Entries Tagged 'Poli-Psy' ↓

I came across an interesting read from the SF Gate about the major political candidates and where they stand on relevant-yet-largely-ignored issues.

Note how many times Ron Paul’s name is mentioned — he is the only candidate that had a consistent platform that valued freedom above all else. The others are all practically the same, and the difference between them as a slow-moving unthinking mass and Paul as a political revolutionary is striking.

Andrew Sullivan defends something stupid:

That tells me that counting Michigan and Florida would disenfranchise a large number of voters who did not vote, because there was no campaigning and/or the voters there thought the contest would not count and so did not bother to vote.

So, voter disenfranchising now extends to voters who don’t vote? In that case, what about the 50% of the vote-able populace who don’t vote for Republican or Democrat candidates? Surely THEY are being disenfranchised as well, right?

I’ll humor this line of thinking with a counter-argument.

If voters being disenfranchised really mattered to Mr. Sullivan, I think he would examine this beyond the OMG-OBAMA-IS-TEH-WINNAR context. Clearly there is a massive percentage of people who do not find Democrat or Republican candidates to be worth the time to vote for them. Why is this, and what can be done to change the trend?

When Jesse Ventura ran for Governor of Minnesota he was a clear underdog but awakened a lot of non-voters who voted him into office. Unfortunately he was a failure of a Governor for a variety of reasons not related to his party affiliation, but the point was proven that there is a serious possibility of bringing “new” voters to the table by offering a clear and different third choice.

No 2008 Democrat or Republican candidate entertains more than roughly 25% of the voteable populace. Starry-eyed singing of “yes we can” and talk of “bringing people together” makes for a good campaign ad, in reality that 75% opposition is not going to budge.

It is practically unavoidable to read on the intarwebs today without running into posts on the Obama/Clinton primary race. Often these posts rely heavily on opinion polls, sampling, and well thought-out grouping of individuals to gauge their interest over a set time period. These are the tactics and tools of marketers, not servants of the people, and most certainly not of grand leaders.

It’s disturbing how many people have been sucked into the notion of a presidential candidate as a product, packaged brightly for consumption by the largest target market possible. We no longer are Americans, we are Black Americans, White Americans, Female Americans, Male Americans, Poor Americans, Rich Americans, Christian Americans, Jewish Americans. We are market-segments, not individuals. We are consumers of a product, not voters of a leader. The insurgence of marketing into politics, our perfection of its methods, and the dumbing-down of the general populace all work hand-in-hand towards the goal of the annihilation of personal liberty and individual thought. The dumbest 51% will hold all of us in shackles, as the lowest common denominator will rule over us.

In the free market, if a product is put forth people either buy it or don’t. If no one purchases it, the product is a failure. Imagine if our currency were our votes, and if the product that is already being marketed to us could be rejected by our saving our vote for a better product. 25% of the population (half of the voting populace) would no longer be able to buy a shoddy product on behalf of the rest of us who choose not to waste our money. No more could clinching narrow market-segments mean victory or defeat — a candidate would have to appeal to ALL Americans as individuals.

Paul Waldman had an interesting post on Code Pink which was linked by Andrew Sullivan:

…this week, which will see the fifth anniversary of the start of the war, Code Pink plans to “step up the pressure,” as its leader Medea Benjamin said. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, “Code Pink has a full roster of activities planned for the week, including: yoga every morning at 8:30; organic potlucks every noon; nightly movies and popcorn; a bike ride around Berkeley on Tuesday; an open-mike musical jam on Wednesday; and a ’send-off’ to the Marines on Friday, when protesters will bring suitcases and pink berets for traveling.” How the Bush administration will be able to resist is anyone’s guess.

Any effective political movement has to engage its participants in a way that makes them feel their contributions are meaningful and redefines their sense of self. But if those contributions aren’t actually meaningful, if they amount to an extended series of circle jerks that accomplish nothing, then the movement will inevitably be confined to a small group of self-deluding members with a lot of time on their hands. There are tens of millions of Americans who want to end the war in Iraq. But how many of them see something like Code Pink protesting a Marine recruiting station and say to themselves, “I want to be a part of that”?

Ridiculous, pointless nonsense can in fact do more harm than good, and more harm than nothing would do. It can create sites like this that attempt to intentionally reverse the original pointless stupidity with more pointless stupidity. Occasionally it is countered as Berkeley’s marine recruiter debacle was, with stripping of federal funding, resulting in the City Council backing down in response.

We see the cry for “something, anything!” often when there is a tragedy of any scale. School shooting? We must do “something, anything!” to fix it by banning Doom and Marilyn Manson. One deranged individual shooting up a college campus does not require a response, and certainly not an ill-reasoned “something, anything!!1!” response.

If you want to feel good about yourself by flailing your arms about so that mass-media will see you, at least be willing to put your money where your mouth is.

From an Obama rally in Oregon, viewable here:

“I mean, think about what these last few election cycles have been about,” the Senator said. “We argue about immigration, but we don’t try to solve the immigration problem. It’s an argument that is all about people’s passions instead of trying to figure it out.

