The Enthusiasm Gap

Glenn Greenwald has a nice post up at Salon today about the only tactic the Democrats consistently employ: ye olde bait and switch. As Greenwald puts it, the Democrats are "willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there's no chance that they can pass it." Then, when it comes to brass knuckles, they all lay down and play dead.

You know who I don't want to be? Ralph Nader. I don't want to be all self-righteous and bitter and craggy and go around saying that both of the parties that are supposed to represent us are actually just paid subsidiaries of corporations. But it's hard to avoid.

By the by, it's interesting that corporations are people as far as free speech goes (and ownership of property, and so on) but not as far as taxes go. Harper's informs me (in one of their soul-crushing indexes) that Goldman Sachs paid 0.6% of their income in taxes last year.

Blackwater

Watching 60 Minutes (explanation as to why I'm watching a show whose target demographic is 30 years older than I am: I'm at my parent's house) and they are doing a piece on Blackwater airplane crash in Afghanistan. Several Blackwater employees ("contractors," "mercenaries") were killed--and apparently, at least one of them was alive for quite some time after the crash, but no efforts were made to rescue them. Outraged families sued, as is the American Way. Blackwater claimed it had no responsibility, because the crash happened in Afghanistan. Apparently, under Islamic law, employers are not responsible for what happens to their employees.

Take a moment to ponder the fantastic-tude of an American company, paid some ungodly amount of money because we've outsourced our wars to private companies (which has proven to be so much cheaper, no?), hiding under Islamic law to escape from taking responsibility for their employees. The mind boggles.

Puritans are Boring

Gawker, which is rapidly moving up on my list of Blogs I Read Instead of Writing My Dissertation (on some days even topping Wonkette, which has somehow become less funny recently? Or perhaps I just prefer the pop-culture breadth of Gawker at the moment) recently had a post which was merely a title: Jonathan Safran Foer Was Right About Everything. Since I sincerely doubted that, I clicked the clicky and found another discussion of his recent book: How You All Should Think and Eat, about which there has been much chatter among the liberal twitterati. The point of the post was that those of us who have limited our consumption of meat to humanely raised, grass fed, $25.99/lb at Whole Foods meat are just fooling ourselves. Because only 1% of animals are raised and slaughtered this way (the argument ran) there will never be enough animals raised this way to satisfy the current demands for meat, therefore (it follows as the night the day) we should all be vegans.

I admit to being deeply conflicted about eating meat. And I am one of those self-deluding people who limits my meat consumption to the above-mentioned criteria, which means, since I make very little money, that I don't eat that much meat. I understand, and agree with, the arguments against eating meat, so I have no defense, really, just a liking for the occasional really rare steak.

Yet this is another example of generally agreeing with a left-y argument about something, but being deeply irritated by the people making it, all the same. Jonathan Pretentious Three Names Foer is exactly that kind of chunky-glasses-wearing, Brooklyn-brownstone-living, over-self-analyzing, postmodern-masculinist-writing, type of person that makes Real America hate the Left. As an added bonus, he is also the type of person who makes the Left hate the Left.

I fail to see why puritanism and self-righteousness on the Left are any more appealing than the same things on the Right, e.g.: "People shouldn't have premarital sex/eat meat. It's immoral and causes harm to people who do it and to the society as whole. Because people have sex/eat meat, the world is going to end, and it will be All Your Fault for having sex/eating meat. God/The Planet is displeased with you, and since I do not have sex/eat meat, I am better than you."

When someone from the Concerned Christian Women of America or whatever says something like the first phrases, Leftists line up en masse to point out that, in fact, people like sex, have sex, and are going to continue to have sex until Iran gets the bomb and blows us all to Kingdom Come. But when someone from Brooklyn or PETA say things along the line of the second, this is not seen as imposing an irrational worldview on others (as the CCWA ladies attempt to do) in order to placate a famously temperamental deity, but rather as rationally deduced moral precepts for the betterment of humanity.

And one more thing these two threads have in common: they are totally lacking a sense of humor about their own ideological position. Because this is SERIOUS, people, THE WORLD IS GOING TO END, chickenlittle * infinity.

Srsly?

I have two perceptive and trenchant and witty blog posts in draft form, only needing a little spit and polish...but instead, I'm going to post a picture of Sarah Palin's hand. On which she wrote notes. In order to answer questions--in front of an extremely friendly audience of Teabaggers, who would have cheered if she had said nothing. Actually, she effectively said nothing, and they did cheer. But let's not quibble.

The best part is...well, I can't decide. There's the mocking of Obama for using teleprompters (by the way, I've never understood this meme from the Teabagging Right'ers. I do believe EVERY FUCKING PRESIDENT SINCE WHENEVER TELEPROMPTERS WERE INVENTED has used a teleprompter. I think it has to be that knee-jerk, anti-intellectual reaction: "He thinks he's so smart, but lookit how he has to read his speech on a telly-prompter thingy."). And then there's the fact that what she has written on her hand is: "Energy" "Budget(crossed out) cuts" "Tax" and "Lift American spirits." Are these really things she couldn't have memorized? It's not like she had to refer to some Nash equilibrium proof. It's six words. Six. lousy. words. How hard could it be...never mind.

Oh, and she hasn't ruled out a run against Obama in 2012. Good to know. Though I think she's going to need bigger hands.