Have We Ever Seen Such Craziness?
07/01/2014
I'm referring to the left's reaction to the Hobby Lobby decision. I freely admit to being biased, and I know one side's impassioned hyperbole is the other's barking madness. But it isn't just the craziness of what's being said; it's also who's saying it. Here, for starters, is the former first lady, former senator (D-NY), former Secretary of State, and potential next president:
I submit that it is difficult to connect what she says here to reality. What is she actually referring to? A Supreme Court decision that allowed--based on a law passed in the 1990s, sponsored by Democrats and signed into law by Mrs. Clinton's husband--a company to decline to include in insurance coverage for its employees certain drugs and devices that are widely believed to function by inducing very early abortions. The items in question are still available and are not terribly expensive. Moreover, the dark age to which she fears the decision returns us, or leads us, is exactly the state of affairs of just a few years ago, before the HHS issued its ill-advised "mandate."
Reasonable people can differ about whether the decision was correct or not. But to claim that the Supreme Court's finding that a company is within the law in not purchasing something for its employees is a declaration of intent by most of the Christians and most of the Republicans in the country to subjugate the entire female sex is either unhinged, or an extremely cynical (but unfortunately very effective) effort at whipping unthinking people into a frenzy. Does Mrs. Clinton know she is spouting nonsense, or does she believe it? Either way, it's bad news for the nation.
I know, people on the right have said many crazy things. But when I try to appraise the level of craziness in a somewhat detached manner, I can't come up with a right-wing phenomenon that ranks with this one. Consider:
1) Distance from reality: there is a popular "meme"--a picture with a caption--being circulated which claims that because of this decision "corporations are people, but women are not." And an awful lot of people seem to be under the impression that the Supreme Court has allowed Hobby Lobby to forbid that its employees use contraception.
2) Degree of illogic: the whole idea that someone else's refusal to buy something for me is the same as preventing me from obtaining it at all. What can you say to someone to whom the irrationality of that is not immediately apparent? There might be a case for it if what was at stake was an extremely expensive cure for cancer. But these are things that anyone but the desperately poor can afford if they want them, and there are reportedly government subsidies for them.
Maybe the most incoherent bit is the instantly popular slogan: "Not my boss's business." No, it isn't, really--so why do you think your boss should pay for it?
3) Level of emotional intensity: "frenzy" is not an inaccurate word for a lot of what I'm hearing. Here's a collection of tweets full of incoherent rage and threats. And here is a Democratic congresswoman, and head of the Democratic National Committee, asserting that Republicans want to "reach into a woman's body."
Unfortunately she's probably right that this will be a very useful campaign issue for the Democrats.
4) Prominence and ostensible respectability of the persons emitting the noise: see the two examples above, and add to the list the vast majority of mainstream journalists and pundits. And, no doubt, most of the entertainment industry, although the people labelled "celebrities" whose reactions I've seen were mostly unknown to me.
The Democrats' "War on Women" tactic is, ethically and intellectually, as offensive as the racist demagoguery of the segregationists of old. And they'll probably be rewarded for it. In a perverse way, the comparison is comforting: we survived and triumphed over the segregationists, and maybe we'll do the same with these demagogues.
I'm beginning to suspect that they've been using 1984 for a textbook in Journalism schools.
Or maybe it's just Humpty Dumpty. http://izquotes.com/quote/339922
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 09:43 AM
Really profoundly disturbing.
"But to claim that the Supreme Court's finding that a company is within the law in not purchasing something for its employees is a declaration of intent by most of the Christians and most of the Republicans in the country to subjugate the entire female sex is either unhinged, or an extremely cynical (but unfortunately very effective) effort at whipping unthinking people into a frenzy."
I'm inclined to believe that Hillary is whipping up a frenzy.
Posted by: Louise | 07/02/2014 at 09:45 AM
What is driving me crazy in the assertion that we (or somebody) want to deprive women of the right to decide what is right for them, when in fact, the mandate deprives us for the right to decide what is right for us. And then, it really drives me crazy that people are unable to understand that. I mean, I think they really are unable to understand that.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 09:52 AM
I agree, Janet.
Posted by: Louise | 07/02/2014 at 10:01 AM
Jonah Goldberg: "In other words, she either honestly believes that the Supreme Court made this decision based upon some fevered theorizing about “women’s bodies” in an effort to prop up male Christians or Hillary Clinton is slanderously comparing the United States to some teetering third world theocracy. I am honestly not sure which explanation is more damning."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/381766/hillary-clintons-pernicious-nonsense-jonah-goldberg
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 10:20 AM
"What is driving me crazy...."
Yes. What they think we're asking for is the right to crush them mercilessly beneath the iron heel of a theocracy, so they don't feel obliged to grant our wishes any legitimacy. That was the drift of the decision by the judge in one of those birthday-cake cases. I think it was Debbie W-S in another clip that I saw yesterday who used some very stern language about not tolerating such things (as Hobby Lobby's objections).
