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Parallel Republican Universes

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Bill Maher talks a lot about the Republican Bubble, which was aptly explained by Marshall Fine in the Huffington Post last September

“We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” as one Romney pollster put it, while even Fox News called bullshit on much of vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention. Because, hey, what does it matter if they’re lying? Half the country already assumes they are; the other half wants to swallow the lie whole, like a large pill washed down with cod-liver oil.

More like castor oil. With the same results.

It’s not like this is anything new. Go back to 2004, when an unnamed George W. Bush aide (later identified as Karl Rove) scoffed at a newspaper reporter as being part of the “reality-based community.” Rove went on to say, “When we act, we create our own reality.”

Or as Humpty Dumpty told Alice in Through the Looking Glass, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” To which Alice replied, “The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

To which, like Humpty, the Republicans reply, “The question is, which is to be master — that’s all.”

To note some recent Parallel Universes posited by the Wall Street Journal editorial team:

  • civil liberties are to blame for recent mass shootings because the rights of the mentally disturbed are protected (12/25/12)
  • a $5 million dollar exemption on estate taxes is a “mere pittance” to people who have worked all their lives and should be allowed to keep their money (1-1-13)
  • the AIG lawsuit against the government bailout of AIG is entirely warranted (1-9-13)
  • defense cuts will be used to fund ObamaCare (1/11/13)
  • drilling & fracking will solve the carbon emissions crisis and turn the economy around (1/2/13)
  • privatizing highways is in the public interest (1/15)/13)
  • mandating ethanol production is “the sort of thing that created the Protestant Reformation”

Stay tuned for more GOP Loony Tunes.

Demonizing and Lionizing: The Right’s Orwellian Morality Play

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The Politiscripting of the Right proceeds in binaries: freedom vs government; makers. vs. takers;  free markets vs. regulation; laissez-faire vs. redistribution, self-reliance vs. communitarianism, etc.

The Wall Street Journal, The National Review, Red State and The Weekly Standard are critical sources of fuel for stoking this “versus” state of mind by perpetually offering up galleries of the demonized the lionized. For example, between Jan. 18-31, here is a partial cast list for this unceasing morality play:

The Demonized: Hillary Clinton, Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama, Mary Jo White, Richard Cordray, Jack Lew, the NLRB, Ben Bernanke.

The Lionized: Republican governors Bobby Jindal, Pat McCrory, Mike Pence, Susana Martinez, Dave Heineman and John Kasich; Art Laffer; Marco Rubio; Stanford economist John Taylor.

Obama Unfettered or Obama In Retreat?

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The Journal has lately had a divided mind when it comes to President Obama. In foreign policy he is all about “retrenchment” and appeasement, but in economic and domestic policy he is now “unfettered” and relentlessly pursuing his aims of “destroying the House” in 2014 and being on a redistributionist rampage.

Obama, after all,  wants to “extend and entrench entitlements into the daily expectations of the middle class–from cradle to college to health care during the working years to retirement and then the grave,” in the process “reorienting the private economy to finance income redistribution”.

These two faces of Obama merge once the Journal helps you realize that he is cutting back on defense and a Pax Americana strategy in order to fund his redistributionist endgame.

Other bizarro moments in the Journal’s recent editorials: mocking any idea of protecting homeowners from default (homeowners now characterized as expecting a “free roof”); rooting for the AIG lawsuit against the federal government for the government’s audacity to save AIG from bankruptcy (aka, the “vague concept of systemic risk”); and the born-again discovery of shortcomings in the mental health system.

Gun politics indeed makes for strange bedfellows.Turning unaccountably pro-government and all considerate & caring, the Journal now wants to enhance mental health provision, after championing the decimation of it along with the entire social safety net for at least the last twenty years. (Mental health being one of the many babies drowned in Grover Norquist’s fiscal bathtub).   Anything to change the subject from guns.

Glossary, mid-January, 2013

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an anatomy of key memes, phrases and obsessions in Wall Street Journal editorials, Jan. 5-Jan. 17, 2013

“assault” weapons: (note: “assault” must always be in fright quotes). Demspeak for any guns–rifles, handguns, etc. Really a recycling of the old “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” meme.

“biggest tax hike in twenty years”: not actually a new tax, but  “fiscal cliff”-related reinstatement of mostly Bush-era tax cuts.

global retrenchment: Obama’s diabolical strategy to let the bad guys take over the world.

growing world disorder: any challenge to American policy or power, anywhere in the world. “Disorder” always has to be “growing,” a meme to maintain the steady drumbeat of impending doom under a hapless, appeasing Obama (see also, “global retrenchment”). aka, “global troubles and disarray,” traced ultimately to liberals clinging to their entitlements.

growth agenda: any economic policy that promotes deregulation, tax cuts, and an unchecked private sector. Anything that unleashes the inherent and unfailing magic of the free market. “Growth” defined, of course, in purely economic terms, regardless of social or environmental consequences, as if a society cannot “grow” morally. (see also, “market failure”). (see also  the “productive engine”)

market failure: any economic policy that promotes deregulation, tax cuts, and an unchecked private sector.

productive engine: the unleashed power of private sector free markets policies. As opposed to the unproductive “entitlement” culture. Obama wants to “extend and entrench entitlements into the daily expectations of the middle class–from cradle to college to health care during the working years to retirement and then the grave,” in the process “reorienting the private economy to finance income redistribution”.

redistributionism: “the prevailing socialist mindset in the academy”.  aka, “Obama Unfettered”. aka, “the progressive agenda: reordering the relationships of Americans to their government”.

tax “reform”: the Democrat Trojan Horse for raising tax rates and broadening the base of taxed. Part of the Democratic masterplan to “spend, borrow, elect, tax, and then tax some more”. note: “reform” must always in fright quotes

troubling: any Obama nomination the Journal opposes (Hegel, Kerry, Lew)

The GOP Prosperity Gospel: Social Darwinism Is Alive and Well

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The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That—with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success—is our national disease.

-William James, September 11, 1906 letter to H.G. Wells

 

In the long month after the November 6 election, Republicans have of course reflected on their loss and formed the usual circular firing squads. But the Wall Street Journal has rhetorically shored up the edifice and rallied the troops by falling back on the eternal GOP verities: economic growth over collective well being, equity  and cultural ideals;  and removing all obstacles to “free market” growth.

Rhetorically, these intertwining memes–the economic gospel of what William James called “the bitch- goddess success”–comprise what Bellah, et. al described in Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (1985) as “the first language of American individualism”:

For most of us, it is easier to think about how to get what we want than to know exactly what we should want…our subjects…are confused about how to define for themselves such things as the nature of success, the meaning of freedom, and the requirements of justice.

This gospel is well-expressed in two telling, stand-your-ground salvos from recent Journal editorials:

In this era when envy trumps growth, the government is raising taxes on thrift, investment and risk-taking in the name of fairness and to finance more government spending. (Nov. 30)

American prosperity is best served by letting business exploit as many opportunities as possible, for the U.S. market or for export.(December 6)

In the first, “growth” (presumably economic growth) and “risk-taking”  are the be-all and end-all, and inimical to “fairness” or “government”.  Government can never be seen as taking risks or as fostering moral or social growth, the general welfare.

In the second, exploitation is indeed at heart of the proposition: “prosperity”, narrowly-defined, can only truly thrive in the absence of workers’ rights and safety, environmental and financial regulation, and affirmative action.

The GOP Gospel has no vision of a collective future based on political equality and participatory democracy. As Bellah, et. al put it, “the freedom to be left alone is a freedom that implies being alone”.

Glossary: November/December, 2012

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Based on Wall Street Journal editorials, Nov. 7–December 7, 2012. The Journal persists as one of the primary generators and and enforcers of Republican rhetorical orthodoxy:

accountability: kryptonite to all teachers

agenda: any policies or proposals put forth by the Democrats (see also “plan”). Democrats always have a furtiveness about them, ulterior motives, a secret agenda

American prosperity: “letting business exploit as many opportunities as possible”. See also: “self-sufficiency” and “human dignity”

blackmailing: what the EPA does to ensure compliance with federal pollution laws

campaigning:  whenever President Obama makes a speech or argues for a position or law. Anything he promotes is part of his “social and political agenda”. (See also “governing”)

clean water: a liberal pretext for regulating fracking

coercion: all government regulation the Republicans don’t approve of

distortion: what happens when the government interferes with the “free market,” which is envisoned as a perfect, charmed circle, destructively “distorted” by government

economic growth: what happens “when government gets out of the way”. Government is “the greatest threat” to economic growth

fairness: the Democrats’ word for envy. Kryptonite to “growth”

governing:  what Congressional Republicans do when they make a speech or argue for a position or law.   (see also: “campaigning”)

higher taxes: the Democrats’ “secular religion”

human dignity: maintained by doing what you want, whenever you want. Best flourishes in the free market; is fundamentally eroded by government

liberals: “class warriors”

natural gas: the rise of this has “done more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions than has the Kyoto Protocol”

Obamacare: stalking horse for the “liberal entitlement dream”, with its ultimate goal of single-payer health care

plan: any policy or proposal put forth by the Republicans. Always presumed to be “reasonable”.

ram, bludgeon, pound on, demonize: what Democrats do to try to pass laws. Republicans, on the other hand, always “compromise” and “negotiate”. Harry Reid is called “the capo”

re-engineering: Any ideas for social or political reform that come from the Democrats. Always pejorative in a  kind of Burkean way that distrusts social change

regulators: must always be described as “hyperactive” and as “job killers”

risk taking: the driver of innovation and the beating heart of the free market. What “entrepreneurs” do. Democratic innovations (such as encouraging alternative energy industries)  are called “boondoggles,” “crony capitalism” or “the dreamland of so many government subsidies and mandates”

school choice: “the great civil rights issue of our era”

self sufficiency: the natural state of man: homo economicus. From Wikepedia:  “In economics, homo economicus, or economic human, is the concept in many economic theories of humans as rational and narrowly self-interested actors who have the ability to make judgments toward their subjectively defined ends. Using these rational assessments, homo economicus attempts to maximize utility as a consumer and economic profit as a producer.This theory stands in contrast to the concept of homo reciprocans, which states that human beings are primarily motivated by the desire to be cooperative and to improve their environment”.

teachers’ unions: “the Evil Empire”; intent on “stealing our kids’ futures”

unions: always refer to as “Big Labor”

Post-Election Mythorializing At the Wall Street Journal

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“The battle for liberty begins anew this morning.”

Wall Street Journal editorial, Nov. 7, 2012

It’s been a month or so now since the the Romney-Ryan-(Ayn) Rand ticket’s defeat. Ultimately, the Republicans were brought down by the moral Taliban, the Tea Party, and the plutocrats–the ranks of their party most out of touch with a changing America.

Since election night, undaunted and unchastened as ever, of course, the Wall Street Journal’s editorials have been doubling down on a few key themes left over, oh, let’s say, from the Reagan years: class warfare, ending all taxes if possible, unfettered free markets, and the inherent evils of government. Money quotations:

The great mistake of Mr. Obama’s first term was putting his social and political agenda above nurturing a faster economic growth. ( “Obama’s Real Fiscal Problem,” Nov. 30)

Mr. Obama has humiliated House Republicans and punished the affluent for the sheer joy of it. (“The Hard Fiscal Facts”, Nov. 11)

Imagine the gusher of revenue the feds could get if government got out of the way and let the economy grow faster. (“The Hard Fiscal Facts”, Nov. 11)

In this era when envy trumps growth, the government is raising taxes on thrift, investment and risk-taking in the name of fairness and to finance more government spending. No one should be surprised when there are fewer dividends and capital gains to tax. (“The Great 2012 Cashout”, Nov. 28)

“American prosperity is best served by letting business exploit as many opportunities as possible…” (“Energy Economics In One Lesson”, Dec. 6)

To be fair, there are a few more contemporary obsessions: fracking, school choice (“the great civil rights issue of our era”), teachers’ unions (“the Evil Empire”), and, of course, Obamacare.

One of the best Obamacare editorials (“Hope and Exchange,” Nov. 27) talked about Obamacare as the “re-engineering” of the health care system,” being “rammed” down the throats of the throats of Republicans. It especially extols Utah’s medical insurance exchange, organized around the trifecta of Republican dogma: defined contribution, consumer choice, and free markets. In other words, coverage caps, the end of all state insurance regulation, and no cost controls whatsoever.

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The more these guys change, the more they stay the same.

