The "Grievance Industry"
18/4/14 12:26![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
paft.livejournal.com posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsMany 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?
*
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?
*
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 15:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 15:46 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 15:48 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 18:04 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 20:50 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 22:54 (UTC)(frozen) (no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 23:11 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 04:48 (UTC)(frozen) (no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 07:04 (UTC)1. Try to be civil. If you must attack, attack the opinion and not the person. Name-calling will not be tolerated.
I think you're just one word away from the cliff now.
It's amazingly frustrating to realize that no warnings have ever had any effect on you. And you presume to be an intellectual.
FFS.
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 20:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 23:21 (UTC)Anarchists, AKA the people you seem to be addressing, believe that social order itself is a corrupting influence, inherently oppressive, and in their purest form seek to abolish all forms of organized hierarchy. (Of course now that I've said this montecristo will probably swoop in on a chandelier to correct me.)
Libertarians on the other hand hold that while social order is necessary for a functioning society, concentrations of power will attract the corrupt and power hungry. As such they advocate decentralization rather than abolition.
To put this in terms that might actually stick. You seem to be using "chaotic neutral" arguments on a "lawful neutral" person and then getting annoyed when that person fails to respond in the way you expected.
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 23:24 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 05:02 (UTC)The thing that puzzles me is why do you care? You've already stated that you don't actually acknowledge any rights or authority that's not being forced on you at gun point so what's it to you if Og clubbed Zuck or didn't.
(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 12:42 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 15:28 (UTC)And yet in practice the difference is nil.
I would try once again to explain to you the distinctions in both philosophy and practice between the different flavors of the Right but you'll either refuse to accept the validity of any sources provided. Or you'll just move the goal posts, and then accuse me of being a hypocrite for not supporting the positions that your straw-conservanarchtarian supports.
Why waste either of our time?
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 21:20 (UTC)What's funny though, is when some of the biggest pro-choice liberals invoke a woman's right to her own body and yet deny property rights of others with their very next breaths. It kind of undermines their arguments.
(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 21:33 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 19/4/14 23:38 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 01:15 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 02:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 02:58 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 20:19 (UTC)By force.
Without a ruling body, if you're too weak to assert your own property rights, then someone else takes it from you.
This is not an ideal circumstance for human civilization.
In fact, according to Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argumentation grounding, you must engage in a performative contradiction to argue that property does not exist, government or no
I'm constantly amused by how in one breath you preach humanity's incompetence in electing governing bodies, yet praise their supposed rationality in individually asserting property rights.
(no subject)
Date: 20/4/14 23:29 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 21/4/14 00:02 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 21/4/14 00:46 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From: