Must We Act As If They Mean What They Say? (What did I mean when I said that?)

Yes there is a difference. And Republicans have got it right. Because the Republican base punishes candidates who take centrist positions, they get candidates who espouse right wing views. Because Democrats don’t punish people who take an extreme line in defense of liberal positions, they get candidates who espouse right-wing views.

(Tangentially, the top headline on Google News for me right now is “Tax plan not class warfare, Obama insists”, which is driving me nuts. Score another rhetorical point for the more ruthless party.)

In April 2009, Perry got a lot of attention for telling a Tea Party crowd that Texas might, someday, have to secede from the Union, to escape an oppressive government in Washington.

Perry said what he did, referencing “secession”, precisely because it signalled his identification with a core constituency of the Republican Party, white Southerners, whose identification with the South, includes various beliefs about the legitimacy of the Confederate cause.

And, of course, Democrats and the news Media drew attention to these “controversial” remarks, for their own reasons.

The phenomena of Republicans signalling affiliation with various sub-groups is just standard-issue American political tribalism. As is, anyone from the Left drawing attention to the repulsive nature of various elements of the Republican coalition.

The objective “radicalism” of what is said is a function of the beliefs of the Republican constituency group. The subjective and critical appreciation (in a negative sense) of that radicalism is a function of the beliefs and associations of opposing Democrats.

In his remarks in April 2009, Perry emphatically declared his appreciation for the Union, and acclaimed his audience, “patriots”.

May it not be that that this is the case:

The Dems are concerned with intellectual purity (hence we take them to mean their philosophical claims); the Reps are not concerned with intellectual purity (“elitist wankery”) and so not only may not believe their philosophical claims, but by making such extreme claims be deriding the whole philosophical enterprise.

(And given the divorce between Dem philosophy & practice – and given the Reps more practical sucess(es) – one might well ask: What is the point of this concern with intellectual purity?)

I remember years ago watching these films about anthropology in college. In fact, thanks to the local community college broadcasting them in the wee hours, I may even have copies of them on video tape, if my VCR is still working…

A tribe in New Guinea decides to go to war, so they put on their best feather headdresses and send a challenge to the tribe next door. They agree to meet at a certain place and throw spears at each other until the first blood is drawn.

I imagine most people who have studied anthropology must have seen that series of films at some time.

Now I’m starting to think … those tribes in New Guinea … maybe they are smarter than we are … When it comes to politics, they get right down to business first thing.

And here I am without a yam garden to my name! When the big collapse comes, I am so screwed…

the liberals will never, ever go back to the simple Edgeworthian principle of making the wealthy the tax paying class

Seems to me the current administration has taken an enormous amount of stick for precisely that – see the “x% of Americans pay no tax at all” meme.

nothing has been as damaging to the ‘liberal’ project as the inability of the Dems to raise taxes on the wealthy

Which is why all Dem-sympathising independents are cheering on the Buffet tax, I guess.

Thou trollest, sirrah.

He so obviously isn’t an anarchist that it’s obviously a losing rhetorical strategy to paint him as an anarchist. Nevertheless, he did, literally, advocate anarchism, at the level of philosophical principle.

But John, even on a literal interpretation, Perry didn’t advocate anarchism. The problem is your framework, not an American willingness to tolerate dissonance between a Republican’s statements of principle and his policies.

You’re interpreting his promise “to make government as inconsequential as possible” within the framework of political philosophy. But that’s not the context of the speech. “As possible” here does not mean logical possibility, but rather a much more vague “as possible given the basic assumptions and beliefs of most Americans as to the minimum levels and types of order, opportunity, fairness, and livelihood.”

You might argue that “as possible” does mean, literally, logical possibility, but in fact we rarely use “possible” to mean “logically possible” in everyday speech. “Please do this as quickly as possible” has never implied, to me anyway, “do this as quickly as it might be done ignoring all other assumptions of priority, value, and perhaps the physical laws of the universe.” “Get here as quickly as possible” does not mean “run over pedestrians and steal a private jet if you can save a few minutes by doing so.”

The contradiction you perceive between Perry’s statement and what we believe his policy preferences to be is resolved once one takes the notion of political vocabulary, and the context of political speeches, seriously.

Seems to me the current administration has taken an enormous amount of stick for precisely that – see the “x% of Americans pay no tax at all” meme.

Actually you could argue that this is a Democrat politician not meaning what he will say. Obama has a tax plan, which says the rich should pay more tax. Its not going to pass, and anyone who pays attention to these things knows what and presumably that’s what he’ll tell his funders. However, Democrat voters (and this is the calculation) will think that he tried, but he was stopped by those mean Republicans.

I’m not sure the same thing isn’t going on with Rick Perry. When Rick Perry talks in minarchist terms, I suspect a fair number of those who support him believe him. Part of what is going on is that they just don’t think that deeply about these things (get the government’s hands of my medicare), and partly they do genuinely want a smaller government. Kind of. To the degree that they think about these things, which is not that much.

Now obviously sophisticated folks know he doesn’t mean it, but then its not aimed at the sophisticated.

I think John identified a really interesting type of rhetoric: extreme statements that (a) the politician has no intention of actually carrying out; and (b) that his supporters don’t really want either.

This is quite different from renenging on promises, where the politician’s supporters really did want what he promised to do, and are disappointed when he gets elected but fails to deliver on what he promised to do.

It’s also distinct from people who say extreme/”crazy” things, and really intend to do them.

(I think I need a picture of Heath Ledger as The Joker, and a caption of “Not sure if serious” at this point).

It’s perhaps closer to the sort of threats that are made prior to a fight breaking out, where the rhetorical threats are more extreme that the participant’s likely actions. If someone says “I’ll [expletive deleted] kill you!” they are (probably) not about to actually commit murder, although some lesser violence is quite possible.

> Now obviously sophisticated folks know he doesn’t mean it, but
> then its not aimed at the sophisticated.

I’m genuinely a bit staggered by appearance of arguments of this form here at CT. Do any of you live in, or perhaps have family members who are teachers or other government employees [1] in, Wisconsin, Michigan, or Kansas? Are you aware of what is happening in those states? What evidence do you have that a President Perry, backed by a radicalized House, wouldn’t try to implement a Scott Walker program nationally? Do you really think that Republicans, should they control the Senate, would honor Democratic holds and filibusters?

