What Army do Never Trumpers bring?

Well, going forward, here is the blueprint for how grownups debate. How, on social media or in real life, reasonable adults who accept science, evidence, facts, and logic can have a disagreement and discuss it. Bob Cesca has a Wednesday interview show that is available on his Patreon page that is free to the public. The idea is that you will go to the Patreon page, enjoy the free content, and be moved to kick him a few dollars to help continue producing content. A great concept, this is the good side of DIY political media and we should all consider spending a little bit here and there to support independent media. And for almost the exact reason for the debate here; because mainstream corporate media is not up to the task of defending democracy and in many ways is responsible for the horrid political climate that lets republicans skate away scott free from every disaster they cause and then put them on television to cover it up and call liberals traitors, etc.

Bob had Driftglass and Blue Gal on this week. They have had a low intensity disagreement for months now over the subject of Never Trump republican conservatives. I'll give you three guesses who's side I'm on and the first two don't count. It has annoyed me to ever higher levels that Bob has taken the position that some grand coalition of liberals and never trumpers will come together to rescue democracy and get rid of #doughfacedonnny. Driftglass has intermittently called Bob out for the, God Chez Pazienza would hate me using this word, problematic nature of throwing in with never trumpers. I don't want to tear down Bob, his heart is in the right place, heck I even tried this argument before the election. "This time, just this time" don't vote republican for president, #doughfacedonny is fundamentally unfit for office in every sense of the word is what I tried to convey. But too many credulous liberals are retweeting Bill Kristol, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, and others as though they have awoken from the multiple decades of leadership in conservative intellectual and political circles to see the error of their ways. This has to stop, these people are not your friends.

Bob clings to liberal optimistic hope that things might be, could be different this time. Hope is inherently about the future, and the future is not set. Sure it's possible that this coalition could arise, but is it likely? Is it worth the price liberals would pay by embracing people who were calling them anti-American traitors two years ago? I used to write about Bob and Chez as being akin to the subjects of my MA thesis, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr. Like them, Niebuhr died earlier than Schlesinger and it is possible that the latter would have thought and wrote in different ways if the former had lived longer. Chez was a healthy voice of skepticism in the more gregarious Bob's ear and while Bob has new co-hosts who exercise some influence on him, he doesn't have that same grounding he once had before Chez died. This is the first time in a while that DG & BG have been on Bob's show and it isn't a seamless transition because they were guests on his interview show, not co-hosts with equal weight to drive the discussion. But DG & BG did present that counterargument that has been lacking on Bob's show.

I'm not finished listening to the debate. Just wanted to get something down about the show itself. The point being that this is how adults argue. This is how sensible people can disagree on something but still be on speaking terms. It's a good demonstration of what we can do if we remember that that disembodied text commenting on something you post, or a news story on a public forum is also a human being. As for the title of this post, it was something that Driftglass said about the coalition with never trumpers. The US allied with Stalin during WWII because the Soviet Union had the Red Army and was a huge asset in fighting the common foe. What do never trumpers bring? Votes, where? The death star plans to unravel their propaganda machine and deprogram all the meatheads? Even some small assurance that we won't go back to defending against grand bargains and how much to cut Social Security again once #doughfacedonny is behind bars, as Blue Gal added. The votes from these people are a rounding error, and they are simply taking opposition seats on tv news that should go to actual liberals who have been fighting trump and the fascism he represents (and republicans embody) since the beginning.

From Reagan to Trump

Another day in the crisis of American democracy. Where are we in this drama so far? Robert Reich posted this video today and does a good job summarizing at least part of the problem. How many hoops do we have to jump through to finally nail the trump/Russia treason down? Will it ever happen? Will it be sudden and unexpected or long and drawn out? Will the con man simply resign after pardoning everyone he can or will he have to be arrested and dragged out? At this point no one knows for sure but real damage is done every day. Let's be honest, despite some bright shining moments, mainstream corporate media has been absolutely atrocious in dealing with republican sedition for a long time. And today they seem to feel as though they cannot comment on each new day's atrocities without lamenting how pure and patriotic past republican presidents were. It is expected on cable or broadcast news to always try to balance and treat liars as though they have something worth our time to say. At every step the constitutionally-enshrined protectors of our republic pull punches, treat lightly, fail to challenge the lies, reach for something, anything that the Democrats have done to claim a false equivalence, and give an undeserved deference to some of the greatest villains our society has produced.

