P.M. Carpenter

Kansas: an iconic post-conservative state

The very essence of traditional philosophical conservatism is to preserve in society that which has traditionally worked; to spurn intemperate change and impetuous revampings in favor of upholding the established order while also allowing for inevitable yet incremental changes to that order, since society itself is a naturally evolving — i.e., changing — organism. As in progressivism, empiricism rules: Don't tamper with whatever is working, leave well enough alone, and unexamined adventurism can bite one in one's butt.

Over the past 50 odd years, we've watched these fundamental, organic principles of conservatism in conservatism decay. In place of reasoned, empirically founded principles have come fanatical ideologies — ways of thinking by not thinking; indeed, never having to think. In Goldwaterism, rhetorical simplicities replaced the burdens of sociopolitical complexities; in Reaganism, wistful optimism supplanted hardened fiscal realities; and in Bush IIism, an unyielding world was seen as bending to America's will because … Bush-Cheney willed it.

Though roundly disparaged, pseudo- or post-conservatism's trickle-down has been marvelously effective. From high above, ideological authorities from Phyllis Schlafly to Arthur Laffer to Paul Wolfowitz aligned with political muck-a-mucks and both camps proceeded to piss their mindless doctrines on the already unthinking rubes throughout the republic. For the latter, nothing could be more welcome than a political philosophy that required no mental exertion. Pitiable case in point? The wretched state of affairs among the political "leadership" promoted from the ranks of the rubes of the state of Kansas.

Notwithstanding a predictable 400-million-dollar budget shortage, economic stagnation, educational butchery and general chaos as a result of doctrinal insanity, Republican legislators are perplexed and know not where to turn. "Some believe that income taxes are off limits and that they should raise sales taxes to shoulder the entire burden," reports the NYT. "Others advocate a mixed approach and said income taxes should be on the table." But, says the chairman of the Senate’s tax committee, "I’m not in favor of raising taxes. I’d much rather be able to see growth take care of what we do."

That's the spirit.

Other Republicans "are not necessarily willing to concede that the [original tax] cuts were the reason for the state’s fiscal problems." Said one — another senator: "It’s my goal to not raise taxes. We have to let the private sector breathe and operate as freely as possible because that is the revenue driver."

Now there's a pol for whom empiricism is truly the Devil.

Meanwhile, each day of these post-conservatives' certainty and countervailing puzzlement is adding $40,000 in legislative costs to the state's budget hole. But what the hell. Their minds are on higher things, such as just how low can modern conservatism sink.

My money is on a sales tax, seeing that that would inflict the most grievous harm on Kansas' neediest. One can ridicule modern conservatism and lament its Fall from any previous grace, yet one must admit: It does have its "philosophical" priorities.

 

George Will and another world salvation attempted

Although I think it's overblown, I have no problem with George Will's assault on university protections from disrespectful free speech — what Will calls students' perceived "entitlement" to be free from "uncongeniality," "buttressed by 'trigger warnings' against spoken 'micro-aggressions' that lacerate the delicate sensibilities of individuals who are encouraged to be exquisitely, paralyzingly sensitive." When I read of commencement speakers who are frantically disinvited by administrative pooh-bahs because of the former's uncongeniality toward, say, a particular religion, my heart sinks a little. But it does so more at the offensiveness of bureaucratic poltroonery than at student hypersensitivities. The latter may be squeaky loud and thus get the oil, but they're an extreme minority awash in a larger indifference to disagreeability and unpleasant speech. They also make the news in their newsy disproportionate way, and thus lacerate the delicate sensibilities of our George Wills, and so cause him to fulminate at an epidemic of student intolerance that isn't.

And that's when Will becomes really enjoyable. "Free speech is more comprehensively and aggressively embattled now than ever before in American history," he declares. Oh dear. Why is that, George? — I mean, other than the obvious (see above: whole armies of excitable students who will brook no disagreement). George explains. It is so "largely because of two 19th-century ideas. One is that history … has a mind of its own. The other is that most people do not really have minds of their own."

In short, it's all the fault of Karl Marx, whose ideational silliness bled into the 20th century and, yea, verily, into today:

Progressives frequently disparage this or that person or idea as "on the wrong side of history." They regard history as an autonomous force with its own laws of unfolding development: Progress is wherever history goes. This belief entails disparagement of human agency — or at least that of most people, who do not understand history’s implacable logic and hence do not get on history’s "right side." Such people are crippled by "false consciousness." Fortunately, a saving clerisy, a vanguard composed of the understanding few, know where history is going and how to help it get there.

Gone from Will's pack of intellectual boogeymen are the vastly influential postmodernists, for whom the mid-20th century's human slaughter obliterated any notions of inexorable progress or universal truths. To Will it is Manifesto-edly clear that "progressives" have ruled without interruption for 167 years. Damn.

At any rate, also gone — in reality — is any notable Marxist intellectual vanguard that firmly believes in history as an independent force, one that obeys universal laws as physical as gravity. They're still around, yes. But Will would have us believe that they are synonymous with "progressives," which is unmitigated bunk. On whole, progressives (a rather indefinable term) are a backward-looking lot, which is to say, they rest more heavily on empiricism than theoretical, forward-looking wishfulness. Is the world safer and healthier and better educated today than it was in civil-wartorn China or ancient Rome or 17th-century Europe? The question answers itself, for the answer lies in empirical data.

Hence most leftist intellectuals believe less in a history of "autonomous force" than in humanity's and civilization's broad evolutionary development. If one wishes to belittle that belief as a misbegotten descendent of strict ideological Marxism, be my guest. I'm neither progressively injured nor offended by it, notwithstanding Will's belief that my delicate sensibilities are lacerated by his heroic defense of free speech.

 

Sen. Paul has been scraping the bottom of the money barrel

Politico:

While his rivals cultivate wealthy backers who will pump millions of dollars into their candidacies, [Rand] Paul has struggled to find a similar lifeline. It’s led to considerable frustration in his campaign, which, amid rising concerns that it will not be able to compete financially, finds itself leaning heavily on the network of small donors who powered his father’s insurgent White House bids.

I think I see Paul's problem. It's true that he's been seeking alms from Forbes' 5th-ranked oracle of obscene wealth, Larry Ellison, whose worth is said to be $53.7 billion (some of which, alas, will be going to Marco, whom Larry "loves"). But Paul has also been wasting his time on relative paupers: Facebook-Napster's Sean Parker, who's ranked 737th among the real money, with a mere $2.6 billion; and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, who, with a paltry $2.2 billion, barely even ranks as wealthy. He's 960th on Forbes' list.

Senator, if you're going to squander 2/3s of your effort on peasants, what do you expect?

 

If you've one-and-a-third hours …

… and you're looking for a way to get an excellent start on the weekend — that is, by escaping the dull rigors of Friday afternoon's workload — I strongly recommend this video: "Anti-Science: Denial in the Face of Facts." I watched it on C-Span last night, and it was as entertaining as it was informative, even if much of the discussion is depressingly familiar.

I almost leapt to my feet and saluted the lady scientist-panelist who disses the History Channel, for which she once wrote, as I once did. The network's descent into second-rate pandering to first-rate morons is beyond inexcusable — it's revolting. But I digress. That's somewhat (but only somewhat) off topic, which is more eminently that of science denialism.

Trust me, you'll enjoy watching this distinguished panel. The moderator, by the way, is a hoot.

 

Pretty clever

And the Originality award for videoed presidential "announcements" goes to …

 

Martin O'Malley.

 

Republicans' Catch-22, and 23, and …

If Joseph Heller were around to write a sequel to Catch-22, he'd almost surely structure the plot on the diabolical predicament of Republican presidential candidates. Capt. Scott Walker would star in the film version.

What a magnificent plight now befalls him.

"A 2012 Huffington Post/YouGov poll indicated that 70 percent of Americans favor legal abortions in cases of rape, incest, or a pregnancy that jeopardizes the mother's life." More recently, reports Politico, Gallup says that "For the first time in seven years, Americans who are 'pro-choice' hold a statistically significant lead over Americans who are 'pro-life.'" To win the White House, any sane politician would therefore discover his inner conscience and true convictions in support of choice.

But wait! As Jeb Bush once observed, along with millions of others who are entertained by such inescapable inanities, Republican pols must blow up their general-election chances by first securing the primary votes of the hopelessly alienating. It's in the book, and there's no way around it; it's as damnable as Capt. Yossarian's discovery that only a remarkably sane person would seek escape from war on the grounds of insanity.

Thus does Capt. Walker plan to sign Republican state legislation "banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy," which "doesn’t include an exception allowing abortions for victims of rape or incest." Walker is in one helluva catch — and for him, unlike Yossarian ultimately, there is no escape.

 

Denny Hastert's real scandal came after, not before

That was some misconduct. "Over five years," reports the Washington Post, "Hastert withdrew about $1.7 million in cash from his various bank accounts — at one point in 2014 delivering $100,000 a month to the person in question," that is, the blackmailer. (Maybe extortion isn't what it used to be. "The U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Illinois … would not comment on whether there was any criminal investigation or charges against the person who prompted Hastert’s allegedly illegal transactions.")

Speculation over John Dennis Hastert's "past misconduct" is of the easy sort, given that the former speaker began his career as a teacher and wrestling coach. (Forgive me for the repetition, but this kind of scenario always resurrects in my mind Nabokov's efficient description of the death of Humbert Humbert's mother: "picnic, lightning.") But let's leave that to the scandalmongers who are forever fascinated by others' closeted skeletons. What I find scandalous is that Denny Hastert, entering Congress with assets of $270,000 and then struggling by on congressional salaries ranging from $77,400 to $165,200 (from 1987 to 2006), left Congress with a "worth somewhere between $4 million and $17 million, according to congressional disclosure documents."

Perhaps Meyer Lansky could have taken an average annual paycheck of $121,000 and converted it into millions of banked bucks. Former wrestling coaches, however, are not known for their financial wizardry, and your typical congressman — which, by every appearance, Mr. Hastert was — is not known for any sort of wizardry. How is it, then, that Hastert's rather modest assets ballooned throughout a humble public career, to upwards of $17 million?

I'm not suggesting that there were any Lanskyite illegalities involved. And that is what is so truly scandalous. Bernie Sanders, for instance, whose congressional career exceeds Hastert's by several years, possesses a worth of about $460,000 (mostly from rental property). Yet by legal hook, crook, and connections, Hastert managed to "outperform" Sanders' portfolio by at least tenfold, and possibly as much as thirty-sevenfold. Something here suggests that Hastert's mind was less on his constituents' welfare than on his happy pursuit of personal assets. And it was all legal.

That is to say, American representative democracy is a license to steal, assuming one affords oneself the perfectly acceptable privilege of doing so. At least Hastert's blackmailer got some of his or her dignity back in tangible form. It's the rest of us who really got screwed.

 

Whoops, sometimes a call for assassination is hard to spot?

I don't believe I've ever read a newspaper editorial quite like this one, from Pennsylvania's Daily Item:

There is no excuse for the letter The Daily Item published on Memorial Day. We did something we shouldn’t have and the readers who called us on it deserve accountability.

The straight forward [sic] reason the letter headlined "What is a Ramadi?" appeared is no bells went off when the editor handling the letter read it and placed it on the opinion page….

But we should have recognized that the final two metaphorical paragraphs of the Ramadi letter were inescapably an incitement to have the chief executive of our government executed. They should have been deleted….

We will strive to do better in the future.

Well, that should be easy. Couldn't do any worse.

(Italics and bold mine.) 

 

Quinnipiac's cliffhanger

Quinnipiac's latest?

Things are so bad in the Republican camp, American voters say by a 14-point spread that Hillary Clinton is dishonest and untrustworthy — and she still beats Jeb Bush by 10 points. She beats Walker by 8 points, Huckabee by 7, and both Rubio and Paul by 4.

Who will rise to the honor of actually being pounded by the Democratic nominee? Therein lies the only suspense. Bush, Walker, Huckabee and Rubio are each tied at 10 percent among Republican voters. Paul is second, at 7 percent. Descending from 6 points to 2 are Cruz, Trump (Trump!), Christie, Fiorina and Kasich.

I suggest we dismiss by acclamation all the 2016 formalities and simply extend the Republican primaries to 2020. Perhaps that'll be enough time for GOP voters to decide just what in hell it is they're supposed to be doing.

 

Milbank and the subtlety of verb tenses

Is this really as daring as Beltway opinionating gets? Dana Milbank:

Condemning Obama for failing to enforce the Syrian red line after blocking him from enforcing the very same red line? This is vintage Cruz, who I’ve long suspected to be a charlatan.

Long suspected?

Milbank attempts to mitigate his confession of an oddly prolonged suspicion by disclosing that he first met Cruz 15 years ago, when the latter worked on W.'s presidential campaign "as a young striver, not a hard-edged ideologue." Hence, or so goes the implication, there was little cause for reasonable doubt as to the man's integrity. But then came Cruz's own political rise, first with the tea party and then with the hawks — and Milbank's suspicions commenced.

They should have come to their inevitable conclusion immediately. For to have even brushed against the senatorial Cruz is to know he's a charlatan. To write that "I once suspected" Cruz of charlatanism is one thing, since it admits a suspicion long lapsed. But to write that "I have" suspected him of it is quite another, since it implies that mere suspicion has lingered into the present. And dear Holy Mother of God, how could anyone of clear mind have been in any doubt for these past three years?

I appreciate that picking on a columnist for a verb tense seems like a minor, or even petty, thing. But here, I suspect that Milbank wrote "I have long suspected" so as to avert, in a rather namby-pamby way, the unmistakably declarative: "Ted Cruz is a charlatan."

 

Speaks (laughs) for itself …

 

Rubio attacks Clinton for doing what Clinton should be doing

Via Political Wire we're informed by Marco that (along with a dig at Jeb) Hillary is doing it all wrong: "No one is entitled to the presidency, and no candidate has the right to skip the process of laying out a vision simply because he or she has the deepest connections in Washington or the most money in big-dollar donations."

A more inaccurate analysis of the American democratic process is unimaginable. Hillary has every right to skip whatever she damn well wants and, at best and at most, to lay out only sketchy visions and only at the most opportunistic moments, as she's been doing with the immigration issue.

The American democratic process is not called a circus for nothing. It's a P.T. Barnum extravaganza of glitz, glitter, smoke, mirrors, elephants, jackasses, balancing tricks and, in a pinch but only a pinch, some high-wire derring-do. The best-known acts attract the largest crowds, among whom even the gapers know the routine.

The "process" is a playbook easily decoded, and political virtuosos stick to it. When, for instance, one is teetering yet still balancing roughly 10 points above the clownish Rubios and Bushes and Walkers, then one keeps one's mouth shut but eyes open. Does this contribute to the enlightenment of the maddened masses? Of course not. But the act isn't intended to enlighten. It's intended to amuse, to entertain, to baffle with empty razzle-dazzle and bring it all to a roaring crescendo.

Naturally, Marco understands this. And, were he in Hillary's tutu and big floppy shoes, he'd be doing the same thing. For now he must follow his own playbook: that of playing the innocent ignoramus, protesting the stupefying popularity of Hillary's big-top pageant. Thus Marco's analysis, above, is indeed deeply inaccurate, but mostly just deceptive — which is fitting, for he's just part of the circus.

 

Jeb Bush: Stuck on the right and then in the middle

The ballsy fiction is that Jeb Bush is not yet a presidential candidate, a fiction that permits him and his super-PAC staff to solicit plutocratic johns like the best little whorehouse in Florida. So be it, not to worry, such fiction is a common plot in our Gilded Age redux. What does worry is that because Jeb isn't yet an official candidate, he can't yet have an official theme song. This is a sad but necessary omission. We are unable to connect Jeb to anything catchy, since the man himself is as uncatchy and bland as a 2 a.m. House floor speech. But I'm sure that Jeb and his staff are sifting through theme-song possibilities in preparation for that glorious day when he becomes official. And the most obvious choice of thematic lyrics is this, from the Steelers Wheel, 1972:

Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I get so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
There's clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.

Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Lose control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
There's clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you.

Reasonable people can disagree with the thrust of those lyrics in connection to Jeb Bush. In the primary season, they manifestly wouldn't apply. There's only one clown to the left of him in a weird sort of libertarian way, and changing the lyrics to reflect that reality would severely injure the song's approximate iambic pentameter. As for jokers to the right? The Republican field, save for the one exception already noted, is closely packed into a Laffable, Pattonesque herd that renders no further-rightward maneuverability.

But come the general election we'll open our post-primary readers, and … See Dick. See this Dick run. See this Dick run to the middle.

He'll be all over the place — as he already has been in his herding maneuvers — and watching him try to keep that smile from his face will also bring one to ours.

It's the perfect theme song for Jeb Bush.

 

to P.M. Carpenter's Commentary

GOP debates: The mysterious saga continues

Politico's Roger Simon joins the fun of sorting out just what the cable networks will do to accommodate the swelling horde of eventual losers:

The CNN folks … have gotten crafty and decided to have two groupings of debates, one for the "smart" candidates and one for the "slow" candidates. That’s my interpretation anyway. The official CNN criteria are just this side of gibberish.

"The first 10 candidates — ranked from highest to lowest in polling order from an average of all qualifying polls released between July 16 and September 10 who satisfy the criteria requirements … will be invited to participate in 'Segment B' of the September 16, 2015 Republican Presidential Primary Debate," says the network. "Candidates who satisfy the criteria and achieve an average of at least 1 percent in three national polls, but are not ranked in the top 10 of polling order will be invited to participate in 'Segment A' of the September 16, 2015 Republican Presidential Primary Debate."

Have you got that? Really? Keep in mind we are dealing with some candidates who think the Earth was created less than 10,000 years ago and that icebergs are being destroyed by too many polar bears trying to crowd on top of them. You think they are going to figure out this formula?

I once had an undergraduate professor who believed that any student who could triumph over the university's ungodly, we-dare-you bureaucratic enrollment process deserved at least 3 credit hours for that act alone. Perhaps any GOP candidate who can comprehend the networks' debate-selection rules should be allowed an additional percentage in his or her polling. They can also be allowed to remove their shoes, for arithmetical assistance, if their points already exceed 10.