Here, (IN PLAIN TEXT) following, is a comment from DaveW to me in another thread and, below it, the reply that, despite all my efforts, I cannot post there:
DaveW wrote:
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Re: How to Get it Done (none / 0)
Maybe among all the verbiage, one of these times you’ll insert an explanation of how letting healthcare reform die at the hands of a corrupt system and a corrupt opposition makes anything better. Yeah, we’re in total agreement that the system is corrupt and unsustainable. A central core of that corruption is the de facto veto of Senate legislation by a 41% minority of the most corrupt. Another central core is the millstone tied around our necks by a Constitution that demands that a citizen of Wyoming have 70 times the Senate representation of a citizen of California. Another central core is allowing paid advertising in political campaigns. Another central core is the extreme power corporations to buy legislation and legislators with money that doesn’t belong to them.
We agree, I think, that these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals need radical reform. I wish they all could have been fixed before healthcare came up. Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about. Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice.
FDR’s response to progressive demands: "I agree. Now go out and make me do it."
by DaveW on Sun Oct 18th, 2009 at 01:37:01 PM EST
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And here is my reply:
citing you:
"We agree, I think, that these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals need radical reform. I wish they all could have been fixed before healthcare came up. Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about. Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice."
Event though you _claim_ that you "wish they i.e. "these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals needing radical reform all could have been fixed before healthcare came up," your consistently stated views at this site belie such a claim as being, in fact, simply a hopelessly vain "wish". In other words, you are anything _but_ serious about this "wish".
How do I know this? Simple. Tell me, _when_ would you— indeed, when _have_ you <b>ever</b> — advocated that, <i>instead of taking the immediately politically expedient course,</i> as you continue to do here and now, those in positions of power place in priority <i> "these and many other aspects of our political fundamentals needing] radical reform" </i>?
My guess is that the honest answer is: "Never."
I’m betting you’ve _always_ advocated doing the immediately politically expedient thing at the expense of taking on what are larger, more deep-rooted, ills which are the foundation of poisoning corruption of the entire political system. Then, as now, you’d have answered at any given moment in the past, when urged that reform of these fundamental ills be made a first-priority, the same things you’re telling me above:
"<i>Ain’t gonna happen, so I don’t know what it is that you’re ranting about.</i>"
which makes of your claimed "wish" just so much bogus and empty bullshit.
citing you again:
"Say it outright: Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering? Is that your point? If not, what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice.
and here:
"Do you want to sacrifice healthcare reform if passing it means using parliamentary maneuvering?"
You leave "Parliamentary maneuvering" undefined and I’m not going to define that _for_ you.
I don’t oppose honest use of the rules of the House and Senate or negotiating skilfully with one’s political opponents (including those within one’s own party!)–rather than, as it seems to me has been done most of the time so far, clumsily and foolishly and in a manner that is simply self-defeating and self-destructive.
Instead, I’ll say this: believe it or not, there really are things which surpass in importance the passage of this health-care reform bill. I fear, however, that within the Obama administration there is hardly anyone who sincerely acts like he or she really believes that.
What could possibly be more important? First, taking care to avoid doing <i>even more</i> deep and long-lasting destructive harm to the tattered vestiges of democratic institutions and, second, actual renewal and further advancement of real open and effective democratic institutions, of which there now remains almost nothing.
The same interests which oppose health-care reform or, say, reform of high finance as Wall Street has been practicing it, also welcome every occasion to do greater deep and long-lasting harm to the crumbling foundations of "democracy"—a thing which exists now in name only.
It’s true that, for those just-mentioned interests, defeating health-care reform (no bill at all is, of course, a full victory for them) or any effective reform of investment finance would be a great "plum". But beyond these, what they would really prize is the further destruction of democratic institutions so that there remains simply nothing of any effective opposition. That goal is really not far away. And as long as you, Obama and others resign yourselves to the thoroughly corrupt system now in place rather than, <i>at a minimum,</i> placing on some sort of "second track" what amounts to a fully-coherent and carefully-planned program for extensive and long-term reversal of the destruction of our democratic institutions,</i> you, Obama and others like you actually materially aid these corrupting interests bring closer the day when nothing at all remains of genuine political give-and-take, when all is completely a put-up job, a sham where there isn’t any real opposition at all to an
all-powerful corporate-state.
citing you:
"…what do all your rants about corruption have to do with the issue at hand? All I get out of it is that you’d rather feel "pure" than be sullied by dirty fighting for some small measure of economic justice."
