On Politics, Part II, "I Don't Like Either Candidate"

The way I see it there are three types of I-don't-like-either-candidate voters.

The Slouch- This person simply  lacks interest and has not taken the time to be informed.  What he does know is based on what the candidate looks like, campaign ads, friends and so on.  This person can be characterized by his discomfort or dislike of discussing politics for fear of his ignorance being revealed.  I would say that this constitutes almost all "independents" and explains why the same state can elect a president that wants to go in one direction and a senator that wants to go the opposite direction.  Oh yes, they then complain about the "partisan divide".

The Utopian - This person views the world through a lens of perfection.  While being sufficiently informed about what the two candidates stand for, this person rejects both because neither comes close enough to his idea of perfection.  This person's understanding of politics reflects the vision he hopes to achieve through an election in that both his vision and his candidate can be defined as narrow.  His candidate will never win a primary because the candidate must appeal to a group with little to no tolerance for those who see the world differently.  The election process for them, after their guy looses the primary, is to trash the winner in order to create a platform to vent their frustration about reality.   Their numbers include people from both the right and left.  I would say however that most are from the right because, in my opinion,  the right contains greater numbers of informed and principled people.  I base this opinion on the fact that the left extracts most of its appeal and power by the promise of redistributed (read free) wealth; which means all anyone really need be informed about is who is promising more free stuff.  This is a question easily answered by party affiliation.   

The Principled - This person rejects both candidates on principle.  He sees himself as not being able to cast a vote for any person who does not meet a minimum level of morality... come what may.  This type understands the ramifications of not voting.  He understands that there will always be a "better" candidate that will serve any given person better than the other, and therefore will be a better candidate for his own sake.  But he shuns the perceived advantage and rejects both anyway.  This person differs from the "Utopian" in that he understands the political realities within which he exists.  He has a high tolerance for differing opinions because he realizes that his vision is meaningless unless it can be converted to meaningful reform by winning elections.  That tolerance has its limits however, and the limits are exceeded when neither candidate can stand or appeal to the same or similar principles. 

On Politics, Part I, The Reality Of Politics

This series of posts is in response to Facebook and personal discussions I've seen and have been involved in.  In short, I hear things that simply do not make any sense.  Please note that I write this, not from a perspective of having all the answers but rather that the answers are more simple than they may seem once the fog of emotion clears and the clarity of reality emerges.

In a discussion once a friend told me the reason that he left his previous church was because it was too political. (Political as in church politics.) Now it might well have been to political, but when I hear something like this I generally assume there is more to it than I'm getting, or even than the person telling me is aware of.

The truth is that politics are very much a part of life.  We all engage in them daily though we do so unaware.   When you and a friend go out to dinner you both discuss and agree on a place and a time to go.  There is give and take on both sides because it is your goal is to have dinner together.  You can't, then, very well go to different places or at different times. You have a common goal.  This is politics in its simplest form.  Sure, it's easy because you both desire the other's company.  But no matter if it is the politics of a complex society like this upcoming election or deciding on dinner, the process is the same.

Yes, it is the same, but it's not always warm and friendly or agreeable; and as such not always easy.  Suppose you were handcuffed to your friend... Who am I kidding. If he was your friend when you were handcuffed, he wouldn't be for long. We all know that.   This would bring about drastic changes.  Still, one thing in the end would be true: where the one went the other would go also. 

This is one reason I am leery of the "I don't like either candidate" response to a question.  It is not like the outcome is not going to impact the person that says this.  They're going with the majority like it or not.  Their choices are clear, even if neither choice is good.

Next time I will discuss a legitimate "I don't like either candidate" position.   

When You Hear The "He Does It Too" Argument, Realize You've Heard A He-Does-It-Too Argument

In the right column on this page, toward the bottom and under the heading "Helpful Links" there is a couple of links to "logical fallacies".  It is my opinion that every person should be at least familiar enough with these fallacies to realize when someone is using one.

