America: Fucking stupid?

By Dan Brooks in widespread dumbening 4 Comments

Politically active Americans, seated, in athletic wear

I like democracy the way Tila Tequila likes MySpace: generally and in principle, but almost never when it appears in individual manifestations. Winston Churchill, who is fortunately dead and unable to see himself name-checked immediately after Tila Tequila, remarked that “the best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Now that the internet has threatened to turn our mediated discourse into a 24-hour conversation with the average voter, we are better equipped than ever to answer the fundamental question of American democracy: are we fucking stupid or what? The results of the most recent Newsweek/Daily Beast poll may surprise you. As usual, “surprise” means “grimly confirm.”

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Friday links! Awesome power of logic edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 2 Comments

Deductive reasoning isn’t just a tool for curing polio and making accurate models of the solar system; it’s also a great way to alienate yourself from like half the population. One can only imagine the joy of the first caveman who combined two truthful propositions to synthesize a third, and the disappointment/rock impact he felt when he tried to explain it to somebody else. The problem with logic is that it works best on those people who are most likely to arrive at valid conclusions themselves. Its effectiveness diminishes as you deal with unprincipled or prejudiced people—sorry, “common sense” people—and drops to near zero when you get to people who prefer standing outside and yelling stuff. Basically, logic convinces least where you need it most, like if Raid killed bugs in direct proportion to their intelligence. This week’s link roundup starts out with some sweet victories for logic, then watches logic return to its role as depressingly aging gatekeeper. It’s also got Glenn Beck telling us which major religion the Antichrist will probably belong to so, you know, look out for that.

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Friday links! This modern world edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment

Minds more astute than mine have pointed out that the time machine must be impossible, because if it will have been* invented, we surely would have had visitors from the future by now. Maybe, though, they just don’t want us to bore them with arguments about how especially crazy everything is now. Surely our present moment constitutes an ordinary broomstroke in the sweep of history, but it seems crazy and futuristic. Ours is an age shocked by its own novelty. Whether we’re lauding the world-changing potential of Twitter or decrying the precipitous fall of old-fashioned morality, we seem to be a nation out of time, blithely declaring each day the turning point we’ve all been waiting for or the final goodbye of the world we once knew. As Bob Dylan once said, the times, this is going to be a really short concert because I am super old. In preparation for the last weekend of the beginning of our lives, Combat! blog presents links to stories that indicate the onset of a new age, if only by our panicked resentment of the change. Won’t you turn a little of the future into the past with us?

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My god, I hope this isn’t real

By Dan Brooks in conservatism 8 Comments

It's time to wrest polits away from the politians and return it to the American people, 16% of whom appear to be utter morons.

While I was languishing in the airport yesterday, beacon of vigilance Ben Fowlkes sent me the most recent Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll of registered Republicans. It is disturbing. It starts off okay, with a healthy number of respondents expressing their intention to vote in the 2010 congressional election and their reluctance to settle on a candidate for president in 2012. It’s disappointing to see Sarah Palin in the lead—and terrifying to see Dick Cheney in third—but three years ahead of the actual election, name recognition is pretty much all there is. Things start to get a little crazy with question three, in which 39% of Republicans opine that President Obama should be impeached. Exactly what crime he has committed goes unspecified, but perhaps respondents were rushing to get to the next question, in which nearly two-thirds of those polled agree that the president is a socialist. Thus begins a series of money shots, in a barrage of insanity that leaves the reader crouched numbly on the floor like a Japanese girl on the internet. If this poll is to be believed, 73% of Republicans think homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed to be schoolteachers. Seventy-seven percent want the Biblical account of creation from Genesis to be taught in public schools. Thirty-one percent want to outlaw contraception. And fully 23% of Republicans believe that their state should secede from the United States of America.

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Public option dies again, kind of, as Senate grinds toward halt

By Dan Brooks in corporatocracy, health care, representative democracy 2 Comments
A bunch of millionaires who look like TV weathermen agonize over how best to keep you from getting free medicine.

A bunch of millionaires dressed like TV weathermen agonize over how best to keep you from getting discount antibiotics.

Those of us with recently re-dislocated shoulders and $35,000 insurance deductibles can go straight to hell and fuck ourselves again, as the federal government has decided overwhelmingly that, as a nation, we must conquer Afghanistan and then leave, but that we must not offer any sort of public health insurance. Those two issues are not strictly connected, but still. According to the New York Times, Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D–NV, net worth $3–$6 million) announced a compromise last night among 10 Senate Democrats that would eliminate government-run health insurance, but retain the possibility of allowing individuals to buy into the same group plans currently offered to members of Congress. It will also let people aged 55 to 64 buy into Medicare, which is not too terribly helpful for the nation, considering that age group contains the lowest percentage of uninsured adults of any demographic in America. Such compromises are necessary, though, in order to get moderate and liberal Democratic senators to agree to pass some sort of health care reform bill. Notice that sentence did not contain the word “Republican.” That’s right, Combat! readers: the Democratic Party, which enjoys a sixty-seat majority in the Senate and controls both the House and the presidency, in its continuing effort to pass the centerpiece of its legislative agenda for this election cycle, has rejected a measure that 68% of Americans support because it has been forced to compromise with itself.

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