Have the Democrats Gone Insane?
As most Americans and perhaps many foreigners know, the Democrats are currently attempting to pass Obamacare through the singular method of the House "deeming" that the Senate will pass it through the reconciliation vote, then voting on it, and finally Obama signing into "law" a bill which has not actually been passed by both houses. The quotes on "law" are intentional, since a bill so "passed" and signed would not actually be "law" under the Constitutional definition, nor would it constitutionally have the force of law (not being an Executive Order).
The chance of this being allowed to stand unchallenged is close to nil. I sure as hell won't obey such a "law" save under direct threat of arrest, and even then I would obey only in hope of revenge later down the line, holding those enforcing this "law" not morally shielded by reason of their offices. I expect that if this "passes" in this manner, there will be massive noncompliance, extensive legal challenges, and probably an overturn in the courts. There might even be open rioting -- Americans do not slavishly submit to tyranny.
One thing is almost certain: the electorate will, in 2010 and 2012, respond by massively rejecting the Democrats in the voting booth. Pelosi, who represents a district which would probably vote for her even if she declared herself Maximum Leader for Life and Queen of the Smurfs, probably won't be unseated, but Reid might lose his seat in 2010, and many less prominent Democrats are assuredly going to have to return to private life.
To some extent this was going to happen anyway: Obama has been a singularly unsuccessful President, after taking office with unprecedented expectations, and this is bound to result in "negative coat-tails." But the Democrats, with this naked attempt by the Legislature to allow the President to govern by decree, are accelerating and amplifying the process. Obama himself, if he signs this bill, is risking impeachment; and the Congressional Democrats are converting what might otherwise be a bad election year for them into two successive Republican landslides. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's even more likely than not that in 2012 the Republicans will take the Presidency, Senate and House.
So, why are the Democrats doing this, when it is clearly so destructive of their ends? It won't even get them Obamacare, since the courts will probably throw it out, and in any case the Republican President and Congress of 2013 will probably repeal the legislation.
polaris93 suggests, in http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2004246.html?view=1373718#t1373718, that the Democratic leadership is literally on drugs.
For all the world their behavior bears striking similarities to methamphetamine and cocaine users I've known -- grandiose or even megalomanic, narcissistic to point of madness, and at the same time utterly clueless and hopelessly incompetent. Like somebody who has bipolar syndrome and has gotten stuck in "manic" mode. I wonder how many Senators and Congressmen have seriously heavy habits of one sort or another now.
She might have a point. Pelosi, in particular, comes out of the 60's drug culture, and may never have kicked her habits. But I think there's something bigger here, something that also came out of the 1960's and is strongly supported by the Democrats.
That is reality denial.
I'm speaking here in both the political and the cultural sense. Politically, the Democrats have in the last 42 years rarely been in positions of power during true national crises. The Carter and Clinton Presidencies were both peacetime administrations -- you have to go all the way back to 1968 to witness a Democratic President (Lyndon B. Johnson) commanding an even medium-sized war. Obama is the first Democratic President in over four decades to have to deal with a threat that he couldn't either easily overpower or ignore. (And note how poorly Carter handled diplomacy during his term in office).
As an opposition party in times of crisis, the Democrats have enjoyed the luxury of carping at Republican Administrations who had to make the painful choices needed for victory. Reagan and George H. W. Bush cleaned up Carter's mess, while Democrats complained that they were meanies; Clinton then enjoyed two terms at a height of American global dominance; George W. Bush then fought the wars that liberated Afghanistan and Iraq and held the Terrorists at bay for two terms, while Democrats complained that he was a meanie.
The nice thing about being an irresponsible opposition is that one can point to the flaws in the Administration's strategy (and all strategies will have flaws, it's part and parcel of the human condition), while not having to delineate a clear strategy of one's own. Obama, in opposition in 2008, could complain that Dubya was being a hostile meanie and that American soldiers were dying in Iraq: as candidate he never did outline a clear alternative strategy, and as President he was surprised to find that his poorly-thought-out nostrums failed almost immediately.