Of interest to me today is an all too common fallacy called the "You Too" fallacy. ¹ The meme above is a great example of this.  Here are several points to consider when encountering this sort of thing:

1. "You do it too" is not an argument.  It doesn't discuss the issue.  In this meme the issue would appear to be deficits, but it's not.  Notice that there is no position being taken.  Neither are there any explanations as to why or if deficits are good or bad or what to do to fix them.  It is simply a veiled accusation of hypocrisy to anyone who decries them.   

2. This fallacy has a tinge of another fallacy called the "Red Herring Fallacy", because it introduces non-pertinent information.

3. Using this meme as an example, consider that this "You Too" argument cuts both ways by raising two questions:

• Does the person who created this meme approve of massive deficits?
• If he does, should we assume therefore that he approved of Bush because of his deficits?

4. This fallacy is designed to put the person who argues against something in the awkward position of having to defend the very thing that he is now against. No matter the issue, this will generally be the case. In this respect, this tactic is normally successful only in obscuring the real issue... which is its purpose.  As noted in "3" however, the one using this tactic has his own explaining to do.  Keep that in mind if you employ it yourself.

Now, to respond to this meme.  First, I was very worried about the deficits when Bush was president, that was Bush 1 and of course 2.

Second, the president is not king.  Every president, if he honors the constitution, is either asked to exercise fiscal restraint or cast it off by congress.  If the deficits were tracked by who holds both houses of congress it reveals a totally different picture than is commonly painted.

Third, deficits are not in their own right bad.  To borrow money to build, say a bridge, that will help future generations to be more productive, then that generation should have to share in the cost.  Nothing wrong with that.  On the other hand, to strap future generations with the cost of lavish pensions for government workers is not ethical, moral or fiscally wise.  And, when there develops an alliance between those who enjoy the pensions and those who give them because the former keeps the latter's campaign coffers full, corruption is now in full bloom.

Forth, the very nature of politics imposes compromise on all .  In representative governments the governments reflect a collective position, not my position.  Therefore, if I hated America and wanted it destroyed, no deficit would be large enough.  I would have to settle for deficits that were palatable for 51% of the people.  Therefore, when Bush was elected I had a choice in degree.  I recognized this has a harsh fact..  I could vote for the big spender, or I could vote for the run-America-off-the-fiscal-cliff-so-it-could-then-be-fundamentally-transformed spender.  In that respect John Kerry was no different than Barak Obama.

Fifth, the wars that Bush entered into did not come from nothing.  We were attacked.  The attack itself brought on its own economic turmoil that effected government revenues.

Sixth, tax cuts don't necessarily amount to reduced revenues, rather, they can increase revenues.  How can the government taxing and spending money in so called "stimulus programs" help the economy more than just letting the people who earned that same money spend it themselves?  It can't. What it does do is give politicians credit, and therefore votes, for giving away other people's money.  In other words, how much would the government take in if it levied 100% tax?  The answer is zero.

And finally, there simply is no comparison between Obama's deficits and any previous administration's deficits, and if Obama has his way, he is just getting started.
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Notes:

1.  Fallacies are known by Latin names.  The "You Too" fallacy is called tu quoque. 

Was 9/11 A Prophesy?

I don't know.  I often wonder if events like 9/11 are not prophetic in nature.  But of course I'm not sure.  Perhaps it simply serves as a metaphor.

But with this in mind I find myself intrigued by the thinking that might have occurred in the minds of the passengers who sat docilely by as a few men armed with nothing more than box-cutters killed them.  Perhaps they'd not really paid attention to the new military phenomenon of suicide murderers; a new news item that had become common fare from the other side of the world.  Perhaps they had simply been lured into a false security.  Those sorts of things, after all, happened over there... somewhere... where was it...?  Afghanistan?

