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Not too many years ago in Texas, a right wing operative told the mainstream press I was a communist. Even in Texas the accusation (based solely on my mocking of '60s John Birchers in an old news story) was laughed at. Nobody'd seen a communist for a really long time. Around Texas there were more alien abduction reports than sightings of communists or socialists.
Lately, though, Republicans here and around the country are warning that there are socialist aliens among us, dangerous aliens probing our vulnerable parts and threatening to destroy the American way of life. John McCain and Sarah Palin say Barack Obama is one. In McCain and Palin's America, there are now two choices. You can be 1) a fake plumber; 2) a socialist.
What's up with this? Two words. No, three words. Big. Insurance. Lobbyists. There are a lot of insurance lobbyists on McCain's staff. With polls showing most Americans want and need health care reform, the health insurance lobby is desperate. So, they begin their campaign against reform by raising the specter of socialism - accusations that can be delivered by television ads paid for with federal matching fund (public) dollars.
The health insurance industry's dirty secret, that all its profits come from the denial of claims and exclusion of coverage, is a little less secret than it used to be. If millions of dollars can be used now to begin to label reform plans as "socialism," Big Insurance will have a head start in the 2009 Congress.
Of course, the term "socialized medicine" has long been used by the insurance industry and the really stupid doctors who've allowed themselves to become slaves to an industry that forces them to deliver poorer and poorer care. Actually, doctors started it way back in the 1920s, before the insurance industry really got into the health business. Until the 1940s, insurance execs couldn't figure out how to make money in health. They could insure property, because everyone's house didn't burn down. They could sell life insurance and earn a lot from investments they made with premiums before their policyholders died. But health? Everybody gets sick. Everybody dies. Where's the profit in that? (As it turns out, there is a lot of money in denying health care.)
When, in the early 20th Century, medical knowledge and training led to a wide disparity between rich and poor in health care, many reformers began advocating for some sort of solution. But these were the years of the Red scares. Industry barons labeled all solutions communist or socialist. Better dead than Red.
It's even cooler that McCain and Palin can get the socialism meme out there without really having to talk about health care, which might raise suspicions. Instead, they base the accusation on Obama's rather bland description of the decades-old American progressive tax system. Obama used the phrase "spread the wealth" when he answered Joe-Who's-Really-Sam-The-Plumber-Who's-Not-A-Plumber.
McCain spits out the words "spread the wealth" with the same derision he used to mock women's health in the last debate. McCain uses scare quotes a lot.
Fear of socialism is suddenly making a comeback. Here an excerpt from an email I got a couple of days ago. It's being forwarded by employees of big corporations.
Notice to All Employees
As of November 5, 2008, when President Obama is officially elected into office, our company will instill a few new policies which are in keeping with his new, inspiring issues of change and fairness:
1. All salespeople will be pooling their sales and bonuses into a common pool that will be divided equally between all of you. This will serve to give those of you who are underachieving a "fair shake."
2. All low level workers will be pooling their wages, including overtime, into a common pool, dividing it equally amongst yourselves. This will help those who are "too busy for overtime" to reap the rewards from those who have more spare time and can work extra hours.
3. All top management will now be referred to as "the government." We will not participate in this "pooling" experience because the law doesn't apply to us.
4. The "government" will give eloquent speeches to all employees every week, encouraging it's workers to continue to work hard "for the good of all."
Never mind the irony of such a message coming from business people who are directly or indirectly lining their pockets with taxpayer bailout cash. On it's face the socialism described by this mocking email is just silly.
Except it's having its effect. I called a few conservative friends over the last few days to ask them about this newfound fear of socialism. They are all taking it seriously. They don't really know why it's bad. Just is. Their minds are closed to the fact that wasteful spending by the private health insurance business is far great than the most wasteful government-managed program.
Socialism is just a monster that was under their beds when they were kids.
And they find a strange, infantile comfort in making themselves scared of the dark once again.
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I work in IT at a large insurance company. I need to pretend I don’t sometimes to live with myself.