Democrats then bring butter knives to fight against the mechanized armor division that the republicans have spent so many years building. One of their worst offenses is appealing to the center and for unity, George Lakoff has spent years trying to convince Democrats and Progressives to stop playing into authoritarian hands in this fruitless endeavor. There is no "Center" where the left and the right meet and people could agree to rational solutions to real problems. There isn't even a spectrum or sliding scale of left to right according to Lakoff, but that one is kind of tough to get our heads around after so many years of hearing about that spectrum. So the piece I want to look at today is Vice President Joe Biden's call for the rest of us to reject doughfacedonny's crap and be the good nation we aspire to be. It is good, he hits all the right notes of keeping and building on the moral conscience that elected he and President Obama, and rejecting the hate and racism that donny has dredged up. The only problem is that he doesn't call out donny by name, a small one for sure as I can't even use his name nor put the title of "president" in front of it. Brother Charlie Pierce put it well, "say his name when you denounce his bigotry", though he was addressing the crocodile tear-shedding republicans who mouthed words to the effect of "this will not do donny." But it is the same product.

As evidenced by the naming of neo-nazi marchers in Charlottesville and their subsequent firing, it is effective. It is personal, the so-called alt right and their fellow republican base voters WANT US DEAD, so shaming and shining a spotlight on individuals is the right thing to do. It has to be made so toxic to even be associated with nazis that republicans can't get away with ambiguous statements like what Lyin' Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin made after donny tried to falsely equate "many sides" for violence by broadly generalizing about all hate and all bigotry is bad. No, we're talking about what actually happened, real people with real names who gathered together to support monuments to confederate traitors, the neo-nazis whose antecedents nearly succeeded in exterminating all of the Jews in Europe. It was a big step for Vice President Biden to actually refer to the current president, not some generalization, even if he didn't say the name. Unlike the Democratic Party's latest slogan of "a better deal" that doesn't even acknowledge the existence of an opposition party that made it this bad for regular Americans and constantly try to make it worse. Of course the better deal platform was a response to the fact that the Democrats really don't stand for anything, even if Progressives want to believe and continue to work in the direction of equality, social and economic justice etc., as polls reported in July.

Really, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. If you act as though current conditions are something that just happened, like a bolt of lightning hitting your home, instead of something that was done deliberately as in a burglar stealing everything before burning it down, then yes people are going to believe that you don't stand for anything. It makes the current state of the union to be fate, instead of something that was consciously made over decades. Which brings me to the response to Biden's article from Ben Cohen of The Daily Banter. Now I don't mean to single Ben out or come down on him too hard, his heart is in the right place and I generally support his positions. And I hear the same sort of thing from his colleague at the banter, Bob Cesca, and from the Stephanie Miller show to name two examples. The problem is letting past republicans off the hook because they weren't the unbelievable shit show that doughfacedonny has been.

Ben starts his analysis like this:

 Whatever you might think of Joe Biden and his politics, he never sought to divide Americans or appeal to their hate. Biden didn’t use minorities as scapegoats, insult women or deride allies, and while he wasn’t perfect, Biden was a man of dignity who always appealed to our better nature.

Why the weasel words? Who do you think this kind of appeal will win over? People aren't perfect, there's no reason to state this. And even the comparison of donny's antics to what Biden stood for in office is ridiculous, that's not the bar of statesmanship. Lakoff would point out that there's no reason to qualify Biden or his politics, that simply gives the right ammunition. And it deactivates the frame of what he's talking about, nothing that is happening today has anything to do with Joe Biden.

