Political Theatre category archive

At SFGate, Mark Worfords wonders just whom we’re supposed to hate this week.

Elsewhere, I’ve seen questions as to why DHS and the city of Boston “locked down” a major metropolitan area to search for one fugitive. Not even in the days of Dillinger and open mob warfare was such a step taken for so long a time.

On the one hand, it could have been security theatre, turning out the troops because they can, or life imitating television cop shows, where all arrests seems to be made by SWAT teams any more and no one ever comes quietly.

On the other hand, Pepe Escobar has lots of questions and a theory, and it’s not a pretty one.

I’m not saying I buy his theory, certainly not in toto. In particular, I think that the answers to some of his questions lie more with irresponsible and craven news reporting and the fog of fast-moving events than with official contrivance.

Nevertheless, as someone whose low expectations of human nature often turn out to be too high and who has little faith in those who surveil in the surveillance state, I think his column is worth a look.

Republican campaign strategy:

Via Bartcop.

. . . the central one of which appears to involve being mean for the sake of mean.

Scott Maxwell reports from the Orlando Sentinel:

Last week, I watched two groups of people hold passionate discussions about health care.

During one, doctors, pastors and patients swapped stories of inspiration and altruism, urging everyone to help as many people as possible.

During the other, politicians tried to persuade one another to help fewer. A plan was afoot to help 1 million people. But most of the politicians wanted to scale the help back — by as much as 90 percent.

At one, attendees talked about a moral obligation to help their fellow man and serve a higher power.

At the other, leaders demonstrated their desire to seek higher office.

The first event was a fundraiser for Shepherd’s Hope — a faith-based model of providing health care to Central Floridians that has become a national role model.

The other was the legislative session in Tallahassee, where politicians are scrambling for excuses to turn away billions of dollars in federal money to provide health care for the poor.

Both groups of people often quote Scripture.

Only one of them lives the Gospel.

PoliticalProf says, “Get real.”

sedavis asked: Dear Professor, Maureen Dowd and Nate Silver at the New York Times seem to agree that President Obama could have done more to pass the national background check piece of gun control. What do you think? Thanks. Sara

I do always find it amusing when people presume presidents have magical powers that can overcome any resistance … especially when those people have never held any elective office, much less worked with a Senate in which 60 votes is the default vote these days.

Until we stop electing tools and idiots to Congress, we will continue to be doomed.

Follow the link; read the rest.

Coincident with another attempt by Creationists to use agents of the state to propagate their magickal beliefs, paleontologist Oliver Knevitt lists his candidates for five terms in the public discourse that he thinks should be retired because they mislead the discussion.

Here’s one.

3. Missing link

This is undoubtedly the worst term in general use. There are many, many fundamental problems with this term, as I’ve written about before, but one the main problems is that a link implies a chain; a great chain of being, with the dumber animals at the bottom and clever man at the top.

Yet, there is a much deeper reason why I’d like this term to be dead and buried. It is entirely perjorative. It is only used by those wishing to deinigrate evolution. It automatically implies that we are involved in some sort of gigantic join-the-dots puzzle; that we spend our time desperately poring through rocks trying to find that one elusive crocoduck that will fill in our tree and finally legitimize our ill-conceived agenda.

The reality is that, if anything, it’s the other way round. We have far too many fossils and which ones are closer to the ancestral line and which are further is the tricky bit.

I particularly commend his remarks on “survival of the fittest” to your attention. The phrase was invented by Herbert Spencer and used during the Gilded Age by defenders of the gilded ones to justify economic inequality and exploitation.

It has remained a favorite of the gilded ones ever since, as it enables them to anoint themselves as “the fittest” cats, when, in actuality, they are often just the fattest cats.

. . . as I was couple of posts ago, Chancey Devega has noticed a new one in the deck.

In trying to frame the narrative surrounding Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokar Tsarnaev’s supposed actions in relation to the Boston Marathon bombing, the public and the mainstream media–both on the Left and the Right–are grappling with how Chechens are (or are not) in fact “white.”