Romney & Pax Americana

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Top Ten Memes from Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial, “The Foreign Policy Debate,”

  1. national interest=self-interest of everyday Americans
  2. superiority of the “American model of economic freedom”
  3. withdrawal from the Middle East  guarantees further war in the Middle East
  4. “weakness” and “indecision”  invite war
  5. (as opposed to “credibility” & “resolve”)
  6. “the calibrated uses of power”= “smart diplomacy”
  7. America as “guarantor of peace & stability”, “chief underwriter of the world order”
  8. “the human and economic possibilities” of a world that, until Mr. Obama came to office, was freer than it had ever previously been
  9. less respect & influence abroad
  10. economic decline at home

    decline, withdrawal, weakness, indecision
    respect, influence, credibility, resolve, power

Ryan’s Mastermemes in the VP Debate

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Bellicose: Martial Law

Two dominant Ryan word clusters emerged from the VP debate. (Wordclouds of each are based on the frequency of each word).  The first portion of the debate, centered on the Benghazi assault, brought the extreme bellicosity of the Romney-Ryan foreign policy to the fore. This is the word family clustered around “peace through strength”,  “no apology”, “projecting weakness”, “American Exceptionalism”, and “emboldening our enemies”. It is well and truly Roveian (that is, inherently two-faced by turning everything into its opposite)  insofar as it claims that its aim is peace (For example, Ryan saying “We want to prevent war,” when he was directly asked if he wanted a war), but the emotional weight and entire subtext is what can be characterized as the material and psychological martial law enforced by America, the world’s sheriff.

In the alchemy of this rhetorical compound, ordinarily neutral terms such as “values” and “credibility” are appropriated into the discourse of dominance. The rest of the world–the subservient Other–has no credibility and doesn’t share “our” values.

Because this position is inherently unstable and subject to threat, it’s  always working to seem invulnerable. It’s the mastermeme that sanctions an unending “war on terror,” a state of velvet but perpetual martial law. It is eternally vigilant, always defending whatever means it uses (waterboarding, drone strikes, military invasions) to justify the end.

This paranoid sense of threat explains Ryan’s obsession with “credibility” and with not “projecting weakness”.  The projection is all. There’s absolutely no rhetorical space for irony or tragedy. It can never, ever “apologize”. It is hubris personified.

“Social Darwinism” is a second major Ryan meme, domestic cousin of the “martial law” meme:

Social Darwinism

This cluster (again, based on the number of times Ryan used each term in the debate)  stresses “self sufficiency”, “responsibility” and “making the tough choices”. It is a winner-take-all mentality, a Hobbesian materialism that is the diametrical opposite of Christian caritas. It eschews all dependencies–on the government, on foreign energy suppliers, on labor. It privileges the super-rich, rechristened and valorized as “job creators”. It is the only possible definition of “success“, so all else is, by implication, failure.

A taint of failure and thus scorn is rhetorically attached to anyone in opposition to any aspect of it. At best, dissenters from this orthodoxy are either dismissed as “special interests” (yet another neutral term that Roveianism appropriates, along with “values” “responsibility”, and even, astonishingly, “bi-partisaniship”) or as selfish “class warfare” crusaders hypocritically posing as humanitarians. The “heroes” of this meme are either Ayn-Rand titans of industry or “entrepreneurs” and “small businesses”. (Anyone but the workers themselvesof course). Although Ryan didn’t use the term “redistribution” in the debate, it is also part of the “failure” meme.

Both of these memes are deceptive and two-faced in their very DNA. They’re like deadly viruses, and Obama and Biden are running out of time to develop an antidote.

The Many Ryan Plans: Roadmaps to Nowhere

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Romney and Ryan face the fundamental dilemma of not being able to straightforwardly say how they would govern because the truth would devastate their campaign. So they swerve and obscure and misdirect, or as The Economist once called them, “fudges and elisions, and the odd outright falsehood.”

The template for this fraudulence was forged in fire when Paul Ryan’s original economic “Roadmap For America’s Future” was floated in 2008, 2009 and then again in 2010. After the 2010 relaunch, Republican leaders quickly read the tea leaves on this socially draconian plan and began furiously backing away from it.

The pruned and tweaked 2012 version seems downright benign in comparison to its predecessors, yet, as David Stockman argued in an August, 2012 NY Times Op-Ed, “Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan,” the much-revised roadmap still leads to nowhere.

Key specific recommendations in the many Ryan plans, currently to be avoided at all costs:

  • the 8.5%  “business consumption tax” (intended to replace the corporate income tax)
  • the optional privatization of Social Security
  • the replacement of the health insurance premium exclusion with an indexed tax credit
  • the elimination of the estate tax and all investment income taxes
  • raising Medicare eligibility age to 69 by 2022

Click here for a comparison of the four Ryan Plans, by the Committee For A Responsible Federal Budget