Then the gut punch that sucks all the wind out of any Progressive impact Ben Cohen could have with this article:

I’m not a fan of Ronald Reagan and completely disagree with his politics, but he did not appeal to hate while in office. He did not vilify immigrants, demean women, or equate Neo-Nazis with anti-fascist protesters. This is why many conservatives and almost all liberals recognize the danger in Donald Trump. This isn’t so much about policy, it’s about politics and the devastating effect divisive language and demagoguery has on the psyche of a nation.

First, what the hell does any of this have to do with Reagan? Why bring him up? That just activates the frame of divinity surrounding Reagan that obviously liberals give some credence to as well. Trying to negate a frame by invoking a supposed "good conservative" only reinforces it. And you might want to check with an actual Reagan scholar like Rick Perlstein before making these claims. Reagan began his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi by talking "states' rights" clearly dog whistling his continuation of Nixon's southern strategy. Then as president he visited the nazi cemetery at Bitburg despite strong opposition from Jewish groups. What about the lying stories about "welfare queens", did those not demean women? Reagan was really hot to "reduce labor costs" (i.e. Your Pay) by breaking unions and deregulating everything, the undocumented immigrant amnesty was a big part of that and contributed to the anti-immigrant backlash today.

So why commit an unforced error like this? To achieve some sort of artificial balance? Appeal to the brain dead reprogrammable meat sacks that still support donny? Please stop doing this, anyone on the left. I have seen enough sentiments to "George W. Bush is so happy he's not the worst president in history" that I want to tear my own tentacles off. This accomplishes nothing positive and only legitimizes past republican crimes against the American people. I know so many activists and writers are desperately trying to break the cycle of "normalizing" Trump, but letting everyone from Nixon to Bill Kristol off the hook for the harm they did to discourse and society isn't the way to go.

It really has been an almost straight line of crimes from Reagan to Trump, each successive republican raised the bar of awfulness to where we are actually seeing democracy fade away and racism become just another political opinion. They are different only by degrees, not in kind. There is no set goal, Reagan most likely never thought he was pointing us in the direction of a fascist dictatorship, but his actions and the words and deeds of subsequent republicans have led us to this point. Stop falling for it!

RIP Chez Pazienza

The Resistance lost a powerful voice yesterday. I woke up to read Bob Cesca's post that his partner in podcasting, and my friend, Chez Pazienza passed away last night. No one has said how so far and he was only 47. This is the definition of not fair, and where lots of people will throw around phrases like "no justice, too soon, unbelievable," and so on. As internet social circles go though, I considered him a real friend. I could send him messages and he would reply as though I was a real person and not some anonymous collection of 1s and 0s in the Aether. I miss him already.

Far more eloquent and passionate writers than I have already weighed in on Facebook about Chez' passing. I simply want to be part of the chorus. How can a nobody like me expect to add something original or moving? I was just honored to be a tiny junior fanboy of both Bob and Chez, Listening to them always felt like I was the freshman sort of on the periphery of the cool seniors' table. But instead of making fun of or belittling me when I asked a question or had something I wanted to share Chez listened and thoughtfully responded. That was the kind of guy he was, though he would overgeneralize about how stupid other (republican) people were, one on one respect and common courtesy were the rule for Chez.

Too soon, for sure. I listened and read each of Chez' laments for all the recent passing of artists who made such an impact on and enriched our lives. I never thought for a second that he would be joining them. No justice, oh man oh man. If Chez divided the world into the good guys and the bad guys, as I suspect he really did in a way reminiscent of the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr whom I once compared him to, then our team is down so many starters and quality backups while the bad guys are all still sitting pretty and sucking the life out of everyone.

Hearing the news this morning made me immediately think of Hunter S. Thompson, not that I have any reason to believe it was suicide or that Chez really had much in common with the Gonzo legend. But Thompson fought the good fight against Richard Milhous Nixon, he lived through Reagan and watched the wave of enlightenment crest in the '60s and steadily recede. Finally, in the wake of the reelection (ho ho) of George W. Bush he had finally had enough and exercised the option of cashing in his chips. Chez experienced 9/11 at a deeply personal level and dedicated a good portion of his life fighting back at those who exploited the tragedy of that day. It would not surprise me in the least to find out that the triumph of cartoon fascism broke his heart.

