On the Contrary

Every now and then when I am watching the news and I hear morons like John Boehner claim that he hasn’t talked with anyone who wants a public option for health care and I go off, my wife reminds me that Republicans are not evil.  No they are not, but their conservative philosophy and the people they put in power are.  Okay, I will give you that John Boehner’s myopia is not any worse than Nancy Pelosi protecting Charlie Rangel from his lapses in ethics.  When it comes to politicians, most have been corrupted by power and money, too many deals, and too many compromises in order to stay in power.

But at the heart of conservative dogma is selfishness, pure and simple.  It is all about I got mine and I deserve it.  It is about a total lack of empathy for those not so fortunate, because they don’t believe they themselves are fortunate.  They believe that what is theirs they earned and that those less fortunate deserve their station in life.  Any sharing of their fortune would be to promote a lack of discipline and hard work, hence their aversion to any government program.  The proof in this statement is to watch how quickly a Republican “sees the light” when some calamity hits them and then they want to be bailed out.  But this only lasts for a few moments before they fall back on their “I deserved to be bailed out because I am a productive member of society, but the rest are just lazy scum living off the system.”  If you really listen to the underlying philosophy this is its basic underlying belief.  I am special.  The rest of you need to work harder.

Let’s look at their mantra of low taxes, small government, and balanced budgets.  The basic logic of low taxes is that it incentivizes businesses to expand.  But that is a gross over simplification.  Taxes are also how the government accumulates capital to invest in infrastructure and business cannot survive without first class transportation systems, communication systems, and a healthy and educated population.  So it has to be a balance.  But what the conservative ideology has become is a tax hating mob, which is kind of strange since they are suppose to be made up of businessmen and women who understand about capital investments and improvements.  But then why should they pay taxes which will just be wasted on the undeserving?

Small government and balanced budgets are part of the same ideology that says government interference with business equals bad, and free unrestrained markets provide the most return for our people.  Once again this is a gross oversimplification.  Certainly government bureaucracy can hinder business, but sometimes to the good.  Need I remind you of our recent financial crisis or the environmental abuses of the past?  Many of our problems that beg solutions are not local or regional, but are national.  Just how are these to be addressed with an ineffective and small national government?  Global warming (which they don’t believe in), energy policy, our depleted oceans, infrastructure problems, clean water and air, oh I could go on forever, are national problems that take a national approach.  As our populations grow and we become ever more interconnected, these problems will not have solutions at local or regionalI levels.  And of course when there is a national catastrophe, there is all of a sudden a national clamor for government intervention.  And the demand, “Why weren’t they prepared?”  They being that government they hate so much.

The balanced budget clamor is also a red herring.  All of us know that we need to balance the books if we don’t want to go under, but we also know that if we look at the business model, large corporations make long-term investments (read loans here) to improve their competitive advantage in the future.  So why can’t conservatives see this logic when it comes to our government?  We are in a whale of a mess and a lot of it comes from our lack of investment (read here tax cuts) in our future.  We are becoming one of the unhealthiest populations of the industrial countries, we are lagging badly in education, and our infrastructure is sad when you go to other countries and see their investments.  Right now is the time to take on big debts to invest in our future and yet conservatives have derailed any attempt to do this.  Why do they do this when it is so obvious we need it?  Why have their arguments become illogical?

The answer to this question goes back to the issue of why American conservatism, at its heart and in its present form, is evil.  At its basis is “I got mine and all the rest of you deserve your fate because you are lazy or undisciplined.”  It is a total rejection of the idea of the common good. It is a protection of the status quo, either for the individual or the corporation when change is what is required.  It started with Ronald Reagan, and the “problem is the government”, and the idea that greed is good because if you are making lots of money you are smart, deserve it, and are lubricating the economy.  This idea should have been totally destroyed by out latest financial crisis where greed almost destroyed our economy, millions were made jobless, but a few got very rich.  Let’s face it.  Most of us bought into this over the last 30 years as we borrowed our way to massive debt, because, well, we deserve the things we bought.

So what we are seeing in almost every debate now are conservatives who feel they are special and chosen, block anything that might require sacrifice now for our future investment or a change in the status quo.  Whether it is health care to protect our citizens, cap and trade to control global warming, energy tax for moving to green energy, infrastructure investment for better transportation, water and air improvements, or people investment, they are against it because they got theirs and they do not want to share in the common good by making any kind of sacrifice.  It is no coincidence that the religious right is part of this movement.  They believe they are also special and selected people.  This whole movement is about selfishness, being the chosen few who deserve their good fortune and justifying their lack of empathy. Money taken from me and spent on others just encourages their dependence on the system.  That is why socialized anything strikes terror in their souls.  The fact that many services like fire protection, police protection, transportation management, and education are socialized, is totally lost on them.

All of the other associated issues, whether it is hating gays, denying a woman’s right to choose, wanting their country back, interjecting religion into politics, interceding into end of life decisions, demanding the impeachment of Obama, denying his legitimacy, it is all about defending their moral superiority, and their perceived deserved affluence.  I got mine and there is no need to share because you would just squander it.  It epitomizes a total lack of empathy or an understanding of our common condition, that there for the grace of “god”, go I.  It is a denial of our basic common humanity, it is an attitude that is at the heart of some of the most evil acts this world has seen, and it is destroying our once rich and prosperous country.  It is evil.

One other thought:  It is true that the nation sprung up for a highly individualized population that took amazing risks in our past to create the nation we have.  But what we have forgotten in this worship of the individual is that they also knew their vulnerability and their survival in the new world depended upon working together.  We have raised that individualism to a level of worship, and we forgot about all of the cooperation that it took to just survive.  It is time to remember both.