(If MarkHalperin spouts bullshit in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, is it still the fault of the DirtyFuckingHippies?)
There's a saying that, as scant as the truth is, the supply always exceeds the demand. When it comes to Beltway pundits – the chattering class, the Villagers, the Very Serious People – the truth is more like a strange, exotic alien speaking a foreign and incomprehensive tongue. (And seriously, who thought it a good idea to invite that Krugman guy to the party every Sunday? Blah blah facts blah blah. Doesn't he know there's a two drink minimum?) Ideally, truth should trump civility, and accuracy should trump politeness, but that is hardly the dominant Beltway style.
Ernest Hemingway observed, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector." When it comes to good political analysis – given the persistent fragrance of political discourse – what's specifically needed is a good bullshit detector:
I'm basically using Harry Frankfurt's definition of bullshit, in which a bullshitter may accidentally speak the truth, but simply doesn’t care whether what he says is true or not. As Frankfurt puts it, "It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as the essence of bullshit." Timothy Noah wrote a good 2005 piece on all this and noted, "Frankfurt's definition is provocative because it allows for the little-recognized possibility that bullshit can be substantively true, and still be bullshit." (I attempted to classify different levels of truth-telling and prevarication in "The Bullshit Matrix.")
Instead of a bullshit detector, the average pundit has a hypersensitive one of these:
Civility does have value, but how it's defined and actually observed (and enforced) can vary tremendously by community or venue. At its most basic, a civil discourse entails that each person gets his or her chance to speak without significant interruption and that needless personal attacks are avoided. A general ethic of cooperatively seeking the truth and exploring possible improvements to a given problem should also be in play. That said, among honest, sane, reasonably intelligent people, this standard is usually a given.
In contrast, in our national political discourse, the actual practice is that saying something that sounds harsh – even if it is factually, demonstrably true – is typically denounced as uncivil or otherwise rude, a breach of decorum. Newt Gingrich may be lying shamelessly, but the rules of the Beltway pundit game entail that calling him out as a liar is the true sin, not the lie itself. Rather than the hosts limiting the discourse to honest, sane, reasonably intelligent people (which necessitates qualitative judgment somewhere along the way), equal time – or rather, disproportionate time – is given to guests arguing in bad faith and/or with little to no expertise in the subject at hand. Consequently, civility as enforced usually does the audience a disservice.
Civility has its place, but honesty over civility, accuracy over politeness. Alternatively, if you define "civility" in part as showing respect for the truth, a liar has broken the implicit contract of the debate/discussion, and as a moral matter should be called out. (Not that that happens much in the Village, but boy, it's awesome when it does.)
I'm hardly unique in this take. One of the liberal blogosphere's key critiques of (and chief frustrations with) the corporate media is due to it oddly defining "civility" and exalting it above truth. See, for instance, the archives of Alicublog, Thers, TBogg, Blue Gal, driftglass, Digby, Atrios, Balloon Juice, Sadly, No and many more.
As we've discussed before, the Beltway establishment doesn't really care about "civility" per se, otherwise long-running, shameless bomb-thrower Newt Gingrich would be shunned, and certainly never put on the air so frequently. The Beltway version of "civility" is an odd construct, entailing that certain aspects of the establishment cannot be questioned, that Beltway Villagers in good standing cannot lose respectability, and that the socially-determined conventional wisdom reigns, no matter how false.
Similarly, now is the season for pundits and voters to bemoan all the negative ads. Who cares if an ad is negative? What matters is whether it's accurate or not. An honest ad will sometimes deliver a harsh judgment. That's as it should be. Ads should be accurate, and fair – in the sense that ads should provide relevant context and not be technically true but misleading. Voters face a decision, and any ad that is honest and fair helps them in that decision.
It can help to view political pundits through an anthropological lens; the majority of them define truth socially, nor empirically. Most of their views result from the almost unfailingly wrong Beltway Conventional Wisdom, built of reflexive, unexamined class biases. Pundits tend to have fine pedigrees (at least by Beltway standards). But for them, the benefit of, say, attending a genuinely good school or world travel sadly remains its value as a class marker. There's little evidence of the mind- and soul-expanding they could have experienced. They're rarely actually thoughtful. Oh, there may be a shred of that left, but they're terribly insecure (and often lazy), so they're anxious to follow the herd and not look like fools. (Actually caring about policies and their consequences to average citizens, the "real Americans" they claim to know, is a sure way to look like a rube in what Jay Rosen calls "the Church of the Savvy.") They wield decorum like a weapon. It's a defining feature of a fawning courtier class, establishment hacks and aspiring bourgeois authoritarians.
(Feel free to use alternative terms. Tom Scocca's piece on "On Smarm" covers similar ground, with "snark" being, at its best, the act of calling bullshit on deserving targets, while "smarm" is civility trolling.)
So sure, it's fine to have a civility meter, as long as you also have a bullshit detector and that takes the lead. Basically, it's also important to have a good one of these:
For example, maybe you sincerely believes that someone calling Dick Cheney a "war criminal" is distasteful, because, uh… he hasn't been formally convicted as such. Or it sounds harsh. Okay, but you should be more outraged by what Cheney actually did, his role in constructing a a torture program and his dishonesty in selling a war of choice. Don't agree with all of that? Fine. But the defining feature of civility trolls, the smarm patrol, the bullshitters, is that they're trying to shut honest discussion down. They don't want to investigate. They don't want accountability (not for their team, anyway). For example, there's a reason torture apologists steadfastly ignore all the accounts and mountains of data proving their claimsfalse. Pick another issue if you like; the same dynamics often play out. For instance, pointing out that a climate change denier is completely wrong may lead to an awkward moment socially in the studio, but letting him spew falsehoods unchallenged does the audience no favors. The bullshit detector must take precedence over the (most popular Beltway brand of) civility meter:
When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke in 2012, both devices should have sounded the alarm. But again, the problem wasn't solely that Limbaugh was rude, or a famous public figure punching down at a student who had the temerity to testify before Congress. Limbaugh was and is a grotesquely misogynist asshole, and that's far from incidental in this case. (As AaronBady pointed out, Limbaugh wasn't just ignorant about female contraception, he was "defending precisely his right not to know how it works.") Still, it's absolutely essential to note that Limbaugh lied about Fluke's testimony. He couldn't engage her on the merits, so he lied about her and attacked her personally. Calling out Limbaugh's viciousness and misogyny was deserved and valuable, but rank dishonesty remains a staple of Limbaugh's shtick even when he's (relatively) more "civil."
Basically, a civility meter can be hit or miss, but depends on how it's calibrated and who's wielding it. It can illuminate some issues, but will miss others, and when used by the Beltway's Very Serious People, it typically obfuscates the real problems. In contrast, a good bullshit detector is always valuable, and should be the primary tool.
Put another way, it's essential that one's outrage allocator is guided by a good one of these:
Most conservative political figures break down into one of four broad groups. They are Reckless Addicts, Proud Zealots, Stealthy Extremists and Sober Adults. Needless to say, they do not exist in equal numbers. The first three categories can overlap, but in individual conservatives, one flavor tends to dominate.
I'll be primarily discussing congressional conservatives (mostly Republicans, plus some Democratic Blue Dogs) and the professional political class, not average Americans (who tend to be more sensible). The full range of American conservatism is better described in a 2009 post, "Diagrams of Conservatism," which remains depressingly relevant. (There was also a companion piece looking at American politics as a whole.)
The chart above relates to the Stupid-Evil-Crazy diagram (detailed version):
Obviously all these categories are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but if they help with identifying and addressing the multiple dysfunctions of contemporary American conservatism, great. Let's take a closer look at the new chart (this time drawn to proportion), and how it breaks down:
Sober Adults make up the smallest portion by far, having been hunted near to extinction by movement conservatives. They believe in the social contract and some form of responsible governance, and can still be found if one looks hard enough, but they do not exist in significant numbers in positions of power. As John Rogers put it back in 2004:
I miss Republicans. No, seriously. Remember Republicans? Sober men in suits, pipes, who'd nod thoughtfully over their latest tract on market-driven fiscal conservatism while grinding out the numbers on rocket science. Remember those serious-looking 1950's-1960's science guys in the movies -- Republican to a one.
They were the grown-ups. They were the realists. Sure they were a bummer, maaaaan, but on the way to La Revolution you need somebody to remember where you parked the car. I was never one (nor a Democrat, really, more an agnostic libertarian big on the social contract, but we don't have a party...), but I genuinely liked them.
How did they become the party of fairy dust and make believe? How did they become the anti-science guys? The anti-fact guys? The anti-logic guys?
It’s difficult to imagine today, but taxing the rich wasn’t always a major flash point of American political life. From the end of World War II to the eve of the Reagan administration, the parties fought over social spending — Democrats pushing for more, Republicans demanding less. But once the budget was fixed, both parties saw taxes as an otherwise uninteresting mechanism to raise the money required to pay the bills. Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford each fought for higher taxes, while the biggest tax cut was secured by John F. Kennedy, whose across-the-board tax reductions were actually opposed by the majority of Republicans in the House. The distribution of the tax burden wasn’t really up for debate: Even after the Kennedy cuts, the top tax rate stood at 70 percent — double its current level. Steeply progressive taxation paid for the postwar investments in infrastructure, science and education that enabled the average American family to get ahead.
As Steve Benen detailed in one of several excellent 2011 posts on the so-called super-committee, "That [Republican] party is long gone." (The liberal blogosphere has been documenting this for years.)
It's important to note that the few remaining sober adults in the Republican Party can nonetheless be painfully wrong on any number of issues. (Sincerity and responsibility are valuable, but they don't automatically translate to wisdom.) However, the faults of this group are typically much less extreme than those of mainstream modern conservatives, and it's generally possible to work with the sober adults.
Over the past 30 (arguably 50) years, the Republican Party has gradually, publicly moved extremely far to the right, to the point that they do not believe in responsible governance anymore, and they say (or actually believe) things that are demonstrably false on almost every major issue of the day. The corporate media will do its damnedest to deny this is the case. It is considered bad form to call out the Republicans without saying the Democrats are just as bad, no matter how ludicrously false this is. The media also like to anoint certain conservatives as noble, principled or thoughtful, and will continue to maintain this fiction even when the evidence of idiocy or bad faith is overwhelming (consider John McCain, or Paul Ryan).
This highlights another key problem with conservative "sober adults" – they are so scarce, the corporate media will invent them. (This is a staple of Thomas Friedman columns, as it was for the late David Broder, although it's often sold as 'sensible centrism.') As a general rule, any conservative that a Beltway Establishment type praises as a sober adult or Very Serious Person is not.
Similarly, in our current political wasteland, well-intentioned liberals can get caught up in a Diogenes dynamic, so desperate to find sober adults among the opposition that that they'll seize on any conservative rebellious enough to state obvious truths as a "reasonable conservative." Some so anointed are indeed decent people and a few are genuinely insightful, but marketing one's self as a "reasonable conservative" to middle-information, "can't we all get along" NPR/PBS/NYT types is quite the cottage industry (David Brooks, David Frum, Andrew Sullivan, the late Tony Blankley, etc.). This group of voters, typified by left-of-center, socially tolerant college grads, are so committed to being fair-minded and so desperate for a sane political landscape that they will grade conservative political figures on a curve. Their desire is understandable, but having an open mind entails giving someone a fair hearing, not turning off one's bullshit detector. It's important to judge all contenders for "sober adult" status on their actual merits, and not gaze at them through the beer goggles of centrist fetishism (yeah, mull that disturbing mangled metaphor for a sec) nor let hope turn to delusion. To quote a driftglass passage I've featured before about good (and sometimes very smart) people falling prey to wishful thinking:
Jon [Stewart]'s problem is that, for all of his formidable comedic and observational skills, he is still in an almost catatonic denial about the country in which he lives. He obviously, deeply wants us to be something more than we are. Something better than we are. A place where people with different but sincere and well-reasoned beliefs can fight hard, come together afterward to figure out a good-enough compromise, and then move on to the next thing.
You know who else wants that? Every fucking Liberal I know.
But this simply is not that country: not some feisty middle-brow Camelot with a couple of equally wacky, equally flawed and equally honorable political philosophies contending in an arena with rules and referees. Instead, this is a country where one political party is ruled by loathesome men with grotesque motives on behalf of a tiny clique of plutocrats and bulwarked by an electoral army which is kept constantly tweaked to the point of near-riot by a carefully-cultivated media cocktail of rage, ignorance, bigotry and God.
What Jon cannot face is that he will never have the country he wants -- that we all want -- by clevering and cajoling and joking and reasoning it into existence.
We've tried that for the last 30 years..
We'll return to this theme, but for now, let's not grant "sober adult" status too eagerly, and move on to the other categories.
Reckless Addicts make up the largest portion of conservative political figures by far. (Substitute another term if you like; I considered "drunken teenagers," but that sounded too innocuous.) Picture a teenage addict, with no sense of responsibility or concern for others' well-being. He's just after his fix. Perhaps he has well-to-do parents who are overly indulgent or just befuddled – either way, they're not intervening strongly enough. They just can't believe that their once sweet kid, who surely means well, would act this way. But he will lie, cheat, steal, and spend without concern for consequences. He's just having a good time, and cleaning up the resulting mess is someone else's problem. (The adults will take care of it.) Bankrupt his parents, burn down their house, screw over other people – none of it matters to him. Alternatively, think of an adult addict, abusive to his wife and children, recklessly blowing through all their savings and going deeply in debt, all to feed his habit. He doesn't care about the future; the welfare of others, even those he is supposedly responsible for, simply does not matter. Whatever conscience he has is deeply buried, and he will never stop his behavior voluntarily, without intervention.
The key difference between this type of conservative and an actual addict is that the conservative chooses this behavior, and does so eagerly. Addicts do make some initial choices, but some forms of addiction entail changes to brain chemistry and other physical symptoms. Overcoming addiction is not solely a character or psychological issue. Recovery lingo is largely true; enabling their behavior does not help addicts, but tough love can; most addicts need to hit rock bottom before they're willing to change. Then, with support, if they choose the path to recovery, they can achieve it (but it's not easy). Our conservative "reckless addicts" deserve far less sympathy, being mostly a mix of stupid and evil ("reckless" on the Stupid-Evil-Crazy diagram). They are hardly victims (although they victimize others) and "recovery" would be easy for them to achieve at any point. Basically… they're assholes. None of this means they're utterly irredeemable, but anyone expecting them to change their behavior voluntarily is painfully naïve. Being reckless addicts, they will only change with forceful intervention, when the consequences of their behavior become so harsh they absolutely must stop.