Digg it Pups!!
We need single payer Health insurance so that all citizens have complete access to quality Healt Care. where the use of prevention has already show that it will save money in the long run! The VA is a good example of the good results/cost savings that can be had from preventative medicine!!
Insurance companies so dominate the economy that it’s inevitable that many good people must work for them, the way a lot of farmers and farmhands wound up in agribusiness. In fact, it’s probably true that very few work within perfectly progressive job settings. We’re lucky for the enlightened souls within these institutions.
Thanks for hitting this point. As long as the insurance companies continue to make money by denying care our healthcare system will continue to go down the tubes. I’d love to get the insurance companies completely out of the picture. Imagine what level of care could be provided by the money that now goes directly to operating expenses and profits for the insurance industry.
Short of getting rid of the insurance companies, the system needs to be altered so that they make money only by delivering care and get punished severely for denying care.
“Western European Democratic Socialism” = Rethug Talking Point.
Female Rethug on Local PBS program this morning: “Obama represents the European Democratic Socialist form of Big Gubmint. Which I don’t like.”
This is all so ridiculous.
By their standards, all insurance is socialism.
It is becoming clearer every day. Their con-job is exposed. Socialism for the rich. Capitalism for the poor.
We could be far healthier for far less money. That’s a fact. Seems like a good message, ‘cept for the cultural and political narrative that such things as single payer will poison our precious bodily fluids…
It’s all hokum. McCain is running on fumes. His bag of tricks is empty and this is just some of the lint that fell out. His and Palin’s charge that Obama is socialist has as much resonance as if they accused him of being a Whig.
Gee whiz, Glenn;
We is beset; terrorists, commies and bears!
Oh my!
We is so lucky to have the Political Class on our “side”.
Can you imagine what it would be like if the Political Class were to be on the “side” of the Ari$tocracy?/s
We need to tell that story over and over and over, to friends, colleagues, family, to people we’d really rather not talk to. Frames and narratives change the brain. We can’t erase the socialist frame in some people’s brains. We have to wire the new — and true — one around it. And that takes volume and persistence.
That’s a BINGO!, Glenn.
The health insurance plan that eventually passes will be similar to the Medicare prescription drug plan, in that citizens will often be forced to forgo the carrot and settle for the stick. Still, it will be better than the coverage a lot of Americans currently have, which is none.
Healthcare I maintain is one area where budget constraints would not have to be a problem. The private system is so inefficient and expensive compared to the government’s Medicare that healthcare could probably be re-organized, made universal, and save money.
Medicare for everyone.
I agree with this, and that’s why I explored their reason for doing it. Highly unlikely that the socialist threat was popping in their polls. If they know it won’t help them get elected, why devote the resources to it? Well, there is the total bankruptcy of strategy by the McCain campaign. But, I think the lobbyists running the campaign are quite happy with their socialism charge, preposterous as it is in the election setting.
My sister left a good paying job at a large insurance co. because she couldn’t deal with the way they operate.
The job was actually making her sick!
Except that there is a problem with the concept of “Medicare for everyone.”
Because then, we’d have to accept the idea that we are one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Joe the Plumber represents the classic Republican meme whereby a voter endorses mean Republican policies on the slim chance that some day in the future he may benefit from them.
“Socialism bad! Hitler fascism good!” ~ chant by the McCain/Bush/Palin supporters
How true the Rethuglians mantra that the government would dole out your health care has many people afraid of such a proposal. they point to the other countries that do cover all their citizens and say(incorrectly mostly) that there would be long lines and some procedures would not be covered. But they fail to mention all the procedures that the Big Insurance Companies have denied and in some cases have directly caused the Death of their policy holder!! WE need a system where every citizen has access to health care.
is it possible that the anti-socialism campaign is not primarily about the presidential elections but instead about obama will be able to do to reform health care while still being able to portray himself as a moderate centrist who advocates for bipartisan solutions?