Cranky

[1] or young women who prefer to control their own bodies

Oh, and I should trace back to my earlier point about how Republican policy is crazy precisely because Republicans have confused emotive statements with descriptive statements, meaning they literally attempt to put into office exactly those politicians, and put into practice exactly those policies, which would make them feel better.

When a whole group of people start confusing the content of “I would feel emotionally satisfied if this were true” with the content of “this, when true, will produce the following concrete benefits X, Y, Z,” you get crap like “Let’s build a wall between us and Mexico! F#$% yeah!”

What evidence do you have that a President Perry, backed by a radicalized House, wouldn’t try to implement a Scott Walker program nationally?

But that’s not getting rid of government, is it. He’s still keeping prisons, police, courts and the army.

Nick (16) and Andrew F (17) make the key point here. There is absolutely no symmetry at all between Perry’s pledge to make ‘government as inconsequential as possible’ and your fictional liberal call for ‘government to control everyone’s lives, down to the last, least detail’.

You can apply reasonable context and qualifications to the former that don’t diminish the pledge in anyway but simply explain it more fully; the same can’t be said for your second example.

Gah, more of that should’ve been italicized. Not enough caffeine, sorry.

“But that’s not the context of the speech. “As possible” here does not mean logical possibility, but rather a much more vague “as possible given the basic assumptions and beliefs of most Americans as to the minimum levels and types of order, opportunity, fairness, and livelihood.”

But what exactly are those “basic assumptions?” It’s a constantly moving goalposts. Some conservatives really are anarchists, and would do away with everything; others would abolish the federal government and make the states infallible. And there are a million variations on the theme of “smallest possible government.”

In other words, I don’t think JH is being uncharitable in his interpretation of Perry’s remarks. Anarchism is a reasonable characterization, as reasonable as any other. This is the problem: conservatives say the craziest damn things you’ve ever heard, and then rely on interpreters to make the case for their sanity.

Which for some reason everybody is willing to do.

If it’s true not just that ideas have consequences but that ideas have implications

I think pretty much everybody believes ideas have implications. The question is who is to be master. So Perry probably has a consistent point of view, splitting the difference, combining the concepts, presto chango: practically no government but not anarchy because [well, I’m not going to guess as to the beliefs of someone whose ideas and politics I abhor, it would be doing him such a huge favor].

I know you go on to say more about it–another interesting post–but I think lots of conservatives would be very insulted if you told them they don’t believe ideas have implications, or suggested they couldn’t draw conclusions from facts.

Edit — the word ‘descriptive’ in assignment of emotive force to descriptive statements should be ‘normative’

But that’s not getting rid of government, is it. He’s still keeping prisons, police, courts and the army.

“Government,” in this context, means two things, and only two things: “taking money from hard-working, decent people and giving it to undeserving layabouts” and “passing all kinds of stupid, pointless rules and regulations that serve no purpose other than to give bureaucrats jobs.” This has been the case at least since Reagan. It very explicitly excludes the military, law enforcement, immigration enforcement, agricultural subsidies, and corporate welfare.

Social Security, Medicare, and infrastructure were also excluded from the dog-whistle definition of “government” until recently, although that may be changing as the Overton window continues its inexorable rightward shift.

Because their language use is emotive, rather than descriptive.

Bingo.

It’s basic Humpty Dumpty semantics: the word means what we want it to mean, no more, no less. It seems to me that we’re wildly overthinking this.

… sorry, that got accidentally posted before I finished.

The counterpart on the left might be revolutionary rhetoric.

It’s seems reasonably clear that neither the US nor the UK will have a revolution in the immediate future. (Other countries, like Egypt, might be different). So when a UK or US activist is using revolutionary slogans about domestic politics, they are often not seriously planning immediate violent overthrow of the government. It’s just the kind of thing you say to establish your leftish credentials.

(Of course, there is a certain amount of Direct Action by self-described Anarchists. But the hallmark of this is that they keep quiet about specific plans for reasons of operational security. If some anarchist is telling me about it, it’s a pretty sure sign they have absolutely no intention of actually doing it).

“Come the revolution, these people will be shot” is the kind of thing you just say. (If they were actually planning to assasinate a politician, they wouldn’t be talking about it).

Neither the US Democrats nor the UK Labour party are revolutionary parties, of course. You need to go a little further left that the mainstream.

Other possible examples: The wearing of Guy Fawkes masks. This is an allusion to the origanl Guy Fawkes’s ateempt at blowing up the houses of parliment, via Alan Moore’s “V for Vendetta”, via 4chan/Anonymous… Clearly humourous, and purely rhetorical. They people are not about to emulate the original Guy Fawkes, or Alan Moore’s characters.

Another example: The respected/notorious hacker group Chaos Computer Club’s logo is a joke on the logo of the Red Army Faction (Bader-Meinhof). Again, largely rhetorical.

John Holbo: “Two weeks ago I made a post that was as comprehensively misunderstood, relative to my intent, as anything I have written in quite a while. So let me try again. I meant to assert the following:”

When a large proportion (majority?) your intended audience infers a different meaning that you meant, perhaps your writing was at fault.

There is also the possibility that it serves the interests of “centrists” who think they would like to see a Republican in office now to mollify the business-oriented, libertarian-leaning center, or “independents,” of both parties, in advance–assuring them that they don’t have anything to worry about. When Weld was elected governor of Massachusetts “everyone” said that he was socially liberal and his personal beliefs would trump party extremists, which didn’t exactly turn out to be the case. So maybe Perry is seen as having pro-business, pro-economy policies by that kind of person, and the only thing that would bother them is obviously ludicrous personal beliefs. It worked out pretty well with GWB, didn’t it?

I have really appreciated the remarks, regarding “emotive” language. People really do like to hear a lot of stuff said, which is not literally true, but which makes them feel good. Anyone, who gives speeches, knows the importance of doing this: you tell the audience that they are the best audience ever, etc. Coaches tell sports teams all kinds of inspiring things, which are literally false, if not downright ridiculous. If you were present, when a companion had an accident, you’d be well-advised to tell your companion that she was “lucky” that it wasn’t worse. Taken literally, it is a ridiculous assertion. But, it rebuilds the person’s healthy narcissism. Think of it as talking to the brainstem.

Darwinian evolution is sometimes held up as an issue, on which Republican politicians are willing to say that they believe things that they don’t. For those in the audience, who promote and defend “creationism”, I don’t think they care at all about the literal biology. They are demanding that their religious narcissism be defended.

