Evil plans for world dominion by dark masters of eeeeeee-vil

Cobb has an interesting post up wherein, after meandering around a bit he says:

I am a willing and able participant in the system employing enlightened self-interest having been struck by:
1) the remarkable resiliancy of the American middle-class
2) regimes of tyrannical chaos elsewhere
3) the prerogatives of wisdom and age.
4) the fantastic vapidity of lefty wishful thinking
5) the concrete reality of collaborative skills

and

As I heard Aziz' name surfacing the other day, I am brought to mind about this Sivanandian imperative and the conspiratorial nature of big Chomsky-sized secrets. What is better at motivating strident insurgent political activism than the existence of secrets and a pledge to correct America from within? This is a potent combination. There is a huge problem with it however. It forces the insurgents to assume evil motivations and elide the complexity of real power relationships.

Nothing illustrates this quite like the gutteral noises made by lefties whenever they utter the word 'profits'. People who don't understand business generally don't understand how profits are created. The complexity of running a business is a big mystery to them. It's a secret. They just understand that people at the top get lots of money, people at the bottom don't, and that 'everything' is all about profits.

That's surprisingly patronizing coming from a usually thoughtful man.Maybe I take it personally because I got a big-ol' Chomsky-sized secret plot motivating the political side of my conversations (of which P6 is just the written part). And I'm not backing up off it, because it's not even secret anymore. Grover Norquist has spoken of it. Karl Rove has spoken of it. Tom DeLay has spoken of it. Congress executes it with every bill that passes favors to CCC (Corporate Campaign Contributors), and every meeting with groups having the same initials. And the whole Republican Party, with dishearteningly rare exceptions, not only drinks the Kool-Aid but asks for seconds.

I'm simply not the type of person to make gutteral noises. I've been as corporate as Cobb, and as independantly employed. I've been broke, on welfare. I've raised a family and therefore had to take that realistic look at the world to understand how a broke Black man can move up, can see past the hostile racism of some and the guilty racism of others to the people who live beneath the attitudes…as well as how to recognize people whose lives and minds aren't constrained by such attitudes. I am by NO means anti-capitalism.

But I am anti-Capitalist.

I see is a class of people whose root morality is Capitalism, to whom that which is profitable is by definition good, and all the other repercussions are dealt with in the aftermath. These folks aren't classic evil, but the results of their actions can be…and in their current collaboration with the neocons, it is.

I don't have to assume evil motivations. I don't deal in the motivations of other because I can't see them. But I can see the results. When Cobb says:

We would all do well to remember unintended consequences.

…he's right—and those with the whip handle should be all the more mindful of it.

Posted by Prometheus 6 on October 21, 2003 - 11:12am :: Seen online
 
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I'm not exactly "anti-capitalist" because I don't think it's up to me to say. But I wonder, do people who fling around terms like "lefty" or what-have-you ever have a conversation with people they don't agree with? The reason I say this is that a classic anti-capitalist (let's say a conventional, mild-dispositioned Marxist, perhaps--of whom I know several) would point out that the current adminstrative disaster we are living through is a culminating crisis of capitalism, and quite possibly be right.But the people who really loathe the present administration aren't "lefties." Dean is not. Kevin Drum or Josh Marshall are not. Atrios is not and neither is Digby. There's the horde of economics nobel laureates (list furnished on request) who have petitioned against the Bush Tax cuts, and there's the CBO whose forecasts are determined by statute. For these people, the system might have worked if it weren't hijacked by fanatics.The notion that there's a significant number of people out there who hate the ida of profits certainly doesn't comport with my experience. On the contrary, profits are regarded with a good deal more respect than the Achillean treasury-plundering kleptocrats running our monopoloid private sector.That, gentlemen, is not a market economy.

Posted by  James R MacLean (not verified) on October 20, 2003 - 7:00pm.

As a rule I'm anti-"anyone that puts something basically conceptual ahead of people that I know". I have a pretty clear view of the machinery at work, and that's how I judge it--I'm not much concerned about the elegance or purity of it all if it's hurting the folks I care about.Oher than that, I agree with you entirely, James. Circa the year 5 P.G. (pre Gingrich) I used to tell people I was about as conservative as a person born in 1957 could be. To say that now, though, would make me the cutting edge of knife against Black folks' throat. It would be used to support policies and decisions I…abhor may be too strong a word, but not by much."Market economy" has become a term of art, like "compete," "WMD," "free nations" and (when used by Dubya) "National Guard airman."The thing that gets me about Cobb is, I'm convinced he knows better.

Posted by  P6 (not verified) on October 20, 2003 - 7:00pm.

I'll be brief because I'm about to eat dinner. Then I'll try to say what I'm trying to say better. Thanks for giving me the benefit of the doubt. I do know better. This was a post that was sitting there in 'draft' mode that was starting to get buried. There are three more tortured pieces in the queue as well.I'm having a difficult time trying to tie together my own situation as unemployed, my confusion about why American health care is so expensive, my recent handyman work, the ufcw strike and the blogospheric talk about civility. Reading Sebastian Holsclaw this morning made me feel as if I just had to get something out there which was integral to this lump of thought in my skull. At first the piece was just about big secrets and liberals. Then it was perfectly obvious that Bush was doing the evil mantra about Saddam and Bin Laden. Then sex came into the picture and there was that bit. But the bulk of this was directed at the unwillingness of pro-UFCW folks to look to the economics of 'living wages', and that's what unnerved me.I figured that if I disaggregated all of this and put it out piece by piece it might work. But that piece doesn't stand very well on its own. Aziz is completely tangential, but it was talk about Aziz that made me think of the big secrets idea, which applies to all sorts of morally outraged people, who in the end look like Emily Latella. ('oh, nevermind')The last thing I want to sound like is some idiot conservative who thinks that the only poor thinking is done by liberals, nor do I want to David Horowitz myself by saying *I* used to think this way and I know how stupid I was, therefore anyone who comes to the same conclusions must be as stupid as I was. Anyway.. I'll be back, hopefully with a better way to belt out the text...

Posted by  Cobb (not verified) on October 20, 2003 - 7:00pm.

There are four major factors to health care being so expensive. (I've been doing a Spanish Inquisition thing on this, but you don't know on the internet. Ha!) First, it is highly regulated by the FDA, and that is a massive layer of beauracracy (sp?) to be paid for; it is highly litigated, with massive payouts for mistakes (meaning massive malpractice insurance premiums), the people who do it are highly skilled and in high demand and therefore paid more, and because there is an essentially infinite demand for it, because very few people are willing to say, "I would rather die than pay that much."It is the last part that really seems to irk the "national health care" people, but I don't see a way around it. The only other option is to ignore the third thing, and then where does that get you? "Excuse me, Doctor, but we are going to force you to work for what we think you should get." You are going to stop getting the best people going into medical school (see Canada) and you are essentially putting the current doctors into slavery.(I don't remember what thread this is, so it is probably off topic and just a response to Cobb. It wouldn't bother me if P6 moved or deleted it, but I doubt he will.)

Posted by  Phelps (not verified) on October 23, 2003 - 8:41am.