Living here in the future ghost state of California, I have a special fascination with water. But I’m hardly alone. It’s interesting to watch the local news and see people upset that it is not going to rain. People here are far past being concerned about their weekend plans. As our drought drags on, people see it as more and more of an existential threat. And while I’m pleased that people really are taking the situation seriously, fear is not the best of motivators. It tends to act as a cancer, and so it isn’t surprising that we are seeing people use the current crisis for some nefarious ends.

This last week, Kate Linthicum reported, Group says California Immigration Policies Contributed to Drought. It seems that a group called Californians for Population Stabilization (CAPS — get it?!) is demagoguing the issue real good. They’ve produced a series of commercials. In one, there is a whiny little boy who asks, “If Californians are having fewer children, why is it so crowded?” It continues on with the boy asking other questions including, “Why isn’t there enough water?” A man in voice-over explains, “Over 98% of California’s population growth is from immigration. Let’s slow immigration and save some of California for tomorrow.” Meanwhile, the little boy looks dejectedly into the camera.

What’s amazing about this commercial is that it could have run in the 1930s. Now the subtext is, “Let’s get the spicks!” But in the 1930s, it would have been, “Let’s get the Okies!” Linthicum reported that earlier this month, the group asked its Facebook followers to “like” the statement that “California’s drought could have been prevented with responsible immigration policies and limited population growth.” And that is, you know, totally crazy in addition to be bigoted and generally evil. Even if no humans lived in California, it would still be going through its worst drought on record. What’s more, only 10% of California water use is from urban use. So the CAPS claim is just as wrong as it could possibly be.

Michael Hiltzik provided some great data about water use in California. It turns out that per capita water use among urban residents is way down: from 232 gallons per day in 1995 to 178 in 2010. That doesn’t even include the current drought, so I assume that number is even lower today. But even more amazing is that California’s total water use — with a huge increase in population and agricultural productivity — has actually gone down in an absolute sense: from 35 billion gallons per day in 1990 to 31 billion in 2010. That actually shocks me; I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Linthicum quoted one expert who noted that if Californians actually care about the drought, they should be campaigning against lawns, not immigrants. Hiltzik put it well:

But of course, CAPS is most definitely not interested in the drought. The group has been around since 1986. It’s like Matt Yglesias’s analogy about Quakers wanting to balance the budget with military cuts: CAPS is just using drought to push their real issue. And their issue is the same one that Californians have had for decades: I’ve got mine so stay away. It’s sad. But it has nothing to do with environmentalism.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the mythology of American policing and how it allows our criminal justice system to stay so messed up. And over at Vox, Redditt Hudson wrote an article that touches on this issue, I’m a Black Ex-Cop, and This Is the Real Truth About Race and Policing. He worked for five years for the St Louis Police Department, and since then, he seems to work in criminal justice reform. So he’s not exactly your typical police officer. But still, he’s been in the field. And I think he has a good take on American policing. In particular, he seems to be able to distinguish between the reality and the myth of the police. And that is refreshing indeed.

Fundamentally, I think it is the mythology of policing that is so dangerous. It is what allows police to think that they live in a world that is especially dangerous. And that leads to officers like Michael Brelo to jump up on the hood of a car and fire 15 more shots — past the 122 already fired — at an unarmed couple in their car. And it is what leads to judges thinking the whole thing was a-okay. Because, you know, Brelo was “fearing for his life.” This isn’t a story of the real world: a civil servant doing a (at worst) modestly dangerous job. This is a story of Odysseus struggling to make his way in a world of the Sirens and Cyclops.

The standard line whenever a police officer does something unconscionable is, “While the vast majority of police officers are dedicated professionals, this officer blah, blah, blah…” Every time we talk about misbehavior of an officer, we are expected to preface it with this disclaimer. But Hudson’s accounting sounds far more reasonable. No, it isn’t the “vast majority” of police officers. It is instead:

Clearly, this isn’t based upon a study. It is just Hudson’s impression. But regardless what the number are, this is the makeup. There are a relatively small number of “good” and “bad” officers and then there are a whole bunch in the middle that go with the flow. This is why certain departments become hotbeds of racism and why a strong administrative effort to clean up a department really can work. But if you asked me, I would say that it is more like 5% of the officers who will always do the right thing. Let’s call them the Eagle Scouts. Clearly, the probability distribution of police officers abusing their power will be heavily tilted away from the Eagle Scouts — that is, there are more “bad” than “good” officers.

