Paul Krugman: The Resentment Strategy

The "raging rajas of resentment" attempt to exploit a powerful force:

The Resentment Strategy, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: Can the super-rich former governor of Massachusetts — the son of a Fortune 500 C.E.O. ...— really keep a straight face while denouncing “Eastern elites”?

Can the former mayor of New York City, a man who ... “marched in gay pride parades, dressed up in drag and lived temporarily with a gay couple and their Shih Tzu” — that was between his second and third marriages — really get away with saying that Barack Obama doesn’t think small towns are sufficiently “cosmopolitan”?

Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself — until Congress changed hands, high-paying lobbying jobs were reserved for loyal Republicans — really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”?

Yes, they can. ...

[T]he Republican Party, now more than ever, is firmly in the hands of the angry right... What’s the source of all that anger? ... [M]uch ... of the anger ... is based ... on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people.

Thus Mr. Giuliani asserted that Wasilla, Alaska, isn’t “flashy enough” for Mr. Obama, who never said any such thing. And Ms. Palin asserted that Democrats “look down” on small-town mayors — again, without any evidence.

What the G.O.P. is selling, in other words, is the pure politics of resentment; you’re supposed to vote Republican to stick it to an elite that thinks it’s better than you. Or to put it another way, the G.O.P. is still the party of Nixon.

One of the key insights in [the book] “Nixonland”... is that Nixon’s political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates’ resentment against the Franklins, the school’s elite social club. There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that ... surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and ... the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.

And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that.

Can Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin really ride Nixonian resentment into an upset election victory...?...

By selecting Barack Obama as their nominee, the Democrats may have given Republicans an opening: the very qualities that inspire many fervent Obama supporters — the candidate’s high-flown eloquence, his coolness factor — have also laid him open to a Nixonian backlash. Unlike many observers, I wasn’t surprised at the effectiveness of the McCain “celebrity” ad. It didn’t make much sense intellectually, but it skillfully exploited the resentment some voters feel toward Mr. Obama’s star quality.

That said, the experience of the years since 2000 — the memory of what happened to working Americans when faux-populist Republicans controlled the government — is still fairly fresh in voters’ minds. Furthermore,... the G.O.P. really is the Gramm Old Party — it really does believe that the economy is just fine, and the fact that most Americans disagree just shows that we’re a nation of whiners.

But the Democrats can’t afford to be complacent. Resentment, no matter how contrived, is a powerful force, and it’s one that Republicans are very, very good at exploiting.

Comments

[TigerPaw]

The Republican's in the US illustrate that perhaps it is indeed possible to fool enough of the people enough of the time. Goebbels would be proud of their achievement and Orwell would shake his head that what he feared/warned would come true.

And people wonder why other former great nations (Rome, China, etc.) all fell after their rise. All they need do is look at the news, read the paper, and most importantly look in the mirror.

[reason]

Unfortunately, this may the inevitable consequence of decades of the propaganda promoting self-indulgence and emotionalism over thoughful self-control that we call advertising. It is more evil than you can possibly think (in spite of economists tolerance of it).

[reason]

And yes Krugman is right, the inability to see obvious hipocracy is amazing and troubling. We need help from psychiatrists here.

[hari]

Look the American political paradigm is bankrupt and Paul can't deal with it without invoking Nixon's student days....

Let's be clear and succint about what ails the Great Satan during this election year. First, read Bob Woodward's new edition on War and Occupation of an Arab land by a W Texas ignoranzia....It's pitiful political tale shld wake you up to the decline of American power and influence in the world right now...and its final demission.

The election shld not be about Georgia (Misha) or Russia. Those are good/convenient *deviations* from the truth about policies followed by this Great (GOP) Satan or *lead head* about to depart from office.

Lesson of past eight years! Beware of what *Idiot* you choose to sit in that immaculate Oval Office...and decide the fate of America and its place in world history. Don't allow youself to be confused by half-cooked political pundits
including our good Paul.

[save_the_rustbelt]

Krugman couldn't blog about his ailing mother without pointing out that people in New Jersey are more diverse and more tolerate that small town America, which is less tolerant than the urban and urbane in ---- New Jersey?

Princeton is the real America. (?) Check his blog.

Anyway, the Democrats should win this election easily, but I think they put their best candidate on the sidelines. Lots of center to center/right Republicans could have voted for Hillary.

[Andrew Hartman]

Krugman hates the politics of resentment, but he's happy to
advocate the politics of nostalgia: let's bring back the
50's.

[bakho]

Other than a few slogans about energy, the GOP convention and McCain's speech were devoid of economic policy or government policies aimed at solving our country's problems.

This election is about the stupid economy. The GOP convention was all about the biography of John McCain. We are electing a leader, not the Prom Queen.

[swells]

I'd like to see blame apportioned where it is appropriate. Republicans do these things because these things work. These things work because too many people are stupid enough to fall for it. Yes, the Republicans should be ashamed of themselves but it is also vitally important that the voters be taken to task for being so stupid. Just as a drunk or a heroin addict can't recover from their addiction until they admit the addiction, voters have to realize it's their own fault before this kind of tactic ceases to hold sway over them.

An intervention is needed and blaming the Republican leadership alone isn't going to accomplish much.

says...

While we're on the topic of the litany of non sequesters, were you Paul Krugman one of Rudy's roommates?

[bob]

Your reading comprehension skills are a bit rusty my friend. Here's what Paul actually said:

"Mercer County — which is a lot more than Princeton, which I admit is a bit unreal — IS what America looks like today."

[reason]

Save the rustbelt - you are misquoting him. He explicitly admitted that Princeton wasn't typical, but said that the county containing it approximately was.

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/09/small-towns-and.html#c129045798

What is it about elections? People read whatever they want to hear into what is actually being said.

[reason]

swells
Agreed. But I don't know if this helps us. It is not clear that the people in question have the cognitive skills (as distinct from ability) to do better. It is like people blaming Australian Aborigines for the problems they have. Yes their behaviour has something to do with it, but unless we can understand and find how to improve that behaviour, stating that fact doesn't change anything.

[reason]

bob -
I see we crossed there. Great minds...?

[ken melvin]

Krugman's cutting loose.

Rethugs, justifiably, suffer much self hate which they seek to transfer to others. It's the old what Jack says about Jill thing.

[swells]

reason, yeah it can be a chicken and egg thing. I think the responsibility of voters needs to be hammered home at every opportunity though. People are talking about Palin being unqualified (which she is) but very few people talk about the electorate being properly prepared to vote intelligently. Most people are, quite frankly, ill equipped to vote intelligently. To my mind, that is why we have selected such disastrous leaders of late. I'm just trying to make the point that the country as a whole pretty much gets exactly what it has coming because it did the picking.

[kotzabasis]

Krugman as a failed pundit is resentful about his ineptness in his adopted vocation as commentator of the NYT when he was sterlingly successful in his 'familial' vocation of economics. Being adept and most competent in the "dismal" science, he dismally floundered in all his prognostications of the war in Iraq and in his suggestions of how to deal with terror.

In his new mantra of 'Nietzschean? resentment' with which he inflicts the Republicans and McCain and Palin, being in a state of trance with his new 'discovery' he becomes totally oblivious of the fact that the Democrats and all their followers are pathologically replete with hate against Republicans and their 'redneck' followers who most of them live in small towns and mayoralties.

So the question arises: Which strategy is worse. The strategy of resentment or the strategy of hate, on which the Democrats definitely are running?

[swells]

kotza, maybe you are on to something but I don't see it. Surely there are haters amongst Obama supporters but can you point to examples of "hate" coming out of the Obama campaign itself? I've paid pretty close attention and haven't seen it but then again maybe I just missed it. Could you provide specific examples of the hate you mention upon which the Democrats are running?

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/03/update-and-thought/

September 3, 2008

Update and Thought
By Paul Krugman

Thanks for all the kind comments on the previous post * (my mother is still in the hospital, but should be moving to rehab in a day or two.)

One thing, though: several commenters said, more or less, that's the way it is in central New Jersey, but out in small-town America there's a lot less diversity and tolerance.

No doubt there's some truth to that — but please, can we get over the idea that small towns in the heartland are the "real America?" A long time ago I complained ** when Bush said he went to Crawford to be with "real Americans": I asked, "And what are those of us who live in New Jersey — chopped liver?"

Today's America is an overwhelmingly urban/suburban nation, in which a majority of the population lives in metropolitan areas with more than a million people. It's ethnically and culturally diverse. Mercer County — which is a lot more than Princeton, which I admit is a bit unreal — IS what America looks like today. And a fine nation it is.

* http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/god-bless-america/

** http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A03E4D91730F934A35756C0A9649C8B63

[ddt]

My impression from this whole thing is that Rove is back. After hearing those speeches I read up on what he is doing, and apparently his protege Steve Schmitt started running the McCain campaign on July 7th. Explains a lot. I imagine that this Palin choice was entirely Rove's choice via his puppet Schmitt. The man is a genius.

From my outsider perspective, they are tapping into some real resentment. I was driving back to Canada from DC through Pennsylvania the night of the Penn. primaries. The next morning we went to get breakfast at a diner just outside of Pittsburgh. I was with a young mic operator who you might call a "hipster" (tight jeans etc.). He was wearing a New York yankees hat that was done in neon colors. The rest of us were dressed pretty conservatively, but when we walked in there was a noticeable reaction from the good ole boys who were all huddled around these two large coffee bars that took up half of the restaurant. When the waitress (actually a very nice lady) seated us, she was like "That's quite the hat you got there. I think it's cute, but the boys over there want to knock it off your head". Nothing actually happened, but it was a very uncomfortable breakfast after that - being stared down by a horde of 20 burly truckers who apparently wanted to knock his block off for nothing more than wearing a funny colored hat.

For me it was a real eye opener. Suburban Pittsburgh isn't exactly the Ozarks, or the deep south, so it really took me aback to see that kind of reaction towards outsiders, just off the interstate. My theory is that it has to do with the lack of economic development, and the struggle that good, hardworking people have in understanding why they have been left behind.

To go back to Nietzsche's groundbreaking study of ressentiment, people can deal with suffering, but what they absolutely cannot do without is a meaning or a narrative for this suffering. Providing this meaning is what the politics of resentment is all about. Eventually, in old europe the masses realized that the proper cause of their suffering was not their own sin, but the ruling class of priests and royalty who were sucking their blood, and eventually they rose up against them. In America the equivalent would be the transnational corporations and the ultra-rich. What the Democrats need to do is appeal to this resentment, but focus it where it ought to be focused.

[anne]

"Could you provide specific examples of the hate you mention upon which the Democrats are running?"

Begin with the resentment of Hillary Clinton, then on, on, on to, well, you know....

[RW]

"...the Democrats need to do is appeal to this resentment..."

Republican strategists understand this very well which is why we tend to hear "populism" either dismissed or analyzed as somehow inappropriate.

More directly of course Democrats are simply accused of engaging in "class warfare."

And now of course Republican strategists are probing the Palin-effect, the use of progressive icons such as feminism as instruments in their war. I suspect they consider the sacrifice of the presidency this year a reasonable price for the discovery.

Along with developing the politics of resentment the Republicans have also developed techniques to blunt the tools by which that set of political tactics may be resisted.

Democrats will have four years to consider carefully how to turn that tide and reconstruct populism in their own image. Based on past history I am not sanguine.

[swells]

This will be a difficult post because I'm going to try to distill a wide panoply of my own experience into text. But I'll try because I think I may be on to something. How does the politics of resentment arise in the first place? To my mind, it arises because a fundamental premise of our state is flawed. This flaw leads to the state becoming a spoils generation machine. The resentment is essentially vicious manuerving over the division of these spoils.

Where is the flaw in the premise? I think the flawed premise is that the government is presumed to possess rights that no individual who comprises the state possessed. While I am admittedly no scholar of political science, it seems to me that our state is based on the notion of the social contract. In this view, individuals band together for their mutual benefit and create a state. They then cede authority over some of their natural rights to the state. The natural right to self-defense gets ceded, in part, to the state and the result is the police and the army, etc.

But where do the perogatives of the state come from when no person possessed the right in the first place, and therefore could not have ceded such a right to the state? What do I mean by this? I'll try an example as explanation. I take it that individuals do have a right to self-defense. But what are the limits of that right? If, for instance, I'm at a mall and someone in the middle of a crowd of 200 people is threatening me with a gun, do I have a right to lob a mortar round into the crowd to try to kill them? Does my right to self-defense entitle me to kill a bunch of innocent bystanders because I'm personally threatened?

I think not and I think that legal concepts of self-defense recognize this in terms of proportionality of response, etc. Yet, I live in a country with thousands of nuclear weapons deployed ostensibly for self-defense? These weapons cannot be used in ways that aren't directly analogous to lobbing a round into a crowd at the mall.

If I as an individual don't have such a right, where does the state get such a right? How does such a right come into existence if I can't delegate my right to the state?

That is just my way of explaining what I mean by a state claiming a right that no individual could have ceded to it.

In the early development of this country, the elite got an upper hand and constructed a political system that endorsed slavery. After slavery was abolished, the elite substituted systems of privilege that resulted in the ascendence of the robber barons and other forms of crony capitalism.

When the New Deal came along, in my opinion, a fatal mistake was made. Instead of recognizing that no individual could priviledge their own existence at the expense of another (and hence the state could not possibly possess such a power legitimately) and doing away with the systems of privilege, the choice was to continue the system of privilege but change the distribution of the spoils.

To my mind, the politics of resentment comes entirely from the fundamental flaw of presuming that privilege is a legitimate right that people possess and that therefore they can cede their right to privilege to the state who can then apportion privilege by coercive means.

I know it's an imperfect world and that the contingent facts of our evolution as primates who exist in hierarchical systems predisposes us to parasitism on our fellows. But, is it still the case that this flaw is a necessity in our social arrangements? Can we not devise systems that obviate privilege?

If we can't, then I think the politics of resentment are with us to stay.

[swells]

anne, I should be clear here. I don't resent Hillary although I can't think of circumstances under which I would have voted for her. She disqualified herself in my view when she assisted in the smearing of women upon whom her husband preyed sexually. It's that whole misuse of power issue again. I disqualify anyone and everyone who misuses their power at the expense of another.

[reason]

swells...
I don't think your argument is correct because
1. There are no intrinsic rights (who would assign and enforce them);
2. given 1 - rights don't apply to outsiders.

And I don't really understand what you are getting at. We are talking about the cultural war, in which elections relate to name calling and non-policy "issues". It is a tribal phenomenon, not a political phenomenon.

