• About

northierthanthou

northierthanthou

Tag Archives: Ideology

Negligence as Principle

05 Saturday Dec 2020

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Big Government, GOP, Help, Ideology, Joe Biden, Kristi Noem, Libertarianism, Republican Party, Ronald Reagan

“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me.”

Ronald Reagan

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help. “

Also Ronald Reagan

***

At times, it seems like there is no real difference between the Democratic Party and that of the Republicans. At other times, the difference seems loud and clear. In other moments you can practically see the gap between the two parties widening.. South Dakota Governor, Kristi Noem’s response to Joe Biden up above is one such moment.

Scratch that: It’s two!

First we have Joe Biden suggesting that he will help struggling Americans once he becomes President.

Then we have Kristi Noem reminding us of the old Reagan quote to the effect that the worst thing you can hear is that someone from the government is coming to help you.

By 2 moments when the gap between Republicans and Democrats widens, you might think I mean, first Biden’s comment, then Noem’s, but I don’t. I mean the Reagan quote and then Noem’s use of it. Those two references reveal the ever-deepening cynicism of the Republican Party.

It was Reagan that really embedded the libertarian themes in modern Republican politics. He did so through folksy statements like the one Noem’s quoted above, statements which contributed to a growing sense that government couldn’t be used to solve real-world problems, and a sense that this view was as natural to any real Americans as life itself. Through statements like that one, Reagan took the GOP in a direction which would become ever more hostile to American government. What might have sounded like skepticism at first, the response of those unconvinced in the efficacy of government aid, has become ever more strident, until we have now reached a moment wherein the faithful cannot bring themselves to even the possibility of that government could do anything but hurt people.

The trajectory that takes people from this modest skepticism to the fanatical anti-government stance we see in so many today is a simple shift from figurative speech to literal interpretation. One has only to take Reagan’s clever turn of a phrase literally. One has only to mean it, and to mean it literally.

One of the ironic things about Reagan’s anti-government rhetoric? It came from a fan of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the architect of the New Deal, a President who did more to insert government into American lives than any President in American history. Reagan was fond of saying he wasn’t the one that changed; it was the Democrats, but this plainly not true. Reagan changed from a man who could celebrate a champion of big government to one who preached against government programs every chance he got.

Statements from Reagan like the one Noem chose to quote above helped to build a new anti-governemnt ideology that now underscores the ideology of modern Republicans. Those seeking government aid are not merely wrong-headed, they are a source of positive evil. You can see this world view in Newt Gingrich’s contract With America, and in the careers of every pundit with a prominent place in the right wing echo chamber. You can also see it in the Oklahoma City Bombing, and in the rhetoric of local ‘militia’s’ all over the United States. More to the point, you can see it in Noem’s glib dismissal of the possibility that a new President could actually help the American people during a time of crisis.

What we see in the modern GOP is a cult which takes Reagan’s maxim quite literally. This is not mere skepticism; it is a pious confrontation with evil itself. What they see in any effort to use the power of government to help Americans is nothing less than a genuine attack on the American people. The horrors they imagine to follow from government aid are more real to the true believers in the Republican Party than the realities of Covid19 or its economic consequences. The possibilities of government aid seem more terrible to them than the actual deaths of their friends and family. We are thus left with a political party that not only fails to take reasonable steps to combat a pandemic, it actively resists those efforts and even takes steps (such as Trump rallies) to endanger more people.

What does it take to make sense of the Republican Party and its refusal to take responsible measures in combating this life-threatening disease? One needs only to take them at their word.

People like Kristi Noem do not think government can help people.

So they don’t try.

She will not protect her people. To do so would be a heresy against Reagan’s old maxim.

Instead, she lets them die.

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Rambling Little Bit About the Consolations of Free Market Fundamentalism

14 Friday Nov 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in Politics

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Founding Fathers, Free Market, GOP, Ideology, Just World Hypothesis, Libertarianism, Politics, religion

hqdefaultAt what point does hope of success in world of rigged economic competition become indistinguishable from belief in the rewards of heaven? At what point does hope for a better life in this world become no more meaningful than hope for a better life in the next?