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 10:24 AM
I can't help but remember that you never thought health insurance should come from employers. Would have saved us some trouble if they had only listened to you.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 10:58 AM
True, Janet. I can't see why employers should pay for their employee's health insurance at all. Give them a living wage - that's what justice requires.
Posted by: Louise | 07/02/2014 at 11:33 AM
Yes, they should have. It was already crazy and expensive and inefficient. Now it's divisive as well. And the way the left wants to fix it is an entirely government-controlled system, which will just make the divisiveness worse.
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 11:59 AM
Sure, watch Republicans defend everything about immediate availability of firearms to anyone to do anything with. Just what the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution outlines. And defend the Open Carry crazies. Yes, go directly to politicians for rational thought. I am enjoying some of the backlash against Hobby Lobby hypocrisy - most of their junk comes from China, a nation with a wonderful abortion record amongst other human rights violations.
Posted by: Stu | 07/02/2014 at 12:56 PM
In case you don't have time to click on that quote, here it is.
“When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less. The question is, said Alice, whether you can make words mean so many different things. The question is, said Humpty Dumpty, which is be master—that’s all.”
I knew the first part, but this is the first time I've seen the latter, and that really is the question, isn't it?
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 01:03 PM
Stu, This isn't so much about Hobby Lobby as it is about the media and the Democrats LYING about what the issue is.
I'm not a Republican. I don't like any of them.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 01:22 PM
Oh, sorry, I was in a rush when I saw your first comment earlier and missed that link. I'm pretty sure I've quoted Humpty in related context before. That really is the way the left has come to see these questions.
Ok, Stu, I fully agree that there are right-wing crazies, but show me the equivalent from gun-rights advocates that reaches the level of my four points above. The cranks who insist on "open-carrying" into Burger King don't get that much sympathy even within their own movement. And Hobby Lobby may be hypocritical, but that's irrelevant to the matter at hand.
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 01:26 PM
No need to apologize. I made the sorry discovery that people don't hang on my every word a long time ago. ;-)
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 01:31 PM
It's sad, isn't it? Especially when some people recognize that I should be listened to.:-)
Here's a welcome bit of rationality at The Atlantic:
http://m.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/06/hobby-lobby-isnt-waging-a-war-on-women/373717/
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 02:00 PM
"I made the sorry discovery that people don't hang on my every word a long time ago."
Now *that* is a tragedy. :(
Posted by: Louise | 07/02/2014 at 02:12 PM
But I bear with it bravely.
AMDG
Posted by: Janet | 07/02/2014 at 02:27 PM
If you conceive of the opposition as obstreperous adolescents, it begins to make sense. They're self-centered and not registering others' interests and their wants and claims on others' resources are their own justification.
See Prof. Barkely Rosser, economist in the employ of the Commonwealth of Virginia, aged 66:
http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/07/assorted-links-1174.html#comments
--
Much of portside politics is this way, down to the understanding of political institutions. You have the student council (elected officials), the school administration (the courts), and an economy based on allowances. The bourgeois types among them fancy themselves the faculty.
Posted by: Art Deco | 07/02/2014 at 03:01 PM
As far as I know, Republicans don't want the government to force corporations to provide firearms for their employees for free. People have to pay for them.
I'm not a Republican, either, but I would not want to be forced to provide abortifacient contraceptives to my employees. They can get them on their own, for quite little money. At this point those too poor to get them on their own can sign up on the Marketplace, and get their contraceptives that way.
Posted by: Robert Gotcher | 07/02/2014 at 03:01 PM
Thanks for linking to that Atlantic article, Mac. Especially since it's written by a young woman. Gives me a bit of hope that all is not lost yet.
Sort of uncanny that she (the author) is a dead ringer for Chelsea Clinton.
Posted by: Marianne | 07/02/2014 at 03:32 PM
Yes, it does me, too. And I wouldn't have noticed that resemblance, but I guess you're right.
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 06:49 PM
"If you conceive of the opposition as obstreperous adolescents, it begins to make sense."
I'm afraid that's all too accurate. Also afraid my generation, a minority but highly visible, initiated that mode.
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 06:59 PM
And you know: I'm glad I know so many women with good sense (starting with my wife), because otherwise the feminists would achieve exactly the opposite of what they intend with me, by making me wonder if there was something to the idea that women don't think rationally.
Also, perhaps not exactly fortunately, I meet plenty of men who aren't any better.
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 08:02 PM
I read a piece on Neo-Neo-Con which said that the idea of pretending that the Republicans are starting a war on women is a Democrat tactic. They are not crazy (on this analysis), they are simply pretending for tactical reasons to believe that all Republicans want to deny women contraception.
