1. Bewildered with Misinformation
• Re: Unexceptionalism: A Primer
• A column dissection of an article by E. L. Doctorow
• The New York Times
2. No doubt, in a response to the recently released and
deeply profound “If I wanted America to fail” video by
FreeMarketAmerica, a liberal ‘intellectual’ has attempted
a counterargument. Instead, he has actually provided a
virtual goldmine of liberal paranoid delusion. Enjoy…
E. L. DOCTOROW: TO achieve unexceptionalism, the
political ideal that would render the United States
indistinguishable from the impoverished, traditionally
undemocratic, brutal or catatonic countries of the world,
do the following:
The setup.
3. E. L. DOCTOROW: If you’re a justice of the Supreme
Court, ignore the first sacrament of a democracy and
suspend the counting of ballots in a presidential election.
Appoint the candidate of your choice as president.
This is delusion based on a paranoid belief that the
Supreme Court acted politically. But it was the Florida
Supreme Court that ordered a selective recount, obviously
attempting to overturn the results. The 6 to 3 vote by the
Federal Supreme Court simply prevented that political
interference with the vote. Subsequent media recounts
confirmed George W. Bush’s victory.
4. E. L. DOCTOROW: If you’re the newly anointed
president, react to a terrorist attack by invading a
nonterrorist country.
Delusion allows a person to simplify a complex situation
into a basic demagogic point. This is completely
debunked in #22 The Quiet Funeral of “Bush Lied -
Thousands Died!”.
5. E. L. DOCTOROW: Despite the loss or disablement of
untold numbers of lives, manage your war so that its
results will be indeterminate.
(Who manages a war?!?) In fact, there were somewhere
over 100,000 civilian and military deaths connected with
the invasion according to Iraq Body Count from 2003 to
2011. (And a large portion were enemy deaths and those
killed by the enemy.) However, it was estimated that
Saddam Hussein was murdering an average of about
100,000 Iraqis per year at the time of the invasion. That
is a saving of almost 700,000 lives over eight years.
6. E. L. DOCTOROW: Using the state of war as
justification, order secret surveillance of American
citizens, data mine their phone calls and e-mail, make
business, medical and public library records available to
government agencies, perform illegal warrantless
searches of homes and offices.
Classic case of black helicopter paranoia, intimating that
illegal things were done, but notice, not one example. In
fact, it has virtually all been ruled within the limits of the
law since.
7. E. L. DOCTOROW: Take to torturing terrorism
suspects, here or abroad, in violation of the Eighth
Amendment of the Constitution, which prohibits the
infliction of cruel and unusual punishment. Unilaterally
abrogate the Convention Against Torture as well as the
Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners
of war. Commit to indeterminate detention without trial
those you decide are enemies. For good measure, trust
that legislative supporters will eventually apply this
policy as well to American citizens.
8. Paranoia produces straw men armies like this. All of this
was covered in #1 Deprogramming Liberalism with
Nuclear Counterarguments. There was no torture (even
some American military personnel were water boarded as
part of their training.) Terrorists are not covered by the
Geneva Conventions. Illegal enemy combatants are not
entitled to trials of any kind. As far as applying his
accusation to “American citizens”, only Barack Obama
fits that bill with his drone assassinations.
9. E. L. DOCTOROW: Suspend progressive taxation so
that the wealthiest pay less proportionately than the
middle class. See to it that the wealth of the country
accumulates to a small fraction of the population so that
the gap between rich and poor widens exponentially.
More paranoid straw men. The OECD has determined
that America has the most progressive tax system in the
world: Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth The individual
Gini Coefficient shows that the gap between rich and
poor has not changed since 1994: The Shocking Trend In
U.S. Individual Income Inequality, 1994-2010 This will
all be put to bed here: #9 Liberals Are the Compassionate
Ones – Really?
10. E. L. DOCTOROW: By cutting taxes and raising
wartime expenditures, deplete the national treasury so
that Congress and state and municipal legislatures cut
back on domestic services, ensuring that there will be less
money for the education of the young, for government
health programs, for the care of veterans, for the
maintenance of roads and bridges, for free public
libraries, and so forth.
11. Paranoid delusion. War expenditures are relative to that
which the war may prevent. 9/11 for example, cost the
marketplace two trillion dollars alone, according to Peter
Navarro – Ph.D. economics, Harvard. #8 The Not So
Surprising History of Tax Cuts explains how cutting
taxes increases revenues to the treasury. While there may
have been some state and local expenditure cuts since the
2008 financial crisis, none of those cuts are attributable to
federal tax cuts or war expenditures. Federal spending
goes up more than population growth plus inflation every
year.
12. E. L. DOCTOROW: Deregulate the banking industry so
as to create a severe recession in which enormous
numbers of people lose their homes and jobs.
Liberal noble lie. There has been no deregulation of the
banking industry that contributed to the housing bubble
collapse or the recession, as explained in #10
Regulamageddon – The 2008 Financial Crisis. In fact, it
was overbearing regulation that caused the financial
collapse.
13. E. L. DOCTOROW: Before you leave office add to the
Supreme Court justices like the ones who awarded you
the presidency.