We’ve all heard the old historical narratives about medieval peasants living in the hope of an afterlife. The point of that narrative is usually some sort of contrast with a more open society, one in which upward social mobility is actually possible in THIS life. It’s a tidy narrative, perhaps a bit to tidy.

How many Americans, I wonder, will live their entire lives in trailer courts and small apartments, all the while counting themselves so much better off than those peasants?

Because opportunity!

Hell! Who could fault anyone for living with hope? Assuming of course that hope doesn’t interfere with their sense of reality, I sure wouldn’t. Unfortunately, the American dream is slipping further and further from our grasp. Ironically, the more distant that dream gets the harder some people fight to hold on to the illusion that it’s still a viable prospect in our current social order.

Heaven forbid a national healthcare system! Damn the welfare queens! The Hell with minimum wage, and let’s privatize Social Security!

I get why some of the economic elites would make such noises, but the every day believer in the free market is often a mystery to me? It seems that such people don’t just want success; they want it on terms which make it incredibly unlikely to ever happen. And in the meantime they reject all manner of public assistance, much of it critical to their own health and welfare. It isn’t even enough to survive; one must survive under the present terms.

In this religion, ‘socialism’ is the Devil, and one of its magic powers is an ever broadening semantic domain. It is increasingly the root evil behind social institutions that have stabilized the American economy for nearly a century. But what makes this rather a-historical devil so powerful in the minds of the average trailer-court Republican? I can’t help thinking it’s in some sense an affront to the just world hypothesis, that vague sense that the world is basically good. If that world is good, then any righteous American ought to be able to make it on his own, so the thinking appears to go. In the end it’s the promise of a certain type of success these folks cling to so desperately, one which is no less fantastic than any waiting beyond the Pearly Gates. The success they hope for is not just paid bills and a good meal on the table; it’s a success that vouches for their own moral superiority, and it is a success promised only in a world that will separate the righteous from the unworthy. It is a success held in the minds of the faithful with all the power and desperation that one could ever find among the faithful of any church. Only a dark force would suggest that this hoped for scenario wasn’t actually going to happen, and only such a dark force could be blamed for the reason it hasn’t so far. The only reason the system hasn’t worked up to this point is that someone, some dark power, has compromised the system. And so people falling further and further behind the great contest for sucess they believe in so much work ever so hard to remove one more piece of the safety net that keeps them in the game at all.

…and in some instances, keeps them alive.

What has me thinking about this was a recent reminder that ‘Democracy’ was one of the great fears plaguing some of our nation’s founding fathers. The fear that the masses would, if given the chance, vote away the privileges of the wealthy and redistribute that very wealth was quite real for the likes of John Adams or even James Madison. I wonder if these men could ever have envisioned a nation of people so content to wait for their boat to come in, so pleased to work away their lives in the hope that the labor would somehow return far more than it ever had before.

If and when the ‘job makers’ ever deem it the right time!

It’s no small wonder that so many who believe in the promise of eternal heaven would also believe in that of Free Markets. It seems that the gods of each work in mysterious ways.

But one day!

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

A Harrowing Tale of Muktuk and Madness! …Or At Least Righteous Indignation

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by danielwalldammit in Alaska, Animals

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Alaska, Barrow Alaska, History, Hunting, Ideology, Internet, Meat, Social Media, Unilinear Evolution

IMG00516-20101007-1633

Whole Lotta Muktuk goin on!

Sometimes moving to a new location can change your place in history as much as it does your place on the map. I first noticed this a day or two after arriving in Barrow as I watched a small child drive an ATV down the street. No-one seemed to notice, not that time or the next. I’m pretty sure that it’s as illegal here as it is most places I’ve lived, but law on the books and law in daily life aren’t always the same thing. So, I saw this for the first time, and the word ‘frontier’ came to mind.

…and I smiled.

Of course, the notion of a ‘frontier’ (with all its ideological baggage) would seem to place Barrow on the cutting edge of history. That notion comes up from time to time, especially in the context of oil exploration and drilling, but also with scientific research, and other topics that people like to project onto a scheme of ‘progress’.