They have this to do with it: I favor _real_ fights, not the sort of botched bullshit we’ve seen so far from Obama & Co., where, instead of taking the fight straight to the opponents, Obama immediately starts by stating _vaguely_ a number concessions, what he’s prepared to "settle for" and leaving even that as something that’s subject to being pushed farther and farther back from what he’d like in a result. And, in that light, if what Obama has worked to achieve so far in health-care reform proves to have been mainly a failure, then, at a minimum, I want that failure to serve all of us as a valuable lesson from which mistakes we can profit in a fresh attempt—which should come <i>without delay</i>. Because, you see (or maybe you don’t), the gross errors which the Clinton administration committed have _not_ been profitably used, nor from them advantages learned, taken and applied in ways that strike me in the current efforts. (though this was the intention from various public pronouncements early on).
This would necessarily involve Obama’s robbing his opponents of their still-all-important advantage of a general public which is simply politically clueless. Obama cannot today even think about the strategic value of appeals to an alert, aware and effectively informed public opinion of any significant size which might give his policy initiatives invaluable support. The reason he can’t should be obvious: no such public exists; and, no matter what, he or others may claim to the contrary, the efforts so far to redress this lack have ranged from nil to pitifully inadequate.
My rants about corruption have this to do with the current legislative battles in the House and Senate:
we—you and I and the rest of the general public, both the best-informed and the least-informed as well as Obama and all his administration have been saps and suckers for allowing a completely broken political system to persist so long in such corruption. And as long as we continue as we have, we’ll remain saps and suckers—following your utterly bankrupt and hopeless assertions that effective reform at a fundamental level as I urge, simply "<i>Ain’t gonna happen</i>, in your own words.
If that is really the case, then we really might as well (as indeed is probably the case anyway!) withdraw all our military forces from Iraq, Afghanistan, and, indeed, everywhere else in the world where U.S. forces are based. Their presence is truly pointless and meaningless since we have for every practical purpose simply given up completely on any worthwhile idea of democracy. And, therefore, all the lives risked and lost, all the money spent, all the effort made, is truly and completely for nothing, utterly wasted.
As amazing as it may seem, all indications that I can see are that Obama himself does not really grasp and understand this signal fact. He acts as though he can at one and the same time treat the foundations of democratic institutions as things of secondary importance without also instilling in the public—who, whatever else they can or can’t grasp can certainly grasp this much—the firm belief that their entire political system is a sham and a fraud, that even its most senior officials don’t really believe in it or take it seriously.
Whether he recognizes it or not, when he approaches his work as he has been doing, this is the message he sends so clearly in ways both subtle and not so subtle. The world of corporate power, though quite as aware of these things as anyone else, doesn’t really much give a damn as long as their power and privileges go on advancing. On that, too, I think we’re agreed.
There’s is so much to cover though in presenting anything resembling a comprehensive answer to so broad a question as you put to me. I can’t really hope to fully treat the myriad aspects or even mention them all in a post such as this. All I can do is try, as I have here, to give you a preliminary and general idea of what I’m driving at.
And, so, there you have it such as it is.
.
Link to comment by DaveW
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Sometimes it is useful to set up thought experiments.
For example, you could have a really fun college seminar on the following.
How to pass a bill (the contents of which, can be anything) when:
You start off with 57 votes in the Senate, including 52 who support the language of your bill.
You can add one member midway through when the court finally settles the election dispute in his favor.
You can add another member by flipping him from the opposition party into your camp.
You can add another member late in the process by replacing a member who has died with a new member who will be available to vote.
Now you have 60 votes in the Senate, but only 55 that support the language of your bill.
How do you persuade those five members to give in and grant you what you want?
If your single goal is the pass this theoretical piece of legislation (a point, I understand, that you dispute) then you can ask your students a variety of interesting questions, including:
How does your strategy shift when you are at 57, 58, 59, and 60 votes? How do you manage expectations? How do you keep the ball rolling? And, when, if ever, do you throw down the gauntlet and insist on the language in your bill?
If you approach this effort as a problem with limited solutions, it will make more sense to you and be less objectionable as some kind of abuse of democracy and honesty.
“Sometimes it is useful to set up thought experiments.”
