The "Grievance Industry"

[paft.livejournal.com]

Many years ago, just after the end of Reagan’s first term, I was listening to a local Talk Radio host, Ronn Owens, doing a sort of “summing up” of the Reagan administration so far. He brought up Reagan’s question, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” and he said, “I gotta tell ya. Yes, I am. And everyone I know is better off too.”

Ronn invited his mostly white, middle-class listeners to weigh in. One after another they lined up to chirp about how well they were doing in Reagan’s America.

Then, he got a black caller, who informed the host, “I’m not better off. I’m not better off at all. In fact, things have gotten worse. And I don’t know one single black American who’s not doing worse.”

“Oh now sir,” Ronn said, with the air of someone calming down a hysteric. “don’t you feel you’re being a little myopic?”

I guess the farsighted, non-myopic approach would have been for the caller and all those other black Americans to think happy thoughts about how well Ronn Owens and the other white folks were doing, rather than focusing on their own petty concerns.



There has long been in the United States mainstream the unspoken assumption that a poor, female, gay, non-Christian or non-white person voting in his or her own interest is a form of whining rather than common sense, even though the stakes for these voters tend to be higher than the concerns of wealthy folks who don’t want to pay those extra taxes that could price them out of that second house in the Hamptons. The rule of thumb is, apparently – if you have a real grievance influencing your vote, like “I could lose my healthcare if the Republicans have their way” or “I could end up unable to afford birth control or unable to get access to an abortion” or “As a black American, I don’t want a guy who’s taking advice from Charles Murray deciding policy that’s going to affect my kids” or “My family could go hungry” or “I could end up in jail for having consensual sex with another adult” or “this guy wants to pass legislation that would endanger my right to vote” you are part of the “Grievance Industry.” And that’s a bad thing.

This attitude has recently been kicked into overdrive by the passing of ACA. The right wing is now in full panic mode over the horrifying discovery that people like being able to afford healthcare and are not going to like having that access taken away. Worse, these same people will actually vote in favor of their own physical and civic well-being. The right seems to think this is awfully unfair, and they believe it’s even more unfair for Democratic politicians to point out to these voters how much is at stake.

Joan Walsh at Salon puts it beautifully:

So let me make sure I understand. Telling your voters, accurately, that Republicans are trying to make it harder for them to vote, and are blocking action on pay equity, the minimum wage and immigration reform is unfair “grievance politics”? Likewise, any effort to deal with the scandal of $1 trillion in student loan debt? Oliphant compares it to the grievance politics practiced by Republicans under Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. But that form of grievance politics mainly relied on inflaming white voters’ fears of cultural and racial change with false or highly exaggerated claims about Democrats. (emphasis added.)

The difference between accusations that are accurate and accusations that are highly exaggerated or quite simply untrue is apparently unimportant, as far as some in the media are concerned.

I mean really, it’s all about whether or not they make people get all emotional. All that arm-waving and emoting about “I want to cast a ballot” or “I want my heart medication” or “I don’t want to end up homeless after my unemployment benefits run out” is JUST like those Republicans who said that black people were going to take over and John Kerry didn’t deserve his medals and gay people were going to kidnap your little boy and marry him. So vulgar!

Why can’t people directly affected by these policies stop horning into conversations that should really be conducted as abstract conundrums over cocktails at a DC reception?

*

Comments

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

So if someone votes Republican this year because they see how the ACA is negatively impacting their family's health care, or are worried about how it will impact their jobs or taxes, are you okay with that?

The problem with the "grievance industry" is not that people vote for what they believe their best interests are (independent of whether they are or not). It's the erroneous viewpoint you espouse with your Joan Walsh quote - the belief that such bogus claims of a "war on women" or having various policies motivated by racism is actually accurate. When you don't need to be honest to win anymore, what's the point? Worked for Obama, after all, so I'm not shocked to see the Democrats doubling down on it this year.

[paft.livejournal.com]

bdj: So if someone votes Republican this year because they see how the ACA is negatively impacting their family's health care, or are worried about how it will impact their jobs or taxes, are you okay with that?

Not if by "negatively impacting their family's healthcare" they mean "we have to pay higher but still affordable health insurance premiums and we're no longer able to buy junk policies." Not if they imagine paying slightly higher insurance rates is the equivalent of being unable to buy any insurance at all.

bdj: the belief that such bogus claims of a "war on women" or having various policies motivated by racism is actually accurate. When you don't need to be honest to win anymore, what's the point?

So the Republicans have not been attacking planned parenthood and trying to eliminate women's access to abortion? Charles Murray and the southern strategy are figments of the liberal imagination?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Not if by "negatively impacting their family's healthcare" they mean "we have to pay higher but still affordable health insurance premiums and we're no longer able to buy junk policies." Not if they imagine paying slightly higher insurance rates is the equivalent of being unable to buy any insurance at all.

