Liberals, don't defend Al Franken with the same arguments used by Trump, Moore, and Cosby

There are a few arguments that are continually used in defense of people accused of sexual harassment or assault. Since Leean Tweedon accused Al Franken or forcing a kiss and put out a photo of Franken humiliating her, arguments primarily used by assaulters and/or their right-wing supporters have been put forth by Franken's defenders. Suddenly the left is attacking the accuser in words used to attack every previous accuser. I find that disturbing.

I'm not arguing that Franken's actions are equivalent to those of a child molester like Roy Moore or a rapist like Bill Cosby. I'm simply saying that people should not change their evidentiary standards based on how much they like or dislike the accused. A sleazy defense of a murderer or a shoplifter is still a sleazy defense.  If you don't accept an argument put forward by Trump or Weinstein then don't use the same argument to defend anyone else.

So here's a handy table comparing the defense of Franken with the defense of various other men in hopes that this will make clear why these arguments are always bad.

The typical defense	The Franken defense	Just like ...
The timing is suspicious	Franken's Republican accuser was trying to create a distraction from the Roy Moore scandal. Why else would she come out with this now?	If the "why now" argument sounds familiar, it's because Moore just used it, asking why his accusers have come out a month before the election. Trump expressed similar suspicions when the Hollywood Access tape came out. Trump actually had a better argument than Franken or Moore, because sexual harassment wasn't a big part of the national discussion until Trump was accused of it. With the Harvey Weinstein-inspired #MeToo movement convincing women that their accusations might finally be taken seriously, this is exactly the time one should expect a flood of these reports. Yes, Tweedon could be making a calculated political move, but by that logic don't we have to dismiss the claims of Trump's liberal victims as well? Are we going to have a rule that we'll only believe victims who are politically aligned with the accused?
She was friendly afterwards	Hey look, here's a picture of Tweedon sitting next to Franken smiling! How upset could she have been?	This is a big defense in the Hollywood cases. Weinstein and Cosby have both trotted out examples where their victims had lunch with them later, or sent them a friendly email, or worked for them again. I wanted to post a link explaining the psychology behind this phenomenon, which is quite common, but my google-fu is failing me at the moment.
It was long ago	He wasn't even a senator!	The Franken photo is about as old as Trump's Hollywood Access tape. Moore apparently hasn't trolled the mall for teenage girls in years.
She's not so innocent	On the same tour, Tweedon goosed a guitarist. So who is she to talk?	This is pretty much every defense for every sexual crime or misdemeanor ever. Sexy clothes, raunchy behavior, kinky tastes, any sexual history whatever is used as a reason to dismiss the victim's claims. Even if you have evidence that a woman is raunchy and inappropriate and sexually charged, it doesn't in any way prove she wasn't assaulted.
It's fake	Social media is flooded with people claiming it was a joke Tweedon was in on, that she was pretending to be asleep, or that the photo was altered. They're saying this even though there's photographic evidence and Franken has admitted to posing for the picture.	Disputing evidence is very popular. Moore signed the yearbook of a victim but denies he ever met her and claims the signature is a forgery. The main difference between Franken and people like Moore and Trump is he didn't start making the bullshit lies some of his fans are making for him.
It's not so bad	Franken didn't do much. He's not really touching her breasts, just posing as though he is, and a forced kiss isn't like grabbing a woman's breasts.	The tough thing here is everyone has a different line. You have a right to your opinion that Franken's photo was no more than a tasteless, ultimately harmless joke, but others have a right to believe that there's nothing wrong with a guy in his thirties hitting on teens or a celebrity feeling entitled to grope every woman he meets. I think it's fair to say any line Franken crossed was crossed further by Trump, many, many times, but if the victim feels a line was crossed, who are you to tell her it's a stupid line?

The Three Stooges meet healthcare reform

The collapse of the Trump/Ryan attempt to destroy Obamacare was one of Washington's more fascinating train crashes. What's wondrous is not that some things went wrong, but that pretty much everything went wrong in completely predictable ways, and that multiple parties, all Republican, were involved in the takedown. If you could have planned the destruction of the replacement legislation, the ACHA, you would have planned for things to play out exactly as they did.

They played out like a Three Stooges movie, with the Stooges played by Paul Ryan, Donald Trump, and, collectively, the Freedom Caucus. And the process is such a mess that it's not even clear whether Ryan or Trump is Moe in this scenario.

Let's look at the destructive power of the Republican Stooges:

Paul Ryan

Ryan was the key architect of the ACHA, and my god, what a mess. For years, the Republicans have insisted Obamacare was a disaster but have refused to present an alternative, and now we see why. ACHA had no real philosophy of healthcare, instead focussing entirely on giving billionaires tax cuts and cutting services for the poor.

At the same time, the bill kept a lot of the most popular parts of the ACA, because Republicans were terrified that taking all the benefits of Obamacare away at once would lead to election losses.

The result was strange, because after 7 years of  Republicans saying they would get rid of Obamacare, Ryan's bill really didn't. Instead, it kept many of the key ingredients but made them all worse. Ryan's bill was set to take insurance away from every single person who had gained it under ACA while only having a minor effect on the deficit.

The bill had been created in secret and Ryan attempted to rush it through before people could figure out what was in it. He failed. He seems to have written the bill with little input from anyone - not healthcare experts, not other factions of his own party, and certainly not Democrats - and he wound up with a bill that even he probably didn't like that much.

When the criticisms started to rush in, Ryan decided to make the bill even worse in hopes of pulling in recalcitrant conservatives even at the risk of losing recalcitrant moderates. He piled failure on top of failure like a master Jenga player.

It turned out that the only quiver in Ryan's arrow is the one that lessens the taxes of billionaires. That was the only part of his bill that looked like it would work the way it was supposed to. While Ryan has managed to cultivate a reputation as a smart policy wonk, the ACHA is wildly supportive of Paul Krugman's portrayal of Ryan as a fake and a habitual liar.

The Freedom Caucus

For Obama's entire time in office, the GOP was the "party of no." The Tea Party wing represented by the Freedom Caucus functioned as party of no within a party of no. Essentially anti-government anarchists, the Caucus simply doesn't want government to work, and believes that compromise is the ultimate evil.

For them, Ryan's bill, as awful as it was, wasn't nearly awful enough. While many Republicans just cynically used Obamacare hatred to fuel voter disenchantment, the FC contains the true believers whose passionate hatred for all government programs is unfeigned and wildly destructive.

For many in the FC the only acceptable option was to roll back Obamacare in its entirety. Crippling it or even fatally wounding it was not enough; it had to be a clean head shot or nothing.

Basically,  the party of no's inner party of no proved incapable of saying yes.

To some extent, this could be politics. The FC is full of people from hardcore conservative districts where there is a constant threat of challenges from the right funded by rich extremists. So making stupid decisions that play to the base make electoral sense. And after 7 years of saying Obamacare was the Hitler of American politics, they had painted themselves into a bit of a corner.

Still, insisting on everything or nothing in politics is the best possible way to get nothing. And the FC got nothing of what they wanted, with little chance to get it any time in the near future.

But from what I've read, the FC sees this not as a disaster but as proof of their power. Which means they are likely to stick to their path of purity politics during every subsequent legislative fight. And that could mean that the Republicans basically get nothing done for their entire time in power (fingers crossed).

Donald Trump

Everything his opponents predicted about Trump was on display during the ACHA clusterfuck. After promising an amazing healthcare bill with better coverage and lower premiums for all, he simply turned over the creation of a new healthcare system to Paul Ryan, who had no interest in any of those promises. Trump didn't understand the bill, and in lobbying for it he apparently didn't even try to make a case for any of its policies (because, of course, he didn't understand them). All Trump could do was try to charm and threaten Republicans (he didn't even bother reaching out to Democrats, which didn't stop him from complaining that none of them was willing to vote for ACHA). It turned out that he was not charming or threatening enough to get a majority to vote for a turd.

When support for the bill proved hard to come by, Trump was completely flummoxed, finally tossing out an ultimatum that failed dismally.

It's unlikely that Trump even really cared about the ACA. For him, Obamacare hatred was a campaign weapon, and he no more wanted to end a working healthcare system than he wanted to jail Hillary Clinton. All he really wanted to do was cater to the base and rack up a win. It didn't happen.

