The little dust up over health care reform, and especially the role Medicare is playing in it, calls to mind this quote by G.K. Chesterton:

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected.

Particularly relevant to this quote is the way Democrats have emphasized simply expanding our messy patchwork system of health care coverage, and finding overall “cost savings” at the same time, while Republicans have jumped at this as an opportunity to posture as the concerned guardians of Medicare. Republicans recently put forth a “Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors,” which claims that Medicare will be fatally “raided” in order to pay for the Democrats’ “government-run health care experiment.” Thus, Republicans are now declaring that “we need to protect Medicare and not cut it in the name of health-insurance reform.”

It probably isn’t necessary to point out just how disingenuous and purely opportunistic Republicans are being here. But I will anyway. Republicans, after all, have a history of opposing, seeking to scale back, and wishing to reduce dependence on social entitlement programs like Medicare. Seriously, if Republicans and conservatives had had their way, there wouldn’t even be a Medicare for them to talk about “protecting.” It is largely because of Democrats that we have programs like Medicare in the first place.

In fact, pick pretty much any social program or progressive agenda over time – be it Social Security, Medicare, or every attempt for universal health care – and you will find the same fearful conservative/Republican opposition arguing that such programs would present a “slippery slope” to “socialism.” So the really amusing part of Republicans now talking about “protecting” Medicare from some “government-run health care experiment” is that before it was enacted, Medicare was for them just such a scary “experiment” that had to be stopped.

When the idea of Medicare was first proposed in the early 1960s, for example, Ronald Reagan warned,

[If this program passes], behind it will come other federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country, until, one day…we will awake to find that we have socialism. And [if we don't stop this], one of these days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.

Right. Those sunset years that are now often longer, healthier, and less likely to be impoverished thanks to things like Medicare?

Now, it is true I think that when most programs like Medicare are enacted, they are the end result of compromises of larger progressive ideals. So they are limited, and progressives often do hope to strengthen and expand them over time. Yet, in spite of limits, shortcomings, and initial scare-mongering, it turns out that such social programs fill such an important need and become so popular, there is little political support to scale them back.

But the really great irony comes when the popularity of such a program can be used as a wedge to maintain the current status quo and oppose more progressive legislation. This is the incredible irony we’re seeing now. Senior citizens, as a group, are the most opposed to the present health care reform proposals. Yet, while the rhetoric of opposition consists mostly of cries about the dreaded “evils” of “socialism” and “government-run health care,” what the elderly seem to be most fearful of is the possibility that their own, very popular “government-run” health care will be negatively affected.

How can such contradictory thinking persist, you might ask? Well, as Slate has been reporting, there is some question about how many people fully realize Medicare is actually government-sponsored, single payer health care coverage. As one citizen infamously, and hilariously, said to a congressman in a South Carolina town hall, “keep your government hands off my Medicare,” apparently without a hint of irony.

Many Republicans, it seems, have been more than happy to shamelessly exploit such dissonance, as well as exploit the anxieties of the elderly, in order to fight the reform effort. I don’t know how else to describe that but as the dark side of shameless opportunism for short-term political gain. I don’t doubt that it all-too-often happens on both sides, and Democrats have certainly voiced similar loud opposition over proposed Medicare cuts in the past. But Republicans, particularly, have been going off the deep end in finding just about any reason to oppose/criticize everything. And in this instance it seems clear, if the circumstances were not a wider reform being put forward by Democrats, Republicans would be saying precisely the opposite, decrying Medicare’s unsustainable path and wanting to cut its costs or advocate for some kind of diverting scheme.

Instead, because of immediate political considerations, Republican leaders are ironically defending leaving a current entitlement totally untouched and indefinitely leaving the fiscal problems we face in this area for some other day (even as they rant and rave about “out of control” spending and deficits, yet reject ever raising taxes to pay for anything). Beyond this being quite irresponsible, shortsighted, and contradictory, some have pointed out it doesn’t even make long-term sense strategically, and might end up backfiring against other conservative goals. As Matthew Yglesias writes,

I hope the right-wing enjoys the giant tax hikes we’ll be enacting down the road once they show the political world that any attempt to trim Medicare spending, no matter how modest, will be savaged by opportunists on the other side.

But, if there is any kind of actual strategy to speak of here, I think there are a couple cynical ways to understand what Republicans are doing. One, they must stir up a ton of opposition to just about anything the Democrats propose, because they do not want the Democrats to get any meaningful, and potentially popular, reform through in such a key area. Two, Republicans fear that said reform could possibly open the door to more popular social services that they don’t want the government to have to pay for. With that in mind then, they likely feel that temporarily defending Medicare is the lesser evil to ending up with anything beyond it (see RNC chairman Michael Steele, who argued we need to “protect” Medicare, but then later cited Medicare as an example of why “government cannot run a health care system”).

I personally do not think, however, that the Republicans have much desire to make Medicare sound for the future. I don’t think they’re terribly worried about us enacting future “giant tax hikes” either. I think they will simply go on hoping they can “starve the beast” by continually hammering away at the already weak political will to raise taxes and properly fund services, and by encouraging privatized, market solutions. Remember, back in the mid-1990s it was Republican, Newt Gingrich, who expressed his hope that they could make traditional Medicare “wither on the vine” by drawing recipients into a “free-market plan.” Hmm, sounds kind of like some other Republican’s recent plan for Social Security too.

The point is, that is just the way the GOP, and especially the “conservative movement,” thinks about government and social welfare in general. So, if I were 65 or older, I would be completely suspicious of this sudden Republican concern for my welfare and benefits; lest I forget that those 65 or older would not even have a right to such benefits, nor such a social commitment to their welfare, if it had been left up to Republicans.

According to a recent Time Magazine poll, Jon Stewart is now “America’s most trusted newscaster.” To account for this phenomenon, I would choose two ways to basically state the same point: 1) Not to take anything away from the brilliant Jon Stewart, but it probably says more about the pitiful state of the cable news media than it does about Stewart himself. 2) It is the result of Stewart and the Daily Show often managing to offer more substantive journalism than cable news actually does, ironically as Stewart and co. are primarily mocking cable news.

It’s really a brilliant thing, and I personally think Stewart is doing great and hilarious work. And I think a fine example of why Stewart has gained such trust is his recent interview/debate with long time health care reform opponent/career misinformant, Betsy McCaughey (pronounced mac-coy). (Unfortunately, the full episode cannot be embedded it seems. But it can be viewed in full here. Go to the the second section – the 8:00 minute mark – on the episode to see the interview from the beginning. Two clips of the extended interview are also available at thedailyshow.com).

The interview is really worth watching closely, because it stood out to me as almost a microcosm of the mainstream media discussion of health care reform overall. While watching, think of McCaughey as somewhat representative of the loud opponents of reform in the conservative media, and think of Stewart as representative of progressives that desire reform and are sympathetic to the current effort.

