Political Labels Part III

The notes that I took directly underneath the “pinnacle versus progress” had a little diagram. Bear with me while I try to explain it. I wrote four words: Liberal, Republican, Conservative, and Democrat. Connecting the words in a circle were four arrows. In the big empty space in the middle, I wrote Meaning.

The lecturer had started out his talk with an example of advertising in politics. Rather than advertising just now creeping into politics, that was always the purpose of advertising. The father of modern advertising was Sigmund Freud’s nephew. Now, I don’t believe in nepotism or even hereditary gifts (you know, that somehow the nephew was born with all of Freud’s knowledge), but the point made was that the nephew very well knew of his uncle’s legacy. The nephew (didn’t grab his name, too lazy to google) made no bones about using advertising for political purposes. His book on the subject was allegedly titled “Propaganda.” That was before the word got such a negative connotation. Anyway, this was in the early twenties.

What I’ve noticed since that time, is that politcal movements are increasingly advertising oriented. One of the main concepts of advertising, as I understand it, is to sell something to someone that they don’t really need. The most effective way to do this is through branding. Advertising spends billions of dollars getting us to associate certain brands with certain experiences. Likewise, in politics, advertising brands politicians (and oh how I sometimes wish it was with a cattle brand) as representing this or that. In Montana, politicians always represent Montana values, while never really explaining what those values are. We saw branding in the last senate election when Jon Tester was shown holding a hunting rifle on his ranch when he apparently had not had a hunting permit for a number of years. However, a good advertising campaign (campaign — such a war-like word except the war is for your brand loyalty and association) will convince us, usually psychological techniques that anything can represent anything else.

Now, let’s take a little side trip. I’ve recently become interested in tribalism. No, not those tattoos or even Native Americans, but humans tendency to form little tribes, clans, or BFFs. We congregate with our sports teams, represent our local city or state, or defend someone’s musical selection as long as it matches our own. Tribalism, I believe, held an important key to Homo Sapien Sapien’s survival into the modern era. Humans want to engage in tight-knit groups. It’s only since the French Revolution that we’ve really stepped up nationalism. Before then, we didn’t really identify with a such a huge political entity as an entire country. So, it sort of makes no sense to only have two political parties represent a country that about as large than all of Europe.

Though, as many in the blogosphere know, we don’t have two politcal parties. I would argue that we actually have sort of a paradox. We have both numerous political parties and only one political party.

Numerous political parties: Each region has its own interpretation of the main political party. That’s how we can have a Democratic Governor in Montana and a Republican Governor in Massachusetts. Each region dictates its own interpretation of the political party.

One political party: Taking a far enough step back, you see both political parties saying essentially the same things while only changing the labels. Plus they flip-flop whenever political advantage might be had. Many of the same corporations are the top donors to both parties. Both parties are run from the top down with political consultants running from party to party, paycheck to paycheck, indifferent to any classical merit of the party.

That’s what I think my diagram was portraying: the one party system that seems to dance around meaning. The advertisers have gotten so good at building political brands that for a large swath of Americans, it doesn’t matter what their candidate actually does or says. A recent study showed that many ardent Bush supporters believed that Bush approved and was implementing the Kyoto Accord. Both political parties flip-flop their traditional stance every few years or even every few months.

But with humans tendency and needfor tribes, how does this actually translate for us? We pick a side and then we fight the other person. We subscribe to our media outlets. We support each other in branding the “enemy.” We believe that “God” or “Reason” or “Over-arching philosophical system” is on our side and the enemy is crazy, stupid, or heretical. We get caught up in this race, this dance to catch the enemy’s tail that we don’t even notice that a giant void opened in the middle, the void of “meaning.” (“Meaning” meaning actually agreeing that certain words mean certain things or that things should get done that help us rather than harm us.)

I don’t know how true this trilogy of tripe actually is, but it sort of makes sense to me. With all this partison bickering us constituents engage in, both politcal parties are accepting huge checks from most of the same corporations. And while the public continues to get this shaft in regards to education, transportation, prisons, health care, and trade, Corporations get NAFTA and a nice big war.

Politcal Labels Part II

I did manage to take some notes from the lecture on Political Labels.  One of my notes showed a sort of diagram that stated Conservative = pinnacle.  Liberal = progression.  I think what I meant when I wrote this is that within a lot of conservative strains that I read, conservatives believe that we have either reached the pinnacle of history or that we have already reached it and must work hard to go back to it.  One example can be found within evolution.  Many anti-evolution advocates believe that humanity is the pinnacle of God’s creation.  It doesn’t get any better than this.  Animals may or may not evolve, but they will never reach the excellence of humanity because God doesn’t want them to.   Liberals believe that evolution is a process.  Humans, too, will change give enough time or climate changes.  We have discovered that we have “dark DNA” — DNA that can be switched on or off given the right circumstances.  In the liberal’s world, humanity is quite capable of destroying everything and is already in the process of doing so.Capitalism can be seen this way, too.  In conservative thought, the free market is the pinnacle of all economics.  Nothing better will ever come along and nothing better could ever exist.  Any inefficiencies within the system can be explained by the market not being free enough, no matter pervasive human tampering with the system.  Any more, the democrats seem to be indistinguishable from the Republicans in this regard.  Both sides want to squeeze as much as they can from the economy as possible.  The difference comes with non-political liberals.  These liberals believe that capitalism, as practiced now works, but is in the process of working better.  Humanity, and earth, needs to develop a better system, one that takes care of our neighbors and respects the environment.

But the above argument seems to have switched places with classic conservatism and classic liberalism.  Today’s conservatives believe that this man-made idea, capitalism, can magically solve any problem if left alone, while today’s liberals believe that a little more finger-in-the-pot is necessary to make sure we don’t suddenly wake up in a hand-basket.

 However, one of the things the lecturer admitted over and over again, is that he’s not sure exactly what today’s liberals and conservatives stand for.    I’ll share some more of my thoughts about this in part three.

Political Labels

My wife and I went to a lecture last night.  The focus on the lecture was “Political Labels.”  We went because of my wife’s ethics class, but the talk resounded with me and things that I’ve been trying to figure out.  I’ve been reading a lot of politcal blogs since October or so–ever since the Independant ran an article alerting me to the wide world of webpolitik. 

 I used to think things were more cut and dry, but as you may or may not have noticed, my political blogs have gone from feast to famine.  It’s not that I’m gloating over a Democratic victory at the national level or lamenting the Democratic setbacks at the local level or even fuming over the Democratic inertia everywhere.  In part it results from a conversations I’ve had with family members over the last few years that have finally congeeled. 

What is the difference between a liberal and a conservative?  I’d get to arguing with family members about issues.  As long as we left off the labels, we were hating the same things and agreeing about the same things.  I would say the Repubs were evil and un-American and they would say the same thing about the Dems.   

Last night’s talk really hit home for that reason.  The professor (sorry, but I never saw an ad and didn’t get his name) expressed his own confusion with political labels.  He went through the history of classical conservativism, explained the main points (wariness of a centralized power and wariness of too much power residing in too few individuals were a couple of them).  Conservativism also exists specifically within a family or community.  It seeks to protect the family and community.  Likewise, conservative economics tend to be protectionist, e.g. NOT free trade as we know it. 

Liberalism, on the other hand, seeks to acheive a grander more abstract goal.  It also views a person in more abstract terms.  One of the more astounding things the lecturer mentioned is that Milton Friedman considered himself a liberal in the classical sense, in that he advocated for freer trade with other countries. 

Please excuse me if I’m vague on a lot of details and refer to my intro which states that I want this blog to partially be a place for me to think while writing out.  I don’t care so much about being completely coherent.  Besides, he was speaking at a breakneck pace.  My wife gave up trying to take notes after the first ten minutes.  After 30 minutes, my head was hurting and my temple veins were throbbing. 

 I’ll try to break up this post a little, so a part II will show up soon.

New Dollar Coins

The U.S. Mint has just announced that it will print a new series of dollar coins featuring all the dead presidents. I’m a big fan of dollar coins, if for no other reason seeing the look on people’s faces when they realize they were just paid with a dollar coin. Almost as good as paying with a $2 bill. I would use them more if vending machines and parking meters actually used the coins or if the coins were actually distinguishable from the quarters. Sure they’re gold, but my fingers have yet to develope a sense of color when jiggling for coins in the dark.

But probably the biggest deterrent for using dollar coins remains the same for not using dollar bills: I don’t carry cash. I figure by using plastic instead of paper, I’m helping save the government far more than by switching over to metal.

My Newest Internet Addiction

Introduced to me by my brother. My life gets sadder with every trade. Maybe I should stay out of the stock market.

Raising the Minimum Wage

This is one of the trickier ballot measures.  I’m not sure if I’m going to vote for it.  Not because I don’t support raising the minimum wage, but because of part two of the measure.  The second part stipulates a yearly increase to adjust for inflation.  This may be a good thing since we won’t have to rely on sluggish politicians hemming or hawing about it every year. 