How does this look in practice? Well, the debt ceiling hostage-taking last year was a perfect (and dismaying) example of reckless behavior (examined at length in "Extremism in Defense of Nihilism Is a Vice" and a couple of other posts). Congressional conservatives took an unprecedented, extreme stance, far to the right of their own party members, and even rejected a deal that favored them by 87 to 13 (the percentage of spending cuts to tax increases). The same recklessness can be seen in muted form in the many conservatives who once supported infrastructure spending as a wise investment in America who then suddenlyopposed it when a Democrat became president. It's prominent in Dick Cheney's conscious rejection of fiscal responsibility because "Reagan proved deficits don't matter" and in the deliberate fiscal recklessness of the conservative Starve the Beast strategy.
Conservatives also have a decades-long history of bad faith on health care. Early this month, Chris Wallace asked Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell about Republican plans to address the 30 (plus) million Americans without health insurance. McConnell lied and said he'd get to it, tried to run out the clock, and finally when pressed basically admitted that the Republicans had no plan and didn't really care. (This goes in line with the Republican habit of releasing budgets without numbers or staying vague about key details of their "plans," such as where $700 billion a year is coming from.) Similarly, Republicans have a habit of running for and against Medicare, depending on the situation. Earlier this month, Jonathan Bernstein noted that Republicans voted to repeal Medicare cuts they voted for and are campaigning against. (The New York Times covered these flip-flopping, bad faith efforts poorly, leading John Cole to exclaim, "It’s Not a Pivot, They are Shamelessly Lying and You Are Helping Them.")
These contortions may be most evident in the virtuoso incoherence of then Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele (back in 2009 in an Washington Post op-ed and subsequent NPR interview). Steele inveighs against the evils of a "government-run health-care system" while simultaneously praising government-run Medicare, simultaneously argues for and against cuts to Medicare, simultaneously decries waste but opposes efforts to curb waste, and simultaneously attacks intrusive government regulations and points to them as a necessary solution (to the abuses of private insurance companies). If you listen to him (and the NPR interview is unintentionally hilarious), his pitch is that Americans should vote for the Republicans over those awful Democrats… but he can't give a coherent reason why to save his life.
While nothing should be taken away from Michael Steele's stunning individual incompetence as a bullshitter (his performance is a personal favorite of mine), he's hardly an outlier. Conservatives have been allowed to get away with this crap for decades, and America has suffered for it. Given the dominant two-party system, America really does need both major parties to be somewhat responsible. They are not, and while the Democrats have plenty of faults (a subject for other posts), the two parties are not equally to blame for the current mess. (As I've said before, if both parties merely competitively pandered to the middle class, we'd be in much better shape as a nation.)
Consider: the American Republican Party is really the only major party in any industrialized democracy that denies the existence of global warming and opposes universal health care. Republicans are far to the right of their major international counterparts. Broadly speaking, American conservative policies do not work (except for a select, privileged few), conservatives do not care about responsible governance, and the system simply would not survive if they actually got their way. The entire political approach of the reckless addict depends on other people stepping in and being the adults. The classic pattern is for a conservative to rail against government spending (and often vote against it) in D.C., then go back to their home state or district… and take credit for the government spending that was often provided over their objections. In one of Rachel Maddow's all-time best segments (from 2010), she chronicled damning evidence of this:
Republicans, right now, do not care about policy -- by which I mean, they will not vote for things that even they admit are good policies. On policy terms they have been caught bragging on the stimulus as good policy. I have no doubt that some of them think that health reform is good policy. We know they think that things like a deficit commission or cap-and-trade or PAYGO are good policy, because they're on the record supporting them.
But they're not going to vote for them because ... screw policy. Screw what even they believe is good for the country. Screw what even they believe is good for their own districts. They are not voting 'yes,' for even things they agree with. For anything substantive. They are not going to vote 'yes' for anything substantive that this president supports. It's not going to happen.
You're not going to earn Republican votes for a second stimulus, for example, by pointing out that it's good policy that creates jobs. We know they already know that. They concede that in their home districts. And they're still not voting for it.
And they are unembarrassed about this fact. They are not embarrassed. Charging them with hypocrisy, appealing to their better, more practical, more 'what's best for the country' patriotic angels is like trying to teach your dog to drive. It wastes a lot of time, it won't work, and ultimately the dog comes out of the exercise less embarrassed for failing then you do for trying.
(Especially when it's a junkie dog. They're the worst.)
It would be great if both parties would cooperatively work to solve problems, and shared in the attendant glory, but that doesn't happen. Bill Kristol, Frank Luntz, Rush Limbaugh, Mitch McConnell, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and pretty much the entire conservative base (occasionally rebranded as the supposedly independent tea party) have explicitly rejected responsible bipartisanship in favor of destroying their perceived political rivals. Instead of working with their counterparts, discussing issues, and making compromises, conservatives have demanded near or complete capitulation... and for policies that do not work for the nation as a whole.
These people are not responsible adults, they are reckless addicts, and they are being enabled by a (mostly) gutless political opposition, a craven press insisting that "both sides are equally to blame," and well-intentioned but low-and-middle information voters who follow the media's lead. Mostly, American citizens just want everything to work well and for politicians to be responsible, but they don't follow policy or votes, and the press is little help, covering most political disputes as he said-she said gossip. Voters are largely clueless about how extreme and irresponsible the Republican Party has become, and pearl-clutching about "civility" and "bipartisanship" displaces any serious, adult discussion of what works policy-wise and who is to blame (and to what degree) politician-wise. That's a huge problem, since it turns out that making informed decisions as lawmakers and voters is kinda essential to democracy.
It really is unconscionable that large numbers of Republican politicians demonize and vote against measures they know work, and that help (or would help) the constituents they supposedly represent. Their constant, unrelenting bullshit makes our national political discourse dumber and less accurate, which is a serious problem. There's added irony in that conservatives are prone to use Ayn Rand'slanguage about "producers" versus "moochers," which in their minds means that good, conservative, tax-paying real Amurcans are unfairly forced to pay to support those lazy, snobby, dastardly minorities and other librul types who vote for the Democratic Party. The truth is that most red states get more federal funding than they pay in taxes, while for most blue states, it's precisely the opposite. Conservatives demonize the very people and philosophy that is helping them. And they feel entitled to that aid – which they would deny to others – leaving them completely full of crap. As we've observed before, when most conservatives say "freedom," they really mean privilege. Reckless addicts, and the constituents who support them, are the real "moochers," parasites and free riders of the system. The further crisis is that the number of reckless addicts in power has grown substantially over the years. In the political ecosystem, reckless addicts depend on a larger number of responsible, sober adults to keep things running and to protect the reckless addicts from the negative effects of their own bad behavior. When reckless addicts grow too plentiful, there's a risk that they will derail the entire system. The added trouble is that they're not the only group throwing things off-balance. Reckless addicts (and stealthy extremists) have been telling lies for decades – and as a result, many of their listeners actually believe them.
Reckless addicts are bullshitters by nature, not caring about what they say as long as it gets them what they want, but the Proud Zealots are sincerely crazy. Reckless addicts may rail against the evils of government while enjoying its largess, but the proud zealots really, truly believe all that propaganda. They probably need the least discussion, since they should be familiar as the targets of mockery on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report and many liberal-leaning blogs. They can be found in greatest percentage in the conservative base, but an alarming number hold actual power. I'll use Danny Goldberg's elegant summing up again:
Almost half of the public is either misinformed or subject to unanswered right wing narratives. If I believed that there was a chance of Sharia law being imposed in the United States I too would be gravely concerned. If I believed that most Europeans and Canadians had inferior health care to that of average Americans, I too would be against health care reform. If I believed that man-made global warning did not exist or that there were nothing we could do about it and that environmental efforts were responsible for unemployment I’d be against cap and trade. If I believed that prisoner abuse would make my family significantly less likely to be killed by terrorists, my thinking about torture would be different. And if I believed that the problems with the economy had been caused by too much government instead of too little, that my personal freedom was threatened by the government instead of large corporations, I’d probably be in a tea party supporter and a Republican.
Large numbers of rank-and-file conservatives believe things that are factually false – and they believe those because their leaders lie to them.
Unfortunately, when opinions do shift among the conservative faithful, it's usually for the worse. Jamelle Bouie summarized a recent Pew poll that found that "among conservatives, 30 [percent] say that [Obama] is a Muslim; among the most conservative voters that jumps to 34 percent. When Pew first surveyed this question, in 2008, only 16 percent of conservatives believed that Obama was a Muslim." A Tobin Project poll found that 62.9% of Republicans believe that the U.S. found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when it invaded in 2003; 63.6% of Republicans also believe that Barack Obama was born in another country (8% used to believe he was born in the United States, but now think otherwise), while a further 14.7% don't know. Meanwhile, a different, far-ranging Pew poll found that:
For the first time in a Pew Research Center political values survey, only about half of Republicans (47%) agree that “there needs to be stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment.” This represents a decline of 17 points since 2009 and a fall of nearly 40 points, from 86%, since 1992.
These numbers are depressing but not surprising, considering the hyperpartisan opposition to Obama declared by conservative leaders from the very beginning (covered above) and the constant lying by Fox News and conservative figures. Regardless of the exact mix of reasons, it's bad news for responsible government.
Connoisseurs of wingnuttia will have their personal favorites: Orly Taitz' Birther meltdowns, Louis Gohmert's dire warnings about terror babies, or any of the many unlovable scamps featured in Roy Edroso's weekly Village Voice pieces (which you really need to be reading if you aren't already). Still, Representative Michele Bachmann (R-MN) may be the quintessential proud zealot. She is indeed an extremist, and will lie about many of her more radical views, so a case can be made that she's instead a stealthy extremist who often fails badly on the stealth part. Still, she says things that are factually false and seems unaware of it; she also seems unaware at times of how fringe her views are. It's hard to ignore that she's nuts, and it remains her defining trait. In a piece on Bachmann, Matt Taibbi warned to take her seriously, but also wrote:
In modern American politics, being the right kind of ignorant and entertainingly crazy is like having a big right hand in boxing; you've always got a puncher's chance. And Bachmann is exactly the right kind of completely batshit crazy. Not medically crazy, not talking-to-herself-on-the-subway crazy, but grandiose crazy, late-stage Kim Jong-Il crazy — crazy in the sense that she's living completely inside her own mind, frenetically pacing the hallways of a vast sand castle she's built in there, unable to meaningfully communicate with the human beings on the other side of the moat, who are all presumed to be enemies...
Bachmann's entire political career has followed this exact same pattern of God-speaks-directly-to-me fundamentalism mixed with pathological, relentless, conscienceless lying. She's not a liar in the traditional way of politicians, who tend to lie dully, usefully and (they hope) believably, often with the aim of courting competing demographics at the same time. That's not what Bachmann's thing is. Bachmann lies because she can't help it, because it's a built-in component of both her genetics and her ideology. She is at once the most entertaining and the most dangerous kind of liar, a turbocharged cross between a born bullshit artist and a religious fanatic, for whom lying to the infidel is a kind of holy duty.
Proud zealots can accomplish a great deal for the conservative movement, but they're most effective firing up the conservative faithful. Problems arise if they're too honest with the general public. Bill Moyers and others called out the shameful McCarthyism of Representative Allen West, but West's remarks didn't make as much news nationally as did Michele Bachmann's accusations that anti-American Muslims had infiltrated the U.S. government, and that they included a key Hillary Clinton staffer, Huma Abedin. The Daily Show justifiably mocked this, and some leading Republicans were forced to distance themselves from Bachmann's insanity, with a few being honest enough to condemn her... while others chose to defend her.
As became painfully evident during the Bush administration, some conservatives will defend absolutely anything their movement does. As also became evident during the Bush years, the press struggles with this, and tries to deny how extreme the Republican Party has become. News junkies can provide a plethora of examples both past and recent, sadly enough. One of the most grotesque examples for me remains the sliming of then 12-year old accident victim Graeme Frost in 2007 by Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives. (I sometimes refer to it as part of The War on Compassion Itself, as well as the War on The Social Contract.) With depressing predictably, many in the press contorted themselves to avoid calling out the rabid rightwingers. Supposedly objective media critic Howard Kurtz stayed silent for a long time, before finally issuing a piece that downplayed the conservatives' viciousness and featured some appalling "both sides do it" false equivalencies.
When most conservatives say "freedom," they really mean privilege, and proud zealots believe they are fighting for what they perceive to be the natural order, which of course entails themselves at the top. That 'natural order' might be an existing, unfair status quo, the unfair hierarchy of a past era, or a mythical hierarchy that never existed (as with theocrats' false belief that the U.S. was founded as a "Christian nation"). Proud zealots will lie (it's permitted or even encouraged with infidels), but they still can be more honest in their way than the reckless addicts and stealthy extremists. (They're certainly more easy to spot.)
It seems that the proud zealots have significantly increased in numbers over the past decade or so, and there may be some truth to this. But Rick Perlstein provides important context in "Why Conservatives Are Still Crazy After All These Years":
But are right-wingers scarier now than in the past? They certainly seem stranger and fiercer. I'd argue, however, that they’ve been this crazy for a long time. Over the last sixty years or so, I see far more continuities than discontinuities in what the rightward twenty or thirty percent of Americans believe about the world. The crazy things they believed and wanted were obscured by their lack of power, but they were always there – if you knew where to look. What's changed is that loony conservatives are now the Republican mainstream, the dominant force in the GOP...
The reason [Reagan] didn't effectively fight tax increases was because, with a Democratic Congress, he didn't have the power to do so. Every time he actually had to sign one he made his preferences perfectly clear, blaming wicked liberals for forcing his hand and adding that this was why liberalism had to be defeated — so that he wouldn't have to sign one again.
This was "reality based." But so, politically at least, is the obstructionism of today's supposedly non-reality-based conservatives: They block all tax increases because they can. And it's worked, hasn't it? That's because as conservative power has steadily increased since the 1960s, more and more of what conservatives actually believe — and have always actually believed —has come to shape American society and its institutions.
In some cases, the proud zealots of today are the stealthy extremists and fringe crackpots of yesteryear; they've just achieved more mainstream acceptability. (An additional factor could be authoritarian followers reacting to more extreme leaders.)
Mocking the extremism and incoherence of proud zealots can be very effective politically (not to mention fun), but it's important to take them seriously enough to prevent them from acquiring actual power. They long to inflict their batshit on America. Proud zealots make the American corporate media very uncomfortable, because the usual media blather that "both sides do it" is exposed as false, and more painfully than usual. The media is frantic to pretend that the Republican Party has not become extreme or crazy, so it will desperately anoint conservative hucksters as sober adults and pretend that the proud zealots of conservatism aren't both crazy and commonplace (rather than outliers).
The Stealthy Extremist tends to be severely ideological and often very radical, but hides his or her true beliefs and intent from the public. (Audiences of the faithful can be spoken to more sincerely.) Stealthy extremists come in different flavors – theocrats, anti-abortion activists, hardcore bigots – but plutocrats seem to be the most popular strain these days. Stealthy extremists are typically the most dangerous type of conservative, because they're smart enough to realize that their extremism will not be viewed kindly by the public, and so they will lie shamelessly. Proud zealots seeking to outlaw abortion will make fire and brimstone speeches about baby-killing, but stealthy extremists will instead look at backdoor ways to legislatively restrict it. The inattentive might mistake them for sober adults, and the shallower members of the chattering class are often quick to laud stealthy extremists as Very Serious People (because praising a conservative gives them centrist cred).
In office, Dick Cheney was a stealthy extremist. Barton Gellman, author of the superb book Angler (which you should read if you haven't) observed that Cheney was "a rare combination: a zealot in principle and a subtle, skillful tactician in practice." Cheney was happy to work the back channels to achieve his goals, and his office aggressively worked to keep their dealings secret. He didn't want any glory, at least not immediately; he wanted results. Stealthy extremists do not want any honest, full, contextual discussion of their plans, and generally feel contempt for public opinion.
Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the best current example of a stealthy extremist praised by pundits as a Very Serious Person. Paul Ryan has a mild manner, but his policies are plutocratic and extreme (not surprising, given that he's a big fan of Ayn Rand). Needless to say, most of the pundits praising Ryan haven't bothered to read his budget proposals in any depth, and certainly not with a critical or expert eye. (Some surely haven't read them at all.) It's not that Ryan's policies are different but honorable; as Paul Krugman has pointed out repeatedly, Ryan's plans are fraudulent. But Paul Ryan's tone is pitched perfectly for centrist pundits, with his talk about sacrifice and responsibility (for the middle class and the poor, naturally, not the rich). And Ryan isn't just popular with pundits; his policies have been broadly adopted by Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate.
(If that weren't enough, government funding (Social Security survivor's benefits) helped Paul Ryan go to college, yet he wants to restrict Pell Grants that would help others do the same, and told a financially struggling student to work three jobs. He's made misleading claims about student grants and loans, favoring more expensive private loans and for-profit education. There's also the issue of hisdonors.)
"The Legendary Paul Ryan" by Jonathan Chait is one of the sharper portraits out there, and a good overview. After going over some details of Ryan's budget, Chait points out:
This is not a moderate plan. As Robert Greenstein, a liberal budget analyst, summed up the proposal, “It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history.” And yet, Ryan has managed to sell it as something admirable, and something else entirely: a deficit-reduction plan. This is very clever. The centrist political Establishment, heavily represented among business leaders and the political media, considers it almost self-evident that the budget deficit (and not, say, mass unemployment or climate change) represents the singular policy threat of our time, and that bipartisan cooperation offers the sole avenue to address it. By casting his program as a solution to the debt crisis, by frequently conceding that Republicans as well as Democrats had failed in the past, and by inveighing against “demagoguery,” Ryan has presented himself as the acceptable Republican suitor the moderates had been longing for.
Whether Ryan’s plan even is a “deficit-reduction plan” is highly debatable. Ryan promises to eliminate trillions of dollars’ worth of tax deductions, but won’t identify which ones. He proposes to sharply reduce government spending that isn’t defense, Medicare (for the next decade, anyway), or Social Security, but much of that reduction is unspecified, and when Obama named some possible casualties, Ryan complained that those hypotheticals weren’t necessarily in his plan. Ryan is specific about two policies: massive cuts to income-tax rates, and very large cuts to government programs that aid the poor and medically vulnerable. You could call all this a “deficit-reduction plan,” but it would be more accurate to call it “a plan to cut tax rates and spending on the poor and sick.” Aside from a handful of exasperated commentators, like Paul Krugman, nobody does.
The persistent belief in the existence of an authentic, deficit hawk Ryan not only sweeps aside the ugly particulars of his agenda, it also ignores, well, pretty much everything he has done in his entire career, and pretty much everything he has said until about two years ago..
As Matt Taibbi points out, Ryan is merely the latest in a long line of hucksters:
Every few years or so, the Republicans trot out one of these little whippersnappers, who offer proposals to hack away at the federal budget. Each successive whippersnapper inevitably tries, rhetorically, to out-mean the previous one, and their proposals are inevitably couched as the boldest and most ambitious deficit-reduction plans ever seen. Each time, we are told that these plans mark the end of the budgetary reign of terror long ago imposed by the entitlement system begun by FDR and furthered by LBJ.
Never mind that each time the Republicans actually come into power, federal deficit spending explodes and these whippersnappers somehow never get around to touching Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. The key is that for the many years before that moment of truth, before these buffoons actually get a chance to put their money where their lipless little mouths are, they will stomp their feet and scream about how entitlements are bringing us to the edge of apocalypse.
The reason for this is always the same: the Republicans, quite smartly, recognize that there is great political hay to be made in the appearance of deficit reduction, and that white middle class voters will respond with overwhelming enthusiasm to any call for reductions in the “welfare state,” a term which said voters will instantly associate with black welfare moms and Mexicans sneaking over the border to visit American emergency rooms.
The problem, of course, is that to actually make significant cuts in what is left of the “welfare state,” one has to cut Medicare and Medicaid, programs overwhelmingly patronized by white people, and particularly white seniors. So when the time comes to actually pull the trigger on the proposed reductions, the whippersnappers are quietly removed from the stage and life goes on as usual, i.e. with massive deficit spending on defense, upper-class tax cuts, bailouts, corporate subsidies, and big handouts to Pharma and the insurance industries.
This is a political game that gets played out in the media over and over again, and everyone in Washington knows how it works. Which is why it’s nauseating (but not surprising) to see so many commentators falling over themselves with praise for Ryan’s “bold” budget proposal, which is supposedly a ballsy piece of politics because it proposes backdoor cuts in Medicare and Medicaid by redounding their appropriations to the states and to block grants. Ryan is being praised for thusly taking on seniors, a traditionally untouchable political demographic...
Stealthy extremists provide important cover for the reckless addicts. But it's all a very cynical con game, and with potentially dire consequences. For most of the chattering class, cosmetics trump substance by a wide margin. Forgive me for quoting it at length, but this Paul Krugman post from 2011 nails the problem:
I’ve been reading various “news analyses” of the Ryan plan, and I’m feeling depressed. In the past, I’ve complained about false equivalence — of “views differ on shape of the planet” type reporting. But what I’m seeing here is worse: supposedly objective, even-handed reporting that actually prejudges the issue according to current conventional wisdom.
The stories I have in mind say things like this: “There are those who criticize the Ryan plan, saying that it’s too radical/goes too far.”
As a card-carrying member of Those Who, I protest. This is just wrong.
People like me don’t say that the Ryan plan is too radical; we say that it’s a fraud. The spending cuts are largely fake, either because they’re just magic asterisks or because they wouldn’t survive politically; the revenue estimates are fake, because they combine huge tax cuts with vague assurances that extra revenue will be found by closing loopholes. There’s no there there — except for big tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor.
All I can think here is that reporters are so deep into the Beltway conventional wisdom that this is a Bold, Serious Plan that they just tune out the people saying that no, it’s not.
And what makes this especially bad is the fact John Cole points out, that the people praising the plan don’t seem to have actually read it:
The plan is bold! It is serious! It took courage! It re-frames the debate! The ball is in Obama’s court! Very wonky! It is a game-changer! Did I mention it is serious? The math demands it! We need to have shared sacrifice! This puts us on the right course! It’s serious and bold!
Read any one of their pieces the last couple of days, and it was like conventional wisdom/villager mad libs. Actually reading the bill, realizing it isn’t serious, it isn’t bold, that it won’t set us on the right path because it gives away as much in taxes as it cuts from the needy, realizing the only people sacrificing are the poor while the well-off are lavished with trillions in tax cuts- well, doing that and actually thinking, like Bruce Bartlett, James Fallows, Paul Krugman, Dean Baker, and others managed to do, that would be just way too much work.
I like that phrase, conventional wisdom mad libs.
Anyway, no, I don’t think the plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.
Stealthy extremists such as Ryan benefit from a pundit class that eschews policy analysis, and ironically, extremists also benefit from their very extremism. Ryan's plans should succeed or fail on their merits (rather, their severe lack thereof), but their radical nature means that rather than rejecting them, the public just doesn't believe they could be real. Democrats running a super PAC ran into this when trying to raise funds (emphasis added):
Burton and his colleagues spent the early months of 2012 trying out the pitch that Romney was the most far-right presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. It fell flat. The public did not view Romney as an extremist. For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan — and thus championed “ending Medicare as we know it” — while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing.
The same dynamic also protects rich extremists such as the Koch brothers. An accurate accounting of who they fund and what positions they support sounds like something out of a conspiracy thriller. It's unfortunate but not terribly surprising that some business owners hate unions (as do the Kochs), yet the public would be more shocked by the many Koch-funded attacks on the Commons, including public libraries, public media, public schools, and public roads.
Other stealthy extremists bear mentioning, including the many American theocrats and anti-abortion activists. Foreign policy has its share, particularly the war porn crowd. And while almost all Republican officials practice fiscal irresponsibility or fiscal recklessness, for the extremists, it's all part of a deliberate, long-term starve the beast strategy (see also the Two Santa Claus Theory). Karl Rove and Grover Norquist have sought to permanently crush the Democratic Party through the K Street Project and other measures.
Still, Paul Ryan is probably the single best current example. His policies are extreme, he lies about their consequences, he is praised by pundits who either don't analyze his policies or agree with their radical (and cruel) aims, and his positions are so excessive that even when they are accurately described to members of the public, they don't believe anyone could be so extreme. Nor is the press liable to set them straight. These dynamics are extremely troubling. The reckless addicts and proud zealots may do more damage in the short term due to sheer numbers, but the stealthy extremists are typically the most dangerous and do the greatest long-term harm.
Categorizing Conservatives
Sober adults are usually the easiest to spot, because they don't spout obviously crazy shit. The other three types can be tougher to distinguish, because they tend to make similar statements to one another. (You'll notice some names were mentioned in more than one category above.) However, their underlying beliefs differ, and over time, they tend to reveal themselves. Feel free to come up with your own, more extensive breakdown, but this may help:
(Click for a larger view.)
Liberals, moderates, independents – anyone who is not a conservative – should definitely support and encourage conservative sober adults against their more extreme, reckless and zealous brethren when possible. Irresponsible conservatives should be offered opportunities to become sober adults. However, some proportion is in order; they already have those opportunities, every time they vote, or give a floor speech, or do an interview, or meet with constituents, or huddle with lobbyists. They can choose to be (at least marginally) honorable or not. Plus – addicts need to want to change. It can't be done for them. In the long run, it doesn't do America any favors to grant irresponsible conservatives sober adult status they don't deserve, or accommodate their extremism, or bow to their zealotry, or enable their addiction. Conservatives should be given the benefit of the doubt to begin with, but their nature should become clear as they establish a track record of votes, positions and statements. (For instance, if Newt Gingrich hasn't set your bullshit detector off yet, it needs recalibrating.) Some small commitment to responsibility is all that's really necessary to join the good government club; running things well is hard enough without letting the raging assholes rule the roost. Effective representative government depends on accountability. Assessing the consequences of policies is essential so that things can run better. Sometimes, that means assigning blame. Capitulating to extremism out of some painfully misguided sense that "civility" trumps honesty and responsibility isn't honorable – it's immoral.
Offer the scoundrels a way out, offer them chances to quit their addictions, their zealotry, their extremism. But if they choose not to go that route – and sadly, that's been the trend pretty relentless for years – cut them off. Make it cost them. Banish them to the political wilderness for a few elections (or generations – they're a stubborn lot). Addicts need tough love. Zealots need to be kept away from power. Extremists need to be challenged. It's not "civil" or "serious" to ignore a track record of disastrous policies, inaccurate statements and bad faith – it's immoral and irresponsible. People of good faith who want America to run better need to make more of an effort to learn what the hell is going on and who is to blame – and they need to challenge that crap. Sometimes, that means they need to pick a side.
The "four types of conservatives" mostly apply to the Republican Party, but also to Democratic Blue Dogs, and arguably to "centrist" Democrats on a number of issues, including imperialism, corporatism, and plutocracy. The faults of the Democratic Party compared to the Republicans is a longer discussion we've had before and will again, but for this post, I'd just suggest that different reform efforts often reinforce each other rather than being mutually exclusive or counterproductive. For instance, efforts to opposes imperialism are important, as are efforts to develop independent media. But it's hard to sell the notion of a general social contract and decent treatment in international relations, sell the idea of not hating and fearing foreigners, when roughly half the country not only hates and fears foreigners, they hate and fear their fellow Americans. It's hard to discuss more subtle issues (blowback, and the failures of bipartisan imperialist attitudes) when our national political discourse refuses to call out even glaring misconduct by one party. Challenging stupidity, craziness and evil in one arena generally has a positive spillover effect. And as Thomas E. Man and Norman J. Ornstein point out in It’s Even Worse Than It Looks:
The second [of two sources of dysfunction in current American politics] is the fact that, however awkward it may be for the traditional press and nonpartisan analysts to acknowledge, one of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier—ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the center of American politics, it is extremely difficult to enact policies responsive to the country’s most pressing challenges.
I wish it were otherwise, but we do not live in a country where decent folks in Al Franken's "mushball middle" can frolic happily in the fields of moderation, secure in the knowledge that everyone in political power values responsible governance, shared prosperity and the basic idea of a social contract. Movement conservatives have been waging an all-out war on all of that for decades, and the true zealots never, ever stop voluntarily.
Personally, I would rather not spend so much time on politics, and sympathize greatly with my friends in "I just want to be left alone" camp. The problem is, as the saying goes, even if you don't care about politics, they care about you. (The aggressive Bush campaign in 2002 for an unnecessary war with Iraq was the wakeup call for many, but the insanity predated that, and it's hard to keep track of all the callousness, irresponsibility and batshit craziness of the past decade or so.)