Notice Stewart, during the interview, is saying things like, “No, that’s not what the bill says, and you can’t make it mean that. Can we please just have a rational discussion about this?” Then consider McCaughey, on the other hand. She claims the house bill is “dangerous” and “cruel.” She even shows up with half of it in a binder, I guess as an attempt to give herself some legitimacy. Yet, if you watch closely, you’ll notice that she never actually reads from the bill, despite Stewart repeatedly requesting this. In fact, even though only a few pages are the main point of discussion here, she did not have those sections bookmarked (as Stewart jokingly points out) and was clearly not prepared to read them.

Watch her hands and eyes throughout. It is agonizing to watch her stumble through the bill, point out key pages over and over only to not read from them, and then totally lose her place a couple times after all that hunting anyway. It finally gets to the point where Stewart says, “Well, get it!” referring to the oft-loosely mentioned pg. 432. Then he eventually takes the binder to read that part of the bill after a commercial break.

What McCaughey chooses to do throughout instead is simply claim what parts of the bill say and what she thinks it all means or will mean. In other words, rather than, ya know, actually read the bill to us, she would rather play the part of the authority and holy keeper of the bill. So she simply says she’s read it all, and seemingly expects us to accept on faith her interpretations and predictions regardless of the actual language of the bill.

This is an example of why the so-called health care debate has become so confusing and toxic. What McCaughey does here is actually the common trend among reform opponents in the conservative media. The main problem is not that these folks are just simply lying and making stuff up. No, it’s even more insidious than that. What they are doing (thanks largely to McCaughey) is latching on to certain provisions in house bill 3200 and manipulating the intent or interpreting the language to mean what they want these provisions to mean.

What I think is happening here is folks like McCaughey, Limbaugh, et al, are willfully exploiting the high level of political and legislative illiteracy we have in this country. It seems that McCaughey and her ilk are operating on the assumptions that a) the majority of people will not have read any of the bill, and b) even if they have read or will read any of the bill, the language will seem vague enough to make scary interpretations seem plausible, particularly lacking outside context. So then, McCaughey and others are more than happy to reference certain sections and exact page numbers of a bill all day long (without actually reading from them most of the time), and then make assertions about what they say or provide for. Yet, if they are discredited based on what the bill actually says, they then ignore the actual language and resort instead to baseless proclamations about what the language “actually means” or will “logically” lead us to.

It’s difficult to calculate just how poisonous these tactics are. But, I fear the end result is all too often this: once the interpretative spin is put on the bill provisions, by the time the bill is actually read by those who are partial to this spin, the bill is then useless. At that point, it doesn’t matter anymore what the bill actually says, because the language has already been interpreted to say something it doesn’t actually say, or mean something it doesn’t necessarily mean, or baseless speculations have been made about future consequences.

As a result of all this, the fear and hype then quickly goes far beyond a rational discussion of the actual bill itself, and all trust in and the purpose of the language given has been successfully destroyed. This leaves us with a situation (actually this is just part of a bigger problem we have) where people essentially can and do believe whatever it is they want to believe based on their own personal selection of “trusted” sources and selective interpretations.

But Stewart granting McCaughey all this airtime raises a key question of the moment: how are people like McCaughey best approached, if at all? Perhaps it is worth it in the end to have McCaughey on The Daily Show to lay bare her unfounded claims, but would we often be better off by ignoring and talking past the McCaugheys out there, rather than giving them the attention they crave? Or must they first be discredited like this before more rational discussion can begin? Is that effective? But then, is getting everyone distracted away from more important aspects of reform with the need to spend valuable time discrediting misinformation in this way a major strategic point of such misinformation in the first place? It’s quite a dilemma.

But more importantly, I hear you ask, what cable news source can we possibly trust in for the next 3 weeks while The Daily Show takes vacation? May I recommend the Rachel Maddow show on msnbc. I just recently discovered it via the Interweb, and it’s been quite top notch of late.

It looks like I might have written my most recent post criticizing Rush Limbaugh a bit too soon, because he really seems to be pulling out all the crazy stops in the call to massive resistance over health care reform. I have made the case on a few occasions that Limbaugh is blatantly hypocritical and has little to no respect for reality, the truth, or for his own audience. This has probably never been more true than at the present, so I thought it’s about time he received a coveted Stop Talking Award. He’s certainly earned it.

Limbaugh has been one of the leading voices blatantly misinforming about things that are in the House bill (HR 3200), and peddling some of the more disgraceful, fear-mongering lies about the health care reform proposals, such as the whopper of them all: forced euthanasia for the elderly. Now, as Rush cheers on the town hall “tea party” disruption/protest craze – which has largely been manufactured and fomented by the steady stream of disinformation from industry lobbyist insiders and people in conservative media outlets like Limbaugh  - he is upping the fear/anger/hate/distrust ante from calling Obama a “Marxist” and a “racist,” with direct attempts now to compare Obama and the health care “plan” to Hitler and the Nazi Party. 

His talk, then, has reached an unacceptable and incredibly irresponsible level…I mean, even more so than usual. It seems like Limbaugh’s favorite tactic these days is to stir people up and get a lot of attention with inflammatory rhetoric and misinformation, but then when others in the media or in government call him out for this, he points the finger like a child while saying the equivalent of, “Did not!,” or “I know you are, but what am I?,” or “But you started it!” Then, he attempts to justify further amping up the inflammatory rhetoric, by always childishly claiming the other side started it. So, in some ways, this is also getting to the point of laughable, unintentional parody. 

Don’t get me wrong. At the end of the day, I don’t think what folks like Limbaugh are able to get away with on the public airwaves is a laughing matter at all. It’s a disgrace, really, and now, it frankly seems to be getting dangerous. But if we stop and think for a moment about the profitable, commercial, and manipulative nature of what people like Limbaugh do, we can see just what an illuminating joke it all is. While parts of this country are in dire straits, and Limbaugh and others are working to fuel the fear and anger and direct it towards the president, guys like Limbaugh profit hugely from such conditions. In fact, they couldn’t be in a better situation right now as far as money, ratings, and publicity go.

So while Limbaugh’s language does often suggest he is just seething with hatred for Barack Obama, I have to think, that deep down, he just loves the presence of such a figure, on whom he can and does project all of his own anger, hate, racism, inconsistencies, and personal character flaws, while getting gobs of the attention he loves in the process, and laughing all the way to the bank.

Consider the following projecting statement Limbaugh made about President Obama after his press conference on health care reform. Note that every word of this perfectly applies to Rush Limbaugh, himself, or at least to his radio shtick:

“What we had last night was arrogance on parade. You have to be arrogant and full of hubris to think you can actually go out and tell those kinds of lies and have them believed. You must have a really, really high impression of yourself. You must really believe the people in your audience don’t care what you’re saying, they just marvel that they’re in your presence and listening to you. We’re talking about an ego here that has no boundaries.” 1

This one’s good too:

[Obama] is an utter, cold, mean-spirited, partisan liar. A man who has to lie about his agenda in order to get people to support it. Because he can’t be — this is why the Democrat Party will eventually implode and fail. They cannot be honest about what their intentions are. They cannot be honest about policies at all. They have to lie. 2

Limbaugh has also recently insisted that he “respects” his audience, thereby earning their trust, and that he is not at all elite, just a totally regular guy. Right.

But then, there’s these two chart-toppers on the oblivious to the incredible irony of your statements chart. First, Limbaugh said this about electing Barack Obama:

And there are people in this country who are Americans who have the same view of totalitarianism that all the worst regimes of the world have had. They just are a minority, or have been a minority, and they have to be stealth to get anywhere because who’s gonna vote for torture? Who’s gonna vote for tyranny? Who’s gonna vote for dictatorship? But we did. We did, and it’s — you see it’s slowly encroaching. 3

Yeh, you know, after he supported the Bush administration for 8 long years and defended, you know, the real torture that was happening, Rush should know all about this.

Secondly, and lastly, check out what a caller had to say about certain Democrats the other day and then Limbaugh’s response:

CALLER: I don’t like to be lied to. I can tell you I can take just about anything, but do not lie to me. I don’t like to be lied to. And I want to tell these people something. The reason we’re fired up and we’re going to these town hall meetings is not because we’re some bunch of riffraff or troublemakers. And the reason people are exploding like this is because we’re tired of being lied to. 

RUSH: Amen, sister. You are tired of being lied to, plus you have read the bill. You know what’s in it. 4

And yet, she listens to Rush Limbaugh. No wonder she’s so angry.

Congratulations Rush. You’re commitment to “cutting edge” disinformation, projecting your own narcissism and lack of integrity onto others, and consistently offering entertaining in the form straight-faced ironic statements has finally earned you the highest award this little blog can give. Please except it, then do the United States a huge favor and stop talking.

Not long ago, a facebook friend put up a quote from a friend of his about how “unbelievably stupid” many Americans must be for thinking that “Obama-care means FREE health care.” I responded by saying this sounds like a condescending straw man argument, or at least talking about whether or not it will be “free” seems to be a distraction from the reasons why many people actually want universal health care coverage, regardless of the price tag.

But I’ve thought some more about it, and there’s a bit more to say of this. First of all, I should note that the term “Obama-care,” while being widely used, is a bit of a misnomer. Though he has made known his general expectations, President Obama has not presented his own detailed health care plan. He has left that up to Congress. Further, there is not just one proposed bill for health care reform, but a few different ones.

Now to the “free health care” part. I imagine the point (which I think was being made) that what, if any, government-sponsored plan comes of this will not be free is rooted in the reality that the cost of government functions and services, of course, ultimately falls on taxpayers in some way or another, at least in theory. Yet, I think there are a couple key things to consider here.

First, I don’t think the government-sponsored “public option” that has been proposed would be without a direct cost, in the form of low premiums, to many who enter in. But, conceptually, it may be that such a government provision could technically be considered “free,” and be as good as such, for those whose economic status puts them in the position of greatest need for such services (think Medicaid). But the response to that is often that it isn’t free, because, of course, someone, somewhere will have to pay for it. As a result, I don’t doubt that the long-held disdain for “welfare” and distribution of wealth and resources toward the poor is playing some part in the knee-jerk opposition to any new kind of government-sponsored health care plan.

Beyond that – and this is the second point here – there is a significant difference between a service that is treated as a guaranteed right of citizenship or a return for paying taxes, regardless of personal level of tax obligation (the major house bill being covered so much in the media certainly doesn’t go nearly this far, like a single payer system would), and one that is based solely on the individual’s ability to pay. Whether we refer to the former as “free” or not really isn’t the point, because what we really seem to have beneath the surface here is a divide among us over which one of the two above choices health care coverage should be.

Those who oppose any form of national health care plan or system must necessarily see health care coverage as any other commercial good, one that is privileged according to personal economic status and is an “individual responsibility.” Those, like myself, who would like to see a national/public health care system created in some shape or form are more likely to think access to medical care should be considered a basic human right and major social goal, coverage for which should somehow be made available to all, to a certain point, regardless of economic condition. This seems to be an essential part of the debate we’re currently having as a nation, though it is largely unspoken.

And it’s really amazing to me how begrudgingly we seem to approach such issues in this nation. Considering the freak out that health care reform might mean scary “socialized medicine” (actually, no one is calling for that), it is amazing that we actually have the great amount of services we do which, by that standard, have long been “socialized” to some degree or another. And of course, such public services are not deemed to be “socialist” evils and haven’t destroyed the country: to name just the obvious few – police, fire, public education, public libraries, roads, etc. These are fundamental services that we long ago decided should be universally guaranteed to us regardless of status (in theory). And we do not expect such services to be left up to market forces and private, for-profit decisions, or based on individual ability to pay, though we do, in fact, maintain alternative private options for many such services at the same time.

But we do have quite a few anti-government, market-worshiping folks in this country who are not satisfied by that. They not only do not want any more such “government involvement,” but would love nothing more, I think, than to see such services become more and more privatized (for reasons I can’t fully understand coming from average people, except to think that maybe a certain level of comfort and a blind faith in “the market” prevents them from properly appreciating government’s role and the real possibility of being failed by “the market” and priced out of crucial areas). As for “privatization” of public goods, though, it seems across the world, in more and more areas, we’ve been seeing it happen in recent decades. In the U.S., this has generally taken the form of contracting what were or might have been public services out to large private firms.

In practice, though, what the “privatization” efforts of our antigovernment, market-ideologue politicians actually result in appears to be something of a shrewd sabotage and heist; as they preach for and cut taxes with an almost religious zeal, eroding the public’s willingness to properly count the cost of and pay for government functions, even as the need and want for such functions expands. Then, key public services become starved for funds and resources even as huge deficits are steadily incurred overall, and like a self-fulfilling prophecy, already much-maligned government looks just as bad as they have always claimed it was. Meanwhile, the privatization dogma starts sounding better and better to more folks, and more and more public services get sold off or doled off to powerful private contractor/corporate cronies instead.

It is outrageous when the people in the above camp come around at times like these, and start crying about big deficits and “our children’s future,” and insist that government can do nothing right and “is the problem,” after they have done so much to damage and debilitate it and destroy the public faith and will. And it is stunning to see so many average people cheering on such reckless destruction of the general welfare or yelling about how much they don’t want government in their lives or “socialism” to come to America, when they’re often just being deceived into fighting against more of the kinds of “socialism” that would actually serve and have served them and/or their fellow citizens in need instead of the financially powerful and publicly unaccountable. Unfortunately, as such folks have been convinced they must valiantly resist “socialism,” what we ironically appear to move more and more toward instead is what John Médaille has coined, “privatized socialism,” wherein risks and benefits are largely socialized, but the resulting profits, of course, are privatized (or some might also refer to what we have as ”socialism for the rich”).

