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It’s funny how you can like someone a lot more before you really get to know them, then you like them after you get to know them. It’s not so funny that the folks who call themselves Republicans don’t learn this lesson no matter how many times they go through that scenario.
The “like - then get to know - then don’t like so much” story follows the script predicted by Allen’s First Law of Human Dynamics; “Don’t expect people to be any better than they really are” The Law is particularly true when it comes to the people in politics. Politicians, in the current structure of things, are almost always in the position of trying to appeal to as large a number of their potential constituents as possible by telling them what they want to hear about how they’ll take care of their interests; give them something. Because it usually takes a majority of voters to elect a person to office, it behooves a politician to try to please as many people, as much of the time, as they can, by telling them in their ads, whatever he or she thinks they want to hear about serving them; giving them something.
At the same time, the politician is taking the money to make those ads from non-human / non-constituent entities; i.e. corporations both domestic and foreign. These “political supporters” expect certain behavior by the politician in exchange for this economic support. The behavior expected from the politicians is often for them to enact legislation that either gives the non-human supporter some special economic benefit or precludes them from having to behave in a way that might cost them profits.
The advantages or privileges the politicians often give these economic entities in exchange for money; are virtually always not in the best interest of the politician’s real constituency. In fact it usually costs their constituents significant amounts of money and often considerable hardship to boot. If any public policy really served the best interest of a constituency; an economic entity, with the help of their paid for politicians, wouldn’t have to “sell” the idea with a gazillion dollars worth of advertising. That reflects Allen’s Second Law of Human Dynamics; “The more hard sell political advertising done for something – The more likely it is against the best interest of the vast majority of citizens”.
Just like this season’s Republican Flavor of the Month each having gone through the “like – get to know – not like so much” sequence; so it goes with “the heavy handed advertising campaign – get to know the details – see it isn’t in the American people’s best interest” experience. First it was The Trump who wowed the T-Publicans with his tough talk about China and the President’s birth certificate. But when the Call to Post sounded, The Trump realized details of his very curious business life would all be disclosed if he ran; he bailed in a proverbial New York Minute. The hopes of the T’s quickly passed to Sassy Sarah Palin, who teased, tantalized, titillated and finally tossed out the idea of running for the Top Spot; probably because she knew she couldn’t stand up to the questions about the who, what, when, where and how of being President. Chris Christie impressed the T-Pubs, with his belligerent bullying style passing for leadership, but he saw his obvious physical handicap didn’t tele-transmit well and that he might not make it to the primaries, yet alone the general election, carrying all that weight through 18 hours a day of campaigning; so it “wasn’t his time”. Michelle Bachmann railed against Obama as if he was to blame for everything but original sin, and that stirred the blood of the T-Faithful, but as soon as Rick “The Hair” Perry jumped in; the Faithful weren’t so loyal and changed heroes. “The Hair” was “the One” until his many committed fans found out he got tongue tied and didn’t sound too smart; then they uncommitted and looked for someone else.
And that brings us to Herman Cain the most recent T-People’s choice. Although he didn’t exactly look like the typical successful, older, white, Republican candidate, in that he wasn’t white; he did have most of the rest of the required credentials. He was also lacking the typical long time inside the game knowledge and contacts; but this year that was a plus in that “gummint” in general and Washington in particular were painted as the enemy. However Cain’s plain, simple, and almost easy to understand plans for the economy, once they were understood, turned out to be not a very practical or useful substitute for the economic systems he said needed replacing. He did define the problem pretty well, but his solution really didn’t add up in theory or in fact. Then he ran afoul of several accusations of sexual harassment and worse from his lobbyist days and Cain all of a sudden had a whole big load of baggage chained to him. That is never a good thing to be encumbered with when one attempting to run, literally or figuratively. All the characters that appeared sequentially in the T-Pub saga of looking (in vain) for Mr. or Ms. Right are clear examples and proofs of Allen’s First Law.
The same inevitability applies to the Second Law. The collective political Right’s insistence on sticking with the long ago disproved concept of trickledown economics, is a classic example. Things were pretty good in America when Geo. Bush II was ushered into the White House by a ton of big money from Big Oil & Gas and their fellow multinational travelers. The tech bubble had burst, but that was to be expected and the Federal budget was balanced. From that day until the world’s economic structure almost spun down the toilet drain in 2008; things went from bad to worse. Yes there was the attacks of 9-11; but the majority of wasteful spending that followed was in Iraq, not Afghanistan where the attacks were planned. And even though the Bush administration said we were at war; they didn’t do any of the standard economic measures required for the additional expenses war creates. In fact they lowered taxes, when traditional policy and common sense dictates the raising of taxes to meet the higher expenses of war(s).
The Bush Big Oil & Gas administration hard sold our “need” for hundreds of thousands of American troops to go and protect the oil fields of the Middle East under the pretense it was related to national security against terrorism. Under the smoke screen of the War on Terror (whatever that means) a few big time, very connected, multinationals got very rich and then richer, while over four thousand American lives and a trillion dollars were tossed and lost in the desert. The whole senseless waste again proves the Second Law; the harder the sell – the worse it is for the American people.
While we were watching the longest war in American history and taking our shoes off at the airport; the Gangsters of Wall Street and their minions in Washington were robbing the world blind with bad mortgages, which they then turned into worse derivatives designed to fail, which they then sold and bet against. The more the Right tried to focus American attention on villains overseas; the more the real villains here pillaged from our national treasury; until eventually the world’s markets were smashed and jammed. The whole thing collapsed just in time to have the Bush run government bail out the Gangsters and then pass the stinking bucket of hot potatoes to President Obama.
The T-Reps then began the hard sell that the whole thing was Obama’s problem and fault for not fixing it overnight. They also made sure he couldn’t fix it by denying him any of the tools he needed and constantly throwing verbal rotten fruit at him and his team while they worked barehanded to slow and then stop up the nation’s economic free fall. All the while the Right kept hard selling the concept of low and lower taxes on the alleged “job creators”, while these self styled “job creators” made the millions of American jobs disappear, and then they created them in China; because it’s more profitable then employing Americans.
It’s not that the multinationals can’t make a profit making stuff here; they just can’t make as much. We used to make computers and all sorts of consumer electronics, appliances, steel and railroad cars right here and very well. But the multinationals outsourced everything they could in order to pocket higher profits; even though it cripples this country’s economic possibilities, potential and future. And all the while they are still hard selling the Voodoo of trickledown, tax cutting, outsourcing, wage lowering. In short, economics that only helps the 1% get richer and the 99% of Americans grow poorer; just like the Second Law says.
Now, through the T-Pubs, they are trying to misdirect our justifiable frustration and anger toward the current President by focusing the American public’s attention on their revolving (but not evolving) group of candidate; all of whom have in common a commitment to say; “It’s not the 8 years of Bush that has us up to our chest in economic garbage; it’s the 2 years in which Obama couldn’t fix it all”. No matter who the Flavor of the Month is or will be next; they keep hard selling the same old story. And they’ll keep hard selling the same old line of, “If the richest pay lower taxes; the rest you will be better off”; despite the fact that Voodoo economics has never, can never and will never work.
But if the American people just remember the Allen’s First and Second Laws of Human Dynamics, they can protect their own best interests. The American people can avoid electing the “what’s their name that I really liked?”, but won’t tomorrow; because people are never better than they really are, no matter how much we want them to be. And we can refuse to be taken in by the hard sell, no matter what it pretends to promise; because it is never actually in our best interest.