I could not agree more! Such thought-experiments are part of—an indispensable part of—careful, clear thinking, strategy-making and planning. Without them, one simply doesn’t even engage in forming and testing hypotheses. So, really, these thought-experiments are nothing less than integral parts of critical thinking and I use them all the time. They underlie all my reasoning and all of my arguments.
all this, too, is true:
Indeed, there are college courses where this sort of thing is routine; many are part of graduate courses in business, international relations, political science or psychology.
But for me, an over-arching question through and by which all these others must be passed includes one you don’t mention:
In our strategy and tactics, at every level from the most general to the most specifically-detailed, how are our assumptions and our practical measures likely to aid or harm the overall welfare of a soundly functioning democratic system; in other words, will what we’re doing in order to achieve “victory” on any given matter, or, our manner of defining in what that “victory” outcome consists, “cost our democratic institutions” more than all the reasonably expected social, political and economic gains?”
In other words again, if ‘to win’ we’re obliged, willingly or not, to promote or participate in what amount to “body blows” to our democratic institutions, then we ought to feel an inescapable obligation find some other way or reject as worthy what we’re attempting to do in the first place. And, at the most minimum level, in undertaking measures which we should know could present terrible dangers to our democratic institutions, we have an obligation to the public to bring them “in” on the rationale and accept their critical appraisals rather than, as is typically done, keeping the public as much in the dark as possible and for as long as possible.
Well, I understand that you don’t want to look at the effort to pass health care reform in isolation. But it is helpful to at least go through the effort to look at it in isolation, before attempting to place it in a greater context.
A failure to do so can lead to some rather glaring errors of interpretation.
Nowhere is this more common than in the effort to interpret the motives of individual acts and statements by the administration and by the power brokers in Congress. It is even confusing people about how to read blogs.
If you look at the body of work of FDL, for example, you’ll notice that they have telling their readers for months that the Obama administration is pursuing a strategy of compelling everyone to buy private insurance, all while giving away the farm to the pharmaceutical industry. The Demon behind this strategy is Rahm Emanuel, who wants to reward his corporate masters. Does FDL really believe this, or are they just selling this line to motivate activism and apply pressure? You tell me.
My take is that they seem to have convinced themselves of this, but they would be pursuing this strategy regardless.
I think their actions are only understandable if you look at them within the contours of a thought experiment…that is, abstractly.
If you remain focused on the ‘how’ of passing legislation, these actions make sense and only minimally conflict with their campaign promises.
For example, at 57 votes, there is no prospect of passing a health care reform bill that doesn’t attract three Republicans. It doesn’t matter what you promised in the campaign, you aren’t getting anything like that, if you get anything at all.
At sixty votes, with five skeptics, you have a different equation.
Everything has to go perfectly, a flawless threading of the needle, to pass the bill with the language you want. If you apply pressure too early or in the wrong places, if you alienate a senator whose support is critical, you lose.
Caution and flexibility are crucial. Keeping the process alive and moving is the most important consideration, not winning a news cycle in August.
Frankly, I think they deserve credit for getting this far.
Like you, I have to say that I don’t know about FDL’s “true” motives or intentions in what they publish. Either view of what they’re up to is entirely plausible.
I grant you this without quibble:
” But it is helpful to at least go through the effort to look at it in isolation, before attempting to place it in a greater context.
A failure to do so can lead to some rather glaring errors of interpretation.”
About this,
Indeed, I agree that, “if you remain focused on the ‘how’ of passing legislation, these actions make sense and only minimally conflict with their campaign promises” and, in fact, therein lies some important part of the problem with remaining focused rather narrowly on the “how” of passing legislation.
Since I came of age during the Vietnam war, it’s impossible for me to observe political events today without reading them in the light of the experiences of that time. During the U.S. war in Vietnam, we have a riveting example of an entire administrations–one, that of LBJ, and the others, those of RM Nixon—which grievously lost their way mainly because they were both so exclusively focused on the “how” and, most incredibly, despite the world-shaking efforts to protest their blundering, efforts which, as anyone familiar knows well, ripped the nation apart and left cities and campuses looking like semi-war-zones, these three administrations persisted blindly throughout those intense protest efforts to pile up the waste of lives and of money.
