Q: Why did dey tell de crocodile to consult a psychotherapist?
A: Because he was in de Nile.
The Times's Richard J. Oppel concern-trolls Willard Mitt Romney a bit (technically, it's a news story, as you can tell in the print edition by the flush right margin—in the online Times everything is ragged right, which means that officially you can't tell the difference between news and analysis; I just noticed this for the first time and I find it strangely unnerving, [jump]
like a restaurant where the waitstaff are wearing the same aprons and toques and tomato stains as the cooks)—concern-trolls Willard Mitt Romney, I was saying, for the way he criticizes Obama on the Afghanistan war effort even though his ideas on Afghanistan and Obama's don't actually differ in any interesting way:
Well, (a) that's not going to happen (outside the cybercircus, anyhow; no doubt Think Progress will run a shocked paragraph). And (b)?
The (b) thing is that this is part of Romney's standard operating procedure, as we've been witnessing it for a year or so now with the health care thing, where he vilifies the PPACA with its dread mandate as if it were the worst thing since the October Revolution, even though his own Massachusetts plan is in outline the same damned thing. It doesn't bother him at all!
This seems to jibe with Romney's habit of lying about everything from his old digs in Paris to the wholly objective and easily Googlable question of whether US corporate taxes have gone up since 2009. Jonathan Chait in this week's New York Magazine argues—this is a pretty weird little column, as others have noted—that Romney does indeed lie a lot, but is not a liar:
Sometimes it's almost as if he enjoys getting caught, seeing people get the measure of his audacity, as when David Corn recorded him telling an audience that there was worse poverty in Europe than the US, directly caused by the European welfare programs;
Chait brings up a more interesting possibility when he refers to the social psychology concept of the "fundamental attribution error"—the way we explain what we ourselves do in terms of the situational context (I had to do it because of the position I was in) but attribute the behavior of others to their disposition (he did it because that's the kind of person he is). What Chait wants to use this for is actually to excuse Romney's lying, to show us how to see it from a situational rather than dispositional point of view—to go from "he lies because he's a liar" to "he lies because he needs to in order to accomplish his goal."
A quite different use of the attribution effect would be to explain the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals tend to work to overcome correspondence bias (he's a criminal because his parents treated him badly) and conservatives do not (he's a criminal because he's a wicked person). This is a nutshell account of the whole IOKIYAR phenomenon: if Democrats abuse poor Mrs. Romney it is because they are depraved and dreadful people; if Republicans say something unpleasant about Mrs. Obama it is because... Oh, they were just joking, or why are you so defensive, or Mrs. Obama is a depraved and dreadful person.
This is possibly something Chait—as a kind of wet, New Republic–type liberal—doesn't understand: that the truly depraved do the same thing. Bashar al-Assad—say—doesn't delight in being evil like Shakespeare's Richard III; on the contrary, he insists that he's not evil at all, whines about how circumstances force him to this or that measure, and about how wicked others are.
In the same way, if Romney ever acknowledges to himself that he is telling a lie, it's for the kind of reasons Chait adduces; he just has to do it, and anyway everybody does, à la guerre comme à la guerre. But he is, in fact, a pathological liar.
And pari passu, if Romney signs off on a plan to provide everyone with health care by forcing them all to buy insurance, he understands that as a good idea, because it's his, and a response to a particular situation; but if Obama does, Romney finds that it's a bad idea, because it's Obama's, and carries Obama's personality defects (whatever those are).
Because if you're Romney, the ideas aren't the central point in any case; they're something you have to bring along, like the tie and the pocket square, but it doesn't signify much whether they are checked or polka dotted. The point is you, and you being a winner, acclaimed. And no, not all politicians are like that—just the psychopaths!
A: Because he was in de Nile.
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| From Openwaterpedia. |
like a restaurant where the waitstaff are wearing the same aprons and toques and tomato stains as the cooks)—concern-trolls Willard Mitt Romney, I was saying, for the way he criticizes Obama on the Afghanistan war effort even though his ideas on Afghanistan and Obama's don't actually differ in any interesting way:
Now that Mr. Romney has emerged as the likely Republican nominee and Afghanistan is again being tested by a Taliban offensive, his position on the war is likely to come under more scrutiny after a primary fight that gave him few opportunities to offer nuanced national security positions. Even so, analysts say he has reasons to be less than precise on Afghanistan: The war’s declining support among voters means there is little space for him to stake out a policy that provides both a sharp political contrast with Mr. Obama and keeps the war’s unpopularity at a distance.Oppel seems to think there is something gaffy about this (gaffish? gaffesque?), in the sense that it might inspire some otherwise docile reporter to ask, "Governor, you've said the White House plans for winding down the war in Afghanistan are 'dangerous' and 'naive', and yet your own program is pretty much the same thing. Does that mean you too are dangerous and naive?" And all hell will break loose.
Well, (a) that's not going to happen (outside the cybercircus, anyhow; no doubt Think Progress will run a shocked paragraph). And (b)?
The (b) thing is that this is part of Romney's standard operating procedure, as we've been witnessing it for a year or so now with the health care thing, where he vilifies the PPACA with its dread mandate as if it were the worst thing since the October Revolution, even though his own Massachusetts plan is in outline the same damned thing. It doesn't bother him at all!
This seems to jibe with Romney's habit of lying about everything from his old digs in Paris to the wholly objective and easily Googlable question of whether US corporate taxes have gone up since 2009. Jonathan Chait in this week's New York Magazine argues—this is a pretty weird little column, as others have noted—that Romney does indeed lie a lot, but is not a liar:
He says lots of things that are obviously false and that he clearly knows to be false – particularly, but not exclusively, about his own record. But it’s not clear that this tells us anything about Romney’s character. Lying is what politicians do when the truth stands between them and their goals. I don’t mean to completely dismiss the role of character here. Some politicians are more comfortable lying than are others. But circumstance plays a powerful role. It’s Romney’s bad luck that fate has dictated his only path to the presidency lies in being a huge liar....But I don't think this is a satisfactory account of what he's doing. In the first place, if it were purely instrumental lying, to attain a specific end, he'd be a little more parsimonious with it; he'd work harder at making it plausible, he'd try to hide truths that are less easy to discover.
Sometimes it's almost as if he enjoys getting caught, seeing people get the measure of his audacity, as when David Corn recorded him telling an audience that there was worse poverty in Europe than the US, directly caused by the European welfare programs;
"Do you believe," I asked [after the talk], "that there is more poverty in Europe than the United States?"Could it be that he's doing it for fun?
Is that before or after government payments, he responded.
You can define it any way you want, I said.
"Well, I'll have to think about that," he said, and started to shuffle away.
But, I said (quickly), you just stated that European-style welfare creates poverty.
"No, I didn't," Romney replied. "I said, look at Cuba, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union."
He hadn't said anything about those countries. He hadn't mentioned them once in his speech.
No, I insisted, you said European-style welfare leads to poverty. That's precisely what you said.
No, Romney repeated, I was talking about Cuba, North Korea, and the former Soviet Union.
It was hard to know how to respond to this utterly false denial. (Later on, I thought of an appropriate reply: "I'll bet you $10,000.")
Chait brings up a more interesting possibility when he refers to the social psychology concept of the "fundamental attribution error"—the way we explain what we ourselves do in terms of the situational context (I had to do it because of the position I was in) but attribute the behavior of others to their disposition (he did it because that's the kind of person he is). What Chait wants to use this for is actually to excuse Romney's lying, to show us how to see it from a situational rather than dispositional point of view—to go from "he lies because he's a liar" to "he lies because he needs to in order to accomplish his goal."
A quite different use of the attribution effect would be to explain the difference between liberals and conservatives: liberals tend to work to overcome correspondence bias (he's a criminal because his parents treated him badly) and conservatives do not (he's a criminal because he's a wicked person). This is a nutshell account of the whole IOKIYAR phenomenon: if Democrats abuse poor Mrs. Romney it is because they are depraved and dreadful people; if Republicans say something unpleasant about Mrs. Obama it is because... Oh, they were just joking, or why are you so defensive, or Mrs. Obama is a depraved and dreadful person.
This is possibly something Chait—as a kind of wet, New Republic–type liberal—doesn't understand: that the truly depraved do the same thing. Bashar al-Assad—say—doesn't delight in being evil like Shakespeare's Richard III; on the contrary, he insists that he's not evil at all, whines about how circumstances force him to this or that measure, and about how wicked others are.
In the same way, if Romney ever acknowledges to himself that he is telling a lie, it's for the kind of reasons Chait adduces; he just has to do it, and anyway everybody does, à la guerre comme à la guerre. But he is, in fact, a pathological liar.
And pari passu, if Romney signs off on a plan to provide everyone with health care by forcing them all to buy insurance, he understands that as a good idea, because it's his, and a response to a particular situation; but if Obama does, Romney finds that it's a bad idea, because it's Obama's, and carries Obama's personality defects (whatever those are).
Because if you're Romney, the ideas aren't the central point in any case; they're something you have to bring along, like the tie and the pocket square, but it doesn't signify much whether they are checked or polka dotted. The point is you, and you being a winner, acclaimed. And no, not all politicians are like that—just the psychopaths!
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| King K.Rool. From Gamerant. |
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