Dust in the Wind

Kansas--the State, not the band--gets a double mention in today's NY Times. Paul Krugman riffs on the ad-campaign against the AARP, the one that suggests that blue haired ladies and gray haired men will whack you with their purses and canes until the US military crawls away from Iraq in order to attend mass gay weddings:

The slime campaign has begun against AARP, which opposes Social Security privatization. There's no hard evidence that the people involved - some of them also responsible for the "Swift Boat" election smear - are taking orders from the White House. So you're free to believe that this is an independent venture. You're also free to believe in the tooth fairy.

Their first foray - an ad accusing the seniors' organization of being against the troops and for gay marriage - was notably inept. But they'll be back, and it's important to understand what they're up to.

The answer lies in "What's the Matter With Kansas?," Thomas Frank's meditation on how right-wingers, whose economic policies harm working Americans, nonetheless get so many of those working Americans to vote for them.

People like myself - members of what one scornful Bush aide called the "reality-based community" - tend to attribute the right's electoral victories to its success at spreading policy disinformation. And the campaign against Social Security certainly involves a lot of disinformation, both about how the current system works and about the consequences of privatization.

Krugman points out that those against privatization of Social Security have logic on their side--in a BIG way. However, Frank's book notes that modern political persuasion is anything but logical:

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage ... which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends." ...

So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

In other words, expect it to get even worse--the wingnut windbags will continue to bloviate about how Granny and Grandpa are in cahoots with Al Qaeda. Well, reactionaries have a history of blaming scapegoats.

The other story out of Kansas is a hell of a lot scarier: wingnut State Attorney General Phill Kline has gone fishing--for women's medical records. (more here). Note that while Kline claims he's fighting predation/molestation of children under the age of 16, the fact is that he's requesting records for more than 90 women who may have had late-term abortions (illegal in Kansas unless the "continuation of the pregnancy will cause a substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman."). Additionally, steps that could be taken to ensure privacy of the women have been rejected by this zealot. No, what the AG is after are women who thought they were making a medical decision based on their needs and in consultation with a physician. Let's hope his bait gets cut.

As YRHT pointed out a couple of days ago, the hypocrisy of the wingnuts in this matter is more than evident with even a cursory exam: how come they don't wail and mourn when it comes to miscarriages? Nature, as the cited article in the post states, is "appears to be an avid abortionist," terminating over two thirds of conceptions. Will the 'nuts make miscarriage a crime?

Probably not--yet--but the point needs to be made over and over that the wingnut argument is actually centered around restricting women's rights. And that's why they have to be stopped.