Reality Politics

by Doctor Science

Reality in the sense of "Reality TV", i.e. "not reality". A performance.

Right now I see people from Karl Rove to Paul Krugman saying that the GOP's determination to "defund Obamacare or bust" is quixotic, self-defeating, or just plain crazy.[1]

I don't think it is. I think that, for the Tea Party end of the GOP, the attack on Obamacare makes good business sense. It's just a question of what business they're actually in -- and I don't think that business is politics in the sense of law-making. Their business is performance.

Poster for The Red Detachment of Women (source.) The point isn't to be *practical*, the point is to give an inspiring performance. With guns.

It's like one of the cooking-contest reality TV shows -- Top Chef, for instance. Contestants on Top Chef make food, but the show is not in the business of making food. People watch the show for entertainment, but the show is only partially in the business of providing entertainment for viewers, considered as customers. For the most part, Top Chef's customers are advertisers, the audience is its product, what it is actually making and selling. It makes entertainment and food along the way, but those aren't the core of its business as a business, they are not what it gets *paid* to do. It gets *paid* to put together an audience, so it is in the audience-making business, not the entertainment or food businesses.

Robert Costa at the conservative National Review reports that traditional Republican leaders don't want a government shutdown

-- and they blame the conservative movement’s cottage industry of pressure groups.

But these organizations, ensconced in Northern Virginia office parks and elsewhere, aren’t worried about the establishment’s ire. In fact, they welcome it. Business has boomed since the push to defund Obamacare caught on. Conservative activists are lighting up social media, donations are pouring in, and e-mail lists are growing.

Less conservative reporters are saying the same thing, though less respectfully. At Salon Alex Pareene says:

As I’ve said a hundred times before, the conservative movement is essentially a self-perpetuating fundraising machine. This is not to say that Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are insincere in their belief that subsidies and a network of statewide exchanges for the purchase of private health insurance will destroy liberty forever, I’m merely saying that the campaign to convince voters and legislators that Republicans can delay or defeat Obamacare this month is a lucrative one, for many people.

And Jamelle Bouie at the Daily Beast quotes Costa, and gives examples:

To illustrate the point, Heritage Action for America—the political arm of the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank—has a standing website devoted to collecting donations. “Conservatives in Congress have proposed using the fight over a key budget bill, called the continuing resolution, to strip funding from this law. But Establishment Republicans and special interests in Washington are resisting this plan,” it explains. But there’s no reason to panic: “You can ensure Obamacare is defunded,” it asserts. All it takes is a small donation to Heritage. “Time is of the essence. Please donate now to ensure we have the resources to fight and win.”

As of Tuesday afternoon [Sept.17th], this particular push had raised over $327,000, and it’s no stretch to assume that other, similar efforts have raised as much if not more cash. To wit, the Senate Conservatives Fund—a political action committee devoted to electing “true conservatives to the United States Senate”—also has a specific website that collects donations for Obamacare repeal. It asks supporters to “Join Mike Lee and Ted Cruz in the fight to stop Obamacare” with a small contribution. The same goes for the National Liberty Federation, a Tea Party group that wants to know if you have a few dollars to spare in the fight against Obamacare.

Republicans in the House have now voted to defund Obamacare 42 times. To lot of people, this looks like the definition of insanity, but I'm arguing otherwise.

GOP Congressmen aren't trying to pass laws and failing, they are trying to perform reactionary conservatism and succeeding. The repeated votes are no more nonsensical than repeat performances of a concert, because people keep paying them to do it. It's a perfectly rational, market-driven business decision.

Jamelle Bouie and many other liberals think these Congressmen and the conservative activists pressuring them are "shameless grifters" raising money from "gullible customers", but I don't think that's true. They are performers raising money from an audience, but that audience is also buying a sense of participation.

Costa notes that "It’s the appeal of a righteous battle over Obamacare, however messy it may be, that’s driving the fervor." Pareene says

Some annoyed Republicans are accusing shutdown-pushers like Ted Cruz of “not dealing in reality,” but Cruz is decidedly reality-based. He’s just selling unreality to his constituents — not just Texas voters, but the entire nationwide network of pissed-off and increasingly delusional conservatives who fund the great right-wing money carousel. He becomes a star, and they get to feel like they’re an integral part of an existential fight for America’s future. [emphasis added]

This is very similar to what Slacktivist calls the Anti-Kitten-Burning Coalition and similar movements among American fundamentalists.

Americans in general really *want* to feel part of a righteous struggle against evil, and being part of such a movement feels *good*, feels exciting and meaningful. This is as true for Occupy Wall Street as it is for the Tea Party. That feeling is what conservative donors are getting for their money: they're paying people to perform reactionary conservatism on the national stage, and they're not just the audience, they're part of the performance. It's not just small, grass-roots donors, either: billionaire donors get to hang around backstage and even work on the scripts, to actually *control* the performance.

This is Reality Politics -- one reason the participants hate Republican realists so much. I have no idea (yet) what we do about it, but I think we have to start by recognizing what it *is*.

---

[1] Chris Weigant's Friday Talking Points is a useful list, though in a snide liberal wrapper.

Comments

[cleek]

on the theory they weren't fit to live in the company of whites

err, cite?

[russell]

Abraham Lincoln would have shipped the freed slaves to Liberia

err, cite?

There is something to Brett's claim, however the reality doesn't speak quite as negatively of Lincoln as you might surmise from Brett's post.

At the time of the Civil War, black slaves were something more than 10% of the total population of the US. The position they had held would (thankfully) no longer exist, but no new position for them existed in society.

As a purely pragmatic logistical problem, it was huge.

One option was for them to emigrate, either to Liberia (which had already been established as a home for expatriate freed slaves) or to a colony to be created for that purpose.

To my knowledge, it was never Lincoln's intent that anyone who DID NOT WANT TO EMIGRATE be forced to do so against their will.

And, it would not be at all surprising if there were lots of former slaves who would have been happy to leave.

[Countme-In]

Yes he would have, or so he planned, though I suspect he would have disappointed the South and even some abolitionist northerners one more time had he lived by not following through on the Liberia plan, given Lincoln's uniquely non-Republican and very American trait of changing his mind, compromising his long-held principles to suit his and our (not enough of us) better nature.

"Better", as in unlike the uncompromising, formerly and largely Democratic-turned-Republican South which has to this day, because they have not been assassinated, much to the detriment of this country, but rather have been permitted to live to cement their reputations and follow the devils of their sub-human nature.

Strom Thurmond, for one, lived all the way to 100 years of age without a bullet in the back of the head as he burnished HIS reputation.

John Wilkes Booth (not there was an entertainer; what an act!) would have had to shoot Lincoln again if the latter had survived the first killing attempt and was left for a few more years of contemplation regarding the stupidity of his Liberia plan.

If Lincoln were alive today, there are vermin serving in the House of Representatives, elected by similar vermin, who would keep shooting Lincoln in the f*cking head with their beloved f*cking weapons, unless they forgot their f*cking guns in the f*cking toilet, as he tried to avert their contemporary tactics of uncompromising political hostage-taking.

As in "South Park", every day it would be "Oh no, they shot Lincoln again!".

"What did he do this time?"

"He changed his mind."

[cleek]

To my knowledge, it was never Lincoln's intent that anyone who DID NOT WANT TO EMIGRATE be forced to do so against their will.

right.

and furthermore, Brett is trolling asserting that Lincoln was in favor of the Liberia thing because he thought blacks "weren't fit to live in the company of whites".

i'd like to see a cite for that.

lacking that, i'll have to assume that Brett is trolling, again.

[Countme-In]

"As a purely pragmatic logistical problem, it was huge."

Read this book .....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rough_Crossings

.... for some historical insight into the "problems" abolitionist England had in both offering cover for freed slaves AND setting some of them up for "freedom" by settling them to Sierra Leone.

But by comparison to say, South Carolina, which yearned to be an independent, but unexceptional slave Nation, England on this one issue at that time was the exceptional nation on Earth.

[Countme-In]

Too bad this racist Republican filth, elected by racist Republican subhuman vermin, didn't have a John Wilkes Booth to shut HIS mouth with a bullet before he could set his reputation in stone.

Along with the other racist Republican vermin named in the article for whom assassination has not yet been an option.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gop-official-says-obama-shucking-and-jiving-on-health-care-law

[dr ngo]

" i'll have to assume that Brett is trolling, again."

Print this out. Under it write, in large letters, "DNFTT." Affix it above your screen.
Apply as needed.

[Countme-In]

Scale Model of murderer Nurse Rafael Cruz, complete set, with wardrobe, available now to Republican primary voters who vote to kill their fellow Americans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htZW8k6fh0E

[Countme-In]

I'd suggest the House of Representatives let the hostage girl (s) go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R-cTX0i2hQ

[Countme-In]

The old standard ... The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

I'd prefer the title: The Man Who Watered Liberty Valance's Tree

In the first scene, early on circa 1993-4 in the first go-round the Gingrich Gang's Republican murderer Liberty Rafael Cruz Valance (you see that he's called "Liberty"; they always call themselves by deceiving aliases, sometimes they call themselves Rosa Parks, or Martin Luther King; American murderers can never settle for Bob or Jim or Rafael but I knew him as Nancy) disrupts the town.

Strother Martin plays Valance's sidekick; he's the Republican right wing media and internet accomplice cackling sadistically in the background as Valance bullies the unarmed, peaceful statesman played by Ji.., uh Ji..., ..Jimmy ji.. jim.. Jimmy Stewart there.

Yes, and there's Andy Devine, as earlier throwback Democrat scurrying for cover.

Someone always has to intervene in American history and protect the naive from the vermin, before the vermin are disarmed that is..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_YyK5Y6hh4

In the second scene, vermin be dead after upping earlier Republican antes to include killing everyone in town, bankrupting the territory, and turning the town medical dispensary into a saloon.

Unfortunately, this clip cuts before John Wayne, after doing the necessary deed, tosses the gun to Pompey, who apparently Abraham Lincoln would have sent to Liberia but got interrupted in reconsidering the plan by a fatal gunshot from an earlier Liberty Valance, Southern Democrat John Wilkes Booth, who was unfortunately for some put to death before he could join the "modern" Republican Party and assassinate Barack Obama and defund Obamacare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwcYIcn5ZEs

[bobbyp]

or keep the boy.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHV0AqDzbv8