Thursday, October 21, 2010

Harsanyi - "Bitter Clinger" Perspective

http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_16379830
"Many of my more enlightened friends like to ask me: How could someone as intellectually gifted, delightfully urbane, profoundly moral and breathlessly handsome [as you] not want to spit at these stupid Tea Party candidates with their stupid positions and their stupid stupidity?"

"Do I wish that Colorado senatorial candidate Ken Buck hadn't declared that being gay was a choice (as if there's something wrong with choosing to be gay)? Yes. Do I wish he hadn't followed up by comparing a gay genetic predisposition with alcoholism? I do. If you were brainy enough to watch "Meet the Press" instead of wasting time in church last Sunday, no doubt you cringed at this primitive lunacy."

--Note from Apolloswabbie to aspiring politicians, if asked this question, answer with the obvious:  "Look I'm a politician.  What I believe about genetics is irrelevant.  Ask me what I think about the Constitution and individual rights.  Specifically, does the Constitution afford extra rights, or specify fewer individual rights, due to genetic variation?"
Harsanyi continues:  "After all, what's more consequential than a faux pas about nature and/or nurture? Who cares that Democrat Michael Bennet was busy moralizing about the cosmic benefits of dubious economic theory and science fiction environmentalism — ideas that have already cost us trillions with nothing to show for it?
"Just as long as we stay focused on what's important, right? We're so easily distracted.
"Those who believe being gay is a choice are Neanderthals. The enlightened trust science. That's why the president appointed a science czar, people. A science czar who co-authored a textbook arguing for mass sterilizing of Americans to prevent an imagined population bomb. You know, "science.""
--Government is to science what human fertility is to pure thought (Caveat - that's assuming you interpret lust as impurity, in the context of human reproduction, it could be considered with gluttony and thirst as the only pure thoughts)

Harsanyi:  "God has no place in this faith. That's not to say that Yahweh has anything on our president, who once claimed future generations would see his election — Goliath government — as the point in history where we finally started "healing the sick" and "the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal . . . ."
"Now, that's the kind of faith-inflected lingo we slack-jawed yokels can comprehend. Otherwise, the left's plans are just too darn complex for us to appreciate."
--I can't figure out why anyone's disenchanted with the President, can you?  Certainly not because he built over-much expectation for his Presidency ... But on that topic, I could almost imagine how people would believe that he thought he could slow the rise of the oceans and 'heal' the planet, but how did they ever buy the one about changing fundamentally the way polics and government are done?!? 

Harsanyi:  ""Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now," Obama recently explained, "and facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day all the time is because we're hard-wired not to always think clearly when we're scared. And the country is scared.""
--The implication being that we WERE thinking clearly and using facts and science two years ago when we selected him ... holy patronization Batman. 
Mr. President, I think what a lot of people are scared of is more government intervention.

I think I can understand The President's frustration (and to be clear, I don't mean in this discussion to display any personal disrespect).  The Candidate told everyone what he was about - his candidacy was an advocacy of time honored liberal tenets which have all been advocated by liberals since at least FDR, if not before.  Certainly he espoused his support for the 'positive rights' which should be added to the Constitution (that is to say, making it a right of one person to have something which government takes from another person, such as medical care or a place to live).  He espoused an energy policy that was first articulated well by President Carter.  He espoused government intervention in virtually every arena under discussion.  He espoused consistent, across the board support of that Federal government supported entity ("unions") which allow one group (those in the union) a coercive government monopoly on employment with their employer.  And, he said he would fundamentally change politics, eliminating things like conflicts of interest, partisanship, earmarks, lobbiests employed by those elected to represent the People, etc.  He even added his intent to be fiscally responsible.  In his mind, everything he's done since then was something he said he would do. 
The problem, as best I can tell, is that many of the folks who voted for him heard something entirely different than what he was saying.  They didn't hear him saying "I'm going to do this like every liberal has wanted it done for 80 years."  They thought he was something that he was not.  They were confused, and I assume, heard what they wanted to hear because of the Candidate's considerable charm.  Now, they are not charmed.  They can see him for what he is, which is someone that believes in a lot more government intervention and power than they do.  They no longer support him.  The President cannot be blamed for that, but probably feels blamed for that.  If I were in his shoes and something like this happened to me, I would be very frustrated.  Perhaps I would blame it on something like a conditional irrationality and a sudden distaste for science amongst the masses. 
I wonder how good one would have to be as a politician to follow the advice of 'under promise and over deliver' but still get elected in the first place.

No comments:

Post a Comment