Now, Bob Somerby has an excellent post up about the obsession with earmarks:
Those high-profile spending measures total nearly $2 trillion. By way of contrast, the EARMARKS which have Sheneman frightened total $7.7 billion. (No one has made the slightest attempt to show how much of that is “wasteful.”) But guess what? Trillions are much larger than billions! In fact, those EARMARKS represent roughly one two hundred and fiftieth of the total spending in these high-profiles measures. That amounts to one quarter of one percent—one dollar of every 250.
But to Sheneman, these EARMARKS are larger than human life. They may swallow the White House itself.
But as valuable and important it is to notice it, at the end he includes something that demonstrates the problem with extending this approach to all political journalism:
Can human beings reason at all? Under present circumstances, worrying about these minuscule “marks” is like driving five miles back down the road because you may have spotted a quarter.
We recently watched the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. As we watched, we asked an incomparable question: Are we so sure that space invaders aren’t running our discourse right now? This morning, we asked one final question, gazing on Sheneman’s work: How did we ever get this far if we’ve always “reasoned” like that?
Au contraire, Bob. It is quite probable that we "got this far" because we "reason" like that. Human societies have always spread narratives in a certain way, and that way hasn't always corresponded to what we'd consider rationality, and it has often involved the propagation of ideas that are...locally suboptimal.
A case in point is the longevity of the Egyptian civilization and some of its rather bizarre habits, like pyramid-building.
That's why everyone can't be Bob Somerby and expect to have an effect on the world. We also have/are going to need people who are also skilled in generating narratives and conventional wisdom.
plover at Three Bulls! (whose earlier post I also recently quoted) has more on this phenomenon.
- Mandos's blog
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Not only is this post nonsensical
Fucking Egyptians? But it is basically just a glorified comment to Lambert's post (posted yesterday evening and still front-paged), which includes the exact same Somerby quote. So was commenting there not high-profile enough for you? How many posts do we need to cover the exact same ground?
We get it, you think Somerby is a bore. I'm sure he is thrilled that part of his post met your approval guidelines.
BTW, the "primary insight" that your pal at TB! trumpets here:
is not new, which makes it not an insight at all. This is in fact the oldest of olde skool, let me give you some quotes throughout history as an example:
But here is my favorite, the one that apparently is the ice cream flavor of the month for the kool kidz:
They are often times found working that stupid REAL HARD.
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I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
Away
I was busy last night and when I turned on the computer this morning and read more of plover's insights, I was inspired to write a post. I didn't go back through the archives to see whether lambert had already blogged it. So sue me.
I am trying to sort through what works and what doesn't in making political commentary effective at actually doing something. Of course there is nothing new under the sun. It's not that Somerby bores me, it's that I'm not sure that alone can actually do something.
In order to find out what does something, we have to be willing to look at the big picture. I thought of Egyptians first because they represent to me the ultimate in doing something and creating narratives with massive staying power. I'm sure I could have found other examples that would have annoyed you just as much.
And you missed the point of plover's insight---that the American progressive movement has not been effective at narrative construction for the past few decades or so. Personally, I think it's important to diagnose why.
Please
It wasn't the "archives", it was the front damn page three posts down from yours. And yes, if you don't bother to read the blog that you are privileged to post on then yes, you open yourself to criticism for that. Especially when you are just humming a tired old tune you have often hummed before in the exact same way, nitpicking on a blogger whose posts the majority here find of much value, more value in fact than his detractors.
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I'm not such a bad guy once you get to know me.
Get off it, already
It'd be different if you were critiquing him because you were doing it on your own accord, but you've essentially gone on the kick because some on this board seem to find his many of his critiques and take downs of serious value. This reactionism just looks petty, and it's really killing your credibility.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
Model
It's not just that people find his work of value, it's that some people seem to hold him up as a model and a point of comparison to other bloggers and journalists as though every kind of political commentary should or could be that way. It's not like I haven't written critiques of the Correntean critique before.
It ties into the general flavour of the main complaint here against the Obama campaign, actually.