Don't Listen To The Douchebags

by Gary Farber

This is my sign-off post for at least three weeks or so, as a front-pager, as I'm in the final stages of my move to Oakland. (Any help, as described, much appreciated.)

But before I go, some quick parting links, and words from others.  George Takei on Clint McCance:

 

Meanwhile, the Texas Supreme Court has been only logical: Texas Supreme Court Cites The Wisdom Of Spock On Star Trek. 

Although since the cite goes to the second iteration of the same words in Wrath of Khan, rather than the first, there may be grounds for appeal.

(Via David K. M. Klaus, who should feel better.)

And last weekend put to my mind Tom Lehrer in 2000 on the keen effectiveness of political satire:

[...] O: Do you feel that you had any impact?

TL: That's hard for me to say. I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted. I think the people who say we need satire often mean, "We need satire of them, not of us." I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin cabarets of the '30s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War. You think, "Oh, wow! This is great! We need a song like this, and that will really convert people. Then they'll say, 'Oh, I thought war was good, but now I realize war is bad.'" No, it's not going to change much.

Going to a Comedy Central show is not working for political change.

It's entertainment.

A source for the Cook quote, if you'd like one, is Peter Cook's obiturary in The Independent:

[...]  "Satire" is sometimes given at least part of the credit for the collapse of the old order (in the form of Harold Macmillan's administration); another view is that it was just a lot of undergraduates repaying the state for their expensive educations by being rude to the Government. Cook's own view of the satire boom was as disenchanted as his view of its targets: he said of the Establishment Club that it was to be modelled on the political cabarets of Berlin in the Thirties "which did so much to prevent the rise of Adolf Hitler". [....]

And read the rest of what Lehrer had to say in 2000 about political satire.  

And as you watch tonight's election, and may feel despair, I leave you with:

"All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
-- Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho

|f you're a Democrat, you can ponder the words of H.P. Lovecraft on the Republican Party, via digby. [UPDATE, 11/03/10, 7:52 a.m; I've decided to include the quote, which is only two sentences, but one a typical Lovecraft sentence.]

"As for the Republicans—how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd, dwell smugly and sentimentally in a distorted dream-cosmos of outmoded phrases and principles and attitudes based on the bygone agricultural-handicraft world, and revel in (consciously or unconsciously) mendacious assumptions (such as the notion that real liberty is synonymous with the single detail of unrestricted economic license or that a rational planning of resource-distribution would contravene some vague and mystical ‘American heritage’…) utterly contrary to fact and without the slightest foundation in human experience? Intellectually, the Republican idea deserves the tolerance and respect one gives to the dead."

And if anyone would like to argue how different the Republican Party of 1936 is to that of today, we can also talk similarities.  After I get back.

And when you want to take your mind off politics, and laugh, rather than cry, try some Beyond The Fringe.

Be excellent to yourselves, and to others, while I'm away! 

Update, November 3rd, 2010, 8:16 a.m.: But do read Sara Robinson's The Myth of the Self-Made American: Why Progressives Get No Respect:

[...] Unfortunately, this is just a symptom of a much larger problem, one that progressives need to resolve if we are to prevail in the future. The bizarre fact is that most Americans who've made it into the middle class got there with the help of seriously life-changing government investments and subsidies -- and yet, ironically, if you ask them if they've ever used a government program in their lives, they're very likely to tell you: Nope. Never. I did it all on my own.

Suzanne Mettler, a professor at Cornell, actually documented this effect in a 2008 study. She asked people who'd been the beneficiaries of 19 specific government programs -- including some of the most popular and widespread programs in the country -- whether or not they'd ever used a government social program. Here's what she found: 

 

There it is, in black and white. Sixty percent of people who get home mortgage interest deductions (one of the most important and lucrative middle-class subsidies going) don't see this as a form of government help to their households, even though many of them wouldn't be homeowners at all without it. Fifty-three percent of the people who got through college on student loans -- and 40 percent of GI Bill beneficiaries -- also think they've paid their own freight. And 44 percent of Social Security recipients don't think that Social Security is a government program -- which comes as no surprise to those of us who remember the ubiquitous calls during last year's health care fight to "get your fllthy government hands off my Social Security."

What's going on here? How can so many people receive so much, and yet remain in such obstinate denial about where it all came from? [....]

Discuss.

Comments

[russell]

"Fail better" is my new motto.

Safe travels Gary!

[dr ngo]

Be well, Gary. Sorry I didn't see you more while we were neighbors, but you (alas) are not the only one with health problems.

California, here he comes!!

[Gary Farber]

Thanks, all. And I'm sorry I never asked cleek to get together. Really, I'm not so bad in person. Mostly.

Meanwhile, this is so moving; George Bush:

[...] had “a sickening feeling” when he learned there were no mass destruction weapons in Iraq [....]

But, what the hell, invading Iraq was still the best idea for how to do the most good in the world.

(Or, y'know, see the Texas Supreme Court for phrasing.)

[Tom M]

It's too sad to cry about, might as well laugh.

[Rob in CT]

That chart is amazing.

I'm not surprised by the people who didn't think of the mortgage interest deduction as a "government social program." I'm frankly amazed at the people on social security, medicare, welfare, unemployment insurance, etc - direct federal aid - who think they've never gotten gummint help. That's just plain astonishing.

[wj]

If you are actually going to be in Oakland (as opposed to merely somewhere in the East Bay -- a short-hand I admit to using myself on occasion), give thanks that you may finally be getting a real mayor (as opposed to a total cypher). Oakland has a lot of problems in its city government, to put it mildly. But at least there seems to be some hope of progress now.

[Hogan]

The Texas Supreme Court applying foreign law? Wait till Tom Coburn hears about this.

[Catsy]

George Takei is such a mensch.

[Carleton Wu]

That's just plain astonishing.

There are few things in human nature more pervasive than the dual desire to take full credit for any successes and disavow all responsibility for any failures.
I know quite a few people who made bank in the tech boom, and not one that attributes the lion's share of their profits to the irrational boom itself. Heck, I was listening to This American Life the other day and heard a young banker on Wall Street explain that the government bailout saving his bank and preserving his 6-figure job showed that he was shrewder than the average American, and so deserved more money.

[Hartmut]

The Lovecraft quote is all the more remarkable considering that he was a proud ultraconservative (outside the South) who only late in life became a supporter of FDR.

[Michael Stack]

I'll be the first to admit that many people are benefits of government largess yet don't realize it ("keep the government out of my Medicare!"). Lower taxes but more benefits, etc...

However, about 25% of the items listed above are not government "benefits". Rather, they are simply reductions in the amount of shit government takes. Sorry - not a benefit. If I announce that I'm coming to your house to take all your stuff, then magnanimously decide to only take half, I think you'd be peeved if I called it a "burglary reduction benefit".

Needless to say, most Americans who have benefited from some type of tax credit like those above, constitute the majority of respondents who have benefited from any of the programs listed. Rightly, in my mind, they claim not to have benefited from a government social program.

Student loans/Pell grants? Yup, lots of Americans have used those, and it's silly for recipients to argue that they haven't been the beneficiaries of social programs. Score one for Professor Mettler.

Social Security? Most people pay more into that than they take out, which makes it hard to keep a straight face while calling it a 'benefit' (admittedly for some there is a net benefit).

Most of the rest are the types of things most people think of when they think of government programs, and most people are right to think that they are not beneficiaries.

Veterans benefits? I don't know the specific benefits this refers to, but unless you call a USPO worker's paycheck a "government social program" benefit, I think Professor Mettler is on weak ground with this one.

Finally, when you call things a "government social program", you're kinda loading the dice - why not ask if they've been benefits of "government programs"?

Because then you don't get the kind of answers you can laugh about with your in-group buddies.

[russell]

If I announce that I'm coming to your house to take all your stuff, then magnanimously decide to only take half, I think you'd be peeved if I called it a "burglary reduction benefit".

If you start from the position that taxes are a form of legal theft, your argument holds some water.

If you see them more as a kind of dues that you pay for the privilege of being part of a larger society, then probably not.

[Gary Farber]

There not having been an open thread since this one, I'm sticking this here, rather than threadjacking or interrupting a more current discussion of an actual topic of substance.

The last misc. box went out this morning. I've had my suitcase and second piece of checked luggage (my monitor) packed since last night, along with my carry-on bag. I have my collapsible cane. I have my phone, my medications, my info, my semi-usable laptop.

Oh, and I've now also achieved a haircut, and unless I suddenly bolt upright and shout "OH SH*T" at something I've just remembered, I'm ready to leave as of now. This is good.

Maybe I'll even be able to get TracFone to turn on my voice mail, without my having to talk my through it on a second phone line I don't have. Probably not, but at least now I have some time to try.

And to otherwise try to get this Power PC G4 notebook and myself to work together more cooperatively.

And otherwise try to -- what's the term? -- oh, yes, "relax."

[Hogan]

Safe journey and happy landings, Gary.

[Gary Farber]

Hoping insommnia doesn't cut in. I've already administered Ambien, but don't want to overdo it.

Any ObWi Bay area folks who would like to offer me tips on living there, or who are interested in getting together eventually, do feel free to drop me a lines, or Friend me on Facebook. You can find out just how much stupider I am when I don't have instant internet access.

[Gary Farber]

Out the door to the aiport in ten minutes. Ta until I'm back online in Oakland!

Flight Date Flight Information  114 Nov 11 Depart Raleigh/Durham at 12:45 PM
Arrive in Chicago (Midway) at 01:50 PM  1440 Depart Chicago (Midway) at 03:10 PM
Arrive in Oakland at 06:10 PM

[Gary Farber]

I'm assuming the TSA won't hassle me over my "RTFM" tee-shirt.

"It means 'read the forgotten manual,' officer."

[Hogan]

"Flight manual" might work too.