At other times, the logic of history places us behind the curve, so to speak. By “behind the curve” I mean that we fall behind someone else’s idea of the direction history is supposed to be going. It might seem more reasonable to think of the issue in terms of straight-forward disagreement, people do things that others don’t approve of, but the point is that people sometimes filter such disagreements through ideas about the general arc of history. It may be a history they urge on the public, or it may be a history they take for granted, but people often plot their values on some sense of an historical timeline. It’s not real history that I’m talking about; it’s an ideological projection of the way history ought to proceed.

I was reminded of this quite clearly the other day when a student of mine recently shared the video below. It starts with some beautiful outdoor shots of Barrow, AK, but (readers be warned) it continues to show the butchering of a Bowhead whale. The video might seem a jarring journey to some, but for most of us (I believe) here on the North Slope, the transition seems quite natural. A whale harvest is a joyous event as it means food for a lot of people. Much as the serene images at the start of the video, a whale harvest is prone to make us want to smile.

I asked what kind of comments, the video had gotten. A moment of scrolling later, I received my answer. The images of whaling had drawn criticism both on the video and on my student’s Facebook account. On the video itself one individual had written; “It’s really strucked up about how cruel people are to animals. It would be great for all animals and humans to go vegan and to respect each other.” I smiled and laughed as I recalled the first time I posted images of a whale harvest to my own Facebook account. I’ve since learned to post warnings and what-not.

Whaling videopdfcroppedagainThis is one of the many ways that life in Barrow (and much of Alaska) differs markedly from that of the lower 48; hunting is a way of life for many people up here. It simply isn’t for the majority of people down there, and at least some of those people imagine all of history moving towards their way of life. The many artifacts of subsistence hunting are bound to rub such folks the wrong way. A friend once commented about the necessity to remove one’s furs before hitting the Seattle airport, and we both laughed. Surrounded by folks in all-manner of furs, I could only imagine the reception some of the day-to-day outfits of the North Slope would get in other places.

I remember once trying to find a gift for a friend who likes Native American art. A vegetarian with significant interest in animal welfare, she would not have appreciated the ivory earrings or baleen etchings locals produced, nor the many varieties of fur. Most of the native artwork here involves dead animals of one form or another, and that really should come as no surprise in a community where hunting is for many people a fundamental part of their way of life.

The issue isn’t simply a question of whether or not to support or oppose hunting, fur, whaling, and so on.; it’s also a question of how you frame the issues. There is a big difference between the commercial fur industry and the hand-made clothes of locals who’ve eaten the meat previously kept warm by that same fur. Likewise, there is a big difference between a whale taken for commercial purposes and those whose blubber will be shared out to the community. Whether or not that settles the issue is another question, but quite often I think people simply fail to notice the difference.

Which brings us back to whaling!

There is a world of difference between the significance of whaling up here and the meaning given to it in other places. This problem was all over a New York Times article on Spring Whaling published a few years back. Its author framed the whole issue in terms of ‘tradition’, then proceeded to worry over the use of technological innovation in pursuit of that tradition. I also recall a discussion of the Makah whale hunt on a random website (I can’t find it now). Participants simply dismissed the idea that native whaling could be anything but a token gesture, a practice akin to preserving a museum exhibit. A similar view can be found in one of the comments to this post, Whaling Camp: Frozen Seas and Ice-scapes at the blog, Cutterlight. In response to this post, a woman named Kirsten Massebeau wrote:

There is no humane way to kill a whale. Today we know whales and dolphins are higher beings. Sometimes these whales suffer for up to 5 hours after being harpooned. Isn’t it time we stop letting the word “tradition” be an excuse for doing something so wrong. Please stop murdering the people of the sea! You are obviously wearing store bought clothes and shoes. Surely you can see your way clear of murdering our ocean friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I think this woman (as with others) raises some legitimate concerns in her comment, but I also think there are legitimate answers to those concerns, and I think the whole thing thrown askew by a certain refusal to take the Native Alaskan population seriously.