“We argue about gay marriage. You know, in the meantime the planet is, you know, potentially being destroyed. We’ve got a war that is bankrupting us. And we’re going to argue about gay marriage? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Yeah because, I mean, you know, civil rights are, you know, I mean, kind of a waste of time.

Bullshit.

Relative to action required by government, Obama is totally off-base. Global warming is a non-issue. The war in Iraq is a non-issue. The immigration “problem” is a non-issue. All three of these talking points would be solved with inaction, and require no direct government interference. Without government interference, the most clean, effective, and efficient form of energy will bubble to the top and state governments will handle the rest. Without (further) government interference, we will not be able to afford empirical activities in Iraq and will be forced to withdraw our troops. Without government interference, our immigration “problem” will cease to be interpreted as a problem.

The basic civil right of having social contracts recognized, however, requires government to defend it and so is a much more important issue than global warming, the war in Iraq, or immigration. It’s a shame that Obama doesn’t see basic civil rights as something that makes sense.

States.

There, I said it.

Our country is a loose federation of states, all of which are intended to handle matters not specifically allocated to the federal government in the Constitution. Things like healthcare. If the California state legislature wants to attempt to enact a universal healthcare program, they are perfectly free to. However, if Alabama doesn’t want to they should not be forced to enact their own or to pay for California’s.

What about those Alabamans(?) who don’t have healthcare and want it for free? They can move to California. Surely, you say, that would cause an influx of non-tax-paying people to California to leech off of their universal healthcare system and that would be awful! Indeed — that is a major downside of providing something to everyone at no cost to the recipient.

Assuming that tax-paying individuals found universal healthcare coverage to be something valuable, they will flock to states who provide it and reinforce effective policy with the movement of their tax dollars. Hey, that sounds a lot like competition?! It certainly does — make states compete for the tax dollars of its citizens just as they do for businesses (case in point, the $75 million tax break Washington (state) is giving Microsoft for a server farm to keep it in the state.) Competition is good, it sparks innovation and necessitates efficiency.

One behemoth federal system will be garbage, and we will see no other option other than to deal with it. It will be a drain on the economic and physical well-being of our younger generations for the sake of the prescription drugs and hip replacement surgeries of the same baby boomers who are destroying Social Security (another result of no competition and federal government overreaching.)

States’ rights is hugely important, and should be considered anytime that programs like universal healthcare are considered. The federal government has their fingers in so many pies already that they simply have no right to be in — education, healthcare, drug enforcement, agriculture, steroid use in sports, the list goes on. We need to cut out all of the federal fat and get back to the basics, leaving the states to decide those really important issues like whether or not Roger Clemens is a liar and how much money to give people to not grow anything on their farm land.

Separate but equal.

We’ve all heard the above phrase, and for many it summons forth an image of a “White Only” water fountain, and a “Colored Only” fountain 50 feet away. There are certainly those who may still argue that “separate but equal” works, but I doubt many of them are proponents of gay marriage today, which is fundamentally the same concept.

Gay marriage, by means of “civil unions” or “domestic partnerships” is harmful to the spirit of equality unless it is applied universally to gay and straight couples alike. What about committed partnerships between a man and two women? A woman and two bisexual men? Will they need to wait another sixty years for their “separate but equal” union?

Why is a social contract — that’s what marriage is at its core — being limited in number and gender by the government? Why is it ever? Why, to legislate morality, of course. The people who want to limit marriage to one man and one woman (either directly or by supporting “separate but equal” options) are the same people who want to prevent you from smoking marijuana or paying that nice Korean masseuse $20 for a happy ending.

The solution, as with the “drug war” and taxes, is abolition. Strip marriage from the tax code and let social institutions handle social contracts. Strip marriage from legal documents and let the association be known for what it is — a contract between two (or more) people to share responsibility of and for assets, including each others lives.

Stories like this in The Olympian disgust me:

Pond suffered the aneurysm just before the R Family Vacations cruise ship left Miami for the Bahamas in February, Langbehn said. After Pond was taken to the emergency room, Langbehn said she was informed by a social worker that they were in an “anti-gay state” and that they needed legal paperwork before Langbehn could see Pond.

Even after a friend in Olympia faxed the legal documents that showed that Pond had authorized Langbehn to make medical decisions for her, Langbehn said she wasn’t invited to be with her partner or told anything about her condition

To what end was she prevented from being at her dying partner’s bedside? What was gained?

Over at The Atlantic, Jim Manzi posts..

Patrick Appel points to a very interesting debate about Intelligent Design at The Corner. (To put my cards on the table, I believe ID to be pseudo-science.)

The debate about evolution is a great example of the kind of sucker play that often ensnares conservatives. Frequently, conservatives are confronted with the assertion that scientific finding X implies political or moral conclusion Y with which they vehemently disagree. Obvious examples include (X = the Modern Synthesis of Evolutionary biology, Y = atheism) and (X = increasing concentrations of atmospheric CO2 will lead to some increase in global temperatures, Y = we must implement a global regulatory and tax system to radically reduce carbon emissions). Those conservatives with access to the biggest megaphones have recently developed the habit of responding to this by challenging the scientific finding X. The same sorry spectacle of cranks, gibberish and the resulting alienation of scientists and those who respect the practical benefits of science (i.e., pretty much the whole population of the modern world) then ensues.

