Five Out of Ten Americans Agree, Congress Is Borked

[SR71]

Across the board, a majority of American constituents want a congressional reboot button. The question is whether we will carry through, and elect a good proportion of new leaders in contested seats a la 2010, or just reinstall the same crowd? Interestingly, Republicans seem to be viewed less favorably than Democrats.

First Read - NBC/WSJ poll: Majority would vote out every member of Congress

In a country sharply divided on almost every issue, most Americans agree on one thing: they don’t like Congress, and they would vote to replace every single member -- even their own -- if they had the option.

[erimir]

I guess that depends on who replaces them. If it was that or the current system, I might choose to throw the lot out. But a new round of elections conducted the same way, just with no incumbents... Well, the same sick election system would elect the same kind of fucktards, for the most part. It would just be a lot more expensive, since more elections would be contested.

It's not like open seats attract a notably nobler set - as you mentioned, there were a lot of freshmen in this Congress, and they were still overwhelmingly assholes and twits.

I'm not fool enough to think that it's something specific to this particular set of representatives, rather than a systemic issue.

[erimir]

Not to mention, you'd be replacing a group that is familiar with the law and legislative process and many of whim have their own power base and experience, with a bunch who don't know what they're doing and many of whom may be even more beholden to the corporations that got them elected.

Sadly, as awful as Congress is on the whole, I don't think throwing them all out without reforming the system will do anything much good.

[SR71]

Kindly direct your sanity elsewhere, young man, I am trying to work up some rage here.

Even though you haven't begged the question, I am going to pretend you did, and respond with some invisible thoughts of my own. After a decade or more of bright line division within the political spectrum, I have a vague impression that political rage is not all the rage anymore, the tone is becoming somewhat muted, the rhetoric worn, threadbare, tiresome. Have the counterpoised populist movements of the Tea Party and OWS somewhat assuaged the summer of our discontent? Are we... mollified? Have we argued back and forth with sufficient duration, intensity and vituperative ideological opposition that the sustained effort has attenuated our appetite for disputation? Has there been a long, slow catharsis?

Is there any possibility that we are in a period of a national rapprochement, at least manifesting as a deescalating trend regarding the intensity of politically polarizing media and online discussion?

[chunksmediocrites]

1. No, and I would say that the Tea Party and OWS are not counterpoised.
Matt Taibbi: Why Occupy Wall Street is Bigger than Left vs Right: October 2011

What nobody is comfortable with is a movement in which virtually the entire spectrum of middle class and poor Americans is on the same page, railing against incestuous political and financial corruption on Wall Street and in Washington. The reality is that Occupy Wall Street and the millions of middle Americans who make up the Tea Party are natural allies and should be on the same page about most of the key issues, and that's a story our media won't want to or know how to handle.

Also it is the middle of winter. Popular protest is harder when it is very cold. Occupy is doing the work of A) avoiding co-option and B) planning strategy, defining core mission, constantly learning and developing new tactics and analysis.
2. Mollification requires that someone is doing some mollifying. And I have seen nothing but lip service combined with actions to shut down protests, arrest activists and prosecute whistle-blowers, while the status quo remains untouched.. People are not convinced that things have gotten better, or that unemployment is diminishing in any real way, or that those elected have a plan to prevent the ongoing decline, or that anything has been fixed or addressed by any in positions of power.
3. No. Do not ever kid yourself that any ideological argument is ever at end. Absolutely people are tired of a Congress that cannot govern in our name in good conscience. But the political theater is still funded- Democratic Party and Republican Party- by the same corporate interests, who fund them both. As long as they are funded, do not expect them to listen to the public. They don't really need the public on their side most of the time. Also the few in our Congress who I can have some respect for- I don't want them to stop arguing for corporate accountability, for regulating industry, for protecting women's reproductive rights, for rule of law, for civil liberties, or any of the other issues that matter to me.
4. No. It is not particularly cathartic.
5. There is societal pressure, especially in the US, for conformity. This is stupid.

The political polarization in the media is largely manufactured. We can be polarized about taxes and spending. We can be polarized about Democrats or Republicans. We can be polarized about gays in the military.

There is virtually no discussion of our foreign policy in regards to our perpetual war; it almost doesn't exist. No polarization on drone strikes, on Iran, on the massive effort since 2010* to crush reproductive rights for women. Massive outrage and organizing in Wisconsin and other states where governors have attempted to destroy collective bargaining have barely been a blip on the radar. There was no polarized political discussion about income inequality in the US until OWS started talking about it. A lot. There is no polarized discussion on Israel, unless you count "how much do you love her, a ton, or more than life itself?". There is no polarized discussion on Guantanamo, Bagram, CIA black site prisons, the war in Afghanistan, the war on terror, the drug war- almost nothing.

Online discussion is actually better. Yes, you can go to a lot of stupid places online and get a lot of ignorant people saying really ignorant things. But I think you can also see signs of people educating themselves, overcoming trolling and ignorance, and actually having discussions about topics the corporate media outlets mostly won't touch. And this is also what it looks like when people have safe places to express their opinions, and time to think about what they want to write, and sources at their fingertips to verify (hopefully) the accuracy of the facts involved. It is different from the news reader reading news at you. And I think that's mostly good.

*Really more of a resurgence of the efforts to crush women's reproductive rights throughout most of recorded history.

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

Yes, you can go to a lot of stupid places online and get a lot of ignorant people saying really ignorant things.

Why do you hate ?

[SR71]

LOL (with inestimable pleasure), that's the spirit! A++. I love me some chunks, main. If I may, I would have to disagree with Mr. Taibbi on the subject of OWS/TP. We are too far apart on too many issues. The Tea Party types blame everything that goes wrong on the government. They are still convinced the financial collapse was because the government forced banks to loan money to poor people. Press them too hard about the bailouts or FIRE sector exhorbitant CEO pay and they will start defending it. They will never admit that much of the increase in debt since 2008 was already baked in since before Obama took office. They want to "starve the beast", and suggest flat taxes that are unrealistically low. Often they are too slow to see the inconsistencies in their own arguments. I could go on but it would get boring/tl;dr. Superficially it may seem there is the potential for alliance, but scratch the surface and the two fronts are worlds apart.

The rest of it is all right over the plate though. Thanks for the Portland article.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by SR71

I would have to disagree with Mr. Taibbi on the subject of OWS/TP. We are too far apart on too many issues. The Tea Party types blame everything that goes wrong on the government. They are still convinced the financial collapse was because the government forced banks to loan money to poor people. Press them too hard about the bailouts or FIRE sector exhorbitant CEO pay and they will start defending it. They will never admit that much of the increase in debt since 2008 was already baked in since before Obama took office. They want to "starve the beast", and suggest flat taxes that are unrealistically low. Often they are too slow to see the inconsistencies in their own arguments.

Sometimes this is true. But poll them on "government-mandated health care" vs "medicare" and you get widely different opinions. They revile the first and are fine with the second and don't want it cut. A lot of them have been astro-turfed by Dick Armey and fed the Right vs. Left pap. Ask them if they want to cut government spending they will say yes. Ask them to pick a program from a list and the only one they regularly pick is foreign aid- a tiny fraction of the budget. When you drill down there is still some overlap that is recognizable.

[Dingfod]

Do not underestimate the ignorance of the Teabaggers. My Teabagger coworker was actually convinced that the government should give every American a million dollars so we'd all be rich. That was until I pointed out that a million dollars times three hundred million people would be $300 TRILLION DOLLARS, five times the entire world's GDP.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Why do you hate ?

[SR71]

Yeah, that's the thing, Dingfod. The TP is an amalgam of asshats that just want lower taxes no matter what and fools who are easily excited over the size of the debt and inexplicably still worried about gun control. They despise government assistance for poor people, period. They are motivated, serious, and frequently uninformed or willfully ignorant of the facts on the ground. They are going to be for re-electing the likes of Rubio, Ryan, Scott, Kasich and the rest of the asshats of note and their breed.

[SR71]

Originally Posted by Angakuk

Why do you hate ?

Is that irony, sarcasm, or flippancy? It's one of those, right?

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by chunksmediocrites

Online discussion is actually better. Yes, you can go to a lot of stupid places online and get a lot of ignorant people saying really ignorant things. But I think you can also see signs of people educating themselves, overcoming trolling and ignorance, and actually having discussions about topics the corporate media outlets mostly won't touch.

Or not.... here's a "discussion" some crazy people are having with my husband.

[SR71]

I don't FB, but I bet it's a doozy.

[Angakuk]

Originally Posted by SR71

Is that irony, sarcasm, or flippancy? It's one of those, right?

Do I have to choose? Can't I have all three?

[freemonkey]

Originally Posted by SR71

I don't FB, but I bet it's a doozy.

It would be hilarious, except they are dead serious, and that is scary.

[chunksmediocrites]

Originally Posted by freemonkey

Or not.... here's a "discussion" some crazy people are having with my husband.

Sure. Like I said there are a lot of places where you will have a harder time having that conversation that advances public awareness, allows some learning for any and or all, etc. Facebook is tough because if someone (as in your example) represents themselves as a Tea Party Activist, they have a vested interest and an audience, and a lot of people who know them IRL. So you're not going to have a conversation where they are going to concede a ton.

What you can do is probe for the willingness to shift someone out of irrational rants into specifics, and I see that is what your husband was trying to do. But I think he is going to want to think about what his goals are and what's realistic, after the initial probe.

Originally Posted by Person on Facebook

Worst guy ever to darken the White House doorstep. I hate this man. The most incompetent leader and yet the shrewdest most manipulating and decieving politician ever elected. He never did one thing in the Illinois senate except vote "present" on sensitive issues and help push Illinois into the financial abyss it's now in. Was propelled by the Illinois unions and media to the U.S. Senate where he spent most of his time running for President. Now he's campaigning earlier than any President ever did at the expense of tax payers.. 1 mil a day.. by injecting 1 official visit into each campaign stump and fundraiser. He's shrewd enough not to use his own campaign money so he can use it all for T.V. smear adds when he knows who his opponent is because he has no positive record to run on. What a dirt bag!

So in this case I would go for the voice of reason asking reasonable questions. Keep in mind that the person writing the above is from Illinois and has a long history of disliking Obama. But in fact most of the complaints involve his acting like a politician, and doing the same thing all politicians do, with a bunch of hyperbolic exaggeration. You could aim at the Illinois record, but she's going to come back all day on that- it is pretty much cemented. If you really go that route you're going to have to do research to find that Obama cast 4,000 votes in the Illinois Senate, of which only 129 were "present". You can ask how she believes Obama contributed to the financial problems, since most of the problems Illinois faces stem from the same problem most states face- the housing bubble and financial sector collapse resulted in massive unemployment, reduced demand, and severely damaged the pension systems. You could go technical on Obama having won his election to the US senate in November 2004, then spent 26 months before announcing his exploratory committee for President in January 2007; and resigning from the Senate in November of 2008, 22 months later- but that's likely to further entrench and come across partisan.

The more likely route is through the attack on his current politicking and his record. Pointing out that George Bush was considered to have also started his campaign for a second term when he gave his State of the Union Address on Jan 20, 2004, and that it is actually the norm- that may or may not get traction. Even more importantly, you could point out that while you also have many criticisms of Obama -this is key- there are actually some positive things he can run on. Then you have to look for achievements that a Tea Party activist might struggle to turn into a negative. That list might look like this: reducing missile defense funding, ending Stop-Loss, a treaty with Russia to further reduce both nuclear stockpiles, consumer protections in regard to credit card company abuses, moved full war appropriations and other "off-budget" items back into the regular budget, enforcement for equal pay for women codified.

Finding things you can agree on- even if you have to stretch and rephrase- is key to having someone come out of the rant mode and into a place involving intellectual discussion. It is really hard to maintain anger with someone who is agreeing with you at least in part, and then asking you for clarification or pointing out some gentle counterpoints.

Absolutely there are a good number of people where the internet is the place to vent, and they have no intention of having a conversation or examining their beliefs. There are a lot of forums most conversation is a zero sum game, because the players reset to default settings with every new thread.

And not that this should be a subject to add to the argument, but Warren G. Harding was the worst president.

[freemonkey]

Thanks, chunks!!

Some of those people are from his family, and I'm really happy that I don't have to spend any holiday time with them, if you know what I mean.

[SR71]

I hate to say it, but most of the TP types I know on line and in real life have one thing in common, and that is that they are consumed with the O-Hate. I don't think there is anything anyone could say to them that will change their minds in that regard.

That earlier post about rapprochement and all that noise, was partly tongue in cheek and partly expressing a faintly perceived shift in the tenor and tone of the conflict. The warring sides, having been at loggerheads for three long years now, are so familiar with each others arguments, the discussions so predictable, it's become a bit past a game to continue on with it. We do it anyway, but it's pro forma, almost just a habit that no longer delivers any satisfaction. The best that can be hoped for is to shift some of the mid spectrum back towards reality a little. I really don't think anyone will be convincing many Teatards not to despise Obama any time soon.

[ImGod]

Originally Posted by Person on Facebook

Worst guy ever to darken the White House doorstep. I hate this man. Blah, Blah, Blah....