(Sigh) I digress. But the last point can be seen very much in our health care system, which not only has socialized areas of payment and delivery but also of research and development, but in the end it is largely determined by and rewarding for powerful, extremely profitable entities. And the point here is, there are some areas, as I’ve listed above, that should rightly be beyond the grasp of the private economic sector and profit-driven market forces alone, if only that there may be a level of guaranteed access for as many citizens as possible, rather than leaving a contingent to be priced out. Payment for health care too is, I think, one of these areas, and it’s an area that demands certain amounts of compassion as well as just and egalitarian distribution.

It seems like we know this at some level instinctively, yet we also seem to experience a lot of cognitive dissonance over the matter. In piecemeal fashion, and sometimes amongst similar opposition to what we’re seeing now, we’ve accepted socializing health care coverage for soldiers and veterans, then for the elderly, and then marginally to the very poor, and, of course, we will treat anyone in emergency rooms if necessary. But then we’ve tried to keep our larger system for everyone else as private and profit-driven as possible, even though this has created a messy, inconsistent system that is failing many people while it is making a few very rich off of sickness and granting varying degrees of privilege to health and life based on money and position.

Of course, part of the aim of having private health insurance plans as we do is to collectively pool risk in order to broaden access and moderately ameliorate the financial obstacles to high quality, specialized treatment. This has worked in a limited fashion to technically cover the majority of people with moderate incomes and decent jobs, but at what rising cost and technical difficulties for individuals, families, and employers, not to mention those without coverage? And even then, it does not provide many with absolute protection or security. They can lose their job, be denied coverage, be very underinsured, have treatments go uncovered, and still be left at risk of financial ruin despite their coverages, all in the midst of huge industry profits.

I’m not saying the reform proposals out there are the only road to take or that they shouldn’t be at all questioned or concerning, (though my own worry is not that the plans being considered go too far, but that they actually are not likely to go far enough to bring about significant change to the system, challenges to the cozy industries, widest possible access, or better control of costs). But I know the current system needs to be changed, and that we can at least do better than we are now doing, if we will just seriously give it an effort. But first, I think we would do well to make up our minds and be more consistent about what we want our health care to be, a commodity or a basic guarantee, and for whom. If we believe everyone should be guaranteed it at some level beyond only private options (like in, say, education), then we should be able to figure out how to make that happen, just like every other western industrial/capitalist nation has.

Will that be free? Technically no, of course. Someone, somewhere will always be paying for it whether it is directly for them or not, and (ideally) we will all be paying into the system collectively for ourselves and one another, just as it often happens to us now to some degree whether we like it or not. For me, that is no reason to object to it. However, for anyone who, on principle, thinks it is, well then, I guess it’s time to get rid of public education too…and libraries…and the police…and fire departments…and public roads…and the military…and the VA…and medicare…hell, let’s just get rid of it all, because we seem to just hate paying for it so much. I’m sure we’ll be so much happier and burden free when all those things are gone, and we’ll have such glorious individual freedom to pay straight from our own pockets for everything we might possibly ever need at any given time (assuming such things will even be available then that is).

I heard a brief segment of the Mark Levin show on Tuesday. And really, a very brief segment is about all I can take of this man’s loud and whiny rants. This is the host, after all, who recently had the following angry exchange with a caller that ended on this note:

LEVIN: Answer me this, are you a married woman? Yes or no?

CALLER: Yes

LEVIN: Well I don’t know why your husband doesn’t put a gun to his temple. Get the hell out of here.

This is what Levin had to say about health care reform on Tuesday:

…[Obama] uses the language to turn things upside down. He’s for reform. Well since when is big, massive, bureaucratic, inefficient, costly government reform?… That’s not reform. That’s big government! Were the Founding Fathers against reform when they wrote the Constitution that they wrote, because it divided power, it balanced power, it checked power?…

Just like Limbaugh and other conservatives, Levin has been portraying his massive opposition to reform as simply a principled opposition to only “reform that destroys,” whereas, according to Levin, “conservatives actually believe in real reform…reform that improves.”

Well, that’s kind of funny, because Levin’s statement about reform and the Constitution contains an amazing irony that he apparently fails to see. Does Levin not realize that the creation of the Constitution itself was rather controversial; because it was not some simple improvement, as was initially intended, but rather a huge overhauling change that actually created a new, larger and more powerful central government? Whereas, the initial intention was much less extreme; i.e., simply address and revise certain parts of the Articles of Confederation, the Federalists decided to throw out the Articles altogether and create a new form of government. At both points, though, at the heart of the whole thing was Federalists’ dissatisfaction over the weakness of the central government under the Articles. 

Accordingly, I’ve gotta wonder how Levin would have viewed the Constitution at its inception. Has he ever considered the possibility that his fearful and angry attitude about federal government power (at least when a Democrat is in the White House) is more in the spirit of the Anti-Federalists – who opposed the Constitution – than the Federalists, whom he now venerates? The Anti-Federalists opposed the Constitution in part for fear that it served to create an overly powerful central government and particularly an overly powerful executive at the expense of the sovereignty of the states. Some such opponents even claimed the Federalists were pulling the wool over the states’ eyes in what amounted to an unnecessary power grab.

Hmm, now why does that last bit sound familiar? Ah yes, because that is exactly what Levin and his buddies always claim the Democrats are trying to do with “unnecessary,” “destructive” reform. Of course, the Anti-Federalist-esque attitudes of guys like Levin concerning the federal government seem to end right where Republican presidents begin. In that case, a super powerful executive coinciding with big time military spending and force are a few of these guys’ favorite things. They just start getting pissed when people want to try all that other “tyrannical” stuff. You know, like publicly providing for the common welfare.

In the words of Howard Beale, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!” I think the so-called health care reform debate in this country might just send me to an ironic, early grave. I mean, the stuff many members of the right are stooping too – the scare tactics, the fearmongering misinformation, the straight up lying/mischaracterization about what bills say and what people have said – is all outrageous and unacceptable, and they are not being held accountable for it. The media, public discourse, and political system in this country might need intensive care more than anyone. And it’s driving me crazy.

As far as I’m concerned, the Rush Limbaughs, the Glenn Becks, the Sean Hannitys, the Michael Steeles, and other obstructionists (both Republicans and Democrats) of the world have decided to make themselves opponents of the interests of the average person in this country. And, what’s worse, they do it wrapped in the flag, calling themselves defenders of liberty.

But just think of who most of these people are, and ask why on earth should they be speaking to the average person? Or, we should ask, just who are they really speaking for? Limbaugh and Beck and Hannity, for example, make millions upon millions of dollars a year, and they make these millions by helping to divide the country and by exploiting fear, anger, and ignorance (And then, of course, there are the key interests the obstructing politicians are tied to). People like this have spent decades conditioning us to selectively think that government services, whether we might personally benefit from them or not, are against our interests and tantamount to slavery. In the meantime, while we’ve been led to believe government can’t be made to work well for us and that we shouldn’t even want it to anyway, powerful corporate interests have grabbed hold of the reins, as is now being clearly revealed by just how difficult getting truly meaningful reform through is, even with Democrats at the helm.

Shame on us for accepting all that for so long. And shame on FoxNews for giving Glenn Beck a nightly show, on which he says to millions, “This bill isn’t about [health care]. It is about power and control over you!,” and “[The President's health care plan is] good old socialism…ya know, pretty much raping the pocketbooks of the rich to give to the poor,” and “The health care bill is reparations,” because the President’s “goal is creating a new America, a new model that will settle old racial scores.” And shame on Rush Limbaugh for saying, “President Obama…wants to pay people to kill some of us before we are born and before we’re ready to die after we are born. It’s called efficiency.”

And shame on all of these folks for not having enough decency and respect for their position or for their audience to be truthful and conscientious. They are not only opposed to a public-option anything, they have no interest in or reason to care about reform in any way. They don’t have to worry about health care. They don’t have to worry about recessions. But they play on the fears of the average people out there that do, while convincing them that the interests of the wealthy and of profit are somehow always their interests too.

But when any of these obstructionists are called out for being opposed to reform, they’ll say that no one is against reform here, they’re just against this reform. Sure, sure. And it’s not personal or anything, either. It’s just about breaking the President and offering “freedom solutions” and all that. But wait a second, when was the last time comprehensive, meaningful health care reform was attempted? 15 YEARS AGO! It was killed by Republicans then, just like they’re hoping it will be killed and walked away from now, again for years to come. And just how long have these Republicans had to come up with a workable, long-term proposal for change since then? It’s not like any of this is new.

I’m not sure I have the stomach anymore to hear such millionaire fat cats and anti-government politicians with no solutions tell us our government just can’t provide us with health coverage, though it sure can wage war on anyone it likes too, while cutting taxes to boot, and it sure can suddenly find the money to bail out the big guys! I mean, hell, and all we are talking about here is a possible public option, and we get this crazed response! Just imagine the freak out if a single payer proposal was actually being seriously considered!

I don’t have the time or energy to go through all the lies and the fear and obstruction. Just had to vent for now. I’m just gonna leave this here by sharing from an an article via my friend Scott. The following two paragraphs pretty much sum up where I’m at on the health care issue (and the rest of the article explains the situation as I see it pretty well too):

We don’t need private health insurance companies. We certainly don’t need a system that wastes $450 billion per year in redundant administrative costs and leaves 45 million Americans without health coverage. We could do without a system that excludes people with pre-existing medical conditions and limited economic resources. We don’t need a system that cherry picks profitable clients and dumps the unprofitably ill in HMOs featuring lousy care and little choice. Businesses and other employers would do much better not having to provide health coverage for their employees, who often end up underinsured. We could do better than a system that ties people fearfully to jobs they want to leave but can’t afford to lose because they might lose their health coverage. 

Health care is a fundamental human right that should be available to all people regardless of their economic resources. A society that takes seriously this elementary principle of social justice does not relegate the poor and underemployed to second-class care or status. The only Western democratic society that doesn’t even try to live up to this principle is the United States. When wealthy and middle-class people have to rely on the same health system as the poor, as they do throughout Europe, they use their political power to make sure it’s a decent system.

If you’ve been reading along on this blog lately, you know I’ve been highly critical of mainstream conservative talk radio, particularly for the negative affects I believe it has on our public discourse. These days, especially, many of the major conservative hosts have shown a remarkable penchant for divisive, alarmist rhetoric, fallacious arguments, crazy spin, and flat-out lies and/or blatant misrepresentations.

In a recent post, I wrote at length about what I found to be generally problematic with this brand of talk radio. But I didn’t offer specific examples from any particular show to illustrate what I was talking about. I didn’t really think this was crucial to the points I was trying to make at the time. As it turns out, though, I’ve recently noticed radio host Rush Limbaugh has been pretty much daily confirming what I was trying to point out, often with him in mind anyway.

It seems ever since Barack Obama entered the White House, Limbaugh has been growing increasingly intense, unhinged, and desperate in his resistance to and hatred for all things “liberal,” Democrat, and, well, Barack Obama. So much so that it seems he’ll now say just about anything critical and negative that comes to mind, whether it has any basis in reason and reality at all or not – a throw everything you can against the White House wall and hope it sticks kind of approach I guess. Really, it would actually be funny at this point, if he did not have such media influence, and if people did not actually mistake his opportunistic spin for insightful commentary.

But then again, it also kind of seems like the more he talks, the more he is turning himself into a boon for the other side. Or at least I can’t imagine how people can still take him seriously when he can’t seem to piece together an accurate, consistent, coherent, or educated argument on much of anything he is daily griping about.

Here’s a short list of some of the more completely illogical and unthinking points Limbaugh has made lately:

• He compared human healthcare to dog healthcare and kenneling options, saying, “there’s no federal dog healthcare plan out there, and [dog healthcare] is working just fine, and it’s based on the dog owner’s ability to pay.” (emphasis added) (Yes, I’m sure people will enthusiastically support a policy of euthanasia for all those people who could not pay or whose condition was too costly to be paid for. Just think of how cost effective human healthcare would be then.)

• After pointing out a report on a study that shows cooking carrots whole retains nutrients that may help in the prevention of cancer, Rush said it was all “absurd,” because “everyone who has eaten carrots in this world is dead or will be dead.” (Yeh, you gotta admit, he has a point there. Prevention of cancer has got nothing on the elixir of life.)

• Concerning the Waxman-Markey energy bill, after Rush proclaimed “there isn’t any global warming!,” he further warned, “Folks, we are made of carbon, and what this is is a carbon tax. Theoretically, we could be taxed because of the carbon dioxide we exhale. If they want to figure out how much that is contributing to Global Warming, we could be taxed on that basis. There’s no limit here once you start taxing carbon.” (As someone aptly commented elsewhere, “This…is evidence of either how desperate Limbaugh is getting, how stupid he thinks his audience is, how stupid they actually are, or how stupid he actually is.”)

The list of these kind of nonsense statements could go on and on. But there are bigger fish to fry here.

Beyond healthcare and energy reform, Limbaugh has recently been at his most negative and dishonest on the issue of our current economic situation. Indeed, it seems that most, if not all, conservative hosts have decided the best way to discredit the new president and destroy his early popularity is to stir up anger and fear about government intervention, spending, and deficits (conveniently now that Republicans are out of power). A key element of this strategy is an apparent attempt to absolve the Bush administration and Republicans by creating the impression that the Obama administration and Democrats are the only ones to blame for current economic woes and are only exacerbating the situation or creating problems that weren’t there before.

Limbaugh comes right out and says this about the Obama administration directly. In fact, right after Obama was elected in November, but, of course, three months before he would actually be in office, Limbaugh started calling the recession “the Obama recession,” blaming the man’s very ideas and presence for the downturn.

Flash forward from that to about a month ago, when Limbaugh ranted on air two days in a row about President Obama referring to the current recession as an economic crisis his administration inherited, one that “has been many years in the making.” At these widely agreed upon, accurate statements Limbaugh scoffed and spat with fury, calling Obama “gutless,” “childish,” and “immature” for blaming his predecessors.