However, there was an event that provided a more compelling warning as to what lay in store for America.  Two years earlier on October 31st, 1999, an Egyptian Air Boeing 767 carrying 217 passengers and crew, on a flight from New York to Cairo, inexplicably plummeted into the ocean near Nantucket.  Although the explanation for this crash became political for obvious reasons, the "black box" clearly revealed that it was the result of actions taken by a pilot. Left alone in the cockpit as the Captain excused himself to the lavatory he simply nosed the airliner over and took himself and the 200 other some odd souls on board to their deaths; calmly repeating to himself the words "“Tawakkalt Ala Allah”" (I rely on God) along the way.   Here is the NTSB report.

The idea of a Muslim taking a large airliner full of people to their deaths through a suicide mission was not therefore new at the time of  9/11.  I wonder if this story ever crossed the minds of any of the passengers or crew members on board the flights.  I wonder how many even knew about it.

For sure, a thought that didn't cross the minds of the passengers, but surely filled the minds of the crews, was the training they had received for just such an event. This training had been developed about three decades earlier during the days of "take-me-to-Cooba", and had all but congealed there as high profile hijackings had tapered off.  Apparently, innovation kindled by a Muslim flying his airliner full of people into the ocean simply wasn't part and parcel to the humans in the bowls of the bureaucracy that oversaw such things. The crew had been trained to verbally resist, but ultimately comply with demands if harm was threatened.  It didn't take long, I'm sure, before hijackers were allowed through the flimsy doors of the cockpit and out of the passengers' sight.

There is a common theme that probably weaved its way through every thought those people may have had that I think is worth noting.  It was trust.  They trusted the voices over the P.A. that ensured them if they complied all would be OK.  They trusted that they were simply by-standers in events much larger than themselves.  They trusted the system that had trained the crews and the webbed network of action that was, at that very moment, being thrown into action by the authorities on the ground. While the thought that their captors would kill themselves in the process of killing everyone on board probably never occurred to them, this lack of scope revealed a trust that proved ultimately fatal.  They trusted the image of their own Western worldviews that they had projected onto their captors. In the final analyses one thing is clear, whatever they trusted, they didn't trust themselves.  They didn't trust their own judgments, discernments and abilities to meet the situation.  They were indeed trained to not.  The "authorities" would handle everything.  So they sat idly by, their numbers much larger than their captors, trusting in all they knew, as their captors flew them gently to their deaths.

There was, however, one glimmer that shone forth that day.  Armed with information gained by an illegal cell-phone call placed by Todd Beamer, the trusting, ignorance-induced stupor that had had them sedated, shattered.  Those passengers heroically rose to the occasion.  Though they were not able to save their own lives, they managed to save the lives of those at the intended target.  Their acts gave many hope beyond that day, for they broke ranks, trusted in their own God-given abilities, and acted.  They went down fighting.

So how is this a prophecy or metaphor?  We are now, as a nation, like the passengers on those airliners, comforted by the trust we have in a system that is being mocked and ignored by those who have been charged with protecting and enforcing it.  There is a group at the helm of our nation that is currently hurtling us toward destruction.  Concealed in the "cockpit", so to speak, with their mouthpieces in the media insuring us that we will be OK if we simply trust and comply with their wishes, they guide us ever closer to our fate with ever-increasing speed.

I look at the simple math. No nation can spend a trillion dollars more each year than it takes in, not even America; and not even if it confiscates the wealth of the rich. No nation can do this while pretending that it has an unlimited amount more to borrow and spend.  It really is simple math for anyone willing to have their sedated stupor shattered.  Yet those currently at the helm are doing it.

I look at the morality.  You can't institutionalize sin and expect all to go well.  Those at the helm see themselves as the final arbiters of good and evil and we are trained to trust what they say by their institutions of education.  This will not stand.  It is taking us to our destruction with increasing speed while we trust that somehow everything will turn out OK.  If you think this let me attempt to shatter your stupor.  It won't.  It's not going to be OK. You can trust me on that.  It's simple math and history.