Of course, Trump being Trump, he is now playing off this disastrous defeat as no big deal. Trump's inability to admit mistakes means he can never learn from them, so expect him to continue to ignore experts and allow hacks like Ryan to create legislation he doesn't understand or care about.

Why It Happened

For eight years Republicans have been dreaming of what they would achieve when they finally were back in power. So how did their first major push to reshape government end so disastrously?

One big issue was that Obamacare was based on the Republican plan known as Romneycare, forcing Republicans to run against what was basically the Republican healthcare solution. It wasn't the bill they hated but Barack Obama himself. This left them with no place to go; they would have been better off had Obama created a single-payer system that could have been countered with Romneycare.

With the only sensible Republican plan co-opted by Democrats, Ryan created pure nonsense and hoped hatred of Obamacare was so strong that no one would care what disaster they replaced it with.

Part of Ryan's own explanation is that Republicans don't know how to govern. He explained that for ten years all Republicans had to do was be against things, and they've only had three months to learn how to be a governing party.

This sums up everything that's wrong with the modern Republican approach to government; they believe you only govern when you are in charge. In reality, governing is something you can do from either side of the aisle. You can introduce legislation, you can engage in bipartisan dealmaking, you can win people over to your side and let them win you over to theirs. The GOP's decision to forgo governing  in favor of continuously attacking  Obama has allowed their government skills to atrophy. Many of them don't even seem to understand how government works.

If Trump really wants to govern, his best shot would be to move a little to the left, ignoring the Freedom Caucus in favor of winning over moderate Democrats in pursuit of actually fulfilling campaign promises like improving healthcare and increasing employment opportunities. If the Freedom Caucus wants to further their agenda, then they would need to stop insisting on all or nothing when they simply don't have the power to get that all. If Ryan wants to be effective, he needs to stop pretending to take policy matters seriously and actually take them seriously.

I don't see much indication that any of that is going to happen. The Three Stooges of the GOP will continue to poke eyes and slap faces and create nothing but mayhem. And just like the real Three Stooges, it's only funny sometimes.

Trump voters are idiots and jerks who blithely voted a racist fearmonger into office - here's why we shouldn't demonize them

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States is one of the most horrific moments in U.S. history. A blatant racist whose election has the KKK dancing in the streets, Trump is a crude, corrupt, unqualified moron who will cause damage to this country - through his Supreme Court appointments, through his destruction of progressive programs, through his encouragment of bigotry and xenophobia - that will continue on for decades.

The people who voted for Trump should be ashamed. They have unleashed a great horror on the country, and it is little comfort that Trump's policies will wind up ruining the lives of many of his most fervent supporters.

So yeah, it is outrageous to suggest that we need to understand these people, as some are suggesting. What's to understand? These are white people whining about their lives even though many of those voters aren't suffering, demanding that the little we've given our country's minorities be taken back, that our halting attempts at equality for women be smashed. They were dumb enough to believe Trump's promises and uncaring enough to not care who got hurt. The majority of them are so racist that they think Obama is a Muslim foreigner. They are monsters.

On the other hand...

There is a problem with painting Trump voters with too broad a brush. Certainly, the worst people in America - Nazis, Klansmen, sexual assaulters - embraced him enthusiastically. But that doesn't mean everyone who voted for Trump loved everything about him.

John Scalzi posited in the Cinemax Theory of Racism that even if everyone who voted for Trump isn't actively racist, they all basically accept racism as a part of the Trump package that they can live with. And that's true. But they are not the first voters to accept the bad with the good. In 2012 I read an article by a progressive who refused to vote for Obama because he had sent out drones in the pursuit of terrorists that had killed many innocent people. For him, to vote for Obama was to say he could live with a president who would kill innocent foreigners.

I voted for Obama anyway - it wasn't like Romney was a peacenik who would end all the killing - but in doing so, I have to accept that I made a statement - to keep the Supreme Court from becoming even more conservative, to keep making progress against racism and sexism, to further a (somewhat) progressive agenda in the United States - I could live with drone strikes that killed civilians in the Middle East. I feel bad about it, but I did it, and I did it knowing I was doing it.

So if you're a conservative afraid of a liberal Supreme Court, if you believe liberal economic policies will make the country poorer, then you might say, "I really hate that Trump is calling Mexicans racists and Muslims terrorists, but I have to protect this country from a greater threat."

I might disagree with that analysis and those priorities, but I can't say I have never compromised on the perfect in favor of what I perceived as the least bad option.

-------------------

I've read a fair amount about those Trump voters. My main takeaway is that they feel like government cares about everyone but them, and they're very resentful. They feel that there is affirmative action for black people, new rights for gays, and nothing for them. That they are taken for granted and undervalued and their struggles are ignored.

And if you're like a lot of my friends, your reply to that is, "Damn right I'm ignoring your so-called 'pain.' You problems are nothing compared to those of people of color. There are people getting pulled over and shot by the police while you're whining that your kid didn't get into their first-choice college. Fuck you with your slightly-lower-than-your-parents standard of living and your undeserving lazy-poor-people tropes. You white straight people are at the top of the heap, and if you're suffering, then how do you think the people without your privileges are doing right now?"

Or, to put it another way, "yes, white America, you really don't matter at all. Just shut up and vote for the Democrats."

I understand this attitude. I have had advantages in life and I feel people with less advantages deserve a boost up; that their need is greater than mine. But at the same time, I can appreciate that if you feel you are getting less so that others - no more deserving than you - can have more, then you might be annoyed.

Look at it this way. Let's say you're a kid, and every day your parents give you one cookie. Now, you have friends who get three cookies a day, so you're already a little resentful about your lot in life, but at least you get that one cookie.

Then one day your parents say, that kid next door gets no cookies, so from now on every Wednesday and Sunday we'll take your cookie and give it to him.

If you're a really noble, self-sacrificing kid, you'll be okay with that. You'll say, give him my Monday cookie as well. But if you're like most kids, you will be consumed with the unfairness of getting less cookies not because you have done anything wrong, but because someone you don't even know is just being given the cookies that have always been a part of your life.

There is a difference between not being noble and self-sacrificing and being a monster. But people who drift to the self-sacrificing side of life can forget that.

-----------------

There's a big problem with the "fuck all you whiny-ass Trump voters, you're all racist monsters" attitude. By lumping everyone together like that, you make everyone in that lump unreachable. If someone came up to me and said, "you are a monster and every death caused by Obama is blood on your hands; people like you should just die, because you care about no one but yourselves," I would not listen to much that person had to say.

And we may really need those non-KKK Trump voters soon. Because there are people who were horrified by aspects of Trump but ultimately thought that voting for him would not destroy the country. They thought Trump was all talk and wouldn't really have jackbooted thugs going from house to house arresting Muslims and Mexicans.

But if they are prooved wrong, they might cool on Trump. They might say, "wow, I did not realize this would happen." And they could join the opposition to Trump.

Unless, of course, you've told them they are all privileged assholes whose concerns are stupid. In which case, why exactly would they want to join with you?

The fact is, white people do have problems, because everyone has problems. If you're white, you are less likely to be shot by a cop, but it can still happen. Innocent white people get shot by cops. White people get sick and go bankrupt paying medical bills. White people lose their jobs. And you can't insist that people shouldn't complain about their problems because others are suffering more. If you lose a child, you don't want to hear, "that's nothing, I lost my whole family, quit whining."

---------------------

I don't excuse people for voting for Trump. They did a terrible thing, for terrible reasons, and will cause irreparable harm to this country. But I still believe we need to understand their views and listen to their complaints. Because the fact is, as they just proved, they can vote in big enough numbers to put a fascist in the White House. And if Democrats don't try and understand and communicate with them, then in four years they will give him a second term.

I'm not That Excited by Hillary Clinton ... But That's How I Feel Every Four Years

It's said that Hillary Clinton suffers from an enthusiasm gap. People just aren't that jazzed to vote for her, and her greatest assett is that many voters are terrified of the apocalyptic disaster a Trump presidency is liable to usher in.

Her supporters have been trying to convince us to get excited. She's incredibly qualified. She has a long history of public service. She's smart and willing to engage with the nuts and bolts of government.

But why should I get excited for Hillary, when I haven't been excited by any of the presidential candidates I've had to vote for over the years?

--------------

Even before I could vote I followed the elections, and the last time the candidate I liked actually became the nominee was in 1972, when McGovern became a cautionary tale in nominating the genuine liberal.

After that it's been all disappointments. In 1976 I really liked Mo Udall, and thought Jerry Brown showed promise, but instead got Jimmy Carter. Whoopdefucking do. 

The first election I could vote in was 1980. Once again, Jimmy Carter was the nominee, and since he had just instituted draft registration for people my age, I was really unhappy with him. I would have preferred Ted Kennedy, or, once again, Brown, but Carter was the nominee. I voted for third party candidate John Anderson. I wasn't excited by Anderson, I just really didn't like Carter. And I was going through my "they're all the same" phase, which ended as I watched Reagan dismantled the government and put foxes in charge of every henhouse, creating a swathe of destruction we have yet to recover from.

There were some good guys running in 1984. I remember liking Alan Cranston. George McGovern took another shot at it. And Jesse Jackson was an exciting possibility. And in their wisdom, the people nominated bland, middle-of-the-road Walter Mondale. Who I did vote for, because, after all, Reagan was gutting the country.

In 1988, my guy was the bow-tied liberal Paul Simon (no, not the Garfunkle one), though Jesse Jackson was still a solid second. Instead, we got the uninspiring Michael Dukakis. I voted for him, but we still got the Bush that gave us Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and an idiot son for our future.

I don't know who I was cheering for in 1992. Jerry Brown. Eugene McCarthy? I know who I wasn't cheering for: Bill Clinton, the guy who brought neoconservatism into the Democratic mainstream. Still, better than more Bush.

It was Clinton or nothing in 1996. He'd turned out to be even worse than I expected; his biggest achievement was gutting welfare. But it wasn't like the Republicans were going to be an improvement.

I wasn't impressed by Al Gore in 2000, who I knew of mainly through his wife's stupid music censorship activism, but it was a year of little choice. I voted for him, but a bunch of people going through their "they're all the same" phase went for Ralph Nader, leading directly to the American invasion of Iraq and the rise of ISIS.

My guy in 2004 was flaming liberal Dennis Kucinich, although Howard Dean also held a lot of appeal. So we got John Kerry. And another four terrible Bush years.

Kucinich was still my man in 2008, although quirky Mike Gravel was also pretty appealing. As for Obama, well, he was basically an early-70s Republican, but at least he brought some history with him, and he was pretty darn likable. That was probably the closest I came to being enthusiastic about the Democratic nominee, but I knew he was going to be a disappointment. And I voted for him again in 2012 even though he had proved me right.

--------------

In 2016 I wanted Bernie Sanders, of course. In this crazy election year he really did have the potential to win and be the most progressive president of my lifetime. So I'm disappointed that I'm stuck with Clinton.

But - and I guess this is my real point - I'm not any more disappointed than usual. In spite of all the antipathy she inspires in people, I don't see her as worse than Gore, or Mondale, or Obama, or her husband, or even Carter, who in retrospect was actually pretty good. She just represents another time when the middle-of-the-road Democrat beat my liberal favorite.

I don't need to be enthusiastic about Clinton. I have voted for every Democratic nominee since 1984, and I will do so again.

I vote for the Democrat because I learned in 1980 what happens when you don't vote for the Democrat. Terrible, terrible things. And I know that a neoconservative replacement for our neoconservative president is still a lot better than an unqualified authoritarian narcicist. 

If Clinton wins, I will be thrilled. I will be dancing in the street, because we will have dodged the biggest bullet in my lifetime and a woman will have broken America's highest glass ceiling. It will be a great night.

Then I'll brace myself for the inevitable disappointment, just as I have with every Democratic win. It's better than bracing myself for the shit show of a Democratic loss.  

Clinton’s Suicide of a Thousand Cuts versus Trump’s Big Lies

Hillary Clinton has once again got herself in trouble for holding back information, in this case not letting the press know that she had pneumonia until she almost collapsed. It’s ultimately a pretty small lie, but it feeds perfectly into the narrative of Clinton as shifty.

At her most dishonest, Clinton doesn’t come close to the dishonesty of her rival, Donald Trump, who tells huge whoppers on a daily basis. Clinton more often paints things in the best light based on the public record, and then continually makes small changes in her story as new information comes to light. Overall, her stories don’t really change all that much, but the constant drip-drip-drip of modifications makes it seem like she never actually tells the truth.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, tells huge, ridiculous, easily disproved lies, and when he is shown the evidence, he simply insists the evidence is wrong. The irony for Clinton is that her attempts to adjust her story to conform to the available facts creates a perception of shiftiness, while Trump’s bold, unapologetic dishonesty just makes people think that he’s a man who sticks to his guns.

Imagine Hillary Clinton were accused of shooting someone. The police would take her into the interrogation room, and she would say, “I didn’t know that person, we never met, I wasn’t there that night, and I don’t even own a gun.”

When the cops would show her a photo of her with the victim, she would say, “well, we may have met once, but I don’t remember them, and anyway, I was out of town and don’t own a gun.” And when they bring in the gun, registered in her name, with her fingerprints on it, she would say “come to think of it, I do have a gun, but I certainly never shot someone I barely knew with it.”

Now imagine Donald Trump was accused of shooting someone. He too would say, “I didn’t know that person, we never met, I wasn’t there that night, and I don’t even own a gun.” Faced with a picture of himself with the victim, he would say, “I never met him, that’s not even me in the photo.” When they brought in the gun, he would say, “I never owned a gun, those aren’t my fingerprints.” When they showed security video of him pointing the gun at the victim and pulling the trigger, he would say, “no, that’s not me. Absolutely not.”

Trump’s ability to stick to his lies makes it difficult for the press to even report on them. Every time Clinton makes a small change in her story, the press can write, “faced with new information, Clinton changes story.” But how many times can the press report that Donald Trump has repeated the exact same lie in the exact same way? It’s not really news; it’s like reporting that the sun rose this morning.

It must be frustrating for Clinton to see her every lawyerly prevarication become a damning headline while her opponent tells so many lies that journalists consider them nothing but “dog bites man” stories. But she keeps reinforcing the negative perceptions by refusing to get ahead of a story; she always waits for events to catch up with her. If on Friday she’d simply announced she had a touch of pneumonia but was going to try and keep going, she would have seemed forthright for admitting to illness and tough for pushing through, and video of her staggering into a car would have been nothing but proof that you shouldn’t run around when you have pneumonia. By waiting until she had no choice but to say something, she encourages people to think she has something worse than pneumonia. If in a couple of days she announces she actually has double pneumonia, no one will be surprised, because that’s what she does.

And if in a couple of days Donald Trump announces that he is incapable of getting sick and in fact hasn’t even aged since he was thirty, people will shrug. Because that’s just Donald being Donald.

Donald Trump's Best Path to the Presidency Involves a Russian Invasion

Donald Trump loves conspiracy theories. Obama was born in Kenya. Ted Cruz's father was in on the Kennedy Assassination. The Clintons killed Vince Foster. 

So Trump should love my theory on why he's running such a terrible campaign.

Right now, pollsters are giving Trump about a 15% chance of winning in November, seemingly because he keeps saying crazy things about how Obama founded Isis or Second Amendment people could do "something" about Clinton. Trump became the Republican nominee because his outrageous statements kept him on the front page, but while that worked great among disaffected, angry Republicans, it's failing with everyone else.

But if I were a conspiracy theorist like Trump, I would think he was blowing the election on purpose, because his goal is not to be elected but to be appointed.

Right now, Trump is claiming that the only way he can lose is if Clinton steals the election through fraud. Among hardcore Trumpites, who believe all the polls are heavily skewed, this is a persuasive argument. 

So, Trump has established that his loss will be from Clinton's skulldugery, the government will be illegitimate, and people with guns will have to do something about it.

For all the crazy shit he says, 40% of the voters are still planning to vote for him right now, so there are a lot of people on his bandwagon. And a lot of them have guns.

So here's the theory. Trump throws the election. His followers, who believe it was all voter fraud, rise up and start shooting Democrats. The country descends into chaos. Tea Party radicals claim the government has collapsed and request help from Russia, because Republicans have a hard on for Putin (apparently, he's what they consider a "strong leader"). Russia invades and appoints their buddy Trump - who has praised Putin and has financial connections with Russia - as the country's new dictator.

Is that an insane theory? Sure. Do I expect anyone to believe it? Of course not. But in a crazy election against a seemingly inept businessman who has already used his bizarre behavior to become the Republican nominee, you've got to consider all the possibilities.

At the least, it's more likely than the Clintons having murdered Vince Foster.

The Trolley Problem and the Protest Voter

In a well-known thought experiment called the Trolley Problem, a train is hurtling down a track towards five people tied to that track, and you can pull a switch to move it to a different track on which one man is standing.

This is generally used to explore moral choice and whether you'd be personally willing to kill one person to save five. If you do so, his blood is on your hands, but if you don't throw the switch, five people will die.

It would be a terrible decision to make.

It's also a lot like the decision voters are facing this year. The train is heading down a track called TRUMP that will cause horrible disasters, inflame racism, bring trade wars and possibly real wars, destroy America's standing in the world, and give us a right-wing Supreme Court that will chip away at our civil rights for decades to come.

The other track is called CLINTON. The train will cause less damage if it goes down the Clinton track, but there's likely to be some poor judgement, some foreign misadventuring, and a poorly-handled scandal or two.

It's a grim decision.

------

If only there were another way. If this were an action movie, you could fire a rocket launcher that curled the track up so that the train would fly up and sail right over those people, landing on the track right past the victims.

You could also do nothing and hope for a miracle. Perhaps the train will run out of gas right before it hits anyone. Or Doctor Who will appear and send it through a time portal into an alternate dimension where no one is tied to the tracks.

What you really need is another switch. Not one that will actually effect the direction of the train, but one you can pull so you can feel you're doing something without having to make this terrible decision.

Let's give you that switch and put a sign on it that says "PROTEST VOTE." Pull it, and you can tell yourself that those five dead people aren't your fault at all; you pulled a switch; what more could you do?

 -------

Right now we have a choice of presidents: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. One of those two people is going to be president. And a lot of people are just watching that train speed down the track and saying, "hey, it's not my train." Republicans who hate Donald Trump are saying, I can't vote for him, he's a dangerous incompetent with no qualifications, so I'll vote for a third party, but never Clinton, because she's evil. Hardcore Bernie Sanders supporters are saying they'll just write his name in rather than vote for Clinton; multiple people have said to me, in virtually the exact same words, "it's not my fault if Trump wins; I'm not the one who chose an unelectable candidate."

Years ago a friend was defending her vote for Ralph Nader in 2000. Her position was simple: if she just voted for someone terrible because their opponent was even more terrible, she was accepting this terrible political system. Things would never get better if people didn't stand up and refuse to cooperate with the status quo.

It's a fair point, but the question that should be asked is, did voting for Nader do anything besides help make George W. Bush president? Did it create a powerful liberal movement? Did it cause politicians to change their ways because a sliver of the populace was unhappy with both sides?

No, it didn't.

If we had a different system for electing people, where parties could gain power according to the proportion of their vote, or where there was a series of run-offs that would make a third-party vote more than just a throwaway, we would have a mechanism to change the system. But we don't, and I don't think many of the protester voters are even working to change our electoral system in a way that would give them that power.

Meanwhile, third parties seem loathe to go through the nuts and bolts of building a party, as Dan Savage pointed out in a wonderful diatribe:

If you're interested in building a third party, a viable third party, you don’t start with president. You don't start by running someone for fucking president.
Where are the Green Party candidates for city councils? For county councils? For state legislatures? For state assessor? For state insurance commissioner? For governor? For fucking dogcatcher? I would be SO willing to vote for Green Party candidates who are starting at the bottom, grassroots, bottom up, building a third party, a viable third party.

Voting for a third party presidential candidate won't advance any agenda. It won't give that party more power, more influence, more legitimacy, or a better future. It will be just the same as voting for "none of them."

And you can do that if you want. Just admit that this is all you are doing. You are not changing the system or creating a brighter tomorrow. You are saying "fuck it."

---------------

You don't have to do anything about that train. It's not your train. You didn't send it down the track. You didn't tie those people up. Why should you take responsibility for other people's actions just because you're the one standing there?

The people on the track screaming "please don't let us die" are probably less philosophical. To them, the mistake made when the train started moving cannot be rectified, and the only thing that will save their lives is you pulling that switch.

And it's a painful switch to pull. I mean, my god, you're going to kill someone! Sure, you'll save five people, but you'll be responsible for a death. How is that fair?

Perhaps after you pull your protest vote switch, someone else will rush up and pull the working switch so you can feel good about yourself and your principled refusal to take responsibility for a problem not of your making. If not, you can watch those people die and say, "fucking railroad company, this is all their fault."

Hopefully you'll feel just as good about that decision later on, when you're tied to the track, the train is coming, and the one person who can save you turns to go.

David Cameron is Paul Ryan's Ghost of Christmas Future

The lesson many pundits are taking from Britain's vote to leave the European Union is that the appeal to bigotry, hatred, and fear can lead people to vote against their best interests and royally fuck themselves up out of pure spite. If that can happen there, they say, then a Trump presidency can happen here.

That may be true, and we should certainly all be scared. But Brexit should also scare one particular American, Paul Ryan, who just had a chance to see what happens when politicians make a short-term political calculus that destroys their career.

Brexit happened because Prime Minister David Cameron wanted to get reelected. A chunk of anti-immigration conservatives wanted Britain out of the European Union and to keep the Conservative Party together and win an election, Cameron agreed to a referendum on leaving the EU.

Cameron didn't want Britain to leave the EU, he just wanted to pacify those on the right and counter the popularity of the anti-immigration U.K. Nationalist Party. He figured he could easily persuade voters to vote REMAIN.

He couldn't, and having created a disastrous situation with disastrous results, he had no choice but to resign.

Now, Cameron will go down in history as the guy who screwed Britain and the EU. That is his legacy. Nothing he has ever done in his life will matter; he's the Brexit guy.

Like Cameron, Paul Ryan decided to do something dangerous to the country for political expediency: support Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate. Trump, a racist, xenophobic no-nothing conman (or, as the Scottish would say, a weaselheaded, Cheeto-faced, jizztrumpet/fucknugget/shitgibbon) who spews hatred against minorities like a shit-throwing sprinkler system, gained the nomination through big lies and absurd promises. It's clear to everyone with half a brain, including Ryan, that he is a toxic bomb set to blow up this country.

But Ryan also believes, probably correctly, that Trump is somewhat more likely to support his help-the-rich, screw-the-poor agenda than Hillary Clinton, and for that reason, he has chosen to endorse the monster.

Ryan's endorsement looks worse and worse every time Trump claims his right to be judged only by those with European ancestry or congratulates himself when horrible tragedies befall the country, but while Ryan will mildly criticize Trump's remarks, he is still determined to make him president.  Ultimately, whether he succeeds or not, he is probably destroying his career.

In November, one of two things will happen. Either Trump, in spite of a phenomenally incompetent campaign, will win, or Clinton will. If it's Trump, well then, an authoritarian lunatic will helm this country, most likely sending the world into economic collapse, and Ryan will intimately tied to that disaster (and probably won't even get much from his shopping list out of the short-fingered megalomaniac). If it's Clinton, then Ryan sold his soul and got nothing for it except a GOP in flames.

The U.S. does not have Britain's parliamentarian system, so Ryan won't have to resign anything. He'll still be a congressman. He might even get reelected; in this country an incumbent can get reelected even if he's in prison for fraud. But his career as the golden boy of the GOP will be over. Like Cameron, he will forever after be known for one thing; tying himself to a bucket of shit, throwing the bucket down a well, and trying not to fall in after it.

Watch out Ryan; it's a very heavy bucket.

Democracy: The System Everyone Likes Until the “Wrong” People Win

In 2011, Egyptians protested against their authoritarian dictatorship, overthrew the government, and held democratic elections that installed Mohamed Morsi as president.

By 2013, unhappy Egyptians were holding mass protests and demanding that Morsi resign. When the military stepped in, many of those protesters were thrilled. Soon the new government proved itself to be at least as bad as the one ousted in 2011.

I remember that after that military coup, there were pundits on both the left and the right who supported it, seeming to believe that this was a way to reset a democracy gone bad. To me that seemed a long shot. Democracy works when people accept it as the thing you’re stuck with. If after every election the people who didn’t vote for the government could persuade the military to step in, you wouldn’t really have a democracy.

Democracy is when both sides agree to accept the results, even if they don’t like them. It doesn’t work otherwise.

Now let’s talk about Bernie Sanders.