The problem is that Perry’s statement, “to make government as inconsequential as possible” is not a manifestation of political philosophy but a code phrase marking tribal identity. “Smaller Government” has been a tribal marker for the GOP for the last 40 years. We can debate all day long what this code signifies in the existential world, but the point is irrelevant. All he’s saying is “I’m one of the good guys, trust me.”

There is however an interesting sociological phenomenon at play here: the flavor of the GOP’s code phrasing bends towards extremism in almost all cases. The GOP has harnessed the basest impulses of Americans (xenophobia, blood lust, hierarchical power structures, greed, machismo) and rides it to political victory again and again. They will continue to do so, at the expense of good policy, open debate and social grace because they have no incentive not to. The Democrats continue to flog away with reasoned discourse and fail to raise in any of the voters the same passions and so appear week.

“Tribalism, though, leads Democrats to exaggerate and misperceive the “radicalism”.”

So the problem is democratic tribalism?

:-|

It was unclear to me whether “churches used to take care of them” meant “churches used to run hospitals for free” or “churches used to make sure they were prudent and saved for a rainy day.

@48, 52
I agree, a lot of the liberal reaction was to the audience shouting to let the man die.

But I will point out that Paul’s answer was a bit incoherent. He suggested that the uninsured person take personal responsibility, that freedom was about taking your own risks. When Blitzer pressed him whether the man should be allowed to die he backtracked and said, of course not, churches should step in and help him, and if we went back to letting churches do it health care would be a lot cheaper. Also, we shouldn’t license doctors (at least that what he seemed to imply), and we shouldn’t have inflation.

So he began with a statement of principle — take your own risks and suffer the consequences. Then he backtracked to an argument of mere utility — it would be cheaper for churches to insulate us against the risk of our own choices, rather than government. Then he meandered off into non sequiturs.

On second thought, I suppose there was a statement of principle buried in his wording. When we rely on churches and private charities, that’s an example of us “taking care of ourselves.” But when we provide the same sort of support through government we’ve somehow absolved ourselves of responsibility.

Should a democratic politician obtain a primary showing of %10 calling for outright socialism (the nationalisation of industry), then I expect mainstream Democrats would sharpen their rhetoric in response without any intention of following through.

How could this happen when the Democrats agree that ‘socialism’ is a dirty word, and nationalization of industry is simply outside of acceptable discourse?

To foster popular participation one has to practice populist politics. Republicans do it, Democrats don’t. They are simply afraid that their (hypothetical) populist proclamations would be taken seriously and endanger their sponsors, Wall Street speculators. Republican populist excesses don’t endanger their sponsors, they have nothing to worry about.

@SusanC: I think the usefulness of that tactic was preempted by the general freaking out about terrorists post-2001. Revolutionary = terrorist in the American imagination (going all the way back to Haymarket), and nobody wants to be associated with anything that might be construed as sympathy to terrorism.

Since this is basically a discussion about whether Republicans are incoherent nuts or actually very shrewd populists, I am not sure pointing out that Ron Paul is both will help us, but on the particular issue of Blitzer’s question and his answer: Paul does argue that healthcare in America will be just fine as long as people take personal responsible and the government keeps its dirty hands out of it, which is coherent, shrewd, populist, and nuts.

Like the Third Republic

Of course it’s beneath Americans to imagine that the experience of any damn furriners could have anything instructive to tell us about gummint, our specialite de la maison, and to look to the French for such an example is really de trop. But at the risk of being treated real ugly were I ever to visit Texas (as ugly as the English language is treated there on a regular basis), I propose to do just that, solve our paradox by the appeal to the example of the Third Republic.

For most of its 70 years, large numbers of French politicians would regularly be elected to seats in the legislature of a Republic which they very publicly was not a legitimate government. They thought that France was by nature and right a monarchy, and/or subject to closer direction by the Church than the secularist Republic was compatible with. They were even arguably, at least at times, a majority of the electorate and the Deputies. But there were three main different flavors of monarchist, which either prevented them from ever forming an effective majority, or perhaps they divided themselves up into such factions in the instinctive recoil from ever having to actually carry out the quite unrealistic plan of returning any flavor of monarch to power. It’s sort of like the dog who becomes absolutely furious at the trash truck as it speeds away, but is careful to give chase only after it has a sufficient lead, because even a dumb dog knows the worst possible outcome would be to catch up to the thing and have the hollowness of its bloodthirsty intent to destroy the behemoth shown up.

Our own dear Rs are not quite in the same position as the monarchists of the Third Republic. Most of them have always talked as if every function the government has added since the New Deal (except Defense!), and all new jurisprudence since then as well, especially the “judicial activism” that overturned Jim Crow — are clearly unconsritutional and illegitimate. But they’ve been president or in control of one or both legislative chambers often since the New Deal, held “ministerial responsibility” as it would be put in a parliamentary system. In our system, unless you have a sustained control of the trifecta, you’re really just what would be called a caretaker government by most of the world. So they have gone along with not touching any third rails of the form of government put in place the last time the Ds had the trifecta and used it, but they were just biding their time until all was in place and ready for the nation to be led up from the slavery of the New Deal and Civil Rights. Well, that time has arrived. The federal courts are packed with Federalist Society stooges, and they have their cadre of governors out there testing the waters on nullification.

So, no, Perry isn’t a consistent anarchist. But he really is a consistent believer in states’ rights, including secession. He understands perfectly well that asserting the full monty of states’ rights — nullification, secession, the 10th trumping the Supremacy Clause — would probably involve at least the threat of the use of force. He believes that use of force against the federal government would be justified, both in general, and specifically as derived from the 2d and from Art IV, sec 4. He believes, correctly, that Madison and Jefferson agreed with him on nullification, even though that, at the end of the day, means that the conflict between the 10th and the Supremacy Clause gets resolved on the field of battle. That doesn’t make him an anarchist from an abstract philosophical view, because he believes that systematic defiance of government authority is only a right of states vis a vis the federal govt, or individuals and militias that have the approval of their states. This is a pretty limited and narrow “anarchism”, but given that he and everybody else in this country since 1865 has gotten used to having “government” mean to us the federal government and nothing more, the belief that it is as legal as church on Sunday to oppose the federal goverment with the force of arms (as long as your state gives its blessing!) sure feels a lot like anarchism. Frankly, I don’t much care about the difference between the ideologically consistent anarchism and what Perry is selling, because anarachy is what the man truly intends and will accomplish if elected.

