Feet to the Fire

Representative Raul Labrador [R - Idaho]: I personally would be willing to give the president a one year CR and I have a lot of conservatives there with me, which would be good for the president, in exchange for a one-year delay in the implementation of Obamacare. And I think that would be something where both sides actually would be able to get something out of these negotiations.

[...]

Renee Montagne: Would you be happy with that [the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act] in a year?

Labrador: I won't be happy with it in a year. My position would be: Yes, let's get rid of the entire program. But I know we don't have the votes to do that. And I don't think it's unreasonable for us to ask for one year delay, of a program that's clearly not working.
Rep. Labrador Of Idaho Weighs In On Government Shutdown

If Representative Labrador's offering a one-year delay of the Affordable Care Act in exchange for a one-year Continuing Resolution, what happens when the year is up? It seems that we end up back in the same place, especially given that his stated goal is to kill the ACA in its entirety. Given this I was somewhat surprised that Ms. Montagne didn't ask Representative Labrador what happens at the end of the year. (The question immediately occurred to me.) Now, to be sure, I suspect that the Representative would likely have attempted to dodge the question, as his choices would have been either making a commitment to allow the law to take full effect or basically admit that he was offering a deal that it made no sense for the President and Senate Democrats to go along with.

Granted, we already understand this, but putting the question out there would have required that Representative Labrador go on the record with his answer. And that may have irritated him, and made it more difficult to get him on the show in the future. But this becomes the problem with relying on "the media" for things like this - they can ask questions, but they generally can't compel their subjects to answer. I would, however, like to have seen the risk taken, and the question asked. But then again, I don't live in the 1st Congressional District of Idaho. And, presumably, those are the people to whom Representative Labrador has to answer when the next election rolls around. Therefore, it's unlikely that he'd say anything that he understands would hurt the cause - or knowingly put himself in a position where not answering would do the same. Because, frankly, he doesn't have to. Refusing to speak to NPR on-air would likely elevate him in the eyes of his constituents. And NPR knows that. So an informative question goes unasked, and Representative Labrador is allowed to cast aspersions on Senate Democrats without even a hint of challenge.

As often as we say that the public relies on the media, the media actually relies on the public. Parts of it, anyway. As long as Republican voters in the 1st District will side with Representative Labrador if he clashes with Ms. Montagne, she has little power as an interviewer. Aggrieved NPR listeners nationwide can "beseech her to do her duty as the fourth estate" all they want, but their opinions carry little weight. It is not an activist, engaged media that makes for a better public. It's an activist, engaged public that makes for a better media. We can't expect the media to simply go after suspect items on the part of people we dislike. We have to be prepared to do the same for the people we like.

The Shame Game

Weakness, misery, does not always elicit sympathy. Perhaps that is because the weakness reminds of what we we fear for ourselves. Or perhaps it reminds us of our own complicity in some broad crime, and more, our presumed helplessness for it to be any other way.
Ta-Nehisi Coates "Notes From the Blue Period"

This is one of the wages, perhaps the most obvious and persistent one, of a culture of scarcity. When there isn't enough. the first thing that many do is go searching for someone weaker than themselves to take from. And then they blame the person from whom they have stolen, as if, had they been roundly beaten in their attempt to victimize another, they would have regarded such an outcome as just and proper.

We are taught to despise this in ourselves. But rather than becoming an incentive to rise above the habit of seeing the vulnerable as legitimate targets, that self-loathing simply inspires us to cloak it in something more to our liking, just as Mr. Coates admits to having done in his youth, and as I did in mine. Whether it's the taunts of children towards those that stir uncomfortable feelings by being different or the mockery that corporate confidence men direct towards their targets, we have learned to hide from shame by visiting it upon others.

In the comments section, Mr. Coates relates:

I spent some weeks in the North Lawndale section of Chicago talking to homeowners who'd been totally ripped off as a result of the redlining and FHA guidelines during the early 60s.

They said the hardest thing to do was to get all the black folks in the neighborhood talking about it. They knew every single one of them had been ripped off. But they were ashamed to speak for fear of appearing stupid and weak.

We are not all the same. Some are weaker than others and some are less intelligent. Shame over the appearance of being stupid and weak is the result of predicating our own-self acceptance on circumstances outside of our control. Give me anyone you care to name, and I will find someone, perhaps even they themselves, who sincerely regards them as somehow stupid and weak. Universal competence is impossible. No matter how strong and bright the person, there is always a bridge too far for them reach on their own, yet one that seems deceptively close.