I agree , Medicare is one of the best run programs in Washington!
that may be closer than you think. did you catch the latest “a vote for Obama is a vote for a Kristallnacht redux” email sent out to elderly Jewish voters by the official republican outlets in PA? in terms of agitprop propaganda we’re well into 1932 territory here.
A couple of years ago I was over in the USA, Arizona actually. I found all my old friends, senior aerospace execs,now largely retired, were afraid, I mean really afraid, of getting seriously ill because it could ruin them.
As I get older lots of my friends, and me, here in bad, Socialist, Britain,have health issues, and the common experience is that they get ill, they get medically and personally well treated on the NHS, they get better, or not,as the case may be.
There are of course little niggles, and not every problem can be sorted, but by and large they are all satisfied. A few use a level of private care, but usually just to advance treatment which would not worsen if it was delayed or to get better food or a private room. No-one, ever, worries about the monetary effect of getting seriously ill. That’s the truth of the British National Health Service.
If that’s the system Mr McCain and his buddies don’t like, I cannot for the life of me understand why not.
Medicare is not a panacea, especially for people on fixed incomes. Even with state government picking up roughly half the tab, my Medicare premium eats up roughly one tenth of my monthly disability insurance. Having said that, it’s a lot better than not being covered at all.
Notice what’s at the bottom of that antagonism? Authoritarianism versus egalitarianism.
This is where George Lakoff’s work has great importance. He explains the power of the frames and cultural narratives that flow from these two worldviews. Full disclosure, I work with George. But his recent elaborations tell us accurately that many people carry both worldviews in different parts of their lives. A strict, authoritarian parent might hold progressive, egalitarian political views.
Contemporary evidence of this can be found, believe it or not, in right wing christian churches, which created nurturant institutions (providing tutoring, day care, psychological counseling, financial aide, a sense of community) that have led in recent months to a mellowing on political positions — pro-environment and anti-poverty.
The right wing has succeeded in capitalizing on the authoritarian worldview with broad and deep communications infrastructure. For too many years the left took a rationalist approach: just give people the facts and they’ll reason to the right conclusion.
But if facts worked, the observation that we could all be healthier for less cost would gain universal support for some kind of single payer approach. It doesn’t, because people can’t reason their way out of their worldviews. A new worldview must be created in the minds and hearts, and that takes right framing, right storytelling. In turn, framing and storytelling must be repeated, loud and long. They must here them from the neighbors, their colleages, and on tv.
OT -
Live web cam: Colfax Ave. at Civic Center Park
http://denver.rockymountainnew.....index.html
Crowds gather for Obama visit, The Rocky is blogging live from the event.
http://www.rockymountainnews.c.....up-sunday/
Since the US is the only industrialized country, a misnomer in itself because we don’t really produce anywhere near what we did 30 years ago, without a national health care system I find it hard to believe that we aren’t smart enough to come up with a system that combines the best of all the systems in other countries and improve upon those systems. These countries didn’t start their health care systems yesterday so there are myriad lessons learned.
That’s the point. It’s not about McCain’s election. It’s about stopping health care reform.
the more i think about this the more i think this is the right wing version of our extremely manipulative and dangerous “Health Care for America NOW!” campaign - both are supposed to be about health care reform but are really about other things - one of the biggest of them being to undermine grass roots pressure for reform that does not benefit the insurance industry.
True ‘national security’, in the human sphere, has far less to do with a huge arsenal than with the well-being of the individual citizens of an nation, any nation,
As it stands (however shakily), America does not appear to wish to be a great nation with great notions, we prefer, ‘twould seem, the thread-bare approach, the resurrection of the feudal age and the diminishment of our own humanity while we engage in the deliberate destruction of other’s lives and the capacity of Earth to support any meaninful human existence, since, for certain powerful ‘interests’, the Rapture appears to be a good ‘investment’.
Sick AND pathetic.
Time for change. Real, substantive, and meaningful change.
Only our collective (I know, a ’socialist’ ‘concept’) human future (and that of the world) is at stake.