What all of these examples have in common is a refusal to allow or even to imagine the practice of whaling in the modern world. They cannot even fathom the possibility that such a thing could occur in the present world. To many of these folks, whaling (or at least the indigenous version of it) is by definition a thing of the past, a mere tradition, and one gathers an empty one at that. This seems to be a common perception of whaling on the North Slope, and that perception injects a great deal of prejudice into any subsequent discussion. It is a prejudice shaped and defined by people’s ideological views about history as much as anything else.

Whaling here on the North Slope is first and foremost a native matter, but it affects us all. The effort to bring in a bowhead is not limited to the crew of a single boat. Extended families and friends all work together to outfit and support a given crew, and the entire community of the North slope accommodates the needs of those involved. Time off from work is granted without question when it’s time to cut a trail through the ice. Homework deadlines are extended when it’s time to butcher and cook the blubber. Blubber and meat are shared throughout the community following a successful whale harvest. Whaling is no quaint tradition on the North Slope; it is one of the most important economic activities taking place up here.

Seeing the importance of whaling to an entire community, the condescension of some of these random comments can be quite maddening. Of course these are merely random comments on social media, but they provide a telling glimpse into the way that the larger public closes itself to local realities. Folks just can’t seem to find room in their view of the present for activities such as whaling and subsistence hunting. Presented with evidence to the contrary, it seems a common response to construe such things in terms of a museum exhibit.

…even when that exhibit is real people going about their daily lives, very much in the present day.

***

Epilogue: The disconnect between people’s perceptions of whaling works both ways. I recently received a charming example of this when a student of mine who teaches in one of the local villages passed information about the New England whaling fleet of the 19th century onto her own native students. They wanted to know how the meat and blubber would be shared.

71.271549
-156.751450

Share this:

  • Tweet
  • Share on Tumblr
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Top Posts & Pages

  • An Uncommon Security Guard: Dave Eshelman, AKA 'John Wayne'
    An Uncommon Security Guard: Dave Eshelman, AKA 'John Wayne'
  • Oh Come On!
    Oh Come On!
  • The Politics of Personification
    The Politics of Personification
  • Map Ain't Time Either.
    Map Ain't Time Either.
  • A Very Soylent Spoiler Alert
    A Very Soylent Spoiler Alert
  • Tears of an Uncommon Indian
    Tears of an Uncommon Indian
  • I'll Just Leave This Here
    I'll Just Leave This Here
  • The Village of Wainwright, Alaska
    The Village of Wainwright, Alaska
  • What Does it Mean to Like Something?
    What Does it Mean to Like Something?
  • About
    About

Topics

  • Alaska
  • Animals
  • Anthropology
  • atheism
  • Bad Photography
  • Books
  • Childhood
  • Education
  • Gaming
  • General
  • History
  • Irritation Meditation
  • Justice
  • Las Vegas
  • Minis
  • Movie Villainy
  • Movies
  • Museums
  • Music
  • Narrative VIolence
  • Native American Themes
  • Philosophy
  • Politics
  • Public History
  • Re-Creations
  • Religion
  • Street Art
  • The Bullet Point Mind
  • Travel
  • Uncategorized
  • Uncommonday
  • White Indians
  • Write Drunk, Edit Stoned

Blogroll

  • American Creation
  • An Historian Goes to the Movies
  • Aunt Phil's Trunk
  • Bob's Blog
  • Dr. Gerald Stein
  • Hinterlogics
  • Ignorance WIthout Arrogance
  • Im-North
  • Insta-North
  • Just a Girl from Homer
  • Multo (Ghost)
  • Native America
  • Norbert Haupt
  • Northwest History
  • Northy Pins
  • Northy-Tok
  • Nunawhaa
  • Religion in American History
  • The History Blog
  • The History Chicks
  • What Do I Know?

Archives

  • April 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011

My Twitter Feed

Follow @Brimshack

RSS Feed

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 8,084 other followers

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • northierthanthou
    • Join 8,084 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • northierthanthou
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    loading Cancel
    Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
    Email check failed, please try again
    Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
    %d bloggers like this: