The Witch Doctor Understanding of Language

As you probably already know, Eric Cantor appeared on 60 Minutes over the weekend.  Here is the full interview, which clocks in at about 12:30 minutes:

Of course, it is the bit at about 10:50 that has drawn the most attention.  At that point Leslie Stahl asked about Cantor’s assertion that no one should ever compromise their principles in politics, and pointed out that Cantor’s hero – Ronald Reagan – did in fact compromise his own principles by raising taxes numerous times during his two-term presidency.

STAHL:          And at that point, Cantor’s press secretary interrupted, yelling from off camera that what I was saying wasn’t true.

                        [Plays videotape of Ronald Reagan announcing a tax increase.]

STAHL:          There seemed to be some difficulty accepting the fact that even though Ronald Reagan cut taxes, he also pushed through several tax increases, including one in 1982 during a recession.

Over at DKos yesterday, Hunter pointed out that this shouldn’t be a “difficulty” at all.  We have videotape, like the one Stahl ran, showing Ronald Reagan sitting in the Oval Office and announcing a tax increase – which he explicitly described as “a compromise.”  Hunter speculatively explains what happens as follows:

Conservatives vowed they would not raise any tax by any amount of money, ever, because it would make Reagan and the Conservative Baby Jesus cry.  Democrats and others began to rightly point out that this was, historically, simply an untenable position to have, and that even the most conservative conservative who ever conservatived, Ronald Reagan, raised some taxes on some things in order to not have government auger itself into the ground.  This caused a bout of cognitive dissonance within the conservative hive mind, first manifesting itself as profound irritation that anyone would ever bring up such a thing, then transforming into a full-fledged demand that anyone saying such things shut up already, and finally morphing into the rather impressive psychological feat of simply denying that any such thing ever happened.  History itself, apparently, had to be changed to accommodate the grand conservative need to believe unambiguously in the absolute truth of their own ideological pronouncements.

That sounds about right, but I would go even further.  I’ve been watching Movement Conservatism for a while now, and the True Believers exhibit what I’ve come to think of as the “Witch Doctor Understanding of Language.”

The 1%'s Own Terror Gives the Game Away

I had a weird revelation the other day:  the ultimate success or failure of the Occupy Wall Street Movement will not be determined by the protesters themselves, but by the 1% and all of their political and media enablers.

But believe it or not, the 1% do feel . . . well, probably not guilt . . . but at least a vague and deeply disturbing apprehension that they may have to pay for what they’ve done in their sociopathy.  And it is this that will help ensure the Occupy Movement’s continuing success.

GOP: Gang Of (adolescent) Punks

Back in my college days I read a line by P.J. O'Rourke that stuck with me ever since. P.J. was explaining the allure of being a 3rd World freedom fighter and observed (paraphrasing from memory): "It will always be more fun to run around in the mountains with a Kalashnikov and sleep with ideology-addled college girls than it will be to spend your life in a rice paddy staring at the ass-end of a water buffalo." Of course, what is implied but not stated is that "staring at the ass-end of a water buffalo" is what actually keeps people from starving to death.

Generally speaking, it is the sober, plodding work that people do that produces more overall benefit, and does so more reliably and routinely, than does the rousing, romantic, exciting confrontation that we all tend to find so viscerally appealing. This is why - in the Real World - most people end up in jobs that do not provide much in the way of excitement but do pay better than any reasonable alternative: boring, routine work produces the most benefit to society. This is also why they don't make movies that are only about people doing boring, routine work: we may all of us be stuck doing that sort of stuff, but we don't enjoy it much and our dreams are always of things a lot more fun.

One of the marks of being an adult is recognizing a univeral truth: if you really want to accomplish something worthwhile, doing so will involve a great deal of hard, mostly boring work. On the other hand, if you care more about "striking a blow" or "making a statement" for whatever cause you've decided to make your own, then you are still pretty much an adolescent who really just wants to star in a movie.

Sometimes it seems to me that America is becoming more and more a nation of adolescents. Even scarier, there seems to be an increasing likelihood that these adolescents have actually seized control of the country.

Eric Cantor: My Negotiating Guru

House Leader Eric Cantor has an, ah, unique negotiating style. Apparently, during a meeting with President Obama on Tuesday, Cantor suggested that there was nothing stopping everyone involved in the debt limit negotiations from reaching a deal immediately. Cantor pointed out that the GOP had asked for entitlement cuts and that the White House had agreed to some entitlement cuts in exchange for additional increases in revenue. The only sticking point was that the GOP didn't want to give Obama any increases in revenue. Nevertheless:

"We both agree on doing something that is good for the country, which is dealing with entitlements," Cantor said, "Why don't we just do that? Why do we have to sit here and say we still got to raise taxes when we don't agree on that? We both agree on entitlements, and, in fact, we would both agree on what the president's prescription for entitlement reform is."

That's brilliant! I can't wait to pull that the next time I get a new car: "Look, we both agree that you want me to have this car, and that I want me to have this car. Why do we have to sit here and say we still got to agree that I need to pay you money for it? Why don't we just go with what we both agree on: I get the car. We can do this deal right now."

I'm sure that'll go over about as well as did this silliness with the President.