The Pitfalls Of Identity Politics

[UPDATE]:

What was I just saying about wingnuts and the health food movement?

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Eden Foods, you are dead to me.

I’ve come to learn that an inordinate number of people involved in the organic foods/natural medicine/holistic health movement are wingnuts. It seems counterintuitive, one would expect these folks to be hippie-dippy peace freaks. But actually a lot of these folks were nurtured in the anti-government, anti-establishment “homesteader” movement of the ’70s, which was a breeding ground for Libertarians. And a lot of them also come out of the survivalist freak show on the far right, as well.

Such are the pitfalls of identity politics. Just because some company markets itself as embracing such progressive ideals as,

Organic agriculture is society’s brightest hope for positive change

doesn’t mean they don’t also believe such crackpottery as,

[birth control] almost always involve immoral and unnatural practices

and

Plan B and ‘ella’ can cause the death of the embryo, which is a person

… which we all know is utter bullshit. Such is the progressive dilemma: I appreciate CEO and founder Michael Potter’s activism against GMOs, but I find his crackpot views regarding birth control abhorrent. And there are plenty of other organic food companies which don’t hold these bizarre views about birth control, so thanks but no thanks. I’ll take my business elsewhere.

Asshole.

They Won’t Ever Be Satisfied

“Dozens” of Tea Party crazies “rallied” at the Tennessee State Capitol, not to protest Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid as was the stated purpose of the event, but really just to protest Obama. Because the Teanuts will never, ever be happy as long as the Kenyan Usurper Nobummer Blackety Black Man is in “their” house:

DesJarlais spoke at the rally, which was sparsely attended. And in the crowd of around 100, most of the discontent was less with expanding Medicaid, and more with President Obama. Linda Tomasik traveled from Memphis.

“The only reason I’m here is not to protest Obamacare. I’ll put it that way. It’s just because I don’t think he should be president.”

Is this not hilarious? The last gasps of the disgraced Tea Party show up to hear disgraced Rep. Scott DesJarlaid talk about being “principled” in a protest of a president who just got overwhelmingly re-elected.

DesJarlais, of course, is the pro-life serial philanderer who begged his mistress to get an abortion. Yes, do tell me about how Tennessee needs to lead the nation in being “principled.” I’m all ears.

Also: There’s nothing like a pro-life doctor protesting providing healthcare to the poor. That, my friends, is the definition of fail.

I’ve said from day one that the Tea Party stands for nothing more than an inchoate rage at their cultural irrelevance, with a dash of fear of change. Doesn’t seem like the message has “evolved” in any way.

Because It’s Not About Birth Control

Okay, who didn’t see this one coming a mile off?

Bishops Reject Birth Control Compromise
By ROBERT PEAR
Published: February 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops on Thursday rejected the latest White House proposal on health insurance coverage of contraceptives, saying it did not offer enough safeguards for religious hospitals, colleges and charities that objected to providing such coverage for their employees.

The administration said the proposal, issued last Friday, would guarantee free employee coverage of birth control “while respecting religious concerns” of organizations that objected to paying or providing for it.

[...]

Under the latest proposal, churches and nonprofit religious groups that object to providing birth control coverage on religious grounds would not have to pay for it. Women who work for such organizations could get free contraceptive coverage through separate individual health insurance policies. The institution objecting to the coverage would not pay for the contraceptives. Costs would be paid by an insurance company, with the possibility that it could recoup the costs through lower health care expenses resulting in part from fewer births.

How does this “not offer enough safeguards” to address religious groups’ objections? Simple: women can still get their hands on some birth control, that’s how! They want a law that gives employers control over women’s health choices. Hell, they’ve already done it.

Look, can we stop trying to appease people who will never, ever be appeased? This is not about birth control! Half the institutions fighting this were already offering their employees contraception coverage and only stopped when it became news.

This is about the failure of the church. This is about the church’s great shame at being completely impotent in the face of cultural change. This is, specifically, about the Catholic church preaching against contraception for years and years and years and nobody paying attention — hell, even Catholic priests and nuns have ignored that piece of church doctrine. The church hierarchy wants the U.S. government to do what they’ve been unable to do, which is to get people to stop using birth control by making it too expensive and too hard to obtain.

That ain’t happening.

Stop paying attention to these idiots. Catholics don’t even pay attention to them. And if the Catholic church wants to spend its money fighting a legal battle it lost long, long ago instead of using that money to care for the poor and marginalized, then that tells you everything you need to know about the Catholic church. They’re a bunch of phonies.

A Few Words On The Whole Foods-John Mackey Thing

God, liberals, what can I say. Sometimes we annoy the hell out of me.

This is the second time the interwebs is in high dudgeon over something said/written by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. Mackey, who is hawking a book (Conscious Capitalism, and no, I haven’t read it) used the word “fascism” to describe the Affordable Care Act. This got liberals all upset, especially since they well remember his 2009 Wall Street Journal op-ed proposing eight “free market” reforms that he thought would fix our healthcare problems better than Obamacare.

Let me interject here and say, Mackey is an unabashed Libertarian. I do not agree with Libertarianism. At all. I think his “eight reforms” — stuff like tort reform, selling health insurance across state lines, and removing government coverage mandates — are horrible ideas, many already proven failures. He also wrote that if only everyone would just eat a vegetarian, low fat diet, all of our healthcare woes would magically go away. This was an astonishingly simplistic, insensitive and childish thing to say about a really complicated national issue. But hey, one of my biggest problems with Libertarians is their juvenile belief in magical thinking.

