emptywheel

There's a bit of a flap over the release of a Berkeley study on the psychology of conservatism. The meta-analytical study shows the psychological characteristics of conservatives: fear and agression, intolerance of ambiguity, and need for cognitive closure.

These characteristics should not be a surprise. They sound like a perfect description of a long list of conservative heros, not least Reagan and W.

But the way the study was released put the Berkeley Young Republicans in tizzy. In a statement accompanying the release of their study, its authors provided a little context about the conlusions, seemingly attempting to explain the results with real world results. So they exaplain how concerns with fear and threat can lead conservatives to embrace another characteristic of conservatism, a tolerance for inequality:

"Concerns with fear and threat, likewise, can be linked to a second key dimension of conservatism - an endorsement of inequality, a view reflected in the Indian caste system, South African apartheid and the conservative, segregationist politics of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South S.C.)."

Similarly, they described how, even given a wide range of difference among individual conservatives, there is a commonality in the way they idealize the past and accept inequality in an embrace of that past time:

"Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way, the authors commented in a published reply to the article."

These contextual contents inspired the Berkeley Young Republican club to issue an objection. Seems they didn't like the comparison with apartheid and fascism. Seems they wanted to be recognized for their commitment to equality of opportunity. So they declared the entire study a waste of taxpayer dollars. (God forbid, of course, that someone figures out why conservatives continue to attract popular support in spite of the fact that their policies are anaethema to the poor.)

I presume these students are Berkeley students, presumably they are fairly intelligent.

But their screed against the study suggests they would be better spending their time studying--and learning how to write--than complaining about what Berkeley professors did with their time. With their statement, the reveal that they have not mastered the simple tasks of using quotations to support their point, of verifying that quoted information is reproduced faithfully, or even of understanding simple vocabulary.

The absolutely misquote one of the contextual examples about Bush, so badly that it is rendered nonsensical.

"One of the researchers, assistance professor Jack Glaser, went on to attribute the conservative lack of “integrative complexity” to current president George W. Bush, citing a statement he made in 2002 to a British reporter that, “My job isn’t a nuisance.”"

First of all, they are called "assistant" professors. If they went to class, they might be aware of that. They might at least be able to copy it faithfully from the study or its press release.

More importantly, W is not boasting in the quote about how lovely his job is. Rather, he is stating that it is not his job to understand the complexity of issues:

"He pointed as an example to a 2001 trip to Italy, where President George W. Bush was asked to explain himself. The Republican president told assembled world leaders, "I know what I believe and I believe what I believe is right." And in 2002, Bush told a British reporter, "Look, my job isn't to nuance.""

"Nuance," "nuisance."

I guess those college Republicans have learned the lessons of their leaders remarkably well.

We're at an eerie stage in the Iraq campaign. Predictions that the war would be a cakewalk have been discredited. It is clear that we will need troops in the country for an extended period. But this strains the US military as a whole, because we can't keep this number of troops in Iraq without making engagement elsewhere--such as in a war on the Korean peninsula--much more difficult.

This leaves us two options. The most cost-effective (in the short-term) thing we could do would be to invite the UN in to help us police Iraq. To do so--or even to gain support from countries like India and Pakistan, that we have all along expected to contribute troops--we're going to need a new UN mandate. And to get that, we're going to need to let some other countries in on the spoils of victory. We going to have to start awarding contracts to other companies than Bechtel and Halliburton. But this will diminish the long-term benefits of the Iraq action, because US companies will not get the bounty expected there.

And if you argue that we went to war for the oil, as is quite plausible, then you have an even bigger problem. If we invite other countries in, then we will not be able to monopolize control of Iraq's oil in the future. This means that we will fail to achieve the primary goal of the war. This is unacceptable to the Cheney clatch, I suspect.

This leaves us the other option, to find some way to maintain that commitment while freeing up troops elsewhere. Rummy is beginning to consider expanding the military as a whole, although he would like to just squeeze the military more, rather than expand it. There is only so long we can continue to squeeze the military without having serious problems (interestingly, overstretched military strength was part of the reason Britain was not able to assert control in the Middle East after World War I). So if we're not willing to go back to the UN, then we're going to have to expand the military.

The administration already hesitates to include Iraq costs in any kind of budget estimates. Whether it includes them or not, the rise in military spending is part of the reason our deficits are skyrocketing. Within the near future, the administration will need to back off of claims that this deficit is not that big, as a proportion of the GDP. In fact, given that the administration's swing from surplus to deficit has been $750 billion, it is not inconceivable that the deficit will continue to balloon to $650 billion, so far that it would be larger than Reagan's historically huge deficits.

