Political Theatre category archive

On Comically Vintage.

Rick Perry, per Bob Cesca on the Bob and Chez Show.

The relevant portion of the discussion starts at about the 37 minute mark.

If we cannot learn from our own past, we certainly cannot expect the United Kingdom to do so.

Cord Jefferson considers the riots in the UK in the light of findings on the causes of the 1992 Rodney King riots:

The most recent analog America has is the Rodney King riots, which shook Los Angeles for six days in 1992. Like London, the arson and looting in L.A. was set off by an incident involving white police and a black victim. Like London, police response throughout L.A. was weak. Unlike London, 53 people were killed in the L.A. riots. In the days following the devastation, Angelenos looked for different ways to pick up the pieces, just as Londoners are doing now. One of those ways was by convening committees; if impartial parties could sit and work through the broken glass and rubble, the theory went, then L.A. could learn from its past mistakes and move forward into a brighter, more lawful future.

(snip)

“Like other urban conflagrations—from Watts to Miami—the 1992 Los Angeles Crisis was sparked by a single incident, yet rooted in grievances and tensions which had accumulated for years,” the report’s introduction said. And later: “As they pleaded for immediate assistance and demanded long-term change, the frustration, anger, and pain of the people of Los Angeles was unmistakable.”

From the introduction:

With the economy flailing – there’s at least one industry – other than Wall Street and Big Oil – that’s booming! And that’s the business of locking up immigrants. Not because there’s more illegal immigration in America today – there’s actually less – but because private prison lobbyists – with the help of paid-off lawmakers who write strict immigration laws like Arizona’s SB1070 – are making sure more and more illegal – and sometimes legal – immigrants are rounded up and thrown in for-profit detention facilities . . . .

Shaun Mullen explains:

The last time a fringe group exerted substantial influence over a major political party was in 1972 when the anti-Vietnam War movement rallied beyond George McGovern over Hubert Humphrey, Henry M. Jackson and Edmund Muskie, all of whom could have beaten Richard Nixon.

I remember the 1972 campaign well and Election Night in particular. It was obvious early on that despite Nixon’s unpopularity — he had reneged on his promise to end the war and there were the first stirrings of the Watergate scandal that would abort his second term — that he would win in a landslide. I woke up the next morning and despite having a world-class hangover immediately understood why McGovern had been thrashed. Like the Tea Party, his supporters refused to dial back on their stridency and cool their rhetoric even if the face of probable defeat.

For you whippersnappers, here’s more about the SDS.

From a letter to the editor of the the Boston Globe.

Writing at Bloomberg, Nathan P. Myhrvold suggests that the wrong metaphors are often used to describe social dynamics. He argues this is why bad ideas don’t die and why persons hold on to falsities.

He argues that society is less like an organism (think Hobbes’s Leviathan) and more like a slime mold.

Granted, our species is very intelligent and has developed exquisite communication across the world and through the centuries. But while people are smart enough to anticipate problems, they are also smart enough to make counterarguments. Every good idea in history has had to fight against many bad ideas before winning broad acceptance.

Like the individual mold cells in a slime colony, most people mainly pursue their self-interest, influenced only partially by a concern for the common good. And our individual agendas often conflict. You can’t balance the federal budget, for example, without goring somebody’s ox. Do we raise taxes, cut spending, eliminate subsidies? Every option is resisted by some people.

What’s more, society as a whole isn’t rational. In politics, religion and other areas of culture, people disagree on the worth of competing ideas. There is no equivalent to the scientific method that can determine in a robust way which ideas match the real world, and which ones can be ruled out. So conflicting ideologies persist indefinitely.

Got a point. Worth a read.

You can’t make this stuff up.

In what appears to be an effort to avoid the free-for-all town halls that have plagued recent contentious congressional recesses, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and other Republican members of Congress have chosen to charge admission to their home-district appearances.

At the Guardian, Hadley Freeman explores the confusing world of wingnut doublethink. A snippet:

Perhaps the most blatant use of doublethink was Mitt Romney’s self-serving claim last week that “corporations are people, my friend”, which managed to be both deeply Orwellian as well as sounding like an offcut from It’s a Wonderful Life. It doesn’t even require a tiptoe of imagination, let alone a leap, to envisage Lionel Barrymore as evil Mr Potter cackling to James Stewart as poor George Bailey: “Corporations are people, George!”

(Incidentally, a version of this self-entitled mentality was echoed by Megyn Kelly on Fox News, the GOP mouthpiece, last week when she ferociously defended her right to maternity leave, despite having derided “entitled programmes” in the past. As Jon Stewart pointed out: “They’re really only entitlements when they’re something other people want. When it’s something you want, they’re a hallmark of a civilised society.”)

Jonathan Bernstein points out that a “traditional” Republican doesn’t have a chance as a Republican candidate. A snippet from the article:

The other thing I’d say to Republicans disappointed in the current choices (as Ross Douthat says he is today) is this: What you’re upset with isn’t the candidate — it’s the party.

Bernstein link via Balloon Juice.

Heh.

I can’t wait to see which Republican candidate will terrify me into voting for Obama again.

At Comically Vintage.

What the Booman said.

By their words shall ye know them:

Infographic from the Republican sideshow er, sideshow in Iowa:

Via Contradict Me.

Afterthought:

“Sterilization.” Hmmmph. Whom exactly are they planning to sterilize?

Russell Brand comments on the riots in England. It’s a long, worthwhile article.

Here’s a snippet (emphasis added).

Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, “mindlessly”, motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that’s why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few . . . pairs of trainers.

These young people have no sense of community because they haven’t been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron’s mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there’s no such thing.

They remind me of the Watts riots, which were also a self-destructive explosion of pressure that had been building for a long, long time.

When pressure results in a spontaneous explosion, you won’t find a strategy to the explosion, but you will find causes.

Link and video shamelessly stolen from C&L.

I have mentioned this story before. Now John Oliver interviews the protagonists.

Via Mano Singham.