Sensible Erection | This is how you play Family Feud politics.

Wednesday, 10 March 2010

This is how you play Family Feud politics.

quote [ One reason for the current non-debate over health care reform is that the Republicans and Democrats are playing different games. Democrats, and President Barack Obama especially, are playing Jeopardy. Republicans are playing Family Feud. ]

This guy has also done (and is still doing) a painstaking chapter-by-chapter take down of the Left Behind series here:
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/left_behind/index.html
He spent most of his life as an evangelical and theology major thus packing these posts with all sort of crazy insights.

[politics] [by Isosceles Lock™@9:21pmGMT] [+10 Insightful]

Comments

lilmookieesquire said @ 9:34pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
Wow. Spot on.

rndmnmbr said @ 9:44pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
+1 Slacktivist. I very rarely hear nonsense on this blog.

Isosceles Lock™ said @ 9:57pm GMT on 10th Mar
♥ Slacktivist ♥

desperado said @ 7:33pm GMT on 11th Mar
So true.

jaxtraw said @ 10:02pm GMT on 10th Mar
Uh, wow. I have trouble with this idea that people of all persuasions deploy; that they are honest and truthful and the other guys are all dishonest. So, "we" never use propaganda, or populism, but "they" do. And "we" ignore public opinion when "we" know it is stupid and false consciousness, but when "they" ignore public opinion "they" are despots.

Sorry, look, it's politics. It's a dirty shitty game and every party plays it. It's all full of propaganda and managing and manufacturing consent and using any dirty argument you can. The twat who wrote this is so certain in his own little bug-eyed self that the Democrat policy is right, that he *presumes* that anyone standing in its way is playing some kind of dirty game. If an opinion poll is against it, the people must have been misled. They don't have minds of their own.

This is just ridiculous.

foobar said @ 10:19pm GMT on 10th Mar
In most cases, you'd be right, but this isn't two competing ideologies. It's not Republicans vs. Democrats, it's Republicans vs. everybody.

There are reasonable conservatives, but they're not fighting battles that were settled decades ago like universal health care, evolution, global warming or abortion.

jaxtraw said @ 10:30pm GMT on 10th Mar
"it's Republicans vs. everybody."

Is it? What about all those tea party folks? Do they count?

I was being lectured a few threads ago about how politicians are supposed to ignore the popular will and do what they believe is right. Aren't the Republicans doing what they believe is right? Are they now supposed to listen to "everybody"?

sanepride said @ 10:37pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
In the matter of health care reform they're doing neither. They are acting on behalf of insurance companies (as are some Democrats btw) and using misinformation to try to skew public opinion.

jaxtraw said @ 10:47pm GMT on 10th Mar
In your opinion. You're presenting your political opinion as an objective fact, as is the writer of the article. If somebody disagrees with you, they must be under the influence of darkness.

Sigh.

lilmookieesquire said @ 10:51pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:3 Insightful]
You're presenting your political opinion as an objective fact, as is the writer of the article.

Teapot, kettle, we all love tanning!...

v21 said @ 10:51pm GMT on 10th Mar
As entirely distinct from your own opinion...

If you want to elevate this discussion beyond this level of "nuh-uh!" post some evidence. Post some sources, some confirmation, some reasons.

(Also: I have enjoyed your return. I've not argued politics like this for ages, and I suddenly miss it now it has returned. It is a huge waste of time, mind you, it rarely rises to the level of new light being brought. Post your sources!)

aliron said @ 11:06pm GMT on 10th Mar
In terms of the health care debate, it's all theories and projections ain't it? Neither of those are facts that are objective like the answer to "What is the capital of Australia?"

v21 said @ 11:19pm GMT on 10th Mar
Sure. But pretty much every decision we make involves theories and projections. It doesn't mean we should just toss a coin - some of those theories are better than others, some predict past events better, some take into account factors that seem likely to be significant... I mean, it's not a toss-up. We can examine evidence and construct arguments to bolster our case. Or we can just say "neh! that won't work! you're wrong! why? because you're ugly!" to each other all day long.

(i mean, Christ - physics has used theories and projections to work back to within a split fucking eyeblink of a second after the Big Bang. There's nowt wrong with the concept of theories and projections)

jaxtraw said @ 11:24pm GMT on 10th Mar
The problem with trying to promote any of these theories is that it gets cut off by Hume's Guillotine. The various approaches to healthcare are all predicated on moral and ethical assumptions. Sure there are facts of a kind in there; statistical this and statistical that, and each side can conjure them. But the question of whether e.g. the wealthy should pay more or the poor should get state assistance are ethical questions which do not and cannot be reduced to facts. The objection by the various anti-Obamacare groups are ultimately ethical, just as the justifications by the pro-Obamacare groups are ultimately ethical.

It isn't a facts thing.

v21 said @ 11:47pm GMT on 10th Mar
First off: there are enough lies and bullshit on either side that debating down the facts, to the likely consequences clears a lot of things up. Such and such should pay, no such and such should pay - it's an argument greatly informed by knowing how much each would have to pay. Facts can take you about 2/3rds of the way into it, leaving these issues as ethical and to be decided by each man himself, etc.

But I would extend this, and then say that you can examine each of the consequences of various parties taking on responsibility. I deny the ethical choices should be made without reference to what works best. I mean, I know this is itself an ethical choice, but I do strongly believe that facts and analysis can answer a lot of these questions. Fuck: philosophical debates on free will are getting shafted by fucking fMRI studies. I don't see why an ethical stance on individual responsibility can't be strongly informed by sociological studies analyzing the consequences of that.