I’ve always liked Bernie Sanders. The things I want – a single payer health system, more taxes on the wealthy, greater worker rights, a stronger social safety net – are the things Sanders wants. If I were declared ruler of the universe and could choose the next U.S. president from anyone who has run for the position in the last couple of years, I would pick Bernie.

But in a democracy, one person can’t choose the president, or the nominees. Instead, there’s a whole electoral system in place.

Regarding the Democratic primary, that system is one Bernie Sanders has liked less and less the more it has become apparent that he is unlikely to win more votes or pledged delegates than Hillary Clinton.

As little as a few months ago, Sanders still had some hope for the democratic process, as long as it was truly democratic. He made the reasonable suggestion that superdelegates – free agents who can vote for whoever they like at the convention – should vote for whoever their state voted for.

The problem is, under that system, Sanders would still lose. Because Sanders is way behind Clinton. About three million votes behind.

So Bernie has a new plan. We throw out the democratic system and decide the nominee based on polling.

What Bernie wants is for all the superdelegates, regardless of who their state supported, to vote for Bernie. And he says they should, because in head to head polls, he does better against Trump than Clinton.

There are reasons those polls shouldn’t be taken too seriously. As the Times points out, Sanders hasn’t experienced a full-on Republican national attack yet, which could drive his numbers down markedly, and Trump is no longer competing against anyone, while Clinton is still fighting off Sanders, softening her support.

But beyond that, picking candidates according to polls is wildly undemocratic.

Right now, RealClearPolitics collection of recent polls shows that averaged out, Sanders beats Trump by 10.8%, whereas Clinton loses by .2%. Each of these polls represents 800 to 1100 voters. If you were to assume that these polls had no overlaps, then they give us the opinions of a few thousand voters. If Sanders is up by 10% over Clinton among a group of 5,000 voters, then that means a few hundred people like Sanders better than Clinton. Yes, they are presumably a representative sampling, but still, if we’re using the polls to select nominees, very few people are actually getting a say.

As of April, over 15,000,000 people have voted in the Democratic primary, and by the convention that number will be higher. Sanders plan is, very simply, to discount the millions of people who prefer Clinton over him in favor of the preferences of a tiny sliver of America’s voters.

How can anyone who believes in Democracy find that acceptable? If we are going to choose our nominees by poll, why don’t we just get rid of elections altogether, and every four years take a few polls and make whoever wins the president? How can Sanders supporters who scream about unfairness every time Clinton gets an extra delegate they believe belongs to Bernie be fine with simply taking the choice out of the hands of the electorate altogether?

What would happen if next week the poll numbers switched, and suddenly Clinton had the edge against Trump? Would Sanders drop out of the race? My guess is, no.

I understand why democracy failed in Egypt, a country unused to the messiness of a system that, in the words of Winston Churchill, “is the worst form of Government, except for all the [others].” But in the U.S., we’ve been doing this for a long time. And even if the results don’t turn out as I hope, which has happened many times, I hope we continue our experiment with democracy, and let people, rather than polls, choose our representatives.

Although I’m still open to just deciding the whole thing myself.

Sanders, Clinton, and the Agonizing Process of Deciding Which One to Vote For

In 2008, I voted for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the New York primary. It was a decision I couldn't help second guessing in subsequent years, as Obama floundered amidst Republican opposition. My mother had been right; he didn't have the experience for the job.

I wondered if Clinton would have done better, and hoped that she would run in the future so I could find out. Now that has happened, and yet I find I'm strongly drawn to Bernie Sanders in much the way I was to Obama. I have to wonder; if I follow my heart, am I going to regret it a second time?

-----------------

Clinton seemed terrific when she was first lady, smart and progressive, but as my senator she was suspect, displaying a mushy moderation that suggested she was more into positioning herself than changing the world. Then she voted in favor of a preemptive war in Iraq, which meant, I thought, that she was either too stupid to recognize the Bush administration's bullshit (detailed in the run-up to the war by the progressive press) or was simply taking a spineless, politically advantageous position.

Obama had been against that war. He also promised that his universal health plan wouldn't include a requirement that people buy health insurance; as someone who couldn't afford insurance, I was worried about facing fines. He spoke beautifully and offered a vision of a better, more hopeful world.

Unlike his most ardent fans, I never expected Obama to turn the U.S. into a progressive paradise. He was, after all, a politician, and bound to break the hearts of true believers. But I was still hugely disappointed by his meekness; he seemed the sort who would bring Roberts Rules of Order to a knife fight.

------------------

So here we are again. A man full of fire and fury, promising great things that might be impossible, versus a far more experienced woman who voted for a terrible war and offers less ambitious but far more concrete plans.

For a lot of people, it's an easy decision. Either Sanders is an impassioned visionary who will lead a modern revolution and Clinton is a corrupt hack with no principles who will hand the country over to the billionaire class, or Clinton is a brainy progressive feminist with deep experience whose realpolitik approach will move us forward while Sanders is an unelectable, impractical gadfly whose nomination is a Republican wet dream.

What I see are two smart, progressive, and imperfect candidates, either of which would be a million times preferable to even the least crazy Republican. Philosophically, Bernie is almost a perfect match for me, a fellow progressive who looks at enlightened Scandinavian countries and asks, why can't we do that? But as annoying as practical considerations are, they cannot be avoided. I have to ask, which candidate is more likely to win the election, and which candidate, if elected, is more likely to accomplish good things? Also, which candidate is more likely to royally screw up?

ELECTABILITY

Electability is a big consideration when choosing a nominee, and in a normal political environment, electability would be Clinton's best friend. She is better known than Sanders, with more political experience. Sanders is an elderly agnostic Democratic Socialist; which normally would make him the most unelectable candidate in the world.

But let's face it, this is a weird year. Voters are sick of a political system that doesn't work and seems custom made for a wealthy elite. The Republican nominee is likely to be Donald Trump, a no-nothing blowhard with a frightening ability to sucker people in with his big daddy authoritarian promises and his constant lies and policy shifts.

Against Trump, Hillary is certainly the adult in the room, and in a sane country where voters want the reasonable, thoughtful candidate over the ticking time bomb, she could easily beat him. But in a year where people are obsessed with "authenticity," and shooting from the hip, Clinton's carefully triangulated positions and coziness with Wall Street  are more damaging than in a typical year. And her history of Republican-manufactured scandals has given her low trustworthy ratings with voters (I'm not saying that's fair, since all the problems I have with her are not the problems the Republicans have created, but it's still a consideration).

Sanders seems better positioned to beat Trump at his own game, out-shouting him, mocking his stupidity, while also being blindingly smarter than him. If people really want big changes, Sanders versus Trump offers a clear-cut choice. Sanders could win over Trump-ites, although the be fair, the reverse may be true as well; a lot of voters seem to just want to disrupt the system but aren't that picky about how it's done.

While Clinton's downside is that she has been softened up by years of molehills turned into mountains by the right, Sanders' downside is he hasn't experienced any real attacks at all. The Democrats' primary campaign has been pretty civilized. While the candidates are increasingly snippy, there is no real mud-slinging - no questioning of citizenship, no spousal slams, no mocking of physical attributes. I don't think he's even been attacked all that hard for saying up front he's going to raise taxes (claiming this will be balanced out by health insurance savings) which he would get slaughtered with in a general election.

What happens when Sanders gets into a savage knife fight with someone like Trump or Cruz? Does Sanders have any terrible skeletons in his closet? I doubt it. Can the Republicans create one? Sure. These are the people who used John Kerry's military heroism against him. Can Sanders withstand the tremendous heat? We don't know. We know Hillary can; she's been living on the sun for years.

Of course, the increased polarization of the electorate means the candidates might barely matter at all, because almost all the Democrats and Republicans will vote for their party, even if they hate the candidate. This gives the final decision to those freakishly unpredictable independents. In this case, enthusiasm and getting out the base is really important, and Sanders seems to have the edge there.

It is also possible that either candidate will win in a landslide due to a third-party candidacy for the conservatives if Trump is the nominee or a third-party run (or just a lot of sniping) from Trump if he isn't. Although things could get patched up with a Cruz-Trump ticket, which would be ... interesting.


EFFECTIVENESS

Then there's the question of who can get more done.

Think of it this way. You have a stone quarry in the middle of a swamp, and you would like the stones mined, carried to a faraway hill, and built into a mansion. One contractor tells you it's impossible, but she can get enough stones to the edge of the swamp to build a decent, reasonably dry home, and maybe you can build a better house later. She has detailed  blueprints.