Being an irresponsible opposition means reality denial. When one complains, for example, of the death toll in a war in which the death toll is in fact historically low, one implicitly tells oneself that one could win that war (or avoid fighting it) at no cost to American blood or treasure. And when a sycophantic press fails to challenge one on one's obvious logical errors, the first one learns of these errors is when one tries to put into effect the non-policies one was never actually forced to formulate.
Well, if one can gain the fruits of war without fighting, and one could in any case fight the war without loss, why can't one sign legislation which has never been passed? If wishing makes it so, then this is a general principle, and one the Democrats are now attempting to apply.
There is also a cultural sense in which this is true. The current Democratic Party is the product of the New Left of the 1960's, and the New Left was culturally distinguished by an explicit belief in mystical hope as opposed to rational planning. Obama ran as the candidate of "hope and change," and neither he felt the need to, nor did his worshippers in the media ever demand that he explain exactly why he hoped and what change he hoped to accomplish.
These people, as part of their life stories, behaved very, very badly as young adults in the 1960's and 1970's, and then believed that they should feel no guilt for any of thier misdeeds because they had "reinvented" themselves. The whole concept of "reinvention," as opposed to the more rational concept of "redemption," is a mystical attempt to avoid reality. He who seeks redemption admits his wrongdoing and endeavors to behave better in the future, hoping that others will see that he has reformed; while he who claims "re-invention" simply declares that he is better, and hopes that others will forget how he behaved in the past.
"Re-invention" pretends that the whole concecpt of honor is meaningless. Whatever one has said or done, once one has "re-invented" oneself, one's prior committments cease to apply. Those statements are "no longer operative," to use a phrase made famous under the Clinton Administration. If one compares Obama's campaign pledges with his behavior in office, it becomes obvious that Obama was an apt pupil of America's first black President, Bill Clinton.
Well, if one need not honor one's personal pledges, why should one honor one's oath to the US Constitution? Why can't Nancy Pelosi simply "re-invent" the legislative process so that a simple majority of the House can "deem" that a bill never passed by the Senate has actually been passed by the Senate, vote on the imaginary Senate bill, and then hand it to the President who pretends to sign it into law? After all, if the police and judiciary treat it as law, so that you'll be clapped into prison for refusing to obey Obama and Pelosi's imaginary law, then it is a real law, isn't it?
Not under the definition of the US Constitution. And, thankfully, enough officials in the judiciary still remember this that Obama is unlikely to be able to force us all to treat his whims as law. And, hopefully, enough American voters still remember how the Constitution is supposed to work that they will deal Obama and Pelosi stinging defeats in the upcoming 2010 and 2012 elections.
The Democrat fixation on the power of wishing makes them extraordinarily vulnerable to a variant of "groupthink." Groupthink is when everyone in a decision-making group agrees with an idea, regardless of its merits, and competing ideas are treated as illegitimate and never rationally engaged. This can, and historically has, lead to very bad decision-making, in which obvious flaws with a plan are ignored, and even after the plan fails, there is a tendency for the group to try to pretend that it has succeed, as if they can make it succeed by denying its failure.
This applies to Obama's whole program. Note the high hopes, echoed by the mainstream media, with which he came to office. Note that the obvious flaws in his plans were never discuessed by that MSM, and they responded to attempts to point them out by demonizing any critics (remember the treatment of "Joe the Plumber?").
Notice that the Democratic response to the emergence of the Tea Parties was to deny their reality and authenticity. Despite the fact that this was one of the most amorphous, spontaneously-generated political movements I've ever witnessed or read about, the Democrats ignored the evidence that Obamacare was angering a large portion of the electorate -- a portion many of whom had voted Democrat in 2008 -- and instead tried to combat the Tea Parties with everything from accusations of "astroturfing" by the insurance companies to outright physical violence.
I strongly suspect that Obama and Pelosi are in a similar groupthink denial mode regarding the extent of the political damage they are doing to themselves and to the success of their agenda. They imagine that with legislative maneuvers, they can somehow pass and keep in effect a program deeply opposed by a majority of the American people: they do not grasp that in attempting this, they are ensuring that all the checks and balances the Framers wrote into the Constitution are working against them; and when these checks stymie the Democrats, they imagine that they can simply ignore the Constitution.