In the end, romanticism and duty notwithstanding, unconditional love comes only from one place: a mirror. And that requires being able to look into it, and understand that, regardless of what anyone else says, the person who stands there is worthy of the complete and total affirmation and acceptance of the person looking back at them. Stupidity, weakness, warts and all. The alternative is to make ourselves into frauds, people who present ourselves as we believe the world is entitled to see us in return for outward acceptance. And inner shame. A shame that manifests itself as a predatory instinct. Perhaps directed inwardly, perhaps outwardly, or perhaps completely undirected. The voices of the Inner Critic are both loud and persistent.

Self-affirmation, self-acceptance, serenity. Whatever it is called, it lies in changing what can be changed, and accepting the rest. The past cannot be changed. The events that prompted us to understand that we are weaker and stupider than we feel we ought to be are fixed. Just as important as accepting ourselves as we are is to accept ourselves as we were. And in doing so, be unashamed.

And Not a Drop to Drink

Turning Off the Lights

With all of the hullabaloo about the partial government shutdown and the fighting over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or, as it's entered the popular parlance, "Obamacare"), the actual purpose of the "debate" that we're currently having has been lost.

In the comments section for Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Obamacare and the Conscience of a Radical" the role of Federal Housing Authority home loans (namely the fact that African-Americans were often prevented from obtaining them) in the creation of urban ghettos was raised, and Mr. Coates makes the following observation: "The 'positive impact' came from the FHA insuring mortgages. The insurance was provided by taxes--taxes paid by blacks and whites. Taking funds from one community and using it to aid another community is not moral. It is thievery." In this case, of course, he's referring to the fact that many ostensibly race-neutral government policies exacerbated the United States' racial wealth gap by taxing everyone, yet only spending those tax dollars on certain communities.

Anyone familiar with the politics of the modern American Right can see where I am going with this. Conservative economic ideology (as opposed to theory) holds that a) the "free market" (the definition of which seems to vary) will solve all problems in a short enough term to be relevant to the observer and b) every dollar paid out in taxes with which the individual taxpayer disagrees is theft, plain and simple. Of course, the American Left tends to hold to the ideological position that it is the job of government to remedy the tendency of markets (and human action) to create unequal opportunities and/or outcomes for different groups of people.

As I right this, a large minority of the federal workforce is furloughed, and a good number of them are working without pay over what is really an argument about the moral significance of where resources end up, as opposed to where they start out. To the degree that Conservative ideology envisions the world as a place that starts out fair (in that "individuals who work harder will accumulate more wealth") and that it is the action of governments and other unjustified collectives that interfere in this, the primary argument against the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is really about suddenly drawing a line in the sand against 200+ years of government becoming less about protecting the "negative" rights of (certain of) its citizens and shifting to enumerating and  working towards a growing body of "positive" rights for all of its citizens - but at the expense of those who do not require government aid to fulfill them.

Because the United States is a representative democracy, the idea of rolling back many of the positive rights already in place is pretty much a non-starter, despite the air of hypocrisy that it lends to the overall Conservative movement. For Conservative lawmakers (despite what aggrieved Liberals may have to say about them) attempting to roll back some of the collective supports to individuals standards of living would be political suicide. (Four words: "Hands off my Medicare.") But those same voters who are, for the most part, okay with being funded by people in far-flung corners of the United States (most of what it termed "flyover country" is propped up by tax-dollar-exporting major urban areas and Blue states on the coasts) are now adamant that the flow of "their tax dollars" to the undeserving be halted.

Despite popular mythology to the contrary, the United States of America has never truly been united in spirit. An Us Versus Them dynamic has more or less always been in play, even in the midst of war. These grievances are now playing themselves out in an acrimonious policy debate and fights on legislative floors. Winning, while it's unlikely to turn out to be what the average voter thinks it will, still carries with it an important affirmation of the victor's worldview (regardless of its accuracy) and values. And that's what everyone is fighting for.

Dr. Feelgood

There is a certain irony in the idea that a populace that can't be trusted with firearms can be trusted with unfettered access to a finite resource like healthcare without making a hash of things. But this is part of the nature of partisanship - there's no less irony in the idea that a woman who can be trusted with a firearm can't be trusted to make the choice as to whether or not to continue a pregnancy.