[I welcome your thoughts on what lessons, if any, this episode of Wilsonian democracy might tell us about the state of US politics and the implications for dealing with global warming, an issue where conservatives brandish even more denial and false charges.]
The organized disinformation campaign by conservatives got a tad disorganized after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), shouted “you lie” to Obama’s face during the president’s big speech on health care reform. Yet imagine what most GOP members would have been thinking (and possibly shouting) if this had been Obama’s big speech on global warming.
CBS News Chief Legal Analyst and Legal Editor Andrew Cohen blog:
Much in the same way that we live in denial about the long-lasting failures of our leaders to address long-term problems (health care, Social Security insolvency, global warming, energy independence, etc.) we live in denial about””and tolerate””an astonishing level of phoniness and mean-spiritedness in the political discourse over such matters. America is like the smiley, happy family that has all the bodies buried in the cellar.
Well, one party lives in denial, that is for certain, which is the primary reason we haven’t addressed those problems.
Cohen fails to mention that the President and Congress are attempting to address three of the four problems he lists by name right now, and conservatives are doing everything they can to block action, as they have for decades. Cohen fails to mention that it is only when Democrats have the presidency and large majorities in both houses that our political system even attempts to do the right thing on those long-term problems — which is why I titled my Salon piece celebrating the June House vote for the clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill, “One brief shining moment for clean energy.”
I think Wilson did Obama and progressives a favor, by providing a face, a video clip, for moderates and independents to see how who is to blame for the lack of bipartisanship. And he certainly did a favor for the late night comics:
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
My idea of the best excuse:
“I chust vanted to say that he shouldn’t have vaited until Zeptember. He should have zed it in Yuly.”
I think the posuring, disinformation and obstruction that we have seen in the health care debate will be mirrored, in attempts to address climaate change. Based on the experience to date, a bipartisan approach in an exercize in futility.
President Obama is correct when he stated that the time for action is now – but the Republicans are looking forward only so far as 2010, and not, in my opinion, to the long-term health and security of this nation.
If you’d like to track the donations being received by Rob Miller, who is going to be the Democratic candidate for Wilson’s seat next year, you can check.
http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/19079
As of 11AM Pacific time the total was closing on $800,000. Contributions keep coming in and I think it’s highly likely that Wilson’s outburst might have be worth a million dollars toward getting rid of him.
Before Wilson’s violation of House rules Miller had only $60k and change.
In the parliamentary system, you can get away with a lot of heckling, but there is a strict rule against the L word. If the Speaker finds you have used it, or words to that effect, he can eject you – the marshal-at-arms comes around with a big mace and hustles you out of the chamber, I believe. When members feel they need to call out a false statement, but don’t want to be quite so rude, they will accuse the other of having “deliberately misled the house” – but that is still unparliamentary language and a basis for being ejected.
“They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent. …Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. … We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now.”
Winston Churchill
(thanks to Micharl Tobis, who in return thanks others for finding this quotation.)
Here’s another prescient quote from around that same time period (1943):
“Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, ‘Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,’ or is it
a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything – God and our friends and ourselves included – as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.” – C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
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There is no single party responsible for the current pathetic lack of civility in our politics. American politics has never truly been civil but the rancor seems to have snowballed since Clinton took office.
Politicians of both parties whine about bipartisanship, but the fact of the matter is that they all employ staff whose entire job it is to take any little thing an opponent says or does, spin it in a crazy direction, blow it out of proportion, then build a conspiracy theory around it, until it seems we are two steps from Armageddon. The goal is not to point out areas in which your opponent is wrong, but to make it seem like he is a criminal and a traitor. Openly biased propaganda outlets masquerading as news networks need to fill 24 hours of airtime on cable, so producers will take any old bait and run with it. Hysterical talking heads compete to see who can be the most outraged over the latest efforts by their ideological opponents to destroy the Constitution or Christmas or capitalism or whatever, based on the principle that, if you are yelling, people will pay attention regardless of what you are actually saying. And we the people have become so entrenched in our ideologies that we refuse to listen to anyone who isn’t reinforcing what we already know. We will believe any evil rumors about the opposition, no matter how flimsy or ludicrous. In fact, we actively seek out ever worse things we can believe about them.
We are trained very well to hate and fear those we should merely disagree with. The opposing ideology is not just wrong, it is evil, as are any and all adherents to that ideology. We no longer have opponents to be defeated; we have enemies to be destroyed. In this environment, is it really any surprise that Kanye West thinks George Bush doesn’t care about black people, or that the President of the United States, in the middle of two wars and a recession, has to spend time repeatedly assuring a nervous public that he isn’t going to euthanize their grandparents? Is it shocking that ridiculous fantasy stories questioning the parentage of Sarah Palin’s son, or President Obama’s citizenship, are broadcast in prime time on national television? Is it any wonder that people stand outside town hall meetings with automatic weapons or a sitting representative heckles the President during a speech before Congress?
social security can’t become insolvent, it’s a program, not a checking account. it can only come up short if the government intentionally refuses to pay — or collapses.
I just want to send a shout out to ol’ Joe here. The Dems really needed someone to stand up and spout off like that, taking away any chance for the Republicans to (a wide audience at least) slam the President and his speech – instead he became their whole message on the news for days. The administration probably couldn’t be happier.
Bob Wallace – Wilson’s donations shot way up too – it’s a saw off.
also Letterman needs new writers, maybe some with a funny bone for a change.
A bit tangential–but did you know Joe Wilson’s real name is Addison Graves Wilson Sr.? No wonder the man is angry or bit off his rocker—he’s the namesake of 3 different diseases. Very strange.