The other contractor says he will build that mansion on a hill, guaranteed. He will move heaven and earth to make it happen. He has a bunch of notes on post-its.

If she's right then voting for him will get you a bunch of stones littered along the path to the hill. But if she's wrong, you're living by the side of the swamp when you could have one hell of a view.

Who do you hire?

The pro-Clinton argument is simply that she knows how to work the levers of power. She knows how to deal, how to compromise, knows when to hold them and knows when to fold them.

She will build on what's here. She will tweak Obamacare, trying to get it closer to what it should be. She will try and push through a few more financial regulations. She will navigate the treacherous path. She will be sensible

But she'll never even try for the mansion on the hill. She doesn't believe in it.

Neither did Obama. He always started with a reasonable position, something centrist and practical that deserved wide support, and then was slapped down by Republicans who painted his most modest proposals as the works of a wild-eyed, America-hating Muslim anarchist.

Obama tried to be reasonable, and that failed because the other side was unreasonable. Sanders would not make that mistake. He would make huge progressive proposals. And while he might not get free college or a single-payer system, not starting at the center could be a powerful negotiating tactic.

What worries me about Sanders is that when asked how he will bring these miracles to pass, he says we need people to rise up, we need a revolution. But how does that happen? Politicians casually ignore what the majority want (better gun control laws, for example) in favor of what donors and lobbyists want. Even if Sanders could get people to demand the same things he demands (and this country is so polarized that this is unlikely), politicians entirely concerned with their own little gerrymandered districts are not going to join the Sanders revolution. This is a big, unwieldy country; it can only turn so sharply.

Still, Ronald Reagan created a pretty major shift in this country, and if Sanders can't turn the U.S. into Denmark, he could still, in theory, push it as far left as Reagan pushed it right.

Sanders is worrisomely vague about how he's going to pay for everything. He claims that his policies will lower health costs and improve the economy, and if that's true then we might be able to afford Sanders' big dreams. But what is the difference between Sanders' claims and those of Republicans who say if they cut taxes on the rich the economy will improve so much that the government will have more money than ever?

Once again though, the point may be trivial; if Republicans keep control of congress, neither Sanders nor Clinton is going to get anything done. The Republicans are perfectly happy to obstruct the government forever if need be. The stones will never be mined, the house never built. The contractor won't matter.

On the other hand, if Democrats get control of both the house and the senate, Sanders' big dreams could make a better country than Clinton's little ones.

DANGEROUSNESS

Presidents can do a lot of damage. George W. Bush managed to tank the economy, plunge us into war and destabilize the mid-east. Bill Clinton pushed through laws that vastly increased the racial disparity in prison populations. 

I'm on the fence in terms of Clinton's electability and her efficacy, but I am far more worried about her capacity to screw things up. Because while Clinton's supporters offer her vast foreign policy experience as a positive, it is what worries me most.

First off, she voted for the Iraq war. At the time, I saw that as pure politically expediency, but it could also represent her general inclination to muck around in other countries and hope for the best. After all, she lobbied for regime change in Libya, which just further messed up the midle east.

I strongly believe in Obama's foreign policy tenet: don't do stupid shit. The history of U.S. foreign policy is the history of screwing up other countries, breaking their governments and alienating their citizens. Clinton, alas, has the interventionist mindset that leads to doing stupid shit, sometimes for very noble reasons. Obama gets a lot of grief because he realizes that America cannot remake the world; Clinton doesn't seem to get that.

I don't think Sanders wants to recreate the world in America's image. I don't think he's interesting in nation building. My feeling about Sanders lack of foreign policy experience is best summed up by the satirical op-ed, Sorry Bernie Bros, Your Candidate Just Doesn’t Have The Foreign Policy Experience Necessary To Prop Up A Pro-Western Dictatorship.  

The danger of Sanders is the danger of  unintended consequences. The more powerful the pill, the bigger the side effects. The more radical the change, the greater the unpredictable ripple effects. Sanders' sweeping proposals are tricky. A $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles is likely to affect the local economy differently than in Podunk, Idaho. Sanders could find himself spending an entire term trying to make one change work the way he expected it to. It's a sizable risk.

---------------------

Sanders versus Clinton is not an exact repeat of Obama versus Clinton. Sanders has more experience in government than Obama had in 2008 and he's a far more progressive candidate. But once again I find myself torn between a candidate whose positions are appealing but whose practicality is suspect and a shifting compromiser who has a plan for getting things done but may not want to do the things I want her to. 

Maybe I was wrong to vote for Obama in 2008, but maybe I wasn't. Could Hillary really have done any better against the anarchists of the Republican party? We'll find out if she becomes president, and then I might be able to decide whether my Obama vote was a mistake. But I'll probably never know for sure whether Bernie or Hillary was the right candidate for 2016. All I know for certain is, whatever happens, I'll always wonder about the path not taken.

Bernie, Hillary, Sexism, Authenticity, and Elizabeth Warren

It is undeniable that, as a woman, Hillary Clinton faces a sexism that makes campaigning tricky. Pundits will obsess over stupid things like her hair and dress, they will scrutinize her actions as a wife in a way male politicians are never scrutinized for their marital conduct, they will look for signs of "womanly weakness" at every turn.

That being said, Clinton is not struggling to beat Bernie Sanders because, as Catherine Rampbell suggested in the Washington Post, Sanders' maleness allows him a freedom to seem authentic that Clinton doesn't have. Sanders, windblown and loud, can express passion; Clinton, constantly under watch by a sexist media, must be meticulous.

But its' not Sanders Brooklyn accent and mussed hair that make him seem authentic, nor are they the key to his popularity. And to see that, all one has to do is look at Elizabeth Warren.

With all due respect to Bernie, he was not most progressives first choice for president. Warren was the one every ultra-liberal democrat pictured taking the White House. Because Warren, with her kempt hair, midwest accent and pricey blazers, exudes exactly the passion and authenticity that Rampbell says sexism prevents Clinton from attaining.

One pundit suggested that Clinton's problem is we have cast her in the role of a grandmother, and when she raises her voice we feel we're being scolded. But Warren raises her voice all the time. She admonishes her foes with great force.

The difference is who is being admonished. If Warren is a grandmother, she is one who will see kids teasing another kid and run outside and chase them away with a broom. When she admonishes, she admonishes for you.

Hillary is something different. Like Warren, she can get angry, but often she's angry with all of us. She's angry because we keep throwing her vote for the Iran war back at her, angry because we asked for an explanation for her private email server, angry that people keep choosing dreamers like Obama and Sanders over a practical, sensible woman like herself. Hillary is the grandmother who tells you that you're a bad child if you don't eat your broccoli.

Hillary's authenticity problems are not because she can't be seen with messy hair. Her authenticity problems are because she's inauthentic. She answers questions with an evasive lawyerliness. She makes unsupportable claims, as when she said that being a woman makes her a true establishment outsider when her resume is remarkably insider-ish. She seems inauthentic because she switches positions and then says, oh no, I never really said I supported that, I just said I was open to it.

Authenticity isn't a male/female thing. Romney seemed inauthentic. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, comes across as passionate and authentic, even when she's being crazy and incoherent.

I'm not saying we should choose our political representatives based on that indefinable thing called authenticity. There are slick, talking-point-driven politicians like Nancy Pelosi who seem phony but still do a terrific job, and it's possible in the end that Clinton's experience, wonkiness, and nuts-and-bolts practicality would make her a better president than Sanders - I'm having difficulty making up my mind who to vote for.

What I'm saying is, if Elizabeth Warren were the candidate instead of Bernie, she would have the same fans, receive the same big crowds, and be attacked in the mainstream press for many of the same reasons. But no one would say she was doing so well because of sexism.

The Tin GOP

The Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz was once (as you know if you read the book) a real man. He lost his body parts one by one to a cursed axe, until he was all tin, and thus, no longer human.

I suspect the moment other people thought of him as a tin man was earlier than when he thought of himself that way. There was probably a time when he was still thinking of himself as a human with a lot of tin when everyone else was thinking of him as tin with a few flesh parts. It always takes some time to acknowledge a new reality.

-------------

I've been fascinated by the panic of mainstream Republicans over the state of their party. Donald Trump, a racist loud-mouthed populist with no clear political philosophy beyond yellow at minorities, stands a good chance of being the Republican nominee for president of the United States. If he doesn't win, it will probably be Ted Cruz, a right-wing extremist hated by his colleagues whose only goal seems to be to cause the gears of government to grind to a halt.

Right wing pundits are wringing their hands and crying out, "THIS IS NOT OUR PARTY." They insist they are the party of small, sensible government and free-market ideals, not the party of racism and demagoguery and intolerance.

But of course, they are that party. Racism, intolerance, and rabid hatred of seemingly most of the country have been, for a long time, as much a part of the GOP as helping the rich at the expense of the poor.

Republicans once actually did believe in government as a tool to make things better. For all his flaws, it was Richard M. Nixon who started the EPA. But the party has moved much further to the right since then. The modern Republican party began with Reagan, an arch conservative who by today's standards is still too liberal for the GOP.

The GOP's cursed axe was the Tea Party. The Tea Party was fueled not by a consistent political philosophy (they would protest against government entitlements while demanding the government not cut any entitlements they enjoyed), but by rage at gun laws and the dewhitening of America, and a general sense that they were getting screwed by "them."

The Republicans saw the Tea Party as a large voter block that they could use to gain and hold onto political power. They embraced the Tea Party, they supported Tea Party Candidates, the chose Sarah Freaking Palin as a vice presidential candidate, all to get those Tea Party voters to come out and help them crush the Democrats. They raised their voices, questioned Obama's citizenship, swift-boated John Kerry, and allowed stupidity and craziness to take a place of honor in the party.

And without them realizing it, everything they saw as classic conservatism was being chopped away.

Right now the leading GOP presidential candidates, Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio, are all Tea Partiers. The are all extremely right wing. And the percentage of Republicans who support them make up a strong majority of the party. Republicans fed the Tea Party like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors, and my, how it has grown.

Now that the last vestige of human flesh is gone, the heart is absent, and the GOP is 100% tin, conservative pundits are screaming that something has to be done before the Republican party is destroyed.

But there is no more Republican party now, there is only the Tea Party. Eventually, the few remaining Republicans will have to accept that.

Boehner Vows to Continue Mouthing Hollow Statements for Duration of Shutdown

In a press conference, Speaker John A. Boehner vowed to continue a series of vague, hallow sound bites until the budget crisis gripping the nation is resolved.

“The American people don’t want their government shut down, and neither do I. All we’re asking for is to sit down and have a discussion. We ought to do something about our spending problem and the lack of economic growth in our country. “Our goal here was to bring fairness to the American people under Obamacare.”

“I could do this all day,” Boehner added.

While the speaker is convinced that a steady stream of vague platitudes will lead to a budget settlement on Republican terms, a confident President Obama, noting that a majority of the American public blames Republicans for the shutdown, has doubled down on his rhetoric, saying yesterday that he would make the GOP “drop to its knees and squeal like a pig.”

why hyperbole is no more okay on the left than on the right

Lately, many of my Facebook friends have been posting a link to the provocatively titled essay in Jezebel, Why Rick Santorum Would Have Killed My Daughter.  It's a very interesting article, and I'd recommend reading it before you continue reading my response.

To boil it down, it is author Sarah Fister Gale's telling of how a pre-natal test saved her unborn daughter's life, and includes a picture of a very cute little girl.  Gale says  the test, called amniocentesis, saved her unborn daughter's life. She goes on to say, "If Rick Santorum had his way, I wouldn't have been able to get that test, and she most likely would have died."

As I read the article I kept expecting her to offer a quote from Santorum, or a link, or something, but that never happened.  It sounded like she was saying he wanted to outlaw amniocentesis, but Gale doesn't ever actually state what his position is.  This left me dissatisfied, so I looked at the comments to see what others had to say

One woman certainly had felt the same way.  I think her name was Barbara, although since I can't find any way to see any of the older comments I can't find what she said now.  But I remember she started by asking Gale to cite Santorum's statements, and then apparently just went off and googled his comments.

What Santorum had said was, without a doubt, moronic.  He feels, like a lot of idiot religious right wingers, that businesses affiliated with religious organizations should be allowed to customize the insurance they offer to deny approval for any procedures they might object to, such as contraception. One procedure he felt they should be able to disallow was amniocentesis, because he says it leads to abortion.  In other words, parents discover their child could be born disabled and have an abortion.

This is, of course, pretty stupid.  It's like saying we shouldn't test for cancer because it increases suicides.  The goal of medical tests is to give information, not to influence behavior.  And as another comment noted, if we allow all religions to determine what insurance can offer, Jehovah Witnesses could deny coverage for blood transfusions, which they don't believe in, and Christian Scientists could disallow everything.

So yes, Santorum is an evil idiot.  But would he have killed Gale's baby?

First off, Gale doesn't say if she got her insurance through a religious organization, so we don't know if Santorum's ideas would have affected her personally.  She does say she couldn't have afforded the test without insurance, so if her insurance had denied the test it's fair to say the child might have died.

But Santorum has not actually proposed to make amniocentesis illegal, although he may want to. And so for me, the whole "Santorum would have killed my daughter" thing doesn't totally fly.

Of course, you can make an argument that really, his policies would wind up killing some kids.  But the problem is, you can make an argument for all sorts of things.

For example, "death panels."  You may remember when idiot queen Sarah Palin said that Obamacare would lead to Death Panels that would decide who lives and who died.  It was a nonsensical thing to say, of course, since it implied that somehow we didn't already have insurance companies deciding whether to provide care to keep people alive or refuse that care.  She was describing something that happens all the time as though it was something that would be ushered in through health care reform.

But while it was misleading, it wasn't exactly untrue.  There would be people deciding whether or not to provide life-saving care.  The fact that it already is that way doesn't change the fact that it would still be that way under Obamacare and thus there would be, after a fashion, death panels.

In other words, it's not the facts so much as the implication that was untrue.

And that's how I feel about Gale's article.  You can make an argument that yes, Santorum would have killed her daughter, but it's a weak argument.  It's so weak that she didn't offer a single quote from Santorum, or link to anything he's said, because she knew the piece would be less powerful if she introduced the messiness of his actual positions over the clarity of his implied positions.

But why not call Santorum a killer?  Won't that work as propaganda, and save us from a Santorum presidency?  "Death panels" was, after all, a very effective way to undermine health care reform.

And yes, it will work, with some people.  Many  will unquestioningly accept that Santorum must want to outlaw medical procedures.  In fact, this approach is probably most effective with Santorum supporters, because they're all idiots to begin with (do I have any evidence to support that?  Just listen to five minutes of Santorum and decide if anyone who was not an idiot could possibly vote for the guy).

In other words, it will work on people who don't question, who don't ask for proof.  But for those who want more than blanket, unsupported statements, this sort of hyperbole simply makes us suspicious of everything someone says.  If you say 99 true things and tell one lie, many people will dismiss those 99 true things, because you are a liar.

Thus, beyond the morality of hurling charges of dubious merit at one's opponents, there is the risk that an important message can get lost because of a stupid, unnecessary exaggeration.  Santorum can be shown to be so horrible on so many levels, there is no need to accuse him of theoretical homicide just to make a point.

left or right, there's no need to be an asshole

Someone who was clearly batshit insane shot a bunch of people in Arizona at a political event. Not the first time, not the last time. Some on the left are trying to blame Sarah Palin graphics and partisan bickering, but as David Brooks points out in the Times, that's nonsense. As my girlfriend and Jon Stewart have both said, it's just like people who blamed heavy metal music for violence and suicides. Tragedy should not be thought of as an opportunity to try to score cheap political points. Alas, it always will be.

The Rally for Sanity, False Equivalency and the Affronted Left

I loved the Daily Show's Rally to Restore Sanity (my girlfriend and I went to it on the Huffington buses, although unfortunately the bus took so long we were only there for the last 45 minutes and couldn't get anywhere close to the rally itself). The concept was simple: public debate has become nothing but name calling, insults and lies, and we should all stop it. We should make nice.

In a world where everyone is accused of being Hitler, that seemed like a good idea.

Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann disagreed, at least in part. They both objected to lumping left-wing pundits with right wing ones.

