Maybe we should start educating people to see politicians the way they see athletes. They certainly may have lots of opinions about what a team should do. But even the most egotistical drunk screaming obscenities from the stands doesn't truly believe that he's a better hitter than Manny Ramirez or that the team should hire a bunch of guys off the streets to play in the outfield. They have more respect for the game than that. It would be nice if citizenship required as much respect for the country.Obviously not a Pirates fan.
-La Digz
But, you know, seriously, dubbleya tee eff? Politics is not a discipline of particulars. Parliamentary procedure isn't kinesthetic. Hiring a campaign team doesn't require hitting a thousand balls on the range every single day. Bussing from state to state and giving stump speeches isn't as hard and doesn't require an ounce of the discipline of training to the peak condition necessary to compete in the NFL. A political race isn't a marathon. Athletics at the highest levels encompasses some of the most singular human achievements. It requires a lifetime of work. The most bling-ed out, tabloid-splashed wide receiver lives a life of positively monastic discipline compared to a presidential candidate. The drunk screaming fan can't hit like Ramirez, but he can surely get himself elected to a county row office.
Technocratic liberalism leads so inevitably to the firm conviction that our governors are, or ought to be, our betters, that to properly function, government must be composed of those "best and brightest," as the damnation-by-praise goes, uniquely suited to make decisions in our stead, and in our best interest. The same paternalism embodied by the foreign adventures in "democratization" obtains at home. We need someone else to tell us what's good for us. We can't be trusted to determine our own course. To sound what might be a truly conservative note: the attendant infantalization of a people over the course of generations, their reduction to a state of dependency, makes them lazy, dumb, and manipulable. Whaddarewegonnado? And hopefully someone else will do it for us.
44 comments:
our institutions are only as good as the people in them. and well, there you are.
Brett Myers punched his wife in the face some years back. fuggit, and fahgetabout it! he's my guy! 3 ribbies last night!
Digby's an idiot.
oh, and fuck the professional athlete as ascetic. . .they're all doped. John Kruk et al QED!!!1!!! and so is Lance. but compared to the President, you're right.
Sure they're all doped, but ya still gotta exercise. All the HGH in the world isn't going to get you up Alpe d'Huez if you spend your day, uh, writing blogs or something.
IOZ, you've attacked the metaphor, and decried the system, but not invalidated La Digz's point.
"Politics" may not be a discipline of particulars, but effective governmental administration certainly is. It's why you don't send ideologically pure but pathetically incompetent Liberty U. grads to rebuild a war-shattered economic system, as GWB did in Iraq.
well ioz may not have invalidated digby's point, but you did a pretty good job
maybe I meant aesthete.
and tell that to Greg Lemond. QED lol roflmao !!!1!1!!! though if you look at what PED's have done for Joe Papp. . .you are correct sir. suck is still suck.
ok now it's time for me to go ride my bike.
Defining the skills required to be a successful and effective politician might be a fun little exercise for the libbloggers.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the two sets are mutually incompatible
It's why you don't send ideologically pure but pathetically incompetent Liberty U. grads to rebuild a war-shattered economic system.
This is like arguing about about the competence of the hospital housekeeping staff after the surgeons harvested grandma's organs and left her open on the table.
Whether the metaphor is good or not, the basic point is valid, and I don't understand why the Blawggin' Brahmin would have a problem with it. This nation of retarded ham 'n' eggers needs to get the fuck over their narcissism and quit trying to stick one of their own at the head of state. This ain't the mechanical bull at the bar, you fatuous hicks.
Palin should be bringing me my coffee in a Waffle House and ending each sentence with "sug" or "hun". Her yokel of a husband should be squeegeeing my windshield and scraping flatmeat off the highways.
anon@ 5:41 is exactly why I'm voting McCain/Palin. I'll anti-intellectualize your sorry intellectualizatin' ass until the cows come home. it doesn't take very many brains cellz to pull a voting lever. or maybe your just DDL re: this whole democracy thing. oh wait, I've said too much! tsk tsk.