I don’t find it at all remarkable that Rs “get away with” saying crazy things about the illegitimacy of the federal government in its present form and reach. It’s what most of them have said very consistently since the New Deal. The fact that political reality has forced them to act little different from Ds in their caretaker government roles doesn’t mean that they have ever given up on going back to a previous form of government some day, when conditions are right. What I find remarkable is the complacency with which we just know that they don’t really mean what they’ve said for these 80 years, that the Federalist Society doesn’t really want to overturn everything decided since FDR, that of course they aren’t serious about states’ rights. Of course they mean this stuff, and of course they plan to act on their beliefs. They’re not going to be stopped because we point out that they’ve spelled “gun” as “gub” on their robbery note, that they aren’t ideologically consistent anarchists, therfore they can’t overthrow the government until we show the note to the bank president and see if he discerns a gun rather than a gub.

We can hope this goes on like the Third Republic, that neither monarchy nor the Church is ever put back on a throne, that this dog never catches the trash truck, and the worst they ever do is bark themselves hoarse against the socialist tyrants and activist judges. I tend to doubt it. But however it turns out, whatever surprising and unforeseen turn reality takes, what is utterly unsurprising is that they continue to rail against the foundations of the system they live in, the system they thrive in. That’s what defines them. What I fear is that they aren’t going to repeat the mistake of their great-grandparents, who acted consistently with their beliefs, seceded, and left the levers of power in the Union to their enemies to use against them. They will instead nullify the federal government at their convenience, but stay in the Union in order to control the response. Unlike monarchy in France, states’ rights in the US is practicable.

But, they’re politically serious.

Christ, Roger, that was the single most emotivist post on the thread.

I can’t imagine an empirical fact better established than the fact that the voters are dumb bastards. If you really think that the Republicans succeed in politics by thinking of the voters respectfully, then I encourage, nay beg you to become a highly-placed Republican operative.

Walt, I don’t even know what this means: “I can’t imagine an empirical fact better established than the fact that the voters are dumb bastards.’ I do know that it fits in with the Republican idea that we should limit voting privileges, and so I’d have to give you back your advice to me: you seem more aligned with Governor Scott Walker than, say, Martin Luther King Jr.
In fact, of course, there is no such empirical evidence because there could not be any. There’s no social science survey of any type, anywhere, that has shown this supposed ’empirical’ fact. And if there was, the category of “dumb” would itself be so laced with dumbness that I imagine the surveyor would be hoist by his own petard.
Thanks, though, for noticing the emotion on my part. It is disgust with a conversation that is as conceptually dumb as the claim that “I can’t imagine an empirical fact better established than the fact that the voters are dumb bastards.” That has the true ring of a barroom truism.

Surveys show that a significant fraction of the American public is uninformed about basic facts about politics. For example, according to the most recent Pew survey, less than half the respondents knew who John Boehner is, and only 38% know which houses of Congress is controlled by the Republicans. And dumb bastardry cuts across all social classes — there was a survey (that I can’t find at the moment) that the more educated you were, the more likely you were to think that the deficit is the most severe economic problem.

Telling me that I’m aligned with Scott Walker instead of Martin Luther King is upping the emotiveness, though. Kudos to you.

And how could I forget? Apparently Americans (on average) think that 25% of the US government budget goes to foreign aid.

No, your comment is about how you’re outraged, simply outraged that we’re saying mean things about the voters. Unlike Republican strategists, who I’m sure are saying behind closed doors, right now, “The voters are just so smart that we have to just rely on their tacit knowledge to do the right thing in the voting booth.” (Come to think of it, there must be at least one David Brooks column that claims exactly that.)

Voters don’t vote on tacit knowledge. They mostly habitually vote for somebody, unless they’re pissed off about something, and then they vote for the other guy.

You’ve completely confused yourself about the objective situation by your emotional commitments. My position may or may not be “reactionary”, as you call it, but it has the advantage of being true. But you’re too busy evaluating things on the Walker-King axis to know it. This is how we ended up being ruled by an oligarchy — the middle class forgets its self-interest, while the rich never do.

Okay, ignorance then. They’re ignorant bastards. We regret the error.

Pervasive ignorance is a capital fact of American politics.

Politics, like any other activity, entails a high-degree of specialization. Most people have lives, and do not have time to spare to pay attention to politics. I suppose, ideally, an educated populace should have sufficient rudiments of knowledge — basic frameworks of institutional and philosophical knowledge — that they can in a few weeks before an election absorb the arguments about specific issues and candidates, pro and con.

Of course, to have any hope that that happens, there are many pre-requisites, including the preparatory civic education. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, must be answered, institutionally, by the careful division, and opposition, of power into process, as well as served, one would hope, by ideologies and idealism.

Political institutions are as subject to entropy as any organic system, and must find renewal in reproduction, or die out. One possible source for renewal are events that motivate the mass of people to pay a good deal more attention to politics than is normally healthy.

Roger: “I can’t imagine an empirical fact better established than the fact that the voters are dumb bastards.’ I do know that it fits in with the Republican idea that we should limit voting privileges

The logic here:

1) Voters are dumb bastards;
2) Dumb bastards shouldn’t be allowed to vote;
3) We should limit voting privileges.

But there’s an alternative syllogism:

1) Everyone’s entitled to vote, since in a democracy everyone is entitled to a say in decisions that affect them;
2) Democracy won’t work well unless everyone with a vote know how to reason and to find necessary information;
3) Everyone should be taught to reason and find necessary information, preferably before leaving school, but if necessary afterwards, whatever it costs.

This allows one to believe that most voters are dumb bastards and still believe ardently in democracy. It also means, however, that one confront the fact that the ruling class doesn’t actually want democracy to work well, which is why education is so underfunded and mass culture so degraded.

For one thing, people outside big cities and near-city suburbs probably don’t have much use for federal social services.

Right. Those farmers get absolutely nothing from the federal government…

Only 2% of the population are farmers. And what they get is money, not social services. and I don’t see why it would be stupid to vote for lower taxes and higher subsidies.

I think it is less ignorance and more like rational disinterest.

Rational disinterest is a very plausible cause of ignorance.

I was personally convinced Obama would end the wars. I was wrong. Instead he started a third.

And provided the military for a fourth (Libya) and seems to be maybe-contributing to noisemaking about starting a fifth (Syria). Wasn’t ‘intervention’ in Syria the main thing we were all terrified Cheney would try to accomplish in the second Bush term? FFS.