According to Limbaugh, “[Obama] did not inherit a mess. He has created one.” Limbaugh went from that into a bombastic, blindly patriotic love fest, saying, instead of a mess,

“Barack Obama inherited…the opportunity to lead a nation of sheer exceptionalism… He inherited…the country that has successfully championed capitalism and widespread prosperity. … He inherited the responsibility to preserve and strengthen the free markets and economies that made this the greatest nation in the history of human civilization. He inherited the responsibility to continue the philosophy and the tradition of a country founded on Judeo-Christian morals, ethics, and principles.

He inherited the Constitution of the United States. He did not claim the right to remake it, to rewrite it, to change it. He swore to uphold it. And he’s in the process of wreaking as much damage to the Constitution as he can get away with… Barack Obama did not inherit a mess. He leads a mess. He inherited the United States of America, where anything is possible. …He inherited years and decades of stewardship from the Oval Office of the greatest nation in history.

So, as Limbaugh has it, “Obama is destroying what others before him created.”

I’ve heard Limbaugh say a lot of junk, and I guess this is the typical fare. But hearing this left me completely dumbstruck, wondering how anyone can now manage to take Limbaugh seriously without suffering a fully unbearable amount of cognitive dissonance. Regardless of how anyone falls politically, the way in which Limbaugh has chosen to dishonestly smear the current administration while letting the last one off the hook is fully unconscionable. It would be one thing if Limbaugh was merely arguing that Obama’s policies are serving to make the recession worse. Of course, Limbaugh does believe and assert this, as any member of the right does with pride. But it is unacceptable that he goes beyond that to deny that Obama inherited any serious problem at all, when everything did begin crashing down under the Bush administration, and the Obama administration is certainly not alone in responding to the problem in the manner in which it has.

The way Limbaugh is approaching the situation, however, is crucial to his divisive game. If he were to fairly admit that Obama came into office facing some very serious, immediate challenges, for which the previous administration must share much blame and had set a course, he might also have to give the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt in their intentions, though he may strongly disagree with their ideas for recovery. But by denying or downplaying the seriousness of the situation before Obama, Limbaugh can (and does) go off on all manner of wild, conspiratorial rants about how Obama is really just making excuses to implement his “real” agenda to destroy American capitalism and snatch up all the tyrannical power he can.

And yet, it gets worse, and very inconsistent at that. On the second day of scolding Obama for immaturity, Limbaugh, right after denying Obama inherited any mess at all, turned around and claimed that is was not Bush, but the Democrats in Congress alone that damaged the economy. Moreover, near the beginning of Obama’s presidency, Limbaugh argued that the recession was not such a crisis after all, because it wasn’t nearly as bad as the recession of 1981-82.

Now, as some might recall, Ronald Reagan, the all-time favorite leader of conservatives like Limbaugh, was president in 1981-82. So why on earth would Limbaugh compare the current situation with what he claims to be the far worse recession during Ronald Reagan’s first term as president? Simple. Because he lays the blame for that recession fully at the feet of Reagan’s predecessor, Jimmy Carter.

Hmm. So let me get this straight. Reagan came into office to see a recession last for two years on his watch. Yet, according to Limbaugh, his predecessor, Carter, is to blame for that entire ordeal. Obama has only been president for six months. But, according to Limbaugh, he is fully responsible for the current problems, because he either turned a nonproblem into a huge mess in a short time, or he and his Democrat cohorts are solely to blame for everything that started going wrong over a year ago and is wrong today as a result. Yet Obama’s predecessor, Bush, after eight straight years, gets off free and clear of any responsibility.

Sadly, that is only the beginning of Limbaugh’s shameful double standards. During the Bush years, Limbaugh often complained that the “liberal media” was bent on hurting the Bush administration and the country by reporting only negative news on everything from the economy to Iraq, both of which Limbaugh always held in a positive light. And Democrats, he liked to say, were “invested in America’s defeat,” economically and militarily, because it would result in political victory for them; that, and “they hate this country.”

But now, it is the reverse. Now Limbaugh complains that the “liberal,” or “state-run” media is always trying to make the economy look better than it actually is to help Obama. Naturally, then, Limbaugh now jumps at every opportunity to do exactly what he condemned the media of during the Bush years, i.e., talking about just how awful the economy is and how down everybody is about it. So as for “investing in defeat,” we know Limbaugh is invested in Obama’s. He, of course, directly said he hopes Obama fails.

Now all of this seems very inconsistent and hypocritical to say the least. We may turn the tables on Limbaugh and ask, “why does he hate America? Why is he now invested in America’s defeat?” And right we would be to do so. But I’m certain Limbaugh would deny any inconsistency on his part. Because there is a warped system – if we may call it that – of Limbaugh logic in which this all fits together, the inanity of his premises and conclusions notwithstanding.

It’s almost like a coded language, and I think I’ve got it cracked. When Limbaugh says “America,” he really means his idea of America, his own political views and interests only. Anyone with opposing views must then be out to remake America into something that isn’t “America.”

To put it into more detail, Limbaugh logic states that “conservative Republicans” are seeking to do only what is good for “America” and in line with “American ideals.” This, for Rush, apparently means things like tax breaks at and distribution toward the top; keeping environmental protections as loose as possible; maintaining a social environment that is safe for big business while attacking social services and the social welfare safety net at every possible angle; privatizing whatever can be privatized; maintaining the status quo in healthcare and most other sectors; and always maintaining a hefty dose of hawkish militarism, etc.

Now, when “liberal Democrats,” or anyone else for that matter, take issue with any of the above, well, that of course means they are opposed to “America” and want to see it fail for their own political benefit and perverse enjoyment. But then, when in power, these same Democrats not only still want “America” to fail, they wish to weaken it and systematically dismantle it all as a giant ploy to grab power and remake the country into something “unAmerican.” So says the bizarre logic of Limbaugh land anyway.

Thus, in Limbaugh’s view, Democrats’ success means “America’s” failure, and vice versa; as he recently said, “the country is failing because Obama is succeeding.” So; success is failure; war is peace; ignorance is strength; et cetera, et cetera.

You know, speaking of Orwell, I think he had a term for Limbaugh’s kind of thinking. And he best described it when he wrote the following:

His mind slid away into the labryinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be concious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself-that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word “doublethink” involved the use of doublethink.

(Much credit is due to Media Matters for their production of the Limbaugh Wire: their thorough, daily documentation of Limbaugh’s antics. All quotes and references made in this post can be read or heard at this site.)

National Review Online put this odd article up the other day titled, “I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin.” In what seems to be a rather lame attempt at satire, the writer of the article, David Kahane, tried to assume the voice of a generic liberal Democrat. This generic liberal Democrat, of course, hates Sarah Palin, and, thus, explains why his “side” was and is willing to resort to any means necessary to destroy her. 

Of course, Kahane is not a liberal Democrat. This is, instead, apparently his idea of a witty, yet challenging parody of Democrats for the purpose of entertaining and waking up his conservative readership. The article, however, reads exactly like what it is: an article by a conservative weakly trying to create a “liberal Democrat” persona based merely upon conservatives’ own wildly cartoonish stereotypes of what a “liberal Democrat” is. 

At any rate, the underlying and dubious premise of this article is that Democrats are now willing to play a ruthless and mean politics to get their way, and conservative Republicans have just not been willing to be mean and tough enough to beat them at this game. Hmm…ok. This would not be worth mentioning at all, except for this one portion that jumped out at me:

In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. … Rather, think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party. (emphasis added)

I’ll look past the overall asinine meanness of this paragraph to make a more important point regarding segregation. I’ve seen the description of the Democratic Party as “the party of segregation” in conservative writings before, and it is something that requires some proper context and clarification, particularly when it comes from National Review. 

Certainly, the Democratic Party dominated the South all throughout the era of segregation. However, there was a distinction between the northern and southern factions of the party. And there grew a significant split between the national Democratic Party and the southern, largely conservative, Democratic leadership in the wake of FDR’s New Deal and, later, Truman’s light concessions to the fight for civil rights. There were some liberal Democrats in the South who stood with northern liberal Democrats and supported New Deal-like liberal economic and social policies, but there were many more conservative Democrats who stood in strong defense of segregation and “states’ rights,” strongly opposed New Deal liberalism, and, thus, had some political and economic attitudes more akin to those of conservative Republicans today (not to mention our friends at National Review).

The split in this factional alliance grew wider as the civil rights movement gained momentum and as conservatives became more and more resistant to desegregation in addition to liberalism in general, while the national Democratic Party became more and more associated with both. Over time, these racial and economic splits led to a political party reversal in the South as the Republican Party figured out how to successfully court disaffected southern conservatives (who had left or were ready to leave the Democratic Party) to their side by exploiting this conservative/liberal split among Democrats and playing on racial fears (see the Southern Strategy).

So, it is irrelevant and quite misleading to refer to today’s Democratic Party as “the party of segregation.” And it is especially questionable that such a statement would come from a writer at the National Review. This is the historically very conservative publication, after all, that published the following regarding segregation in the south in 1957:

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the median cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. The question, as far as the White community is concerned, is whether the claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage. …the South…perceives important qualitative differences between its culture and the Negroes’, and intends to assert its own.

“National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.” (emphasis added)

National Review may have adjusted its tone slightly on matters of race since then, (to the chagrin of white supremacists, who long for the days when National Review “was once a voice for whites“). But I think that the above excerpt makes clear that, when it came to the issue of segregation, region and ideology, not political party per se, were largely the decisive factors in the end. And it seems the ugly truth is, the battle to defend and maintain segregation based upon white superiority was very much a conservative fight at the time. Case in point: the support of segregation and affirmation of white superiority from the very conservative National Review. I imagine National Review would now love nothing more than to quietly pin the ugliness of that past on those damn “liberal Democrats,” but they’re not going to get off that easy.

Since I wrote so favorably of the Pixar film WALL•E last year, I thought I should jot down some of my thoughts about the newest Pixar film, UP, which I believe I enjoyed just about as much as WALL•E.

One of the things that seemed to strike a lot of people (myself included) about WALL•E was the remarkable first 30 minutes or so of the film, wherein we are introduced to the little trash compacting robot and his love interest, EVE, without any dialogue or practically any spoken word at all, beyond the simple exchange of names.

UP begins in a somewhat similar, visual story-telling fashion. The film centers upon a grumpy old widower named Carl Frederickson. But we first meet Carl as a young boy who dreams of exploring the world. After we see Carl meet and form a lasting childhood friendship with a kindred, would-be explorer spirit, Ellie, the film flashes forward into a short silent montage that shows most of Carl’s life unfold in a matter of minutes, as he marries and grows old with Ellie, and sadly, is left alone after her death.

Much like the introduction of WALL•E, this introduction of UP is beautiful, essentially flawless film making by any standard. And what’s more, it is executed with a surprising and subtle amount of charm and feeling surrounding love and loss that creates real empathy for the character we’re about to spend the next couple hours with. 

Carl’s loss of Ellie at the end of the silent montage is gripping, and must be the heaviest moment in any Pixar film. Yet the filmmakers did a nice job of tastefully, however lightly, transitioning from this dark moment of loss in the film while also keeping it embedded as the deep emotional undergirding for the rest of Carl’s story, which soon thereafter takes off, if you will, like an almost Indiana Jones style adventure ride.

It’s interesting that, since the release of UP, I’ve noticed some people expressing the desire to see Pixar start making some films specifically geared toward adult audiences. The idea behind this desire is that the last couple Pixar films start out with a surprising tone of sophisticated and understated filmmaking and mature themes which could have made them masterpieces. But then, as they pick up pace toward the middle, they tend to become geared more to keeping kids entertained and lose hold of some adults as a result. This is what has some people mildly lamenting the more slapstick, kid-oriented elements that stick out in films like UP as they progress, (e.g., talking dogs that can fly their own fighter jets). 

I can certainly understand this feeling, and I imagine a strong case can be made that many Pixar films do have significant weak points in the midst of really impressive strong points. I also have to admit, I too would be really interested to see Pixar branch out some from their current brand of family films. But still, I’m not so sure that either the kid-oriented elements or balanced approach per se should be the focus of criticism about these films. In fact, I can get plenty of enjoyment myself from seeing silly things like the occasional talking dogs (at least in UP, where it’s done somewhat creatively), or a giant goofy exotic bird, or a bunch of silly robots here and there to lighten things up.

Worthy of further consideration are comments on all this I’ve read from parents who are very pleased with what Pixar has been producing. And, of course, they are happy with Pixar’s brand of filmmaking, because it provides them the rare opportunity to see movies that both they and their children can equally enjoy on different levels and maybe even on some of the same levels. This is what Pixar has always done so impressively and perhaps better than any others currently out there. And I think they do it so well, because they demonstrate a genuine respect for both children and adults in the way they make films.

As a result, at their best, Pixar has been able to make films that are fun, entertaining, intelligent, and moving (without being oversentimentalized) for children and adults alike without dumbing down, overstating, or overplaying things for kids, nor resorting to crass humor (just because it will go over kids heads) or cheap nods to pop culture trends to win over adults. 

Altogether, this has made Pixar pretty much a one-of-a-kind with an impressive list of consistently good and thoughtful films that adults and kids can both look forward to enjoying together. I, for one, see no reason to complain if Pixar wishes to keep this UP.

For all my bicycle commuting friends out there, James Howard Kunstler recently discussed the role of bicycles as a viable transportation form on his own “KunstlerCast.” A caller requested that he talk about ways we can better (or actually) facilitate bike transportation in the U.S. in the future. This caller had lived in the Netherlands for a time, and describes how pleasing and safe his biking experience was there (in contrast to much of the U.S.), even in their suburbs. Kunstler discusses how, of course, the biking experience here in most U.S. cities is far less safe and far less positive, because we clearly have not had the same kind of good planning and accommodations, nor has, as he says, “the automobile been highly disciplined” as it has been in some European cities. 