Another thing that Hudson noted is that racism against African Americans is not just something that white officers do. He sees the problem as being fundamentally one of abuse of authority. So the racism is systemic: it is acceptable to abuse black and brown people. So officers, regardless of what race they identify with, will abuse black and brown people because they know they can get away with that. They know they can’t go out and abuse students at Stanford.

How the mythology plays into this is in how it allows the officers in that big middle group to justify abusing their power — although it is probably a potent justification for the people who were attracted to police work because of the power. I’m sure that the officers who killed Freddie Gray thought that somehow what they were doing was justified because they have such dangerous jobs and because all the world is evil and all that other garbage that we allow them to go on thinking.

I remember something that Jim Hogshire said in his excellent book, You Are Going to Prison. He was talking about prison rape and how it was accepted by the prison authorities — part of the mechanism of control. He noted that if a warden wanted prison rape stopped today it would stop today. Well, that’s what I think about police brutality. The reason it continues on is because of us. We don’t want to give up our mythology of policing. Maybe it would help if we just got explicit about it, “While most police officers are demigods who exist in a dangerous but magical world…”

See also: Most Dangerous Jobs.

Ian Millhiser wrote a great take-down of Charles Murray’s new book, By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission with the blunt title, Jeb Bush’s Favorite Author Rejects Democracy, Says the Hyper-Rich Should Seize Power. It comes with a great big picture of King George III. Because that is, in effect, what Murray is arguing for. Basically: democracy isn’t going to bring about the great libertarian utopia that Murray wants. (That’s because it is an extremely unpopular ideology.) “Murray, in other words, would rather transfer much of our sovereign nation’s power to govern itself to a single privileged individual than continue to live under the government America’s voters have chosen.” Kind of frightening that this guy is considered one of the great American conservative thinkers.

Millhiser focused a lot of attention on Murray’s misuse of James Madison to make his case. According to Murray, Madison didn’t believe in the expansive interpretation of the Constitution. That’s a questionable statement. Any time people make arguments based upon what various founding fathers did or didn’t think, we are getting into very dangerous territory. For one thing, most of the founding fathers weren’t wonderful people. For another: they lived in a completely different time with radically different needs. But when it comes specifically to Madison, he was a pretty practical guy whose opinions changed over time.

What I’m struck with is that the supposedly learned Charles Murray seems stuck with the Constitution as it existed in 1788 — that’s 227 years ago for those of you following along at home. The Constitution was set up so that it could be changed over time. This is something that people like Murray always seem to forget. They also seem to mistake the Constitution for the Articles of Confederacy. The whole point of the Constitution was to make the United States a practical possibility. The Articles of Confederacy were unworkable. And much of the original Constitution has needed to be shed because it too was unworkable.

And that brings us to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. That was basically what turned Charles Murray’s beloved “Constitution” in the modern Constitution — greatly expanding the federal government and limiting the rights of the states. That’s because, oh I don’t know, we had just fought the Civil War over the issue of what states seemed to think were their rights. Murray claims that all that is wrong with modern America stems from the 1937 decision finding Social Security constitutional, Helvering v Davis. But what he really wants is a repeal of the Fourteenth Amendment where the federal government is neutered.

Millhiser concluded pretty much what I did a couple of weeks ago, Charles Murray Finally Realizes He Isn’t Winning. He noted the general change in the conservative outlook on politics, “When President Ronald Reagan was in office, he spoke with the confidence of a man who believed that the American people were on his side.” Conservatives sure don’t think that anymore. And here is the great big conservative “thinker” whining about how democracy can’t possibly help them to attain their goals.

Ultimately, Murray is calling for the decimation of the law itself. Of course, he is quick to add that his approach would only be used against laws that are invalid. But invalid according to whom? That’s a question that Murray doesn’t seem to grapple with, but the answer is obvious enough: the billionaires who fund his little project. So he may think that doing this will lead us back to the One True Way of (his version) of James Madison. But it leads further back than that: to King George III. This is the conservative goal. But it has always been — from Edmund Burke to Charles Murray.