But there’s an alternative syllogism:

Indeed:

1) Everyone’s entitled to vote, since in a democracy everyone is entitled to a say in decisions that affect them;
2) Democracy won’t work well unless the preferences of the polity are legitimately and fairly represented;
3) The existing parties don’t provide that representation and reinforce institutional barriers to entry for parties that would do so;
4) I have a pitchfork you can borrow, and we can share a torch.

This idea that voters are mostly low-information and that’s a bad thing is quite a bit like the idea that Christians are mostly low-devoutness and that’s a bad thing. We should work to build a system that treats low-information voters fairly and attends to their needs. It’s not necessary that they become the slightest bit more wonky or interested.

We CT commentariat are ‘into’ politics as a hobby, and claiming that we catch up on our BBC reading out of some noble devotion to duty is highly disingenuous. We do this stuff because we get into it. Most other people won’t. Same with car manufacturing. We don’t try to teach every driver in society how to spot engineering flaws in a model of car; we set up a system in which they can trust their desire for a fairly reliable automobile is attended to.

Someone like me could sit here and disparage you bastards for not spending years learning the ‘basic’ mechanics that would be necessary to make a high-information choice in preferred/purchased automotive… or I could demand a system of governance which penalizes malfeasance among car designers and sellers, so that low-information buyers don’t get utterly screwed. (They might not get an ‘optimum’ deal, whatever that would be, but they get something that attends to their reasonable expectations fairly well.)

So, fellow politics-engineers, let’s not ruminate over how we should attempt to teach Civics 101 to every last damn voter (though to achieve something approaching our own level of political sophistication, it’d be more like a three-year intense Civics sequence).

Instead: how do we identify and penalize political malfeasance? And how do we insulate those regulations from destructive meddling?

Look, this is a simple cost/benefit analysis. You pay the government, you get something from the government.

In places like France or Denmark, you get free medical care, free higher education, free child care, unemployment benefits for at least two years with occupational training, public transport, retirement at 60, etc. It makes sense to agree to pay higher taxes to make sure services are not cut.

In the US, OTOH, the taxes are only slightly lower, but the services are virtually non-existent. Everything is spend on ‘defense’, to defend ‘our way of life’. Well, I believe under these circumstances it’s not unreasonable (let alone stupid) to opt for lower taxes.

“We CT commentariat are ‘into’ politics as a hobby, and claiming that we catch up on our BBC reading out of some noble devotion to duty is highly disingenuous. We do this stuff because we get into it. Most other people won’t. Same with car manufacturing. We don’t try to teach every driver in society how to spot engineering flaws in a model of car; we set up a system in which they can trust their desire for a fairly reliable automobile is attended to.”

Brilliant. Simply brilliant. I forget this way to often.

Or maybe that you’re voting against a foreign-born radical Muslim socialist who hates America.

I should have added:

“Or that you’re voting for a reform-minded champion of the middle class.” Conservatives aren’t the only ones who can get fooled.

Salient @87

I’ll second (or third?) MPAVictoria’s “Brilliant. Simply brilliant.”

I watched Glenn Beck on Fox a few times. I’ve listened to Rush Limbaugh and some of the other right-wing talkers. I’ll venture that they are serving an audience that feels itself starved for understanding. They don’t just push buttons, in the Frank Luntz style of politician talking points. They offer bits of esoteric information, apparently latent with revealing meaning, and models of analytic thinking. A lot of this is just offering models of effective water-cooler poses, for people, who want to express themselves and win arguments during breaks at the office — Keith Olbermann’s Countdown made this function of cable-news commentary-heavy “news reporting” explicit. But, on the evidence, I think it would be a fair assessment to say that there are lots of politically ignorant people, who are genuinely motivated to be less ignorant. As well, of course, of people such as Steve @84 describe, who, frustrated in their starvation of information and power, don’t pay attention, because they’ve given up.

Blaming the ‘ignorant bastards’ seems, in the present moment, blaming the victim. The victim of what, though, other than their own ignorance?

If you’re a statesman, I don’t think you sell the price of gas going up by creating understanding. You build and subsidize trains, buses; free bike-sharing in the cities.

@97

It is no accident that the current crop of Republican fascist governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey and Florida went after high-profile transit and rail projects, and defunded them. Those governors represent the resentments of people, who are mad about the fading of a certain vision of the American Dream — one that involves the freedom to drive an SUV and hates the preaching of tree-huggers.

I think it’s a near-sighted resentment, but you don’t meet that resentment by an unexplained proposal for a bike lane.

In politics, as in life, just showing up is 80% of success.

I didn’t know that there was any mystery to why the Republicans play to the resentments of crazy people? (Hint: rich, greedy folks are a minority, too, and the Supreme Court is yet to enfranchise business corporations.)

Here’s what Holbo and most commenters here are missing:

The question is not what politicians believe but how they act once in power. And anybody who doubts that Republican crazy talk can and will translate into crazy policy action is irredeemably naive.

Take again Perry. Does he really believe that Global Warming is a hoax invented by greedy scientists? Maybe, maybe not. Somewhere between 30 and 50% of Americans genuinely believe this to be true and I’m sure that at least some Republican leaders do but probably not all. But is there any doubt that as president, he would act *as if* Global Warming were not real or didn’t matter? There is absolutely none. Whether he really believes in crazy conspiracy theories or just doesn’t give a damn about the future of mankind doesn’t politically matter – the policy outcome will be the same. So what is the point of debating whether or not he means what he says?

It reminds me of the discussion about whether Bush really believed there were WMD in Iraq (in which case he was incompetent) or not (in which case he lied). It doesn’t matter. He said those crazy things and he did those crazy things. That’s what matters. And what also matters is that the political system and the mass media environment function in a way that legitimizes both the crazy talk and the crazy act.

And here we need to stop and ask, how is this possible? How can a system that generally favors self-preservation give rise to that kind of political lunacy? Of course, Republican policies are rational from the point of view of some actors but even the plutocracy has (one assumes) a long-term interest in maintaining the social contract, maintaining the public infrastructure and basic government services, investing in education and research, and preventing ecological disaster. What makes the crazy talk we are hearing from Republicans so scary is that whether or not they believe what they say, they *are* intent on sacrificing their own long-term interests for whatever short-term advantage they hope to gain. They *are* willing to trash the country, they *are* willing to trash the planet. They *are* behaving as if they were genuinely crazy. And liberals *are* not getting it. And I just want to keep banging my head to the wall when I read the kind of nonsense Holbo comes up with.

