Hack To The Future
Some folks are talking-up the ERA again. Good for them. Unfortunately, their chatter has inspired reactionary gasbag David Frum, after an obligatory homage to Phyllis Schlafly, to offer a new frame-job on the ol’ conservatarian ‘Liberals have no new ideas’ argument:
We’ve been hearing since November about the resurgence of the progressive left – the new enthusiasm, the new energy, the new organizations, the new commitment. Amidst all these exciting novelty, there is only one thing lacking: new ideas. The resurgent “progressive” movement is the most backward-looking political force since William Jennings Bryan tried to repeal the industrial revolution. Their big issues – a government healthcare monopoly! do away with secret union ballots! and now … ERA! – date respectively to the 1940s, the 1930s, and the 1970s.
It’s just bizarre to tune into blogosphere debates to watch freshfaced 20-somethings passionately champion, as if just invented, policy proposals that were old when their grandparents were young. If this is progressiveness, what would reaction look like?
Above: Looking Backward Frum 2007 to 1215
This is rich, coming as it does from a spokesman of a movement whose raison d’etre has been (for forty years now) a repeal of the New Deal — or, failing that, repealing the New Deal mentality of the populace.
But the fucktardious asshelmet asked what reaction would look like. I shall be more helpful, then:
Reaction would be a belief-structure that holds the repeal of the Corn Laws, the birth of laissez-faire, and the advent of Spencerian social darwinism as events which represent the peak of human achievement. Pathetic, of course. Thus, the thoroughly reactionary Libertarians — sorry excuses for human beings, belonging to a sorry excuse for a political movement. Thus, progress ….back to the 1840s.
Reaction would also be the attitude, held by certain Democrats, that a tack to the ‘center‘ — which is actually a euphemism for the place on the ideological spectrum about where Richard Nixon and Nelson Rockefeller spent most of their careers — would be a useful exercise. Thus, progress …back to 1992, or 1976, or 1892.
But the two examples above can’t hold a candle to the real rat-bastard reactionaries whose yearning atavism is as ambitious as it is depraved. The real fucking reactionaries are led by Dear Leader Dubya, for whom David Frum wrote counter-revolutionary speeches and for whom David Frum continues to practice the most pathetic sort of hackery.
The real fucking reactionaries want to ‘roll back’ everything. Thus, progress …back to 1932, to the Gilded Age, to 1791, to 1214.
Real reaction looks not to synthesize new with old, much less endorse the status quo ante, but to enforce anti-thesis, whatever form it may take and wherever it can be had, by decree if it can and if not by that, then… we’ll see soon enough, I expect. Real reaction doesn’t even stand athwart history yelling ‘stop’ anymore — no, of course not, that would be conservative. Rather, it stands athwart history and progress yelling ‘rewind’: It demands that society be put in a time machine and transported back to an era when men were men and morals were morals, god damn it. This sort of reaction is epitomized by a particularly loathsome human being named — surprise, surprise — David Frum, whose ultimate desire is to repeal the social contract back to the standard enjoyed by the fucking Donner Party:
Contemporary conservatives still value that old American character. William Bennett in his lectures reads admiringly from an account of the Donner party written by a survivor that tells the story in spare, stoic style. He puts the letter down and asks incredulously, “Where did those people go?� But if you believe that early Americans possessed a fortitude that present-day Americans lack, and if you think the loss is an important one, then you have to think hard about why that fortitude disappeared. Merely exhorting Americans to show more fortitude is going to have about as much effect on them as a lecture from the student council president on school spirit. Reorganizing the method by which they select and finance their schools won’t do it either, and neither will the line-item veto, or discharge petitions, or entrusting Congress with the power to deny individual NEA grants, or court decisions strinking down any and all acts of politically correct tyranny emanating from the offices of America’s deans of students – worthwhile though each and every one of those things may be. It is socials that form character, as another conservative hero, Alexis de Tocqueville, demonstrated, and if our characters are now less virtuous than formerly, we must identify in what way our social conditions have changed in order to understand why.
Of course there have been hundreds of such changes – never mind since the Donner party’s day, just since 1945 … But the expansion of government is the only one we can do anything about.
All of these changes have had the same effect: the emancipation of the individual appetite from restrictions imposed on it by limited resources, or religious dread, or community disapproval, or the risk of disease or personal catastophe.
The advocacy of a system designed to promote economic fragility for the masses, for the sake of socially and morally engineering them to be the perfect fascist beast, a raw and ruthless super-Jacksonian movement, the ‘new man’ of which being just as likely to bite off foriegner’s head as his neighbor’s — or so the engineer hopes: That‘s what reaction looks like; it’s the face of the Republican Party.
Debates over how Hegelian/Marxist history actually is aside, how the hell is it reactionary to feel like problems that’ve been around for 50+ years deserve solutions?
Desiring a functional health care system is reactionary?
Is the repub’s secret agenda really to take down the fascist tyranny of the dictionary, by freeing words from the restrictive “definitions” which have chained them ever since we invented fucking language?
Also, waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. Make the newy-new server play nice all the time. It’s moody.
um… yes. remember, they are making their own reality….
Not that it matters much, but the ERA does not date back to the seventies, no matter how much Frum and his ilk might want it to (dirty girl hippies!).
The ERA, as anyone who has read an introductory paragraph about it would know, was drafted in 1923.
Wow, thanks for not trolling this time, Grampaw.
FWIW, the whole time I was writing this post, I was thinking of the *other* neoliberal troll of teh internets, that fucking wank-job DDR who is often found in DeLong’s comments defending the dogma when not on genuinely progressive sites attacking the anti-dogma, calling anyone not a neoliberal free-trader ‘reactionary.’
I like to think even *you* have a better appreciation of the dialectic than that, G.
A scarlet letter R for all you reactionary progressives. And if that doesn’t stop you from violating villages mores, a dunk in the river surely will.
David,
What planet are you FRUM??
I was reading this excellent collection of essays when I came across a passage that made me think of you, Mencken, and all the headbutting you do with the neolibtards that hang around the fringes of the left….
Interesting idea…why shouldn’t the labor market be as free of unnecessary regulation as the production market? 😉
It’s a great little collection overall, and definitely worth the read.
William Bennett in his lectures reads admiringly from an account of the Donner party written by a survivor that tells the story in spare, stoic style. He puts the letter down and asks incredulously, “Where did those people go?�
Now, I’m not someone who believes that societies slink ever downward into decadence or that people today are all that different from those of the past, so I would rather think long and hard about why today’s conservatives think those people don’t exist anymore. Perhaps those folks just aren’t conservatives, or if they are aren’t the sort to hang out where the Bill Bennetts of the world do.
you wear your new pen name well, meester mencken. such vitriol! such acerbic nuance! your rage is comforting.
i insist: are you a closet zapatista? coz you sound, while not articulating it directly, as someone who would give the concepts of “leading while obeying” and “from the left, and from below” a shot.
keep em comin’, güero…
Ahh, yes, what was it that produced all that fortitude?
Could it be rampant disease, wild animals, hostile natives, a good chance of starvation, religious tyranny, justice by duel or mob, slavery, lack of knowledge of germs, lack of personal hygene, no rights for women or anyone slightly brown, no long distance communication, no electricity, (should I go on?)
1215? These cro-mags want to be back in the stone ages, where… wait, I have it figured out!
They can’t get laid because they are so terminally unattractive, so they want to return to the times where you could just club a woman over the head and have your way with her. I think that may be at the base of the thinking produced by these reactionary fools. It is the natural extension of the logical pathway advocated by the likes of Old Winky himself, the Frumster.
OOGA! Me want Woman. Ooga booga…
Being conservative (small ‘c’) in itself isn’t bad. There should always be at least one person in the room asking “Why do we need this new thing? Can you prove to me how this new thing is it better than what we have been doing? What might we be giving up/setting in motion without realizing it?” But such healthy and justifiable skepticism can only be a reaction to change and can never be a governing thesis in itself.
American Conservatives (big ‘C’) go much further. The one property that defines all Conservatives is a deeply held belief that there is some discreet point in the past When It All Went Wrong. The present (never mind the future) zooms right past them as they blow all their energy trying to hit history’s non-existent ‘Undo’ button to get back to the glorious moment before It All Went Wrong. For some, its the civil rights era, for others its the New Deal, still others pine for the Gilded Age. Hell, for the wingiest Wingnuts, Where It All Went Wrong seems to be the fucking English Civil War.
I worry a bit when I hear progressives talking about “getting back to the way things were before Bush”. I understand that they usually mean renewing our commitment to human rights, the rule of law, etc. but the formulation holds the seeds of reactionary conservatism. We cannot go back, only deal with the current reality and move forward.
mextremist
i’m with you man, sometimes html does sound a bit…revolutionary, you know what i’m saying? in a paine-sian kind of way. ‘s good, methinks.
sooth.
i think it is pretty clear what the problem is, and it goes beyond partisanship: our rich (mostly but not exclusively) white elites are sick with the decadence that infects their (my?) class in any late-stage empire. the question is merely whether its rome 100 AD or 300 AD, really.
Contemporary conservatives still value that old American character. William Bennett in his lectures reads admiringly from an account of the Donner party written by a survivor that tells the story in spare, stoic style. He puts the letter down and asks incredulously, “Where did those people go?
Bill, I believe the answer is into someones’s digestive tract.
Retardo:
“Dialectic” is a bit of a loaded term, don’t you think?
But yeah, I would like to believe that I understand the multitude of positions on trade issues out there too well to refer to a broad collection of them as “reactionary.”
Or “the dogma,” for that matter.
Aside to Jillian— there are indeed people opposed to trade restriction who are also opposed to restriction of the movement of labor. Myself included, though I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it on this particular blog. Try looking into the various positions of various “neolibertards” on immigration.
But look at me, I’m letting Retardo bait me into, uh, helping him derail his own post. Shame on me!
The friggin’ Donner Party is his idea of moral role models? Never mind where they went — where do these people come from? No wonder they think torture is just good clean fun.
Fun Fact: My stepdad actually had a distant relation from the Donner Party that was one of those EATEN.
Yeah, whatever happened to those guys, anyway? Boy, those were the days, eh? (translation: Fuck Bill Bennett)
Jillian,
In order for free trade to even work in theory, labor must be allowed to flow as free as the capital. Even then the whole thing would collapse because it’s always easier for the very wealthy to move liquid assets than for the poor migrants to travel hundreds of miles to work low-paying jobs, but it’s something the free trade supporters “forget” to mention. Can’t imagine why…
As the Galactic Dustbin has already pointed out, the correct answer to “Where did those people go?â€? is “down each other’s gullets, at the end of hope.” And that happened, if I remember what I was taught correctly, because Big Daddy Donner fell for the latest get-rich-quick fad (California! gold! money for nothing!), packed up his long-suffering family and a couple of gullible neighbors, got stuck halfway to the destination because they hadn’t done enough research before leaving Missouri, hared off on a “shortcut” that took longer and cost them most of their slender reserves, and decided against all advice from more experienced travellers that they could cross the Sierra Nevadas in November without getting snowbound. Individual members of the team did indeed react with great fortitude, but they should not have been out there in the first place. Hmm, sounds like we may have uncovered the reason for the reactionaries’ desire to enshrine these unfortunates as role models for the rest of us…
Individual members of the team did indeed react with great fortitude, but they should not have been out there in the first place. Hmm, sounds like we may have uncovered the reason for the reactionaries’ desire to enshrine these unfortunates as role models for the rest of us…
Exactly. The story of the Donner party is a story of going somewhere with thoroughly inadequate preparation. Sounds familiar?
Also, found a fascinating article by Jared Diamond, as to why the survivors survived. The short answer: women do better. Babies and old folks die off, single people die off, and blokes kill each other. The women basically waited them out.
So, eating each other is this guy’s answer to modern politics? Hey, there’s plenty of meat on Karl Rove, and I bet it’d be nice and tender, ‘cos the guy doesn’t give the impression of someone who uses his muscles much. Mind you, I’d have to kill myself afterwards, so I think I’ll just become a vegetarian, if it’s all the same to you.
Shorter David Frum: “I know we have the resources today to prevent our lives from being ruled by the constant fear of destitution, starvation, and easily-eradicable diseases: but let’s pretend we didn’t!
Grampaw, I’m not denying such people exist. I’m just poking a bit of fun at the general increase in anti-immigrant vibes that America has been giving off lately.
And being opposed to restrictions on the labor market is awesome! Getting rid of the protectionist benefits of citizenship will do a lot to hasten the downfall of capitalism – once more First World workers realize their bosses hold them in the same degree of contempt as they hold those Third World “savage” workers, who live without superfluities like running water or toilets, the First Worlders will be a lot less eager to
defend the inequities of the capitalist system!
Now, I have to say, being the kind-hearted soul I am, I’d much prefer to see those inequities done away with by reasoned dialogue and legal, structural realignments, but if you want to advocate for the wholesale destruction of the state overnight, I’m surely not going to stop you. I admit it’s a hard thing to say that I “look forward” to – does anyone look forward to Ragnarok? – but the great thing about smashing the state is that there are waaaaaaay more of us workers than there are of the capitalists. Things won’t go well for you guys in the chaos that ensues afterwards.
..despite almost total domination of the mass media, the courts, and of course a sweaty death-grip on the Executive Branch, the Republican Party is sinking in a way not seen since 1974. Rebranding is a possible solution, and Jackpot Bill Bennett has shown them the way- don’t just piss around with different rhetoric or new faces- rename the party! All hail The Donner Party! Let’s eat!
groat clusters, anyone?
Could it be rampant disease, wild animals, hostile natives, a good chance of starvation, religious tyranny, justice by duel or mob, slavery, lack of knowledge of germs, lack of personal hygene, no rights for women or anyone slightly brown, no long distance communication, no electricity, (should I go on?)
Actually, that’s what mated with Rupert Murdoch and Brent Bozell to produce Anna Nicole Smith’s breast implants which will take 45 nuclear half-lifes to dissolve, long enough to convince Rush Limbaugh that they’re the Holy Grail, with 44-1/2 lives to spare.
I am processing this through largely intuitive means, but it seems to me that globalization is an inevitable outcome, but only in the best case scenario. If an energy source were made commercially available to make long distance trade profitable for the long forseeable future, I like to think that would benefit everyone in a world of dwindling resources that would want to import goods not found on their home soil. I do not have the facts to support this argument, so I am putting it out there for debate and thought- Are your local resources adequate to provide a quality of life that you would like?
Actually, having thought about it, I think he’s got a point about the halcyon days of the Donner party. After all, in those days, the good old days, dangerously stupid people, and their partners-in-crime dangerously gullible people, could be removed from the gene pool. Here, they get elected.
If we’re going for survivability, then why not choose leaders the good old-fashioned way? Updated to make the best use of modern technology, of course, as well as provide entertainment for the stupid masses.
I mean trial by combat. We could make it a cage match for the Prez, and have boggins of elimination rounds all over the place for people to contest their cabinet position of choice.
After all, if we’re going to have meatheads running the world, at least we could winnow them out a bit, and have fit meatheads.
Two will enter. One will leave.
Two will enter. One will leave.
Two will enter. One will leave.
“Where did those people go?�
Why, they’ve emerged as neocons!
If watching the Bush/Rove/Gonzo/(insert your favorite administration criminal or neoconvict apologist here) consortium has shown us anything, it’s that they’re willing to eat their own to survive.
wow! Your site finally came up after ages of errors.
Remember, it says ‘under the law’, not ‘in the bathroom’.
You needn’t eat the leg Thompson, there’s plenty of other good meat.
Jillian:
Wow.
…and Retardo thinks I’m a troll…
As for free movement of labor, I’m pretty sure Adam Smith wrote a chapter about it in Wealth of Nations. So it’s not like a new idea or anything, nor is it something any neolib/laissez-faire free trader would advocate, as they are just tools of capital themselves. Libertarians would probably be on board with it though (Adam fucking Smith!).
It takes a special kind of brilliance to begin with a reference to the Donner party, and then segue two paragraphs later to “the emancipation of the individual appetite”.
I would like to make a joke about the Doner Kebab party, but the details elude me.
As for free movement of labor, I’m pretty sure Adam Smith wrote a chapter about it in Wealth of Nations.
Yep. Free movement of labour, restricted movement of capital. S’gotta be that way for classical capitalism to work.
So it’s not like a new idea or anything, nor is it something any neolib/laissez-faire free trader would advocate, as they are just tools of capital themselves.
Almost. They are just tools.
William Bennet admires the Donner Party.
Wonder how he’d have done?
Careful, your feline highness. Actually reading Adam Smith is something only traitors do. It’s just like the Bible. Jebus n Adam Smith want you to yank a couple words out of context, oversimplify their meaning, and use that as justification for ignoring every single other thing the two of em said.
I will give Adam Smith one thing over God n Jebus, tho. He existed.
“But the expansion of government is the only one we can do anything about.
“All of these changes have had the same effect: the emancipation of the individual appetite from restrictions imposed on it by limited resources, or religious dread, or community disapproval, or the risk of disease or personal catast[r]ophe.”
At least we got a neocon to admit that expansion of government can contribute to liberty, not detract from it. We liberals have known this since the Civil Rights Movement, wherein expansion of government power (esp. federal gov’t) into regions of homegrown apartheid extended the franchise to long-suffering citizens. This expansion of freedom was, of course, the real reason conservatives opposed ‘big government’. Not only did it re-enfranchise blacks, who’d been stripped of their new votes by their reactionary local governments, but big-government egalitarianism eventually spread wealth to folks whom the Bushes call the servant class. This makes the workers uppity, and hard to control.
Klein’s Tiny Left Nut (not his real name, surely) said what I was going to say:
Frum, you idjit, the reason we have “the emancipation of the individual appetite from restrictions imposed on it by limited resources, or religious dread, or community disapproval, or the risk of disease or personal catastrophe” is two-fold, and I invite you to oppose them to your disingenuous, hypocritical heart’s content.
They’re capitalism and science, you tit. As for the disappearance of “virtue,” you just might be onto something. It’s the public success and influence of buffoons like Bennett, and weasley, faux-intellectual court sycophants like your esteemed self, that shows just how far we’ve fallen.
Here, I’m leaving the Luger on your desk. Do the right thing. For once.
Actually, a different brad, Jebus did exist. Sadly for the fundies, though, he was very, veeeerrrrry different to the way he’s portrayed in the expurgated edition of Da Bib.
I have a couple of great books, you see. Got the first one from an academic remainder mail order company many many moons ago, and got so excited I had to have the second when it came out, some years later.
When I say great, though, I don’t mean as in ‘a rollicking good read’. I mean as in ‘bloody hard going academic writing that’s well worth it in the end’. That sort of great. Written by Barbara Thiering. The ones I have are Jesus the Man, and Jesus of the Apocalypse. World-shattering stuff, and quite intriguing. I first got into that when I picked up a copy of A Crack in the Jar, also remaindered, all about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
I have no idea about the veracity of the claims, but it makes fascinating reading, at least to a nerd like myself.
Mr. Wonderful,
Thanks. No, not my real name but a nomme de guerre (sp?) inspired by an encounter with the Swamp Man himself one night. A guy who squirms, lies, denounces and generally twists himself in knots not to acknowledge that those on the left were right about all things Iraq and GWB. Hence, his small and disproportionate testes.
For some reason, it looks like my serious comment, as opposed to my Monty Python quote, has disappeared, which may cast some mystery on your comment.
Perhaps an attack by America’s littlest pundit?
The inability of right wingers to actually grasp the incompatibility of capitalism with traditonalism never cease to amaze me.
Had Bill Bennet been with the Donner Party, my guess is that he would have been the sole casualty and the rest of the party would have survived the storm.
Mmmmmmmmm – fat gambling hypocritical sanctimonious pundit — that’s good eatin’.
[…] Demented neocon smear-merchant David Frum = Rubber-faced comic Stan Laurel plus accountant and […]
[…] and in a frontier, but it sure as hell doesn’t work without one. And deep down, glibertarians know it: Contemporary conservatives still value that old American character. William Bennett in his […]
[…] soft character of the American people, he’s recommended as way of corrective a repeal of the social contract to the Donner Party’s level: Contemporary conservatives still value that old American character. William Bennett in his […]
[…] though. Those sacrifices will make the sacrificees better in the long run – reinforce their moral fiber and, ultimately, lead to true happiness too! Struggle is good for the soul and the spirit! […]
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