Bully for Us
I was watching Bush talk about “tort reform” the other day, in front of a crowd of health care workers in southern Illinois. As usual, he used the familiar combination of dumbed-down rhetoric, transparently-feigned outrage, and outright deception to frame the issue as one of interest to the majority. “Frivolous litigation drives up the cost of health care,” Bush claimed, also tying in unrelated issues of asbestos settlements and whatever other frightening anecdotes about our “out of control” legal system he could scare up to rile up the rubes. “Reform (e.g., limiting jury awards) is the only solution!”
Taking apart the details of Bush’s argument is a fool’s game. I have found that the best way to understand what he’s really saying is to turn his statement on its head and see if it makes sense. In the case of tort “reform,” the idea is not to stop frivolous lawsuits – which no one supports, not even lawyers – but meritorious lawsuits.
The powerful companies and individuals who are Bush’s primary constituents hate being called to account by ordinary citizens. They resent the authority of judges and juries to penalize them for the malfeasance and dishonesty that they see as routine and unavoidable parts of their business (playing by the rules all the time would make them uncompetitive, y’see). Most of all, they hate the unpredictability. If they just had a number they could plug into their spreadsheet for each consumer who drops dead from using their product, or each patient who dies or is grievously injured as a result of medical malpractice, they could assign a tolerable risk level for these kinds of incidents and budget a certain number of payouts every year, which may turn out to cost less than improving the faulty process. Instead, they face the annoyance of having to argue each case on its individual merits, never knowing if a jury might decide that a single incident of abuse might be worth an astronomical penalty.
Is the current system perfect? Of course not. There’s enough slush and waste to gin up a nice straw man argument that speaks to the outraged “common sense” of the uninformed, packaged around a small but hard kernel of truth. Certainly there is room for improvement, especially in the ways that normal people can get drawn into the nightmare of litigation. There’s also the matter of the influence and financial support given by trial lawyers to the Democrats – an arrangement that some might legitimately view as corrupt or at least disconcertingly cozy.
But really, these things are beside the point. What matters here are the core values of Bush and the modern Republican party. These values carry through on practically every domestic policy initiative, and are so simple that they can be hidden in plain sight. Most self-identified conservatives will even agree with the formula if you spell it out to them. And it is simply this:
They believe that in any social conflict, the rights of power and privilege should be preferred and protected above the claims of the disadvantaged, or society at large.
Run any domestic conservative Republican position, from taxes to environmental policy to civil rights, through this filter. It explains a lot. This is not to say they are hostile to the rights of minorities or the disadvantaged, except in certain special circumstances. But they are profoundly indifferent to them. The retiree who through bad luck, bad decisions or poor timing ends up without the means to pay for a decent lifestyle in old age is of no importance. Nor the poor family that can’t pay for medical care, or the Wal-Mart employee who doesn’t earn enough to benefit significantly from a tax cut.
In a very cynical way, of course, their logic is impeccable. If your objective is to maintain yourself in power, then what happens to the powerless doesn’t really matter, because, by definition, they’re powerless.
The problem is, their numbers, which have always been large, are growing. That’s why the deception is necessary. Bush can’t come right and say to consumers and patients that he wants to take away their right to hold large organizations accountable under the law. He can’t say he wants to reduce publicly-funded retirement benefits for the majority of people so that a few can end up better off (while the financial services industry reaps a windfall). He can’t say that he wants to turn public lands and waterways over to extractive industries so they can maximize their profits without having to waste time worrying about environmental impact. But, of course, that’s exactly what he wants to do.
There’s nothing new about this. The conspiracy of the powerful minority against the majority has been a theme of American democracy since the days of the Federalists and the Jeffersonian Republicans. The successful have always asserted the pretension that their success entitles them to greater prerogatives, and the majority has always answered back by requiring them to compensate society at large in the form of taxes, transparency, and good citizenship under the law. The debate has been lively, and, since the equilibrium point is elusive, the give-and-take has been good for America on the whole.
What’s troubling about the current situation is that there is little willingness on the part of the majority to hold the powerful to account for anything. Bush seems to understand that people prefer to identify with the powerful than with the powerless. Whether because of family upbringing, religious indoctrination, occupational outlook or whatever, many people are almost entranced by the exercise of power, even when it is being exercised against them or their interests.
That’s because, despite the liberal rhetoric of freedom and self-determination, a good portion of humanity is not democratic by nature. They are intolerant of dissenting ideas, impatient with debate, unwilling to compromise, and see public policy as a way to exercise collective will and force rather than solve problems in a deliberative way. People who pride themselves on their honor, loyalty and patriotism are easy prey for unprincipled leaders because their values equate the questioning of leadership with betrayal. They fall into line and are happy to march themselves right off a cliff if told to do so in a loud enough voice.
In the last election, the Democrats, depressingly, hit the natural limit of democracy in America. For our system to work, the economically and socially powerless must be willing to exert the power they do have, in their numbers, to punish those who abuse them politically and economically. Bush’s deception in framing the issues (typified by the “tort reform” example) may fool some of the people some of the time, as such lies always have. But I don’t think it’s enough to say people are fooled. What they are is stupefied by the audacity with which Bush is pursuing his agenda. The spectacle of an institution trying so brazenly to monopolize power, as Bush and the GOP are doing, speaks to the emotional core of millions of little would-be authoritarians who, thwarted and dissatisfied in their own personal lives, are happy to abase themselves in order to see others humbled as well.
These people aren’t cheering the “little guy”: they’re cheering the bully. With gusto. If you get shafted by your HMO, or wrongfully terminated by your employer, screw you! Life is tough (hell, mine is), so suck it up. The idea of David beating Goliath, or a plaintiff winning millions from an irresponsible corporation, doesn’t fit the action-film revenge-fantasy narrative that has collectively gripped the country. Wimps and whiners need not apply. And God help the lawyer who’s using “technicalities” (aka the law) to stand in the way of a good ass-kicking.
This odd moment of history is good news for bullies everywhere. And Bush, the poster child for the oppressed minority of wealthy and powerful interests, isn’t about to let it pass without kicking sand in the face of as many 98-pound weaklings as he can.
8:31:01 AM 
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