Piglet gets at the point that I really wanted to in this: whether or not they actually believe all the stuff they’re saying, given the opportunity, they will do a great many crazy evil things that line up with the words.

“It is no accident that the current crop of Republican fascist governors in Wisconsin, New Jersey and Florida went after high-profile transit and rail projects, and defunded them. Those governors represent the resentments of people, who are mad about the fading of a certain vision of the American Dream—one that involves the freedom to drive an SUV and hates the preaching of tree-huggers.”

No, most republican opposition to mass transit I’ve seen is based on cost-benefit analysis. And a suspicion that the unionized workforce that build and operate the transit systems funding democratic politicians are operating under THEIR self-interest, not some greater love of the planet.

The US isn’t Europe, and I suspect with cheaper gas prices, more Europeans would be driving, but that is a policy trade off.

Salient, who is this “we” you’re talking about? Are you part of a secret cabal that runs the world? Then yes, I suggest you bring up your ideas at the next meeting. I also suggest you bring up the ideas of ending war, and feeding the hungry.

Or are you a spokesperson for a new Philosopher King Party that I’m not aware of? If you’re on the ballot on my state, I’ll definitely take a look. We could use a party of benevolent philosopher-kings eager to design a system that automatically reflects the interests of voters, whether or not they pay attention.

On the off-chance that you’re neither of those things, and that you’re a basically powerless citizen like myself, then what “we” should do is not really relevant. What’s relevant is what they, the ones with actual power, are going to do to us, and how we can stop them. We’re the objects being acted upon, here, not the subjects acting. The only way we’re going to change that is part of a political movement. If it’s too much to ask people become informed about their own self-interest and participate in a political movement, then there’s no way to change it at all.

Yes, as people are making clear, the most important criticism in the earlier thread wasn’t that JH claims that the sizable sheaf of cigarette papers separating Rep from Dem doctrine is illusory, i.e. that Reps are really secretly Dems.

Instead the criticism was that JH seemed to be joining the press and the Dems in indulging this kind of rhetoric, even when taking it at face value could be advantageous vis a vis undecided or swayable voters.

This ‘class war’ stuff, for example. The complacency – or justified confidence – involved in the Reps going out of their way to bring the issue up is remarkable. Surely it would be possible to start pointing out that the Reps seem to be accepting the ‘class’ bit and opposing only the ‘war’ bit. You start debating some moron Republican and get them to admit this in some suitably lurid terms, keep banging away with suitable catchphrases and you might get a few more to make the break with the dominant narrative and take up a left-populist one – outriders in the propaganda campaign could perhaps manage to hold their noses and use the ‘New World Order’ catchphrase, even.

There’s a huge constituency of so-called ‘conspiracy theorists’, most of whom are not especially wacky, not particularly right-wing, and often reasonably close to the mark on most issues, but whose vocab triggers allergic reactions among VSPs. That vocab could be subtly adopted by a left party and some of of that constituency won over to the lesser evil of the Dems. All you have to do is agree about the GWOT and not ostracise people on the basis of the largely irrelevant detail of their views about Republican political conspiracy. How hard can it be to point out just where the Reps money, ideas and Tea Party come from?

So instead of guiltily denying that they’re engaged in class war, the Dems should ask – What class war? What is this war you are taking sides in, and whose side do you take us to be fighting for? Why you always going on about class – always about class with you aristocrats, isn’t it. Not for us this class war, but a war on class itself, etc.

Bringing up the issue of class ought to have been a bad move for the Reps – the myth of a classless society is really the foundation stone of the whole culture of hypocritical right wing bullshit in the US. A left wing opposition would be very pleased that the enemy has put it on the agenda. Just keep repeating class, class, class. The convenient conventional US terminology that only acknowedges one huge middle class, into which almost everyone falls, is not really taken seriously at a fundamental level – the term ‘working class’ ought to be a very positive and salient one and could be reintroduced without people feeling particularly insulted, couldn’t it?

Class rhetoric ought to be ramped up – it’s not a death tax, it’s anti-aristocracy protection. The Ron Paul thing – class genocide. Quietly inveigle Max Keiser into a TV slot. There’s shurely plenty of appetite for opposition to the aristocracy/plutocracy once its existence is actually acknowledged and suitably framed.

BUT (as HV et al have pointed out) actually existing Democrats don’t want to do anything of the sort, of course because those cigarette papers don’t actually add up to a very thick sheaf, many of them are a touch on the patrician side themselves and, oh yeah, the whole system is based on corrupt funding and lobbying.

And presumably Dem voters – whose self-definition in the absence of any real substantial political differences is based on being nicer and saner and more reasonable capitalists – would be turned off by such ‘extremism’ and generally being indecorous. Like the Dem senators sitting on their hands in 2001 after the bent election, because it was thought impolite to make too much of a fuss. Thanks for that, chaps.

In other words the reason why the Reps are allowed to get away with this stuff is because boldly exaggerated claims of being more right-wing than thou backfire only so far as being right-wing is regarded as a bad thing. But in US mainstream political rhetoric (leaving the floating labels of ‘moderate’ etc to one side) there is only one wing – the cowboy-capitalist right wing, still defined in opposition to the phantom ‘commy’ left. The slogan ‘Capitalism, watered down’ is not an inspiring one.

US mainstream politics, in yet other words, is Hannity and Colmes writ large.

It’s been touched on once in comments, but I guess I have to say it:

When Democratic politicians get up and say that they believe in the rule of law, or distributive justice, or in moblising and empowering the disengaged and powerless they are making radical philosophical ones claims which they (clearly) don’t really mean.

There are plenty of asymmetires between Republicans and Democrats. But the John Holbo has identified isn’t one of them.