Anyway, that was around three years ago. This time, people seem to be hung up on Mackey’s use of the word “fascist.” The thing is, I said the same thing myself back in 2009. Put aside all of the totalitarian/nationalistic baggage the word carries, and consider its economic definition. Aren’t we always told that fascism is the merger of state and corporate power? So how is a government requirement that private citizens buy a product from a private, for-profit corporation without also offering a “public option” not fascism?

Mackey now admits his choice of words was poor. I watched him on CBS This Morning say we needed a new term, one that doesn’t allude to authoritarian regimes.

This made me laugh. Mr. Mackey, I believe the word you’re searching for is “corporatism.” Funny that wouldn’t occur to the CEO of a big corporation. Ah well. Libertarians, what can I say? They always wear blinders. I have to wonder: if Obamacare mandated that everyone buy organic food, would Mackey have a problem with that?

Mackey is entitled to his opinions, as are we all. I don’t agree with him on everything. But it seems a shame that he stuck his foot in his mouth on the Obamacare “fascism” stuff, because really liberals should be behind a big chunk of what he’s saying now.

Again, I haven’t read his book, but I’ve read several interviews he’s given about it. And basically what he seems to be telling his fellow corporate CEOs is, stop being such selfish, greedy dicks.

For example:

“I really don’t think shareholders should come first, I think it’s fundamentally a bad strategy,” Mackey said yesterday at a Captains of Industry series interview with Norman Pearlstine, chief content officer of Bloomberg News. “Happy team members result in happy customers, happy customers result in happy investors. If you put shareholders first, you won’t get there.”

The event at the 92nd Street Y in New York was sponsored by Bloomberg Businessweek.

Mackey, 59, a self-styled “conscious” capitalist and longtime nonconformist, has written a new book in which he criticizes companies that focus solely on maximizing profit. The book, “Conscious Capitalism,” was released this week.

In the book, Mackey and his co-author, Raj Sisodia, a Bentley University marketing professor, discuss ways to create value and lift people from poverty. Mackey’s bottom line: making money need not be a zero-sum game.

I agree with that 100%. And I’m not a Libertarian. I also agree with this:

Mackey tells Inskeep that companies must have a higher purpose than just making money.

For example, when Whole Foods decided it wanted to stop selling overfished species of cod and octopus at its seafood counters, it didn’t just abruptly cut off its suppliers. Instead, the company gave its suppliers three years to come up with a better way of fishing; during that time, the seafood stayed for sale — but with a label of “unsustainable.”

In the end, Whole Foods, working with the Marine Stewardship Council (we’ll have much more on them later), was able to find one supplier of sustainable cod.

I agree with that approach. I also find it a little strange that Mackey doesn’t recognize the flaw in his magical Libertarian ideology: why aren’t all corporations like Whole Foods? Why isn’t everyone focusing on the big picture, why aren’t they all doing the right thing, instead of just focusing on profit? Does Mackey not get that a health insurance company doesn’t make money off of certain groups of people? Like, really, really sick people? That Libertarianism requires a whole set of presuppositions that don’t exist in the real world?

I guess not. But c’mon, liberals. Let’s join in the conversation here, instead of calling for boycotts over the misuse of a word like “fascism” — especially when a lot of us were saying the same thing two years ago.

So no, I’m not boycotting Whole Foods. Nor am I nominating John Mackey for sainthood. Remember this? Remember when Mackey created an online sockpuppet to bash rival Wild Oats in online stock forums? At a time when he was trying to buy that company? Hilarious. Also, not nice. John Mackey, you’re kind of a dick, too. Something else I can say about most Libertarians.

By the way, this reminds me of the one bumper sticker I want to see. It goes something like this:

Who Is John Galt? And Why Is He Such An Asshole?

Ha ha. Love that one. So, boycott Whole Foods if you want to, but I won’t. But I will ask my fellow liberals to stop reacting in such a knee-jerk way to the use of loaded words like “fascism” and whatnot. Please. This makes us no better than the Teanuts who call for the fainting couches every time a liberal says a mean joke about Sarah Palin.

I Thought They Hated The Feds?

The above photo is from a Tea Party rally going on right now at Tennessee’s Legislative Plaza. It was posted to Twitter by Tennessean state house reporter Chas Sisk. (Yeah it’s a crappy photo but it’s all we’ve got, folks.)

Tennessee is one of the few states which still has not made a decision about setting up a state health insurance exchange as part of Obamacare. The Tea Party is rallying against the state exchange, of course.

Which begs the question: they do know that if the state doesn’t set up its own exchange, the Feds will do it for them, right? Right?!? Aren’t these the “states rights” people? They really want the Feds to do this instead of letting Tennessee do it? Are they serious?

Not the first time the Tea Party hasn’t made a lick of sense.

Oh, and also from Chas Sisk’s reporting on the rally comes this gem:

Steve Gill is our local conservative radio blowhard. Hilarious. Apparently Republican votes count twice as much as Democratic ones! Must have something to do with that “real America” stuff I mentioned in my last post.