It seems like the “internets” has been the most effective of the lie-spewing methodologies of the McDead campaign. That is, when asked, these people who repeat the “Muslim, socialist, Hussein” crap, say they read it on the internet. It seems to have stuck, so it would make sense that they would try this out on their “base.”
Sadly for them, their base has already stuck on that, and it is no longer growing. They cannot peel very many votes off at this point. Go early voting!
It is taboo for politicians to admit that other countries do anything better than the U.S., despite the fact that we’re way down the list in terms of average life expectancy, etc.. We keep getting screwed but it’s okay because they tell us that we’re number one while they’re doing it.
not about stopping it - about shaping it and who is to benefit.
if we really care about genuine reform that is not a sop to the insurance industry - we have to point out what is being done by campaigns run by both parties. so let’s be clear about what our side is doing too.
McCain and his buddies don’t like it because:
1) They are paid by the insurance companies not to like it;
2a) At some level the authoritarian mind understands that the health fears of Americans keep them docile. There’s less time for political engagement when we must work night and day for insurance benefits;
2b) People can be controlled by exploiting the Western neurosis that disease or accident is a sign from God that one is not one of the Elect, that one is consorting with demons, or been cursed by devil-worshipers. Guilt about ill health is a terrible thing, and it’s been politically exploited for a long, long time.
More Numbers -
Obama visits Reno, takes on criticism
About 11,000 attend rally at UNR ballfield
With the finish line of a long and hard-fought presidential campaign looming into view, Democratic nominee Barack Obama told a Las Vegas crowd of 18,000 on Saturday not to stop fighting.
Obama tells crowd of 45,000 he’ll create millions of jobs
———————————
McCain, accompanied by his wife, Cindy, was greeted by 1,000 to 1,500 people earlier Saturday in Albuquerque,
The Arizona Republican stood under a giant American flag on Mesilla’s historic plaza, telling a crowd of about 3,000 people under a blazing autumn sun ……….
So , yesterday McCain spoke to 4,500 people, Obama spoke to 74,000 people.
Here’s how I’ve been answering those scary emails from relatives:
1) The police department is socialist.
2) The fire department is socialist.
3) The library system is socialist.
I’m trying to remember when this dread of socialism started and why. It seems most of my life and I wonder if the people long ago confused socialism with communism. There’s no logical reason to explain it.
Medical Insurance - Kaiser Permanante, Received today 10/24/2008
Deductable $5450, $30/visit after deduction, Family Plan
Age Month Year +Deductable
<30 $281 $3372 $8832
30-39 $314 $3768 $9218
40-49 $352 $4224 $9670
50-54 $416 $4992 $10442
55-59 $513 $6192 $11642
60-64 $638 $7656 $13106
65+ $837 $10044 $15494
$50 copay, Family Plan
Age Month Year
<30 $675 $8100
30-39 $746 $8952
40-49 $751 $9012
50-54 $855 $10260
55-59 $983 $11796
60-64 $1113 $13356
65+ $1352 $16224
Major childbearing age is 20-40. When my son was born, it cost me $1 at Kaiser. My insurance was about $100/month.
This is insane. No company will create jobs here, when it can hire a cihnese or indian for the same as our health insurance costs.
But SD, it is axiomatic that America has NOTHING to learn from anyone else.
We’re “exceptional”.
I mean it would start with ‘health care’, but then, heaven forbid, the economic ’system would come under scrutiny.
We might even want to examine the role and cost of the MIC.
Besides, what could ANY nation or people have to teach us, we’re Gawd’s chosen, not those ‘others’?
;~D
I planned on tackling this in a subsequent post. Let me say here that early in the Dem primaries, Lakoff and I (with several of our colleagues) wrote about the problems with most of the Dem health care plans.
Their biggest mistake is what we call “surrender in advance,” assuming they can negotiate with insurance companies (or simply avoid some of their highly leveraged antagonism). Now that all Dems have been attacked as socialists for having even modest reform plans ought to cure them of that misguided belief.
What happens is the core progressive value gets undermined by halfway solutions.
p.s. i’m a little slow, but catching on now i hope.
Good point. Fewer and fewer companies will pay for health care benefits. Yep, pretty soon the only folks who will have insurance benefits with the job will be government workers. Socialism.
Slow? You got it perfectly. I mean, you agree with me. You must be smart. :)
That’s a lot of it. During the Cold War, the more nuanced view was that the Soviet style of government was actually socialism, not communism. It complicated matters when people began to point out that Great Britain, Canada, etc. also had socialist tendencies.
Earlier in the 20th century, the anti-communist, anti-socialist meme was promoted by pols and their corporate sponsors as a rationalization to prevent workers from organizing.
Damn, slow browser again. The above was a response to selise at 43.
They are afraid of catching a Social(ism) Disease.
i think you and george are missing the point - it’s not about “surrender in advance,” it’s about manipulating democratic voters’ expectations so that the party leaders can craft halfway measures that have corporate support without antagonizing their base.
this, imo, is the essence of clinton’s third way that has now become so central to Democratic party governance.
Kind of you to say so. Thanks for the thought.
It started on 6 Nov 1917, the day the Bolsheviks overthrew the Menshevik provisional government headed by Kerensky. Europe and the US were scared to death the revolution would spread worldwide. Lenin’s attempt to convert an agrarian economy to communism was a dismal failure but the threat continued to be a rallying point in Europe and the US.
Colbert pointed out with the McCain plan you can get your insurance, when you cross state lines to buy your illegal fireworks, cigarettes, and liquor.
just wait until you see my 49 *g*
hope i was wrong about you and george and that we’re still in agreement.
Yes, they were blurred. Intentionally. It’s an important point.
Kucinich was the only single payor medical care proponent, but he’s funny looking. He’s got a hot wife though. Rich Lowery might have generated some buzz for a Kucinich candidacy. /s
Well, that’s not so off the mark. I think it’s opportunistic avoidance of pain, you think it’s electoral manipulation. Honestly, it’s both, I guess.
Don’t forget that Dennis and Elizabeth are vegan. No point in trying to run that flag up Joe the Plumber’s pole.
I concur absolutely. Its Obama’s way also. Testaments to this phenomenon abound.
Who was the academic who wrote about “democratic socialism” back in the day? He was speaking at the University, and he stayed overnight in a hotel where I worked as a waitress. I recognized him, and he was overjoyed that the revolution might be on the way when his waitress recognized him. . .
What hackworth said at 58.
Ted Kennedy, who has had great health care, is working to introduce a plan in Jan of 2009
wishing i could find more on who his coworkers at this moment…
I’ll let go of my meat when you pry it from my cold dead fingers. /s
Hmmmm, gettin’ a little phallic around here. *g*
I nearly spit out my breakfast cereal when Lindsey Graham said (repeatedly) on This Week that Barack Obama never says or does anything without the approval of MoveOn.org. Lying bastard, I usually mute the TV when his smarmy, sanctimonious face appears.
Afraid you’re on your own there, buddy. Hope you occasionally let it go for hygienic purposes.
Actually, my belief is that they have no idea what it means, its just one more way for the rethuglicans to scare the sheeple(low info voter)into voting against their own interests. The repig party has been doing it since Nixon in 72, and except for a couple of elections it has worked out real good for them. Scare the crap out of the sheeple and tell them that the wolf-a repig-is really just the sheep dog. So it goes, over and over. It has worked great for over 30 years, so it should work great this time, no. Democracy, ain’t it wonderful. The thugs and the crooks win in order to fleece the sheeple and give the rich more money. The bailout will just make the pigs richer while the “ordinary joe” will be totally forgotten 30 sec after the election is over.-Of course that is if the repigs win with the crap they are pushing on the sheeple.
One important point: we have to change the opinion environment candidates step into. It’s not just the responsibility of our candidates to pick up the flag. This was the secret to the conservative ascendency. Their candidates stepped could campaign on messages well-seeded in advance by the movement. It was the communications infrastructure advantage.