A brilliant book, Voltaire’s Bastards by John Ralston Saul, is devoted to examining (through such case histories) just how a tunnel-vision of rationally-driven planning and progress-measurement so often leads very bright people to follow at length courses which, as soon as one “steps back” and examines them, are recognizable as literally insane.
The tendencies Saul’s book details are veritable “classics” of government management and administration. Barbara Tuchman’s book, The March of Folly covers much the same themes.
And their points are vital for our understanding:
these tendencies aren’t ones to which any given government administration “might” fall prey, they are rather ones to which, without deliberate care to avoid them, any given administration is nearly bound to fall prey .
If someone has first grasped the legislative process and requirements, then I am happy to discuss larger contexts, including the wisdom of individual concessions along the way.
Unfortunately, I have few partners for that debate. The best is definitely David Waldman (Kagro X).
Larger context does, I believe, inform some of the administration’s more dubious decisions. Keeping Lieberman in the caucus, for example, and failing to exert maximum pressure up front on wayward senators more generally, is probably informed by the need to keep going to the well, on climate change, on financial regulations, on immigration reform, etc.
“If someone has first grasped the legislative process and requirements, then I am happy to discuss larger contexts, including the wisdom of individual concessions along the way.
Unfortunately, I have few partners for that debate. The best is definitely David Waldman (Kagro X).”
This general lack of familiarity is indeed one of the central and plaguing problems about most people’s view of politics. And it’s a shame, as your own experiences impress on you.
In addition, it’s been clear to me for some time, as I’ve already mentioned, that you have a certain access to administration people that is, I suppose, unique in this blog. I certainly don’t have this. Moreover, I know from other experience—for example, in volunteering at the HQ of a national presidential campaign in the first quarter of 2007 here in France—that unless one knows people inside such organizations, it is incredibly difficult to parse and assemble a picture of what actually is going on and, vitally, why. As you know, personalities clash, large groups of very ambitious and bright people, all with large egos, working together, produces frictions which complicate any outsider’s ability to understand the “inside” workings. So, in that I’m at a distinct disadvantage. It helps, but only up to a point, that my university degree is in “political science” ( a term I disperage as too grandiose) and, in that, particularly on “U.S. government and the legislative processes”. So, I read texts, sat in lectures, and studied the legislative process mainly from the national government level. But I never worked as an aide in Washington nor personally had connections with administration staff in any government. However, I’ve read a fair deal from high insiders’ memoirs, with their accounts of their days in government and, from these, whatever the administration may be, one can gain a fairly decent appreciation for how people in Congress, the White House or the Supreme Court commonly think and behave in broad terms and under commonly occurring circumstances. So, that much, too, I have to draw on in my thinking about these issues.
The insiders’ memoirs are great tools; but they appear well after the fact. What I so deplore is that the public (with rare exceptions like your case) are so terribly in the dark about so much of what is happening as it unfolds in the daily affairs of the nation. Distrusted, excluded, there is little the general public can know or contribute!!—and the typical workings of Washington, D.C. and state capitals continue to ensure that this is the case.
And, above all, foreign-policy-making, which, after university, came to hold a larger and larger part of my time and interests, is the real “black box” of government. Really, there, very few outside the principles concerned and their friends and families get any insight into what the hell is being done and how and why. Only when things come to light through observable phenomenon, or by reading through the lines of the press articles can anyone glean what has happened and try and guess the “who”, “why” and “how”.
There is nothing unique about my access, such that it is. And I can tell you, having some staffer from Harry Reid’s office tie themselves in knots trying to defend some parliamentary betrayal is of limited usefulness to me. Back when we were discussing telecom retroactive immunity, for example, I was able to discern earlier than a casual observer that Reid was going to go with Rockefeller’s bill over Dodd’s. He was screwing us and trying to tell us that he wasn’t. But they weren’t telling me the truth, so I had no greater insight into their true motivations.
Likewise now. No one in Reid’s office is going to tell me anything they aren’t willing to tell any other reporter. If I have insight, it is earned by learning about the rules.
By those measures (“insight…earned by learning about the rules”), then, you ought to be able to find a larger number of people who meet your standards for partners in debate. The rules are evident in practice not to mention their being matters of public record, with the most important parts of them—such as varying circumstances for different voting majorities; rules of procedure, and, most notably the general process of bill passage, etc.—being better known and understood today at least for those who watch C-SPAN, the world-changing difference in the past 25 to 30 years.
