The Jon Tester Chronicles

Not much going on here in Arizona, but I had an idea yesterday as we wandered in the desert (how appropriate!) that this would be a good time to start the Jon Tester Chronicles. This is the man who so charmed Montana progressives in 2006 and still holds them in rapture. I’ll add to this now and then as I am inspired and invite reader contributions.

Jon Tester believed in a “public option” for health insurance when he was elected. That’s because Max Baucus said that it meant that the public would be given the option of buying health insurance from a private company. OR ELSE. Jon still supports that kind of public option, and will fight hard for it.

Jon Tester set out one morning on his way to work to count to ten. When he got to five, he backed down.

Jon Tester thinks that we should change the last words of the national anthem to “o’er the land of the free, so why can’t we all just get along?”

Jon Tester believes, in his heart of hearts, that Notre Dame’s mascot should be called just an “Irish Fella.” He doesn’t get why “fighting” is important to them.

Jon Tester likes to tell the joke in the Senate dining room that he loves progressives … “boiled in oil!” (He usually guffaws and discharges liquids out his nostrils). He gets odd stares and polite chuckles.

Jon Tester was driving down a country road near his home one day when he saw a sticker in the window of the car ahead. It said “Progressive Insurance.” Enraged and gorged with country cider, he floored it, pulled in front of the car, slammed on the brakes, forcing the driver with her infant passenger to stop suddenly. He then flipped her off, screamed out his window “Take that, bitchwoman!”, floored it and sped home.

Jon Tester and Max Baucus are close friends. Max taught Jon all about this “being a senator shit.” He said that all you have to do is talk the right way, and people talk themselves into believing in you. That way, you can pretty much do what you want. Jon didn’t really believe it until he proposed the Forest Jobs and Recreation Act, and saw Democrats and some environmental groups line up behind it. “Holy shit,” he said to Max. “I can do anything I want!”

Jon Tester is fat, so he doesn’t get the babes like Max does. Even so, Max occasionally sends over an intern who searches amid the layers of fat for his unit. If she can find it, he gets his Monica on.

Jon Tester once told Max that he could not believe how easy it was to be a senator. He said “I vote right, money rolls in.” He told Max that all he had to do was watch out for the burrowing press. They both laughed heartily.

No chance we’ll be pulled over – we’re white!

We are spending the next month in Phoenix, Arizona, in a house that backs up to South Mountain Park. It was an impulsive move I made a couple of months ago as I grieved the loss of my two brothers. I thought – “To hell with it! Live!” All three of my brothers died before reaching 70 (Joe 58, Steve 67, Tom 69 years and 11 months). I’m going to break that record, shatter the 70 barrier. It’s an eight year stretch ahead of me. *

We’ll be hiking the desert, taking in spring training. Two sets of Bozeman friends have houses down here, and a third couple will be spending a week with us. Does it get any better than this?
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*I had a physical last week, and the doctor told me that parents of daughters tend to live longer than others. I have four, so maybe I should shoot for age 100?

Inconceivable …

This exchange caught my eye, from 4&20 Blackbirds. It’s in the comments after a post by Lizard regarding a Montana candidate for Denny Rehberg’s House seat, Franke Wilmer. Wilmer had claimed, as is so easy to do without evidence, that the number one threat to our national security are terrorist attacks.

Turner: I’m not sure what your quibble with Wilmer is. Is there a greater threat to national security (if we understand this to mean an action leading to the deaths of large numbers of Americans) is terrorist attacks?

What would that threat be? What is Franke missing?

lizard19 terrorism is a tactic, that’s my first quibble. it’s used both by foreigners and by US citizens, so it’s a threat that shouldn’t be relegated solely to the area of foreign policy, where terrorism is used to justify projecting US imperial ambitions. in terms of actual deaths caused, not having access to affordable health care is a bigger threat than terrorist attacks.

and I thought I was pretty clear in voicing my concern over Franke’s endorsement of Obama’s military doctrine. obviously my opinions are perceived as pretty radical to some when it comes to criticizing Obama and the whole left’s obsession with humanitarian interventions, but if terrorism is such a concern, then actions taken by this administration to actually STRENGTHEN the boogemen [sic] in al-Qaeda should be examined just a bit more closely, don’t ya think?
Continue reading “Inconceivable …” →

Corporations are indeed people – psychopaths

In their fine documentary “The Corporation, Mark Achbar, Jennifer Abbott and Joel Bakan have taken modern law at its word and ask, “If the corporation were a person, what sort of person would it be?” …The American Psychiatric Association classifies psychopaths and sociopaths under the general diagnosis of “antisocial personality disorder,” and to be diagnosed with the disorder, the patient needs to meet three of out these seven criteria:


  1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
  2. Deceitfulness, as initiated by repeated lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
  3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
  4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
  5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
  6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
  7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

The filmmakers find that corporations do indeed behave in these ways, breaking the laws if they can, dissembling and hiding their behavior, sacrificing long-term welfare for short-term profit, being aggressively litigious, flouting health and safety codes, welching on payments to suppliers and workers and never once feeling a pang of remorse. (Raj Patel, The Value of Nothing, Page 41)

Raj Patel
I might add that the qualities above are pathological – that is – no matter who is at the helm of a corporation, that person cannot change these behaviors and so is not even aware that these behaviors even exist. For instance, oil, gas and pipeline companies that contribute to global warming have run a propaganda campaign, a highly successful one, to convince Americans that it is not a problem. The CEO’s of these corporations surely know better, and yet cannot change their behavior because they know that if they acknowledge the problem, the group that sponsors the position that the CEO’s occupy will expel them.

It is group pathology, and so cannot remedy itself. For that reason, corporations need to be heavily regulated and subordinated in law to the status of servant of the public, and not a legal person.

The nature of stupidity

From John Cleese

I think the problem with people like this [he was asked about Christine O’Donnell, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck] is that they are so stupid that they have no idea how stupid they are. You see, if you’re very very stupid, how can you possibly realize that you’re very very stupid? You’d have to be relatively intelligent to realize how stupid you are. There’s a wonderful bit of research by a guy named Dunning at Cornell, (who’s a friend of mine, I’m proud to say), who has pointed out that in order to know how good you are at something requires exactly the same skills as it does to be good at that thing in the first place. Which means, and this is terribly funny, that if you are absolutely no good at something at all, that you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you’re absolutely no good at it. And this explains not just Hollywood, but almost the entirety of Fox News.

I might add that the people he refers to are baseline stupid, barely sentient, but that there are higher degrees in this knightly order that are cloaked in better jargon.

There is no “I” in “Group Psychology”

I wish to point out something painfully apparent, something swirling all about us but to which all seem oblivious. It is this: Campaign rhetoric does not translate into public policy. During election cycles politicians hire public relations and advertising firms, and these are the ones who craft the talking points. They poll, research attitudes, use focus groups and psychology. But none of this is done with any notion that the result might be a new law or citizen initiative. As soon as the election is over, it all vaporizes.

Advertising, to be cost-effective, cannot dwell on individual traits. Rather, it must focus on groups. Let’s go back to Edward Bernays and his book on advertising, “Propaganda” (about advertising, and not what we now call propaganda, an offshoot. The word “propaganda in his time was not tainted as it is now.):

The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible manipulation of motives which actuate man in the group. Trotter* and Le Bon**, who approached the subject in a scientific manner, and Graham Wallas***, Walter Lippmann****, and others who continued with searching study of the group mind, established that the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology. So the question naturally arose: If we understood the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?[Footnotes are mine.]

It’s the group, baby. Just the group. That’s all that matters – move groups into voting blocs.
Continue reading “There is no “I” in “Group Psychology”” →

The meaning(lessness) of our elections

An exchange with Polish Wolf over at Intelligent Discontent brought to mind a truth that is not so much inconvenient as unpleasant. I keep it submerged and don’t often let it surface. 

It is widely shared wisdom that everyone should vote, no matter intelligence or education. We should all have a voice. That sounds really good. We should all genuflect now. 

The  universal franchise created a new environment,  new problems for leaders last century. The biggest one was most people are clueless about international and national affairs, so that consulting them should only be done for show. There are two spins to put on this:

Bertrand Russell agreed that the average citizen was indeed clueless, but that the process was useful anyway. It routinely forces changes in leadership, a good in itself even if that is an unintended outcome for voters. It reins in aristocracy.

In the US  his reasoning does not apply, as our elections are privately financed, and this has led to two, and only two parties. The two parties and their financiers are our aristocracy. Democracy is a sham here. 

In the twentieth century American intellectuals addressed the problem of the universal franchise coupled with the ignorant voter. Their conclusion was that people had to be allowed to believe that they were in  charge, and so be given their sham elections and never let in on the secret. 

That’s pretty much how we do it now, and if we had enlightened leadership it would be a workable system. But we do not have that, so that the true effect of manufactured consent is an elite and detached leadership class fronting for silent power, or what we now call the “1%” (but which is in truth more like the “1/10th of 1%”). There is no effective way to hold them accountable, as our elections have no substance and do not affect policy. 

So contrary and illogical as it seems, our democracy was killed by too much democracy.

My solution? Rewrite or throw out the constitution. It’s dysfunctional anyway. Eliminate private money from politics, and minimize high elective offices, instead having very small districts elect representatives in gymnasiums, each required to make the case for election by means of deliberation. The resulting body, a parliament of sorts, would by ballot appoint the top tier of leaders and hold them accountable, removing them from office when they misbehave. Sound familiar?

The advantage of this system is that disinterested people would not show up, nor would they be encouraged to do so. People would not be encouraged to vote for the sake of voting, nor would they be influenced by stupid TV ads and other manipulations used to win elections. However, if conflicts arise that spring into action various constituencies, they have a means to power.

There is no system that satisfies ideal democracy, but my goodness, the one we have here is a not even a good joke. It is a hoax. My suggestion does not eliminate the problem of parties, but without money, influence, there would be more than just two.