I re-titled this blog a while back because gloominess just wasn't appropriate, besides I felt Chez had the market on gloominess kind of cornered. What I thought at the time was how much justice and fairness really are human constructs, the universe could give less than a warm squirt of piss what happens to any of us. Tentacles of course are popularly associated with the cosmic horror of H.P. Lovecraft. And the only way to make sense of Chez' passing without delving into conspiracy, which he would have absolutely hated, is to accept that the universe is utterly indifferent. We care that he is gone; but the stars don't.

Not to be sentimental pseudo-religious because I know he'd hate that too, but I hope that Chez is up in a heaven of his liking, hanging out with Bowie and Prince, and all the others he respected and admired who preceded him there. Your battle is over Deux Ex Malcontent, the rest of us will carry on. The good fight was worth fighting when Chez was on Earth and he fought it well; it remains the good fight today and everyday hereafter it will be worth it.

Getting The House In Order

I am a big fan of The Bubble Genius Bob and Chez Show, and I follow their writing for The Daily Banter and elsewhere. This is a podcast about politics that Mr. Cesca and Mr. Pazienza host twice a week to bring their pragmatic liberal point of view to a grateful audience. I am using the honorific "Mr." out of respect and it is how gentlemen talk about their friends. Two and a half years ago I wrote an open letter to Chez so I could try and cheer him up and share some historical perspective with anyone who was open to reading it. I like to think it helped, Chez posted the link to his blog and The Daily Banter, where the letter received a decent response, and an expression of gratitude from the man himself. Recently the show has focused more and more energy on the fringiest of fringes, the so-called Bernie Bots. Chez's articles have also lately become borderline obsessed with the idea that there are an enormous number of these privileged snowflakes who cannot wait to stay home on election day if Bernie Sanders is not the Democratic nominee. I am worried that this tendency is negatively impacting his mental health and want to give it another try to help my friend and to start getting our Democratic house in order for this long march to election day.

I am the first to admit that correlation does not necessarily mean causation, my letter could have had no real impact on Chez's improved attitude and writing. But if there is even a chance that I can be of some help I want to share my perspective on the issue of Bernie Bots and the attempted sabotage of keeping a Democrat in the White House, then let's give it a shot. I want Kid Dynamite (someone called Chez that in a comment on my post, I'm pretty sure he was being sincere) back in form and blasting the snot out of Republican obstructionism.

I will preface this by saying that I will be turning the mirror around a bit and using some of Bob's and your words, observations, and ideas to make a case for snapping back to form. And yes, I'm being selfish because every time you, Chez, write a monster smack down of that Republican obstructionism I get a warm fuzzy. This obsession started with grumbling about college kids being college kids, so let's start there. The beautiful thing about being Eighteen, Nineteen, etc. is it only happens once, and this is (hopefully) "our" chance to be stupid and live to tell about it. Bob certainly noted after the low youth turn out in 2014 that what loud college kids want is often irrelevant to our larger political reality. I have also written about the stupid mistake I made in 2000 and tried to atone for it. You and Bob have repeatedly stated that crowd sizes, yard signs, and social media hits are a poor gauge for estimating electoral strength. So I want to state that I worry you are being had.

Or am I missing the point? Is this grumpy "get off my lawn" idiom just an act? A niche to fill for this election cycle and bathe in clicks? No, I don't think so. Unless everything about your writing has been an act since I started reading it. Though criticizing Bernie Sanders' supporters has certainly generated a lot of pageviews and comments. On the other hand, and this may be completely unsupported anecdotal evidence, it seems like so many of the commenters are repeat offenders and the discussion is between just a few passionate people with a lot to say. There have been about 26,000 shares of your latest article on Bernie supporters, how many of those are from real, engaged citizens and how many are from people just passing on a cool meme? With all the technology available to us these days, it is still awfully hard to tell.