In some ways, mostly due to C-SPAN, it’s far easier for any one in that audience to gain the level of knowledge you’re describing, then. These aspects are, though, the same as strategy plans and tactics which occupies so much of your attention here. For that, some acquaintance with staff and officials is invaluable; and, despite your minimization of what you have of that, indeed, unless others participating here are reporters, (or they can phone and get through as though they were,) then, yes, indeed, your level of access to people is “unique” practically by definition, it seems to me.
My view, though, is that, as far as the main virtues and values of the general public’s (of which I’m a part) insights and opinions is concerned from the point of view of law-makers, there’s little particular need for much specialist or expert knowledge. What Washington people need to know is what the public thinks and why—and those public opinions are more valuable as Washington allows them to be better-informed.
That, which is and should be what blogs like this are all about, is where people can contribute genuinely useful communication–and do it in a way that complements the too-narrowed tunnel perspective of the pros in the legislature and the executive.
Do such people have discussions such as this one? Perhaps–maybe even “probably”. But we don’t normally get any knowledge of it and certainly not in any timely manner.
my point being that I don’t have any access that most of the better known progressive bloggers don’t have.
And, mine, that this indeed makes you “unique” in this blog and, beyond it, part of a relative handful. What’s to tough about acknowledging this?
Nothing. But if we’re talking about why most progressive bloggers are taking a position of planned capitulation, it isn’t because they have less information available to them.
You have the advantage of being able to observe the political maneuverings at a distance. It’s much easier to be dispassionate and see the big picture when it doesn’t involve your day-to-day existence.
You have healthcare. Many of us are being crushed by the burden of premiums, have lost our coverage along with our jobs, or have been denied coverage for any one of a host of reasons.
The same analogies apply to any number of policy areas–we’re living with the reality, which puts our focus more on the battles than the war.
You’re trying to debate agricultural subsidies with a hungry person. Yes, these things are important, and saving our country from the corporatist interests that are co-opting our democracy is crucial, butright now our stomachs are rumbling.
I almost resent that you’d address a comment to me in this blog when, as you damn well know, I’m banned outright in the disgusting & censorious ‘hole’ you usually frequent.
But, since you have, here’s what I have to say,
If my distance gives me some greater measure of relative dispassion on these issues, (and I wonder at the claim since I consider myself rather “passionate” about them), it’s true that this is due to my fortunately not being personally and immediately subject to the fallout from the insanity that reigns in so much of U.S. society. But, then, whatever else it means, it also may mean an advantage in reasoning since I could thereby have a better shot at seeing and thinking about the issues from a somewhat freer vantage point.
In argument and in reasoning, that advantage should be welcomed rather than criticized and made a ground of some sort of ‘disqualification’ since, after all, the point here is to come up with clear, sound reasoned views of the actual facts rather than simply and solely commiserate with the suffering.
A much better analogy is that I’m debating with a “junkie” (who is deeply addicted and disabled by that addiction) about the best way to get free of the habit that’s going to kill him if he continues in it.
If you resent my addressing a comment to you because I frequent a forum from which you are banned, I shall refrain from doing so in the future.
I find it a rather stupid argument, though, especially considering that most of the people there have been banned from another forum where I am free to post, and no one has ever before held my lack of banning against me.
Bob Herbert’s column (which is almost eerie in the way it echos what I’m urging) today really says it all for me:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/opinion/20herbert.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print
[emphasis added]
I guess that, for some, it’s not absolutely necessary to enjoy the advantage of the “distance” I have from the scene of the “accident”.
After all the words I still don’t find an answer to the question that set you off: Are you saying it would be better to lose healthcare reform by refusing to use strategy? That’s a slightly different version of the question, actually, because I think it points to the place where you and I cannot understand each other.
Strategy — all strategy — consists of deception. (We’ll start running this way, then when they follow, we’ll throw the ball that way. We’ll stage a landing up here to draw their troops, then do a sneak landing at Dover Beach. We’ll leak that the new smartphone appears to be based on the Intel chip then release it with the ARM one.) Strategy depends on misdirection and secrecy.
It seems to me that you’re saying, the Dems should refrain from using strategy to get their priority policy passed into law. Even if it means that there is no healthcare reform, for instance. You seem to think something would be gained by that. That their example would somehow transform political life in America, or something. I believe the result would be far less dramatic: they’d be dismissed as weak and losers, and cede the game to the most blatant corporate lackeys. We would enter another half-century or more in which “liberalism” was dismissed out of hand as beneath the contempt of realistic citizens.