In 2010, we the American people are going to show them just how wrong they were. And in 2012, we can show them again, and relegate Obama to his proper place -- as an embarassing footnote to American history.
The chance of this being allowed to stand unchallenged is close to nil. I sure as hell won't obey such a "law" save under direct threat of arrest, and even then I would obey only in hope of revenge later down the line, holding those enforcing this "law" not morally shielded by reason of their offices. I expect that if this "passes" in this manner, there will be massive noncompliance, extensive legal challenges, and probably an overturn in the courts. There might even be open rioting -- Americans do not slavishly submit to tyranny.
One thing is almost certain: the electorate will, in 2010 and 2012, respond by massively rejecting the Democrats in the voting booth. Pelosi, who represents a district which would probably vote for her even if she declared herself Maximum Leader for Life and Queen of the Smurfs, probably won't be unseated, but Reid might lose his seat in 2010, and many less prominent Democrats are assuredly going to have to return to private life.
To some extent this was going to happen anyway: Obama has been a singularly unsuccessful President, after taking office with unprecedented expectations, and this is bound to result in "negative coat-tails." But the Democrats, with this naked attempt by the Legislature to allow the President to govern by decree, are accelerating and amplifying the process. Obama himself, if he signs this bill, is risking impeachment; and the Congressional Democrats are converting what might otherwise be a bad election year for them into two successive Republican landslides. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's even more likely than not that in 2012 the Republicans will take the Presidency, Senate and House.
So, why are the Democrats doing this, when it is clearly so destructive of their ends? It won't even get them Obamacare, since the courts will probably throw it out, and in any case the Republican President and Congress of 2013 will probably repeal the legislation.
polaris93 suggests, in http://polaris93.livejournal.com/2004246.html?view=1373718#t1373718, that the Democratic leadership is literally on drugs.
For all the world their behavior bears striking similarities to methamphetamine and cocaine users I've known -- grandiose or even megalomanic, narcissistic to point of madness, and at the same time utterly clueless and hopelessly incompetent. Like somebody who has bipolar syndrome and has gotten stuck in "manic" mode. I wonder how many Senators and Congressmen have seriously heavy habits of one sort or another now.
She might have a point. Pelosi, in particular, comes out of the 60's drug culture, and may never have kicked her habits. But I think there's something bigger here, something that also came out of the 1960's and is strongly supported by the Democrats.
That is reality denial.
I'm speaking here in both the political and the cultural sense. Politically, the Democrats have in the last 42 years rarely been in positions of power during true national crises. The Carter and Clinton Presidencies were both peacetime administrations -- you have to go all the way back to 1968 to witness a Democratic President (Lyndon B. Johnson) commanding an even medium-sized war. Obama is the first Democratic President in over four decades to have to deal with a threat that he couldn't either easily overpower or ignore. (And note how poorly Carter handled diplomacy during his term in office).
As an opposition party in times of crisis, the Democrats have enjoyed the luxury of carping at Republican Administrations who had to make the painful choices needed for victory. Reagan and George H. W. Bush cleaned up Carter's mess, while Democrats complained that they were meanies; Clinton then enjoyed two terms at a height of American global dominance; George W. Bush then fought the wars that liberated Afghanistan and Iraq and held the Terrorists at bay for two terms, while Democrats complained that he was a meanie.
The nice thing about being an irresponsible opposition is that one can point to the flaws in the Administration's strategy (and all strategies will have flaws, it's part and parcel of the human condition), while not having to delineate a clear strategy of one's own. Obama, in opposition in 2008, could complain that Dubya was being a hostile meanie and that American soldiers were dying in Iraq: as candidate he never did outline a clear alternative strategy, and as President he was surprised to find that his poorly-thought-out nostrums failed almost immediately.
Being an irresponsible opposition means reality denial. When one complains, for example, of the death toll in a war in which the death toll is in fact historically low, one implicitly tells oneself that one could win that war (or avoid fighting it) at no cost to American blood or treasure. And when a sycophantic press fails to challenge one on one's obvious logical errors, the first one learns of these errors is when one tries to put into effect the non-policies one was never actually forced to formulate.
