Tuesday, November 29, 2005

A further discussion on the nature of Republicans

Thankfully for those of us who can read, Schmidlap finally posted part II of his four part series on the state of America - Evil, Greedy, or Stupid: What Kind of Republican are You? If you haven't read that, go do that first before reading this. We'll wait.

You're back. If you're a Republican and still reading, go thank a teacher, and then congratulate yourself. You may hold the hope for the future of your party.

Now, a while ago, I disagreed with our fine correspondent over whether the future of America was as bleak as he suggested. In this response (what are these, the Federalist Papers or something?), I want to agree with the classification scheme, and elaborate some more.

Evil - This is truly the scariest group of people in the world. They act as villians in a Dickens novel or something, spending all of their effort to gain more for themselves, actively cruel, and willing to hide behind lie after lie in order to protect their narrow view of the world. There is hope here, however. Not that evil men will vanish, because there will always be evil, as long as there are those who value power above all else. The hope lies in that, as sometimes happens, evil people outreach their grasp, and are brought down. This week we have a shining example in the person of one Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a corrupt Republican (I know, it's redundant) from California, whose heart must have grown three sizes this week, because he turned himself in, and is now turning state's evidence against some of his co-conspirators. Since these people have no souls, once they're caught, they continue to think about how they can gain, and are willing to hurt anyone else (even their compatriots in crime) to do so. I've heard that there could be as many as 60 names coming out of the Abramoff scandal, for example, although we only know a handful so far. We may yet see Turd Blossom and DeLay and Frist hoisted by their own petards. We may not, since too many judges are in the grasp of the evil ones, but that's where the hope lies.

Greedy - The Libertarians are a funny group. In some ways, I would like to be a Libertarian. Philosophically, I respond very well to the ideas of Locke and Hume and Smith, and I'd love to live in a world where everyone was educated enough to make wise choices – to only spend money at businesses that gave good value and high quality, to vote for the person who was best qualified - and so on. I’ve read Atlas Shrugged and listened to Rush (no, not the obnoxious lying blowhard) and all that too. But I’ve also spent some time in the real world, the world where even educated people make stupid decisions, where soldiers coming back from war will spend the rest of their lives suffering from PTSD, where accidents will occur and pension funds will be raided and those who wish to do harm will do so and where those who work hard and try their whole lives to be good people still suffer and children will be born to drug addicts and corporations will ignore deadly practices because it saves a few billion dollars. And as much as I’d love government to operate on the Harm Principle, it’s just not realistic. Here’s an example that I give to those who tell me that we don’t need governmental regulation – consider a pharmaceutical company that develops a wonderful new drug that cures some horrible disease, but rushes it to production, because there’s no oversight, and they want to help as many people as they can as soon as possible (HA!). But they miss that some of those who take the drug will die, because they never tested it properly. And 10,000 people are dead in a month. The market will indeed correct itself, and that company will suffer huge financial losses – perhaps go under for good – but 10,000 people will still be dead. The Libertarian has to write those deaths off as losses that will just happen, but I’m not willing to.

The greedy throw anyone who isn't perfect in their model under the bus. A person with real compassion (read: a Liberal) supports programs that will help people get educated, so they have a better chance of getting that $16/hr job. They support low cost (or no cost) day care programs for those going to school and working low-wage jobs. They support proactive health care programs and coverage for everyone. etc, etc, etc.

And then you know what you do, if you really care about your fellow humans? You look at that "horrible" example of the single mom who won't go to school and won't work and just keeps having more kids and is on drugs and tells the aid people to just keep the checks coming and she doesn't plan on doing a damned thing to help - and you provide aid anyway. Not really for her sake (although we don't want her to starve), but unless something's done for her kids - get them in decent schools, get them life mentoring (cuz they sure aren't getting that at home), get them health care and food and clothes and whatever it takes, they won't have a chance.

Because that's really what this country is supposed to be about - everyone has a chance to succeed. Some people are born with that chance, and some need help, perhaps multiple times during their lives, to get it. And then we set a floor beneath which we won't let anyone go (unless they really choose to - ya wanna live by yourself in a shack in the mountains and never speak to anyone? bully for you), and we make that floor one we're all comfortable with - healthy enough food to make a good diet out of, shelter that has heat and air and is sturdy and mechanically sound, access to health care that focuses on catching things before they get bad, and most importantly, an education which opens minds and encourages dreams and treats everyone as if they have the potential to be great.

Will some squander their chance, through bad choices, or sloth, or whatever? Of course. Not everyone will be Bill Gates. But that floor's there for them too.

Stupid - This is the group where we have some hope of making things better. The evil may go to jail, the greedy may one day need Social Security and Medicare and discover the value of sharing, but the stupid can learn. They’re not being taught right now, not in enough places by enough people with enough resources, but therein lies the potential for a better world. We may live in America the Stupid, but most of the stupid people out there aren’t incapable of learning – just ignorant of how to learn. Perhaps it’s because I’m a teacher, but I think that pretty much everyone can learn a little more than they think they can, if given the tools. The Evil and the Greedy don’t want this, of course – they know that the dumber the rest of us are, the easier it is to tell us what to do.

But this is where I fight, because these are the people who can change. Maybe not BubbaJoeJimBobBubba, with his confederate flag and his indiscriminate use of racial slurs and the What Would Jeff Gordon Do? bumper stickers, but his kids. We need to develop a national will not just to throw standards at education, but to really make it better. To make it so that the kids born in the New Trier school district and kids born in the middle of nowhere, population Uncle Daddy and Aunt Sister, and kids born to a crack whore and a gangbanger have the same opportunities to learn. To make teaching a profession that’s rewarding financially as well as personally. To look not for the lowest possible level of “acceptable” work, but to push every child to do as well as they can.

Someday, if we can figure out how to do that, things will change.

4 comments:

schmidlap said...

Great post, Doc.

Coupla things:

1) Love your example of the drug company and the 10k dead people; I will be using that in a drunken bar conversation with one of my favorite Objectivists very soon.

2) We'll just have to agree to disagree on the prospects of smartening up America the Stupid. It won't fail because of lack of effort or commitment by good people like you, but because the evil who run the show are actively working against you, and they manage the national checkbook. Stupid == Power for the evil, and Stupid == Cash for the greedy. So they like us stupid, and will do whatever they can to ensure it. There's positive feedback in the system, and it's already in oscillation.

3) I had considered a fourth trait for Republicans, racist, and you allude to this(BubbaJoeJimBobBubba) in your article. But I decided that's just a subcategory of stupid with a good side helping of evil, and so I left it out. If you really want to see just how bad it is out there, go to a wingnut blog. You won't have to look hard to see oozing piles of vile, raw, sickening racism.

I wonder what Lincoln or T. Roosevelt would think of their party today?

drmagoo said...

First of all, Lincoln and Teddy would be shunted aside and barely listened to nowadays. A Republican that told the South to go fuck itself and freed slaves? A Republican that busted trusts? Heresy! Where's the evil? Where's the greed?

I also thought about discussing racism, then decided it was too big a topic to just stick into this post. It's also a dangerous topic, so I'm hesitant to jump in unless I can do it with both feet.

There is one thing that I can think of that would knock the evil ones off their perch when it comes to education - a substantive threat to the nation. Not this made-up crap about Saddam and WMD's, or even something as tenuous as terrorism, but a real national threat, like China threatening to invade, or cashing in all those bonds it's bought or something. Something that sparks a 1950's/1960's investment in education (that we've been coasting on for nearly 50 years). And when that happens, we need to take control of it and not let those bastards get their claws in on any of it.

schmidlap said...

I see one last hope of knocking the evil fuckers down, but it may not be too solid.

The one thing that is really killing them right now is a vigorous, aggressive, non-politicized Justice Department. Fitz and the boyz are crawling up into each and every orifice, examining each rancid dingleberry. And because the evil cabal is the most gutless, chickenshit bunch of bastards on the planet, at the first sign of DoJ involvement, they are going hoarse from all the squealing they are doing on their "pals." The whole Ponzi scheme is collapsing.

But I say it may not be too solid for two reasons. One, Chimpy McGlowstick-in-Anus can just pardon everyone. Two, he can keep appointing cronies to head Justice and then nothing will really get done. Why Ashcroft recused himself at the beginning of the Plame investigation is one of the great mysteries of our time. You can be sure Abu Gonzalez is more of a team player than that and this breach of trust won't happen twice.

drmagoo said...

Well, there's one person the Liar-in-Chief can't pardon - his own bad self. So what we need is to grab the House and Senate in 06, impeach him and his Master Dick right away, and let them rot. We'll let Condi and the rest of them know that if any of them even has a dream about pardoning the traitors, they'll be in the next cell, and Lynndie England's less friendly twin will be the guard.