I think Bruce’s economic self interest point is a good one. How do people understand their economic self interest?
Interestingly, everybody so far seems pretty convinced that the GOP conveys the message that, for instance, they are going to destroy Medicare. And thus, the only reason the chief immediate beneficiaries of medicare – the over 55 group – has moved very much into the GOP column is because they are either dumb or ignorant.
That’s one hypothesis.
Another hypothesis would be pavlovian, and it would go something like this. The great domestic accomplishment of the Bush administration was to push through an enormously expensive and corrupt pill bill, the MMA. This, it turned out, took – from what I gather, the constituency for it, medicare beneficiaries, approve of it heartlily. Why? to quote Wikipedia, “Among other benefits, the senior gets an immediate financial boost, as many plans let them skip paying Part B and Part D premiums, waive usual deductibles, and waive copays, all while covering preventive physicals and providing a prescription drug benefit.” The plan went into affect two years – not four years or five – after it was voted through.
Contrast this with the ACA, which – while confirming the corrupt part of the Bush deal with Big Pharma – was heralded as a compromise solution – pleasing a narrow D.C. constituency, but nobody else – and, to get by the Centrist pundits and to satisfy the president’s own Chicago School heart, cut the ‘fat’ from Medicare. The Republicans immediately seized upon this latter fact, which simply confirmed the plus 55 impression that the Dems would happily cut them off. As for the rest, they have an uncertain impression of being shouldered with yet another financial burden, mandatory insurance, while having no real benefit to offset it – and yes, they may in time, although they will also surely face higher wait times as well, every one of which will be blamed on the Democrats.
So, do they mean what they say? Well, they – politicians – say different things at different times. Apparently, the fact that the GOP in 2010 criticized the cuts in Medicare over and over – I’ve quoted from the opening salvo in February 2010, when Gingrich criticized the cuts – simply escaped the notice of the “well informed” liberal voters and analysts, who thought instead that Obama was appealing to independents by being fiscally prudent.
Here’s a link about those 2010 attacks: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/how-to-run-against-medicare-cuts-see-the-2010-campaign/

“Piglet, where are these liberals who don’t get that the Republicans are crazy, and are going to destroy the country? I sure don’t know any.”

Obama, for one? What about the liberal part of the media punditry? There’s Krugman but hardly anybody else who dares speak it out loudly. And what really is Holbo’s point? Maybe I’m still missing it but if he thinks what you thinks every liberal thinks then he does a good job hiding it.

Why moderation? I don’t think I’ve done anything bad and have not been held up since signing up.

“Do people in these rural counties ever meet any federal g-men: FBI agents, someone from FEMA, FDIC, department of education, GAO, a federal judge?”

Do people in cities meet FBI agents all the time? And who ever meets somebody from the department of education? FEMA? People in rural areas are probably more likely to need FEMA assistance.

Your argument is a bit spurious. The point is precisely that most rural areas are kept alive by transfers from both state and federal governments but they aren’t aware of it. It’s a perception issue, akin to the 40% or so Medicare recipients who aren’t aware that they are benefiting from federal programs.

Salient, who is this “we” you’re talking about? Are you part of a secret cabal that runs the world?

Yes, “We CT commentariat” are indeed a cabal of world-rulers — didn’t you get your parcel of the New World Order with your CT subscription papers? :)

On the off-chance that you’re neither of those things, and that you’re a basically powerless citizen like myself, then what “we” should do is not really relevant.

…relevant to what? I think it’s ok for us to talk about ideas, even in circumstances where ‘we’ have very little power to enact them. You can mentally insert “if ‘we’ somehow could” into these various assertions, if that makes it more palatable. But such conversations, about ideas that we’re powerless to enact, are vital. For one thing, such a conversation (hopefully) helps us avoid pursuing bad ideas! For another thing, it helps us converse with the people in our community about what we want for ourselves, our community, our country, etc. For another another thing, we might discover in the course of inquiry that there is a coherent way to work with others in the community to push for improvement in the direction of some particular idea, or at least, we might see ways to help get the ball rolling. And, we find discussing somewhat-impracticable ideas fun.

(And remember for example, as recently as 1990, the idea that the US would ouster Saddam Hussein by force and occupy Iraq indefinitely was fairly impracticable, it was a fringe idea. Now it’s reality, and it seems to be reality because people who felt it was a good idea somehow caught the ear of a guy who would become President, and they probably earwormed his ear a long time before it seemed plausible that he would become President…)

What’s relevant is what they, the ones with actual power, are going to do to us, and how we can stop them.

Isn’t “stop them” a thing that “we” should do? I feel like this contradicts your position of one sentence ago. Feel free to re-interpret–

how do we identify and penalize political malfeasance? And how do we insulate those regulations from destructive meddling?

–as a variation on “how do we stop them?”

There’s the present, which sucks. There’s the Future, where we have successfully implemented change, where we have created a future where everything works sufficiently well that the voters can go back to not paying attention. People are congratulating you on the beauty of your Future.

But there’s the intermediate step, where we actually obtain enough power to implement change. Since you and I have zero power, we have to convince other people — probably lots of other people — to pay attention. That means the one thing we can’t tell the voters is that they shouldn’t need to pay attention.

And some ideas can be implemented by vocal enough advocacy — gay marriage is something that seems to be coming about in that way. But the kind of change you want simply can’t come about in that way. You can run into your House representative and say “gays should be allowed in the military,” and this might make a difference. You can’t run into your House representative and say “you should have less of a free hand to take bribes from lobbyists, and be more responsive to the wishes of the voters, who in turn will give you nothing,” and hope to have any chance of his listening to you. The only way that can matter is if he knows you’re speaking for lots of voters, and the only way that can be true is if you have roused lots of voters to pay attention. Which is the exact thing that you are saying the voters shouldn’t need to do. Maybe they shouldn’t need to, but they still do.

In American politics, the last 30 years has been a story of the Left being blind to the critical importance of institutions, while the Right pursues a far-sighted program of selectively building, destroying and re-making institutions.

I read Salient @87 as recognizing the central, critical importance of institutions, but, maybe, I was wrong. Institutional change requires institution-building. If you don’t want the Media to mindlessly adopt a narrative such as, “Excessive gov’t debt drives economy into toilet” right after the banksters’ fraud and incompetence have tanked the world economy, then, you need at least some prominent organs of news production and distribution, which are not controlled by giant Media conglomerates dependent on gov’t IP, licenses and franchises, and financed by business advertising.

In small towns and rural areas, I don’t think the issue is that people feel themselves independent of government. Government is as pervasive there, as anywhere. The issue, it seems to me, is one of local v. remote. The local elite is likely to have an interest in promoting a degree of political hostility to “remote” government. That’s long been a theme in American politics — going back to the Anti-federalists, who were often notables with a local powerbase.

The New Deal, informed by an institutional economics which no longer exists, was often quite clever in addressing this problem. The WPA built magnificent local post offices. Programs usually included elaborate schemes for status-enhancing, ceremonial local administration (think Draft Boards, or Agricultural Extension).

By contrast, say, environmental regulations coming from the Nixon-era EPA thru State Fish and Wildlife or Natural Resource agencies, are the fiats of non-local technocrats, and they come into direct conflict with the interests of local landowners and developers. That’s the kind of thing, which generates resentments and motivates local notables with money to promote an extreme conservative philosophy.

I read Salient @87 as recognizing the central, critical importance of institutions, but, maybe, I was wrong.

Nah. Your interpretation sounds right to me, and I happily endorse everything you said subsequently. I would say that institution-building is a principal means through we act on good ideas once we’ve gotten them hammered out and refined via discussion forums like this one, and I’d point to Steven Attewell and Lemuel Pitkin and plenty of other CT regulars as paragons of this, building up institutions like the Working Families Party. I’d also point to the folks who built various environmental-protection institutions, e.g. Greenpeace. (There are local examples of institution-building in which I’m involved, but as a pseudonymous commenter I’m testy about listing these and thereby publicizing my precise location in the world.)

I guess instead of “the central, critical importance of institutions” I would say “the central, critical importance of mass coordination” but that seems like just a semantics difference between us. Maybe by later saying “you can catch a Representative’s ear” in order to win Walt over, I took away from that centrality. Wasn’t intentional. In fact, the best way to catch a Representative’s ear is to coordinate with others in sufficient number to act as a clearly defined cohesive group that claims to speak for, and attempts to speak for, a swathe of the population (which is to say: form institutions! And of course, that’s not the only reason to build institutions, etc, etc.)

That means the one thing we can’t tell the voters is that they shouldn’t need to pay attention.

The phrase ‘pay attention’ is sliding around all over the place.

What do we need to do on voters’ behalf (as much as we can)? Clarify who they should be jawclenchingly mad at, who they should be sigh-inducing irritated by, and who they should fist-pumpingly appreciate, and for all of these, give a general impression why you’re right, with sufficient emotive content to resonate and stick.

Also, this recent Nation article offers an interesting perspective:
http://www.thenation.com/article/162922/democrats-rural-rebellions

Perhaps most remarkable is where the Democrats are winning. Most of the recall elections in Wisconsin, as well as many of the special elections in other states, have taken place not in cities but in rural areas. Of the forty Wisconsin counties that were entirely or partially in Senate districts that saw recall races, twenty-three voted Democratic, and four more gave the Democrats 49 percent or more of the vote. Democrats were not just winning counties that voted for Walker in 2010; they even won several counties that voted for John McCain in 2008. That’s a big, big deal, because the national Democratic setbacks in 2010 came overwhelmingly in rural areas, with thirty-nine US House seats in the most rural Congressional districts flipping from the Democrats to the Republicans. That represents two-thirds of GOP Congressional gains, and it parallels patterns that tipped gubernatorial elections and control of legislative chambers…. “Schools and services are what keep small towns strong,” says Wisconsin Senate Democratic leader Mark Miller, who represents a number of rural communities. “If the fight is between Democrats who want to defend public schools, public services, and Republicans who want to sacrifice them in order to give tax breaks to the rich, that’s when you’ll see rural voters shifting back to the Democrats.”

You mean on the day the disability checks come in the mail, and you can drive down the U.S. highway past the U.S. Forest to take your kid to the U.S. Army recruiting office? Or the day the hospice care lady comes to look in on grandma? Or, was it the day, you lost your house to Fannie Mae, and had to move to the trailer park?

“Is the federal government more visibly useful in a rural trailer park than in Manhattan?”

Excuse me but you made the claim that it is *less visible in rural areas*. The burden of proof then is on you to reject the null hypothesis. Also, “visibly useful” is quite subjective. Measured in dollars per capita, the federal government is very present in rural areas but whether it is “visible” and perceived as “useful” is a different matter and it has been precisely my argument that perception and reality differ significantly.

“Well, I don’t think disability checks are sent disproportionally to trailer parks; people in suburbs probably use highways more, and the “U.S. Forest” thing doesn’t seem very meaningful.”

Hand-waving. “probably”, but you don’t know. Anyway I thought your comparison was with Manhattan, not with the suburbs. There’s a lot of literature about policy intervention and indirect subsidies favoring suburbanization over cities. That might be interesting for this discussion but it doesn’t really look that that is what you want.

…incidentally, these famous farm subsidies, it’s not like they are there to help the farmers. They are there to address the particular market failure that threatens the urbanites much more than it does the farmers.

Remove the subsidies, see prices collapse, farmers go bankrupt, no food produced next year. The farmers will certainly have enough to survive, but urbanites will starve. So, if I was a farmer, I don’t think I would’ve felt any gratitude at all. Why? You don’t do it for me, you do it for yourself.

“Also, initially, this was about “government services”, and so I’m not impressed by the argument about dollar amounts being shifted around; it misses the point.”

You are welcome to provide evidence for a lesser importance of “government services” in rural areas. I haven’t seen any yet. I actually know people who have lived near self-sufficient lives in remote areas. Back-to-the-land hippies. Some of them even lived without electricity. What you say may apply to some of these people but these are vast outliers. Most rurals today do not fit that self-sufficiency myth any more than Manhattanites do. Also, many of those living in rural areas (as defined by Census) are really sub/exurbanites.

The farmers will certainly have enough to survive, but urbanites will starve.

Right, because there are so many farmers in the US who grow subsistence foods for their families….

“I already provided some, but you don’t care to respond”

Henri, you started this side thread with the remark (82) “For one thing, people outside big cities and near-city suburbs probably don’t have much use for federal social services” and multiple commenters have questioned that claim. Note that the comment you replied to (78) explicitly referred to Social Security and Medicare. The suggestion that rural areas don’t “have much use” for these is just baseless and as was pointed out, there are numerous other federal and state government services (or shall we say interventions) that rural areas rely on.

Since then you have responded by citing anecdotes, constantly shifting goal posts, and making all kinds of unsubstantiated claims, some of them just ignorant (rural counties never have contact with FEMA?). So to claim that you provided evidence but nobody responded is a bit rich, frankly. It’s time for you to either drop your “rural areas don’t need government” theory or revise it into something more defensible.

So your statement is that it is common sense that rural people have no use for Medicare and Social Security. Well, sometimes common sense is just common nonsense.