Given that race does not exist except in the minds of those who see it (“race” based on skin color was dreamed up by Europeans along about the same time as chattel slavery and colonial expansion, by a quite marvelous and no doubt unrelated coincidence) and that it was the Caucuses that put the cacca in Caucasian, this seems to be a particularly stupid attempt to gin up a kerfuffle.

Follow the link for Devega’s comments, then check out his other post on the topic.

In which the Delaware River becomes the Delawhere-did-it-go River.

Timothy Lavin argues that more precise news reporting might lead to a better understanding of the news. A nugget (emphasis added).

George Orwell illuminated something important about how bad policy can be both the cause and the effect of sloppy writing. Language, he wrote, “becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”

I bring this up apropos of the gun-control plan the Senate has been considering. You might think, reading this morning’s news, that the Senate had voted on this plan and then “defeated” or “rejected” it. The Hill, for instance, wrote: “It failed by a vote of 54 to 46, with five Democrats voting against it. Only four Republicans supported it.” Reading that, you wouldn’t suspect that 54 senators actually supported passing the measure in question, which they did. Or that the proposal was actually blocked by a filibuster.

Newshound explains the “silent filibuster.”

Warning: The slideshow may not work in all browsers (like my Opera, for example, which, despite the warning, is as modern as it comes). You can watch it in a “supported browser”* at the original location.

______________________

*Really lame, Newshound. Really really lame.

Thom wonders why the fear of big guvmint and offers a theory. An excerpt:

Billionaires and big transnational corporations don’t want big government because when government stops funding the commons, things like schools, hospitals, water, power systems, then the billionaires can grab those natural monopolies and squeeze more and more money out of the working people.

Susie outlines how Republican hostility to safety regulations led to the explosion in Waco.

Just read it.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Stanton Peele offers a taxonomy for classifying the cackling that resounds after an event such as the Boston bombing.

Here’s an example; follow the link for the rest (emphasis in the original).

Vamping. “Vamping” is the term for the circumlocutions speakers use when they have nothing to say.* You can always tell when media people are doggie paddling — they say the same things over and over again, report there is no new information but that when any appears they will surely let us know (thanks!), and use as many words to say nothing as possible. Thus, the single phrase that best indicates you are participating in a kabuki theater media exercise is “at this point in time,” as in, “We don’t know that at this point in time,” when “We don’t know that at this point,” “We don’t know that yet,” or — most succinctly — “We don’t know” would all suffice.

Aside:

The latest rumor in the press is that an arrest is near. A caution: Get some grains of salt and remember Richard Jewell.

Republicans in Maine have forestalled an attempt to ban persons under 18 from tanning salons because parental freedom.

Under that reasoning, I should have been free to give my kids plastic bags and tell them to go play in the street.

David Farmer also disapproves. A nugget:

A February 2012 report found that of 300 tanning salons contacted nationally, 90 percent state that indoor tanning did not pose a health risk, while more than half of salons denied that indoor tanning would increase the risk of skin cancer.

In fact, nearly 80 percent of salons said that indoor tanning is beneficial to health, and some said it would prevent cancer.

At least one salon said: “It’s got to be safe, or else they wouldn’t let us do it.”

We shouldn’t let them do it.

The science is shocking.

A study released last fall by the University of California-San Francisco estimated that indoor tanning is responsible for more than 170,000 new cases of skin cancer a year just in the United States.

At Asia Times, Chung Min Lee tries to figure out what’s with North Korea. A nugget:

Kim has walked into a self-made trap; namely, that he has to show his people and his generals that he really deserves to be the Young Marshal who can lead his nation to new heights. By rattling his sabers and almost daring South Korea, the United States, China, and Japan to take him on, he feels that he can earn his military stripes, even though he spent his teenage years at an exclusive boarding school in Switzerland and has lived as a de facto deity, unlike the absolute majority of his countrymen who have lived in fear and hunger.

But as Carl von Clausewitz reminds us, “any complex activity, if it is to be carried out with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperament. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a ‘genius’.” Clausewitz’s dictums were written nearly 200 years ago, but they’re as relevant as ever because Kim doesn’t have the intellect or the temperament of being a true genius. This is the first lesson that we should draw from North Korea’s unprecedented antics and bellicosity.

Read the rest.