[reason]

To explain, in a healthy polity and election is about deciding what policies the country will follow in the next few years. The state of the nation and the world is analysed, and different proposals to deal with it are put forward, evaluated and voted on. In present day America, it is all about dividing people into tribes and getting them to vote for their tribe (rather like African politics).

[reason]

oops ... healthy polity an election is ...

[anne]

"She disqualified herself in my view when she assisted in the smearing of women upon whom her husband preyed sexually."

Care to document this? I can hardly wait for the documentation. Notice me waiting. Not that the charge is original, but just the rubbish that has been going around for years. I am waiting for the documentation.

[anne]

"Preyed sexually?"
"Preyed sexually?"
"Preyed sexually?"

Interesting language, by the way. But, do document the smearing charge. I am so waiting to learn of the smearing.

[ddt]

"swells says...
But where do the perogatives of the state come from when no person possessed the right in the first place, and therefore could not have ceded such a right to the state? What do I mean by this? I'll try an example as explanation. I take it that individuals do have a right to self-defense. But what are the limits of that right? If, for instance, I'm at a mall and someone in the middle of a crowd of 200 people is threatening me with a gun, do I have a right to lob a mortar round into the crowd to try to kill them? Does my right to self-defense entitle me to kill a bunch of innocent bystanders because I'm personally threatened?"

swells, what you are getting at here sounds like the Hobbesian concept of the state. This is how he solved the problems you are outlining:

In the original state of nature men enjoy all rights, rights to anything. That includes the right to kill anyone else at any time for any reason. In order to set up a state, the people agree to relinquish this unlimited right to self-defense, and one person, the sovereign, is allowed to keep his and rule over everyone using this right to violence. In this way the natural right to self defense is never actually transferred to the sovereign. The sovereign is still an actor who basically operates in the state of nature, while the subjects agree for their mutual benefit to relinquish their natural rights.

[hari]

Swell - I like your self-righteous Mantra dealing with ancient Greek politie of *State* and *citizen*. What you forget to add in your mantra is that the citizen is the poor devil for which the State has been created - inorder to provide (self) protection.

The socalled *resentment* is nothing more than a factor of contradictions in the evolving social system - since Plato.
You can't get rid of it. Why? Because it is the hydrolic system of social evolution...to a state of affairs in which resentment disappears altogether and/or synthesizes into a new form.

[hari]

Swell - Just imagine someone smiles and/or winks at your wife and she returns the favour. You take it as an insult that your own wife partook in such a devils game...resentment begins to find space and emotion in you!

Could it be that homo sapiens are wired for social and other forms of resentment?

BTW just yesterday I read that some where in the brain there is a storge system of recollection of past performance and whatnot - doctors are trying to pinpoint it!

[swells]

anne, per your request:

Willey claims Hillary Clinton, now a Democratic presidential candidate, had “enabled” her husband’s alleged sexual indiscretions by coercing and intimidating the women who made claims against him. She said the then-first lady orchestrated smear campaigns against her and other women and hired public investigators and lawyers to protect the Clinton’s political interests.

“Through no fault of our own, we were smeared in the media, terrorized by thugs, audited by the IRS, followed by strangers and victimized by threats,” Willey wrote in her book. “Our homes were broken into and our pets were killed. And we know that Hillary and her minions were behind the terror.”

"She's behind the secret police. She's the one who sets up the war room when he goes out and he does what he does and he zeroes in on women," Willey told FOX News, noting that her book offers considerable details on that charge.

found at this link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,309796,00.html

and this:

Flowers sued George Stephanopoulos, James Carville, and others in 1999 for defamation (later amending the suit in 2000 to include Hillary Rodham Clinton as a defendant), claiming that they orchestrated a campaign to discredit her. Judicial Watch represented her in her defamation lawsuit against Hillary's former aides, Stephanopoulos and Carville.[4] In 2003, a federal judge further approved appeal.[5] The appeal was revived in 2002, but rejected by the Ninth Circuit in 2004.[6]

found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gennifer_Flowers

and this: Five days after the story had broken on January 21, Bill Clinton had stood before the TV cameras, wagged his finger, and emphatically denied having sexual relations with "that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

The next day, Hillary had blamed the accusations on a "vast Right-wing conspiracy" against her and her husband.

from here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-507762/Why-Hillary-Clinton-let-husband-Bill-seduce-woman-sight.html

and this: Why did Hillary try and blame the VRWC for her husband's woes, if she knew this "mother to grandmother conflict" was the root of Clinton's problem? If Hillary was aware of this "psychological abuse" that caused Clinton's behavior, then WHY did she sit back while every woman who dared to open her mouth about Bill Clinton was trashed? Where was Hillary when Paula Jones was being crucified in the media? Where was she when Kathleen Willey and Juanita Broaddrick were being called liars? Hillary now says that she knew her husband had a sexual problem yet she sat by while the women who were victims of this known problem were trashed. Gosh, how pro-woman of Hillary, to sit by quietly while all this was happening to other women.

So it isn't the VRWC now and it isn't prejudice against people from Arkansas -- WOMEN are to blame for Clinton's women problems! Again, how pro-woman of Hillary to blame the women in young Bill's life for the women problems in adult Bill's life.

from here: http://www.rightgrrl.com/carolyn/bill080399.html

and this: The stories that Jackson relates and her political commentary mesh nicely in the final chapter in the book, which deals with Hillary Rodham Clinton. This chapter is easily the most relevant to the current political scene due to Hillary Clinton’s status as the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. However, Jackson counsels against electing Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton was a willing partner in her husband's attacks. She always defended her husband politically and never gave any of her husband’s accusers a shred of sympathy or credibility. Jackson concludes that Hillary Clinton’s preference for her own political career over the well being of her husband’s victims make her a poor choice for feminists, the Democratic Party, or the American people. The nation’s voters will not soon forget these harrowing tales of victimization – and the role Hillary played in enabling them all.

from here: http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Printable.aspx?GUID={8F9CA81A-D4C6-48A2-8483-C109B1243B91}

[swells]

anne, I posted several links to articles, etc. documenting what I said. For some reason, the site here is set up to hold posts like that for Mark Thoma's review. I did try to provide the documentation you requested.

[hari]

Actually it was a US/Israeli team of scientists studying alzheimer patients...and (location) of their memory tanks!

[swells]

hari, well if I was being self-righteous that isn't what I intended. I was trying to ask a serious question. The root of the question really goes back to many of the concerns Madison tried to address in the Federalist Papers nos. 9 and 10. How to control faction, etc.

[anne]

Swells, thank you for searching; that was nice of you. As distasteful as may be, I will look for the documentation later and set down for us, if possible, what I find which I am quite sure will be meaningless. The charge as others was made, the charge as others is false and we need to understand that.

[anne]

Here is the memory reference:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/science/05brain.html?hp&pagewanted=print

September 5, 2008

For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving
By BENEDICT CAREY

Scientists have for the first time recorded individual brain cells in the act of summoning a spontaneous memory, revealing not only where a remembered experience is registered but also, in part, how the brain is able to recreate it.

The recordings, taken from the brains of epilepsy patients being prepared for surgery, demonstrate that these spontaneous memories reside in some of the same neurons that fired most furiously when the recalled event had been experienced. Researchers had long theorized as much but until now had only indirect evidence.

Experts said the study had all but closed the case: For the brain, remembering is a lot like doing (at least in the short term, as the research says nothing about more distant memories).

The experiment, being reported Friday in the journal Science, is likely to open a new avenue in the investigation of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, some experts said, as well as help explain how some memories seemingly come out of nowhere. The researchers were even able to identify specific memories in subjects a second or two before the people themselves reported having them.

“This is what I would call a foundational finding,” said Michael J. Kahana, a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the research. “I cannot think of any recent study that’s comparable.

“It’s a really central piece of the memory puzzle and an important step in helping us fill in the detail of what exactly is happening when the brain performs this mental time travel” of summoning past experiences.

The new study moved beyond most previous memory research in that it focused not on recognition or recollection of specific symbols but on free recall — whatever popped into people’s heads when, in this case, they were asked to remember short film clips they had just seen.

This ability to richly reconstitute past experience often quickly deteriorates in people with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, and it is fundamental to so-called episodic memory — the catalog of vignettes that together form our remembered past....

[swells]

ddt, I would suggest (and I know it's impertinent) that Hobbes conflated the notions of power and right in his definition. I am talking about rights, not power.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/science/05brain.html?hp&pagewanted=print

For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving
By BENEDICT CAREY

The patients watched a series of 5- to 10-second film clips, some from popular television shows like “Seinfeld” and others depicting animals or landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. The researchers recorded the firing activity of about 100 neurons per person; the recorded neurons were concentrated in and around the hippocampus, a sliver of tissue deep in the brain known to be critical to forming memories.

In each person, the researchers identified single cells that became highly active during some videos and quiet during others. More than half the recorded cells hummed with activity in response to at least one film clip; many of them also responded weakly to others.

After briefly distracting the patients, the researchers then asked them to think about the clips for a minute and to report “what comes to mind.” The patients remembered almost all of the clips. And when they recalled a specific one — say, a clip of Homer Simpson — the same cells that had been active during the Homer clip reignited. In fact, the cells became active a second or two before people were conscious of the memory, which signaled to researchers the memory to come.

“It’s astounding to see this in a single trial; the phenomenon is strong, and we were listening in the right place,” said the senior author, Dr. Itzhak Fried, a professor of neurosurgery at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Tel Aviv....

[Cyrille]

"Lots of center to center/right Republicans could have voted for Hillary."

There is no such thing as a center Republican.
There is scarcely such a thing as a center Democrat for that matter. But Republicans are all FAAAAR right.

[Cyrille]

Reason, Aborigines were living just fine in their country. Their behavious is problematic for success in an Anglo-Saxon world, but that's because Australia was invaded and they were chased from their land. Their behaviour and culture would be just fine if they didn't have to live in a society that was imposed to them by force.

[swells]

reason, I would disagree that there are no intrinsic rights. I know it is awfully hard to defend my view as ultimately it requires getting to ought from is which is notoriously difficult in philosophical terms. However, here is the gist of my argument. Human being's have a nature (not saying I have a final definition of what that nature is, just that there is such a thing). Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics lays out a compelling case for the necessity of developing in accordance with that nature. Such development is a necessary thing for human beings and the extent to which we are good or bad is to be directly measured by such development or the lack thereof.

Therefore, in a normative sense, rights are those capabilities minimally necessary to such development.

I think you too conflate notions of power with those of rights when you insist on some mechanism of enforcement. Rights exist even when abriged by the predations of power.

I don't really answer the question of how one gets to ought from is. Hume's critique of induction is successful and there is no relief available via some proof. However, I do think anyone arguing against my view would need to explain how evolution could "trick" an organism into such a falsity.

[Cyrille]

"Krugman as a failed pundit is resentful about his ineptness in his adopted vocation as commentator of the NYT when he was sterlingly successful in his 'familial' vocation of economics. Being adept and most competent in the "dismal" science, he dismally floundered in all his prognostications of the war in Iraq and in his suggestions of how to deal with terror."

I think there is no need to read further. Good joke though, when Krugman was one of very few people in high diffusion media to get it right from the start.

[Holly W.]

I'm going to make the comment I was expecting from STR: Krugman describes the GOP as "A party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years..."

Correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm having no luck Googling this information, but wasn't Congress Democratic under Reagan and Bush I, then 2 years into Clinton's first term -- a total of 14 years? And then we had a Democratic president for 8 years. Now we've had a slim Democratic congressional majority for 2 years. So I'm thinking a person could just as easily describe the Democrats as "a party that has controlled the White House, Congress, or both for 24 of the past 28 years" -- not much different. This comment from PK just feels deliberately misleading to me and slightly dishonest.

Why can't Krugman focus on the more immediate past? The GOP had a happy 6 years straight of a Republican president and Republican congress working hand-in-hand -- and it's been such a disaster that the entire GOP convention seems to be focused on pretending it was some other party in charge.

This is the proverbial truth stranger than fiction, and requires no exaggeration at all.

[ken melvin]

Swells ain't.

[hari]

Swell - The Federalisyt Papers - and its entire Archive - tells you nothig more than the state of human affairs (soial contradictions) in the former (13) American Colonies.

Remember the race factor was nothing other than (white)British! The rest of the slaves didn't count....(get it).

Now talk about your society built on social resentments....
===========================================================
ddt- Nietsche will not suffice to teach you anything here, IMHO. His was a world of previleged social/ruling class. Not the commoners who took over at end of 19th century European history - to Nietsche's great and profound dismay.

[swells]

reason, I should go a little further. After all, I am asserting that I know a truth that I cannot prove. I'll play a little fast and loose here with terminology. Godel's theorems prove that there are some truths which can be seen to be true but are not provable from within the confines of the system within which they exist. I am basically saying that the existence of intrinsic rights is such a truth.

However, that leaves one in the position of being able to claim that for any proposition that one wishes to hold as such a truth. To be effective, there has to be some criteria for telling whether a particular proposition is or is not possibly such a truth. The criteria I use is that of contradiction; i.e., would taking a proposition as a premise lead of necessity to contradiction. If so, it cannot be such a truth as logically the existense of such a truth would destroy any distinction beteen truth and falsity.

I could be wrong but I've never found the proposition that intrinsic rights exist to lead to contradiction. Hence, I am able to be persuaded that the premise has not been falsified. Such falsification would of course destroy my argument.

[swells]

hari, I am not so sanguine as you in relation to the inapplicability of the Federalist arguments. I just don't think human nature has changed that much in a couple of centuries.

[hari]

Anne - Thanks for reproducing here the NYT article on brain memory cells. It's a fascinating finding indeed!

[swells]

ken, I don't pretend to be. I'm just an ordinary guy trying to understand things that have puzzled me for about 40 years.

[hari]

Pauls error of judgement is not only profound but unfortunately rather dismal - for using *resentment* as a conduit for political discourse.

It ain't necessarily so, my dear Paul.

[outsider]

outsider says...

I'm simple. Maslow's hierarchy, the broadest base of his pyramid, the first of human concerns, physiological, next safety, 3rd love/belonging, 4th self esteem/respect of others, lastly, self-actualization ( morality, creativity, spontaneity, PROBLEM SOLVING, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts.

Cheney visits Georgia, Condoleezza, Libya. Qaddafi quote: " I support my darling black African woman. I admire and am very proud of the way she leans back and gives orders to the Arab leaders."
"Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza".
"I love her very much." (Source N.Y. Times 5 Sep 2008}

A nice October surprise package from Pakistan/Afghanistan boarder kerfluffles, Georgian/Russian flare ups and a flare up from Reagan's "Mad Dog of the Middle East" takes over 4 out of 5 hierarchies.

Georgia wants stuff, Libya wants stuff.

Economy...jobs...education... "Them Elites worry about savin' a book when the house is on fire!"

RealClearPolitics Poll Averages, Obama + 3.8.

10% undecided (?) waiting for a reason to vote, I assume, and the polite ones who tell pollsters how unprejudiced they are plus voting machines and police stuff in a few key counties...

Good luck to us all.

[hari]

From a historical perpective the conclusion of the national platforms of the two Conventions confirms that America has more or less arrived at a cross-road of chosing whether to go forward or backward (into its hive!).

Recall no substantive debate took place on policy - just a lot of hot air!

However, now the *race* factor has been plugged into the equation of Nov 4th elections. If the *audacity of hope* can be the signature of BO, it's clear GOP/VP will become the frontage of their attempt to regain the WH - a big IF, at best. Rovian tactics is based on distilling the *racial equation* in this election...and forcing the electorate to consider their choice! Afterall it has never happened that a blackman could became Pres. of USA - in 2008.

[kthomas]

outsider, usually I can understand your prose. This time, you're tippin' out, man.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/05/opinion/05krugman.html?hp&pagewanted=print

September 5, 2008

One of the key insights in “Nixonland,” the new book by the historian Rick Perlstein, is that Nixon’s political strategy throughout his career was inspired by his college experience, in which he got himself elected student body president by exploiting his classmates’ resentment against the Franklins, the school’s elite social club. There’s a direct line from that student election to Spiro Agnew’s attacks on the “nattering nabobs of negativism” as “an effete corps of impudent snobs,” and from there to the peculiar cult of personality that not long ago surrounded George W. Bush — a cult that celebrated his anti-intellectualism and made much of the supposed fact that the “misunderestimated” C-average student had proved himself smarter than all the fancy-pants experts.

And when Mr. Bush turned out not to be that smart after all, and his presidency crashed and burned, the angry right — the raging rajas of resentment? — became, if anything, even angrier. Humiliation will do that.

Can Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin really ride Nixonian resentment into an upset election victory in what should be an overwhelmingly Democratic year? The answer is a definite maybe.

-- Paul Krugman

[I do not understand the thrust of this argument. There seems to be all sorts of Democratic as well as Republican "resentment." What then?]

[hari]

Anne - Paul is now afraid that another four years of GOP is or may be possible. It must frighten him, I suspect.

My reading is that it is more like Biden and BO have to find ways and means of losing this watershed election.

The way they're becoming prisoners of Bush/Cheney moves in The Caucasus and Crimea (now) is indicative of their lack of audacity to think clearly and speak with force on what's on line with Russia, China and emerging Asia.

[realist]

a people gets a government they deserve,

there's a f--l born every miniute

true?

[anne]

Hari:

"My reading is that it is more like Biden and BO have to find ways and means of losing this watershed election.

"The way they're becoming prisoners of Bush/Cheney moves in The Caucasus and Crimea (now) is indicative of their lack of audacity to think clearly and speak with force on what's on line with Russia, China and emerging Asia."

Perfect explanation, I understand and I agree. I am astonished at how captive of Bush-Rice foreign policy Obama and Biden have become. This has been the worry for me for months, and more so now.

[hari]

Avignion (France) - EU Foreign Mins meeting on crisis in the Caucasus may find a solution to diffuse the crisis caused by Misha's arrogance to invade SO - resulting in Russian invasion of Georgia.

Like I noted (elsewhere) with you, Stienmeir/German/FM is proposing a Stability Pact for The Caucasus to include also Turkey and Azerbajan. It may be the way out for Russian forces.

[Bruce Wilder]

Resentment is an emotion of anger or rancor directed at a person or group of persons of higher status in response to a real or imagined wrong or slight.

Admiration is an antonym for resentment, and the function of resentment can be seen in the contrast. Admiration is a feeling of regard or esteem for one greater than one's self, for one of higher status. Inherent in the feeling of admiration is the self-referential feeling of inferiority; in admiring the talented, hard-working and successful champion athlete, we are implicitly acknowledging our own shortcomings and limitations, so there is always a feeling of shame, lurking potential in the shadows of admiration.

Admiration and resentment are emotions built into any status hierarchy. Admiration functions to confirm the legitimacy of the status hierarchy and general organization of society as meritocratic and just; resentment is available to attack and tear down the existing status hierarchy as illegitimate.

It was the success of the Liberal Consensus of the 1950's and 1960's in setting in motion social revolutions, which admitted previously excluded groups from the upper reaches of the American status hierarchy, that created the political conditions in which resentment would be the preferred weapon of the authoritarian conservative political Party, a Party, ironically, bent on creating an aristocracy.

Classically, the best counterpunch to the use of resentment by authoritarians is extremely aggressive exposure of the elitism and hypocrisy of the leaders. (I don't know if that's been confirmed by actual political and psychological research.) Talk about McCain's many houses; Cindy's $300,000 dress and private plane. Expose the Palins as secessionist traitors and adherents to a religion actively hostile to Catholics. Etc. Make them the hated elite.

Authoritarian followers are basically egalitarians, but they have some pretty heavy defenses against acknowledging the defects in the conmen, who tend to be their leaders, and not least motivating those defenses are large reservoirs of resentment. So, such classic tactics may meet with limited success.

As for how American politics became such a dangerous cesspool of right-wing deceit, corruption and general foolishness, I think television has had a lot to do with it.

On one level, television trained up a couple of generations of stupid people. The time sucked up into passively watching sitcoms probably actually reduced the educational attainment, and even the IQ, of a couple of generations of Americans, who never learned to read, write or think critically.

The time sucked up by television -- and the number of leisure hours expended was simply phenomenal, 1960-2000 -- also drained away the time Americans had previously dedicated to social affiliation outside of immediate family (or even within the family, truth be told). The country of joiners, chock full of voluntary organizations and associations, became atomistic. The Elks, the Knights of Columbus, the Shriners, the Union Hall, even the Country Club and the Church, declined. This decline was part of what facilitated the social revolutions, because it also meant a decline in ethnic and racial group identification and related systems and expectations of status domination and group exclusion. But, many of the previously strongest, healthiest social organizations, which formed bases for political organization, identification, voter information and mobilization, declined. Unions were not there to deliver votes to Democrats on economic issues. Civic-minded Main Street Chamber of Commerce types were not there to moderate Republicanism. Where remnant social organization failed altogether, replacement social organizations -- most notably, the evangelical churches -- were weaker and less balanced -- people fall in and out of evangelical churches very rapidly and they are not supported there by generations of family association or tradition.

Finally, television (and radio), as institutionalized, became entirely a creature of corporate business interests, supported financially by corporate business advertising and organized as components of giant, conglomerate corporate business organizations. Television became a tool, exclusively, of one numerically small political class and interest. And, television has functioned, increasingly, as a propaganda arm of that political class/interest. The weak attempts at creating a public television and radio network foundered and they were largely subverted by the Republicans.

The hope for political reform in the U.S. rests partly on manifest failure of Republican movement conservatism, and the discouraging effects on their supporters. But, also, partly, on the advent of the internet. As people's time is diverted by the internet, people become drawn away from television and into an more interactive, participative experience, where they can write as well as read, and be exposed to many sources of information and criticism, which invites more critical thought. And, at the same time, the long-suppressed affiliative instinct has been re-awakened. Americans are obsessed, at the moment, with social networking. Facebook and MySpace are where atomistic narcissism meets social networking. Even television has switched from sitcoms to reality television, much of which is given over to the virtual lab study of social dynamics. (Real World, Survivor, Big Brother, etc.)

The political fallout is already apparent in Obama's candidacy and easy fundraising, but will continue to affect the shape and momentum of political change for years to come.

[piglet]

Holly: "This comment from PK just feels deliberately misleading to me and slightly dishonest."

You are saying this after actually verifying that Krugman's statement was factually correct. That's a nice try.

[Bruce Wilder]

Note: the foundation of resentment is the shame felt over one's inferior status; anger trumps shame, emotionally, so anger can be used by a person to manage and suppress painful feelings of shame. The anger of resentment is convenient to personal, emotional self-management.

Another, more constructive remedy, is the pride in belonging to a larger whole. So, large, hierarchical organizations invest in group pride, to counter the corrosive effects of resentment in the ranks. This extends to patriotism, of course. And, an effective compliment to the use of resentment, politically, is the strategy of suggesting that the object of resentment might also take away patriotic pride in belonging to a privileged group.

[anne]

Hari:

"Avignion (France) - EU Foreign Mins meeting on crisis in the Caucasus may find a solution to diffuse the crisis caused by Misha's arrogance to invade SO - resulting in Russian invasion of Georgia.

"Like I noted (elsewhere) with you, Stienmeir/German/FM is proposing a Stability Pact for The Caucasus to include also Turkey and Azerbajan. It may be the way out for Russian forces."

From simple accuracy there comes a focus on effective diplomacy, a point completely lost on the Administration and the Democratic leadership.

[swells]

Bruce, once again, a remarkable post. I truly look forward to your insights. But I do have to question your definition of admiration. It's just a quibble but may have some significance. Do you think that Tiger Woods is incapable of admiring Ernie Els? I think by any reasonable standard Tiger is a higher quality golfer but I find myself seriously doubting that he can't admire a particularly good shot executed by someone else who is a lesser quality athlete. I know a good many musicians and they don't seem to have much trouble with honestly admiring the creations of others and I don't think it's predicated on the idea that the others have to be better than them.

I think there is something in humans that allows us to admire beauty, achievement, etc. for it's own sake without necessary recourse to calculations of status and/or personal deficiencies.

[S Brennan]

Dunno about this Paul...

"[M]uch ... of the anger ... is based ... on the perception — generally based on no evidence whatsoever — that Democrats look down their noses at regular people."

My perception of modern Democrats is that they do look down their noses at regular people and examples abound, take the VP's bankruptcy bill, take Obama's FISA vote...please.

Yep Paul, as long as Democrats keep their donors happy, all is good. Are the Republicans any better? No, but there is plenty of evidence to show Democrats have moved away from FDR & LBJ's commitment to working people.

And for the record, those years where Democrats showed concerned for the working class were [coincidentally?] the most prosperous years of the Republic.

[anne]

Holly:

"Correct me if I'm wrong...but wasn't Congress Democratic under Reagan and Bush I, then 2 years into Clinton's first term -- a total of 14 years? And then we had a Democratic president for 8 years. Now we've had a slim Democratic congressional majority for 2 years."

The Senate was Democratic longer during the Clinton years, while Democratic for the beginning 2 Bush years and the last 2. But, I think the Senate was Republican for a couple of Reagan years.

[swells]

Bruce, another quibble. I am not sure that resentment must be based on notions of one's inferior status. Ask yourself this question. Would it be possible for the leader of a primate group to resent a handicapped member who is slowing the group down during their migration to new hunting grounds? If so, that resentment wouldn't necessarily be based on notions of inferior status, it could be resentment engendered by the impersonal circumstances; i.e., the conflict between notions of group solidarity and the need to get to the hunting ground in time to gather the needed resources.

[ken melvin]

Palin and McCain say these things hoping to peal off a few working class votes. They do so because it has been shown to work. I think Krugman also meant to send a message to the 'progressives' in re the working class. This giving people a reason to vote against someone has worked very well indeed for the rethugs.

[donna]

What gets me about Republicans is they "resent" the people with Ds after their name and "admire" those with Rs after their name, even when their behavior is exactly the same. They would be livid ofter a "D" with a daughter pregnant out of wedlock; it's totally hypocritical. We would hear no end of it and the media would play along with their faux anger and "resentment". McCain has been a Senator for 26 years so where was his change until now? Palin is a bone tossed to the wingers to buy their votes. The convention was a circus show for the rabid Republicans. Many of the rest of us just looked on and shook our heads at the idiocy, the anger they put out after being IN CHARGE for the last seven years, and then in horror last night when they actually broke the no pics of 9/11 for political purposes barrier.

But I suppose that's just me looking down on them....

[piglet]

Dictionary.com offers the following definitions for *resentment*:

the feeling of displeasure or indignation at some act, remark, person, etc., regarded as causing injury or insult.

Indignation or ill will felt as a result of a real or imagined grievance. See Synonyms at anger.

a feeling of deep and bitter anger and ill-will

a feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as a wrong, insult, or injury

This has nothing to do with status. You are completely off the mark here, Bruce. Resrntment is directed against somebody who allegedly has caused a grievance. Traditionally, a person of superior status wouldn't feel resentment towards an underling because the latter doesn't have the power to hurt the first, so resentment is more often directed against either equals or superiors. However, in the democratic era, one can actually feel resentment towards somebody regarded as inferior in status, if one believes that the latter has unjustifiedly been empowered. Of course, the white supremacist feels resentment over the fact that blacks can vote; the millionaire feels resentment against the poor recipient of food stamps paid for by the rich person's tax money.

[ken melvin]

Seems resentment depends very much on ignorance.

[Noni Mausa]

Hi guys, a little late here, but...

Thanks to Swells for the long speculation, I don't have time to study it this minute, so I will just talk about "inherent rights".

Of course there is no such thing. Lava doesn't respect them, you won't find their eggs under a fallen log. But we need them. Quick exposition:

When you look at a society, its shape derives from concrete limits and chosen limits. The concrete limits include water, farmland, resources, and the people, as biological actors.

The chosen limits include culture, law, custom, stories, the intellectual landscape, and people as conscious actors.

Given the same concrete limits, chosen limits will act together to shape the social environment. They are like the pins set in a lacemaker's pillow, which shape the final filigree.

Now, when the concrete limits are also changed, some elements of the chosen limits can no longer be maintained, others arise even if not consciously chosen. Things like state protected human rights evaporate, replaced by individual protections -- , guns, street gangs, and all these are driven by resentment at deprivation.

Over the past 30 years as the right has perfected the politics of resentment, they have also put in place lots and lots of reasons (real or confabulated) for people to feel resentment, and then have taken that energy and pointed it not towards the abstract causes of their deprivation, but towards each other.

This sentence is a good example: "Governor Barracuda today promised to stop union negotiations and impose a settlement, citing concern for the taxpayer." Both groups Gov. B cites are a) taxpayers and b) could probably use a raise. They are the same people, by and large, but Gov B persuades them to circle around and savage their own tails out of resentment. Do this enough and they will all jealously monitor each other so no-one can get a raise.

Choosing to respect human rights, the rule of law, the concept of justice and all the other elements places the pins which create an egalitarian society. You can pull the pins out, sure, but your lace goes all to hell.

Noni

[Patricia Shannon]

Swells,
How do we do away with the advantages of wealthy privilage w/o government action? Mob action against the plutocracy?

[piglet]

What liberals don't understand is the resentment that our so-called social conservatives (who are really ideological extremists) feel, deeply, genuinely, towards liberals. What is the grievance they complain about? It is the fact that liberals (and not only them) chose to live their lives differently and they, the conservatives, can do nothing about it. Liberals don't understand the Culture Wars. To them, individual decisions about reproduction, sex, family, are just that - individual decisions. If you are against contraceptives, that's fine, you don't have to use them. If you are against premarital sex, that's fine, you are perfectly free to live abstinent or to marry. If you are against abortion, well, don't have an abortion. Make your decisions and let others make their own.

But social conservatives don't see it that way. They basically feel that people shouldn't have the choice to reject what conservatives regard as morally superior values. Deep down, they feel superior, they feel they are better people, they feel they are defending a righteous cause. At the same time, they feel powerless, not because they can't live the way they want to, but because they can't prevent others from living the way they want to. They continue to feel powerless even after having controlled the government for many years, because democratic politics cannot give them what they really want. That's why their irratonal anger and resentment will be a reliable Republican political asset for years to come.

[swells]

Noni, I always appreciate your insights. I don't get your criticism of inherent rights though. I don't think anyone would argue that they exist in some realm as real things if one takes real to mean concrete things. Rights are admittedly a normative construct. But, what keeps things from being real just because they are normative? Justice is a normative concept too but I would honestly be hard pressed to say it doesn't exist.

Let me give an example that isn't normative just to try to explain what I mean. Let's say that one has ten generators each of which varies in output by 15% high to low over some nominal value of voltage. It's possible to wire these generators up in a certain way such that the output of the ensemble of generators only varies by 1.5% from high to low over the aggregate output of the ensemble. This is called a virtual generator. Utility companies use this approach all the time. It's how they deliver a stabilized power source to your home. Does the virtual generator exist? Since it delivers stabilized power to my home, I would be hard pressed to argue that it is non-existent. Instead, I would categorize it as existent and call it an emergent property of the ensemble. Change the nature of the ensemble and you could change the nature of the virtual generator or even destroy it. But, while the components exist in a certain state, the virtual generator does exist, it has physical reality in its effects.

This is the kind of existence I propose for inherent rights. These are emergent properties that are indeed contingent, even contingent on a lot of differing factors not least our peculiar evolutionary heritage. Would an intelligent swarm of methane clouds on Jupiter have the same rights? I don't know. But I'm willing to speculate that it would have some rights that derive from the nature of its existence.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/us/politics/06web-healy.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

September 6, 2008

Clinton Advisers Mull How to React to Palin Candidacy
By PATRICK HEALY

The Obama camp wants Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to help counter Gov. Sarah Palin, but Clinton advisers say she won’t attack Ms. Palin.

[Right.]

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/us/politics/06web-healy.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

The Obama camp wants Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to help counter Gov. Sarah Palin, but Clinton advisers say she won’t attack Ms. Palin.

[More ironic than I could have imagined. "Hillary, go on and attack Palin." "I don't think so." ]

[anne]

http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/webtexts/bartleby/

1853

Bartleby, The Scrivener
By Herman Melville

In this very attitude did I sit when I called to him, rapidly stating what it was I wanted him to do--namely, to examine a small paper with me. Imagine my surprise, nay, my consternation, when without moving from his privacy, Bartleby in a singularly mild, firm voice, replied,"I would prefer not to."

I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume. But in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, "I would prefer not to."

"Prefer not to," echoed I, rising in high excitement, and crossing the room with a stride, "What do you mean? Are you moon-struck? I want you to help me compare this sheet here--take it," and I thrust it towards him.

"I would prefer not to," said he.

[Hillary Clinton prefers not to, to.]

[swells]

Patricia, well now you would ask that question wouldn't you-:). I have only the glimmer of the glittering of the beginning of a clue. One thing I notice is that people don't go around resenting gravity very often. It's an impersonal fact of nature. People don't normally resent the fact that light can travel just so fast in a vacumn.

Here I reveal my bias for the notion of inherent rights that are emergent properties of our nature. I think that we need to concretize the notion of rights and get such a notion established on a ground firm enough to function as an impersonal fact of nature. This is one place I think the underpinnings of libertarianism is given short shrift. Yeah there are a lot of silly people attracted to libertarianism. While I'm not a Christian, I do recognize that the old boy had some decent ideas and I can't discredit the good ideas just because a bunch of idiots have twisted them beyond all recognition. Same with some aspects of libertarianism.

To go further would necessitate getting into a whole different realm of discussion extending to information theory, evolutionary theory and more, all of them fields where I risk the display of tremendous ignorance on my part.

But, to put it as briefly as possible, there is a reason that hierarchical social structures evolved that is related to both information theory and the contingent facts of our evolution as primates. These reasons probably no longer apply. There are a lot more ways to be dead than to be alive and there has to be powerful motivation for leaving an island you already occupy. But, I think we are up against such powerful reasons and that we have to devise some means of accomplishing the same ends that hierarchies accomplished minus it's exploitative aspects.

[Julio]

Anne,

Bartleby, The Scrivener

"I would prefer not to," said he.
[Hillary Clinton prefers not to, too.]
Nicely done!

[anne]

I love the idea of men asking a woman, especially a woman beaten on by those men, to beat on another woman in turn, only she would prefer not to. I just love the irony. I always knew Bartleby would come in mind at the proper time when I read of him in junior high school. I have to try preferring not to, when I would prefer not to, myself.

[anne]

OMG! They went and changed the heading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/06/us/politics/06web-healy.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

September 6, 2008

The Real ’08 Fight: Clinton v. Palin?
By PATRICK HEALY

If white working women become the swing vote this fall, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Gov. Sarah Palin may be suddenly squaring off.

[anne]

I suppose that Obama could always drop Biden and choose Clinton; sort of like the speculation about McCain dropping Palin. Suddenly there is Palin fear. "White working women," beware! OMG!

[anne]

There is a wonderful Seinfeld about Rachel Welch and Elaine, where Welch has a terrible temper and won't swing her hands when dancing and gets fired and is furious and think Elaine who is walking along the street not swinging her hands is imitating her, so Welch fights Elaine and all the men are wild about a "cat fight." There we have the ultimate in Democratic strategy.

[piglet]

Have you seen any polls showing that women - especially Clinton supporters - are rushing to support Palin? I would be very surprised. Besides, anne, you are kinda undermining your own logic by suggesting that "those men", who "beat" Clinton so hard, need a woman to attack another woman. That NYT article is just the usual gossip and there is more interesting stuff to talk about on this thread.

[piglet]

"How much Mrs. Clinton wants to help Mr. Obama is another matter. Some of her aides note with a hint of resentment that Mr. Obama did not pick her as his running mate;...

“Let me tell you something,” said Luanne Van Werven, a Republican delegate from Lynden, Wash., as the convention closed late Thursday night. “I secretly think Hillary loves Sarah Palin.”

It's just the kind of gossip thast the dysfunctional media in this dysfunctional democracy love to write about. We should know better than that. You should know better, anne.

[anne]

http://www.machaon.ru/pooh/chap5.html

1926

Winnie-The-Pooh
By A. A. Milne

...In Which Piglet meets a Heffalump

And all the time Winnie-the-Pooh had been trying to get the honey-jar off his head. The more he shook it, the more tightly it stuck. "Bother!" he said, inside the jar, and "Oh, help!" and, mostly, "Ow!" And he tried bumping it against things, but as he couldn't see what he was bumping it against, it didn't help him; and he tried to climb out of the Trap, but as he could see nothing but jar, and not much of that, he couldn't find his way. So at last he lifted up his head, jar and all, and made a loud, roaring noise of Sadness and Despair . . . and it was at that moment that Piglet looked down.

"Help, help!" cried Piglet, "a Heffalump, a Horrible Heffalump!" and he scampered off as hard as he could, still crying out, "Help, help, a Herrible Hoffalump! Hoff, Hoff, a Hellible Horralump! Holl, Holl, a Hoffable Hellerump!" And he didn't stop crying and scampering until he got to Christopher Robin's house.

[Holly W.]

Piglet, are "factual" and "misleading" necessarily exclusive? I think people mislead with facts every day... :-)

BTW, your post at 10:50 AM, about social conservatives feeling powerless because they can't control everyone else's behavior, seems spot-on -- a Canadian acquaintance on another forum introduced me to William Gairdner, fighter for the "conservative resistance" in that country, and some research into him finds exactly that sentiment. He's even written a book called "The Trouble with Democracy" about it.

[piglet]

Holly, thanks for agreeing. I still don't see your point. Krugman has asked: "Can the vice-presidential candidate of a party that has controlled the White House, Congress or both for 26 of the past 28 years, a party that, Borg-like, assimilated much of the D.C. lobbying industry into itself ... really portray herself as running against the “Washington elite”? What's misleading about that? Krugman's point becomes even stronger for the last eight years, during which the Reps have completely dominated Washington with only a few exceptions. But he is also right to point out that conservative dominance goes back decades, even though that dominance hasn't been total most of the time. The point is that conservatives are using opposition rhetoric while being in (and terribly abusing) power, and they are getting away with it. What's misleading about pointing that out, pray tell me.

[anne]

The problem is that Democrats have had a majority or important minority Congressional presence for the last 28 years, and have made far too little dent in policies designed to reflect Republican preferences. Republican minorities appear to be significantly more effective and therein we have a problem.

[RW]

In the end Bartleby dies in prison, where he preferred not to eat, after being arrested for refusing to leave the office where he had previously refused to work so perhaps this is not the best metaphor for Hillary but it is a very good line regardless.

Based on the very few contacts I have in the right-wing strategy arena, and they are few indeed, it seems Palin has opened some eyes and she, as well as other selected women, will almost certainly be used to probe the possibilities and boundaries of feminism as a tool/weapon in the conservative cause.

But the right-wing's 'discovery' of feminism's potential utility beyond their traditional deployment of it as a pejorative is only in the initial stages of exploration and time will reveal what the appropriate defense(s) should be, assuming the right elects to push in that direction. Depending upon how that plays out progressive feminists may find themselves facing a real trial as their own symbols are turned against policies they hold dear but that day I think is not yet; in a 2-3 years when the kinks have been worked out seems possible, to inaugurate Palin's second coming perhaps.

"Time is a great legalizer, even in the field of morals." - H. L. Mencken

[outsider]

outsider says...

Kthomas,

Sorry, I get more coherent as the day moves on.

Two of the biggest Republican guns visit trouble spots just before a definitive election? I was attempting to point out a possibility that "Security", McCain's presumed strong point, would trump lesser issues such as the Economy if danger loomed from abroad.

It would not be a first for such deals.

The election is still too close to call. Especially after a rousing, well thought out series of spontaneous from the heart speeches following enemy action.

The good news though, Levi Johnston, after a vigorous 2-3 year training will make a great head of Homeland Security...

[Bruce Wilder]

Thanks for the comments on my little essay on the social psychology of resentment.

I would acknowledge that people do "resent" other people, who are not their social superiors. My dear sister, who should know better, resents people, who get food stamps. Yet, still social status is still implicated, and the anger has its origins in feelings about one's self. My sister would say that she works hard, and these irresponsible people are rewarded for being irresponsible, or something like that.

Dictionary definitions notwithstanding, resentment is not just about anger over an injury, per se. You don't resent the guy who dents your car's fender in the parking lot; you might be angry with him, of course. But, resentment implies some kind of disrespect or humiliation or embarassment or diminishment of self. You might resent the cavalier way the guy, who dented your fender, treated you afterwards.

Resentment, like jealousy, is about one's own self-esteem and narcissism, and has great potential for evil, as a result.

[ken melvin]

Like bees and other insects, herd animals, pack animals, ... we humans reward those who 'do as they are supposed to do' and ostracize those who don't. Small towns are much worse - just ask the Faulkners, Tony Morrises, ... So, in a way, the rethugs are playing to human instinct. On the other hand, progress depends on breaking with the status quo - piety is great in principle, but we are all subject to 'the human condition'. If we could replace religion with better education in re the human condition and certain accepted norms of behavior, wouldn't we be better off?

[RW]

WRT resentment, I think reason's reference to tribalism up-thread is germane.

Back in the 70's Henri Tajfel and his colleagues conducted a series of psychological experiments that led to the development of social identity theory (SIT). No sense in going into the details in an aging blog comment thread but a number of the experiments were quite elegant and one in particular has remained with me over the years.

Two groups were formed by random selection with each group given a name that had no particular meaning. Each group was informed of the existence of the other group but with no details. One of the experiments was to have each group member choose benefits for their own group on a specially designed scale that did not identify the benefit in question but did grant the same benefit to the other group along with your group as you moved up it.

That scale granted your (the chooser's) group more benefits than the other group but only up to a point. After that point you still could increase your own group's benefits but you would provide more benefits to the other group than your own when you did so.

Guess where the majority of the members of both groups stopped.

[Bruce Wilder]

ken melvin: "wouldn't we be better off?"

better off than whom? would seem to many a relevant question, on the evidence RW references

[BJ Feng]

Wait a minute, this coming from Krugman who advocated more viciousness not too long ago? And this from the left who resent religion and the religious, who genuinely look down upon gun owners and hunters, and who hate the rich with all their being?

Democrats are not above herd behavior or mentality.

[RW]

"...this from the left who resent religion and the religious, who genuinely look down upon gun owners and hunters, and who hate the rich with all their being?"

Who or what does this caricature refer to? It appears to be nothing more than an attempt to insult somebody -- does anyone recognize the intended target? Perhaps the inestimable Feng can clarify who he imagines the recipient of this vulgar imagery ought to be?

I suppose it is possible the debasement of social discourse or general lack of broad education in the US has reached the point where the brain-washed or ignorant might believe a political centrist like Krugman was representative of the political left but surely not here on this blog?

But perhaps it was intended as an attempt at humor?

[piglet]

"And this from the left ... who hate the rich with all their being?"

I thought we were elitist snobs with 300 dollar haircuts.

Bruce: "But, resentment implies some kind of disrespect or humiliation or embarassment or diminishment of self." As I said, it typically involves a feeling of powerlessness (real or imagined).

[Patricia Shannon]

Swells,
Maybe Hillary loves her husband.