Psychopolitik 2.0

As we already know, the whole fuss over Israel is flaring up again, as the cycle goes. Sandwiched between the reports though is something interesting for its mundaneness: “Bush said a bad word!”

To hear the official story, Bush & Blair were speaking at the G8 summit about the latest violence, and didn’t realize that a microphone was picking up their conversation, resulting in Dubya saying “See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.”  Call me crazy, but IMO you can only do that “I didn’t know it was on” bit a couple times before it becomes obvious you intentionally do that, and he used those years ago.

The point of this was two-fold — 1) to seem more stereotypically “regular guy” & 2) as a subliminal wink to the Neo-Imperialists out there, that he’s Mad As Hell over those damn a-rabs.  Predictably, the media is playing up the whole “unguarded moment” thing: CNN’s video page labels their content about it “the sh*t heard round the world”, their worst talking head Kyra Phillips said “we like to hear those raw comments” (why is someone like this working for CNN?  All she does is giggle and stick in editorial comments), & WaPo had the following line in their report on it:

The conversation, while consistent with Bush’s politer public remarks, offered a rare glimpse of the president in a less-guarded moment at a major diplomatic event, capturing his style of interaction with one of his closest allies.

Careful y’all don’t scrape your knees while you’re down there…

When people talk about media bias, they tend to assume that it’s all intentional.  Things like this would show otherwise: there was no way of them being able to tell that by running with this tangent off of the real story they’d be helping Bush, they more than likely thought it would serve to “lighten up” a dark subject — after all, people are bitching that the news is too “depressing”.   Because of that, they’re susceptible to being played.

News of the latest flare-ups between nation-states, & my own readings of discussions about anarchy prompted the following:

How would a stateless society defend itself from outside violence?

Heh….I see that that voter ID thing in GA got rejected — again:

The same federal judge who threw out Georgia’s voter ID law last year blocked the state Wednesday from enforcing its revised law during this year’s elections.

The ruling came less than two hours after the Georgia Supreme Court denied the state’s emergency request to overrule a state court order that blocked enforcement of the new photo ID law during next week’s primary elections and any runoffs. […]

If the rulings stand, Georgia voters will not have to show a government-issued photo ID to cast a ballot this year. The state’s primary election - which would have been the first election for which the IDs were required - is scheduled for Tuesday. The general elections are Nov. 7.

There were charges that it amounted to discrimination and/or a poll tax by critics.  Odd, since they made the IDs available free.  But really that’s almost beside the point when you look at the big picture: notice that there’s been an increase in unease about the ballot box recently?  Allegations of vote-fraud are mainstream now, the accuracy of electronic voting is in question, the whole thing is under more scrutiny than ever before.  Sure, accusations of vote suppression or vote-buying aren’t in any way new, but it’s safe to say it hasn’t been such a chunk of discussion until now.  It all sounds familar in a way I’m uneasy about, strikes me as, well, banana republic-like.

This is NOT in any way to say that these things should be ignored, AT ALL, do not take it that way.  Rather, it’s a sign of how much politics interferes in that we have such passions about it now.  The way we react nowadays you’d think this were one of those countries we hear about where politics is just an extension of tribal strife & who wins determines who lives or dies…

A conclusion of Scott Winship’s analysis of ideological identification, via Kevin Drum:

Adults are conservative on foreign policy and national security (52 to 48) and values (62 to 38), but liberal on economic/social policy (57 to 43) and fiscal policy (60 to 40). Consistent with the idea that liberal is a stigmatized word, just 56 percent of operational liberals self-identified as liberal, while 30 percent self-identified as conservative. In contrast, 79 percent of operational conservatives said they were conservative.

Waitaminute… If the majority of the population is “conservative” on “values” (read: they approve of butting into things that don’t concern them via the State) & on foreign policy (read: they’re militaristic & irrational), while being “liberal” on fiscal policy (read: they believe money grows on trees), then wouldn’t that mean that the average voter is pretty much a fascist?

Now, I’m taking this analysis with a huge grain of salt because 1) concrete definitions were not given (I made an educated assumption of what was meant; challenge me on them if you wish), 2) no “libertarian designation was given (being socially “liberal” & fiscally “conservative” does not make you a libertarian, as actually-existing fiscal conservatism advocates not a natural market order but neo-mercantilism), & 3) it’s from a site called “The Democratic Strategist”, for cryin out loud, but there is logical reason for this result to be accurate.  There’s an observable tendency among us, which varies not by political views but by commitment to whatever they are, to underrate the effect certain things have on us in the long run.  People that get involved with political matters and/or care about them — including people like myself who want to hang politics with the rope it sells us — make up an awkward group, one that sees the consequences of things that do not directly affect us immediately.  The rest of the population is operating off of rational ignorance:

Ignorance about an issue is said to be “rational” when the cost of educating oneself about the issue sufficiently to make an informed decision can outweigh any potential benefit one could reasonably expect to gain from that decision, and so it would be irrational to waste time doing so.

