Dana Blankenhorn

The Reality-Based Community Gets Unhinged in NSA "Scandal"

For the last decade liberals have proclaimed ourselves to be the “reality-based community.” The idea, starting with the Iraq War, was that conservatives were seeing monsters under the bed, that they were ignoring real threats, and that this attitude was leading us to disaster.

It did. Iraq was a disaster. Katrina was a disaster. The Great Shitpile, meant to cover it all up, caused the Great Recession, another disaster. For Republicans, the ultimate disaster was President Obama, and their denialism has continued from the day of his election to today.

But if Democrats are to be useful, if we're to become a true governing majority, we can't take our eyes off the ball of reality. With the so-called NSA Scandal, we have.

Secrecy vs. Anarchy

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 24 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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I have a new friend, an anarchist.

He's a veteran political activist of the left-wing type, but hearing him talk about current events sounds a lot like hearing a Tea Party activist rail against ObamaCare.

The essence of the radical case, during every political crisis, is always that institutions can't be trusted, even democratic institutions. Democracy doesn't work, they cry, it works against the people's real interests, which these activists are privileged to know because, well, they're their interests.

Tribalism

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 22 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The greatest danger to democracy comes from tribalism.

In most of the world, democracy usually fails as a direct result of tribalism. People divide up into tribes based on ethnicity, or religion, and vote exclusively along tribal lines.

The result is it doesn't matter what the issues are, or who the candidates are. The result is foreordained.

Tribalism allows enormous corruption to exist, because there's nothing to stop the leaders of the largest tribe from stealing. From the other tribe and from their fellow tribesmen.

Gun Owners Anonymous

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 19 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The people who attended last week's NRA convention, and the people who support them politically, engender a wide range of emotions in those of us who don't share their ideology.

Fear. Loathing. Anger. In my case, rage and ridicule come quickly to mind.

But the most important, most effective emotion is not being deployed. It's the emotion that led Gandhi and Dr. King and even Jesus Christ to change humanity. It's almost never deployed against the greatest threat to life in our time.

Law and Order

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 18 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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One way to see the bend of political history clearly is to look at the issue of law and order. (To the right, the original cast of the long-running NBC series.) 

Americans have always favored law and order, and opposed movements that dismissed it. The Republican Party spent a generation hammering Democrats for being “soft on crime,” from Spiro Agnew sneering at the “nattering nabobs” who enabled student protests in the 1960s to George H.W. Bush and his “Willie Horton” ad in 1988. Democrats were only able to break through when they went “yeah-but” on law and order, as with Bill Clinton's support of “welfare reform” and harsh sentences for drug crimes.