Balls and Strikes. That’s what John Roberts said about being a judge. During his confirmation hearing, he said, “I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.” At the time, I was appalled. Never in my life had I ever heard someone say such a nakedly dishonest thing during a confirmation hearing. It was pure rhetoric of the conservative variety. What he meant was, “I’m not like those liberal activist judges, I just apply the law.” The only thing that could be worse than Roberts lying about this is if he is so delusional as to actually believe it.

It’s been a bad couple of weeks. And this week’s Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon vs FEC was the worst of it. You can read my thoughts on the case in, Supreme Court Strikes Blow for Oligarchy. It isn’t so much what it means on a practical level, because the truth is that our political system was already a mess. It’s owned by the wealthy. If you have any question, just look at what happened to Proposition 37 in 2012. But the truth is that the Supreme Court could have decided to make a stand for democracy, but the conservatives rushed to the conclusion that the best thing is for us to have an oligarchy.

What the Supreme Court is really doing is deciding between competing interests. This is what the court should be doing. And McCutcheon provided an amazingly clear choice. On the one side, there are several hundred extremely rich people who already have undemocratic levels of political power. On the other side, you have well over 300 million people who have an interest in not having their democracy manipulated. Five of the justices felt the interests of the few hundred were most important. Four of the justices felt the interests of the entire nation were most important.

I’m not saying that the interests of the majority always trump the interests of the minority. Not at all! That’s why we have a constitution and the rule of law. But this case seems pretty clear. It reminds me very much of Bush vs Gore where the conservatives on the court were so very concerned that the trust fund millionaire Bush would lose out on any possible rights. In this case, the court is very worried about the rights of an Alabama millionaire to grease the wheels of democracy. It would seem that the conservatives on the court are only really interested in individual rights when it comes to people who already have a hell of a lot more rights than most.

But the baseball analogy really bugs me. I’m always impressed with baseball umpires. Things happen fast and they very rarely blow a call. I’m sure if you had nine umpires behind home plate when a curve ball skimmed the edge of the plate, at least eight of them would agree on the call. The reason that the justices didn’t agree on the call in McCutcheon is that it is nothing at all like calling balls and strikes. And with the conservative majority on the court, just like with conservatives throughout the political system, it is all about ideology. I can live with that, but it is galling when they claim they are just objective arbiters of truth.

My favorite song is “If I Only Had a Brain.” Or at least it is if you go by the song that I sing most often. Following from my mom, I am always singing bits of songs that comment about what is going on in my life. And given that I find myself often doing very stupid things, singing “If I Only Had a Brain” is appropriate. It’s also a hell of a song with a catchy melody and clever lyrics. It is also wry and plaintive, which rather well captures the duality of my personality.

The part I most sing is actually done by Judy Garland. “With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’, you could be another Lincoln.” First: wow. I love that kind of smart and corny line. And there are others, like when “riddle” is rhymed with “individal,” a silly truncation of “individual.” Or rhyming “merry” with “dingaderry,” which may or may not be a word. And that’s the first part of the song:

What hit me this morning was what the lines imply: President Lincoln was a great man because he was smart—because of the thoughts that thought. This was an idea that I dimly remember from my childhood: that the president was smart. This idea has died, especially as of Reagan—but not because Reagan wasn’t smart. It is all part of the Republican Party’s push to authoritarianism.

If you push all the racism aside with the Nazis, what you are left with is a violent authoritarian movement. It mythologized violent, unthinking youths. And we see this everywhere in the modern conservative movement. Look at all the love that Putin is getting these days. Or look at how the religious right has turned Jesus into a muscle bound Rambo character who is coming back (Soon!) and taking names. But most of all you see it in the conservative faith that government is something that is best done by uneducated novices. (For a counter to that, see, Jerry Brown’s Liberal Bona Fides.)

The issue is not about being smart, however, but about valuing intelligence. The whole thing goes back to Paul Krugman’s line that reality has a well known liberal bias. This wasn’t true 50 years ago. But the conservatives have moved the country so far to the right that there really are very few policies they support that make any sense. So it isn’t surprising that they would start pushing the idea that stupid politicians are better than smart ones. They really don’t have many smart politicians who are willing to support their bad ideas.

Stephen Colbert mocks this rather well by talking about thinking with his gut. But it is a widely held belief. At least on the right. The last three Democratic presidents (Obama, Clinton, Carter) were, regardless of their other failings, very intelligent men. The last three Republicans presidents (Bush the Younger, Bush the Elder, and Reagan) were, while certainly not dumb, not known for their intelligence brilliance. If anyone were going to mention one of them in a song, it will be like this, “Complexity won’t trouble you; you’ll act just like ol’ W; before you get a brain!”

