Tribal Loyalty and the Corporatist Agenda: It’s Not Just For Republicans Any More

By: Jane Hamsher Monday March 29, 2010 8:40 am

Ezra then went on to write (with no small amount of irony) that poor David Frum had been purged from AEI for his failure to walk in lockstep with the GOP on health care, after Frum pointed out that the foundations of the bill really were conservative.  He castigates the party for its unfettered tribalism in shutting down a truthteller like Frum, who he applauds for merely pointing out the obvious conservative intellectual inconsistency. You could give yourself whiplash trying to count all the reversals wrapped up in that one, starting with Ezra’s long-held insistence that the health care bill represents a huge progressive victory (though he has been trying to square the two, as if progressive “goals” hadn’t been used as bait to neutralize liberal opposition and achieve a drastic corporate agenda).

It’s probably unfair to single out Ezra for this rather glaring inconsistency, since he was just one of many who were quick to excoriate “purists” on the left who didn’t support the bill and then subsequently leaped to Frum’s defense.   But if the lesson of the David Frum firing is that it’s really bad for a political movement to stigmatize dissent and deviation from the party line, what does it say about those steely-eyed “pragmatists” who castigated pro-choice dissent within their own party when abortion rights were deemed an acceptable sacrifice?

There is no consistent, coherent moral position being expressed here.  Rather, a woman’s right to choose has value primarily when it can be demagogued to exclude those who don’t pass its litmus test of tribal loyalty. Abortion is a core element of the liberal canon that cannot be broached at any cost when it comes to shutting down potential trans-partisan alliances around civil liberties or ending the war that have nothing whatsoever to do with choice.  But when it comes to a law that actually seriously impacts a woman’s right to choose,  abortion rights can be sacrificed for some “greater good,” with some feminist cover quickly assembled to affirm that an appropriate standard has been met.  And anyone who doesn’t arrive at that conclusion at the same time is operating in bad faith and should not be taken seriously.

The abortion issue is emblematic of the way in which appeals to tribal loyalty were used to stigmatize and delegitimize progressive opposition to a radically corporatist health care bill. George Bush couldn’t privatize Social Security because of liberal opposition, but liberal resistance to a health care bill authored by the insurance companies was effectively neutralized by a call to Democratic party loyalty.  Anyone making a consistent values argument, who didn’t immediately fall in line and support the passage of a neoliberal health care bill, was “helping the Republicans” – as if Republican opposition to the bill wasn’t the very thing that gave progressives negotiating power in the first place.

In What’s the Matter with Kansas, Thomas Frank poignantly describes how white working class Americans are tricked by corporate elites into acting against their self-interest through naked appeals to irrational tribalism.

Glad that only happens to Republicans.

Have I mentioned that recently?

Trust, Underwater

By MATT BAI, The New York Times

Published: March 18, 2010

In 2004, newly married and having decided to embark on the next phase of adulthood, my wife and I bought a house. This was back in the delirious days of multiple offers and outlandish escalation clauses, when you had to bring your checkbook with you to an open house, just in case someone else tried to buy the place while you were poking around the attic. I called a mortgage broker somewhere in Florida, and she was thrilled to hear from me, practically breathless. I felt as if I were the 10,000th customer to come through line at the Safeway, my arrival heralded by streamers and sirens and all kinds of free stuff falling from the rafters. Did we want a five-year adjustable-rate loan or maybe even rates adjusted on a monthly basis? Why not just pay just the interest rather than the principal? Did we also need a bridge loan for a few months, to hold us over from one house to the next? How about a ”second trust” – that is, two mortgages instead of one – so we could put less money down, maybe even as little as 5 percent of the purchase price while avoiding the penalty of private mortgage insurance? We might as well open a home equity line of credit on top of the mortgage, she said, so we could borrow another six-figure sum with the tear of a perforated check. Countrywide, the nation’s largest lender, would happily give us that free, and, hey, you never knew when you might decide to add a skylight over the kitchen, or maybe a stone turret.

Duh.

Welcome to the real world you privileged little prick.

I’m just not sure what I can add to this-

Next Big Issue? Social Security Pops Up Again

By JACKIE CALMES, The New York Times

Published: March 22, 2010, A1

By 2016, Social Security will begin paying more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, according to the annual report of government trustees; reserves in the form of government i.o.u.’s will be exhausted by 2037, after which incoming taxes will cover three-quarters of benefits.

Before his inauguration, Mr. Obama said of Social Security, “We have to signal seriousness in this by making sure some of the hard decisions are made under my watch, not someone else’s.”

Similarly, some Democrats argue that their party should act now, while it controls the White House and Congress, rather than take the chance that Republicans will regain power and try to carve private retirement accounts from Social Security, as former President George W. Bush did unsuccessfully.

Umm… what’s the difference again?

Make sure you speak slowly and loudly like I’m “fucking retarded” and deaf, or even worse- French.