You know what grinds my gears?

Wow, two posts in one night? Yeah, I guess it has been awhile.

Normally, I like to keep a pretty even-keeled approach to life.  Not a whole lot of things make me upset because as my dad always says, “It’s just not worth the energy to get mad”.  And he’s completely right.  Yet, there are a few things that really, really get me going.

1) Ignorant people who, like the cliched ostrich, simply prefer to stick their head in the sand rather than try and understand what’s going on

Ah, ignorance is bliss.  Not for me, though.  In nearly every discussion I’ve ever had about (modern) political discourse, we lay the foundation for making the kind of society we want to live in by assuming that every individual will be “rationally self-interested”.  That every person could and should know what is best for them, implying that they will be well informed.  Now, this could easliy lead into an entire discussion on the state of education in this country, but that’s enough fodder for a completely different post.  A good sizeable portion of the population, on both the left and the right, tend to grab onto talking points offered up by cable news programs and run with it like that is the end all, be all, killer argument that will completely shift society towards their point.  An example:

On the right: Barack Obama is a socialist.

Let’s take a look at that statement because you can’t go but a few minutes listening to right-wing punditry without hearing this one.  The clame is that Barack Obama is secretly a socialist that wants our government to effectively seize all wealth in this country and redistribute it equally.  My biggest problem with this one is that I’m pretty sure most people don’t actually understand what socialism is.  Socialism, for all intents and purposes, an economic set of beliefs that argues that the state should take public control of the means of production, with a view towards fair compensation.  Well, if Barack Obama wanted to redistribute wealth equally among all people, that would look a bit more like Communism, wouldn’t it?  But calling your political rival a Communist is soooooo 1950′s.

No, I do not believe the talking heads and politicians that started this slanderous term about Obama actually think he wants to turn us into a Communist/Socialist country.  This term was first used not after the Joe “The Plumber” (Who’s name is not Joe and seems to be more Sam the Reporter more than a Plumber) incident.  The first time I had ever heard this used was from the McCain campaign themselves, especially from Sarah Palin.  I truly believe that the McCain Campaign simply used this as a way to “otherize” Obama, to make him seem not like you without actually going back to the old standby of “he’s black”.  No, I believe the campaign realized they needed to alienate Obama from their base by making people afraid of him.  Afraid that he would come after their money and their guns in an unprecedented way.  But calling someone a Communist just gets you laughed at today, so what did they do?  They went for the next best thing: Socialist.

Does anyone believe that Obama thinks the best way for our country to be run is to have the government run businesses?  If they do, I’d love to hear the reasoning.  Does anyone honestly believe that Obama had started running for president well over two years before the election, well before the economic crisis began craving, indeed yearning to be able to run up these kinds of deficits if he didn’t think it was absolutely necessary?  If you do, then we’ll have to agree to disagree.

If anything, I believe that Obama’s approach to this whole mess is wholly unoriginal.  For as much talk as there has been comparing Obama to Lincoln, his situation is much more like the one that FDR faced coming into office.  Indeed, a crisis of the credit markets, of consumer confidence and an economy that just seems destined to continue down the drain.  Sound familiar?  I could be talking about 1932 or 2009.  And Obama is taking many of the same approaches FDR took during the 1930′s.

Now wait a minute you say, FDR didn’t stop the Great Depression, World War II did!  Yes, you would be right that we didn’t completely get rid of the effects of the depression until the war started.  However, if you look at this graph the US unemployment dropped every year except for 1937.  And wouldn’t you know it, 1937 was the year that budget hawks got on Roosevelt’s case enough that he had to scale back some New Deal programs and raise taxes in order to balance the budget.  Wouldn’t you know it, the programs were helping until budget hawks called for less spending, indeed the exact opposite thing we needed at the time?

So let me be one of the the few to actually stand up (figuratively) and say it: I, by way of my personal opinion, believe that the $787 billion stimulus package may not end up being big enough.  There, now it’s out there.  If I’m wrong, I’ll eat my words (figuratively).  But Lord help us if I’m right.

2) People who cherry pick science for their own personal beliefs

This one always gets me hot under the collar.  I am lucky enough to have grown up in a generation of people who actually knew the dangers of smoking (even though many, many of my age continue to do so, different strokes I guess).  How did we come to know these dangers?  Surely we’ve all had the grandpa or grandma who smoked, got sick and died.  But everybody dies, how did we know that it was the cigarettes?  Scientific studies.  So now we know that you are at a much higher risk of getting lung, throat or mouth cancer if you smoke.

We landed a man on the moon (or maybe we didn’t, if you believe that conspiracy theory).  You trust science to make sure that your grandpa’s pacemaker will work if your g-pa’s heart starts to beat irregularly.  It is far and awide accepted that if I go to an optometrist, he will give me a prescription for glasses that will make me see better.  Thanks to science.

But when we start talking about the origins of humans? Nope, nope, nope, the science is completely wrong.  Carbon dating is a sham.  The scientists “just found some big bones and put them together to make it look like whatever they wanted it to” (actual quote by a source who shall remain nameless).  I do believe in consistency in life.  I believe that decisions should be as fair as possible.  How in the world can it be consistent that the same science that has made our lives exponentially better (especially with things like the internet) is all of a sudden completely wrong?

Ok, I get it.  It 100% goes against your personal beliefs as a (insert denomination here) true believer.  That’s fair, this is America and you can think whatever you want to, it’s one of the things that makes this country great.  But please, PLEASE keep your personal beliefs just that: personal.  John Rawles came up with a pretty smart way of having a civil debate in a public, pluralistic democracy.  He proposed the idea of “public reasons”, a pool of ideas that the general public can at least somewhat agree upon.  If you want to debate on the merits of science, use scientific arguments.  If you want me to have a religious discussion, by all means bust out any Leviticus or Romans clause that you want.  But please, don’t mix the two, it makes a horrible mess.

Vero Possumus

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