Take the %age of the population that is eligible to vote.  As we all know, a sizeable amount don’t bother, for various reasons*; many simply do not care.  Within the group that remains, there are people that are motivated enough to vote, but not to really think through their choice; these would be the ones that are either cultural partisans (i.e.: “my granddaddy was blahblahblah, my daddy was blahblahblah, so I’m blahblahblah”) or choose based on some cue that has nothing to do with their qualifications for office (I recall reading awhile back a study showing that some people voted in presidential elections based on looks — seriously).  Further down you get people who are such rabid partisans that they would vote for a ham sandwich if you stuck the right campaign button to it, & folks that vote for whoever brings their area the most pork, irregardless of where the money is supposed to come from or anything else.

Ask yourselves: Who is left?

This explains so much — why the incumbency rate for congressmen is something like 98%, why there’s the “I hate congress, but love my congressman” phenomenon, etc., but ESPECIALLY why anti-state types are looked at as oddities: you rail against, say, the Patriot Act, & many aren’t thinking “damn, that’s low”, but “they aren’t watching ME, who cares?”; you complain about defecit spending & their eyes glaze over; you denounce the War on Drugs & (assuming they don’t use drugs themselves) they say “eh, that doesn’t involve me”.  As a nation, we have essentially turned “whatever” into a political slogan.

Our task is to get those people to realize that you have to draw the line somewhere NOW, because when it’s obvious it’s too late.

(* - I’m leery of voting again because frankly at times I feel we’d be better off if there was an election and no one showed up.  By discussing election stuff for others, I’m hedging my bets in the narrow hope that maybe some sort of shift can be made in the traditional way, but I’m not holding my breath.)

If ever there was a more blatant example of what connections can do for you, I ain’t seen it:

Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, a musician in his own right, helped secure the release of Atlanta R&B producer Dallas Austin from a Dubai jail after a drug conviction, the senator’s office confirmed Saturday.

In a statement released through his staff, the conservative Republican said he was contacted by Austin’s attorneys, then called the ambassador and consul of the United Arab Emirates in Washington on Austin’s behalf.

A Grammy winner who has produced hits for Madonna, Pink and TLC, Austin was arrested May 19 and convicted of drug possession for bringing 1.26 grams of cocaine into Dubai.

On Tuesday a court sentenced him to four years in jail and said Austin, 34, should be deported after serving the term. Hours later, Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum pardoned and released Austin. (emphasis mine)

Question: why is the average US citizen caught with drugs somehow deserving of prison time but Dallas Austin isn’t?  Last time I checked, Orrin Hatch wasn’t exactly Mr Legalize-It…

Slaps on the wrist for people w/ access to power, SWAT team home invasions & mandatory minimums for the commoners.  It’s so plain. Whoever is running against him should call him on this ridiculous contradiction.

Nice to see people kept right on being stupid during my vacation…

1861. 1941. 2001. Our big wars — and the war on terrorism ranks with the big ones — have a way of starting in the first year of a decade. Supreme Courts, which historically have been loath to intervene against presidential war powers in the midst of conflict, have tended to give the president until mid-decade to do what he wishes to the Constitution in order to win the war.

From this bit of trivia about US war history a reasonable person would see coincidence.  Krauthammer apparently doesn’t.

During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus — trashing the Bill of Rights or exercising necessary emergency executive power, depending on your point of view. But he got the whole troublesome business done by 1865, and the Supreme Court stayed away (emphasis mine).

If anyone ever asks you “what is it with those paleo- types & Lincoln?”, point them to some of these type of articles.  Neos are always invoking Lincoln as example of “what to do” during any kind of conflict, no matter how complex.

Here’s the kicker:

Had the current war on terrorism followed course and ended in 2005, the sensational, just-decided Hamdan v. Rumsfeld case concerning military tribunals for Guantanamo Bay prisoners would have either been rendered moot or drawn a yawn. […] What the Supreme Court essentially did in Hamdan was to say to the president: Time’s up. We gave you the customary half-decade of emergency powers, but that’s as far as we go. From now on the emergency is over, at least judicially, and you’re going to have to operate by peacetime rules.

First of all, the “war on terror” is about as much an actual war as the “war on drugs” — which is to say, not at all.  You cannot declare war on a tactic or concept.  Second, what we actually did was wage war in Afghanistan as retaliation for 9/11 only to be pulled away in favor of invading an uninvolved party.  Since Afghanistan is hovering back towards the same conditions, one would think that people like Krauthammer would be too busy screaming about failing there to complain about “judicial activism” (modern “conservative” speak for any decision they do not like).  Oh well…
Funny thing is, if you assume that this “pattern” has some sort of meaning, then the Supreme Court is following precedent by their action.  So either Krauthammer just likes the idea of unchecked executive power, or… screw it, he just likes unchecked executive power.  Seek help, Chuck.