At the risk of using a Doocy mark, how many so-called #feelthebern movement leader types could just be paid right wing trolls? Is is wrong to ask the question of whether much of this controversy is actually being led by agents provocateur? How many dedicated, professional, well-paid propagandists would it take to lead an army of disconnected volunteer trolls to pretend that they are actually leftist Liberal critics of Hillary Clinton? My answer: One. You guys have commented in the past that comment thread trolls are often led by by one operative or organization that produces the memes and talking points for issues of the day. The majority of "conservative" trolls are followers, right wing authoritarian followers to be precise. It really would only take one person to forward the idea on some obscure, reactionary message board that everybody should show up on liberal websites and social media to attack Clinton from the left, and the trolls would come running. After making exaggerated claims (conveniently echoing Republican propaganda) criticizing Clinton, and making the idealistic stand about "teaching the 'establishment' a lesson" and that politics as usual is not good enough, we come to the 'staying home or voting for Trump' portion of the ratfucking campaign.

Or it may be that the Bernie or bust movement is wholly part of the "far left", as it was in 2000 with Ralph Nader and the Green Party. I dislike speculating because there are no reliable documents to put forward as evidence. And the social media revolution has turned discourse into shifting desert sands anyway. Left or right, any number of people can create a number of sock puppet accounts to echo their message and agenda. Just as there are right wing authoritarian followers who obediently line up behind authority figures who tell them what they want to hear and will gladly attack anyone who disagrees with their self-righteous world view, there are left wing versions as well. In The Authoritarians Bob Altemeyer describes the left wing authoritarian follower as a permanent rebel who is never satisfied with the existing order. Sound familiar? You and Bob talk about them all the time without using that label. It could be any combination of these vandals manipulating people for a myriad of reasons

The right wing authoritarian followers who show up to troll liberals have their leaders in right wing media and politics, with Trump being the textbook definition of the "social dominator" that Altemeyer described. But left wing authoritarian followers have leaders as well, you and Bob know them well. These are the Glenn Greenwalds and H. A. Goodmans of the world, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. had them defined as "wailers" almost seventy years ago. In The Vital Center he described those two chuckle heads as "democratic men with totalitarian principles" almost as dogmatic and ideologically driven as their power-hungry counterparts on the right. I wrote about "wailers" and "doughface progressives" in several posts a few years ago (here, here, here, and here) because of the similarities between our self-appointed "purist" progressives who aggressively complained about being excluded and betrayed by the Obama Administration after working so hard to get him elected and those careerist "establishment" doughfaces in the administration who aggressively complained about the pajamas media and their foolish liberal agenda. Both sides had a point and the fact that we had to have that debate in public makes me despair of ever getting the house in order.

But seriously, in the large electoral coalition that is the Democratic Party, how many of these Bernie Bots that pledge to never vote for anyone but him are there? Chirping about it on those social media-driven websites that depend on Facebook traffic is one thing, but how many of these chuckle heads were going to vote before Bernie entered the race? Statistically insignificant is the term that springs to mind. Whether driven by authoritarians on the left or right, the numbers of Bots is pretty small. Most of the people I know and people I have observed do not have the nihilistic and apocalyptic view of pouting and staying home if they don't get what they want. No, most is not even the real descriptor, one is more like it and she never voted for a Democrat before. So the excessive energy spent trying to reason with people you, Chez, always admit will never see reason seems like a waste. We can't get everyone to agree, that's why we have elections. It is an imperfect method of resolving differences, but it's better than letting Trump make all the decisions.

I would love to see the young, disillusioned college types get out there in huge numbers and contribute their energy and passion to the process of democracy, but it hasn't happened. We can't win them all and moreover, we're not ready for a revolution. Even if that revolution is simply a return to dedicated New Deal policies and programs, which Bernie is basically advocating (for all the talk about Democratic Socialism, Senator Sanders is just a staunch New Dealer). Too many people have been effectively conditioned by the right wing media into petulant children. And not just on the right, the most interesting and largely unexplored facet of our descent into fascism has been how coarse we have all become in recent years. And goddamnit, wasn't The Daily Banter trying to "unfuck" the internet and raise discourse? I agree with most of what you, Chez, said in that piece, now that catharsis has been achieved it is time to take a break and stop policing the kids. The rest of non-authoritarian society needs you to get our house in order.