In general, it would be far wiser to challenge the assertion that X implies Y. Scientific findings almost never entail specific moral or political conclusions because the scope of application of science is rarely sufficient. In fact, for the two examples that I provided, I have tried to show in detail that X does not come close to implying Y.

Conservatism has often been called (by intellectuals) the “stupid party”. But I think it is more precise to say that healthy conservatism from Burke onwards has been the party of “facts trump theories”. Naturally, if you are in the business of spinning theories – that is, if you are an intellectual – this can be pretty frustrating, and it will often be to your advantage to characterize this as “stupid”. But this is what makes contemporary conservative ideology that refuses to engage seriously with the scientific enterprise so damaging: it sacrifices the key conservative virtue of empiricism.

I wholly agree. Accepting evolution implies nothing but that we likely evolved from less-developed beings to what we are today. Examples of evolution and adaptation in many forms are omnipresent. To ignore the evidence just to blindly cling to theism is ridiculous. You can be a theist and believe in the likelihood of evolutionary theory just as well, you’ll just have to think rationally as you determine the difference between literal and figurative teachings in your various religious texts.

As for global warming, I also agree that accepting a warming globe does not require one to be for cap-and-trade / carbon-credit systems. Are we making a direct impact on the Earth’s climate? Sure. Should that mean that we halt our technological advances and regress to living in caves? Of course not. Efforts for cleaner energy should certainly be made, but not at the expense of the amount or reliability of that energy. While hydroelectric and wind power make a lot of sense, those solutions are not practical everywhere. Burning coal is technologically retarded and we definitely need to move away from it as a major source of power. All signs point to nuclear power as being the answer — let’s move forward with that.

I was reading this SLOG post, and just had to make note of it here.

Looks like Catholic voters are still an Obama weakness, but there’s some movement in his direction. Seems to me like he could pick up a few more—especially among voters who care about just war theory, the death penalty, and asking for forgiveness when you’ve made a terrible mistake. But I was raised by hippie Catholics, so what do I know.

(If you’re curious: Obama won the small Latino vote in Virginia but lost the smaller Latino vote in Maryland.)

How disgusting. People actively showing interest in the segmentation-for-manipulation of our population in an attempt to figure out which subculture, religious affiliation, or skin color of people to appeal to for votes. The division of America is being planned and discussed in the open by politicians and their ilk who have nothing to stand on or for but turning people against each other. This Talking Points Memo puts it well at one point:

The Obama campaign’s instruction to their volunteers to steer clear of policy questions. How can we truly bring about real political change if the movement the Obama people are building is devoid of ideological content, content merely to mouth gauzy generalities about “coming together” and “yes we can”?

..and from Megan McArdle at The Atlantic:

I’m watching his speech now, and it’s inspiring. But it’s also saddening, because deep down, I don’t believe that Obama is going to change Washington, eliminate lobbying, etc. I wish he wouldn’t tell me things that I can’t possibly believe–and moreover that I can’t really understand anyone believing. He might be the best president; he might even make Washington work a little better, though I kind of doubt it. But he isn’t going to transform American politics in the utopian way his speech implies. No one who has dried out behind the ears could reasonably believe that he has this power. So why is he saying he does?

When you avoid real questions of policy and instead pander to population segments, you are not fulfilling your duty to the people as a whole. When the people themselves expect — and even encourage — that pandering, the system has failed.

A real politician who stands for actual, real, serious change, like our buddy Ron Paul, needs not pander to subgroups in an attempt to buy their votes with fake smiles and pats on the head. Unfortunately, in our broken system that means that he earns only 10% of the vote. Regardless, I would rather vote for someone I know will lose than to throw my vote away on a momentary perception of a lesser evil — or worse try to prove a point by selling my vote to a candidate with darker skin, or different genitalia.

No offense to Obama-supporters who read this, but I cannot support Obama in ‘08. The hyperbole of hope-and-change which surrounds his campaign is that which will undoubtedly let down his supporters. Just as the hopes of change regarding our occupation of Iraq resulted in a let down in 2004/6. Nonetheless, some Democrats continue to support Pelosi et al, seemingly blindly.

Both the Republican and Democrat parties are driven by lust for power. Both Republicans and Democrats are blindly ignoring the economic crisis that they are spending us into. There no longer is a distinction in terms of economic policy between the “tax and spend liberals” and the war-mongering neo-conservatives. While the Republicans want to spend trillions on wars, Democrats want to spend trillions on universal healthcare and social safety-nets which functions as hammocks. Where the money is spent is irrelevant — it is taken from us and redistributed for votes. We are paying for them to remain in power, and not only in dollars.

I’ll believe in a “candidate for change” when one of them starts to listen to this guy: