The unconscious of a conservative (addendum)

Central Plains prairie. From ecolandscaping.org

That inability of conservatives to imagine themselves in the other guy's position may help explain the habit they have of regarding everything as a game, but not "only" a game.

Republican reaction to the president's cancellation of the Keystone pipeline project made me think about this--like Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska, quoted on NPR this morning as saying,

I'm deeply, deeply disappointed that our president decided to put his politics above the nation.... To me it's pretty obvious, it's all about election-year politics.

The party line is that Obama has [jump]
sold out the "national interest" in favor of "special interests", and I was wondering what special interests? I mean, I don't get anything out of cancelling the project or not cancelling it for that matter--I may be a little uncertain on the geological aspects, but my attitude is totally high-minded and unselfish: it's about the planet and all.

"Centrists", of course, in the sense (as I've noted before) of journalists with a peculiarly statistical notion of "objectivity", can't grasp that. To them, the passions of environmentalists are precisely equivalent to those of people who want "creation science" taught in public schools, a political fact. Whether or not we are actually in the process of making our planet uninhabitable is of no interest, and not even relevant to the main question, which is, who's winning? And being amused, heh-heh, by the folly of it all, since it's only a game.

For those who nowadays call themselves "conservatives", it's the same thing, except that they aren't amused. They are well aware that their own arguments are specious, but they are serious as cover for the short-term money interest that they are representing. For example, the case for having capital gains taxed at a lower rate than wages: David Kocieniewski notes in yesterday's Times that

Some economists say the cuts are necessary to keep capital from fleeing the United States to lower-tax countries. Scott A. Hodge, president of the conservative Tax Foundation, has written extensively that a capital gains tax is effectively double taxation on profits that have already been taxed at the corporate level. Many investors, and political leaders in both parties, have lobbied for tax cuts on capital gains and dividends by arguing that they spur investment and, therefore, job creation.

But there is little data to support that contention: the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service issued a report last year concluding that tax cuts on capital gains reduce federal revenues and do little to stimulate economic growth. And as income inequality and tax fairness have become major concerns for many Americans, the issue of tax fairness has brought calls to alter the tax code’s preferential treatment of investment income.

("Little data" being, naturally, the "objective" expression for "no data at all".)

The power people among Republicans know that bringing capital gains taxes in line with wage taxes will not drive capital out of the country. They know that Darwinian evolution is the only adequate theory of the diversity of biological species on earth. They know that the Keystone pipeline will not create any significant number of jobs.

They don't necessarily know that the Keystone pipeline will destroy drinking water supplies for millions of Americans--we don't know either, honestly, we just hae a clearer idea of what the chances are--but they don't care in any case. They are playing exactly the same game that the journalists are reporting--only for very high stakes.

And they think we are too.