I Am Tired of the RNC Convention, Too.

1952 Republican National Convention, Chicago, Illinois.  Was it better then?

Three posts dealing with last week’s Republican Convention in Tampa remain unfinished.  I just don’t have the heart to deal with them.  What needs to be said about the convention has been said over and over.  And, honestly, finding something positive in all those comments is tough.  Thank god for Condoleezza Rice.  Although that Clint Eastwood sure is a funny old guy.

I can’t even get mad anymore.

But I was thinking about politicians, conventions, and facts.  Years ago I was prepping for a high school debate — the topic was universal health care, by the way — and my coach thought I should find a stronger piece of evidence to support an argument.  I pointed out that I had found something recently published from a current congressman.

Yes, my coach explained, he did indeed recently make that argument, but he is using information that is years old and disproven.

I was disappointed and a little shocked.  (And how so naive!)  But the transgression here was a matter of timeliness.  In the current political debate, black is white and up is down and few people give a damn.  Men and women seeking national leadership roles flat out lie and mislead.  Has it always been this way?

I believe politics reflects the will of the people — this is a democracy, after all — and it seems that the people have willed ignorance and deception as our guiding principles.  Anyone paying attention to what is happening in Washington — including the people running for public office now — know the true score.  So why do we let liars like Paul Ryan rewrite history and smash the facts?  (Paul Ryan perhaps the biggest liar of them all last week…and that says something.)

The bottom line is simple.  If you want to know what is going on politically, you don’t ask a politician.  They’ll give the answer that suits them best and too often that is a lie.  There is no mystery why most Americans don’t understand the simple facts behind our economic malaise any better than they understand quantum physics.  They have chosen to be uninformed, misinformed, and misled.

Americans should demand better, but frighteningly it looks like we might be on the eve of accepting even worse.   All this despite the disgraceful efforts put forth at the RNC National Convention.  Shame on us.

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Reading Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged 

In college I read Atlas Shrugged.  It was a matter of love.  A woman I loved fiercely gave me her copy.  And so I love the book.  Kind of.

Keep in mind that she could have given me a bus ticket to read and I would have thought it great literature.  Also let me tell you that I was 20 years old.  Those reasons are solid enough for me to “love” the book — at least they were many years ago — and maybe the only valid reasons to love the book either then or now.

Although, to be honest, as a young man thinking I had nothing but opportunity ahead of me, absolute individualism made a lot of sense.  I was, after all, in college and free from most worry.  I grew up fortunate, or at least fortunate enough.

But the poet in me took over; and I still enjoy this much about the book.  I found myself daydreaming about days when men wore fedoras and leather-heeled shoes.  I liked to think of spartan coffee shops on empty windswept city street corners.  Newspaper meant something real and tangible to me.  Khaki was sexy.  In short, I created a myth — or a sort of nostalgia — that hadn’t any basis in my own experience, but instead in an experience of fantasies that fit the Ayn Rand aesthetic.  Quickly that nostalgic fantasy more sense than any moral  or philosophical message in the book.

I even thought of my girlfriend as my Dagny Taggart.

So I grew up.  I think too many people reading too much into Ayn Rand have not grown up.  They are still reading their girlfriend’s book.

For my part, I realized that not everyone could own a railroad or a steel mill.  More importantly, I understood that this raised very interesting ethical, economic, and social questions.  I understood, too, that we needed people who could own and run railroads.  A large part of Atlas Shrugged, however, deals with people who choose not to run their railroad…or their factory or their lab or their whatever.  They take their marbles and go home.  That’s objectivism, I suppose.  Does it work?  It is hard to see how.

There is a lot of childish pleading and begging — almost like fetish porn — running through Atlas Shrugged.  (“Oh please…please, please, please…please…”)  There is a lot of self-serving gratitude, too.  Who is John Galt?  If  Hank Rearden were born today in Somalia, would he build a great foundry?  Probably not.  But there is no room for reality in the fiction of Atlas Shrugged.  It is pretty scary, therefore, when your political leaders start to cite it as a guiding philosophical text.

The captains of capitalism depend as much on the success of the majority as much as the majority depends on the success of the captains.  It is that simple.  You don’t really need to dig deeply into Ayn Rand’s populist pseudo-philosophy to understand that.  Even I, as a twentysomething, quickly sorted that out.