I see a nation being skillfully guided toward its end, and a people sitting docilely by, trusting the images of our past and heritage that are being projected onto reality.  Like the hijack victims, we sit trusting that nothing really bad can happen here... no matter what we do.  Things get fixed.  They just do.  They always have.  It's always been that way.  And it always will be.  We... trust...

The Death Of Dan Rohrbough At Columbine High School

Brian Rohrbough, the father of Dan Rohrbough, gives an account of April 20th 1990, the day of the Columbine Massacre.  This is an excerpt from "INDOCTRINATION, public schools and the decline of Christianity in America". (click here for link) I highly X 100  recommend that you beg, borrow or steal a copy of this documentary if you are a Christian with children in the public school system.   

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Transcript of Brian Rohrbough and "Indoctrination" producer, Collin Gunn

Rohrbough:

On the morning of April 20th, before noon, I received a phone call.  And in a panic stricken voice, Dan's mom said to me "Brian, have you heard from Dan, do you know what's going on?".
And I said "no".

And she told me that two gunmen had entered Columbine High School with machine guns and hand-grenades and they were killing kids.  And so me and my co-worker dropped what we were doing and we headed toward the school, and we got to where we could look across the park and we could see the school.  And there were two police cars parked there blocking our way and we couldn't go any further.  And we stood there, watching, and a lady burst out a front door and she was screaming and crying, and she said to the police "save that boy, do something, save that boy!" and that's really where I realized how bad things were.
We heard they were going to start bringing school buses, and the first bus came and I watched as the kids got off and they would run to their parents and they would cry and they would hug.  And all to often I heard this hollow promise that you'll never set foot in that school again.  When the last bus came...when the last bus came, it was empty.



When the next morning came, we opened the newspaper, and there was a picture... of a young man... wearing green... a green shirt, and bluejeans..., (chocking) lying dead on the sidewalk, was my son
That was... our only notification.
I knew how bad the public schools were, and I knew that because I was in the public schools.  And as parents I think that we want to believe that things have gotten better, when in fact they have gotten much worse.  It was my responsibility to make sure that my son was safe, that he was educated properly, but I failed that.  I put him in a pagan school where they teach there is no God, there is no creation.  There's evolution based on a cosmic accident.  And evolution breaks down to one simple belief, and that is that the strong kill the weak as a form of survival and that there's nothing wrong with that.
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Gunn:

"Both of the killers Klebold and Harris had received good grades from their Columbine High teachers for their graphically violent writings.  They showed their violent videos in the classroom with approval. One of them wore a tee shirt brazened with the words 'Natural Selection', the other with the word 'wrath'."
Ideas do have consequences."
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Rohrbough:

They had taken evolution much further than most people do, but if you stop and think through it, their logic was correct, if evolution is true, and yet it is taught in the school... and I put my son there.  Even though I'm a Christian... so, when we talk about my son's murder, yes it's right to condemn these two murderers, it's right to condemn this school system that taught these wicked things, but you must remember, I am the one who put him there, and I am the one who is responsible for his death.

So?

I saw this ad from "Vote Our Future" dot com.  It's a good ad I think.  It tells the truth about what is being done to young people today... in short that they are the ones who will be paying for all the free lunches.  What I find odd however is that the ad doesn't lead anywhere, other than to encourage young people to vote.  It acknowledges that if young people vote that they can thwart what is being done to them, but it doesn't give any direction or reasoning as to who or why to vote one way or another.

Part of this I think is the thought forms of the demographic that the ad is attempting to reach.  The minute anyone mentions a political party, or a candidate, this age group is inclined to dismiss it.  After all, everyone is angling for something in life, except, of course, the person who says that everyone is angling for something.  So nothing is mentioned... only the favorite whipping boy: "the faceless, party-less "politician".

Still, I find myself watching this ad and thinking So?  Voting is what got us here.  Young people are not being stuck with the bill for our folly because of a lack of votes but a lack of a coherent worldview.  I'm not sure how much good telling young people that they are getting screwed by older people is going to do.  But it does cause me to realize the fears I've had all along.  Older people now, by handing their healthcare over to the government, are in essence handing it over to the up and coming generation, a generation that has been taught by the same older people that there are no absolutes, not even that everyone should absolutely get taken care of when they're sick or broken.

