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

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

Let's simplify, and clarify then:

You attempted to imply that I was indicting the entire set of all women as being ignorant of the concept of rights. I wasn't. After an addtional exchange of comments, you attempted to imply that I was indicting the entire set of "those of us [women] who advocate for access to abortion and contraception" as being guilty of the error. Again, I wasn't. I myself, a man, would agree that "access" to abortion and contraception are legitimate in the sense that nobody should be in the position of forbidding them.

The set of people who I do claim are engaged in contradiction are the members of the set, male or female, who claim that they have the authority to take from others through the political system in order to fund their "access" to abortion and contraception. You have the right to speak freely; you have no right to demand that I purchase you a megaphone. There is no justifiable legal authority to forbid the sale of abortion services or contraceptives. There is also no justifiable legal authority to demand that other parties be forced pay for these goods and services or to otherwise provide them against their will. The decision as to whether or not to provide or withhold in this instance is justifiably entirely with those who hold individual property rights to such goods and services.

The people who are demanding that some people be expropriated (robbed via taxation) to pay for the contraception and abortion choices of others are demanding that a property right in their own bodies be respected, while at the same time, attempting to deny the property rights of those from whom they intend to steal. That is contradiction. "My body, my choice," and "my wallet, my choice" are both rooted in the same ultimate right to property.

[paft.livejournal.com]

IOW, if a woman is unable to afford contraception, or the cost of an abortion, she's just plumb out of luck. And since she may very well also be unable to afford food for her unwanted children, or shelter, or education...

Luuuuuvly society you envision there.

[montecristo.livejournal.com]

...if a woman is unable to afford contraception, or the cost of an abortion, she's just plumb out of luck...

Are you telling me that this is how it works in paft's kill-or-be-killed, dog-eat-dog world? Everybody steals what they want if they can't afford it out of pocket...or maybe if it's just inconvenient...or maybe if they've already got the money necessary to purchase such things earmarked for "necessities" like entertainment? Where does it stop in your Mad Max world?

You can truly envision absolutely no other scenario other than: if a woman can't pay [subjective evaluation] for pills, condoms, or an abortion, she's entitled to steal them? Poor little soot-stained Liza Doolittle, living in the gutter, selling flowers, her only options are to steal money for an abortion or contraceptives, or be burdened beneath a menagerie of "unwanted" children, all desperately hungry sick and needy too. Our only options are to look the other way, while she steals for herself, or worse, jump right in and do her stealing for her, and "donate" the plunder to her worthy cause, or else stand helplessly by as the devil takes the hindmost. Right? There is no voluntary charity in paft's world, only the kind encouraged with a whip or a truncheon. Right? Poor Liza, she has no friends, no private social organization full of concerned humanitarians to come to her aid, no hospitals willing to offer reduced or free aid to indigents and other poor? Let's of course conveniently drop the fact that in the first place, such medical goods and services are only outrageously priced, and the poor kept from useful remunerative, dignity enhancing trade, when socialists and other economic loot-and-pillage types have engineered distortions in the market that make such things as prohibitively expensive for everyone, not just poor waifs. No, I know I won't get you to agree to that latter supposition on your economic understanding, but really, no charity, no alternative, none but to steal from the grasping claws of the uncaring? Nobody or at least "not enough" people are there to possibly voluntarily contribute money or services to a potential organization that will help the needy afford such things? Oh, but there are enough people who will muster up enough "concerned compassion" to vote for somebody else to steal such things, and give them away, somehow, and call it virtue, and of course forget about it, and not even notice the damage they've done to the system of economic interactions. Am I reading that right? Is that how the dichotomy works in your Dickensian world?

[paft.livejournal.com]

m: Are you telling me that this is how it works in paft's kill-or-be-killed, dog-eat-dog world?

I'm pointing out that's how removing all government is likely to work in the real world.

m: ? Everybody steals what they want if they can't afford it out of pocket...or maybe if it's just inconvenient...

If "what they want" is the means to keep themselves and their children alive, as in, access to food, water, shelter, medicine, etc., yes, people are very likely to steal. It's called survival.

m: or maybe if they've already got the money necessary to purchase such things earmarked for "necessities" like entertainment?

Do you understand the difference between someone stealing because if they don't, they or their kids will starve to death, and someone stealing because they want an expensive TV?

m: There is no voluntary charity in paft's world, only the kind encouraged with a whip or a truncheon. Right?

As almost anyone who works in private charity will attest, voluntary charity will not cover the vacuum left in a society that has no publicly funded and run safety net. In the laissez-faire era of the industrial revolution, the existence of numerous private charities did not prevent countless poor children from being killed or disabled by malnutrition.

This is an unpleasant fact of history that anarcho capitalists studiously ignore.