More paranoia. We saw above that the federal Supreme
Court made the correct decision.
14. E. L. DOCTOROW: If you’re one of the conservative
majority of a refurbished Supreme Court, rule that
corporations, no less than human beings, have the right
under the First Amendment to express their political
point of view. To come to this judgment, do not
acknowledge that corporations lack the range of feelings
or values that define what it is to be human. That humans
can act against their own interest, whereas corporations
cannot act otherwise than in their own interest. That the
corporation’s only purpose is to produce wealth,
regardless of social consequences.
Selective outrage. Who runs corporations? Those same
humans. Each of his criticisms can also be applied to
unions and the media.
15. E. L. DOCTOROW: This decision of the court will
ensure tremendous infusions of corporate money into the
political process and lead to the election in national and
state legislatures of majorities of de facto corporate
lobbyists.
Sort of like unions. The way to reduce government
lobbying is to reduce the influence of government in the
marketplace, thus taking away any incentive to lobby in
the first place – duh!
16. E. L. DOCTOROW: Given corporate control of
legislative bodies, enact laws to the benefit of corporate
interests. For example, those laws sponsored by weapons
manufacturers wherein people may carry concealed
weapons and shoot and kill anyone by whom they feel
threatened.
Outright kooky paranoia. Why not enact laws to benefit
corporate interests? Corporations are major benefactors in
America. Plus, I would like to know where Mr. Doctorow
sees anywhere in America that people can “shoot and kill
anyone by whom they feel threatened”.
17. E. L. DOCTOROW: Give the running of state prisons
over to private corporations whose profits increase with
the increase in inmate populations.
Silly paranoia. So are prisons going out and rounding up
the public to throw them in jail to increase their profits?
Sheesh!
E. L. DOCTOROW: See to it that a majority of prisoners
are African-American.
More silly paranoia. All prisoners are criminals. That is
the criteria.
18. E. L. DOCTOROW: When possible, treat immigrants as
criminals.
The silly paranoia continues. Even illegal immigrants are
often not treated as criminals.
E. L. DOCTOROW: Deplete and underfinance a viable
system of free public schools and give the education of
children over to private for-profit corporations.
Straw man paranoia. Education funding goes up beyond
population growth plus inflation every year. Sending
children to private schools often means paying twice. The
parent is obligated to pay school taxes for the public
schools and private tuition.
19. E. L. DOCTOROW: Make college education
unaffordable.
Delusion. The more government meddles in the education
system the more it costs. Remove the government and
tenure and allow for competition, and watch costs come
down.
E. L. DOCTOROW: Inject religious precepts into public
policy so as to control women’s bodies.
War on women paranoia. Fetuses are not “religious
precepts”.
20. E. L. DOCTOROW: Enact laws prohibiting collective
bargaining. Portray trade unions as un-American.
Plain old paranoia. Where are these places “prohibiting
collective bargaining”?
E. L. DOCTOROW: Enact laws restricting the voting
rights of possibly unruly constituencies.
Again, where is this happening exactly? The only new
laws that I am aware of are to ensure a legal process. I
demolish this objection here.
21. E. L. DOCTOROW: Propagandize against scientific
facts that would affect corporate profits. Portray global
warming as a conspiracy of scientists.
Apocalypse paranoia. Liberals always use Armageddon-
just-around-the-corner as leverage to implement more
liberalism. I put global warming out to pasture in essays
#19 and #20, along with an explanation of this liberal
apocalypse syndrome.
22. E. L. DOCTOROW: Having subverted the Constitution
and enervated the nation with these measures, portray
the federal government as unwieldy, bumbling and shot
through with elitist liberals.
Just plain old playing stupid. What subversion? No one
has to “portray the federal government as unwieldy,
bumbling and shot through with elitist liberals”. It does
that on its own.
23. E. L. DOCTOROW: Create mental states of maladaptive
populism among the citizenry to support this view.
Oooo… Sounds so ‘intellectual’. No wonder it makes no
sense. Did someone convert Bush’s weather machine that
he used to direct Katrina into New Orleans into a mind-
control machine? Sheesh! Populism is a liberal tactic of
us-versus-them outside of direct political issues, like the
poor versus the rich, minorities versus whites, the people
versus the corporations, etc.
24. E. L. DOCTOROW: If you’re a justice of the Supreme
Court, decide that the police of any and all cities and
towns and villages have the absolute authority to strip-
search any person whom they, for whatever reason, put
under arrest.
Silly paranoia. Criminals hide things, often things that are
dangerous and against the law. If liberalism had not been
so permissive and soft on crime by treating the criminal
as the victim over the last few decades, this probably
would not be necessary.
25. E. L. DOCTOROW: With this ruling, the reduction of
America to unexceptionalism is complete.
With this conclusion Mr. Doctorow’s paranoid delusion
is complete. This reads like a Daily Kos diary. I’m
surprised to see the NY Times stoop this low. (Wait – no,
I’m not surprised.)
You can now see why I titled this slideshow as
Bewildered with Misinformation. Mr. Doctorow is
nothing less than a liberal propagandist. Every assertion
(liberal talking point) is easily rebutted, but
unfortunately, liberal readers eat this stuff up.