Fees To Thugs

The old story goes like this.  A young couple living in the city of Chicago decide to start a little family business.  Shortly after opening their doors a shady looking character walks in asking for the proprietor.  He then offers the couple “protection” in their business.  The couple look a little confused so the stranger clarifies.  “What I’m offering you, for a fee you see, is protection… from us”.  Now they get the picture.

These are thugs and that’s how they operate.  This tactic has been around for years and has now been  perfected to the point that people seem to accept it as good and normal.  Consider the union shop.  The person who goes to work in this shop has his “fees for protection” taken out of his paycheck every month; and it's tax deductible to boot.  If the poor worker doesn’t like what his union stands for and decides to stop paying his “fees”, then the union, backed by the power of the federal government, has him fired. Thugs you see.

On a larger scale we witnessed this year the attempt by these same sorts of thugs to oust the Governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker.  All the stops were removed it seemed because Walker was actually keeping a campaign promise to stop the fiscal bleeding in his state brought about by promised fees.  The thugs in the press slandered him.  The thugs in the legislature tied the hands of their law-making colleagues by denying a quorum by fleeing the state.  The thug workers filled the capital with rebellion, hatred and spite. In the end however the people of Wisconsin won this little battle.  We will see how that goes yet.

But there seems to be another strand of thuggery on the horizon.  We have all heard the story of Chick-fil-A’s run-in with Chicago’s mayor, the thug Rahm Emanuel.  It seems that the president of Chick-fil-A has announced that his company is not paying the fee for protection...  in so many words.  So, in typical thug fashion, the mayor has informed Chick-fil-A that it will not be receiving protection in Chicago… from Chicago.

The Arizona republic, a thug rag in its own right, ran a story Saturday, the 27th of July, informing the reader of the sort of fees that are expected for this sort of protection.  It's article begins: “Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos waded into a developing corporate culture war over gay marriage Friday with a $2.5 million donation to keep same-sex union legal in Washington… Bezos joins Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and companies like Starbucks Inc. and Nike Inc. with support to the campaign to uphold Washington’s law.“    Strangely missing in the story, for those who notice such things, is the typical 1-versus-99%-esque drivel we are accustomed to seeing when it concerns the uber-rich like Bezos and Gates, or how the low paid employees at these companies might have received raises instead, or the fact that these are very large corporations which are the nemesis of the modern day thugs--so we are led to believe anyway.  We didn’t hear any of this because they paid the fee… you see.  They are saints.

This all makes sense to us because we are tuned to it.  We are in fact living it out in the spiritual realm.  In this same fashion God offers us protection from himself.  But God is no thug.  For one, we rightly and justly deserve what God is offering us protection from… which is Himself.  Because we are the thugs in this story.  But more than this, he is offering to pay the “fee”, because it is a very expensive fee you see.  Not even Bill Gates could pay this fee.  His worldly wealth is much better squandered on worldliness.  But there again is the beauty of this fee.  Those who are oppressed by the likes of these sorts of thugs can still afford the fee, for it is paid by God Himself, and is free to all who realize their need for it and so ask for it.

An Old Post I Finally Decided To Publish

Like German tanks rolling into Poland it appears that the Government’s invasion of the health insurance industry will continue unabated. But as we, like the Poles losing their homeland, morn the closing of an era of freedom, we ought to realize that this happened as the result of a ramification of problems we refused to see, and not as a result of problems that were just too difficult to overcome. Let me explain one of them here.

One problem in particular, if one were to dig past the rocky crust of entitlement thinking and emotions, is a faulty premise concerning healthcare. Consider the following syllogism:

• Premise 1: No one ought to be allowed to die as a result of his own foolish health insurance decisions.
• Secondary premise: It is not fair that some must pay for the foolishness of others.
• Conclusion: Government must take away all people’s rights when it comes to health insurance. 