You insist on assuming that if they wanted to, Obama and the Dems could have just made more speeches and Americans would rise up and save the republic. I see nothing in history or current political culture to suggest that that’s anything more than the absurdest of fantasies. Elected officials will always be the last in the chain that leads to radical change. They have to be made to do it. FDR’s tardy changes were a response to serious fear that the country would turn to Communism as its last hope to mitigate the economic collapse. I retain some faith in Obama because my highest hope for him was never more than that he’d reset the parameters a little, enough to open a niche where radical change could at least begin to get a hearing.
I don’t understand the dramatics. You scream about political strategy as if its use is about to destroy some American democracy you think you remember existing. You equate, apparently, parliamentary strategy to selling the Vietnam atrocity. Vietnam was not about maneuvering, it was about bad and stupid and venal policy.
I don’t know what else to say. You basically called me a liar, so there’s little space for conversation. Much more importantly I just don’t understand where all the dramatics come from, and can’t believe you really think all practical legislation should wait until a corrupt system — no, a corrupt society — has been transformed into something that’s never existed before. Maybe you can explain exactly what part of the strategy Boo described would trigger the armageddon that your dramatics describe. In the meantime I continue to try and decide whether I think love of money or love of purity is the root of all evil. I’m leaning toward the latter.
Your dishonesty, (frankly, that’s what it is,) starts with yourself. If you can’t be honest with yourself (hardly a problem unique to you), you’re not going to be honest with those you debate. Hence my insistance that you begin by this: quit kidding yourself with what is really patent nonsense. I mean, that’s what you’ve “sold” yourself and it’s what you’re trying to sell to me. Should I treat that “kindly”? I don’t think so; are you kind to others who try and bullshit you?– when you can recognize them doing it? Again, I don’t think so.
“Strategy — all strategy — consists of deception.“
Uh, no, it doesn’t.
Example: you’re being treated for cancer. In the process, you and your doctor have to decide the best course of therapies. It requires that you consider a fact-set called “your particular case”. In this, your doctor owes you the truth, and you have a right to expect it. Now, before you object, “Yeah, but that’s different, that’s a doctor!” let me remind you that, if you live in a “company town” and you have only a company-town doctor to consult, that is, a doctor who is ultimately employed by your employer, then you have a conflict of interest. Not “might have”, do have. You might in any specific instance get the straight dope from this doctor about your case, but you have to wonder. Because he has other powerful and conflicting interests than simply giving you the untainted truth about your treatment.
” You scream about political strategy as if its use is about to destroy some American democracy you think you remember existing. You equate, apparently, parliamentary strategy to selling the Vietnam atrocity. Vietnam was not about maneuvering, it was about bad and stupid and venal policy.”
This is truly a laughable “distinction”: “Vietnam was not about maneuvering, it was about bad and stupid and venal policy.” [emphasis added]
In the world which you take as given, there is not and never can be any, even superficial, distinction between these. I have to say that, here again, you are truly deluding yourself and, yes, that really does put an incredible “crimp” in our discussion. Anyone who would assert that “Vietnam was not about maneuvering, it was about bad and stupid and venal policy,” really has no idea what he is talking about.
more to follow later
Do me a favor and lose some of the condescending tone you are using in the comments. If you feel you are on the receiving end of the same, take the higher road.
I don’t have time to monitor all comment threads, but our motto here is ‘Don’t be a prick.’ I don’t care if you want to abuse and belittle my opinions, but try to please show more respect for their opinions of other commenters.
You make good arguments when you try. I prefer to have this as a discussion board, not a mirror of cable news with people just insulting each other.
Thanks.
“If you feel you are on the receiving end of the same, take the higher road.”
It’s not condescension I’m on the receiving end of, it’s sheer nonsense born of self-delusion. I can try, yes, to take the “higher road” but not to point out as nonsense and self-delusions such things leaves me “no road at all“, doesn’t it?
do your best.
Deal.
I will try. For today, I think there’s enough on the bread-board for the moment so I’m proposing to leave it at that till tomorrow.