On this day in 1792, Thaddeus Stevens was born. When I wrote about him a year and a half ago, I quoted Wikipedia of that time saying, “Stevens dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. He believed from his personal experience that being different or having a different perspective can enrich society. He believed that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed but celebrated.” Of course, Wikipedia being what it is, no longer says anything about that but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t make the sentiment any less true, even though we don’t exactly know what Stevens dreamed about.

Stevens was a very important Pennsylvania Representative during the Civil War. He became interested in the cause of abolishing slavery in the 1830s. Had he not have committed to that cause, he would likely have gone much further as a politician. But he was a true believer, not just of the cause of slavery but of the cause of the powerless generally. Even though that kind of belief (then and now) tends to go along with a lot of paternalism, it is hard to think of him as anything but a good guy. And racism was not just a theoretical issue with him.

In the 1840s, Stevens hired the one-quarter African American (then as now just “black”) housekeeper Lydia Hamilton Smith. She became what neighbors considered Stevens common law wife. So his interests couldn’t have been too paternal. She was, however, 23 years younger, and by her photograph as an older women, quite attractive. Idealistic though he might have been, he was still a man.

Happy birthday Thaddeus Stevens!

Recently, I’ve been watching a lot of the British television series Agatha Christie’s Poirot. It’s the one with David Suchet in the title role. I remember watching it when it first came out; I was blown away by Suchet in the part. I was used to Albert Finney in Murder on the Orient Express and Peter Ustinov in Death on the Nile. Although I liked both of those films, I didn’t feel that either actor captured the essence of Hercule Poirot. But Suchet really brought the character to life.

This is very important. The truth is that the plots of Agatha Christie really aren’t that interesting. They are often far fetched. What’s more, they are so mechanical. Christie had a formula and she stuck by it. The only real question from half way through one of her stories is what bit of arcane knowledge she will pull out of her bag of research to justify the conclusion. It is very rarely a surprise exactly who done it, only how they done it. And that surprise is pretty much never interesting.

What is perhaps most problematic about her plots is how Poirot’s evidence is so weak. I am almost always left with the idea that even the worst defense attorney would manage to get the murderer off. To make up for this, the plots usually involve the murderer confessing under the power of Poirot’s narrative. And this is often combined with the murderer’s suicide. All of this is brilliantly lampooned in “The Evil Voice” from The Mitchell and Webb Look:

So all we are left with to really appreciate is Poirot himself. And he is an awful character. Agatha Christie herself said that he was “insufferable” and “an egocentric creep.” And I think this is why Suchet is so great at the character. Poirot is a man who is very good at one thing, but is blessed in only valuing that one thing. So he’s perfectly happy being the very limited person that he is. And Suchet plays the character fearlessly in this regard.

So it isn’t that Poirot doesn’t care that other people look down on him for being a coward. It is that he doesn’t even know. There is only one Good and he happens to have cornered the market in it. Lucky him! Interestingly, in my travels in academia, I have met more than a few Poirot types. They are kind of sad in their very limited appreciation of the complexities of life. And so is Poirot. But we get to see him at his best.

Agatha Christie’s Poirot has been produced for almost 25 years now. They’ve made 70 episodes. Half of them are 50 minutes long and the other half are feature length. I think that speaks well of their quality. If you haven’t seen the series, you really do owe it to yourself to at least check out a few.

Over at The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter made a good point, Don’t Call Rand Paul the Frontrunner. Basically, she distinguished between candidates who get a lot of media coverage and candidates who actually win. Journalists like covering Rand Paul because he isn’t as dreadfully boring as most Republicans. And he appeals to certain Tea Party folk. But neither of these groups are that important in nominating a presidential candidate. “These ‘bedrock’ voters don’t show up at straw polls. They don’t wave signs or show up at rallies. They do, however, vote.” Or at least they do during presidential elections.

So Rand’s problem isn’t in a general election but in the primary. Or so Walter thinks. I think he has at least as big a problem in a general election. A big part of this is very general. Paul is an ideologue. There is intense attention in a general election. Compare him to, for example, Hillary Clinton. I actually prefer Paul’s view on international affairs to Clinton’s. But in the public sphere, Clinton’s realpolitik comes off as knowledgeable and serious. Paul’s isolationism comes off as the fantasies of a child.

This brings up another issue. Even though I agree with Paul about foreign affairs, I would never vote for him. Just on the most basic level, the truth is that Paul isn’t serious when it comes to foreign affairs. I don’t think he’s thought the issues through half as seriously as I have, and foreign affairs isn’t something I’m very interested in. I fully expect that if he became president, it would Bush the Younger all over again. The great isolationist candidate would turn into the great preemptive striking president.