We haven’t done that, though we are really starting to reach that level. In other words, I blame progressive donors for not getting it as much as any individual candidate.
I wonder if he can go anywhere without an entourage. If I lived in his neigborhood, I would carry a camera at every opportunity so as to catch him with a boyfriend or male prostitute.
Hmm …”the core progressive value gets undermined by halfway solutions.”
Do you suspect, Glenn, that simple, upright courage, or its lack, replaced by (political) ‘expediency’ might be the ‘problem’?
To be blunt, when have progressive values EVER, in living memory (mine is round-about 62 years) had a fair shake in this nation?
Care to name a single President, Vice President, Cabinent Officer or even a Senator who has CONSISTENTLY, or even ‘partially’ consistently stood, virtually every time, or even ‘most’ of the time, regardless of the political ‘cost’ for such values, who did not, in the end, ‘compromise’ to the point of abject ’surrender’?
For progressive ideas to take firm ‘root’ they need to be consistently ‘planted’ and ‘tended’, who, among the ’serious’ Political Class has done these things?
‘Serious’ meaning simply having enough ‘clout’ to consistently be ‘heard’.
At best, we might find (and agree upon) a few ‘examples’, but such examples are the ‘exception’, if you will, we all know what ‘rules’.
I hear that stack of books on my coffee table screaming my name.
Be good to yourselves, and all other living things.
Namaste
Well said.
That neurosis is much weaker in Britain, and of course we are also much less religious, which may be connected. Even that faithful ally of the free market, Margaret Thatcher, felt she had to say “The National Health Service is safe in our hands”.
conyers actually had a single payer plan. he introduced H.R.676 - and it got 93 cosponsors (see pnhp’s info and links). “Healthcare Now” is the coalition that is advocating in support.
oops.
but that’s not the obama plan.
so… a bunch of “progressive” organizations got together and pooled resources ($40 million) to start a “grass roots” campaign they call “Health Care for America NOW!” (i’m sure there was no intention to confuse people by choosing a name so similar to the single payer advocates’ organization /s). they came up with a set of “principles” that don’t require single payer and asked us to lobby congress to support it. we did. now congress pretends to listen to us and so get’s to do what they wanted to do all along. in fact obama just signed up on oct 6).
the whole thing stinks and a lot of good people got suckered. worse, our national “debate” on health care was set back.
Paraphrasing another comment (67), we have to do this ourselves. The Right was smart. It altered the opinion environment between elections. It did it with a communications infrastructure that cost milliions and millions. The progressive movement is way underfunded. We’re doing a great job given the resources.
Some people argue with me about this, but there’s a limit to what even “transformational” candidates can do in any given election. We ask them to carry the flag up a steep hill toward our dug-in and well-armed opponents — and I can’t blame them, really, for not making the sacrifice.
We have to take the hill. Then choose our leaders to build the city there.
Best I can tell, Joe and Lindsey never venture far from McCain’s crevasse unless they’re spewing talking points on TV.
was writing my comment at 73 and didn’t see your reply (or SD’S) that i need not have.
That statement is the BIG BINGO!!! of this thread, so far as I’m concerned.
Stand firm, selise.
The d’s have abused the public trust quite as much as the r’s.
One might say they’ve (d’s and r’s) been in cahoots these past almost-eight years, without straying an inch from the truth …
And they lie just as unconvincingly as the thugs, when they set us up for the next ’sell-out’.
Another thought. It is the fear of the unfamiliar.
Can you imagine the row the Republicans would make if someone suggested for the first time today that all American Communities should have identical bright yellow buses with flashing lights to take the kids to school? Now that is socialism!
Risk aversion plays a big role in delaying change, even change necessary for survival. Makes you wonder how evolution produced risk aversion.
What would cause the health insurance industry to implode like the “lenders” and speculators of late? They need to go down, we will pay for it just like we will pay for the banks, but a lot more people will be dead.
The major parties are two fat maggots feasting on the bloated corpse of our Republic. Still, the Dems are the more attractive of the two… as maggots go.
Early humans had to confront risk on a more or less continuous basis. They didn’t have the opportunity to get stuck in a comfy little rut like we do.
not all risk taking is adaptive.
Hold onto your hats - BT is upstairs with some amazing stuff.
Blue Texan Sunday Morning Edition is upstairs!
McCain Totally Losing It: Palin Is Qualified To Be President Because She’s Married To An Oil Facilities Worker
Glenn;
If you have been reading my comments over time, then you will know that I hold as self-evident, in a society which has or pretends to have democratic traditions, the obligation of the citizenry to insist upon justice, equality and truth.
I intend to ‘help’ our ‘leaders’ know which way to ‘lead’ us until the day I untangle this mortal coil and shuffle off on the next great adventure.
But, what has gone on, while, in part, is on the souls of ‘the people’, has been achieved through deliberate deceit, secrecy, and arrogance on the part of the Political Class.
Until the Political Class is made to recognize and accept their responsibility and malfeasance (I refuse to ‘politicize’ CRIMMINAL behavior, to turn Cass Sunstein’s ’sentiments’ in the other ‘direction’) then we are susceptible to ungoing collapse, as a society, quite as much as we are vulnerable to economic perfidity.
You’re right and ratfood at 82 is right. Motorcyle helmet laws are a good example of your point. In that case, I wonder how there are any bikers left to protest the laws….
LOL!!!
The yellow scourge is loosed upon us!
i heard an argument for universal health care last night that i especially liked because i thought it would appeal to rightwingers. but i can’t remember where i heard it and a brief search did not turn it up. i’m sure it’s been made many times, all of them much better than i could… but it went something like this:
we need innovation. innovation requires risk taking. in hard economic times we could encourage innovation by providing universal health care and a basic safety net because then people with a good idea would be more willing to pursue it. yeah! new business, people are free to innovate and create and (by implication, get rich)….
i’ll try to find the quote.
Maggots?
Or weevils?
As in the ‘lesser’?
I was using the editorial “we.” Our counterparts, conservative movement activists, benefited from rich ideologues who funded a massive noise machine. What we’ve done we’ve done on our own. I hope funders notice the successes.
As to the elite political class, it is a threat to democracy. We are slowly unraveling their authority, but oh so slowly…
they will stop lying when it stops working for them. i hope our attempts to shine a light can help.
Some thinkle tanks of our own?
Absolutely.
Hint. Hint.
The argument has been made, lo these many years, that ALL the ‘real’ wealth is on ‘their’ side.
Wealthy leftists THIS is your moment. Step into the light and be counted.
Please.
The big problem, Glenn, as I see it, has to do with ‘comfort’; that seemingly being the goal of our nation’s ’striving’ … but what you (and I and many others) are suggesting puts easy ‘comfort’ at risk, thereby mitigating its saliency in the ‘considerations’ of many people, who would prefer, naturally, we are to assume, that someone else take the risks, whether politician or fellow citizen … not a good thing. It connotes a laziness of mind and a lack of rigor in consciousness.
Could be a part of a general appeal to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—interesting argument- but the right will claim that hunger and poverty motivate people to work hard (if you don’t feed em).
Think how much more vast the darkness, were our efforts at ‘enlightenment’, however unrewarding they may seem, not
being made?
Thank you, selise for standing, always, for compassion, understanding and truth.
You are the (prickly, but gentle) conscience of the lake more often than you know …
i think that argument works better in good economic times because there is less unemployment. when people can’t find a job, you can starve them but it’s pretty hard to make them work harder when there is no job.
but i’ll have to use it on a few right wingers - my ability to predict their response is not very good.
i’m pretty sure that prickly is an understatement. but i thank you not being a “prickly” as i am. *g*
That’s decadence, and I’m afraid you’re onto it. Although it’s deadly contortions have been great in the past, Western Europe (look at prospering, humane Spain) seems to have avoided this Romanesque downward spiral. The American resistance from the beginning — Jefferson, Emerson, et al — has from the beginning articulated the danger.
A conscience which is not prickly, has little to recommend it.
But, as I have suggested, selise, you temper your honesty with a gentle self-awareness which reflects a journey of depth and breadth, wrapped in wise humor …
;~D
But Joe the Plumber and his parents were FINE with socialism for the poor when they all were on welfare. Hannity sure ignored that statement from Joe and went onto another subject fast. Now that Joe has made it, he refuses to pay back the system that helped him in tough times. Selfish, selfish Joe the Plumber (who doesn’t even have a plumbing license!).
deep in EPU land: i think one of the repugs strongest or at least most resonant memes on healthcare is “choice”.. people keep talking about how some bureaucrat will decided their healthcare. we need to demolish that argument… as if healthcare is a matter of choice, as if somebody would deliberately choose inferior care. and as if under current plans anyone has any meaningful choice… instead of a bureaucrat its a claims adjusters determining who you can see and what procedures you acn have.
“I planned on tackling this in a subsequent post. Let me say here that early in the Dem primaries, Lakoff and I (with several of our colleagues) wrote about the problems with most of the Dem health care plans.
Their biggest mistake is what we call “surrender in advance,” assuming they can negotiate with insurance companies (or simply avoid some of their highly leveraged antagonism). Now that all Dems have been attacked as socialists for having even modest reform plans ought to cure them of that misguided belief.
What happens is the core progressive value gets undermined by halfway solutions.”
Glenn, I actually think the solution to the framing problem can be found in the language both progressive and more conservative parties use in talking about programs, and how they pay for them.
They use the term “Social Market Economy” — I know this is true in Scandinavia (read and speak Danish) and in Germany (also read and speak) and while the parties argue constantly about the balance between “Social” and “Market” no one would consider delinking them. In practice, what it means is that policy is weighed in both social and market terms, forcing an open political discussion of necessary or recommended trade-off’s. Let me give you an example of a small thing I followed a few years back.
This was a debate in the Danish Folketing — the parliment. Heart Researchers had completed significant research around the globe regarding the relationship between diet for school children where the school lunches were high in fats that contributed in middle and old age to heart disease. The proposal before the Folketing required the school lunch programs, and the canteens in upper schools and Universities, to reduce fats, and add more fruits and vegetables to the menues. The Ministry of Health provided the Folketing a quite detailed analysis of the lifetime costs to the National Health Service of heart disease caused by diet, as well as a projection of how much money could be saved by reducing heart disease via better children’s school diets — spread over 65 years. Loss of earning capacity due to disability was also laid out. It fell to the Folketing members to debate the social value of such a program, and the economic cost benefit analysis of the proposal. No one argued that it was “up to the parents” to decide whether to try to reduce their kids probability of getting heart disease — or perhaps that the science was bad, and who believed science anyhow — no, the frame was social market economy. Are heart healthy people better off? Happier? — and what are the potential ways available to reduce fat intake? What are the costs? And yes, they did make significant changes in school menues as a result.
This of course happened because all 14 parties in the Folketing didn’t question that heart disease cost their national health and welfare budget considerable funds, and every Dane is covered by the National Health Program — and lowering the incidence of Heart Disease saved money. So did postponing it to later years. Thus it was both a market decision and a social one.
And what party coalition sponsored this legislation — well the more conservative coalition. The Social Democrats went along of course, as the then leader of the minority — but no ism had any part in the debate. Fruit and Vegetables won.
We need to start using a concept like “Social Market Economy” — there is a good discussion of the evolution of the cross party concept particularly in Germany and France in Tony Judt’s recent book, “Postwar”
Glenn, your thinking is such a pleasure to contemplate. Thank you and thank you to the folks at FDL.
Just returned from a long meeting, so I’m sorry for taking a while to respond. Thanks for the kind words.
I like that frame. Social market economy. I wasn’t aware of it before.