Politics is a John Hughes Movie

Watching Bill O’Reilly (why do I do this to myself? I do not know) “interview” two alleged experts on interrogation has been a frustrating, fascinating few minutes. He’s asking, of course, about torture, waterboarding, etc. One is an eggheaded intellectual, while the other is more of a pragmatic policy man. The intellectual was clearly chosen because he was predicted to oppose the use of torture in interrogations, while the other guy was supposed to support it. But neither of them would unconditionally sign on to the idea of using torture to get intelligence about terror. Bill went around and around, making his question more and more general and gotcha-esque, trying to extract some commitment from these two (or at least one of them) that waterboarding et al. would be the best national security choice in some undefined scary situation. He gives up in exasperation when neither of them will take his bait (probably guaranteeing an out-of-context sound byte later on).

Once again, and more forcefully, I’m struck with the sense that party politics in America is a game of cliques. The in-groups come first, with the dogma, policies, and even values and beliefs, coming afterward. The entertainers (masquerading as newspeople) like O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Maddow, and Olbermann understand this, and feed their audiences a steady diet of self-confirming sugar water. But it’s the clique first. The ideals serve the cliques.

How else to explain the supposedly “Christian” right’s insistence on supporting any war waged by a fellow conservative? Or demanding that concealed handguns be allowed on Texas university campuses¹? Or supposedly-fiscally-responsible party members calling for increasing expansion of prisons, the military, and police forces at taxpayer expense? Or the antagonism to environmentalism in any form not sponsored by hunters and fishermen? How else to account for the “progressive” left’s protection of endangered species, sometimes at land- and business-owners’ expense, while insisting on the right of choice in even late-term, convenience-motivated abortion situations? And what about the mainstream left’s emerging opposition to nontraditional environmentalism and feminism? The illuminating factor is group loyalty and identity.

The most telling points are the flip-flops whenever the regimes change in Washington. For eight years, conservatives lambasted anyone protesting any of Bush/Cheney’s policies as antipatriotic, while the liberals crowed about the patriotism of dissent. Now that Obama’s in charge, we have John Stewart et al. ridiculing the Tea Party folks² while the right-wingers remind us that our Founding Fathers were protesters. This pattern holds with the expansion of executive power, as well (Obama has decided it’s not so bad, while the Republicans have discovered a taste for restraint). We are true to our school, before all else. And if the ideology fits within that, great. If not, we’ll twist it around until it does. This explains, I think, a huge amount of what goes on in U.S. government.

And now, a picture of some flowers:

1. but notably not in any legislative buildings [↩]
2. you will note my amazing restraint in not calling them Teabaggers [↩]