It's snowy outside, but don't fear, Jacob Weisberg is here to warm our hearts. He's going to explain exactly who's to blame for the (non-snow related) gridlock in Washington:
In trying to explain why our political paralysis seems to have gotten so much worse over the past year, analysts have rounded up a plausible collection of reasons including: President Obama's tactical missteps, the obstinacy of congressional Republicans, rising partisanship in Washington, the blustering idiocracy of the cable-news stations, and the Senate filibuster, which has devolved into a super-majority threshold for any important legislation. These are all large factors, to be sure, but that list neglects what may be the biggest culprit in our current predicament: the childishness, ignorance, and growing incoherence of the public at large.
It's wonderful to see an avowedly liberal columnist fulfill right-wing stereotypes by calling Americans stupid, isn't it?
Anyway, Weisberg continues with the standard litany of complaints pollsters have listed forever: when you phrase a question one way, people say yes, but when you phrase it a different way, people say no. What's up with that? It's an interesting question, one that gives rise to a certain chicken-and-egg sort of scenario.
Basically: are Americans dumber than other people? Weisberg seems to think that our stupidity "or, if you prefer, susceptibility to rhetorical manipulation" is what "locks the status quo in place." It's an interesting historical question: are we responsible for allowing the rhetorical manipulation (and with it the corporate control, the shredding of the social safety net, the ability of right-wing discourse to seep unchallenged into mainstream discourse), or were these things foisted upon us by a particularly rapacious and insidious kind of capitalism? Most likely these things are intertwined as the result of a history of self-generated, aggressive, individualistic myths, as Weisberg seems to indicate. But he doesn't really get into it.
Which is a shame. Because if he really thought about it, he might get somewhere towards understanding what's really at stake here. Instead, he says we have a "national ambivalence" about government. Maybe that's the bird's eye-view. What we really have is a tiny minority of crazy people who hate the idea of taxpayer money paying for anything except churches and war. Their clout is magnified by a sympathetic media--including, not incidentally, people like Jacob Weisberg.
What of these seemingly contradictory desires established by all those polls? They're evidence of people's basic misunderstanding of how government actually works. Where did this misunderstanding come from? According to Weisberg, it's our own fault as Americans; we're just susceptible to propaganda. But where did the propaganda come from? The crux of the article--and the moment where Weisberg really lets it all hang out--is here:
Republicans are more indulgent of the public's unrealism in general, but Democrats have spent years fostering their own forms of denial. Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.
Republicans are more indulgent of the public's unrealism in general. See, the silly public lives in candyland, and the Republicans are the kindhearted but weak-willed uncle who just can't say no. Kids want candy! It's wrong to make them eat all those facty vegetables without a little bullshit ice cream to wash it all down.
But that's not the worst part.
Democrats have spent years fostering their own forms of denial...Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.
It's quintessential Weisberg laziness to use the term entitlement spending at any time, but particularly in this context. It's right-wing terminology, of course; as Marie Cocco explains, it's based on the "premise that federal "entitlements" -- that is, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- are bankrupting the country and weighting down generations of younger Americans with the extraordinary burden of caring for their aging parents and grandparents."
In the same article, Cocco explains why these fears about the cost of social programs--these "entitlements," (a word that rich white politicians and media figures typically emit with a characteristic sneer)--are complete crap. The problem, of course, is that seemingly well-meaning people like Barack Obama and Jacob Weisberg continue to buy into the scare tactics. In Weisberg's case, that means he believes that all politicians avoid confronting reality. Republicans campaign and govern like life is a comic book, and Democrats are misguided because...they refuse to confront a crisis that only exists on the pages of the comic book.
By accepting the premise that "entitlement programs" are in crisis, you also accept that the only possible solution to the "crisis" is to cut benefits, or else reduce any other "discretionary" spending (i.e. non-military) to compensate. And this is the entire right-wing plan--to eliminate any and all non-military/national security/Christian church-related government spending.
They've come a long way towards their goal, in no small part because liberals have been unable and/or unwilling to articulate a response to their rhetorical assaults over the last 30-40 years. Weisberg thinks the American public is stupid. I'd say the American public is displaying the natural result of what 40 years of unchallenged propaganda can do.
The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in the public, but in Jacob Weisberg.