Well, if one can gain the fruits of war without fighting, and one could in any case fight the war without loss, why can't one sign legislation which has never been passed? If wishing makes it so, then this is a general principle, and one the Democrats are now attempting to apply.
There is also a cultural sense in which this is true. The current Democratic Party is the product of the New Left of the 1960's, and the New Left was culturally distinguished by an explicit belief in mystical hope as opposed to rational planning. Obama ran as the candidate of "hope and change," and neither he felt the need to, nor did his worshippers in the media ever demand that he explain exactly why he hoped and what change he hoped to accomplish.
These people, as part of their life stories, behaved very, very badly as young adults in the 1960's and 1970's, and then believed that they should feel no guilt for any of thier misdeeds because they had "reinvented" themselves. The whole concept of "reinvention," as opposed to the more rational concept of "redemption," is a mystical attempt to avoid reality. He who seeks redemption admits his wrongdoing and endeavors to behave better in the future, hoping that others will see that he has reformed; while he who claims "re-invention" simply declares that he is better, and hopes that others will forget how he behaved in the past.
"Re-invention" pretends that the whole concecpt of honor is meaningless. Whatever one has said or done, once one has "re-invented" oneself, one's prior committments cease to apply. Those statements are "no longer operative," to use a phrase made famous under the Clinton Administration. If one compares Obama's campaign pledges with his behavior in office, it becomes obvious that Obama was an apt pupil of America's first black President, Bill Clinton.
Well, if one need not honor one's personal pledges, why should one honor one's oath to the US Constitution? Why can't Nancy Pelosi simply "re-invent" the legislative process so that a simple majority of the House can "deem" that a bill never passed by the Senate has actually been passed by the Senate, vote on the imaginary Senate bill, and then hand it to the President who pretends to sign it into law? After all, if the police and judiciary treat it as law, so that you'll be clapped into prison for refusing to obey Obama and Pelosi's imaginary law, then it is a real law, isn't it?
Not under the definition of the US Constitution. And, thankfully, enough officials in the judiciary still remember this that Obama is unlikely to be able to force us all to treat his whims as law. And, hopefully, enough American voters still remember how the Constitution is supposed to work that they will deal Obama and Pelosi stinging defeats in the upcoming 2010 and 2012 elections.
The Democrat fixation on the power of wishing makes them extraordinarily vulnerable to a variant of "groupthink." Groupthink is when everyone in a decision-making group agrees with an idea, regardless of its merits, and competing ideas are treated as illegitimate and never rationally engaged. This can, and historically has, lead to very bad decision-making, in which obvious flaws with a plan are ignored, and even after the plan fails, there is a tendency for the group to try to pretend that it has succeed, as if they can make it succeed by denying its failure.
This applies to Obama's whole program. Note the high hopes, echoed by the mainstream media, with which he came to office. Note that the obvious flaws in his plans were never discuessed by that MSM, and they responded to attempts to point them out by demonizing any critics (remember the treatment of "Joe the Plumber?").
Notice that the Democratic response to the emergence of the Tea Parties was to deny their reality and authenticity. Despite the fact that this was one of the most amorphous, spontaneously-generated political movements I've ever witnessed or read about, the Democrats ignored the evidence that Obamacare was angering a large portion of the electorate -- a portion many of whom had voted Democrat in 2008 -- and instead tried to combat the Tea Parties with everything from accusations of "astroturfing" by the insurance companies to outright physical violence.
I strongly suspect that Obama and Pelosi are in a similar groupthink denial mode regarding the extent of the political damage they are doing to themselves and to the success of their agenda. They imagine that with legislative maneuvers, they can somehow pass and keep in effect a program deeply opposed by a majority of the American people: they do not grasp that in attempting this, they are ensuring that all the checks and balances the Framers wrote into the Constitution are working against them; and when these checks stymie the Democrats, they imagine that they can simply ignore the Constitution.
In 2010, we the American people are going to show them just how wrong they were. And in 2012, we can show them again, and relegate Obama to his proper place -- as an embarassing footnote to American history.