Time for substance, not rhetoric
I’m busy and I don’t have time to fisk Obama’s whole speech. That would just leave me irritable anyway. But there was one little section that jumped out at me:
The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure.
Oh really? So that’s why we are giving trillions to bankers and letting the laboratories and universities, fields and factories, entrepreneurs and hardworking people rejoice over a few crumbs from the ‘stimulus’ package? Just imagine the good jobs that would be created, the innovation we would see, the wealth that would be created if we actually funneled all these banker giveaways into science, the arts, and education.
But no, it is more important to preserve the status quo, preserve income inequality, and do what we can to make debt slaves out of our populace.
He goes on to say
What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.
I’ll pull together when you start putting your money where your mouth is.
By the way, our health insurance premiums went up 44% this year. I feel lucky that I even have my lousy coverage. I’m still waiting for that ‘change’.
Some substance about his policy rhetoric you might enjoy (when you have time) — Haidt’s premise is that how a liberal president talks will affect whether he’s perceived by conseravtives as morally worthy to make substantive changes. For all Americans moral policy is about fairness and not harming people, but for conservatives morality also has to serve tribal or in-group loyalty, respect authority and prize “purity”:
I think that’s what I heard him (wisely) doing last night. He can get the policy and program substance right yet have it all fail if he doesn’t get the moral rhetoric right first, connect with the whole public’s psychology in ways those of us not devoted to loyalty, authority or purity don’t appreciate.
I’m reading Scientific American’s lead skeptic Michael Schermer’s latest book, “The Mind of the Market” now. (He was raised evangelical and wanted to major in theology at Pepperdine btw, becofre he discovered science.) He makes the same dispassionate arguments Haidt does, that the real science of economics is explained more by our behavioral psychology, shaped by history, and the new field of evolutionary biology (neuroeconomics) than by facts and figures with dollar signs . . .
JJ
February 25, 2009 at 10:26 am
I will look at that, thanks JJ. There was a lot I liked about Obama during the campaign — especially hearing him speak — but he lost me with his support for that awful bailout bill in the fall.
I am very concerned about the state of our economy, I don’t see any compelling evidence that helping these irresponsible and greedy banks will do anything but harm our economic health in the long run, and I am very upset to see near perfect continuity in policy from Bush to Obama on this issue. The only difference seems to be that Bush/Paulson just did what they wanted, Obama tells us “Of course you’re upset, I understand” then he goes and does whatever he wants.
I believe Geithner was a terrible cabinet pick, either incompetent or crooked, and the fact that Obama stands behind him greatly diminishes my respect for the President.
I was also unhappy about his wishy-washy stance on gay marriage: he said he was against it but for it on a technicality.
I wish he had spent his early political capital pushing the issues he campaigned on.
I’m a little testier than normal, you may notice. I’m trying to sell my house, pick a grad school, and a few other things. I’ll be starting the Ph.D. in the fall. Hopefully things will settle soon.
Rolfe Schmidt
February 25, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Good example of how our own personal psychological state affects how we see these policy and political issues, huh?
I thought y’all sold the house before taking off on the world travels? — best of luck with it all, and let us hear online about the grad school developments when you can. I’m very interested!
JJ
February 25, 2009 at 3:41 pm
I wish we sold the house then, but we failed. Oh well.
Re: grad school, I have offers from USC and UW to work in computer science. I was rejected by MIT, but maybe I had that coming: I rejected them the last time. I plan to work on education technology; it should be fun!
Rolfe Schmidt
February 26, 2009 at 6:59 am
LOL re MIT — same thing happened to me once, with a big job I applied for and they were begging me to accept, before I had to pull out due to family crisis. A few years later I really needed and wanted the job; by then the head of personnel whose search had picked me, was superintendent of schools and wouldn’t even talk to me about it.
JJ
February 26, 2009 at 11:44 am
Rolfe, my master’s was in education technology! — but that was so many decades ago, that computers didn’t even figure into it. All tv and photography, graphics arts and communication theory . . .the power of inspiring with multiple modes of storytelling is unchanged and valuable today, but otherwise I would be completely obsolete in a school media center these days.
JJ
February 26, 2009 at 11:48 am
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