Intellectual Laziness
As I write this post, word is coming that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has officially left the Republican Party where he never he really fit over the last few years to become an Independent. It has been reported that he is willing to spend up to $1 billion (you read that right) of his own money for a potential Independent bid for President next year. Every where you go, you hear people complain about "the system" but it seems to be an especially popular complaint in politics. However, this constant complaining about how bad the system is underlies the fact that the system has always been used as a scapegoat for the intellectually lazy and those who don't want to actually do anything to address the problems in America.
As E. J. Dionne noted in a column last week's Washington Post about the nature of the complaint of "the system." This column was written in response to those who said "the system is broken" because of the failure to pass a bill on immigration, ignoring the fact that this bill was always a very shaky compromise that infuriated liberals like me because it would have broken up families and made a cruel and ineffective guest worker program the law of the land, and infuriated conservatives because it offered a path to citizenship for the 12 million or so illegal immigrants currently in the United States, even though their hero Ronald Reagan signed an outright amnesty in 1986. (So much for the notion that he was an ideological purist. He may have been the most overrated President ever, not to mention the object of worship in an icky Republican cult, but he did try to be practical from time-to-time.) This was a bill that tried to be too many things to too many people, thus fitting the schizophrenic nature of public opinion on immigration.
However, as Dionne noted, the problem is that most of the people who complain about "the system" never explain any solutions. Or, in his own words:
He couldn't be more correct. I've lost track of how many times the response to malfeasance and abuse of power by Republicans was some variant of "well, they both suck." Well, if they both such, why change things? Then, there is the self-righteous declaration my many Republicans in this state that, "I don't vote for the party, I vote for the individual," even if they always vote for the Republican. Of course, all this really is is a cheap political trick to try to insinuate that those of us on the left are not thinking and informed citizens, but automatons who will vote for anyone with a D behind his/her name. Well, there are differences between the two political parties. It doesn't really make much sense to be a liberal in this day and age and have an R behind your name. This is the reason outgoing South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb changed parties in 2005, and why his duaghter essentially beat him to the punch when she came of age politically.
There are differences between the two major political parties and the two dominant political ideologies in America and the two major parties (although admittedly in this day and age, Republicans are more attached to conservatism than Democrats are to liberalism). Because of those differences, it does not make sense to insist that people are going to come together somewhere in the middle to make a solution that will please everyone on every issue. The reason we still have fights over reproductive rights in this country is because this is a question with little room for compromise. The reason we still have battles over the Iraq War is because it is kind of hard to split the difference between ending the war and continuing the war. Instead of complaining about how "both sides are bad," examine the differences and igure out what the best fit will be. And if you don't like choosing one or the other, stop whining about how evil the two-party system is and try to actually propose something that will make it possible for someone to vote third-party without making it easier for the candidate who is farther away on the political spectrum to win, thus guaranteeing that things will get even worse in your opinion, a la Nader voters in 2000. (In that election, if anyone still honestly believes that there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush: congratulations, you have officially proven the entire point of this post.)
I see this similar process with those such as supporters of Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) who insist that he is for "change," although none of them have ever been able to articulate what this change is. I know that he has already violated Jesus' warning to "Judge not, lest ye be judged" (Which is more of an admonition against hypocrisy than it is saying that we should never call things out when they are wrong.) on several occasions. I remember that he complained in his initial address to Internet supporters announcing the creation of a Presidential exploratory committee about the influence of money in politics, but when he came to Charleston last year for the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner he had time for the $1000 donors who were the members of the JFK Society, but not the volunteers or the people who paid $75 for a ticket, a sharp increase over the $25 to see then-Senator John Edwards (D-NC) in 2002 and the $50 to see then-Governor Mark Warner (D-VA) in 2005. Incidentally, both of these keynote speakers had the time to speak to every single person who wished to speak to them, thus invalidating the excuse offered by Obamamaniacs that he had to catch a plane. (I know because I spoke to both of them.) Also, I received multiple calls from the Obama campaign asking for money, despite the fact that I told them repeatedly that I would not pick a candidate until this fall, although I didn't tell them that my holdout is because I am waiting to see if Al Gore gets into the race. In the calls, there were repeated boasts of the money that Senator Obama had raised in the first quarter and how "we need to stop Hillary."
Of course, this brings me to the other bone of contention with Obama's vague insistence of change. He has complained about negative campaigning, but his campaign was not above a cheap shot at Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), referring to her as "D-Punjab" in a campaign memo. This doesn't sound like elevating the tone. It seems to me like the same old negative politics that Obama has criticized. There are two common defenses to Obama on this one: 1) He didn't write the memo, it was a staffer, and 2) Everyone does it. Well, when I ran for office last year, unless I put a disclaimer on a communication, every single word of every communication made by supporters on my behalf (for that matter, when I posted newspaper articles by unfriendly sources on my website, it was still my responsibility to put the disclaimer on that material, which I did) was as good as coming out of my own mouth, pen, pencil or keyboard. There are only so many times that you can blame it on the staffers before it becomes obvious that you have a problem with discipline in your own campaign. Also, the question isn't whether Senator Obama will do what everyone else does, the real question is his ability to live up to his own lofty standards. While people love to quote Matthew 7:1, as I did above, many people forget that the next verse is "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." I am not quoting these verses because I believe that there should be some sort of Christian nation, but because this is something that people of every conviction of every kind would have no problem with affirming. (In fact, Jesus essentially affirmed the basic idea of something taught by the rabbi Hillel in virtually every part of the Sermon on the Mount.) In other words, the standard for the Obama campaign isn't whether or not he is as negative as everyone else, the standard is whether he runs a negative campaign at all. (Again, going back to my own campaign, I only signed the Code of Fair Campaign Practices after I was assured that it did not prohibit me from criticizing the policies and votes of my opponent.) If you still think that Obama is the way to go, just imagine how much of a handicap that will be when it comes to criticizing the Republican nominee. In other words, all of this concern with "the system" and "change" is nothing more than a tool to score cheap political points, and it will not sustain itself in the long run.
Finally, there are ways to criticize the system that are valid. However, the only way to do this is to offer a solution to the critique. When I ran, I made two systemic criticisms: campaign finance and health insurance. My criticism always came with a solution: public financing of campaigns for the former, and single-payer for the latter. In other words, if you think there is a problem with money in politics, you have a moral obligation to explain how you want to fix it. Al Gore has done this as well in his book The Assault on Reason, insisting that the solution to the current focus on triviality is to a) stop asking stupid horserace questions and actually research the issues, b) more use of alternate media such as the Internet that are more participatory (and something that he brought to TV with Current in 2005 with its short films by viewers, that has spread to more viewer created content, such as the first commercial of Super Bowl XLI by Dorito's) and c) improved education and study to develop critical thinking skills. So, next time you hear someone complain about the system, ask that person what he/she plans to do about it. If you don't hear one, this is just an example of intellectual laziness at work.
As E. J. Dionne noted in a column last week's Washington Post about the nature of the complaint of "the system." This column was written in response to those who said "the system is broken" because of the failure to pass a bill on immigration, ignoring the fact that this bill was always a very shaky compromise that infuriated liberals like me because it would have broken up families and made a cruel and ineffective guest worker program the law of the land, and infuriated conservatives because it offered a path to citizenship for the 12 million or so illegal immigrants currently in the United States, even though their hero Ronald Reagan signed an outright amnesty in 1986. (So much for the notion that he was an ideological purist. He may have been the most overrated President ever, not to mention the object of worship in an icky Republican cult, but he did try to be practical from time-to-time.) This was a bill that tried to be too many things to too many people, thus fitting the schizophrenic nature of public opinion on immigration.
However, as Dionne noted, the problem is that most of the people who complain about "the system" never explain any solutions. Or, in his own words:
It's all nonsense, but it is not harmless nonsense. The tendency to blame the system is a convenient way of leaving no one accountable. Those who offer this argument can sound sage without having to grapple with the specifics of any piece of legislation. There is the unspoken assumption that wisdom always lies in the political middle, no matter how unsavory the recipe served up by a given group of self-proclaimed centrists might be.
And when Republicans and Democrats are battling each other with particular ferocity, there is always a call for the appearance of an above-the-battle savior who will seize the presidency as an independent. This messiah, it is said, will transcend such "petty" concerns as philosophy or ideology.
Finally, those who attack the system don't actually want to change it much.
He couldn't be more correct. I've lost track of how many times the response to malfeasance and abuse of power by Republicans was some variant of "well, they both suck." Well, if they both such, why change things? Then, there is the self-righteous declaration my many Republicans in this state that, "I don't vote for the party, I vote for the individual," even if they always vote for the Republican. Of course, all this really is is a cheap political trick to try to insinuate that those of us on the left are not thinking and informed citizens, but automatons who will vote for anyone with a D behind his/her name. Well, there are differences between the two political parties. It doesn't really make much sense to be a liberal in this day and age and have an R behind your name. This is the reason outgoing South Charleston Mayor Richie Robb changed parties in 2005, and why his duaghter essentially beat him to the punch when she came of age politically.
There are differences between the two major political parties and the two dominant political ideologies in America and the two major parties (although admittedly in this day and age, Republicans are more attached to conservatism than Democrats are to liberalism). Because of those differences, it does not make sense to insist that people are going to come together somewhere in the middle to make a solution that will please everyone on every issue. The reason we still have fights over reproductive rights in this country is because this is a question with little room for compromise. The reason we still have battles over the Iraq War is because it is kind of hard to split the difference between ending the war and continuing the war. Instead of complaining about how "both sides are bad," examine the differences and igure out what the best fit will be. And if you don't like choosing one or the other, stop whining about how evil the two-party system is and try to actually propose something that will make it possible for someone to vote third-party without making it easier for the candidate who is farther away on the political spectrum to win, thus guaranteeing that things will get even worse in your opinion, a la Nader voters in 2000. (In that election, if anyone still honestly believes that there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush: congratulations, you have officially proven the entire point of this post.)
I see this similar process with those such as supporters of Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) who insist that he is for "change," although none of them have ever been able to articulate what this change is. I know that he has already violated Jesus' warning to "Judge not, lest ye be judged" (Which is more of an admonition against hypocrisy than it is saying that we should never call things out when they are wrong.) on several occasions. I remember that he complained in his initial address to Internet supporters announcing the creation of a Presidential exploratory committee about the influence of money in politics, but when he came to Charleston last year for the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner he had time for the $1000 donors who were the members of the JFK Society, but not the volunteers or the people who paid $75 for a ticket, a sharp increase over the $25 to see then-Senator John Edwards (D-NC) in 2002 and the $50 to see then-Governor Mark Warner (D-VA) in 2005. Incidentally, both of these keynote speakers had the time to speak to every single person who wished to speak to them, thus invalidating the excuse offered by Obamamaniacs that he had to catch a plane. (I know because I spoke to both of them.) Also, I received multiple calls from the Obama campaign asking for money, despite the fact that I told them repeatedly that I would not pick a candidate until this fall, although I didn't tell them that my holdout is because I am waiting to see if Al Gore gets into the race. In the calls, there were repeated boasts of the money that Senator Obama had raised in the first quarter and how "we need to stop Hillary."
Of course, this brings me to the other bone of contention with Obama's vague insistence of change. He has complained about negative campaigning, but his campaign was not above a cheap shot at Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY), referring to her as "D-Punjab" in a campaign memo. This doesn't sound like elevating the tone. It seems to me like the same old negative politics that Obama has criticized. There are two common defenses to Obama on this one: 1) He didn't write the memo, it was a staffer, and 2) Everyone does it. Well, when I ran for office last year, unless I put a disclaimer on a communication, every single word of every communication made by supporters on my behalf (for that matter, when I posted newspaper articles by unfriendly sources on my website, it was still my responsibility to put the disclaimer on that material, which I did) was as good as coming out of my own mouth, pen, pencil or keyboard. There are only so many times that you can blame it on the staffers before it becomes obvious that you have a problem with discipline in your own campaign. Also, the question isn't whether Senator Obama will do what everyone else does, the real question is his ability to live up to his own lofty standards. While people love to quote Matthew 7:1, as I did above, many people forget that the next verse is "For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." I am not quoting these verses because I believe that there should be some sort of Christian nation, but because this is something that people of every conviction of every kind would have no problem with affirming. (In fact, Jesus essentially affirmed the basic idea of something taught by the rabbi Hillel in virtually every part of the Sermon on the Mount.) In other words, the standard for the Obama campaign isn't whether or not he is as negative as everyone else, the standard is whether he runs a negative campaign at all. (Again, going back to my own campaign, I only signed the Code of Fair Campaign Practices after I was assured that it did not prohibit me from criticizing the policies and votes of my opponent.) If you still think that Obama is the way to go, just imagine how much of a handicap that will be when it comes to criticizing the Republican nominee. In other words, all of this concern with "the system" and "change" is nothing more than a tool to score cheap political points, and it will not sustain itself in the long run.
Finally, there are ways to criticize the system that are valid. However, the only way to do this is to offer a solution to the critique. When I ran, I made two systemic criticisms: campaign finance and health insurance. My criticism always came with a solution: public financing of campaigns for the former, and single-payer for the latter. In other words, if you think there is a problem with money in politics, you have a moral obligation to explain how you want to fix it. Al Gore has done this as well in his book The Assault on Reason, insisting that the solution to the current focus on triviality is to a) stop asking stupid horserace questions and actually research the issues, b) more use of alternate media such as the Internet that are more participatory (and something that he brought to TV with Current in 2005 with its short films by viewers, that has spread to more viewer created content, such as the first commercial of Super Bowl XLI by Dorito's) and c) improved education and study to develop critical thinking skills. So, next time you hear someone complain about the system, ask that person what he/she plans to do about it. If you don't hear one, this is just an example of intellectual laziness at work.
posted by Albert McStephenson at 6:21 PM
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