I know you will hate the second half, and think it's a load of rubbish. But I think this current debate does revolve around lies and shitty statistics and projections more than resolves around moral dilemmas. Most of the objections are on proposed costs, coverage, economic impact - this isn't an ethical dimension. These are things you can predict.

arctan said @ 5:30am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:2 Insightful]
If the Republicans would actually concede that they believe, as an ethical matter, that we should have inferior health care, and that inferior health care outcomes are the price we pay for being ethical (for not "robbing" the rich or giving the government "tyrannical" power or whatnot), then fine. Let them make that ethical case.

It's where they lie about factual matters, like whether the private health care system *is* inferior or whether the current system *does* create unnecessary bankruptcies and deaths or whether the "Obamacare" system will create "trillions of dollars in extra costs" or lead to "death panels" executing my grandmother -- it's when they try to say *that* shit that I get upset.

You want to ban gay sex because you just think it's wrong? Fine. Just say that. Don't make shit up about homosexuality leading to pedophilia to try to make your case, though. You want to block green-energy legislation because you think it's Just Wrong for the government to "interfere" in the private sector? Wonderful. Don't make shit up about how global warming isn't happening to try to justify that.

Same here.

sanepride said @ 7:00am GMT on 11th Mar
There's plenty of lying going on, but it's also conceivable that some of these folks honestly believe that homosexuality is tied to pedophilia, or that global warming is a hoax. Or they've managed to convince themselves of it.
The question is whether willful ignorance is worse than outright dishonesty.

aliron said @ 12:04am GMT on 11th Mar
You're right, of course. We need to base our decisions on something, and short of precognition there's projections and theories.

It's just that, initially, to me, the author of the blog post was selling those as objective facts but now I realize he meant the Jeopardy/Family Feud analogy to be a loose one. The capital of Australia example threw me off. Dems are, for the most part, basing their argument on studies from reputed sources whereas the Reps are making arguments based on arbitrary polls.

f00m@nB@r said @ 12:07am GMT on 11th Mar
Good luck. jaxtraw doesn't believe in data.

sanepride said @ 12:11am GMT on 11th Mar
I'll take that challenge:

Health Sector Has Donated Millions to Lawmakers

incpenners said @ 2:38am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:-2 Troll]
:: cough
cough ::

sanepride said @ 3:19am GMT on 11th Mar
So what's your point? Everybody gets special interest money. I'm talking about pressure coming specifically from the health insurance sector. And yes, as I stated above, Dems are taking this money too.

sanepride said @ 11:49pm GMT on 10th Mar
OK jax. In spite of your rather annoying habit of dismissing any fact that counters your own belief system as being 'opinion' I'll concede the point on this one.

However: The fact is that insurance companies are major contributors to the vast majority of Republicans who most vocally oppose the health care bill (and a good few Democrats as well). This is in addition to a massive lobbying effort. I'll leave it at that and let you draw whatever conclusions you'd like.

ring riot said @ 9:04pm GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
Pardon me, jaxtraw, but you probably do that more than anyone on SE. So you'll pardon us if we plug our ears as you call that kettle black.

foobar said @ 10:45pm GMT on 10th Mar
No, the tiny but loud minority of teabaggers do not count.

Competent representatives follow the popular will, tempered by expert advice.

Universal health care is both the popular will and the long settled expert consensus.

arctan said @ 5:26am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
At some point you have to drop the evenhanded bullshit and have enough confidence in what you believe to, y'know, believe it.

Yes, I think I'm right and that the Republicans are fucktards, and am "treating my opinion as fact". If I didn't think it was true it wouldn't be my opinion, would it?

It's this kind of teach-the-controversy shit that still has us running in circles over issues like creationism and global warming denial.

desperado said @ 7:39pm GMT on 11th Mar
+ one million

ring riot said @ 10:23pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:1 Informative]
Just a note: I was actually trying to mod the post Insightful - not your comment - which I feel doesn't apply here at all and which I disagree with. Wasn't going to downmod you, but wasn't going to upmod, either.

So you got a free bee. ;-)

v21 said @ 10:37pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:2]
I feel ring riot was not generous enough. Have a full beard of free bees.

v21 said @ 10:33pm GMT on 10th Mar
No, the Democratic party don't play it nearly as much. Which is why they keep losing. All the fucking time. For 25 fucking years they've been on the back foot.

Here's someone more eloquent than me going off on it.

jaxtraw said @ 10:50pm GMT on 10th Mar
This is one reason I like being part of a marginal loony political cult. I no longer have to put on a poker face and pretend that anybody shits rainbows.

v21 said @ 11:00pm GMT on 10th Mar
Hell, I enjoy this argument as a spectator. I appreciate this mainly on the level of pure political maneuverings, because it is too fucking depressing to get too personally invested.

Lets back up.

Do you disagree with the statement that there is a tonal difference between the Republicans and the Democrats? That the Republicans generally have the blue-collar common-sense angry yelling part wrapped up, while the left comes off tweedy and smug. In the debate with Al Gore, before the 2000 elections there was an exchange where he presented a policy, and Gore broke down why it was worse for everyone except some fat cats. Attacked it plain and simple with facts. And George Bush waved it off with "He thinks he's so smart, he has all the numbers". And it fucking worked! It's a far better strategy to play. It turns out - gasp! - being smug and condescending and doling out statistics like you are the fucking schoolmaster doesn't really win many people over. And that's the tactic the Dems have traditionally found most at home to them, and that is a major part of why they have been such sad-sacks the last 30 years.

It doesn't matter who is right, it just matters how they say it. That's all I'm trying to convey here. If you can't see the difference between the tone of the two parties, well, I'll probably dig for more examples. But I will also lose respect for you, a little.

jaxtraw said @ 11:35pm GMT on 10th Mar
Yes, I agree that there is a tonal difference. The populist side, as is often the case, are indeed anti-intellectual, and that is largely because they perceive intellectuals- urban "liberal" elites, basically, as being determined to impose their value system. The thing is, that is true. It comes down to ones opinion on whether or not it is a good value system to impose, and whether one ~~class~~ demographic in society has a moral, ethical or natural right to do so. But the broad division between liberal and conservative politicians represents a real ~~class~~ group division in the population.

The presumption that intellectuals are wiser than non-intellectuals is not believed by the populist conservative ~~class~~ side of things. We might imagine a few hundred years ago, a peasant saying "Oi don't fink oi should 'ave to be a tenant, oi wants be own land." And he'd be cut to rhetorical ribbons and ridiculed by the well educated aristocrat who could deploy a great speech about the virtues of aristocratic stewardship. But the illiterate peasant's feelings would remain (and we may rather sympathise with him). This is the kind of class divide at the heart of this issue. The liberal intellectual class- which is strongly represented tonally here at se- is almost entirely incapable- blind- to the idea that anyone could have a rational divergent opinion from their own, because that class is drunk on the idea of themselves as superior stewards of society. They cannot see anything beyond a bunch of knuckle-draggers high on God and guns. Elitism sticks in the craw of those beyond the elite circle.

I find America in regards to this issue refresshing. At least there is one party, to some degree, trying to represent the outsider view. Here in the UK, the Labour Party used to do that, standing up for the peasantry, but now that is gone, and that party is entirely of the patrician elite. I live in a country where opposition is effectively extinct; there is only a gray dreary uniformity across the political class. So, to see a "tonal difference" in America is to see, for me, democracy in some way still alive.

sanepride said @ 11:54pm GMT on 10th Mar
And so you believe the Republican party is trying to represent 'the outsider view'? That's pretty fucking hilarious.

jaxtraw said @ 12:01am GMT on 11th Mar
Best you can do? Read the thread.

sanepride said @ 12:26am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Informative]
my opinion is that you are full of shit.

What do you know of the 'outsider view'? Your pontifications are as 'intellectual elitist' as anything I've read here.

v21 said @ 12:03am GMT on 11th Mar
You know what's so hilarious I could choke? Barring one "moment of change" they have symbolized the outsider view better than the Democrats for a good many decades.

sanepride said @ 12:23am GMT on 11th Mar
The outsider view being what exactly? Corporate welfare and tax breaks for the rich? Aggressive, unilateral foreign policy? Denial of science and erosion of civil liberties?
Even if these persistent Republican policies represented a true 'outsider view', how is it productive or positive? I think the destruction wreaked by eight years of the Bush administration pretty much speaks for itself.

rndmnmbr said @ 6:57am GMT on 11th Mar
Corporate welfare: helps the poor business owner.

Tax breaks for the rich: well, I'm going to be rich one day...

Aggressive, unilateral foreign policy: God made us Americans special, and really, who cares about those foreign people?

Denial of science: how can science be true if it ignores or refutes the Bible, which is obviously correct?

Erosion of civil liberties: it's not right for them to sin and teach our children to sin and someone should stop them and make them act decent.

ComposerNate said @ 9:20am GMT on 11th Mar
If the bible is to be believed, aren't scientists the greatest of our enemies? Isn't the pursuit of truth what got us kicked from Eden from the beginning, what forever separates us from God?

rndmnmbr said @ 4:17pm GMT on 11th Mar
I'm not saying it makes sense. I'm just saying, this is what a lot of people believe.

ComposerNate said @ 8:27pm GMT on 11th Mar
I'm grateful the religious aversion to science is mostly subdued, shaming.

v21 said @ 12:01am GMT on 11th Mar
But this frustrates me entirely! The "outsider view" shafts the populace entirely more than the smug cunts do. The "outsider view" imposes its belief systems more completely. The ones championing the "outsider view" are in fact the elites in the system. The smug cunts - they largely belong to the middle class that has been so hideously squeezed in the last 20 years. The patrician elite are not the college professors.

I mean, I obviously understand the way both sides come off, and the reasons things are as they are - but this frustrates me completely. Thinking seriously on this, I feel like shuddering with pure ineffectual rage. (i have, by now, stepped forward into a partisan view)

sanepride said @ 12:29am GMT on 11th Mar
Both you and jax are dealing in such broad stereotypical generalizations that it's somewhere between comical and painful.
You do understand that you're just appropriating the rhetoric and propaganda of both extremes and assuming it's truth, right?

v21 said @ 6:36am GMT on 11th Mar
Oh, yeah, of course. But I'm trading in vague public perceptions over the course of decades... it's pretty much impossible not to. I mean, at least we're both aware we are - you can't characterize half of the political class of a country as "smug tweedy cunts" without either being really fucking ignorant, or vaguely taking the piss. It's the second...

jaxtraw said @ 4:22am GMT on 11th Mar
I've abandoned three answers to this already. I just thought of a different approach.

One of the things that I hated about Avatar was the depiction of the Navi. Their life was too perfect. When the hero said in his videoblog "we can't offer them anything, they'll never leave" he was right. Who would leave their perfect happy life with their beautfiul forest and personal god and tame dragons? There was no question in the movie to engage me.

It would have been much a much more interesting story, I thought, if the Navi had been more realistic, a poor tribe struggling for survival. If the one thing they owned was their land, ordinary land not magic land, and sometimes they suffer famines and disease, and many of their babies die, and so on. And instead of the Corporation and its army being just Evil, if they had had something to offer the Navi; like a stable food supply and medicine and machetes instead of stone knives, and then the Navi would have had a conflict between whether to acquiesce or not; whether to stay poor but free on their own land, or join "civilisation" and gain wealth but lose autonomy and their tribal homelands. That would've been more interesting to watch, for me.

This is my way of saying, that this is the dilemma facing ordinary people, and the Tea Partiers etc, regarding the expansion of government. Sure, it brings stuff it will give you. But what price are you going to pay as a result? If you give them your homeland (metaphorically), it's gone, and you're never going to get it back.

So in my crude metaphor, progressives can't understand why the "Navi" won't trade their autonomy for antibiotics. Who'd carry on with dying babies just for a few acres of crappy forest?

That sort of illustrates the conflict, to me.

foobar said @ 5:42am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
Universal health care gives me a hell of a lot more freedom than the American system. I quite like that I can't be arbitrarily denied health care to serve the profit motive of some insurance company.

arctan said @ 5:45am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
Fuck the metaphor. What "forest"? What self-owned "land"?

Nobody in America -- or, at least, no one but a vanishingly small percentage -- goes out into the woods and follows the folkways of their ancient ancestors, picking beneficial herbs and fruits and making poultices and praying to the spirits of the land to heal them from illness.

Whether this bill passes or not, Americans are still going to go to the same damn hospitals to get the same damn doctors to order the same damn scientific, technological tests and give the same damn scientific, technological diagnoses to prescribe the same damn scientific, technological pills made by the same damn pharmaceutical companies.

All we're talking about is reorganizing the *means by which we pay for this*.

And what's really disgusting to me is that a largely cold, bureaucratic, high-level decision between whether to focus capital within one state actor constrained by democratic processes or spread it out among several private actors constrained by delivering profit to stakeholders is being *spun* by the GOP as though it were the situation you describe.

Because a lot of really pig-ignorant, emotionally-driven Americans *hunger* and *yearn* to believe that they are something like the Na'vi -- that they have authentic, traditional folkways worth preserving -- and cynical fuckers in suits and ties are going out trying to convince them that giving your money to a gigantic, faceless, bureaucratic corporation is somehow an authentic American tradition akin to Native Americans doing a spirit dance. That changing the entity under whose authority some suit signs off on your health care somehow changes the *nature* of it, is somehow akin to turning a sacred grove of trees into a shopping mall.

It's a level of cynicism and crass falsehood that's almost literally vomit-inducing -- that we're so impoverished of genuine tradition and genuine forms of "authenticity" in our country that some people are completely vulnerable to having asshole suits tell them that giving money to asshole suits is their Authentic American Sacrament. That having no choice but to give your money to a for-profit corporation is "autonomy" and makes you free and wild like the Indians while having no choice but to give your money to the government is "tyranny" and makes you a drone.

Seriously. Nothing about that makes sense, and people nonetheless lap it up because they're so hungry for meaning and authenticity and a narrative of Good Guys and Bad Guys. (And they themselves are, in fact, so pig-ignorant and emotionally driven that they will argue ridiculous and self-conradictory things like shrieking against all forms of "socialism" and then IN THE VERY NEXT BREATH yelling "Keep your hands off my Medicare!" So sorry, jaxtraw, not even the red-blooded authenticity of the American masses is wise enough to truly reject "socialism" in favor of libertopian paradise.)

micham18 said @ 6:38am GMT on 11th Mar
But, you missed his point entirely.

You keep using facts. The people you are arguing against don't give two shits about that. They don't want to change the way they are living.

And by telling them all the reasons why they are wrong they will just dig their heels in more.

It's not that people practice any herbalism or anything, it's that they feel that their lifestyle right now will be stripped away and they have this inane urge to resist it.

jaxtraw said @ 7:19am GMT on 11th Mar
Yes. Arctan failed to grasp the metaphor entirely.

Just for the hard of thinking, arctan, the point with my metaphor is that it's not a question of whether the "Navi's" lifestyle is in somebody else's opinion worthless or wonderful. It's their thing.

jaxtraw said @ 7:36am GMT on 11th Mar
Sorry, to clarify further- the "land" is their perception of their own autonomy. Their autonomous rights.

Healthcare is just a high profile issue in a resistance to governmental expansion in general. They see the government extending itself continually into their lives- their "land"- and are drawing a line and saying "no further". Where that line happens to be doesn't really matter specifically. It's just a point where you say "stop".

Anglo-states have expanded gradually and continually, with the occasional big lurch normally covered by a crisis- wars are popular for that; it's the progressive "shock doctrine". But the general boiling the frog approach means it is very different to pick a moment to say that "stop", so any particular point chosen can be portrayed as an excessive response to a relatively minor "reform".

The Tea Partiers are saying "the line is right here". They've had enough. If you bothered to listen to what they are saying, instead of sitting with the other smuggies laughing at rednecks and hillbillies and chillbillies and so on, you might hear it.

Leviathan hungers. It's worth considering who are the chumps here; is it them, for supporting Teh Corporations, or is it you, for supporting Leviathan? After all, those corporations, they just want to rip you off and take your money. But Leviathan wants your life; it can arrest you and beat you up and throw you in jail and kill you. Teh Corporations take your money, but Leviathan takes your money and takes your money and never stops and hits you with a cudgel if you try not to let them have it. Leviathan promises to make things better and they get worse, and Leviathan says give us more power and more money and we'll make them better next year, and they never are. Leviathan declared war on Iraq, not Teh Corporations. You spent eight years hating Leviathan and calling it a despotism, and now you're demanding more of it.

Who are the chumps?

tiemy said @ 4:30pm GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Underrated]
This is a very fascinating little narrative, which is quite convincing provided you know absolutely nothing about the reality of the issues you're dealing with here.

Healthcare "reform" - and the bulk of popular hostility towards it - isn't about expanding government. It's about cutting costs, fiscal austerity and protecting the profits of the myriad of private interests that run the US healthcare system. As Obama has pointed out repeatedly, healthcare reform is market-based and market-driven. Even the fig leaf of public interest reform, like the government-run "public option" that solid majorities of the US public support, has been long dropped.

scabble said @ 3:30am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Insightful]
There's a funny thing about the whole "elitist intellectual vs populist conservative" dichotomy. It isn't necessarily that there is an unreasonable fear that liberals will impose their value system- most hayseeds thrive on a knee-jerk xenophobia that makes them expect everyone unlike them to want this. I think there is a more sublime culprit at play here.

On the one side you've got demonstrably educated people who use things like "facts" to prove their points.

And on the other side you've got people who simply believe they are as smart as those dirty city liberals- they just ain't got no fancy book larnin' what makes you put words together purty.

But there's this entitlement, see? It's the creed of the "real American." Red-blooded, don't tread on me all men are created equal God-fearing God bless Americans. This mythology allows many, many people to believe that whatever bullshit they crock together is just as solid a point of view as anything those tweedy city faggots can muster.

I'm not talking about death panels, or talking points or even talking heads for that matter. I'm talking about the real America, where it's "Golly, everybody should have healthcare" versus "That nigger wants to take my guns away."

Too many elitist Democrats look down their noses and revel in their intellectual superiority and come off like total twats while they do it. They want to be right but they usually are, damn them. And it makes it really easy for your average flyover state citizen to hate them. And to be honest, I don't think people like Pelosi even want to court their support. They just might stain the carpet.

For most real world Republicans, it's really about how they look at those stuffy elitist intellectuals and deep down they say to themselves "You think you're so smart. But I'm just as smart as you."

But they're not.

And the Democrats know it. But they think if they keep showing the rubes how smart and how right they are, eventually the rubes will change. Nope. That didn't work in high school and it doesn't work now. The biggest climate change we're facing today is one in which it is becoming harder and harder to be openly intellectual.

The GOP has mastered the art of herding the rubes. They keep each splinter issue spinning like a plate on a stick and they add more all the time. Whether it's Jesus, or gay marriage, or taxes, or gun control, or abortion or what have you they'll tell you whatever it is you need to hear to grant your false equivalency. Most "real Americans" identify as Republicans, but they only really care about one or two of these issues. But as long as "their" issue is covered, they're on board for the duration.

Unfortunately, one teeny tiny percentage of these people is the "really fucking rich who want to stay rich and get richer" people. And they're playing this game better than anybody.

arctan said @ 5:36am GMT on 11th Mar
That is such bullshit I don't even know where to start.

There's just as many snide "elites" if not more on the Republican side as on the Democratic side. There is nothing less "elitist" about all the filters and social signaling mechanisms and ideological dogwhistles you have to go through to get a Wall Street job or a Cato Institute pundit or a (generally laughably falsely so-called) "self-made" millionaire than to get a teaching position at Harvard.

The fact that Republicans spin their particular forms of elitism -- generally revolving around having lots and lots of money -- as somehow *not being elitist* when Democratic forms of elitism are is bizarre, especially how well they've managed to get away with it, but there's no truth to it. President Bush was not somehow "not elite" despite his massive inherited wealth and all the doors his fancy Yale degree opened for him because he had a goddamn ranch and wore a cowboy hat.

sanepride said @ 7:06am GMT on 11th Mar
I love how jax derides the intellectual elitism of the left, yet blithely tosses out tidbits like 'Hume's guillotine'.

jaxtraw said @ 7:15am GMT on 11th Mar
The elitism isn't knowledge or expertise. A physicist isn't an elitist because he understand arcane shit about string theory and talks about it to other physicists. He isn't an elitist when he says him and his fellow physicists are ten times fucking cleverer than everybody else, because they probably are. He isn't an elitist when he says 99.9% of the rest of the population can't understand a word he's saying.

He becomes an elitist when he decides that that gives him the right to a dominant socio-political role; when he says, "we physicists should be running this fucking joint, because we're better than everybody else".

sanepride said @ 8:03am GMT on 11th Mar
...An attitude which easily dominates the political right as much as the left, if not more so.

jaxtraw said @ 8:30am GMT on 11th Mar
Nobody seems to be quite addressing the point. Everyone's defending intellectualism. There's nothing wrong with intellectuals. It's the elite bit.

Societies can have all kinds of elites; a military elite, a business elite, a priestly elite, etc. Progressive society happens to be driven by an intellectual elite; that is the intellectuals are the "brain" of the machine. It's not intellectualism that is the problem, it's the idea which western intellectuals cottoned onto in the nineteenth century that they guide decision making and deliver a technocracy. That's basically what modern progressivism is, when you strip off the bells and whistles.

Hence the reaction against intellectuals; because the conservative/whatever masses know that when some barking mad professor at the University Of Fucknuttery decides that cheese has rights and starts punting papers into The Journal Of Barmy Ideas, a few years later they'll be being told that insulting cheese is a criminal offence, and by then it'll be too late to stop it.

As an example; one that has interested me was the sudden arrival of the phrase "Binge Drinking" in the lexicon of panic; we are overwhelmed by a plague of this binge drinking, and the word "binge" had mysteriously trasnformed from "drinking yourself into a poisoned stupour" to "more than a couple of pints".

It originated with a fucknut called Henry Wechsel at Harvard. He then got some nice funding from the Temperance Foundations; I think it was the RW Johnson one, can't remember. That then pushed the phrase into the international health bureaucracy (particularly the WHO) and thus it permeated the culture as part of the new drive for alcohol restriction ("on the tobacco model", but then waht isn't, these days?)

It's sometimes fun tracing these things. Anyway, taht's the point. Some tenured fucknut at Harvard has a fucknut idea, next thing you know governments are shouting SOMETHING MUST BE DONE. So if you want to fight this shit, you have to identify the source- which, usually, is a fucking twat in academia.

sanepride said @ 3:53pm GMT on 11th Mar
OK, so apparently you have a grudge against the academic 'elite' because they're interfering with your drinking habits.

Seriously, your beef here is just silly right-wing populist fantasy. If these academics have real sway over policy - which sadly they often don't by the way - how is this not a good thing? These are after all, highly educated specialists in institutions that have the resources to do good and legitimate research and compile reliable data and statistics. Don't like the data? Convinced these scientists and scholars have some personal agenda? Fine. That's why there's peer review and open debate. To resort to the dichotomy you seem to favor so often, I'd rather my policy makers and representatives heed these 'elite' academics when considering the great social questions than listen to the frothing bible-quoting mob (which unfortunately they often do). In reality of course the political condemnation of the 'academic elites' originates from conservative policy think-tanks and pundits. In other words, political and media 'elitists'.
What you seem to be advocating is advancement of ignorance (or maybe just indifference), due to your embrace of this invented bullshit notion of 'elitism'.

jaxtraw said @ 6:56pm GMT on 11th Mar
OK, so apparently you have a grudge against the academic 'elite' because they're interfering with your drinking habits.

I don't drink alcohol these days. I'm actually discussing a general issue. The State interfering with peoples' "drinking habits" didn't work out very well last time, did it?

Seriously, your beef here is just silly right-wing populist fantasy.

No, it's a considered analysis of the socio-political structure. But feel free to carry on sneering.

If these academics have real sway over policy - which sadly they often don't

...but generally do

- how is this not a good thing?

Because they are a self-interested lobby. You know, like Big Business.

These are after all, highly educated specialists in institutions that have the resources to do good and legitimate research and compile reliable data and statistics.

And also in a position to concentrate on research which furthers their own personal agendas and fetishes, such as promoting Temperance.

Don't like the data? Convinced these scientists and scholars have some personal agenda? Fine. That's why there's peer review and open debate.

The peer review process is a private system beyond public scrutiny. Even the most cursory analysis by an objective observer would see the problems with any peer review system, in that it is review by peers, thus a group checking on itself. Would you trust a system of businesses being relied on to peer review each others' accounts without other oversight, or would you suspect that it would incentivise collusion and tax evasion? Would you trust policemen to peer review each others' behaviour, or would you suspect that they would tend to exhonerate one another of brutality charges? What magic makes academics capable of escaping normal human nature? Do you really claim that anybody can be trusted to be totally objective and free of corruption simply because they are supposed to be?

To resort to the dichotomy you seem to favor so often, I'd rather my policy makers and representatives heed these 'elite' academics when considering the great social questions than listen to the frothing bible-quoting mob (which unfortunately they often do).

Obviously you would. You're a progressive. You know the experts will generally promote an agenda you desire. Why would you want anyone interefering with that?

But if the state turned to religious figures for instance for advice on "great social questions"... boy, would you squeal.

In reality of course the political condemnation of the 'academic elites' originates from conservative policy think-tanks and pundits.

Now you're into the conspiracy theory. Anybody disagreeing with you is part of a corrupt conspiracy, or they're stupid and led astray. But your side doesn't ever act like this. Despite the plethora of think tanks, NGOs, progressive foundations, non-profits, campaigners, activist networks... no, no, they're all being ruthlessly honest. And when an academic who produces anti-alcohol research is funded by a foundation predicated on temperance promotion, and the public health lobbies all decide, apparently by magic, to start pushing temperance policies as one, that's fine. Because they all shit rainbows.

What you seem to be advocating is advancement of ignorance (or maybe just indifference), due to your embrace of this invented bullshit notion of 'elitism'.

No, I'm promoting suspicion of special interest groups. Just like you do with "for profit" groups, but I'm saying apply the same criteria to everybody, because everybody is the same.

It is much like we have both witnessed Andy, Bob and Charlie beating somebody up, and I say, "these guys are all shits" and you say, because you like Bob and Charlie and they do you favours "Hey, that Andy is a shit, but Bob and Charlie, I don't believe they'd do anything wrong, I never saw anything, it was a trick of the light".

I've calmly described in several posts why we can suspect all manner of groups- academics, activists, bureaucracts, of having personal agendas which they promote, just like businesses do. But you have your hands over your eyes and fingers in your ears because they're on your side and you want them to gain undue influence.

Have you ever noticed how progressives always say, about pretty much anything, it should be state regulated? And yet, when it comes to academics etc, suddenly the rhetoric is how they mustn't be interfered with, how they must have complete academic freedom, and thus taht everyone must be required to listen to them, but not question them. If the State is a trustworthy and unbiased, such that it can regulate and control everything else, why does it lose that halo regarding your friends? Why is a peer review process considered adequate to ensure honesty among academics, when you distrust and despise non-interference and deregulation in all other things?

It's because you want them to have undue power, because you aspire to the elitist technocracy they espouse- the rule of the few over the many, in which politicians are merely zombie implementors of policies brewed in the smoke-free rooms of the academy. You're entitled to hold that view. You just can't expect those who are ruled to always take it lying down, and even less expect them to like you for it.

sanepride said @ 8:04pm GMT on 11th Mar
...In your opinion.

Haha!

themightyblot said @ 8:18pm GMT on 11th Mar
Apparently you don't know what "peer review" is. It's not a bunch of people nodding at each other saying "oh, yes, quite." It's a bunch of people doing the research again, checking the facts, seeing the foibles, doing more research, and more research, and _more research_ until it's been proven that there is fact within the hypothesis, or the hypothesis has been proven false.

Peer review isn't regulation, which is what you're really talking about. Regulation is a body overseeing the goings ons, making sure things are being done right. In this case, you don't want regulation being done by the institution; you want an outside force, to make sure things are _really_ being done right by a set standard.

You don't want internal regulation, ever. But internal peer review? Perfectly fine.

jaxtraw said @ 8:40pm GMT on 11th Mar
Peer review isn't replication. That's what other scientists (sometimes) do after the research has been published. Peer reviewers review the paper prior to publication; they don't replicate it. They're busy scientists with their own research to do.

valen85 said @ 4:04pm GMT on 11th Mar
LOUD NOISES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sanepride said @ 5:01pm GMT on 11th Mar
Sorry, did we wake you?

valen85 said @ 5:52pm GMT on 11th Mar
Yes.

v21 said @ 5:50pm GMT on 11th Mar
These pernicious stupid trends will always spread. Blaming them on the researchers ... well, what are the researchers supposed to do instead? Not research this stuff? Would you truly be happier if there was no work done into the effects of drinking? Someone is going to come up with an Issue, and then people are going to try to deal with it. At least this way there should be some attempt at evidence beforehand.

Let's crystallize the point down a bit. Who was the one who "pushed the phrase into the international health bureaucracy" and how did they do it? Henry Wechsler coined it, yes, but I would be hugely surprised if he heavily campaigned for it.

tl;dr: "So if you want to fight this shit, you have to identify the source" : why do you think this?

sanepride said @ 6:23pm GMT on 11th Mar
According to Wikipedia, Dr. Wechsler (whose name jax didn't even get right) is credited with helping to popularize the term 'binge drinking'. They do not credit him with coining the term.

jaxtraw said @ 7:43pm GMT on 11th Mar
I did it from memory; it was a while ago I tracked it down out of interest in the sudden remarkable redefinition and popularity of the term. My bad.

"Binge" has always been associated with excess. It was Wechsler's programme that popularised it in this context.

jaxtraw said @ 8:04pm GMT on 11th Mar
One way to explain would be to swap this around and consider a right-wing equivalent.

Let's consider a medical researcher who is a conservative christian. We find him doing research into the efffects of abortion and, Lo! he discovers links to all manner of problems, medical and social. He finds a friendly journal to publish his research. Family values and anti-abortionist activists use his work as grist for their campaigns against abortion. You look into this guy and find his work is largely funfed by conservative christian foundations. He goes to conservative christian conferences and networks with other anti-abortionists. And so on.

Now in the world at it is right now, he's going to probably get shot down in flames. You know this guy is biased. You know he does the work because he's looking for evidence for anti-abortion activism. You're going to pick those papers he published apart; and they probably deserve that too.

So basically, we're looking at the phenomenon of the activist scientist, whose work is far removed from the ideal of objective truth seeking. He's chosen to do the work, not out of a scientific interest in abortion, but out of a moral motivation.

It just so happens that the overwhelmingly organised and influential networks and funding of activist science are on the progressive side of things. But the same analysis applies to any activism motivated research. What you guys are trying to pretend is the basically ludicrous idea that such scientists, the journals, their funding sources, their activist contacts, the bureaucratic networks, etc, are completely ideologically neutral. Which is just simply contrary to observation.

To quote Wechsler himself-

"I received a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Harvard University. My interest has always focused on social factors in deviant or self-destructive behavior. After a few years of research on mental health, I decided to work in a broader area—public health. I wanted to concentrate my work on youth, since the ability to change maladaptive behaviors among young people offered the greatest benefit to society."

Whether you agree with his motivations or not, it is transparent that he sees his research as following an activist, or "social engineering" agenda. He's not just disinterestedly collecting data on drinking, he's doing it to promote his social view; explicitly his ethical belief that drinking is "maladaptive" and reducing it will offer a "benefit to society".

He may be right. Depends on your own ethical view. What is incontrovertible is that he has an agenda.

jaxtraw said @ 8:10pm GMT on 11th Mar
Not to mention, from the same interview-

"...The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offered me that opportunity by funding the first CAS survey, and three more after that over a period of over 12 years. The ensuing rich data set [...] allowed me to obtain a picture of the drinking behaviors at American four-year colleges and universities, and to publish over 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals in fields ranging from psychology, public health, medicine, sociology, economics, and education. I have been able to disseminate these findings beyond the scientific community to educators, policymakers, and legislators."

See that money shot at the end there?

themightyblot said @ 8:29pm GMT on 11th Mar
Nobody who supports abortion being legal says that it's a healthy and emotionally wonderful thing. Scientifically and emotionally, it's a very damaging thing, to both the mother and the unborn child.

Binge drinking also is a very unhealthy and damaging thing to do. It's also very legal.

There's nothing wrong with pushing your agenda or pushing your data into the public eye. If you're a scientist, it behooves you to do so. It's when that data is used to impose legal restrictions on human behavior that you should start questioning things. But not that data, or the scientists. You should start questioning the leaders in power who are passing those laws.

The litmus test for whether a law dictating human behavior should be passed or not is this; does the act being prohibited harm anyone other than the person doing it, directly? If it doesn't, the law shouldn't be passed. Simple as that.

Binge drinking isn't illegal. Driving after binge drinking is, because you have now put the lives of others at risk.

v21 said @ 12:39am GMT on 12th Mar
Wait, explain the bolding of the previous bit...

Naruki said @ 3:59am GMT on 12th Mar
He believes that scientists who explain their research to legislators are inherently evil and not to be trusted.

v21 said @ 7:50am GMT on 12th Mar
Nonono, I got that bit, I didn't get why he thought "over 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals" was an obvious act of evil.