As I thought.

So the Republicans have not been attacking planned parenthood and trying to eliminate women's access to abortion? Charles Murray and the southern strategy are figments of the liberal imagination?

As perceived by the liberals, yes.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

You're being ridiculous again. State abortion restrictions are a matter of legislative record.

If you want to talk about honesty, it starts at home.

[paft.livejournal.com]

Indeed, I don't equate paying a slightly higher but still affordable premium with being unable to pay for healthcare insurance at all.

Nor do most rational people.

paft: So the Republicans have not been attacking planned parenthood and trying to eliminate women's access to abortion? Charles Murray and the southern strategy are figments of the liberal imagination?

bdj: As perceived by the liberals, yes.

"As perceived by liberals" meaning "you make these sound like BAD things.,"

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

If you can be a libertarian and support say, anti-abortion laws, then either your definition of libertarian begins and ends with a functioning SRY chromosome, or any self-identified libertarians are lying through their teeth about what they believe. In short, there is a war on women, and you'd think libertarians would be at the forefront of the pro-choice movement, if their ideology's own theoretical principles was followed by its self-proclaimed adherents in reality. Of course, then again, there was nothing to predict Ioseb Jugashvili would turn anti-abortion either.....

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

If you can be a libertarian and support say, anti-abortion laws, then either your definition of libertarian begins and ends with a functioning SRY chromosome

Is that kind of like how If you support Affirmative action it's because you think minorities (excluding Chinks and Heebs of course) are too stupid and impulsive to succeed academically without it? Or if you advocate "income equality" it's because you're an envious little shit who just wants to re-live the glory days of the French or October revolution?

/Sarcasm

They could be deontological libertarians who take the whole "human life has an intrinsic value" thing seriously, that or they could be rational anarchists who would point out that "equal rights", by definition, requires some acknowledgment of the father's place in the whole affair.

Seriously dude, this comment was stupid and combative even for you.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

No, that would be like if you're a law and order conservative who supports the rights of mob rule and baying savages to govern themselves. ;) No libertarian should support the right of the government to regulate what women do with their uterus, as the only means to enforce such policies is totalitarian. Anyone who claims to be able to do both at once is either dumb, deceptive, or both.

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Does a libertarian support the right of an individual to commit suicide? If a libertarian can be against suicide being legal, then they are not a libertarian.

Go ahead and tell me how a libertarian could possibly be against suicide being legal. Go on....

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

Another fact is the influence of hypergamy, which means that women typically choose a mate (husband or boyfriend) who earns more than she does. Men don’t have the same preference for a higher-earning mate.

While women prefer to HAVE a higher-earning partner, men generally prefer to BE the higher-earning partner in a relationship. This simple but profound difference between the sexes has powerful consequences for the so-called pay gap.

Suppose the pay gap between men and women were magically eliminated. If that happened, simple arithmetic suggests that half of women would be unable to find what they regard as a suitable mate.

Obviously, I’m not saying women won’t date or marry a lower-earning men, only that they probably prefer not to. If a higher-earning man is not available, many women are more likely not to marry at all. [...]

The best way to improve economic prospects for women is to improve job prospects for the men in their lives, even if that means increasing the so-called pay gap.


Now tell me, was it a democrat or a republican who said that?
I'm waiting

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

I don't know and don't especially care. What's the point here?

[enders-shadow.livejournal.com]

When I cite a republican saying things that are harmful to women and you ignore it, the point is, you have blinders on when it comes to the sexism within your own party.

This is not to suggest Dems are free of sexism. They deal with it too, and I am not blind to it. You must, as a man, start waking up to the sexism in our culture. Same as being white you need to wake up to the racism in our culture.

Much like an Alcoholic, the first step to solving the problem, is admitting there is a problem!

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Who ever they are they are clearly a loyal foot-soldier in the on going war on women and other groups we don't like but who we want to vote for us (tm)

/ sarcasm.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Both parties are fairly dishonest, Obama's campaign was at least less dishonest than Romney's.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Oh please. What an assertion. Politics is nothing more than "Who, whom?" as V.I. Lenin observed. You're at best analogously attempting to draw moral distinctions between two serial killers, one of whom may be debatably responsible for one or two fewer corpses than the other. Risible.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The real grievance industry is the one run by an Australian and a Saudi prince that blathers on about the evils of foreigners and Muslims and anything else it decides to manufacture as a threat.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

"Making it harder for your voters to vote." Translation: Requiring the same ID that most states require just to buy a six pack of beer. Making it harder for you to vote means making sure that the people who are attempting to vote themselves bread and circuses out of Americans' pockets are at least not foreign nationals (a lost cause, I know, when foreign nationals don't even have to come to the U.S. to get what they want from U.S. politicians, especially Republicans). Making it harder for you to vote means making sure you aren't voting while dead, or voting two or three times. How horrible. Voting two or three times is as American as stolen apple pie.

Frankly though, I'm all in favor of voting, democracy and the collectivist mythology breaking down. It's an inevitability anyway. Making voting more secure and tamper-resistant only gives it a legitimacy it doesn't deserve. Hell, let the "illegals" vote — and watch what happens when they do, and get caught. Good times. The Republic, such as it was, is pretty much gone, except in fantasy. Let's see the Empire collapse. I'm all for it. Vote bread and circuses all you want. Blow up the economy with calculation-proof, destabilizing socialism, and then vote yourself socialized band-aids once the medical goods and services become too expensive to buy. Brilliance. Everybody vote two or three times. Pose as your dead grandma, or someone's dead grandma, and go vote. Get together some groups and hire some tour buses to hit the polling places multiple times. Make it a party. Politics is corruption, by nature, why go small?

Just don't do all that stuff too quickly. I'm nowhere near finished stocking up on things like food, medicine, gold, and guns. We don't want to start the old Zombie Apocalypse too soon, you know.

[paft.livejournal.com]

m: "Making it harder for your voters to vote." Translation: Requiring the same ID that most states require just to buy a six pack of beer.

Voting is not the equivalent to buying a six-pack of beer. It's an important part of our political process, and a right for which people have given their lives.

m: Making it harder for you to vote means making sure that the people who are attempting to vote themselves bread and circuses out of Americans' pockets...

I've not seen many "cicusses" being an issue here, and I don't see much that's unreasonable about voting for issues that will keep bread in one's children's mouths. People are not asking for clowns, tiger-shows, etc. They're asking for the ability to live on what they earn while working, and the ability to get medical care when it's needed.

As anyone who knows about the issue of vote fraud will tell you, the incidence of voter fraud is pretty much infinitesimal.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Voting is no more a "right" than stealing is. The fact that people "have died for it" is irony. If it were such a sacred thing, and we were really serious about the "fairness" of "one-man-one-vote" then nobody would have any problem whatsoever with demanding to see identification before exercising that public sacrament. The fact is that some factions of the populace think there is advantage in voting more than once or other forms of voter fraud and are agitating to facilitate it.

They're asking for the ability to live on what they earn while working

Patently false. They're asking for more than what they are able to earn, to be supplied by someone else. If all people wanted was to be left in peace to earn their own livings they would all be libertarians. Politics is mostly about demanding more than you can earn yourself to be provided at someone else's expense. As Frederick Bastiat put it: "Government is that great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else."

As for the circuses, there are plenty of them and one need only flip on the TV to find them.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

...ID that most states require just to buy a six pack of beer.

Should alcohol be regulated in this way?


...the people who are attempting to vote... are at least not foreign nationals... aren't voting while dead, or voting two or three times.

Where? Also, these kinds of vote tampering (much less the actually effective types of vote tampering) generally happen in ways that requiring IDs will not stop.


Voting two or three times is as American as stolen apple pie.

What elections has this happened in? What elections would widespread usage of this tactic effect? You're postulating a conspiracy of hundreds or thousands of people, each voting multiple times, each of them not getting caught, in each of dozens or hundreds of voting districts, for this to have any measurable difference. Where is this conspiracy?

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Should alcohol be regulated in this way?
No. Trade in and use of alcohol shouldn't be politically regulated in this way. In other ways, voluntary and contractual, regulation has a place. Still, that is beside the point. My observation is that plenty of people who see no problem in voting to require that their neighbors be required to carry and produce ID for all kinds of consensual private behavior that is nobody else's business can damn well submit to the same logic when the subject is voting, an activity that creates all sorts of impositions on the lives and property of others. The desire to have no identification when voting is nothing more than a wish to facilitate voter fraud.

Oh please, not the conspiracy theory argument! There's no conspiracy necessary, not that there isn't plenty of petty conspiracy, here and there, in uncoordinated pockets, to go around. No, there's just a diffuse desire to "win" for ones' side at any cost, and there's plenty of that to go around in politics.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Basically, it's an argument of making people show their papers in order to exercise a basic right.

Apparently it's inconceivable that there are people who don't drive or send relatives to the liquor store but who might want to vote.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

Citation needed on all this fraud. You'll be advocating for drug testing of welfare recipients next.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

If you want to give charity to some individuals out of your own pocket you are perfectly free to require, as a receipt of that largess, that the recipient pass a drug test first. You are also to not impose such a requirement. Welfare is the expropriation of some for the ostensible benefit of others. Ends do not justify means. I oppose "welfare" on that grounds.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Citation of actual fraud can be debated indefinitely. I do not have to cite some magical number of bank robberies in order to justify the observation that forbidding banks from hiring guards or placing a locking secure door on their vaults is nothing more than making such crime more feasible.