According to Peter Wehner, the Democratic Party has moved far to the left while the Republicans have stayed pretty much where they were. The New York Times gave him a thousand words to make a shockingly disingenuous case for his claim, Have Democrats Pulled Too Far Left? But that title gives entirely the wrong impression, because it is not a question. Wehner is convinced of it. And by cherry picking issues and creatively starting the clock at the presidency of Bill Clinton, he sounds sorta reasonable. The problem is that his argument would only be convincing to readers of The Wall Street Journal editorial page — because they already believe such nonsense.

Wehner’s main argument is that the Democratic Party has moved back to being as liberal as it was before Clinton. This is supposed to be some terrible thing, because one of the things that all conservatives know is that the Democrats lost three presidential elections (1980, 1984, and 1988) because it was too liberal. As I’ve discussed to the point of exhaustion: this narrative is wrong. The Democrats lost those elections because the political science fundamentals were in the Republicans’ favor: the economy was bad in 1980 and then good in 1984 and 1988. What’s more, Clinton won in 1992 because the economy was bad, not because he was conservative and had a “Sister Souljah moment.”

But is the modern Democratic Party more liberal than it was under Bill Clinton? In some ways it is. But this isn’t because of some great lurch to the left. It is because times and evidence have changed. Wehner pointed out that the Democrats have turned against Bill Clinton’s “tough on crime” policies. Yep. That’s because they have been terrible for the nation. Also: Clinton has turned against them. Democrats have also turned against Bill Clinton’s end of welfare as we have known it. Again: that’s one that has long been shown to be a failure and only ever looked like it worked because we were in the middle of a stock bubble created economic boom. In addition, you can add Obama being more liberal on things like gay rights, where the entire country has moved left. Finally, Clinton did not make as big a deal of global warming as Obama does — I wonder why! But that’s the extent to which Obama is more liberal than Clinton.

Wehner also noted that Clinton lowered the capital gains rate and Obama raised it. Yes, but Clinton lowered it to 20% and Obama raised it to 20%. Nothing is said of the fact that Clinton raised the top federal income tax rate from 28% all the way up to 39.6%. Obama only allowed it to return from 35% back up to 39.6% — while allowing all the lower income tax brackets to stay lower than they were under Clinton. And then, Wehner noted that Obama created Obamacare. Fair enough. But Clinton tried to create the even more liberal Hillarycare — and failed. So how is it that Obama is more liberal than Clinton?

And then, as though Wehner can’t write so much as transmit his conservative id onto paper, he switched his discussion to the recent UK elections. According to him, the Labour Party lost because it “ran hard to the left.” Again, this is the kind of nonsense that is believed only by those who get their “news” from The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The Labour Party ran a decidedly centrist campaign, promising (very much like Democrats in the US) to be Conservative Lite. Wehner also mentioned that the election gave the Conservative Party its first outright majority since 1992. Yes, but with 36% of the vote — one of those oddities of supposedly democratic political systems.

As for how far to the right the Republicans have moved: he’s not even right on that account. He starts the clock at Clinton, so basically the big move right had already happened. But even still, as recently as 2008, the Republicans wanted to do something about global warming. As recently as 2006 they wanted to do something about immigration. On the issue of abortion, the Republicans have largely become absolutists, even while claiming that Obama’s position has somehow moved left. Republicans are now for giving more money to farmers and less food to poor children. Wehner’s entire argument is based on a very selective reading of history. It’s shocking that this guy has a job.

What comes across loud and clear in Wehner’s article, however, is his desperation. Anytime a conservative comes out in public trying to save liberals from themselves, you can be certain that it means that said conservative is very scared. And that is because conservatives long ago learned something that most liberals still don’t understand: you don’t need to win elections if you can move the political playing field far to your side. The fact that Wehner doesn’t get laughed out of polite society for claiming that Obama is a liberal firebrand shows just how successful the Republican Party has been at moving the playing field far to the right. The last thing he wants is for extremely moderate candidates like Hillary Clinton to take up any actual liberal — and popular — policy positions. So I’m glad to see him sweat. But I cannot say why The New York Times thinks it is appropriate to give such a disingenuous, nervous fool this very valuable exposure.

Afterword

I wrote this yesterday morning. I didn’t think that Wehner’s article would cause so much of a stir, but at this point, it looks like everyone has written about it. The consensus is the same: Wehner is an idiot. But I thought Ed Kilgore had a good take on it, The Tired Old “Both Sides Getting More Extreme” Meme. He noted that since Wehner is a non-crazy Republican, he has to make these kinds of arguments to justify staying in the party.