The thing I don’t like about the yearly increase is that it might take away ammunition for future wage increases.  If we have a built in mechanism for raises, then opponents of wage increases will use that against us.  We would effectively be locked in at $6.15 per hour until the feds raise the minimum wage or if somehow the state raises it again.  However, next time, it will be much, much harder to convince people to raise the minimum wage.

Then again, I have a friend who was assigned to find people who make minimum wage.  The thing is, you can’t really find anyone in Missoula who makes only $5.15/hour.  That should be expected in a town with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country.  The problem is that the lower end of the spectrum makes $6.50 to $7.50 per hour and that’s not enough!  As the collective wages go up, more people move in (though it doesn’t help to be part of the third coast or that we’re part of a college town).    More people strains an already tight housing market.  In Missoula, we either need cheaper housing or higher wages, but $6.15 is just not enough.

Spending Money

My co-worker, who works three part time jobs just to live paycheck to paycheck, was amazed when I told her than my wife and I each only work one part time job.  How did we do it?

Simple:  we spend less than we make.  We’re not idiotic complusive spenders.  We rarely just gottagottagottagotta buy that new thingy.  Currently, we don’t have a care because we took care to live close enough to both of our workplaces that we could bike and walk.

We’re looking to buy a car and were saving up money to pay in cash, but are going to buy on credit, because 1) it’ll help strengthen our credit rating for when we buy a house 2) we can get a car now and spread the payments over a longer period of time.

We eat organic food because 1) the natural taste is better, 2) no poisons were used to grow the food, 3) the extra price pays for increased production costs including living wages for the farmers.

We don’t have cable.  We don’t have a land line.  And we currently don’t have the internet.  But before you call me a neo-ludite, understand that we have cell phones.  Soon we’ll have wireless internet.  We have a lot of CDs (sorry MP3s suck).  I hate distractions.  I hate paying more for stuff than I acutally have to.  I hate all those stupid posts about “don’t buy Exxon for a day!”  Instead, I gave up the car for a while, and if I lived in a city that has public transit on sundays or was warmer, then I’d give it up for good.

Economists

I’ve encountered a fair number of economists on the Internet.  To date the majority have been extremely arrogant about economics in relation to politics.  More times than I can count, the validation to their arguements have been “I study( or have studied) economics in college.”  They seem to think that because of this, they should be appointed philosopher king of our republic.

However, in our country, the majoriy, rather than knowledge, rules.  These economists tell me to “trust” them and their education instead of actually trying to share their knowledge.

Our current economic system (capitalism) was inspired by a writer (Adam Smith).  While many changes and clarifications have occured since then, my understanding is that economics studies how a population with unlimited desire manages limited resources.  Under this definition, economics moves away from a more mathematical approach to a psychological approach.

Graphs and interest rates help influence economics, but they don’t comprise all of economics.

Scrooge

My name is Ebeneezer.

I’ve finally decided to chuck my old dial up out the window.  What?  I’m finally moving up to dsl?  Cable?  Faster pussycat, KILL!  KILL!!!

No.  I’m getting rid of my internet and phone line for now.  That’s right:  no more phone calls either.  Turns out I forgot to pay my phone bill.  Though, with how anal I am in finances that I forgot to pay a bill eludes me.  I can’t really contest it either.  My bank didn’t cash it, but I truly don’t know if I sent it.  I accidentally washed my check book the other day.  Completely destroyed my register.

That’s the second weird thing:  I always check the pockets of my pants before I wash them.  I know for sure that I checked my pants that night.  So, my bill was late.  My discounted phone lost its discount.  Rather than pay more for less service just to stay away from Qworst, I’ll toss out the phone, maybe switch to wireless internet, maybe share a phone with my wife.

Cut and Spend Conservatives

Though our most quiet congressman, Denny Rehberg sometimes strikes me as one of the most sinister.  He’s of the current crop of fiscal “conservatives” that can’t seem to spend enough of our future money.  Rehberg seems to think that every farmer and business carries debt.  While that may or may not be true, at least the farms and businesses pay back their own debt.  If not, creditors can filed action, lawsuits follow, blah blah blah.  But how is Congress held accountable?  Elections of course.

Anyway, Rehberg believes that “‘Where you get in trouble is when your debt is not manageable.’   Rehberg said he believes the nation’s current debt is manageable. “  While some millionaires might believe that our national debt is managable,  the debt per person is more than I currenlty make in a year.

At least the democrats were up front enough to let us know that we had to pay for government spending.