To Dave, I’d urge that what sounds severe in my critiques, including especially those which you take as attacks on your honesty, are, believe it or not, no less than I subject my own notions to. As harsh critics go, you’ll never approach what I demand in reviewing what I think I believe and why I think I believe it. I’m constantly questioning whether what I claim meets the tests of honesty and fairness. If I practice this toward you and with myself it’s because, again, believe it or not, I’m accutely aware of how tempting it is to convince one’s self of what one wishes were true.
I don’t believe that our situation is utterly hopeless but I do believe it’s appallingly bad. I remind myself that it’s important to grant the existence of the “good aspects” which do exist; but, if things look appallingly bad to me, I really wish they were better, too.
They never will be, however, if we all simply “let ourselves off the hook” intellectually; but that’s exactly what we’re very inclined to try to do.
I don’t care if your objections are polite; if you make them polite, that’s fine with me, but I don’t much care, polite or nasty (Not that this is intended to claim that they are). But I very much mind if you present less than your most severe criticisms, because to be given an easy ride risks leaving my own errors untreated and unexposed and that is not what I regard as a favor or as being kind.
It’s in that same spirit that I’m uncompromising in my critical review where I object to some of what you’re claiming and defending.
The shortest answer to the deep question, “How did we ever get into this mess?” is,
“We’re consistently too easy on ourselves and on each other, that’s how.
Apologies for being rude, yes. Please excuse my lapses of patience and my rudeness. Apologies for being severely critical, no.
“It seems to me that you’re saying, the Dems should refrain from using strategy to get their priority policy passed into law.“
Well, I’m not claiming that.
“Are you saying it would be better to lose healthcare reform by refusing to use strategy?“
It very much depends on what this health-care reform turns out to “mean” and, with that, what it “costs us” in further depredations of an already corrupt system. In short, there’s no pat answer possible for this question, and, furthermore, since it’s usually not possible to know in advance with any precision just what any given course of legislation is likely to “cost us” in such a sense, one should, out of prudence, err on the side of safety; but there is more to say about the assumptions contained in it, and, about those assumptions, more in a minute.
“You insist on assuming that if they wanted to, Obama and the Dems could have just made more speeches and Americans would rise up and save the republic. I see nothing in history or current political culture to suggest that that’s anything more than the absurdest of fantasies. Elected officials will always be the last in the chain that leads to radical change. They have to be made to do it.”
I certainly don’t assume that if they wanted to, Obama and the Dems could have just made more speeches and Americans would rise up and save the republic, and I’ve stated as much explicitly. (Aren’t you paying attention!?
Go back to my remark where I observe that it’s one of the most important obstacles to Obama’s success in his initiatives and one of the most important advantages to the lobbies and their sponsoring interest-groups which oppose him, that, Obama and the Dems cannot easily just make more speeches and expect that, in the immediate term, Americans would rise up and save the republic.
But, because you and, by all indications, Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the entire upper hierarchy of the so-called liberal establishment, are so single-mindedly fixed on getting legislation done in the corrupted system without really doing much of anything to address the fundamentals of that system’s corruption, we have no reason to expect that this situation [just made more speeches and Americans would rise up and save the republic] is going to change. That’s right at the core of my objections to your views.
Now, to refer to the comment above, to which I said I’d return in a moment,
“Are you saying it would be better to lose healthcare reform by refusing to use strategy?“
this and much else in your argument tends to carry an assumption about the reform legislation that’s so nearly all-important for you. It implies what is, to use an over-simplified metaphor as illustration, something like a more or less straight road from “A”, being the Obama administration’s health-care reform initiatives, and “B”, their shepherded passage through the House and Senate and on to conference committee, where the differences will be ‘ironed out’ and then, on to the White House for a victory signing ceremony.
Why do I claim that you seem to imply such a “straight-road” conception to what I’m sure you recognize is a very twisty and turning process? It’s because all your criticisms of my views suggest that what I’m proposing amounts to a serious and very unwise “detour” from what you want to do, get from “A” to “B” with as few ‘turns’ as possible, and, most of all, taking the corrupt system as we know and accepting that without disturbing it. That’s why I claim your view is rose-colored.
