Because pretty much every thought that comes out of his head is garbage.
Today's offal is Robert J. "Not-Paul" Samuelson's pet theory that the reason our politics in general is so "poisonous[ly] polariz[ed]" is that "politics increasingly devotes itself to making people feel good about themselves -- elevating their sense of self-worth and affirming their belief in their moral superiority."
Not-Paul might have a point if the two parties were largely fighting over issues of little real-world significance but fraught with moral implications - if most current partisan issues were likely to have no wider impact than the debates over midnight basketball or Terry Schiavo. If that's what our politics looked like, he'd have a case.
So does he? He continues: "Global warming is about "saving the planet." Abortion and gay marriage evoke deep values, each side believing it commands the high ground. Certainly, President Obama pitched his health-care plan as a moral issue."
Well, yeah. Addressing global warming really is about "saving the planet," at least as we know it. For its proponents, health care reform was about extending affordable health insurance to an additional 30 million people, and not letting insurers drop you the moment you became sick. And depending on your assumptions about the personhood of the fetus, abortion is either about preserving or denying the right of tens of millions of women to retain control over their bodies, or about the killing of over a million people each year.
That's big stuff. It matters. This ain't midnight basketball.
And look at the rest of our major issues: the stimulus bill was about keeping us out of a far worse recession than we're in, a recession that's already leaving millions of Americans without jobs for more than six months, resulting in great hardship for millions of families. But without the stimulus, those numbers would have been much, much greater. The objective of the financial regulation bills being considered by Congress is to ensure that goings-on in the world of high finance, opaque to most Americans, don't reach out and knock a hole in the real economy a second time in the foreseeable future.
Or the recent past: earlier in this new millennium, we've fought over a war that killed hundreds of thousands and cost us hundreds of billions (so far), whether torture is justified, whether to keep Social Security intact, and so forth. Big stuff. Hell, the fight over the 2000 election was big, because if it had gone the other way, there would have almost surely been no Iraq war, no program of torture, no attempt to gut Social Security. Sure, there have also been some 'feel-good' issues during these years - stuff where the level of passion is far higher than the consequences dictate - but there have always been issues like that. People are like that: that's why people care about sports teams and the stuff in the tabloids.
As an alternative theory of why our politics is so heated, Not-Paul might consider the notion that while one side's arguing mostly on the basis of objective facts, the other side's throwing up a lot of smoke about socialism, totalitarianism, and the end of our freedoms. They've been hearing for a year and a half that Obama was going to take away their guns (and gun sales boomed last year), that he was going to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and push Rush Limbaugh off the air (with George Will being one of the leading pushers of this foundationless notion), that ACORN was taking over the 2010 Census, and who knows what else.
And consider this: if health care had been about the left feeling good about itself, we could have made the public option the be-all and end-all of this bill. But ultimately, almost all of us realized it wasn't about us, and that the benefits of even a bill without a public option for those lacking insurance were more important than fighting a big, righteous fight that we were likely to lose.
There's just nothing to support Not-Paul's ridiculous notion that our politics is about self-esteem, rather than the things that matter. And as usual, it's impossible to overstate what a worthless crock of shit Robert J. Samuelson is.
This is of a piece with greater Broderism. We can't have fierce political disagreements because they make the baby David cry.
There's nothing wrong with two political parties differing on basic approaches to problems. That's why we have elections, so people can choose the vision of society that they find most attractive.
What I object to with the Republicans is that they are fucking incoherent liars in matters of policy. If they wanted to just go out there and sell low taxes for the rich, and the status quo on health care as their program, more power to 'em. But don't give me this crap about death panels and socialism.
Samuelson is one of Kaplan Daily's biggest wastes of skin.
Posted by: Sir Charles | April 05, 2010 at 01:02 PM
my main quarrel is that this column is OF the sewer; no need for tossing.
the grain of truth is that there is a political strand that depends on workin' 'em up to a froth-mouthed frenzy, so they can "feel good" about blasting others and even about blasting changes that will personally benefit them, facts be damned. some decent examples include everything that rush and michelle b. say, and the entire tea party thing.
if one wants to talk about elites and their agendas, one might begin with those who profit financially both from the fomenting of blather, and the maintenance of the status quo -- insurance, banking/financial institutions, pharma, big media, giant industries in general, very rich people.
Posted by: kathy a. | April 05, 2010 at 01:23 PM
While I probably have an even lower opinion of Robert Samuelson than the rest of you, I'm curious about the animus toward Midnight Basketball. Seems to me it was an attempt to return to some of the very valuable youth activity that existed when I was a kid and has disappeared as we seek to redistribute society's to the hedge fund guys and sneer at those left behind.
Back before the sociopath Karol Wojtyla moved the focus of the Catholic church from supporting families to sex wars and paying off victims of rape, basketball was kind of a symbol of healthy youth activity, perhaps because it flourished in the ethnic Catholic milieus that didn't play baseball or because back in the good old days it was less commercialized? Or maybe I'm reading too much into the little pamphlet called Saint Bill of New York I rescued from the house after my mother died, in which the three great virtues of Catholic teenagers (male division) seem to be not abusing the homeless, not forcing yourself on unwilling young girls, and not blaming the guy who passed you the ball when you miss the shot.
Posted by: Gene O'Grady | April 05, 2010 at 07:49 PM
Gene,
I don't think l-t c, or any of the rest of us, think badly of midnight basketball. I actually thought it was a great idea. And I was a big hoops player many years and many pounds ago.
I think the point here was that it was the kind of archetypal mini-initiative that was emblematic of the limits of liberal governance in the 90s. It was a worthy endeavor, but not exactly the epitome of an ambitious political agendae.
Posted by: Sir Charles | April 05, 2010 at 09:03 PM
Gene - more or less what Sir Charles said. To the extent that I was aware of it at the time, I was for it; I was puzzled back then over why the wingnuts had problems with the idea. (The quick, obvious argument for: not every ghetto kid is a gang member or a Good Clean-Cut Kid; plenty are on the bubble, but are going to choose among the non-boring options available when they're hanging out late at night. Hence midnight basketball: something interesting and fun for them to do at the witching hour besides break into cars or become foot soldiers in someone's gang.)
But I was using it as an example of something where the issue became a cultural flashpoint well out of proportion to its likely effects one way or the other. The extent to which Not-Paul's argument has a leg to stand on is in direct proportion to the extent that our politics is about people turning relatively trivial stuff like this into a battle of Good v. Evil.
One thing Not-Paul doesn't even consider is that it may be just ONE side that takes such an issue and turns it into such a battle. Midnight basketball wasn't meant as a big deal by the Clintonistas, it was just one minor Good Idea that might help a bit around the edges. It wasn't the left that turned it into fightin' words.
Posted by: low-tech cyclist | April 05, 2010 at 10:43 PM