"anon@ 5:41 is exactly why I'm voting McCain/Palin"
The logic of which explains the state of the fast-fading US under the Bush Imperium.
booyah!
"It would be nice if citizenship required as much respect for the country."
i'm not a patriot, i was just born here. when ideological purity becomes a requirement for citizenship, just drop me off in Canada, ok?
only idiots believe in America. Christ. I have a hard enough time relating to my friends and family. who knows where I'd find the time and effort to worry about relating to 250 million complete fucking strangers.
we are united in the voting booth! oh really, we all fit?
"booyah!"
Mr F, you had me until the Schtuart Shcott allusion.
This nation of retarded ham 'n' eggers needs to get the fuck over their narcissism and quit trying to stick one of their own at the head of state.
I thought that sticking one of your own as the head of state was the entire point of democracy.
You're suggesting that the narcissist should not act like a narcissist. That the "mentally challenged" (is that what we're supposed to say this year?) not be retarded. Even if they could be something they are not... why should they? What possible incentive is there?
Oh right, I forgot. They should elect That One because it would be nice for you, Mr Anonymous. Oh, how precious. Are you quite sure it's them that are the narcissistic retards? (Don't bother to respond; I know you're certain.)
The whole reason that people are inclined to put "one of them" in power is because they have a mortal fear of what not-Them would be capable of with it. In the dumber among us this manifests itself as culture war politics, but the raw impulse itself is understandable. The true problem is in not realizing that to everyone else, we're all not-ME, and questioning the central power itself rather than whoever happens to want it.
You can think the anointed Serious People suck w/o wanting a yokel to control everything. The control is the real problem.
also
Dear Ruling Class,
Please refrain from using the noble sport of hockey to prop up your "so who wants to run an empire" sideshow.
At long last have you no shame
"Whether the metaphor is good or not, the basic point is valid, and I don't understand why the Blawggin' Brahmin would have a problem with it. This nation of retarded ham 'n' eggers needs to get the fuck over their narcissism and quit trying to stick one of their own at the head of state. This ain't the mechanical bull at the bar, you fatuous hicks.
Palin should be bringing me my coffee in a Waffle House and ending each sentence with "sug" or "hun". Her yokel of a husband should be squeegeeing my windshield and scraping flatmeat off the highways."
wow, don't really know where to start. first of all, raging classism, almost to the point where I can't tell if you're joking. second, uh the whole point of this blog is that the state is *fundamentally wrong*, and you don't improve it by sticking someone more "competent" in control, because that just makes them more effective at fucking us over.
it's like people who claimed we "botched up" iraq. yeah, if only we had had a stronger, more efficient military. then we reallyy could have slaughtered those iraqis.
basically, go back to digzy/npr/sucking obama's dick
Her yokel of a husband
Shirley, you jest. He works as an oil rigger, won the Ironman race, and belonged to a separatist party. He's such an Islamaphobe that he hardly knew there was a war going on because he was, like, doing his own thing--- dig? And HE should be squeegeeing YOUR windshield?
The guy should be guest hosting Ioz's minarchist blog and you should take schizo's advice.
I love yinz.
Mr. Fun: no dope, unless Erdinger Hefeweizen counds and it doesn't.
Point is, train for the race you want to win. Barry O and Johnny Mac are consummate masters at their sport. It's classic Digs to bitch
about the fact that it's not the sport she thinks it should be.
second, uh the whole point of this blog is that the state is *fundamentally wrong*, and you don't improve it by sticking someone more "competent" in control, because that just makes them more effective at fucking us over.