Instead, what we have is a process which puts the House Speaker in a re-run of the labors of Hercules (who only had twelve!) as she tries to juggle the competing demands of the 218 (minimum) member-votes she must muster to gain passage. That “Byzantine” process is what you fear my “detour” put at risk when, all by itself, it entails who-knows-how-many intricate and interlocking deals and arrangements as each of these members put their own conditions and claims on the Speaker “in return for” their support. That’s the process which you and I know is the general “SOP”, standard operating procedure of contemporary Capital politics. It goes by various names, “Horse-trading”, “backroom deal-making”, “give-and-take”, etc. They all refer to the same things.
When, where and how, in your calculus of what’s best for the Republic do “we” ever take up addressing this situation? Remember that question? You ignored it, above. No where in your reply is there the slightest hint that this question gets your attention. So, let me repeat, when have you ever bothered to urge more fundamental reform of the roots of the long-lasting corruption? You claimed previously that you really “wish” things were different, better, etc. but you don’t say anywhere how that wish has ever informed your view of what is best to do in the present and practical world of here-and-now. Nor do you offer any suggestions for the near, mid or long term as to how we’re ever to get to any sort of helpful reform. So, what I come to as your real view, by default, and not openly stated, is this: we’ll get to these matters when the system completely collapses into utter chaos. Then there’ll be no alternative to dealing with them.
But that sort of situation is precisely what the Russian people suffered when their old and bankrupt regime collapsed and if it teaches us anything, it’s that in such circumstances, things are truly chaotic and the idea that out of them could come anything which deserves to be called desirable, let alone an improvement over our present corrupt situation, truly staggers the imagination.
more to follow later
In these threads and elsewhere I’ve claimed that a constitutional convention is the minimum required to address the fundamental problems in our system, including the dysfunctional Senate, the electoral system, getting the money out of elections, Supreme Court appointments, corporate “citizenship”, and the tax system for starters. I don’t see any connection between that and what strategies are used to try and pass healthcare reform. Nor do I see any movement toward systemic change. Nor have I ever imagined that an elected official, born of the system, is going to lead revolutionary change in the system.
That’s it for me. Trying to have a discussion with you has become as pointless as talking to a teabagger. Maybe that’s my fault, maybe yours, maybe it’s the toss of the dice. Not interested in investigating which, so I’m done.
“Trying to have a discussion with you has become as pointless as talking to a teabagger.”
If I’d really resembled a “teabagger,” you’d have ripped my arguments apart with ridicule rather than renouncing as you’re doing here.
You’re free to break off the debate, of course. And you can even claim that trying to argue with me is pointless. I think, though, that what’s really going on is that, like so many people, when your own self-deceptions are put right in front of you, you flee.
That’s something in itself that is important that we recognize and understand. It’s fully a part of the prevailing tendencies which, taken together, give us what you have in U.S. political culture.
But there’s maybe one other important element in the dynamic here. On our level, which is that of the observant public who basically have no influence to speak of and can’t, no matter what our opinions, really take any decisive part in making the corrupt system better, it’s terribly frustrating to arrive at a recognition of insights which indicate what course would make circumstances different and maybe better and at the same time have to accept that, even so, there’s nothing we can do about it at our level.
It’s likely, I think, that constitutional amendments are necessary to address the fundamental problems and, since that seems so far beyond what any of us could help bring about, the result is tantamount to saying that the situation is a hopeless one.
What I find in your case is that not only do we come to a conclusion that things seem practically hopeless but, what’s more, we can’t even discuss them beyond this point. That’s something which I find fascinating and instructive. There are so many, many like you, Dave, whose real attitude, once it’s brought out into the clear, is deeply fatalistic.
Whether it was once true or never more than just a popular myth, there was a different time lived by very different Americans who, correctly or not, acted as though they believed that there was very little that they could not accomplish as a people. That time and those peole are long gone. Today, if there are any defining characteristics of “Americans”, one of them is that they’re a people who no longer believe they can achieve anything, and, seem to think—going to the other extreme—that they can’t achieve anything.
Tosses of the dice have nothing to do with it.
So, you’re “Not interested in investigating which, so [you’re] done.”
Not all strategy is deception.
Have you ever seen Big Ten football?
Take the Iowa Hawkeyes . . .
They don’t really hide what they’re going to do. They play conservatively and rely on not making mistakes and being more physical than the other team. They play fundamental smash-mouth football. On both sides of the ball they play relentlessly physical football.
Eventually they wear the other team down or the other team makes mistakes.
It’s not always pretty to watch. Clouds of dust and inches and all that.
But it’s effective. And the other team knows its coming.