts/logic/reason or not, it doesn’t seem to me like there’s any reason left to support these guys. And I’ve pointed this out before, but it seems more and more like belaboring the obvious. They’re not nice; not unifying; obviously not trying to build a world that works for everyone, quite to the contrary, appear to have it all settled in their minds who’s supposed to be interrupted, talked over, “spanked,” sent out of the room so the big kids can talk about what to do (to everybody). We know their policies aren’t good, we’ve tried ’em, they aren’t even trying to be nice people, they’re being jackasses and high-fiving each other right out in broad daylight over the success they’ve enjoyed being jackasses. They’re spending money like it’s going out of style and they don’t care. They kill jobs. Uh, what’s left??

Ultimately, it isn’t really their fault. It seems we’re learning something about our fellow citizens, our fellow voters. They claim to be motivated by things that, when the rubber meets the road, it seems don’t really matter to them very much.

He lost the debate because he was too nice.

Disagree. I thought Ryan executed a great “rope a dope” strategy. Biden came off like a jackass and people noticed that. Ryan for the win.
- bpenni | 10/12/2012 @ 09:56
Yeah, I come down on your side on this one. Ryan did what has to be done, he accentuated the differences between his side and the other side.

This is like violence, and XML: If for some reason it isn’t getting us the results we want, it’s because we’re not using enough of it.
- mkfreeberg | 10/12/2012 @ 10:01
It seems we’re learning something about our fellow citizens, our fellow voters. They claim to be motivated by things that, when the rubber meets the road, it seems don’t really matter to them very much.

Yup. I forget who wrote it (P.J. O’Rourke?), but they’re among the truest words ever penned — if Democrats really cared about things like facts, logic, and principles, they’d be Republicans.
- Severian | 10/12/2012 @ 13:36
The Dems make a big show of taking care of the poor. The fact is, they despise poor people. These are the same folks that hate Wal-mart. Why? Because poor people shop there! The only thing they like about poor people is they are so easily led. Give them a few trinkets and they will do whatever you say. It’s so empowering. They love the poor in the abstract and it’s never, ever the poor person’s fault that they wound up that way.

The really classic example is that 2007 Obama video that surfaced. He tells them that the Stafford act wasn’t waived for New Orleans. Yet he not only knew that it wasn’t true, he personally voted AGAINST waiving it! And he must have been a good judge of intelligence because it doesn’t seem like anyone who listened to him even bothered to see if it was true or not. It fit in with their world view and that was good enough for them.

I stopped voting Democratic because I had heard that “They’re liars” one too many a time. You cannot keep saying that year after year and expect people to continue to believe you. My hope is that there were people out there that heard Biden say it yet again that thought “Didn’t I hear this in 2008?” Maybe it will be their turn to start questioning what they are hearing.
- teripittman | 10/12/2012 @ 16:30
“That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped it would.”

It never does, does it? When the exchange of ideas is initiated, the hectoring begins. And it never ends. When the opponent remains unconverted by the browbeating, they throw up their hands in frustration.

Selleck pointed out the purpose of the argument; the audience was entertained. Some of them may have been enlightened, but that wasn’t the point of the exercise. Selleck’s arguments were never taken seriously, or examined, or refuted for that matter. He was nagged until he lost interest in espousing his views.

As the Beatles once said, no one was saved.
- chunt31854 | 10/13/2012 @ 06:45

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Not Caring and Not NiceFriday, October 12th, 2012

Not Caring and Not Nice
Friday, October 12th, 2012