This syllogism was undergirded recently by Nancy Pelosi. On a particular day recently she blamed those horrible free-loaders (those who can afford insurance but don’t bother) for the problems with health insurance. Don’t worry about Pelosi’s change of heart though. As a democrat she can easily  forget that she ever said such a thing about her constituents so those “free-loaders” will be morphing back into victims on her lips quicker than you can say greedy, racist Republican. But on this day Pelosi actually swerved a little closer to the truth than usual in her drunken-esque ramblings. Even If only by one premise she did however avoid bashing through the rail that usually keeps her well clear of the road of reality and common-sense.

The premise of which I speak is number 1. Like the Blazing Saddles’ sheriff who gained control of a deteriorating situation by holding his gun to his own head, this premise allows that no matter how irresponsible a person may be, society must step in before that person pays the ultimate price for his stupidity. Never mind for the moment that this directly contradicts our society’s religious source for morality: evolution, the effect is that an entire society is held captive, according to Nancy Pelosi and myself, by those who think buying a Harley more important than providing for one’s own healthcare. So when they are hauled into ER shortly after they found their Harley and helmetless head bouncing down the highway, premise 1 kicks in. Since premise 1 is already accepted law, and as such constitutes de facto free healthcare, Obamacare can’t really be seen as the beginning of socialized medicine but rather only a stage in its implementation.

There have always been other options beyond letting the man die that don’t involve the coercion of those who choose wisdom over foolishness. For one he could be cared for then charged for the service. The resources could be extracted somehow.  The IRS could be consulted on this. They are masters at extracting the fruit of other people’s labor from their greedy little hands. But for the same reasons that we accept premise 1 as a given, we, as a people, will never allow for any options that might make a mom feel bad.

For those who see the 2700 pages of bureaucratic-micro-managing-tentacle law bound up inside Obamacare as an actual effort to solve health insurance issues there’s probably no hope; likewise for those who blindly see it as compassion or others yet who see it as just another means to pick their “rich” neighbor’s pocket. But for many it is a travesty. For just as throwing expensive drugs, as opposed to searching out root issues, at a sick person’s symptoms is expensive in terms of that person’s health and dollar-bills; it’s also expensive in terms of liberty and dollar-bills when higher taxes and less freedom are seen as the only acceptable medicine for maintaining the health of a free republic.

When a people enjoy the luxury, for a time, of abandoning reality; choosing instead to drink deep the wine of make-believe worlds of personal peace, affluence, and resources that magically appear at their benevolent leader’s beckon and call, they become too drunk to think. But reality has a way of catching up. It always does. And given the bar tab, and the drunken stupor that the majority of Americans appear to have drank themselves into, when it catches up this time it’s going to run us all down.

Ozzie And Harriet, Not Real Life?

How many times have I heard the criticism that the show "Ozzie and Harriet", or “Leave It To Beaver” were not real life? In answer to this criticism the networks gave us “Married With Children”. Now there’s a show that should keep the I’m-failing-as-a-parent blues at bay. But what happens when a show actually reflects real life?

 Well apparently the makers of the movie “God Bless America” don’t want to live up to this standard. Judging from the trailer, it appears that this movie allows its makers, and viewers, to fantasize about how they wish they could respond to the trials of human relations.  One of those trials is some misbehavior in a theater.  So the characters respond the way they respond to all the other things that they don't like about their fellow humans.  They shoot them… right there in the theater.

But now, since such has become real life, they are going to remove that part.  Go figure. Don’t worry though. Since no one has gone on a shooting rampage in the park, or at a protest, lately there’s plenty of opportunity elsewhere in the film to vicariously live out the fantasies of simply blowing away those wedon’t like.

Posting At Winging It

I occasionally post at Winging It.  Today is one of those occasions.  You can find it linked below if you like.

Which Judge To Choose?