Ayn Rand (Photo credit: DonkeyHotey)

To say, as Paul Ryan says, that you are motivated by the thought and writing of Ayn Rand demonstrates a sort naivete and a not-so-careful reading or understanding of her thought.  Plus you have to pick and choose, if you’re Ryan reading Rand.  Religion — especially Catholicism — was not high on Rand’s list of institutions she tolerated, for example.  What should God-fearing conservatives think of that?  And in some rather uncouth ways, one might side her with feminists.  Ouch.

Never worry if you are a conservative, however; you primarily look for important-sounding fluff to stilt your platform anyway.  Pick and choose what works, i.e., what fools the followers most directly.  Sound intelligent, be intelligent.  Your platform will stand sturdy and strong.

Is that platform made of pine, by the way, as in Ayn?  Make sure you get your lies right.  Too many Anns want no part of it.

Related articles

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If I Had Hair This is What I Would Do…

After several hundred posts, I am slowly fine tuning the art of being a mostly-missed, poorly-understood small time blogger.   And I’ll share a tip with you, maybe one that is obvious.

Tip:  Don’t write about the big events of the day and expect big results.

When Mitt Romney rolled out dangerously misguided Paul Ryan as his running mate, I made the mistake of jumping into the fray.  The result?  A dozen or two readers.  The day before when I wrote about ghosts, ballerinas, and wood nymphs, I had several hundred readers.

Of course I have brilliant insight and comments to make about the decline of political leadership in the United States, but so do hundreds and thousands of other people who actually have followers.  They are going to take the lion’s share of the feast.

But if you want to know about screech owls or old people sitting on park benches, then I am your man.  So let’s see what happens if I just throw a random one out there.

If I had hair — and if I were a young woman — I would wear my hair as shown in Picture 1.  It is somewhat cheesy in a stylish sort of way, but interesting, kind of like me.  And if I were to wear my hair like that — and if I were a young woman — I would find a rooftop upon which to stand and gaze thoughtfully out over the trees and roof tops of the world.

So how is that?  Kind of a nice break from everything else that is going on in the world.  In fact I very nearly wrote about Helen Gurley Brown today only because I had yet another one of those strange congruences of experience and events.

Within the last week — I swear — I saw something about Cosmopolitan and, being convinced Helen Gurley Brown had already died, I asked myself when.  I could not remember.

So today…within minutes of looking for something other than Paul Ryan to write about … I see Helen Gurley Brown’s death announced, just as I am surfing Cosmopolitan for ideas.  Try to tell me that isn’t odd.

I do believe that we exist within connections of which we really cannot be aware.  It is something more than instinct and something more than foresight.  It is that sort of gut sense, the uncanny, maybe.

And I remain steadfastly convinced we connect with things that matter well before and after we might have an opportunity to experience them; experience and emotion somehow link up despite the chaos of it all.

At times this seems painfully simple and obvious.  But then I have to wonder why some of the best, most cherished connections defy the sense that made the connection in the first place.  When something comes undone, what is happening?  And why don’t I have hair?  There has to be something behind all of this…a hidden reason.  Having faith in that is like having religion.

Now please scroll down this blog and find something worth your time.  Tell your friends and family to do the same.  Then tell me about it.  I am eager to discover with you.

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Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan’s Budget

I am going for a walk.  And while I do that you should read “Everything You Need to Know About Chairman Ryan’s Budget” from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a non-partisan organization that monitors and assesses state and federal budget and policy trends and programs.

Look, there are many reasons why the global economy is out of sync with what Americans expect.  In many ways the economy simply is adjusting to changes in competitive advantages across the globe, especially labor, and changing investment streams that follow them.

But the situation threatening middle and working class security and opportunities rests heavily on the policy choices of recent years.  Yes, Democrats are guilty, too, of underfunding and cutting government and generally letting the programs and infrastructure that sustained American security and opportunities go to waste.

People like Paul Ryan — and his little side kick Mitt Romney — propose even more drastic changes, changes that would have been unthinkable in mainstream American political discourse until recently.  It represents the epitome of arrogance, recklessness, and blatant stupidity to further dismantle generations of progress and equality in this country.

Republicans today represent an extreme sort of social, political, and economic regression.  All you need to do to understand this is pay attention to their policy positions.  In other words, read a little.  Among the worst policies recommendations are those that come from Paul Ryan.  His budget plan is a made-to-fail disaster.

