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Thursday, May 17, 2007
The Political Problem: Changing The Game
Imagine sitting down to a two-person poker game, getting a good hand from the deal, betting substantially on it, cocking an eyebrow at your hesitating opponent, and finally hearing him say, "Pawn to King Four."
Might come as a bit of a surprise, eh? That's not the game you agreed to play, the one you're prepared for, or the one that's already in progress between you. You'd protest that he had to be kidding. There are no pawns in poker. A few kings, yes, but no pawns.
He might be kidding...or he might be attempting to evade the damage from a bad hand, and shifting the contest to a field where he deems his chances better.
Your Curmudgeon has never seen this happen at a poker table, or a chess table, or a bridge, backgammon, or Candy-Land table. No one would be permitted to get away with it. Yet in politics, it's done all the time.
Here's a sample from the recent past, on the lively subject of same-sex marriage:
When Rep. Marilyn Musgrave, the Colorado Republican sponsoring a federal marriage amendment, bluntly confronted Newsom with his criminal behavior ("I'm going through the deliberative legislative process, Mr. Mayor. You're defying the law."), he pursed his lips and snorted: "I'm hardly defying the law." Hardly? Fact: In 2000, California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 22, the state's Defense of Marriage Act. Despite Newsom's issuance of 3,500 marriage licenses to homosexual couples, Prop. 22 remains the law today.Musgrave didn't back down: "You're making a mockery of the law." Newsom wheedled in response: "I think you're making a mockery of this country and our values of diversity, and bringing people together and uniting people."
Musgrave was successfully challenging Newsom's actions under the law, which was plainly against him and could have seen him indicted and tried for malfeasance. Newsom, knowing he couldn't win on that field, tried to change the game to a comparison of legally irrelevant attitudes about "diversity," such that for Musgrave to respond at all would relieve him of his disadvantage.
Leftists, multiculturalists and cultural relativists do that a lot. They seldom win on evidence and logic, because in the overwhelming majority of cases, the evidence and logic are against them. When backed into an argumentative corner by a conservative with the evidence and logic on his side, they inevitably try to change the game. They should never be allowed to get away with it, yet all too often they do.
Your Curmudgeon has already examined the Left's use of emotional factors to blind uncommitted Americans to the rational arguments against their contentions. This topic of change-the-gamesmanship is closely related to the earlier one, though larger in scope.
Here's another sample, from a very recent Newsweek article:
It's risky to put a politician on the couch, but that has not kept President Bush's critics from charging that he is "in a state of denial" about the situation in Iraq, as Sen. Harry Reid said last month. The phrase was the title of Bob Woodward's latest book on the war, and in January, USA Today editorialized that Bush is "in denial about the insurgency that has plunged [Iraq] into civil war."This could all be dismissed as psychobabble, except for one thing. Psychology researchers, including some who advise politicians, have reached the same conclusion. "I do think there is denial on Bush's part in his running of the war," says Kerry Sulkowicz, clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University Medical Center. "He seems unmoved by the extent of the evidence that things are far worse than he believes. The tip-off for denial is perpetual optimism, a pathological certainty that things are going well."
Bush could, of course, know full well that the United States cannot achieve its goals in Iraq. If so, then he is lying not to himself but to us (for reasons scientists would have a field day with, but that's another story). But while it's always risky to psychoanalyze a politician from afar, a few things in his past are consistent with the capacity for denial. When he was 7, his baby sister died of leukemia. Bush, while certainly not denying her death, tried to cheer up his grieving mother, saying everything would be OK. Also, those who abuse alcohol, as Bush has admitted doing, typically need to see the world in black and white in order to stay on the wagon. "It's how they control their addiction," says Sulkowicz. "It reflects an inability or refusal to see shades of gray."
Columnist Sharon Begley might not have had to talk to a lot of "psychology researchers" before she found one that would endorse her preferred position, or she might have had to winnow through the faculties of many prestigious institutions. She didn't say, and we can't know. But of these things we may be sure:
- Miss Begley is at least as convinced of the correctness of her opinion as President Bush is of his;
- Professor Sulkowicz has acted irresponsibly in psychoanalyzing someone he's never met;
- Neither of these persons is arguing about the state of the pacification effort, which is going considerably better than they would care to admit, and might ultimately succeed in presenting the fledgling Iraqi government with a manageable domestic peace.
This is standard for American leftists these past hundred years. They have an absolute commitment to their own ideas that they never, ever question, but no one else's commitment to his convictions is permitted to escape their ersatz psychoanalysis. Anyone who differs with them is deluded, evil, mean-spirited, a racist, a fraud, in denial, a homophobe, or a closet queen. Frankly, such tactics say a lot more about those who use them...or perhaps about their relations with their mothers.
These are not battles a man with any self-respect should lower himself to fight. Their premise negates any conception of individual integrity or dignity. Rather, when a leftist tangled inescapably in adverse evidence and its implications attempts this sort of game-changing, whether it be to an emotional, psychological, sexual, religious, or other field irrelevant to the objective issue at hand, he must be called on it. Then the implications of his attempt should be detailed in full, for your audience's benefit.
They will hate us for it, of course. No man likes to have his weapons taken from him, especially if defeat would undermine his self-esteem or his moral posture in others' eyes. But could they hate us any more than they plainly do already?
More anon.
(Your Curmudgeon has written several other essays about the political problem:
Please read them all.)
Comments
Just a moment.
“Bush, while certainly not denying her death, tried to cheer up his grieving mother, saying everything would be OK.”
Did she actually write that? Or did you just stick that in to see if we were paying attention?Posted by on 05/19/2007 at 06:02 PMShe really wrote that, More. There’s no depth to which they won’t sink.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 05/19/2007 at 06:27 PMSorry, strike the above. I followed the link. She said it.
Posted by on 05/19/2007 at 06:37 PMThe comment may be “low”, but actually the adjective I would use would be “puerile”. Just incredibly puerile. And it probably went through multiple layers of editors.
Standards are dropping.Posted by on 05/20/2007 at 11:31 AM
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