It is my belief that all political endeavors must adhere to one of two notions.
First is the notion of Loot and Plunder, more politely known as Free Stuff. Vote for me, and I will reward you with loot and plunder taken from...
Well, that is the question. Who are the evil knaves and beasts that deserve to be stripped of their ill-gotten gains to feather the nest of the good guys like you and me? In the old days the bad guys were the village next door. By the time of the Greeks of the Iliad, we were looting and plundering Lyrnessus and its darling princesses on the way to Troy. By the time of Hitler, we are talking about acquiring Lebensraum in the east to the Germans would feel comfortable growing their own food, because it was all the Jews' fault. With lefties we are talking about rightfully looting the bourgeoisie of their ill-gotten gains to give the proletarians what is rightfully theirs.
So Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her Medicare For All is just the latest in this ancient human tradition. We will all get universal health care and the middle class will have no tax increase. Instead the health care will be paid for by the rich and the insurance companies.
Yep, if you believe that, I gotta bridge to sell you.
But here is the dirty little secret about progressive politics. It was enunciated years ago by Irving Kristol, neoconservative Jewish intellectual extraordinaire and father of the present NeverTrunp Bill Kristol. Kristol the Elder said that the secret of progressive politics is that, in order to help the poor, you have to deal in the middle class.
Thus, Social Security. The idea was to help the poor in their old age. But to pass it the Democrats had to deal in the middle class. And today I'll bet that the program mostly benefits the middle class. with a little nod to the poor in giving relatively higher pensions to people with low wages and a limited working life.
Same thing with Education For All. Sounds like a great idea. But where are the school districts that perform well? Right, in wealthy suburbs. And where are the school districts that perform badly? Exactly in minority inner cities.
Now the problem with Medicare For All is the same problem that faced Obamacare, and before it, HillaryCare. The middle class already has health insurance and the middle class likes its health insurance. And it's a strange thing, but the middle class isn't all that keen on paying a ton more in taxes or premiums to pay for the uninsured.
Back in the Nineties, in the Age of HillaryCare, I already knew about Kristol's Law. So it didn't surprise me in the summer of 1994 when the local PBS newsreaders marveled in disbelief at the failure of HillaryCare. It was, they admitted, because the middle class, the Harry and Louise of the insurance company commercials, already had health insurance and didn't want to pay more.
Enter Obamacare in 2009 with the cunning Jonathan Gruber doing the policy analyst work. Obama and Gruber -- and presumably the rest of the deep state -- had learned the lesson of HillaryCare so they first squared the insurance companies and then promised that "if you like your doctor / health insurance you can keep you doctor / health insurance." And you will save $2,500 a year. All lies, but necessary lies if they hoped to pass the program. Now that Obamacare is passed Republicans are afraid to terminate it because all the people getting Obamacare subsidies, every one of them, will go out and vote for Democrats, do not pass Go.
This is Chantrill's Law. Government programs cannot work because you cannot reform them.
So now we are offered Medicare For All. Naturally, Sen. Warren has enlisted one of Gruber’s Obamacare accomplices to cobble together a document to make the math on Medicare For All come out --without a middle class tax increase. Of course she has. The only question is whether she call sell it, and whether she can cobble together enough lies, like the lies of Obamacare, in order to pass it in Congress.
But Warren is sailing in a square-rigged ship against a pretty stiff wind. Because the middle class already has health insurance, thinks it already costs quite enough, and is not willing to risk it all on a promise that only the rich will pay.
The other political strategy you can try if you want to Do Something is embedded in my maxim, that "the only warrant for government power is existential peril." This is when the tribal leader rallies the men with the threat that the Mongols are already at the door. Every man must come out and fight, or we will all be killed! This was normal in the good old days, when, e.g., the Vikings would kill all the men in their raids and then sell the women into slavery.
In religion this expresses itself in various prophetic cults and their end-of-the-world scenarios. Currently, with considerable cunning, our global elite is selling the idea of end-of-the-world global warming, perhaps 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The notion was put together by Maurice Strong, who "served as the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme."
Let me ask you. Suppose you wanted the UN to head up a global environmental program with considerable global powers, as a first step towards beneficial and wise global governance? What would you do? Exactly. You would propose an existential peril, amounting to the End of the World, Unless We Act Now.
But, of course, ordinary humans are a bit reluctant to give up everything in order to enlist in the army of some UN bureaucrat, or indeed in anyone's army. You have to really amp up the fear and paint a frightful picture of rising sea levels and dying coral reefs and dead baby seals and extinct polar bears in order to sell the people on your prophecy.
So the question with the Green New Deal, to basically stop all normal life for the next decade in order to completely transform the economy away from fossil fuels to renewable resources, is whether you can make the sale. Obviously it isn't that hard to persuade empty-headed young women who know nothing, like AOC and Greta Thunberg. And many of the liberal women here in Seattle are at this very moment contentedly driving around in electric cars knowing that they are saving he planet. But can the prophets persuade the ordinary man and woman with job and house and family to give it all up: "Will you join in our crusade? / Who will be strong and stand with me?"
In general, it seems, people are quite happy to help save the planet. Unless it is going to cost them money. So, the only way forward is to form a religious movement and stoke it with prophecy. That's the way that humans band together to fight an existential peril.
In 2020, it seems that Democrats are pushin both political strategies, the Loot and Plunder strategy and the End of the World Unless We Act Now strategy.
The only question is the old one enunciated by Harry Percy about summoning spirits from the vasty deep. "But will they come when you do call for them?"
First is the notion of Loot and Plunder, more politely known as Free Stuff. Vote for me, and I will reward you with loot and plunder taken from...
Well, that is the question. Who are the evil knaves and beasts that deserve to be stripped of their ill-gotten gains to feather the nest of the good guys like you and me? In the old days the bad guys were the village next door. By the time of the Greeks of the Iliad, we were looting and plundering Lyrnessus and its darling princesses on the way to Troy. By the time of Hitler, we are talking about acquiring Lebensraum in the east to the Germans would feel comfortable growing their own food, because it was all the Jews' fault. With lefties we are talking about rightfully looting the bourgeoisie of their ill-gotten gains to give the proletarians what is rightfully theirs.
So Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her Medicare For All is just the latest in this ancient human tradition. We will all get universal health care and the middle class will have no tax increase. Instead the health care will be paid for by the rich and the insurance companies.
Yep, if you believe that, I gotta bridge to sell you.
But here is the dirty little secret about progressive politics. It was enunciated years ago by Irving Kristol, neoconservative Jewish intellectual extraordinaire and father of the present NeverTrunp Bill Kristol. Kristol the Elder said that the secret of progressive politics is that, in order to help the poor, you have to deal in the middle class.
Thus, Social Security. The idea was to help the poor in their old age. But to pass it the Democrats had to deal in the middle class. And today I'll bet that the program mostly benefits the middle class. with a little nod to the poor in giving relatively higher pensions to people with low wages and a limited working life.
Same thing with Education For All. Sounds like a great idea. But where are the school districts that perform well? Right, in wealthy suburbs. And where are the school districts that perform badly? Exactly in minority inner cities.
Now the problem with Medicare For All is the same problem that faced Obamacare, and before it, HillaryCare. The middle class already has health insurance and the middle class likes its health insurance. And it's a strange thing, but the middle class isn't all that keen on paying a ton more in taxes or premiums to pay for the uninsured.
Back in the Nineties, in the Age of HillaryCare, I already knew about Kristol's Law. So it didn't surprise me in the summer of 1994 when the local PBS newsreaders marveled in disbelief at the failure of HillaryCare. It was, they admitted, because the middle class, the Harry and Louise of the insurance company commercials, already had health insurance and didn't want to pay more.
Enter Obamacare in 2009 with the cunning Jonathan Gruber doing the policy analyst work. Obama and Gruber -- and presumably the rest of the deep state -- had learned the lesson of HillaryCare so they first squared the insurance companies and then promised that "if you like your doctor / health insurance you can keep you doctor / health insurance." And you will save $2,500 a year. All lies, but necessary lies if they hoped to pass the program. Now that Obamacare is passed Republicans are afraid to terminate it because all the people getting Obamacare subsidies, every one of them, will go out and vote for Democrats, do not pass Go.
This is Chantrill's Law. Government programs cannot work because you cannot reform them.
So now we are offered Medicare For All. Naturally, Sen. Warren has enlisted one of Gruber’s Obamacare accomplices to cobble together a document to make the math on Medicare For All come out --without a middle class tax increase. Of course she has. The only question is whether she call sell it, and whether she can cobble together enough lies, like the lies of Obamacare, in order to pass it in Congress.
But Warren is sailing in a square-rigged ship against a pretty stiff wind. Because the middle class already has health insurance, thinks it already costs quite enough, and is not willing to risk it all on a promise that only the rich will pay.
The other political strategy you can try if you want to Do Something is embedded in my maxim, that "the only warrant for government power is existential peril." This is when the tribal leader rallies the men with the threat that the Mongols are already at the door. Every man must come out and fight, or we will all be killed! This was normal in the good old days, when, e.g., the Vikings would kill all the men in their raids and then sell the women into slavery.
In religion this expresses itself in various prophetic cults and their end-of-the-world scenarios. Currently, with considerable cunning, our global elite is selling the idea of end-of-the-world global warming, perhaps 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The notion was put together by Maurice Strong, who "served as the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme."
Let me ask you. Suppose you wanted the UN to head up a global environmental program with considerable global powers, as a first step towards beneficial and wise global governance? What would you do? Exactly. You would propose an existential peril, amounting to the End of the World, Unless We Act Now.
But, of course, ordinary humans are a bit reluctant to give up everything in order to enlist in the army of some UN bureaucrat, or indeed in anyone's army. You have to really amp up the fear and paint a frightful picture of rising sea levels and dying coral reefs and dead baby seals and extinct polar bears in order to sell the people on your prophecy.
So the question with the Green New Deal, to basically stop all normal life for the next decade in order to completely transform the economy away from fossil fuels to renewable resources, is whether you can make the sale. Obviously it isn't that hard to persuade empty-headed young women who know nothing, like AOC and Greta Thunberg. And many of the liberal women here in Seattle are at this very moment contentedly driving around in electric cars knowing that they are saving he planet. But can the prophets persuade the ordinary man and woman with job and house and family to give it all up: "Will you join in our crusade? / Who will be strong and stand with me?"
In general, it seems, people are quite happy to help save the planet. Unless it is going to cost them money. So, the only way forward is to form a religious movement and stoke it with prophecy. That's the way that humans band together to fight an existential peril.
In 2020, it seems that Democrats are pushin both political strategies, the Loot and Plunder strategy and the End of the World Unless We Act Now strategy.
The only question is the old one enunciated by Harry Percy about summoning spirits from the vasty deep. "But will they come when you do call for them?"
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