Eugenics and The Big Lie

Ben Carson, Republican candidate for president and retired neurosurgeon, appeared on ABC News to spread another historical inversion about Eugenics and Margaret Sanger. Bob Cesca called out the good doctor's inaccuracies and pointed out that these crazy ideas come straight out of the fevered imagination of agent provocateur and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Cesca pointed out that the quote from Sanger was grossly taken out of context and the only other piece of evidence ever presented by the glossy-eyed true believers of this mythology is a completely doctored map manufactured by a propaganda outfit purporting to show that Planned Parenthood clinics are largely sited in predominantly black neighborhoods. These falsehoods are also exposed by a study from FactCheck.org already in 2011 when they were uttered by the last GOP Forkboy Herman Cain. The reason for all these attacks on Planned Parenthood are simple, PP and Margaret Sanger were the "good guys" in Eugenics history, and need to be destroyed as part of the larger war on women declared by the fascist right.

Ideology is a set of guiding ideas that inform the actions and beliefs of adherents. Ideological conflict can occur within and between these ideas, which compete to drive politics and government policy. The free market fundamentalism guiding government and corporate policy in the United States is an ideology that has been internalized to such a degree that it has lost it's identity as one of many guiding sets of ideas, much to the detriment of living things in this country and on Earth. It has many commonalities with Eugenics' competing ideology, Social Darwinism. As Planned Parenthood represents the positive side of Eugenics and was supported by many Progressives at the turn of the century as well as today, it is naturally an enemy that must be destroyed. Contraception, family planning, and yes, even abortion were liberal in that they empower individuals at the expense of elites. However much family planning empowers elites as well, working-class people gain a great deal from controlling the size and composition of their families. Children in Progressive Era America were coming to be seen as economic liabilities as many families crammed into urban tenements and no longer worked their own land. As such, having control over the number of mouths to feed was a positive for parents as well as a social good in itself.

To backtrack a little, Eugenics was Greek for "good in birth" and was coined as a name for certain principles by Sir Francis Galton, the British scientist who coalesced many ideas about genetics and evolution into this ideology. In short, Galton was influenced by his distant cousin, Charles Darwin, about natural selection and wanted to improve humanity through artificial selection. Galton was not exactly a heroic character, his own childless marriage led him to the hypothesis that aristocratic women failed to produce enough offspring from husbands of genius on their own and needed to be compelled in some way to have larger families and thereby increase intelligence in society. Conversely, imbeciles should be prevented from marrying and reproducing, thereby improving the race through guided breeding.

Two things can be taken away from this foundation story. First is that these "negative" eugenicists were elitist, they would use the power of the state to enforce who can have children and how many. Sanger and other "positive" eugenicists would use the power of the state to improve sanitation, medical care, the distribution of milk, education about hygiene and so on, but depend on the power of self-interest for people to voluntarily use contraception to limit the size of their families. Negative eugenicists were often progressives but in elite positions like doctors, prison wardens, social workers and were therefore used to making decisions for other people. In the US eugenics was less concerned with encouraging the strong and intelligent to have more children but much more concerned with stopping the "feeble-minded" from reproducing. And their methods were confined mostly to wards of the state, segregating by sex in mental asylums and prisons, prohibiting marriage between the indigent, and ultimately sterilization of social work cases that could be deemed "degenerate." After all, eugenics was concerned with improving the (white) race and arresting degeneration in white people, a prevalent idea that many in the lower classes were actually de-evolving after some golden age of enlightened superiority. Actually much of the supposed degeneration was caused by problems in the environment, not genetics, from poor working conditions to crowded living spaces.