Naruki said @ 8:39am GMT on 12th Mar
Well, he either believes one or both of the following:
a) Wechsler falsely included some of the articles sent to whoever with the total count of "peer reviewed" articles, and/or
b) disseminating your findings to anyone is pure Grade A Evil.

You can tell by the use of the word "money shot". To a normal person, this has sexual connotations. But remember, Jaxtraw is a Libertarian. They worship money. To him, it is meant literally, as in murdering money, which is the only crime worth prosecuting.

v21 said @ 12:38am GMT on 12th Mar [Score:2]
I like how you treat the conclusions these scientists draw as foregone. I would be perfectly happy to accept the anti-abortionists papers, provided they do hold up. If they don't, then they're trash - the only possible scientific use is that maybe they'll inspire someone to bury them by doing further research on the subject. Is it easy to tell the difference? Hell no! This is why things like the Cochrane Collaboration exist. This is why peer review happens. This is why people are skeptical about stuff until it's replicated.

I don't expect dispassion from my scientists. I've not met a one who wasn't hugely opinionated - that's how it works. You get involved, you argue for a corner, you collect data and try to get it to show that your theory still holds. There are ethical lines in this - falsifying data is obviously pretty much the worst thing you can do as a scientist. Withholding experiments that didn't turn out well - well, in medicine there's procedures to minimize this, also. That schools of thought can become ascendant and preferentially receive funding - it happens, and sometimes the results can be a crying shame.(Though if only one is ascendant, then this branch is long dead.) The main reason I know of for people leaving careers as scientists (besides the low pay) is disgust at the politics. Mind you, though, the consensus in a field - when there is one - is actually pretty fucking dispassionate, or at the very least usually very well grounded.

But I don't think you can lay blame on whatever regulations your whining about on the researchers. Even if they do communicate with people outside of their own bubbles. Politicians and civil servants, being largely people who got into it (again) to make the world better, will always latch onto perceived problems and try to fix them. I have a feeling you want to fix this by getting rid of all the politicians and civil servants - personally I think that the people in charge of our destiny having an urge to improve things is really quite fortunate. Anyway, they can get these problems from a variety of places - lobbyists, special interest groups, newspapers (these are really variants on a theme), internal gossip that has mutated over time, facebook protest groups, special advisers, polls (super important, these - they kinda determine the length of their careers). Or they can turn to scientists, one of the few groups constrained by having at least some system for checking they're not just spewing bullshit. And yes, the scientific consensus is not always fully formed, or well sampled when politicians and civil servants decide what to address, but decrying them for being involved at all - again, one of the few groups with a half-decent chance of being in spitting distance of facts - well, fuck that noise.

ring riot said @ 9:08pm GMT on 11th Mar
Except of course, your own party - which you constantly claim shits rainbows.

Naruki said @ 8:41am GMT on 12th Mar
Actually, he means the Free Market shits rainbows, and his party is the only one that can see them.

However, only everyone else can smell them.

ComposerNate said @ 10:35pm GMT on 10th Mar
Here's an article about which I'd particularly like reading incpenners' honest insight.

sanepride said @ 10:39pm GMT on 10th Mar
Good luck getting anything beyond a +1 funny mod.

ComposerNate said @ 8:28pm GMT on 11th Mar
*goes hungry*

ComposerNate said @ 10:36pm GMT on 10th Mar [Score:3]

Eru said @ 11:03pm GMT on 10th Mar
Not that I'm on their side at all, but aren't tax cuts what republicans want? Along with reduction of spending on government facilities?

And couldn't I for instance, put down, "Drastic increase in taxes + cutting off of all funding to hospitals, schools and roads" and get a gigantic projected blue bar. Not that it'd, y'know, actually mean much...

v21 said @ 11:20pm GMT on 10th Mar
Unfortunately, only half of Republicans are truly committed to tax cuts and reduction of spending. So they compromised by increasing spending and cutting taxes too.

sanepride said @ 11:39pm GMT on 10th Mar
Well more specifically, the Bush tax cuts (shown in the chart) were accompanied by huge increases in spending across the board. A lot of the same Republicans now railing against the health care bill (not to mention the stimulus and jobs bills) as being too expensive happily voted for massive spending programs during the Bush era.

verycleanteeth said @ 12:20am GMT on 11th Mar
Republicans in general don't care about the deficit. They pretend to so they can paint Democrats as big spenders, but that's just politics. If they cared about the deficit they'd have to actually admit that some tax increases might be necessary.

rattus said @ 9:25am GMT on 11th Mar
Those are conservative values.

These are neo-cons. They stand for lunacy.

Naruki said @ 2:26pm GMT on 11th Mar
The graph is really confusing at first glance. It's not a continuum, it's snapshots of what each thing did to the economy in its time.

Bush's actions slammed the fuck out of the budget, then slammed it again a little bit less hard, and the PPACA bill is expected to actually do something good for a change.

f00m@nB@r said @ 2:09am GMT on 11th Mar [Score:1 Informative]

aliron said @ 4:40pm GMT on 11th Mar
Well, meat tastes good.

ComposerNate said @ 8:26pm GMT on 11th Mar
Torn, dying flesh is repulsive.

snowfox said @ 11:10pm GMT on 14th Mar
To you, perhaps, but to me it is my very life.

Naruki said @ 5:49am GMT on 15th Mar
Same here.

hackiavelli said @ 1:49am GMT on 12th Mar [Score:2 Interesting]
Screw age and citizenship, the requirement for elected high office we need is a Bachelor of Science. The lawyers and MBAs had their chance and they unsurprisingly turned out to only be good at fucking things up.