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The Empire Strikes Out

You can never go wrong with a good “The Empire Strikes [Blank],” right? In my sleep-deprived reading over the last few days, I read a quote from a Republican Congressional leader–forgive me for the vague attribution here, but it was about 4 AM and I didn’t take my usual notes because reaching over to the nightstand for a pen seemed like a major effort–about some piece of legislation, and he said, “What I don’t want to see is America no longer being the leading country in the world.” That point struck me as a non-sequitur given that the item under discussion wasn’t “A Bill to Reduce America’s Status,” and “leading country” is undefined. “Leading country” in what? There are some things we definitely lead in, like defense spending, and others we definitely don’t, like math and science education or infant mortality rate. I dismissed it as a bit of useless jingoism and moved on, but thought, “Say we weren’t the leading country in the world, whatever that means. How bad would that be? Would it mean we could give up all those overseas bases and reinvest some of that money here at home in bridges and water filtration systems and meat inspectors? What the heck are we holding on to, anyway?”

By coincidence, over at the Huff Post they have a very good clip of Bill Maher talking about defense spending, the tea people, and the mental disconnect that seems to take place when you ask people just what government spending it is they want to cut. There’s an obvious place, but no one wants to go there. It would be an oversimplification to say that we could just chuck it all and go home (which Maher does not say) but it is true that the post-World War II/Cold War order of things has changed and we haven’t reacted to that.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 26th, 2010 at 5:04 pm and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “The Empire Strikes Out”

John Foley Says:
April 26th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
This is a tough call. I do enjoy having a strong military. There’s a lot of a-holes out there who want us dead, and it’s nice to know we can project a powerful and intimidating image. On the other hand, it does seem pretty wasteful to have so many bases in other countries - especially when those troops would be better used in places with actual strife, like Afghanistan and Darfur.
David in Cal Says:
April 26th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
What a disgusting piece of work Bill Moyers is. He begins with the word “teabaggers” — a childish insult against tea partiers and against gays. Normally liberals would oppose gay bashing, but that rule evidently doesn’t apply when one is attacking conservatives.

He follows up with a mysterious point about dentists, which sounds like it’s intended as another childish insult, if I could only figure what it’s supposed to mean. Then he provides a list of untruths about what tea partiers supposedly want. No sources are cited, of course, because his list is bogus.

Bill Maher ought to be an embarassment to every true liberal.

However, he does have a valid point that our defense spending includes areas that could be cut or redeployed. I will give him credit for that. Unfortunately, it’s not easy to figure out what parts of defense spending are worthwhile and which ones are not. Maher would contributes more if he took the trouble to analyze our entire defense budget and figure out which parts ought to be revised.

That’s not a simple task. E.g., having troops in Germany looks like a waste. They were originally put there to deter a Soviet invasion of western Europe — something we no longer worry about. However, our German bases now provide a useful link to the Middle East, so they may be worth keeping.

I do want to focus on one Maher comment about tea partiers’ supposed inconsistency: “They want a deregulated free market and their jobs to stay here in the US”

Maher thinks a highly regulated market is the way to keep American jobs. He’s dead wrong. A free market is indeed the way to keep jobs here and encourage the formation of new businesses that will provide more good jobs. That process worked here for over 200 years. It worked abroad, in areas such as Hong Kong and Chile. It will keep working here if the Dems leave business the freedom to grow and prosper here.
John Foley Says:
April 26th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
I don’t see any gay-bashing here. That’s a huge stretch for you to make, David. I agree that the term “teabagger” is childish, but there’s no gay-bashing implied or inferred. This strikes me as mock outrage on your part.
David in Cal Says:
April 26th, 2010 at 9:21 pm
John, IMHO using the name of a gay practice as an insult implies that there’s something wrong with the practice. Therefore it insults gay men who engage in that practice.

Here’s an analogy: suppose somone chose to insult a group s/he didn’t like by calling them “beaners”. I’d say that would insult both the group and Hispanics. YMMV.
jerry Says:
April 27th, 2010 at 10:35 am
Anyone who gives credibility to Bill Maher and the Huffington Post is off my reading list. I will not push Wholesome reading and stick to your Yankee commentary which is excellent. You are a closet Bolshevik…See Podhoretz’
book.
John Foley Says:
April 27th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
The “teabagger” nickname was actually started by FreeRepublic. They distributed signs to Tea Party members that read “TEA BAG THE LIBERAL DEMS BEFORE THEY TEA BAG YOU.” The fact that a site populated by so many homophobes would self-identify by using a name synonymous with a gay sex practice is just delightful irony. The joke is at the expense of the homophobes, not homosexuals.
Now? Now it’s just caught on and become a part of the vernacular, as these things do. I don’t use the term myself, as I consider it cheap and unfunny. But I know lots of gay people, and none of them feel personally offended by the term “teabagger.” It’s not aimed at them.
David in Cal Says:
April 27th, 2010 at 1:07 pm
Glad to know that your gay friends aren’t offended by the term “teabagger”, John. That’s good evidence that the term isn’t offensive to gays in general. (However, I wonder whether fiscally conservative gays would feel the same way. Would they feel doubly insulted?)

OTOH the fact that some tea party members once used the term means nothing. The singing group N.W.A. used the N-word, but that doesn’t mean that I can use the N-word without giving offense.
John Foley Says:
April 27th, 2010 at 10:52 pm
This is a logical fallacy. You can’t compare a word which is universally offensive (when used by non-black people) and compare it to a word which no one is offended by. Not every potentially-offensive term is equal, and I just don’t see “teabagger” as this huge hateful slur against gay men. Yes I’m using anecdotal evidence, but it’s all we have to work with. It’s a fairly obscure term for a bizarre sex practice, not a blanket pejorative term for gay people. Unless you come up with reams of date showing that gay men en masse are spectacularly offended by its usage, I have to go with experience. I still think you’re just pretending to be outraged because it gives you a good opportunity to make Bill Maher look like a huge hypocrite. He wasn’t demeaning gay people, and I believe that virtually no gay people reached the phony-baloney conclusion you’re reaching. I dunno. Maybe Andrew Sullivan and Al Rantel are offended beyond belief and just haven’t said anything. I have yet to see it.
Mike K Says:
May 4th, 2010 at 1:41 pm
Someone mind clarifying why teabagging would be considered an exclusively gay practice? Maybe I’ve got the meaning wrong, but it struck as something that requires two partners, only one of which needs to be a man.

The Empire Strikes Out

9 Responses to “The Empire Strikes Out”

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