But it’s deeper than that. While his foreign policy positions would make him seem like he isn’t qualified to be president, the issue doesn’t otherwise mean that much to voters. I would never vote for him because his economic ideas are loony. And I know from experience that libertarian rhetoric always turns into straight conservative policy. So Rand Paul would give us a smaller safety net but he wouldn’t lessen government spying on us and he wouldn’t reduce the number of people in prison for nonviolent offenses.

For most voters, economic issues trump everything else. The only way he might get some traction is to campaign like Reagan in 1980. You might remember that Reagan promised that he was going to cut income taxes by 10% for the first three years for a total of 27% cut. It didn’t work out that way. But at this point, I don’t think voters are going to buy lavish promises. All the big income tax cuts that Republicans have enacted have been overwhelmingly for the rich. And because of the way that most of the tax burden on the poor is in the form of local and payroll taxes, even an across the board income tax cut would be highly regressive.

The only issue that Paul might have is his embraces of cannabis legalization. But even on that issue, it is clear that he holds his nose. And by 2016, I’m not sure it will be that big an issue as more and more states move to legalize. Plus, if Paul becomes the nominee, the Democratic nominee will follow him on the issue. So cannabis is a pretty thin reed to hang a campaign on. Meanwhile, he’s for destroying lots of popular government programs. And he’s a racist, even if he uses pretty words to justify it. Bottom line: he’d be a bad candidate and I’d be more than happy if the Republicans nominated him.

Afterword

Necessary caveat: liberals said the same thing about Reagan. But it was a very different time. We are at the end of 35 years of steady movement to the right. I don’t see people standing up and demanding that we get cracking on destroying our culture even further.

This morning on Business Insider, I read, UPS Fires 250 Employees for Staging a 90-Minute Protest to Defend Co-Worker. It seems in February, a bunch of UPS employees went on a short strike to protest the firing of union activist Jairo Reyes over an hours dispute. UPS has claimed that they had to fire the employees because their business is time sensitive. The natural response to that is: really?!

UPS often arrives well over 90 minutes late for pickups and deliveries. It is the nature of their business. Basically, what UPS is saying is that employee protests are all fine just as long as they absolutely don’t inconvenience the company. You know, it’s like the old conservative idea of free speech: you can say anything you want as long as you don’t. UPS is sending a clear signal: any union activism will result in your being fired. And sadly, that sort of behavior has been perfectly okay with the government for over thirty years.

The story gets worse, however. The New York City Council is threatening to break a contract they have with UPS that save the company millions of dollars in reduced costs on their parking fines (a cost of business for all delivery companies). UPS, like a petulant child, responded with threats. “UPS fired back that it might need to terminate additional employees if the city alters its contract.” In other words: if you don’t let us needlessly fire employees, we will fire more.

Notice how pathetic this is. These great “job creators” are only profitable because of the special government deals they get. You have to wonder why the government is even doing business with them. There’s definitely a problem with companies setting one locality against another. But the government really needs to get its act together. New York City has the advantage here. If UPS wants to lose millions of dollars just so it can make a statement, let it. Someone else will hire the people to deliver the packages.

Coming on the heals of two weeks of constant bad political news, this just depresses me. We really have become an oligarchy. And the people can’t even manage to rise up enough to vote in midterm elections. Meanwhile, actual democratic remedies become harder and harder—not only systemically but simply because the people are spending all their time just trying to survive. The United States has become a country by, for, and of the corporation. Now it is UPS who tells New York City what to do. The people don’t matter at all.

I heard that Sean Hannity recently signed a $100 million four year deal with Fox News. Arithmetic fans will notice that this is roughly $25 million dollars per year. That stood out to me because Rachel Maddow makes less than one-third of that. But while Maddow is the star of MSNBC, Hannity is at best a fading position player. So what gives?

Some would point out that even in the 25-54 demographic, Hannity still beats Maddow even though he is at a worse time. And Megyn Kelly, who is in direct competition with Maddow, crushes her. But that’s hardly an indication that Hannity or Kelly are bigger draws than Maddow. The truth is that Fox News is simply a bigger draw than MSNBC. Even Piers Morgan would out-perform Maddow if he were given a show on Fox News.

It’s worse than this indicates, however. The main thing I got from An Atheist in the Foxhole is that of all the cable news stations, Fox News pays its people the worst. All the regular workers there dream of getting a job at MSNBC or CNN. So that’s quite a disconnect. It would be one thing if that free market cult of a television station paid everyone well. But instead, they starve their worker base and lavish their stars with money.

I think this the conservative ideal of a market economy. In fact, for years we had to listen to Mitt Romney jabber on about this. It’s a lottery approach to incentives. It doesn’t accept the idea that one can gain valuable skills and go on to have a decent job and fulfilling life. Instead it is: if you are super great, you too might get that multi-million dollar paycheck. And that is a real problem because it actually disincentivizes most workers. And the people it incentivizes are the wrong kind of people: hyper-aggressive and narcissistic.

Fundamentally, it is all about luck. I’m sure that along the way, plenty of Bill O’Reillys simply didn’t make it. Interestingly, that’s key to the Horatio Alger stories. They weren’t about people working hard and succeeding, they about young men who lucked into positions where they were able to show their stuff. No one says that Bill O’Reilly isn’t good at his job, as pernicious as his effect on society may be. But O’Reilly didn’t get his chance by being a contestant on “America’s Next Top Pundit.” Any number of random events could have derailed his career.

So Fox News appears to be the conservative economic utopia where the rich get almost everything and the poor, who support them, fight for the scraps. If conservatives were honest, they’d admit that this is the world they are trying to create. All the Fox News pundits would not go around saying that poverty would be eliminated if we just ignored it; they’d say the truth, “I’ve got mine, too bad for you, suckers!” And if the billion dollar “news” network is this way, just imagine how much worse it would be in the economy as a whole.

I think Dana Milbank is kind of an idiot. He is the ultimate Washington Wanker. He’s a moderate who is great at spouting what all the upper middle class Washington pundits think. You know the stuff: economically conservative, and socially liberal—the beliefs that are totally consistent with their class interests. But even while they are just pushing the policies that are best for them, they think that they are being objective and advocating for what is best for the nation as a whole. Milbank is that kind of loser.

But he does have his moments. In February, he called Bill O’Reilly on his shameful pre-Super Bowl interview with President Obama. And then Monday, he offered up the greatest headline I’ve read in weeks, Conservatives to Women: Lean Back. It runs through the absolutely pathetic Heritage Foundation forum. “The advocacy group held a gathering of women of the right Monday afternoon to mark the final day of Women’s History Month—and the consensus was that women ought to go back in history.”

It appears to have been a truly ridiculous event. The basic idea is that women are happier and wealthier and more conservative when they are married. Now I don’t know about the happier issue. But it is true that married women are wealthier and more conservative. But the argument has things backwards. It is like saying, “Most rich people own boats, so if you buy a boat, you’ll be rich!” The truth is that older women are more likely to be married and older people tend to be richer. And at this time, the older generation tends to be conservative. (It is not true that people get more conservative as they get older, however.) So the big push that if women would just get married they’d vote Republican is just stupid.

But at least it isn’t harmful. But telling women who aren’t in a position to get married that doing so will solve all their problems is harmful. I don’t doubt that being in a good marriage is better than being single for most people of both sexes. But being in a bad marriage is far, far, far worse than being single. And that would be the result of such advice. The truth is that women can decide for themselves if they want to get married. They don’t need to be “encouraged” into doing it.

The whole thing is entirely typical of modern conservatism. Social problems are complex, but conservatives just want to throw simple solutions at them. People are poor? Conservatives say if you get rid of food stamps, that’s just the kick in the butt poor people need. There is widespread poverty in minority communities? It must be young black men don’t have enough billionaires to look up to. And here, single women don’t understand the beneficence that is Ayn Rand? They just need a good Romantic Hero to rape and then marry them! (To be fair, unlike Rand, they don’t specifically endorse rape, although they do provide some apologetics for it.)

Milbank summed up the forum, “Essentially, they’re saying that Republicans aren’t the ones who need to change—women are.” That does seem to be the big problem with these events. And it is clear that the Republican women are a big part of the problem. He finished his article by noting that there were very few women at the event. John Hilboldt of the Heritage Foundation started the forum by saying, “Wow! Where are all the ladies?” To this Milbank made the perfect observation, “It’s a question Republicans may be asking for a long time.” Yes they will.

Afterword

When I was looking for images, I found the following on a conservative website. It is amazingly vile. For one thing, it makes an equivalence that no liberal is making. The argument here is akin to saying, only the Japanese have ever been at war because they are the only ones who ever had a nuclear bomb dropped on them. Another thing is that it wants to say, “See, those Muslims are the ones that abuse their women; not us.” Of course, even if you accept that framing of the issue, American Christian men do that to American women. So what exactly is the point? Also: notice the slut shaming. That Sandra Fluke just wants to have sex and make us all pay for it! This all goes back to Rush Limbaugh; if he hadn’t started all of that creepy ranting, no one would talk about her in this way. And to top it off, they’ve changed the debate—no doubt because of Limbaugh’s widely mocked lack of understanding about how hormonal birth control works. But the issue has nothing to do with condoms unless you are the Pope.

Two things to note. First: there is a lot more about this that is disgusting; don’t take my comments to be exhaustive. Second: this is the same argument that Richard Dawkins made against women in the atheist community who tried to point out the rampant sexism in the movement. So it ain’t just conservatives.