The idea that all politics is based on culture, and that all social injustice is based on repressive conformity, implies that any act that violates social norms is politically radical. Of course, this is an extremely attractive thought. After all, the traditional work of political organizing is extremely demanding and tedious. Politics, in a democracy, requires bringing enormous numbers of people on board. This creates a lot of unappealing work - licking envelopes, writing letters, lobbying politicians, and the like. Assembling such vast coalitions also requires interminable compromise and debate. Cultural politics, by comparison, is significantly more fun. Doing guerilla theater, playing in a band, making avant-garde art, taking drugs and having lots of wild sex certainly beat union organizing as a way to spend the weekend. What the countercultural rebels managed to convince themselves of is that all of these fun activities were in fact more subversive than traditional left-wing politics because they attacked the sources of oppression and injustice at a "deeper" level. Of course, this conviction is entirely based on a theory. And since it is so obviously in the interest of the rebels to believe in this theory, anyone with a moderately critical turn of mind will naturally find it suspicious.
I would add "driving slow in the fast lane, vandalizing public buildings, and incessantly quoting moronic movies" to that list, but otherwise, damn - it's as if the author were a regular reader of the puerile parasites on this blog!
But yes - "technocratic liberals" and the best & brightest brought us Vietnam, so clearly we should just elect any old fuckstick who makes fatuity a cardinal virtue; I'm sure that won't be a disaster. Whoever heard of stupid people fucking anything up?
Just say fuck it and go bowling, dudes, or keep on wanking on a blog. Whatever it takes to justify looking down your noses at the "system"* and all the fools who work within it.
*From the same book: "The culture cannot be jammed because there is no such thing as "the culture" or "the system". There is only a hodepodge of social institutions, most tentatively thrown together, which distribute the benefits and burdens of social cooperation in ways that sometimes we recognize to be just, but that are usually manifestly inequitable. In a world of this type, countercultural rebellion is not just unhelpful, it is positively counterproductive. Not only does it distract energy and effort away from the sort of initiatives that lead to concrete improvements in people's lives, but it encourages wholesale contempt for such incremental changes."
I wouldn't go so far as to say that faith in government or an ideal of leader competence makes us lazy. Fuck, people don't need that much help to be lazy. Depoliticization from the cool kids who're above it (no offense) and from the powerful, who seek to break popular organization in their favor, alike, has done enough to aid in that.
I'd also dispute that that's a conservative idea, IOZ. I've never met people as ready to assume that the leaders know what they're doing as conservatives. It's just that, as is sadly the case with many liberals, there are only certain authorities they've learned to distrust. Conservatives have no lack of trust in Republican presidents, businessmen, bankers, military men, sportscasters, certain religious authorities, and so on. The belief that these people should express some rare amount of virtue is totally different than assuming that the powerful embody that virtue. But your mileage may vary.
Still, your criticism of Digby is somewhat valid, because the thing is that Digby's trying to reduce to metrics what can never be. Wisdom, not numbers, is what our leaders ought to have. But you can never quantify the characteristics that will make a good leader. They're never on display, and when they may be, we have no means of discerning lies and truth.
And even if we could see these things for real, well, the thing is that we've all got a different sense of what is wisdom, where we need restraint, where we need action, and so on. Even if the candidates were transparent, the people would still clash and it'd come down to maneuver, deception, and injustice.
I am definitely disappointed I missed New England Worlds again. what a venue and what a race.
the trouble, anon@10:00am, is your unthinking and unquestioning faith in the system. I agree, it is what it is, and the rebels are foolish. because what are they battling? yet why should any of us pay any respect to something so fundamentally wrong? and fundamentally ill? this is the internet and us slaves need distractions. and speaking of distractions, here you are! and you even learned html today! awww how sweet. really, we're touched.
if I made one mistake in this thread, it was giving anon@5:41 too much credit. there's nothing inherently wrong with anon@5:41, besides the politics and ideas he or she is throwing down. this:
anon@ 5:41 is exactly why I'm voting McCain/Palin
should read:
the vitriol spewing forth from anon@5:41's fingertips is exactly the reason why I'll be voting for McCain/Palin this time around.
attacking anonymous internet-types on the internet is, well, retahded, and wicked virtual.
blawg!
cuneyt: would you say that conservatives expect some degree of corruption whereas the liberals expect things to get better or politicians to do the impossible, transcend their own self-interest? that's the sense that I get.
Well, Mister, it really depends on what authorities. I know a ton of liberals who definitely don't believe that Republicans will transcend their self-interest (though most of them like to attribute arcane explanations when Dems do the same things).
In general, I wouldn't say conservatives expect corruption, except for a few conservatives and a few authorities. The NY Times? Sure. Democrats? Definitely. The military? Never. The rightists I know almost always assume that when it comes to cops and soldiers, there has to be something else that explains seemingly horrific behavior. But then, some folks I know also figured Nixon was set up by the libruls, so you never really know.
I don't see any reason to associate conservatives with political realism. They hop between pragmatic acceptance or convoluted apologia when it comes to their own corruption and moral outrage when the same occurs in others. They're hardly unique, sure.
Was that long-winded enough? Sorry--I need to work on being concise.
Yes, incompetent imperialism is to be preferred to competent imperialism, but how does this argument extend to economic policy?
Capitalism is an evil system, but incompetently managed capitalism only increases the suffering of the poor and working class.
Having said that, the claim that "competence" and "experience" are what we should look for in a candidate is mistaken, I think. All the folks who engineered the current financial collapse were supremely competent and experienced. They were also supremely self-interested (as all humans are).
Wouldn't it make more sense to ask where a candidate's self-interest lies, and then choose the candidate whose self-interest is closest to your own? Sure, that logic, badly applied, gives you "I don't care about Palin's qualifications, because she's one of us!", but it also got Evo Morales elected.
If a global depression is really in store for us, then we may get to the point where we're willing to elect a populist coca farmer as President. What will Digby say then?
But it's not about competent and incompetent powers; it's about competent power checking power. We can't rely on the weakness or strength of our rulers; we must become rulers in our own right and seek to counter those who would rule us.
Incompetent imperialism is hardly preferable to anything; it wreaks the same damage, and can actually invite even more suffering as the initial violence is reversed and then answered in kind. Incompetence almost demands competence in response; an inept grab for empire can fail and bring about much more effective imperialism. No, let us not bet on poor leaders. They're not going to do our work for us.
Well, anonymous@10:00am, considering the Democrats have given Bush everything he's wanted in the last two years, I must say that licking envelopes, writing letters, and lobbying politicians appears no more effective at creating change than our host's daily blogging. If one also considers the return on effort expended, it actually appears far less effective.
Yes, I've certainly come to believe that rolling up my sleeves, pitching in, and donating time and money to elect people who will betray me is preferable to sitting on my ass. I'm just not sure why.
I suppose though that l`elite is somewhat preferable to l`espoir.
nest pah?
the state is *fundamentally wrong*, and you don't improve it by sticking someone more "competent" in control, because that just makes them more effective at fucking us over.
I'm not so sure; as I've said here before, I think the Bush administration puts a big dent in that theory.
I sort of wonder if there's a sort of idealism here; a faith that somebody -Congress, the electorate, the Supreme Court, whoever- will step in and revolt if our leaders are to overtly awful, and you need some skill to hide your evil from those people.
This is somewhat valid; Bush would get slapped down if he tried to declare himself supreme leader for life.
But clearly, it's only true to a very limited extent; he can still argue with a straight face that Habeas Corpus is a bad idea and everybody will nod and say, "Yeah, that's a valid point".
Or maybe the theory is that if somebody is enough of a fuckup, they'll even manage to fuck up being an asshole.
That's not really how things work, in my experience.
Anon 10:00: It's also in the self-interest of the envelope lickers to think that they are doing something useful.
As the authors point out, getting high, fucking, and putting on guerrilla theater are all activities that are rewarding in and of themselves; envelope licking is only rewarding if it actually accomplishes change.
Incidentally, I always thought that was the point of this blog; to vent in a way that accomplishes nothing.
"Not only does it distract energy and effort away from the sort of initiatives that lead to concrete improvements in people's lives, but it encourages wholesale contempt for such incremental changes."
You know who else had contempt for incremental change?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Check. Mate.