Maher said:

“The message of the rally, as I heard it, was that, if the media stopped giving voice to the crazies on both sides, then maybe we could restore sanity. It was all nonpartisan and urged cooperation with the moderates on the other side forgetting that Obama tried that and found out…there are no moderates on the other side. When Jon announced his rally, he said the national conversation was dominated by people on the Right who believe Obama’s a Socialist and people on the Left who believe 9/11’s an inside job, but I can’t name any Democratic leaders who think 9/11’s an inside job. But Republican leaders who think Obama’s a Socialist…all of them.”

I couldn't find a transcript of Olbermann's discussion of the Rally, which you can find on youtube, but he and his guest Jonathon Alter discussed the fact that MSNBC prioritizes facts and journalism over opinion and political agenda, whereas FOX "News" does exactly the opposite, and functions more as a propaganda tool than as a news station. He also said the hard right is not going to start acting more reasonable just because the hard left lowers its rhetoric.

Those are good points, and if Jon Stewart really does have, as he mockingly promised on The Daily Show, a "Rally To Determine Precisely The Percentage Of Blame To Be Doled Out To The Left And The Right For Our Problems Because We All Know That The Only Thing That Matters Is That The Other Guys Are Worse Than We Are And/Or Fear," well, the right, particularly in the case of FOX, will be apportioned more of the blame.

It's true. In a tit-for-tat comparison, James O'Keefe (the miscreant who took down ACORN) plays with the truth more egregiously than Michael Moore, and Sarah Palin makes up more absurd lies than anyone on the left outside of 9/11 conspiracy nuts, who, as Maher points out, are not a part of the left-wing mainstream in the way birthers are a substantial part of the right. On FactCheck.org you will find flat-out lies come more from the right, while the left's attacks are more likely to be just misleading or unproven (although the worst campaign ads of the season were the inexcusably sleazy commercials of Alan Grayson).

Yet, I don't think it's good enough to say, "why are you bitching us out, the other side is way worse."

"We're better than them" is a common excuse. In the 20th century, Communists throughout the world excused the bad behavior of Russia and China's because they claimed America was worse. Meanwhile, American's would answer any accusation of U.S. governmental oppression by saying, we're much better than Russia. You can always say, "I won't let gay people marry, but I least I don't want them executed" or, "I don't think women are as capable of men, but I wouldn't prevent them from voting," and point at the people who would do those worse things, but that doesn't mean you're right. It just means you're less wrong.

The truth is, both sides are full of hypocrites. I expect it from the right, because they lie so casually that it is just who they are at this point, but I don't want it on the left, because I want the left to take the moral high ground.

Olbermann, alas, often wallows in the same hypocritical mud as the Republicans (I can't speak too much to Maher, because I never watch him - I always found him facile and annoying). I remember a few years ago when the right wingers were complaining about some inflammatory comment on a left-wing site, and Olbermann made the very reasonable point that the site had no control over what people chose to post on their forums. Then, a year or two later, a right winger posted something inflammatory on a right-wing site, and Olbermann immediately jumped on that site, seemingly oblivious to the role reversal.

I am often bothered by the left. It bothers me the way Nancy Pelosi relies on meaningless talking points as much as anyone on the right (I think Joe Biden has the reputation of putting his foot in his mouth primarily because he is not afraid to say what he thinks, unlike most politicians). It bothers me when the left attacks free speech. As I pointed out before, you can't laud Lenny Bruce and then damn Don Imus, because they both said equally provocative and inappropriate things. It really bugged me when the left mercilessly went after beauty pageant contestant Carrie Prejean for saying she disapproved of gay marriage, both because people do have a right to their opinions and because, well, she was a really insignificant celebrity whose opinion was not remotely influential. It didn't matter what she thought, but she was attacked for months for what had been a fairly mild statement.

Yes, it's terrible when people are racist, sexist, homophobic or anything like that, but it's actually their right. People are entitled to believe what they believe. If you insist other people cannot express their opinions, you give other people the right to insist you keep your opinions to yourself.

I constantly have to watch out for my own hypocritical tendencies. For example, a while back someone created a dumb joke group on Facebook that basically encouraged God to kill Barack Obama. I learned about it when I got an invite to sign a petition demanding the group be deleted. And at first I thought, I should sign that. And then I thought, what would I think if this "kill Obama group" was a "kill Sarah Palin" group or a "kill George W. Bush" group? Would I sign a petition insisting Facebook delete the offending group? Hell no. I might not go so far as to join it, but I certainly wouldn't mind it.

In fact, in the 1980s, I wrote a song about how, if it weren't illegal, I would write a song encouraging people to kill Ronald Reagan. It was one of my most popular songs in the left-wing folk circuit I was a part of. I thought it was terrible to make a joke about killing Obama not because I had a problem with people making jokes about killing presidents but because I had a problem with people making that joke about a president I liked. But even though I think the people who joined that Facebook group (who vastly outnumbered all those who had joined any group suggesting we harm George W. Bush - the right is really far more savage than the left) are probably all idiots who believed Obama is a socialist Muslim ready to institute death panels, they have a right to believe that. People should use their free speech rights to counter these beliefs and educate people as best they can, but they should not criticize behavior on the right that they wouldn't think twice about were it coming from the left.

And that is why I like Jon Stewart; he believes in non-partisan civility. I often compared Bush Jr. with Hitler, and yet, he didn't gas a single Jew. I have tossed out words like "fascist" far too casually, and I think it's great that there is a national figure who is pointing out that "only Hitler is Hitler."

Is MSNBC as bad as FOX? Of course not. And even though Olbermann objected to being compared with Glen Beck, he did, in honor of being less provocative, suspend his Worst Person in the World segment. Olbermann also once apologized for an over-the-top attack on a Republican after being called on it by Stewart, even playing Stewart's entire Olbermann parody on Countdown. Would Glenn Beck or Bill O'Reilly do that? I don't think so. And if all Olbermann wants is to be a better person than Glenn Beck, he has easily cleared that hurdle.

But the point of the Rally to Restore Sanity was not, I believe, to encourage people to be slightly less of an asshole than the other guy. So while Maher and Olbermann are correct in saying the right is worse, they would be better occupied in thinking about how they can work to shed more light and less heat.

Wired Comes Out in Favor of Boycotting Everyone You Disagree With

There's apparently a controversy about the game Shadow Complex because one of the writers who worked on it is open and actively anti-gay marriage. Because of this, some people have suggested boycotting the game, such as Wired writer Guy Mustapa, who writes:

Many question the efficacy of a boycott. Even Peter David, the comics writer who penned Shadow Complex’s dialogue, piped in to call the boycott “cheap and vicious and small-minded.”

He’s dead wrong there. The point of the boycott is to start the discussion and encourage people to look at the issue from a different point of view. Epic and Chair may not feel an economic sting around this boycott. Orson Scott Card may not lose an minute of sleep. But if only a handful of people notice how strongly some folks care about the issue of gay rights and take a moment to try to understand where they’re coming from then the boycott (or even the intimations of one) can be considered a success.

I disagreed strongly, and wrote a comment at the bottom of the article and then thought, hey, I haven't blogged for a while, why don't I use this comment in my blog:


The mentality behind boycotting this game is equivalent to the mentality behind the 1950s Hollywood blacklist, in which writers, actors, and directors were prevented from working because of their political opinions. True, a boycott would not have the same decimating results as a government witch hunt, but the attitude is exactly the same.

Do we really want to do this? Do we really want the left to boycott every game or movie or TV series that has connected with it anyone who is anti-gay marriage or anti-health care reform? Do we really want everyone on the right to boycott every game or movie or TV series that has connected with it anyone who is anti-war or anti-abortion?

I am no less horrified by this suggested boycott than by the concerted effort made years ago to destroy the Dixie Chicks because they said they were ashamed to have come from the same state as George W. Bush (an attempt that failed spectacularly). People actually do have a right to have their opinions, and they do have a right to employment. I'm pro gay-marriage; does that mean the anti-gay people should all refuse to read my game reviews (at, quick plug, nintendo.about.com) and encourage everyone else to follow suit? Is that really the world we want to live in, one where everyone's livelihood can be affected by every political opinion they express?

Mastrapa's statement that the point of a boycott is to "start the discussion" is ludicrous. The point of a boycott is to stop discussion; it is a way of saying "SHUT UP, SHUT UP, SHUT UP!" It is a way to bully people who disagree with you.

It is my believe that rather than trying to shut people up, we should encourage everyone to speak their mind. It is my belief that the most effective way to counter an argument is to let that argument be expressed and then rebut it.