Posted by: Grumpy | 07/02/2014 at 08:10 PM
I read that, too. I think it was in the same piece or in someone's comment on it that mention was made of George Stephanopolous badgering Mitt Romney on whether or not it would be constitutional for a state to ban contraception. From any point of view except a desire to trap Romney it was a nutty thing to spend interview time on. I think it's pretty hard to separate the cynics from the genuine nuts, though. Many of them may be both--genuinely believe it while shrewdly using it as a tactic.
Posted by: Mac | 07/02/2014 at 10:00 PM
The paragraph about Romney being stunned to be asked by an interviewer whether he wanted to ban contraception was in NNC's own piece - I didn't read the comments. I would guess that a few leading Democrats are deliberately using this tactically, and the others are dupes and fellow travelers.
I hate to say this, because I wish I myself had more of the generous Catholic impulse to be neither of the left nor of the right. But right now it looks to me like some of the fellow travelers are those catholics who have sprung to criticize Hobby Lobby for various moral failings.
Posted by: Grumpy | 07/03/2014 at 05:52 AM
Well, they're certainly not, in the long run, doing the Church or for that matter the country a favor. I think a lot of that is driven by a strong antipathy toward the right. In my experience a lot of Catholics who say they're neither of the left nor of the right are fundamentally more sympathetic to the left, but can't really get on board with the left's cultural program.
It's obvious that Catholic thought can't be fitted into the current left-right demarcations. You can keep your head about that while still recognizing that in the current situation if you're going to get involved at all you're almost bound to come down more often on one side than the other. Seems like the only way you can avoid that is to hold yourself entirely apart from the whole thing and say nothing about politics at all.
Posted by: Mac | 07/03/2014 at 07:47 AM
Also afraid my generation, a minority but highly visible, initiated that mode.
Rod Dreher said living in Florida had soured him on the old. Perhaps my own view is too dependent on the standards and practices of my parents' contemporaries (vintages 1922 to 1936), but I've found as a rule that the elderly seldom make asses of themselves unless they are suffering from dementia. Since the exceptions I can think of were all academics, I suppose this fellow Rosser should have left me less poleaxed than he did.
Posted by: Art Deco | 07/03/2014 at 08:16 AM
They are not crazy (on this analysis), they are simply pretending for tactical reasons to believe that all Republicans want to deny women contraception.
I think you mean their public relations mavens (who went into that trade because they lack the people skills to be pimps) are using it as a tactic. Wagers most partisan Democrats have either tuned out or lapped it right up.
Posted by: Art Deco | 07/03/2014 at 08:19 AM
From any point of view except a desire to trap Romney it was a nutty thing to spend interview time on.
Stephanopolous' previous employment was in Bilge Clinton's p.r. apparat. He's a Democratic operative with a TV show. However, little doubt you find partisan Democrats who think this is a reasonable allocation of limited time. See Jonathan Haidt.
Posted by: Art Deco | 07/03/2014 at 08:22 AM
Catholics who say they're neither of the left nor of the right are fundamentally more sympathetic to the left,
They caricature the starboard, something made all the easier when members of the starboard caricature themselves. (Best examples: two people I encounter online who tell me that street crime in slum neighborhoods five miles away from where they live and in the same physical settlement somehow has nothing to do with them and that slum residents are sponges if they expect suburban residents to pay taxes to support a metropolitan police force).
Posted by: Art Deco | 07/03/2014 at 08:29 AM
Both sides do that (caricaturing) to the other, and both sides have plenty of people who can be pointed to as justification. Your example is a pretty good one.
Posted by: Mac | 07/03/2014 at 10:52 AM
Dreher's old people in Florida are probably a self-selected sample that skews toward the obnoxious.
Posted by: Mac | 07/03/2014 at 10:53 AM
Btw, here is the piece I mentioned where I quoted Humpty-Dumpty's manifesto:
http://lightondarkwater.typepad.com/lodw/2012/11/sunday-night-journal-november-4-2012.html
Posted by: Mac | 07/03/2014 at 05:06 PM
That's funny Maclin, because I remember the first paragraph well, so I know I read the post, but I don't remember the quote, nor did I ever know that that was what followed the quote about words meaning what HD wants them to mean, even though I've used a picture with that part of the passage for my profile picture a couple of times.
AMDG
Posted by: janet | 07/03/2014 at 09:40 PM
Interesting. It's the "which shall be master?" that's always stuck with me--it sounds so ominous.
Posted by: Mac | 07/03/2014 at 09:59 PM
Well, I AM the master, that's why words mean what I say they mean. ;-)
AMDG
Posted by: janet | 07/03/2014 at 10:09 PM
"but I've found as a rule that the elderly seldom make asses of themselves unless they are suffering from dementia."
That has generally been my experience - especially among my grandparents' set, sadly all now deceased.
This generalisation may be tested sorely as the Boomers get thoroughly elderly. :/
Posted by: Louise | 07/04/2014 at 10:20 AM