Rhymes With Cars & Girls

Apparently we are meant to think that Osama bin Laden is going to ‘issue’ another message.

Every time this sort of thing happens, it becomes clear that there are a number of people in the West who believe (or purport to believe) that Osama bin Laden is still a living person, as in, not dead.

I have to wonder: do those same people also believe that Tupac Shakur is still alive?

A favorite theme of the left in politics is to bemoan the fact of a large faction of the ‘working class’ that (says the left) ‘doesn’t vote their own self-interest’. I suppose this is what Obama was getting at with his ‘bitter’ comment’.

The point is understandable enough. Obviously the left believes their policies are better for the ‘working class’, which is debatable, but let’s stipulate that they are right. What I find interesting is the premise behind the whole concept, which seems to be that lower/middle-class people should pick who they vote for ENTIRELY based on which candidate will help them, personally, the most economically.

Let’s flip things around and examine how upper-middle-class lefties vote. Do they vote ENTIRELY based on ‘economic self-interest’? Certainly not! Indeed, the entire sales pitch of Mr. Kerry, Mr. Edwards, Mrs. Clinton, Mrs. Boxer et al is that they will enact policies that will specifically not benefit people who are as wealthy as they are.

But it’s good to vote for them, says the left. I think I’ll vote for them!, says a huge swathe of upper-middle-class lefties.

So, wait. Why don’t upper-middle-class, politically-correct lefties vote their ‘economic self-interest’? “Oh, we’re voting based on principles, you see. Principles such as equality, and fairness”, they might say. “Stuff we believe in. We’re certainly not only thinking about ourselves.”

Which is perfectly fine. But so then why isn’t it just as understandable and nonremarkable that a lower-class person might vote based on - well, you know - principles, and not be thinking only about themselves, in spite of their ‘economic self-interest’? The left finds this so incomprehensible that they can only stammer nonsense (”clinging to guns and God”) by way of explanation.

Because only the anointed, selfless, upper-middle-class left are allowed to have principles. Everyone else is a pig at a trough trying to stuff his face as much as possible. This is what the left seems to be thinking, at least, when they express amazement and dismay that people besides themselves might have higher principles guiding their political leanings than money-maximization.

Another explanation, perhaps, is that wealthy lefty people imagine that if they were poor, they would only be thinking about themselves and their poorness and maximizing their ‘economic self-interest’ with everything they do. Being perplexed that someone else has principles might, in a sense, be another way of saying “if I were in your position, I’d discard all principles”.

Either way the ramifications are fascinating.

Everyone knows that one of the lowest-of-the-lowest tactics that right-wingers resort to is to question the patriotism of their opponents. Why, patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. It’s practically McCarthyist, a horrid and disgusting spectacle to observe. Just wanted to remind people of that.

Meanwhile, on a completely unrelated note, professional lefty blogger Matthew Yglesias explains that he’s figured out that anyone who isn’t in favor of withdrawing our military presence from Iraq (like he is) doesn’t care about America.

Matthew Yglesias complained that he was running out of “strategic patience” when it comes to the military contingent that the U.S. currently has stationed in Iraq. This sort of complaint always bothers me to the point of irritability (cf. my sarcastic comment in that thread), but it’s difficult to articulate why. I think Postmodern Conservative comes close to boiling it down to its essence: “Iraq Is Money”.

Matthew Yglesias, and people like him, including possibly you, are complaining almost exclusively about money, when they complain about Iraq.

But so why does this bother me so much?

Reason 1: Quite often, the people doing the complaining - about money - have no tangible reason to complain. I feel fairly secure in asserting that Matthew Yglesias, lefty blogger/commentator with a book coming out soon, is doing just fine, financially. The money that the U.S. government has spent on the occupation of Iraq has not affected him in any tangible way whatsoever. Yet he is “impatient” over it. There is a disconnect here. Indeed, for most of the people out there fond of complaining about the Iraq military contingent, their actual finances in their actual lives are not suffering in any measurable way whatsoever as a result of it. It’s basically an entirely hypothetical concern.

Reason 2: There is a mismatch between what the “anti-war” faction likes to say (and tell each other) they are complaining about (war = bad, the suffering of our soldiers, etc.) and what, it often seems, they are actually complaining about (money). Sure, it need not be an either/or proposition, but the problem is that no matter how bad or well the occupation/counterinsurgency is actually going, they will always fall back to the “but we’re spending lots of money” complaint. This gives the impression that even if the occupation were going near-perfectly, they’d still complain about the money. But in that case what’s the point of discussing how well Iraq is going at all? It’s still going to cost money and ‘money’ remains on the “anti-war” faction’s laundry-list of grievances. In a very real sense, it’s their baseline complaint. But the reason this grates is because they always posture as having nobler concerns - peace, love and understanding, and all that good stuff. But corner one of these people and try to pin down exactly why the Iraq occupation bothers them so much and chances are you’ll end up having to follow their logic down a twisty path that starts with how much money we’re paying, proceeds to how this puts us into debt, meanders vaguely to the idea that interest rates will have to go up, and culminates in an observation such as this will affect their mortgage because it’s an ARM, thus he might end up having higher mortgage payments in 2011 or something. (Yes, I have actually had this conversation with someone.) In other words: take a guy who’s posturing as having selfless peace-loving concerns, squeeze him a little bit, and what oozes out, frustratingly often, is a stinky dollop of self-centered spoiled-brat self-regard. Seriously, we are supposed to urgently abandon the Iraqi government (which requests our military presence) because some upper-middle-class lefty software programmer (or, prominent lefty blogger) is worried about….hypothetically having a higher mortgage payment later?

Yes, Iraq is money. But so many of the people who complain about the money we are spending on Iraq are among the most financially coddled, secure and comfortable people in the history of the world. I believe it is appropriate to discount their concerns accordingly. In any event, the idea that I am supposed to listen to their complaints with a straight face really tests my patience.