Anyone who has ridden a bike around a car-centric city or urban area in the U.S. will likely relate to the conversation that follows. Kunstler talks of his own experience getting hassled by cops for riding his bike on his city sidewalks, but then later, when riding on the street instead, getting told by a trucker at a red light to, “get off the street asshole!”

I decided a while ago to share the road with automobiles when biking around my city, and have certainly experienced the latter verbal abuse or the angry honking of a horn a few times as a result. And that is a terribly sad thing. For me it suggests the tragic and insidious side of our urban/suburban attitudes and priorities that have centered largely around a destructive and self-centered automobile bias. Whenever I hear of people displaying hostility toward bicyclists in the road, I want to remind them of two things: 1) the roads are public spaces to be shared (with the exception of the interstate highways) by all vehicles – motorized and nonmotorized alike - and pedestrians. And 2) back in the late nineteenth century, early bicyclists were actually the first to move for paved roads as public goods. So how about some respect and a willingness to share these goods, hmm?

There is a connection from all this to Kunstler’s Ted Talk I referenced in the last post, particularly his comments about what our built environments communicate to us about who and where we are as a culture. That resonated with me, because what the suburban area I grew up in now largely communicates to me is a general sort of “we don’t really care” as an end result of large-scale atomization and disconnection – built around excessive and burdensome car dependence – that nonetheless masquerades as liberated freedom of choice and mobility. In turn, the amounts of energy, waste, and individual and social burdens such sprawling suburban places require are obscured as people live in ways that make it difficult to internalize the inevitably of sharing goods and interdependently effecting all people and things around themselves.

Now, publicly creating transportation and development alternatives to this in our urban and suburban areas would require different thinking about planning and funding priorities for communities, greater understanding and opportunities for participation, and various adjustments in zoning laws and land-use regulations, if not the wholesale replacement by other kinds of guidelines altogether.

But it seems when alternatives in the form of public planning and public effort are discussed, things can all get very touchy and seemingly threatening to the individual liberty mystique that holds sway over many Americans. Many conservatives, libertarians, and otherwise “free market” minded folks, for instance, who you might think would constantly be decrying the “market distortions” surrounding suburban sprawl (some, in fact, do), often tend to instead voice a default response along the lines of, “Down with central planning! Let people live how they want and buy whatever they want with their money, and let the market determine what is viable and how to best allocate the resources.”

Now, some of these folks, rather than being in support of the current sprawl per se, seem to contend that lessening or fully removing the rules and restrictions currently in place and letting things develop naturally in line with market forces instead will inherently bring about more sensible development. It may be the case that simply removing zoning laws and having less restrictions on what can be built and how and where it can be built would result in a more efficiently built environment in some areas at many levels, but there certainly aren’t any guarantees and a lot of variables, conditions, and vastly interconnected social costs and concerns to consider. As a result, I tend to lean more toward the view that the remedy for our bad planning and regulations is not removing the planning and rules altogether. Rather, we should work toward more awareness, participation, and hopefully new and better planning and rules with respect to given areas and populations, while, granted, perhaps we should loosen up some restrictions on land-use as well.

Also, in general I find the common language of individual consumer “freedom” and “free market” platitudes to just be problematic on many levels, whether we are talking about how things are (wherein it is largely an illusion), or how things could be (wherein the promotion of the “free market” is very obscure toward any certain sort of end or full consideration of the consequences of such an arrangement, to say the least). But, of course, it’s most obviously problematic in the present situation, because, when we are talking about things like people fueling up their cars, hopping on major roads and interstate highways, driving down to that house in the suburbs and exurbs, or driving from there to that job in some other town and/or county, we are not talking about merely free, autonomous individual choices that are the result of some kind of “free market” phenomenon.

In truth, as with so much of what we do and will always do, such choices are social in nature and socially derived to a great extent; they have a definite social impact; and they are quite often even socialized to some degree or another, as they rest upon collective goods. In other words, the above options – these “individual choices” – are made possible because of a large amount of social effort and cost. In this particular case, the costs of these choices have been subsidized, externalized, or otherwise obfuscated in various ways for quite some time now. And, with the encouragement of public and private forces, individuals have widely chosen (or been limited to choose) in favor of sprawl en masse to such an extent that alternate choices of transportation and subsequent living have been severely constrained. To put it another way, amidst all our supposed choices, the choice to be free from depending on cars to reach virtually every local destination is not much of an option for much of the population. So if anyone happens to become defensive over their “freedom of choice” and say “you can’t tell other people how to live!” when met with desires to counter car-centered sprawl publicly, the irony (beyond all the public support and cost behind their choices of course) is that, in the case of transportation and urban living in the U.S., most of us have actually been left with a significant lack of choices collectively.

With that in mind, all the “free market”/”let people do what they want” talk surrounding this issue seems most problematic when it comes from people who, out of token opposition to public options (unless they benefit the car apparently), seem to strongly defend the status quo instead. Consider, for example, this recent post by Randal O’Toole at Cato, wherein he comments approvingly on this column by George Will in Newsweek. Here, both Will and O’Toole seem to more-or-less stand in support of our sprawling, car-centric status quo as they complain about President Obama’s Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood. They are convinced LaHood wishes to follow in the footsteps of cities like Portland by enacting policies that would favor alternative forms of transportation, public transit, and higher density development. The problem, according to O’Toole, is such policies are designed to make driving torturous and thus, “coerce people out of their cars.” 

Well, if O’Toole wishes to look at it in this negative way, we could conversely say that what we’ve been doing in large part instead, publicly and privately, over the last 60 years or so has long been coercing people into cars, whether they realize it or not. But I imagine there are many people who are fine with this situation, if not even prefer it (though many do not seem to see it clearly), and are ok with low density suburbia and their life of driving, just as I imagine many people in cities like Portland love that they have good alternatives to automobile dependence such as reliable public transit, walkability, and good bicycle accommodations. 

A big problem for us, though, is, there are several cities and metro areas that seem to be stuck in a kind of density/transportation limbo – relatively dense, and yet, the automobile has been allowed to almost completely dominate the scene, or, as Kunstler might say, has not been very disciplined at all. Places such as these could greatly benefit from different planning that better facilitates transportation alternatives and more healthy and diverse public spaces.

Encouraging such alternatives, and even “disciplining” the automobile doesn’t mean forcing people out of their cars, because there is big difference between being free to drive cars (just as we are generally “free” to walk and ride bicycles) on the one hand, and the dominant favor for the car, on the other hand, that has resulted in making driving as unimpeded as possible in many places, often at the expense of the attractiveness, safety, and viability of nonmotored transportation and other alternative ways of getting around. As long as the car continues to be the main priority, what incentives there are to utilize alternatives to driving are greatly discouraged, if they are even still realistically available. And you have to think, at the least, we’ve been doing something very wrong and terribly spoiling some drivers when they get angry at the presence of bicycles in the street in a dense downtown, where all means of getting around well without a car should be highly encouraged, and indeed, should be one of the great, built-in perks of living in such an area.