Ugh. I almost wrote about Jonah Goldberg’s column about conservative values finding a home in the evil Uber-Liberal world of the moving pictures. His rhetorical laziness and blatant force of ignorance will always trump any sort of real cogent point he could make about the excellence of “conservative values“.
Instead, something else fell in to my lap, which is much more worthy of my rankles.
I don’t think people understand what debate is anymore. Reading this hot garbage Newsday fueled “debate” on whether Republicans are cold-hearted or not makes the case that the two authors don’t either. Then I read the comments. Yeah, people don’t have a goddamned clue what debate means anymore.
It’s easy to understand how this came to be. Real debate is hard for normal people. For the pundit class, who get paid to think by their ideological monied interests, it’s all too easy. For the pundit class, debate is just yelling over someone who thinks differently from you, not answering the original question asked, and going of on some tangent that’s somehow remotely related to the debate topic…and inexplicably not answering the question. That’s debate in the 24 hours news cycle, so can you really blame normal, everyday people, if they think that what the see these days is “debate”?
I tend to avoid reading these kind of “pro” and “con” articles when they appear in the newspaper. They lack any real substance and simply boil down to a “chocolate” or “peanut butter” solution from their respective camps on the myriad of topics foisted at it. It’s also just blatant status quo upkeep in the grand false equivalency.
So the topic goes: “Recent poll results from the Pew Research Center raise the question anew: They show that 86 percent of self-described "steadfast conservatives" believe that in America, "the poor have it easy." Just 6 percent of "solid liberals" believe the same thing. Who is right? Are liberals too soft-hearted, or are conservatives big ol' meanies?”
Joe Mathis (I guess representing the left-wing?) and Ben Boychuk (Umm…the right-wing…but not because he is a LIBERTARIAN!) “debate” this question.
Coming in at a (generously counted) blazing sixty-hundred and sixty-ish words you kind of get the notion that there’s not going to be much, if any debate. And wouldn’t you know it? There isn’t! Mr. Mathis does attempt to answer the question. Of course, the answer is yes: because they are!
Mr. Mathis makes some good points. He discusses the last election, and Romney’s “47 percent” comment, behind closed doors. It’s in their veiled racism towards “others”, like Reagan’s “welfare queens” of yore. Further, it’s in the GOP/right-wing’s exaltation of “policy wonk” Paul Ryan’s annual attempt to gut welfare budget’s and garner huge tax cuts for the wealthy through his “budgets”. It’s going on now with the current immigration problem, as the pundit class looks at those children living a life in limbo and squalor and just keep screaming “Eww! Eww! Send them away! Obama do something! Ick! Ick! Ick!” It’s in GOP/right-wing in congress being the arbiter’s of the general “Do-Nothing Congress 2.0” nature. If they are not cold-hearted, then what are they? They certainly aren’t pragmatic or sensible currently.
Mr. Mathis undercuts most of this by continuing to hedge his answer towards the false equivalency. It’s kind of hard not to. Regular people aren’t as black and white as the pundit class is paid to be. They can be of two minds on a topic. Believing that some poor people aren’t trying hard enough, AND that government is doing too much harm than good or in their case, probably not spending the money on the things they think the government should be spending their tax money on.
Ben Boychuk, in perfect right-wing fashion, doesn’t even bother answering the question. He’s basically “Answer?…pssh! That poll is stupid!”. The End. He does site a shortened version of the poll you the viewer can participate in and of course he came up “solidly conservative“. Then goes on to I guess site the actual poll where people could answer “I don’t know” to some of the questions, and has one of his buddies at the LIBERTARIAN Cato Institute double down on Mr. Boychuk’s assertion that the poll’s questions are dumb, therefore the poll itself is dumb. He then rattles off some debunked right-wing talking points, and calls it a day.
The Pew Poll website quiz that Mr. Boychuk sites is indeed a bit dumb. There are only two answers to a question, and it’s PRETTY OBVIOUS which answers are which. But the debate question isn't “Is this poll dumb and why?” and I’m pretty sure if we count this as a debate, then the answer is “Yes, Republicans are cold-hearted…and stupid…and don’t take direction well when asked to debate a question.” But hey at least Mr. Boychuk was found to be "solidly-conservative". Whew!
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