Seriously, though, do the authors address that? It's not just the long haired guys playing hacky sack in Pioneer Square who aren't big fans of incremental change; Smart people who actually accomplished a lot have also had some issues with "incremental change". Justice too long delayed is justice denied, etc.
Also, this, from the Publisher's Weekly blurb:
"With sharp humor, the two make a solid case for consumerism being motivated by competitiveness rather than conformity."
I hope that in this case "rather then" is slang for "in addition to". Conformity and competitiveness aren't opposites; they're good buddies. Look at, say, the American idea of masculinity; You must conform, by liking manly stuff and hating girly stuff, and you must compete; there's no sin worse then being a loser.
Actually, I'm hesitant to read that book because all those additional reviews make it sound stupid and myopic.
"Capitalism is an evil system, . . . "
As compared to?
I don't think Digby and IOZ are really answering the same question.
Digby wants to answer the question: since we have a representational govt, and must have someone represent us, who should it be?
Take out the givens, and then we can talk about the politicians in the abstract, but it wouldn't be the same conversation.
As for Leonard's precious thought above, I don't think you go far enough. Most libs I know do not only think it would be good for them that Obama won, but also good for the Repubs who won't vote for him. Many believe that most Repubs are voting against their own self-interest due to superfluous culture war arguments given to them by talk radio, Fox, etc.
"...what can the left do? What can you effectively do? ... It’s fashionable to make fun of Fukuyama, "End of History," but even the majority of today’s left is effectively, if I may make an adverb, Fukuyamaists. Basically, isn’t it that most of us leftists silently believe capitalism is here to stay, parliamentary democracy is what we have, so the problem is simply how to make it work better? Our ultimate horizon is, again, in the same way as we were talking about socialism with a human face: global capitalist democracy with a human face. And for me, the key question is, is this enough?
"...the left, around thirty years ago, simply stopped [asking] certain questions. I remember when I was young, we were still debating: will capitalism last? Will the state go on? Now, we accept all this. Maybe ... the time is coming to start asking these fundamental, tough questions again..."
--Slavoj Žižek
"You people is parasites."
-Mr. T
Hey, I read that Nation of Rebels book too. Something funny about it: he lambasts Naomi Klein for the flawed premise of her No Logo book and her own hypocrisy, and he does it all without once confusing her with Naomi Wolf!
"Capitalism is an evil system, . . . "
As compared to?
Systems that are good.
"Systems that are good."
Such as?
Well, I guess this is all a pissing contest, but how about the war of all against all? Naked ambition, madness, all that.
Of course, that's the logical extension of almost all hierarchical systems: ruled and ruler alike motivated by sheer self-interest and greed, limited only by capacity and placement.
That at least gets points for consistency, unless you're one of those who believes that your favored system of economic hierarchy is actually enlightened, leveled, and self-correcting.
cüneyt: I am guessing that you are responding to me. I realize that some people take brevity to be rude, but I saw no reason to elaborate. I am simply asking, actually asking, to what is capitalism being compared in order to argue that it is "evil?" I also wonder what systems (more specifically, what systems of production and distribution) does christopher, or do you, consider to be "good?"
You said: "Of course, that's the logical extension of almost all hierarchical systems: ruled and ruler alike motivated by sheer self-interest and greed, limited only by capacity and placement."
You have in the sentence above made clear why the grounds for comparison are often so important.
I actually think yours was a necessary question. I was providing a possible answer but not necessarily refuting yours or anyone else's point. In short, I was trying to carry forward the line of thought.
Sorry if I misunderstood your previous comment. As I was reading and responding to it, my brother-in-law was arriving from out of town, and my three year old daughter was pulling on my arm and whining about something mysterious to me.
In other words, a lot of distractions.
I don't know if you misunderstood; I just meant to clarify in case I was unclear.
You know who else had contempt for incremental change?
Martin Luther King Jr.
Check. Mate.
Seriously, though, do the authors address that?
As a matter of fact, yes.
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