Actually, WAIT JUST A SECOND
Ugh. Hate Meta-Blog posts, but...
Our snarky post two down from this one generated quite a few comments(only our debunk of Intelligent Design as science generated more, I think). Leaving out the dick jokes, several of them are responses from us to various folks who took exception not to anything we actually said, but to things other people - Democratic presidential candidates mostly - have said about Social Security. This is really annoying. What makes it so irritating is the knee-jerk reaction of people, mostly of a conservative bent, who decide that since John Kerry might have said something, we ipso facto agree with it. ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME?
I guess this comes down to completely differing views of not just politics, but our political process. To us, politics isn't sports. We are not personally invested in the candidates themselves and they sure as hell don't speak for us. Being on the left, the guys who we want to win rarely run anyway and wouldn't have a chance if they did(even FDR doesn't stand a chance today), so we have to view presidential elections as a choice between two people we don't like. And we have to view them as applicants for a job, not heroic or demonic figures. It seems that lots of people are far more invested in the person and are willing to accept that person as their spokesperson, their voice, their hero, whatever. That way lies facism, my friends.
Look, you want to disagree with us or take issue with something we've said, that's fine. But please, if you're going to go after us, do it on something we actually said. We don't go around to your blogs posting Shrubya's mangling of words and then accuse you of being as dumb as he is. We don't go quoting something inaccurate or false that some know-nothing jerk said and then say "Look! Price is a liar!" We don't excerpt racist comments from Free Republic and say "MajorDad is a racist!" And we certainly don't hold anyone but Glen Reynolds responsible for the tautalogies, platitudes and half baked analysis that passes for commentary over at Instapundit. That'd be more than a little disingenuous. So please, argue with us about something we said, not something someone who we never even claimed speaks for us said. And if you think our snark is weak, by all means, point it out, but make sure you're going after ours, not someone else's. And try to be funny. Please.
As for Social Security - the nominal topic of the post - as I wrote in comments and in the one post we've made on Social Security(actually, there's a second one which mentions it only tangentially), we ain't wonky enough to know the ins and outs of the whole deal. However, we read articles by enough wonks and economists to have a general understanding of the issue. We also, being lefties, have an innate distrust of the Wisdom Of The Market to provide everything since we view it as wholly undemocratic. We also have an innate distrust of this administration, it's goals, its ideology and its rhetoric. So it's true that we're likely to come down against privatization, even in a knee-jerk fashion. But you won't hear us saying "George Bush wants to steal your grandmother's pension checks!"
By the way, so far I haven't heard one good reason to privatize. I've heard really empty statements like "We need to bring it into the 21st Century" and "We need to create an ownership society." Neither of these statments carries any meaning at all. Neither of these statments addresses how privatization is going to fix the supposed problem. They do sound an awful lot like someone's campaign rhetoric though.
(And for the record, if I'd been alive at the time, I probably would have voted for Stevenson.)
Our snarky post two down from this one generated quite a few comments(only our debunk of Intelligent Design as science generated more, I think). Leaving out the dick jokes, several of them are responses from us to various folks who took exception not to anything we actually said, but to things other people - Democratic presidential candidates mostly - have said about Social Security. This is really annoying. What makes it so irritating is the knee-jerk reaction of people, mostly of a conservative bent, who decide that since John Kerry might have said something, we ipso facto agree with it. ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME?
I guess this comes down to completely differing views of not just politics, but our political process. To us, politics isn't sports. We are not personally invested in the candidates themselves and they sure as hell don't speak for us. Being on the left, the guys who we want to win rarely run anyway and wouldn't have a chance if they did(even FDR doesn't stand a chance today), so we have to view presidential elections as a choice between two people we don't like. And we have to view them as applicants for a job, not heroic or demonic figures. It seems that lots of people are far more invested in the person and are willing to accept that person as their spokesperson, their voice, their hero, whatever. That way lies facism, my friends.
Look, you want to disagree with us or take issue with something we've said, that's fine. But please, if you're going to go after us, do it on something we actually said. We don't go around to your blogs posting Shrubya's mangling of words and then accuse you of being as dumb as he is. We don't go quoting something inaccurate or false that some know-nothing jerk said and then say "Look! Price is a liar!" We don't excerpt racist comments from Free Republic and say "MajorDad is a racist!" And we certainly don't hold anyone but Glen Reynolds responsible for the tautalogies, platitudes and half baked analysis that passes for commentary over at Instapundit. That'd be more than a little disingenuous. So please, argue with us about something we said, not something someone who we never even claimed speaks for us said. And if you think our snark is weak, by all means, point it out, but make sure you're going after ours, not someone else's. And try to be funny. Please.
As for Social Security - the nominal topic of the post - as I wrote in comments and in the one post we've made on Social Security(actually, there's a second one which mentions it only tangentially), we ain't wonky enough to know the ins and outs of the whole deal. However, we read articles by enough wonks and economists to have a general understanding of the issue. We also, being lefties, have an innate distrust of the Wisdom Of The Market to provide everything since we view it as wholly undemocratic. We also have an innate distrust of this administration, it's goals, its ideology and its rhetoric. So it's true that we're likely to come down against privatization, even in a knee-jerk fashion. But you won't hear us saying "George Bush wants to steal your grandmother's pension checks!"
By the way, so far I haven't heard one good reason to privatize. I've heard really empty statements like "We need to bring it into the 21st Century" and "We need to create an ownership society." Neither of these statments carries any meaning at all. Neither of these statments addresses how privatization is going to fix the supposed problem. They do sound an awful lot like someone's campaign rhetoric though.
(And for the record, if I'd been alive at the time, I probably would have voted for Stevenson.)
posted by jayinbmore at 10:45 AM
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