{"id":73082,"date":"2012-04-06T11:47:25","date_gmt":"2012-04-06T17:47:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=73082"},"modified":"2012-04-06T11:59:30","modified_gmt":"2012-04-06T17:59:30","slug":"politics-isnt-about-policy-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/?p=73082","title":{"rendered":"Politics Isn\u2019t About Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economist Robin Hanson<\/a> explains some unpleasant facts of life.<\/p>\n

Food isn\u2019t about Nutrition
\nClothes aren\u2019t about Comfort
\nBedrooms aren\u2019t about Sleep
\nMarriage isn\u2019t about Romance
\nTalk isn\u2019t about Info
\nLaughter isn\u2019t about Jokes
\nCharity isn\u2019t about Helping
\nChurch isn\u2019t about God
\nArt isn\u2019t about Insight
\nMedicine isn\u2019t about Health
\nConsulting isn\u2019t about Advice
\nSchool isn\u2019t about Learning
\nResearch isn\u2019t about Progress
\nPolitics isn\u2019t about Policy<\/em><\/p>\n

When I say \u201cX is not about Y,\u201d I mean that while Y is the function commonly said to drive most X behavior, in fact some other function Z drives X behavior more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There’s more to most things than meets the eye … or the brain, when you get right down to it.<\/p>\n

For example, we want nationalized medicine so poor sick folks will feel cared for, military actions so foreigners will treat us with respect, business deregulation as a sign of respect for hardworking businessfolk, official gay marriage as a sign we accept gays, and so on.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is why I’ve always said that ‘gay marriage’ isn’t about marriage, it’s about the attempt by homosexuals to have their sexual activities accepted as somehow normal by the wider society when it’s as plain as the nose on your face that their sexual activities are not<\/em> normal, if normal means anything. Which is why ‘progressives’ attempt to destroy the whole concept of ‘normal’ — the closer they can get to having people accept the DoubleSpeak notion that ‘normal is whatever you want’, then the closer they can get to keeping the sheep quiet while they destroy any aspect of the common culture that they find inconvenient.<\/p>\n

This perspective explains why voters tend to prefer proportional representation, why many refuse to vote for any candidate when none have earned their respect, and why so few are interested in institutional reforms that would plausibly give more informed policies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hence the resistance in the current Republican primary process to ‘settling’ — I won’t vote for Santorum because he’s a bigot, I won’t vote for Gingrich because he’s a flake, I won’t vote for Romney because he’s a rich white guy and I’ve been raised to believe that rich white guys are the Enemy.<\/p>\n

The same process works on the Democrat side: I’ll vote for Obama because he’s a black guy (ignoring the non-black parts) and black guys are oppressed, even though it’s plain as the nose on your face that he’s an incompetent amateur who’s never had an oppressed day in his life. This is why an notorious simpleminded moron like Joe Biden can spend a lifetime getting elected to public office (by people who appear to be even stupider than he is), and wind up a heartbeat away from the Presidency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economist Robin Hanson explains some unpleasant facts of life. Food isn\u2019t about Nutrition Clothes aren\u2019t about Comfort Bedrooms aren\u2019t about Sleep Marriage isn\u2019t about Romance Talk isn\u2019t about Info Laughter isn\u2019t about Jokes Charity isn\u2019t about Helping Church isn\u2019t about God Art isn\u2019t about Insight Medicine isn\u2019t about Health Consulting isn\u2019t about Advice School isn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-think-about-it"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=73082"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73084,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73082\/revisions\/73084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dyspepsiageneration.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}