There’s this thing about modern American conservatism: it’s clueless appropriation of liberal complaints. You see it all the time in countless ways. But I want to talk about hypocrisy today, because of something I just saw. But before I get to that, I want to go back almost three years.
At that time, I wrote an article about the religious scholar Robert M Price. He’s incredibly knowledgeable on Christianity, but also other things like New Age belief systems and H P Lovecraft. And in this way, he’s what one would have to call a liberal — some would say a radical. But politically, he’s conservative. But he’s not a smart conservative. Whenever he talks about politics, it’s clear that all his information comes from right wing radio.
And on one occasion, he said something that I had heard so many times before. He was talking about hypocrisy as it related to the Bible. And then he gave an example.
Fake Hypocrisy
I wrote at the time:
This is a clear example of fake hypocrisy. The Democratic members of Congress (Remember: not a single Republican in either house voted for it.) weren’t treating themselves any different than they were treating people who work full-time at Walmart.
Now sure: if Congress had passed single-payer healthcare and forbade people from buying private insurance (something that would never happen) and then kept their previous insurance, that would have been hypocrisy. But that wasn’t the case. Price thought it was hypocrisy because he didn’t know what he was talking about.
Real Hypocrisy
And so we come to the present day. On Monday, Sarah Kliff wrote, Republicans Exempt Their Own Insurance From Their Latest Health Care Proposal. She put it simply, “House Republicans appear to have included a provision that exempts members of Congress and their staff from their latest health care plan.” What she’s talking about is the provision that allows states to opt out of “Obamacare’s ban on preexisting conditions.” You know: so that sick people in Alabama and Idaho could be further screwed over. I guess in the fantasyland of Republicans, that’s called “Choice!”
But Kliff continued:
I wish that Dr Price read the newspaper instead of getting all his news filtered through Rush Limbaugh. Because here is a case of real hypocrisy. In fact, it is a case of stunningly wicked hypocrisy. This is Old Testament kind of hypocrisy — you know: David and Bathsheba hypocrisy.
It’s All Different Now
Of course, now everything’s changed. Yesterday, Kliff wrote, GOP House Member Says He’ll Fix the Exemption for Congress in His Health Bill. The member in question is Tom MacArthur himself. But the only reason he’s removing it from the bill is because he got caught. If it hadn’t been reported on, it would have stayed. MacArthur put it in the bill because, like most Republican politicians, he’s a real hypocrite.
To make matters worse, MacArthur appears to have lied about the reason he put it in. He blamed the Senate Budget Committee. The Senate Budget Committee spokesperson said in no uncertain terms that this was absolutely false. It was not, as Ben Bradlee would say, “A non-denial denial.”
Summing Up
A liberal friend of mine doesn’t like it when I go after Republicans so harshly because she has Republican family members and friends. But the funny thing is that as I’ve become less partisan — feeling like I’m floating out there far to the Democratic Party’s left — my opinion of Republicans has cratered. The politicians are — with almost no exceptions — simply evil. And the voters are stupid, ignorant, or both.
I just don’t have the time for it anymore. If the Soviet Union was the Evil Empire, the United States is the Evil Empire. And that’s certainly what the world thinks. But like all evil empires throughout history, we think we’re just spreading peace and love. We are an ignorant people. It’s not surprising that half of us can’t tell the difference between fake hypocrisy and real hypocrisy.
Most people just don’t want to think about politics — or, more specifically, policy. They don’t mind funny stories where politicians get caught with their pants down … much in the way they like “dumb bankrobber” stories. In this, times haven’t changed much since Paul Harvey was on the air.
What’s do damning about this is that, in lieu of actually paying attention to policies, voters (and the non-voters who keep us inertial) accept time-calcified brand identites of the parties. Democrats are kindly, head-in-clouds dreamers, Republicans the nitty-gritty realists. Neither of these are remotely true nor really ever were. But fast-food never looks like the pictures on the drive-thru menu, either, and we still buy it.
Yep. What could be more “head in the clouds” than thinking massive upper class tax cuts will somehow lead to broad-based prosperity?
Honest to God, most of these people actually believe “tax reform” is going to mean they get more take-home pay. They see the numbers for what’s taken out and wish those numbers were smaller. Few understand the differences between Social Security, Medicare, health insurance, state tax and federal tax. They just assume it all goes to some faraway entity called “government,” and don’t believe they get anything back in return. (They certainly don’t get enough in return!) So they love it when Republicans promise to cut taxes. And every time the Republicans successfully cut taxes, that paycheck never gets bigger for some reason …
And the worst part of all this is there’s really no hope for the GOP short of complete destruction. The Dems l, at least, have a left wing capable of pulling the mainstream party away from corporatism. The GOP has liquidated any shred of sanity; it’s loons and dittoheads and wingnuts all the way down.
It’s just not a political party anymore. It has no approach to governing except “destroy it and sell the parts for scrap.” Once upon a time, the GOP stood for business-friendly policies and actual job creation. Eisenhower wasn’t anti-union.
Our depressed blog host has written that in a functional democracy, the Republicans wouldn’t exist (except in fringe form). Instead, the Democrats would split, in two or even more ways. But that’s not even conceivable right now, with the corporate money and massive propaganda army behind Republicans.