Mothra, Conscience Balm, Tax Policy and Daylight, Garbage In and Garbage Out, and White Privilege.
Welcome to the Daily Sausage.
First up, researchers in Japan have found evidence that radiation from the Fukushima nuclear disaster has caused the mutation of dozens of butterflies. The butterfly’s spokeswomen, a pair of very, very small Japanese twins, were unavailable for comment.
Next up, Ed from Gin and Tacos stumbles upon the MO of the Conservative Movement, not just in terms of Voter ID laws. To paraphrase:
- Ignore the data. Do the facts from experts not support your conclusions? It doesn’t matter, because they’re biased, and you have to teach the controversy.
- Establish bias. Your facts are from the liberal media, academia, or some other source that is insufficiently conservative, and therefore worthless.
- Move the goalposts. Voter ID might not be an actual problem, anywhere in the country, but it’s still a good thing to have to prevent it from ever becoming a problem.
- Concede past results but point to a dangerous future. Sure, thirty years of conservative economic principles have left the country dangerously unequal in terms of income and economics, but if we do anything else the “job creators” will “Go Galt” and take all their jobs somewhere else.
Where I disagree with Ed is his fifth point: admit you were wrong.
You can tie your ideological opponents up in knots by attacking their arguments with those four points. But the second you admit you were wrong, the whole house of cards comes down. You can’t ever admit you were wrong.
Let me pitch a hypothetical to you: the world is in trouble, and I have a plan to save it. However, it’s a secret plan, and I won’t discuss it with anyone until everyone in the world agrees to give me complete control over their government.
You’d think I was a loony, right?
I mean, this is some fucked up logic. “Vote Romney/Ryan 2012! Unlike the black guy, we won’t tell the world about our secret plans to save it!”
Speaking of Romney’s tax plan, the candidate himself came out and called the non-partisan Tax Policy Center’s assessment “garbage”. Romney went on to say “Instead they made various assumptions about what they thought I would do which are not in fact accurate,”.
Okay, that’s fair. The TPC took your tax plan at face value and tried to plug in numbers to make it work and couldn’t. So, Candidate Romney, would you be so kind as to provide the TPC, or for that matter anyone, with the numbers you believe would make your plan work?
What’s that, Candidate Romney? Your tax policy numbers rely on fourth-dimensional mathematics revealed to you and you alone by the Angel Moron(i) on Gold Plates that require Seer Stones to translate?
To quote Stan Marsh: “No, it proves he was making it all up. Are you blind? […] It’s a matter of logic. If you’re going to say things that have been proven wrong, […] then you better have something to back it up.”
(SMART SMART SMART SMART SMART)
And finally, an article from The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf disputing the National Review’s assertion that whites are the victims of racial prejudice.
If you’re Christian and white, you’re born swaddled in a blanket of privilege that you will wear as a cloak the rest of your days, by virtue of the fact that you could go back in time to any point in the last several hundred, if not several thousand, years and be just fine. This goes double if you happen to be male. It’s just the way Western society has evolved. For most of the last two millennia, white Christian men have pretty much run shit in the Western world. Consequently, when white Christians, especially men, complain about being oppressed, those of us whose races, religions, etc. have a history of actually being oppressed, usually by white Christian men, can only laugh, usually derisively.
As previously mentioned, I’m Jewish. Being Jewish affords one a unique perspective, as it’s one of the few ways to get the benefits of white Christian privilege, as the vast majority of Jews are indistinguishable from their Gentile counterparts, while still being grounded by the occasional bout with discrimination in the form of antisemitism, which is still strikingly common, even in 2012.
I’ve been privileged in that I’ve never had to worry about being pulled over by a cop for driving while white. I can hail a cab in any city in America. No one has ever accused me of being an affirmative action hire or admit. And I’ve heard people I used to respect say some pretty terrible things about other races when they thought they were in like-minded company.
At the same time, I’ve been discriminated against. People have hurled terrible insults about my faith and culture at me. I’ve been asked potentially embarrassing and on occasion offensive questions by people that just didn’t know any better.
So, when the National Review, who has had to fire three writers in the last twelve months for writing some really Grade-A Stormfront-quality racist bullshit, starts calling reverse racism and that whites are really the ones being oppressed, you’ll have to excuse me if I have a hearty belly laugh.