I was as surprised as anyone after doing research that historic eugenics in the US and English-speaking world was not concerned with eradicating the inferior races. In every instance I found, eugenic sterilization and segregation measures were about purging degeneracy among white people, they didn't care about African-Americans or other races. Why would one expend energy studying or "improving" other races that you were supposedly competing with? In any case, eugenic ideas had a very difficult time gaining hold in "backward" areas of the US like the South because of entrenched religion. Eugenic sterilization did occur in the South but it was limited compared to a "frontier" area like California, which as a newer area of the US lacked the strong traditions that opposed new-fangled ideas like evolution or engineered breeding.

So when Ben Carson or anyone carrying water for Alex Jones tries to project Nazi holocaust images onto historical eugenics in the US, they are selling a big lie. The contradictions of pitching this idea that Planned Parenthood is carrying out an extermination of the African-American community to the Republican base that frequently complains about the very existence of African-Americans is mind-boggling. It must take an enormous amount of ideological discipline to believe that an under-funded organization can carry out such a feat through the voluntary actions of individual patients. But contradictions are at the heart of anyone claiming to be "pro-life" yet supports the death penalty, mass incarceration, police brutality, the proliferation of firearms, "stand your ground" and the republican enthusiasm for endless war. It is a good example of the compartmentalized thinking from right wing authoritarian followers that they can separate these contradictory ideas.

Belief in the zombie lie that Planned Parenthood targets blacks for extermination while ignoring actual history is strong evidence that ideology trumps facts in the minds of partisans. What exactly do Forkboys like Dr. Carson and Mr. Cain achieve through this particular lie?

For further reading

Horwitz, Howard. “Always with Us.” American Literary History 10 (1998): 317-334.

Klausen, Susanne. “’For the Sake of the Race:’ Eugenic Discourses of Feeblemindedness and               Motherhood in the South African Medical Record, 1903-1926.” Journal of Southern                   African Studies 23 (1997): 27-50.

Nye, Robert. “The Rise and Fall of the Eugenics Empire: Recent Perspectives on the Impact of Biomedical Thought in Modern Society.” The Historical Journal 36 (1993): 687-700.

Sandall, Roger “Sir Francis Galton and the Roots of Eugenics.” Society 45 (2008): 170-176.

Soloway, Richard. “Counting the Degenerates: The Statistics of Race Deterioration in Edwardian           England.” Journal of Contemporary History 17 (1982): 137-164.

Podcasts

Another case of the Kraken being behind the times.

Something valuable came to my attention recently almost by accident that I thought I would pass on to anyone who might find utility in it. I think I was vaguely aware of podcasts before but it took a jolt to actually look into it.

I was a fan of Bob Cesca's work on Huffpo and started following him on a new site called The Daily Banter. Then found out he did a podcast with Chez Pazienza and stumbled onto it through Google. All of a sudden a new world opened on the ITunes store, there are podcasts for just about every subject and most of them are free to subscribe to. So, The Bubble Genius Bob and Chez Show features the two hosts bantering (pun intended) back and forth about the news of the day. No guests, no phone-ins but I guess the thing that caught my attention is their left-realist perspective reminiscent of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Reinhold Niebuhr. It is a strand sorely lacking in American media today, tough and pragmatic, and unwilling to play the weasel-word "both sides" meme of corporate media. Niebuhr himself would have found the irony in a committed atheist in 2013 regularly quoting him, as Chez does, especially since he Chez expressed no knowledge of Niebuhr's work when I contacted him about it. Bob is as idealistic and pure as Schlesinger ever was, but neither man was ever naïve about the real world. Cesca also has a keen interest in history, particularly the American Civil War, further strengthening the comparison with Arthur Schlesinger. Someday I will dedicate more analysis to this inquiry.

Other podcasts I have found to keep me occupied during all the time I spend in the car include: The Talking Dead, two incredibly polite and nice Canadian fellows who spend their time talking about death and apocalypse on AMC's The Walking Dead; Full of Sith, Star Wars and comics; Rachel Maddow's audio highlights from her MSNBC show since I no longer have cable; and the intriguing My History can beat up your politics, more or less a lecture formatted 'cast comparing contemporary events to historical ones. Then I just discovered The Alton Browncast, anyone who ever watched AB's show Good Eats or his other appearances on Food Network knows that he is very well-spoken and knowledgeable. I learned how to cook from him and a heck of a lot about cultures and food history over the years. Mr. Brown is from Atlanta and trained himself to speak without a Southern Accent for television, he records the 'cast from his garage which is very punk rock. The first episode he was speaking really fast at times, which is easy to do in this format but slowed down in the second so there is definitely a lot of promise here.

 So if you spend too much of your time in a car or doing work that requires your hands and eyes but not necessarily your ears, podcasts might be a good (and often free) investment. This does not mean I have lessened my support of audiobooks but let's be honest, not everyone can stay focused during a long time recitation of a book. 'Casts are usually 45 minutes to an hour, so about the same as a music album.

Cesca on cynicism

What is the difference between gloomy and cynical? It is never fun to be accused of cynicism, we are supposed to be the "Shiny, Happy People" REM sang about all those years ago. A few definitions to help explain.
Cynicism: An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others. Also: the holding or expressing of opinions that reveal disbelief and sometimes disdain for commonly held human values and virtues.
Pessimism - the feeling that things will turn out badly 1. A tendency to stress the negative or unfavorable or to take the gloomiest possible view.
2. The doctrine or belief that this is the worst of all possible worlds and that all things ultimately tend toward evil.
3. The doctrine or belief that the evil in the world outweighs the good.
A healthy dose of skepticism or even cynicism is a very important tool when venturing into the public venue of politics. After all, people do lie. People also cheat and manipulate others. But not all and it takes a special kind of sociopath to lie, cheat, and manipulate you one-on-one or in a small group.

For the purposes of this blog, cynicism is the active understanding of the negative in human nature and using it for selfish purposes. Gloominess is the passive understanding of these features and the almost complete lack of power to do anything about it. However, being gloomy also means expecting the worst to prevent disappointment.

Nobody jujitsu's this sort of lowered expectations better than Bob Cesca. He recently nailed Mitt Romney's ultimate cynicism championship title in a way that makes my eyes water. If I live a thousand years I could never equal this zinging indictment.

Americans shrug off the political process under the assumption that politicians are liars and scam artists with little regard for their personal struggles and pet issues. So that’s what voters expect when election days grow larger in the window. Consequently, they either ignore the process or make thoughtless, dart-board choices based on an insufferable “lesser of two evils” brand of pessimism.
But it takes a particularly cynical politician to literally build a campaign around this negative expectation.
Mitt Romney is doing exactly that.

That is the cynicism I am trying to get at. Just as the hedge fund monkeys flinging their worthless mortgage-backed feces at mouth-breathing investors, or the whole trail of hot-potato passing vermin who built the damn housing bubble in the first place. "We know it's crap, but everyone is in on the game."

Romney is easily the most jaded, cynical presidential politician since Richard Nixon. He operates with the hubristic attitude that voters expect him to be shifty, and therefore he’s allowed to be shifty. The expectation gives him permission to be that caricature. For example, he accused President Obama of being an elitist because he attended Harvard even though anyone with a cursory knowledge of Romney’s history knows he also attended Harvard. But none of that matters. He’s smart and calculating enough to know for certain that a chunk of Republican voters will accept the claim at face value and not investigate the contradictions and hypocrisy, and the rest of the Republican voters expect him to say whatever it takes to win, so who cares if it’s bullshit?

And here we have it. The money shot.

BTW, I knew it would only be a matter of time before someone in the reality-based community found some redeeming quality in george w. bush's presidency. Yes, he had core values... They all sucked rotten eggs, but he did have some. But he had to lie constantly to disguise how rotten they were.

After absorbing the awesome in that post, check out what Cesca has to say about Social Security and the rottenness of pilfering morons wishing to steal it from you.