As a country, we're broke. Even if the administration were planning to share Halliburton and Bechtel revenues with the country to offset the deficit , we would still incur the interest on the deficit to bridge the time until we assert control over the world oil supply and reap the consequent financial benefits. But the country will not get a dime of the Halliburton/Bechtel prices--it will only continue to get the subsidized price for oil that we currently get. This will prevent our economy from getting over its reliance on fossil fuels, granted. So it will prevent our economy from total collapse. But it will not help the country in the long term.

In short, we're making policy decisions that aim for a long-term financial position. But to get there, we're going into hock, and each citizen is paying a ton of money for bombs and soldiers. This is just as unsustainable as Soviet military spending was in the 1980s.

We can't afford our own Iraq policy. And the case will only get worse if Rummy is allowed to drum up war in Syria or Iran. There is no return on this military investment for taxpayers. Which will make it unsustainable in the long term.

At one point during the summer of 2000, I remember seeing that Enron had reached number 4 on the list of donors to Bush's presidential campaign (It would end up lower down, at twelfth. I was familiar with the company from some oil and gas documentation work I had done. I knew the company from its early years, before it became Wall Street's darling. And since I had not followed its foibles in the financial news, I could not imagine why the company was investing so much money in a presidential candidate.

The credit card companies I understood. Bush was promising to reform the bankruptcy laws, which (if they are ever passed--they have not been yet) stood to bail credit card companies out for the poor business decisions they had made. For years, credit card companies had been offering new credit cards to people who were already so far in debt, there was little chance they would pay off the cards. The new bankruptcy law would make it harder for people to declare bankruptcy (and therefore get out of paying this debt).

Phillip Morris I could understand too. The cigarette company needs all the help it can get, to retain some kind of viable market at a time when the link between smoking and cancer has been proved. And Bush has already paid this debt off; his government has pressured the WHO hard against passing an international smoking agreement, which would prevent certain kinds of tobacco advertising worldwide.

But Enron? I speculated mightily on what the company expected for its donation. And while I never figured out--before the fact--what the donations were for, I was one of the least surprised people when the company went under the following year.

So now Merrill Lynch is leading the pack of Bush contributors. And by an impressive amount, too . . . they have already spent more than MBNA spent as Bush's top donor in the 2000 election.

This time, the reasons behind the donation are much easier to discern. The Eliot Spitzer agreement with Merrill Lynch (and several of the other finance companies at the top of the list) has exposed them to a slew of lawsuits. Further, one of the next orders of business for business reformers would be to cut back on the number of financial services a company can offer. If we were serious about cleaning up business, we would prevent Merrill Lynch from sleeping with several different departments in the same company.

Still, though, I cannot help but wonder if there is something more there. Merrill Lynch just had an
unbelievable quarter. Perhaps it was unbelievable. As the examples from the last presidential election suggest--Phillip Morris, Enron, MBNA--companies give huge donations when they realize they will no longer be able to compete according to the existing rules of the market. They hope and expect that the president will help them change the rules, so that they can sustain unsustainable business practices. Merrill Lynch had a phenomenal quarter--but is it sustainable growth?

Ronald Reagan is due to die shortly, and his supporters are readying a blitz of celebrations of his life. Even this week, they managed to get a aircraft carrier named after him--the first time a ship has been named after a living former president.

While everyone is thinking about Reagan, we ought to think about others aspects of his legacy.

For example, it was under the Reagan regime that we strengthened our ties with Sadaam Hussein. We sent Rummy out to make friends with him and offer support, largely because he was fighting Iran. This policy led, eventually, to the point where Sadaam was empowered enough that he tried to break away from our control, by invading Kuwait. Today's war is not so much about Iraq being the largest threat in the world (North Korea would certainly be a bigger threat). It is about eliminating a regime that refuses to play by our rules.

The Reagan administration set his power in motion, and now we are paying the price.

The same is true of Liberia. During the eighties, the US heaily funded the Doe regime in Liberia, all in the name of anti-communism. Such support (as well as the related infusion of arms) led directly to the instable position we're in right now.

So I wonder whether, while we're feting the old Gipper, whether we can't reflect on the policies that he--and many people now back in government--advocated. They're not the only ones that have resulted in unwanted, expensive consequences. But they're pretty bad ones.