Enough with the wailing and gnashing of teeth, already. Complaining about the neighbors doesn’t improve the neighborhood.
Half of eligible voters didn’t vote and the half that did was divided pretty evenly. Two percentages points seems like so little, although given the size of the US, the numbers are sizable. A million here, a million there and pretty soon you are talking about a lot of people. What astonishes me is the absolute hooey that people believe about Republicans, conservatives, the federal government, law, the economy, the poor and the rich. That is staggering. Possibly, that is reflected in the election results, although to say that is to insult at least a quarter of the electorate.
My granddaughter asked me yesterday if it was true that Romney was responsible for the breast cancer deaths of thousands of women. “How could he be?” I asked, “When was he ever in a position to be so responsible? Who said that?” Her friends did and said their parents were voting for Obama because of that. “How was he responsible?” She said no one knows, but they all think he is evil. Besides, he’s a Mormon and that is really bad. Her teacher said so. Did the child misunderstand what she heard? I don’t think so.
I’ve heard that Romney would make all women quit working and stay home. Who said that? The political science professor in the room next to mine at the community college. That wasn’t the only absurd he said, either. Romney would make the use of contraceptives illegal. Who said that? Many women I know were adamant about that. He would make abortion illegal, too. As if a president could dictate that. “How do you know?” The women on “The View” said so and everyone knows it is true. “Did he say it?” He must have said it. Everyone knows that is what he would do.
America is awash with information, much of it false. Who is educated enough to discern? Maybe no one, not even the educated. Once, conservatives thought that more influence on the culture would answer these problems. Create media outlets to express the conservative voice, proclaim the conservative point of view. We’ve done that. The Internet abounds with conservative talk and there are so many conservative magazines one must make choices as no one with a job could read them all. Then, as Pete notes, Fox News is full of it’s own kind of hooey. I can’t stand to watch it. Can you? It is entertainment, successful as that, and subsequently, hard to take seriously. Persuasion by that means has not been effective and looks to be counter-productive. What’s next?
I don’t know, but I do know that no American wants the country to fail or really wants to endure a financial and social apocalypse. We will all do all that we can to avert that, if only for ourselves, our families and our friends. The rich, who the administration says it is determined to eat, really have no where else to go in the world to be as comfortable. They won’t be eaten, of course, because the president, the hungry senators and congressmen and their most supportive friends are also rich. Just as has always happened, there will be legal ways to protect wealth and the most truly wealthy, the rarities like the Buffet or Gates, know or have hired people who know how to shield wealth most throughly. They’ll be all right. But that’s what America just voted for, while telling itself it was voting for something else all together.
I suggest that the only way left to Americans to ensure prosperity is to trust to Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand. It really works, for the most part, no matter what system of government or economy is extant. Individuals each doing his best to survive and prosper will not totally prevent hardship, or perhaps not prevent hardship at all. They, we, will ensure that most of us survive, because we take care of ourselves. No matter what foolishness is done as a result of political foolishness that is said, people tend to keep their wits about them and get through hard times, sometimes thereby averting truly hard times for all in the process.
“Take back America”? We’ve got America, but so have our neighbors. We have no choice but to share. Conservatives have to figure out how to live with the ones who see the world and American politics much differently than we, as well with the near half of the country who may not be looking or thinking about the world or our politics at all. Or if they are looking, are so dissatisfied that they will not play the game at all. At the moment, do you really blame them?
November 10th, 2012 | 3:39 pm
Instead of attacking it, Conservatives need to realize that higher-education matters (a lot).
November 10th, 2012 | 3:48 pm
I really, really wish it were as benign as you’ve presented here. Persuasion? How do you persuade the following?
Here’s the reality of some Obama supporters, and as this is the 74th anniversary of the “Night of the Broken Glass”, it seems all the more disturbing.
Caution: The speaker has an extremely foul mouth and very little coherence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQBfudpKo3g
November 10th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
“I don’t know, but I do know that no American wants the country to fail or really wants to endure a financial and social apocalypse. We will all do all that we can to avert that, if only for ourselves, our families and our friends.”
“We will all do all that we can to avert that…”,
Kate, do you really believe this?
I think it’s true that no one wants catastrophe, but it seems the collective default of the country is to defer the catastrophe a little longer so as not to feel the inevitable pain that confrontation requires, or alternatively convince oneself that the haircut need to be taken by ‘the other guys’ be they the 1% or the 47% or whomever.
The term that appears to be increasing in popularity on this site, and I’ve used it frequently myself, is ‘bubble’. Conservatives such as myself just found out this election that we were in a bubble about the nature of this years electorate. And some of us suspect the left which occupies the White House and Senate are in another bubble concerning the fiscal implications of entitlement spending.
And so to I think the electorate is in its own ‘bubble’, fed by the predominate culture, which seems to be greatly influenced by a manichean picture of evil white, Romney-like fat cats pulling the economic strings.
My mistake was assuming that this election would precipitate the collapse of said bubble. It didn’t. In light of the protective media phalanx around the democratic policy makers in DC, I don’t envision moment of collective enlightenment occuring spontaneously in the country either.
Which leaves me with the terrible suspicion that this bubble will end the way every other bubble with end, with a lot of unecessary pain.
I truly would love to be convinced otherwise.
November 10th, 2012 | 8:10 pm
I’ve never seen journalist malpractice and mendacity as blatant and outrageous as the lies about contraception this past year. I understand politicians lie whenever they think they must, or can, but the media cooperation in this case really has been beyond the pale.
It will be interesting to see whether the Catholic Church, and others, are serious about their position. Clearly the administration thinks they’re bluffing. I don’t know that they’re wrong. Anyone hoping for relief from the courts is living in cuckoo-land.
Among the other post-election Easter eggs we’ve gotten (Boeing, Petraeus, shale oil, etc.), I got a letter from my health insurer via my employer that premiums are going up 15% next year. They even attribute this to “a federal law requiring coverage of women’s preventive services.” This for a high-deductible health plan that has much lower premiums than “conventional” plans and is supposed to be somewhat immune to price hikes since so much more cost is subject to the deductible rather than premiums. My employer pays thousands more per employee for health insurance than the federal fine for not providing it, and since we’re much smaller than fifty employees I’m not sure he’d be subject to those fines anyway. Anyone who thinks Obamacare means anything other than the end of employer-provided health insurance for small businesses is delusional. (Note: this would be a good thing, if it were part of a plan to move to an individual based HDHP system, but that’s the exact opposite of where they want us to go).
I’m pretty sure that Obamacare will collapse on itself before it manages to destroy the best health-care system in the world, given that we’re already bankrupt, but it may be a close run thing.
Economic catastrophe is unavoidable. As I’ve said multiple times here already, it may provide a bit of consolation that the guy who lost wouldn’t have been able to avoid it anyway. It will also be amusing to see the continued use of “unexpectedly” in the recurring monthly stories of economic doom that are inevitably in our future.
November 10th, 2012 | 9:26 pm
Pseudoplotinus
“I think it’s true that no one wants catastrophe, but it seems the collective default of the country is to defer the catastrophe a little longer so as not to feel the inevitable pain that confrontation requires, or alternatively convince oneself that the haircut need to be taken by ‘the other guys’ be they the 1% or the 47% or whomever.”
Well said.
November 11th, 2012 | 7:39 am
We are merely paying the price for our dalliance with social democracy-progressivism which began, I might reminds you folks, with the academics, eggheads, cognescenti, etc.
The Obama Admin reminds me of a line from Dylan: “What with three babies born, the work it was cut, to half a days shift for no reason…”
Wait ’til they get hungry.
November 12th, 2012 | 7:52 am
[...] my contention that individual Americans will grow the economy almost no matter what our federal government does, [...]
November 15th, 2012 | 2:37 pm
You are marks. Easy marks that have been sold to the conservative movement for profit. It is sad really, to see Christian morality reduced to a prop in a con mans game. All for the love of a few more bags of silver. Satan could not imagine such a self destruction – only men.
November 15th, 2012 | 5:59 pm
Dear Mr. Observer, on becoming a Christian, I lay aside the foolish immorality that accompanies the assumption that there is no God. Belief demanded a reassessment of my ethics. That brought me to conservatism as the only possible politics for the Christian. Therefore what you write reads like foolishness to me. I make no profit from being a conservative; I’d have received more if I sought government handouts, like so many do. What the heck are you saying there?
November 15th, 2012 | 6:01 pm
Mr. Cain, I teach at an institution of higher education. So does everyone who writes for this blog as far as I know. Who doesn’t think higher education matters?
November 15th, 2012 | 6:04 pm
Brian, yes, I really do think people will do all they can not to fail nor to let our nation fail. I think that’s American; I think that’s human. I am not saying that everyone works brilliantly nor with total success, but individuals, doing what they can, are not without effect on the nation as whole. If you guys didn’t really believe that, you’d be seeking asylum in some other country where you could be more assured of liberty. Assuming you could find one, which I suspect you couldn’t.
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