Republicans are not good for the United States and don’t serve the interests of most Americans, including an overwhelming majority of Americans who make the mistake of voting against their best interests and vote for these clowns.

We don’t need stupid ideologues running our government.  We need intelligent and informed leaders.  Republicans seem to possess neither of those qualities.  I have said it before and I will say it again, it is hard to see how a person can be both honest and informed and be a Republican today.

If you really do care about your children’s future — a favorite conservative politician’s trope — don’t vote Republican.

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An Expert From The Heritage Foundation Speaks on The Ryan Plan

Alison Acosta Fraser

I can’t help myself.  Sorry…back to sales later today.  First I have to comment on a segment of Talk of the Nation that aired on Tuesday, April 5.  It gives us a look at conservative reasoning skills and the “experts” who back it up.

Neal Conan, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, interviewed Alison Acosta Fraser, Director of the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation on the topic of solutions to the long-term federal debt crisis.

Conan is an intelligent and thoughtful journalist.  This could have been an opportunity for clear talk about the fundamentals behind the conservative fiscal and economic strategy.  Instead the so-called expert from the Heritage Foundation offered nothing more than rally-sign rhetoric that any right wing sycophant might parrot on talk radio. 

Representative Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Budget Committee, rolled out a plan to cut $5 trillion from an already starved federal budget.  He will cut assistance to poor and elderly while protecting the unbalanced tax cuts for the better off and wealthy in the United States.  (Got to love the Christian right in America.)  So much of Neal Conan’s discussion with Allison Acosta Fraser focused on Ryan’s misguided efforts.

Ms. Fraser talked about Paul Ryan’s “timeless vision” and “robust proposals,” but did a fairly horrible job explaining why his plan was such a great thing for the future. 

In the first place, conservatives don’t have the facts of history behind them.  We have been running government under an increasingly strong influence of conservative values.  Lower taxes, less regulation, and free trade have been conservative principles advanced by the right and frequently embraced by the left over the last 30 years.  It is hard to see how continuing down this path is a good idea unless, of course, you are unable to put 2 and 2 together and get 4, which is essentially what Republicans will not do.

Take a telling example from Ms. Fraser.  Neal Conan is pressing her a little about taxes and tax rates in the United States.  Alison Fraser doesn’t seem to understand the difference between rates and receipts, which makes discussing the simple fact of historic tax rates in the United States a cumbersome topic for her.

She insists that Paul Ryan wants to keep taxes where they are now “more or less at the historical average.”  When Conan suggests that taxes are at historic lows, Fraser’s answer is purely Palinesque:

“Yeah. He’s looking out towards the long term. So if you look over 10 years of his plan, they get up as they – you know, as they are projected to do anyway under current policy, to return to their historical average. The reason that they’re at lows right now – and they are recovering – is because we had a major recession…”

And it gets better.

Conan corrects her explaining that taxes are at historic lows.  And Fraser stumbles all over herself to agree — kind of.  I quote Ms. Fraser again:

“Tax – no, tax rates aren’t at historic lows. They have been lower in the past, but they are not as high as they have been in the distant past. You’re correct there.”

Wait…Conan said tax rates were at historic lows and Fraser says first answers “no, tax rates aren’t at historic lows.”  Well…actually she is going to say that they are not as high or as low as they have been “in the distant past” so in the end, Conan, “You’re correct there.”  The logic doesn’t add up unless you conflate history into some sort of singularity.  At some mysterious “distant past” we had lower tax rates, but we didn’t have the post-WWII economy either.

Fraser is eager to clear up the point.

Conan restates again that tax rates in the United States as a percentage of GDP are at the lowest level since Second World War.  And Fraser’s answer to this?  “Yeah. And we’ve had a major recession.”

So…because we now have the lowest tax rates since the Second World War we have a recession.  Seems to me maybe we should be talking about raising rates again, not lowering them.  Lowest taxes today and we have a recession.  That isn’t good.  Isn’t that what the expert from the Heritage Foundation Center on Economic Policy just said?

It is hard to know.  The entire interview is rambling half-finished conservative sound bites.  And this is what passes for an expert on the right.

In other words, there is no substance here.  Still no facts to support the conservative claims.  Facts are haphazardly misapplied anyway.  Moreover the principles of economics don’t back up their proposals so they don’t dare tread into that territory.  Instead there is nothing but ideological rhetoric packaged in simple-minded sound bites.  And this is from an “expert.”  Listen for yourself and decide. 

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