My plea to anyone who covers politics (particularly the corporate media) would be this. Please try to judge political figures and policies on their merits. Please recognize that policy matters. Please call out corruption and bullshit whenever it occurs and no matter who spouts it. (Liberal and independent bloggers try to call out the Democrats frequently, not just the Republicans and conservatives.) But also, when one side's rap sheet grows much, much longer and more egregious, please don't panic and succumb to efforts to work the ref. Don't traffic in false equivalencies and insist that both sides are equally to blame when it just ain't so. Please don't grade conservatives on a curve, and please actually read and analyze the damn policies of stealthy extremists before you praise them as "Very Serious." Please supply useful information versus gossip, and help voters make more informed choices. Add nuance, complexity and detail rather than offering bland centrist generalities and comforting establishment clichés. Making informed, qualitative judgments is essential for good governance and thoughtful voting, and political commentary should encourage that process instead of shutting it down. Obviously, there are many reasons the corporate media won't listen – but then, addicts, extremists and zealots never stop voluntarily.
(Edited slightly for typos, clarity and to add a link.)
To follow up on my previous post on common ground, here are my basic parameters. (This is basically a roundup of past posts, with much greater discussion at the links. Click any image for a slightly larger view.)
I can find common ground with people who believe in the social contract:
I could pretty much stop right there. The idea of a social contract is pretty basic, and was central to the founding of our nation, but modern conservatism overwhelmingly rejects the notion on almost every level and in virtually every arena.
I can find common ground with people who recognize that plutocracy and democracy don't mix:
I can find common ground with people who are members of the reality-based community, interested in effective policy and responsible governance. (They're "wonks" in this somewhat tongue-in-cheek diagram, explained seriously here and more flippantly here.)
Related to the social contract above, I can find common ground with those who recognize the authoritarian strains in movement conservatism, and are instead interested in building, maintaining and improving on a fair system for everybody:
Also related to the social contract, I can find common ground with people who don't have extreme goals or selfish, reckless behavior:
I can find common ground with people who are anti-bullshit, who oppose false equivalencies, and aren't afraid to say so when both sides aren't equally to blame. As Daniel Patrick Moniyhan reportedly said, "Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts." Having an open mind means giving someone a fair hearing, not turning off one's bullshit detector. It doesn't mean wiping one's mind of all prior knowledge or ignoring the track record of the speaker.
I'm happy to work with people willing to fight the Stupid-Evil-Crazy Vortex:
Read through the Danny Goldberg piece linked in the previous post, and it'll remind you that conservatives have lied outrageously about almost every single issue under the sun. Eight Republican senators voted to repeal Don’t Ask Don't Tell, which is encouraging. However, the GOP's die-on-this-hill stance for tax cuts for the richest Americans and its obstructionism on the START deal were horribly irresponsible, shamelessly disingenuous and utterly indefensible. START finally passed, but its passage never should have been in jeopardy. It should not be such a difficult fight - with the outcome seriously in doubt - when it comes to matters of basic sanity and essential need (like securing loose nukes).
The Republican Party has not been run by responsible adults for some time now. This should be no secret whatsoever to anyone who's followed politics over the past decade or more. Moreover, ignoring this, and shrinking from challenging political figures who utter falsehoods, severely hurts our country. Currently, I'd say our situation looks something like this:
Liberals criticize the Democratic Party for its failings all the time. Meanwhile, I've lost track of how many times I've put in a good word for reasonable, well-intentioned people who identify themselves as Republicans or conservatives (I know a few). I'll probably continue to do so, but sometimes I'm awfully weary of it, because that characterization is so laughable when it comes to the conservative political class. I'd love it if the few reasonable types left could take over their party, but I'm not going to pretend that the GOP is something other than what it's shown itself to be countless times: irresponsible, reckless, inhumane, corrupt, dishonest, plutocratic, and occasionally downright nihilistic. Neither am I going to pretend that denying that reality will somehow make things better. As I've often written, if both major political parties merely competitively pandered to the middle class, America would be in far better shape. But it's delusional to think scoundrels of any stripe will suddenly develop consciences on their own. Only a real threat to what they hold dear - only a loss of power – can curb them. Even then, they'll only change if obstructionism and waiting two to four years ceases to work. Banishment to the political wilderness for a generation or two is what's needed.
It's a perennial question for those following American politics and movement conservatism specifically – is this or that political figure evil - or stupid? Maybe he or she's just crazy? Or is it some mix?
Sometimes the answer's moot, but it can be important to figure out for accurate political analysis - or at least on-target mockery. Roy Edroso included a stupid-evil ratio for all the conservatives in 2008's "Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere." I find myself returning to this question constantly, and probably looked at it in most depth in "Diagrams in Conservatism." Blue Gal and Driftglass delivered a great podcast playing the stupid, evil or crazy game for prominent conservatives (it's about an hour long, but it flies by). The Daily Show had a wonderful Team Evil versus Team Stupid bit on Fox News. And back in October, Rachel Maddow graphed the "kookiness-viability" scale of conservative candidates (with a shout-out to the "hot-crazy" scale to boot). It's both a game and a serious issue.
A stupid-evil or stupid-evil-crazy ratio is useful, but doesn't capture quantity, influence and other useful factors (the originality of someone's plot to destroy America, their favorite straw man opponent, the best form of medication for that person, and so on). Christine O'Donnell has said some shockingly stupid things, it's true, and beats even Sarah Palin in that category, but currently Palin has far more influence. Likewise, George W. Bush wielded far more power than either of them. Furthermore, while Bush's incurious nature remains legendary, and he was a piker compared to Cheney in the evil category, it would be a grave mistake to let Bush off the hook on the "evil" front. Clearly, we need better metrics here.
Wingnut trading cards with stats of some sort might work, but in the meantime, I wanted to try out a visual/graphic approach. The Stupid-Evil-Crazy graphic above relates to this model:
In this model (which riffs on an old Bruce Reed article, and is explained seriously in this long post, and more satirically here), "wonk" doesn't necessarily mean intellectual, it means anyone who's reality-based and interested in good governance:
The wonks aren't always right, and a great deal of them aren't ignorant about politics, although many wonks retain the capacity to be stunned by really atrocious hackdom. However, the wonks tend to arrive at good policy answers more often than hacks because that's their aim. Obviously some political power, whether through elected office or a citizen movement, is necessary to enact good policies. And sometimes, the smart political move is also good policy, hence the overlap between the circles in the diagram. Still, pure hacks see power and political gamesmanship as their own ends, and their efforts often oppose good policy. Meanwhile, the zealots occasionally stumble upon a good policy, but they're far more likely to take a side in a power struggle framed by the hacks.
Wonks of all stripes generally play fine together. Hacks are a necessary part of politics, and not all of them or the zealots are evil or destructive. The Dems have quite a few hacks, and some zealots as well. But the GOP is absolutely dominated by hacks and zealots, and it's a serious problem. Those few sane, honest, responsible conservatives left have been hunted near to extinction by the GOP, and the survivors wield little to no power or influence. Congressional Republicans have chosen obstructionism even on basic measures, and have refused to vote for bills even after getting concessions. Meanwhile, many Republicans say or actually believe things that simply aren't factually true.
Here's a more detailed version of the Stupid-Evil-Crazy graphic above:
(Click for a larger view.)
Let's break this down. This model doesn't apply exclusively to conservatives, of course, and can be used simply as a way to explore why bad decisions are made. Stupid covers problems centered on intelligence, most of all ignorance and lack of curiosity. No one can be an expert in everything, of course, and per the wonk description above, sometimes smart, well-intentioned people make mistakes. Some problems can only be solved through trial and error. However, wonks (reality-based people interested in competence) typically make different sorts of mistakes than do hacks or zealots, or in this model, make different decisions from the stupid, the evil and the crazy. The wonks may be unaware of something, but they're trying their best.
The bigger problem is when stupidity is a conscious choice or one made by default. For instance, both George W. Bush and Sarah Palin were/are proudly incurious. One of the most inexcusable things about Bush in terms of character was that he refused to grow into the role of President of the United States. Insecure and aggressively anti-intellectual, he used the notion of his "gut" to trump legitimate expertise. He was happy to stay in the bubble Cheney constructed, and regardless of any policy issues, Bush was an absolutely horrendous manager. Likewise, Sarah Palin wears her ignorance as a badge of honor, and her groupies adore her for it. To quote a friend: "I want a president who's smarter than me!" (Jay Smooth's got a great take on this, too.) Being competent, being qualified, and being reality-based is denounced as terribly elitist by movement conservatives. (Successful grifting shows a certain type of intelligence, but we're talking about the ability to understand the basics of important policies and to govern well.)
Crazy covers problems of emotion, whether an excess of negative feelings or a lack of basic positive ones. (We're using "crazy" in the colloquial sense, not in the "mentally ill" sense - although that may apply for some people.) While many right-wingers aren't that, um, well-informed, it's their craziness that really defines them. "Obama is a Muslim," "death panels," centrism is "socialism," you name it – the right-wing rank and file truly believes some crazy shit. They're largely impervious to facts because of their strong emotional attachment to their beliefs; challenging them actually tends to reinforce their convictions. It would be funny if the consequences weren't so dire. Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter and other social conservatives have long been waging a vicious war on compassion itself. From Nixon's Southern Strategy to Reagan's welfare queens to Bush's unnecessary war with Iraq, most of conservative politics over the past 50 years has depended on whipping up fear and spite.
Evil covers problems of morality. Choose another term if you like, but as I've written before, I don't think "evil" should be reserved only for fictional characters like Darth Vader. Acting in self-interest is fine, but evil is the willingness or eagerness to significantly hurt others in the process, or a general ethos of selfishness and recklessness. Providing for one's family isn't evil. Actively working to screw over the poor and middle class when you're rich and powerful is evil. So is simply not giving a damn when your actions (or clear inaction) will cause unnecessary suffering to one's fellow human beings. The evil tend to be focused on power - and powerful, destructive people tend to be more evil than stupid or crazy.
Let's apply the Stupid-Evil-Crazy Vortex to a specific issue, climate change (specifically, climate change caused by humans). The evil angle here is pretty obvious. The oil industry wants to monopolize the energy market and make obscene profits, and renewable energy threatens that. Thus, conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, funded by ExxonMobil, will do things like offering $10,000 to a scientist willing to challenge the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A recent To the Point episode focused on climate change and its deniers; the "evil" strategy is to sow doubt and impede environmental reforms as much as possible. Now, smart evil people might think, hmm, damaging the planet won't be good for my descendents, but "stupid-evil" is defined by its recklessness, as shown on the diagram. Climate change denial has also become a core part of conservative dogma – as Ron Brownstein has noted, "it is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here."
Obviously not everyone can be an expert on climate science, but it's not difficult to grasp the general trends of global warming and the need for action. Citizens without much information or understanding of science, though, are more likely be fooled by global warming denial propaganda. And while some of those pushing climate change denial are evil, some are legitimately stupid. Even behind closed doors, some Republicans really don't believe in global warming. Senator James Inhofe apparently thought that photos of icicles in Buffalo, NY proved that global warming wasn't real, and has claimed that global warming is “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” While Inhofe is certainly capable of being evil (and is a bit crazy), the icicle example earned him justified ridicule. He wouldn't have used it if he actually understood the issue. Stupidity might not be his driving force, but it's probably his defining characteristic on the issue.
Some people reject the idea of climate change because it's legitimately scary or because it threatens other beliefs they hold. I'm a bit sympathetic to that (if they're not obnoxious), but that would put them in the crazy portion of the graphic. For them, personal profit or lack of intelligence aren't as relevant as strong feelings or a cognitive dissonance. Bridging the stupid-crazy gap is Congressman John Shimkus, who argued that global warming couldn't destroy the Earth, because in the Bible God said he wouldn't inflict another Great Flood upon the Earth or otherwise destroy it. Of course, even if one shares Shimkus' religion, one doesn't need to take the Bible literally, and even if one took the Bible literally, the passage Shimkus cites still allows for human beings to destroy the planet all on their own. Regardless, the notion that we don't have any responsibility to reduce pollution because God will save us is both stupid and crazy. I'm assuming Shimkus was sincere, and that his strong personal, emotional attachment to his beliefs is the main reason he rejects empirical facts (or renders them irrelevant). Meanwhile, also in the crazy category are all those conservatives who brag about driving gas guzzlers or running up their energy bills just to pissoffliberals. It's childish, spiteful, and a nutty approach to personal finances.
What about other issues? On health care reform, many Americans were unaware of how other countries handle health care more effectively, but that's not really their fault. Stupidity came in when anyone believed that insurance companies had their customers' best interests at heart and could be trusted, despite ample evidence to the contrary. Following a familiar script, conservative leaders invested heavily in "the crazy," concocting scary tales of death panels, and feeding spite over the notion of "other people" (typically poor and non-white folks) "freeloading" off of a new system. In theaughts as in the '90s, the Republican plan was to pursue power, even if it meant ignoring a serious problem, lying shamelessly, and screwing over their own constituents. That's pretty evil, and sadly, also nothing new. Almost all of the reality-based debates on health care reform were among liberals.
On economics and fiscal matters, unawareness yet again plays a major role, as most Americans have little idea about how unequal wealth is in the United States, or that it's grown to Gilded Age levels in the past 30 years. Stupidity arrives when people consistently vote against their own economic interests. Craziness comes in different flavors, but there's the spite factor of not wanting some other demographic group to do well, and the lottery mentality of opposing raising taxes on the rich because one day you might hit the jackpot. The evil angle is fairly clear – championing a system which makes a small group fabulously wealthy while leaving everyone else struggling is horrendous. Working to destroy any social safety net in addition to that is just unconscionable. (However, some of the sore winners really do believe what they're saying.)
Feel free to improve on this graphic or these divisions; I'll probably play with it more in future posts. If anyone wants to help develop more detailed stupid-evil-crazy stats, great. I do think most of the destructive figures in American politics have at least 10% in each category, though. For instance, while Christine O'Donnell is definitely stupid, some of her ideas are also genuinely crazy, and she's also a liar, so she doesn't get off scot-free on the evil front. Meanwhile, while Newt Gingrich is almost entirely evil, he's occasionally unwise (stupid) in his choice of evil remarks, and as a raging egomaniac, he's a bit crazy. Still, that only speaks to ratios, and not to power, influence and other important characteristics.
Hanlon's Razor is "Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." It's funny and often true, at least when it comes to regular people. Plus, motivation can be moot sometimes. However, when it comes to the powerful - Don't Discount the Evil.
