Off with their heads!

Well, we done it. We have a place to live. The Boulder rental market heated up, and we were like Kramer on Seinfeld trying to find a seat on the subway. We ended up in Southwest Boulder in a house across from Veile Lake. It’s an older house, not what we wanted, but the market forced us to take it. It’s a beautiful view out the front window, there is lots of open space and many trails nearby. It’s a block away from the recreation center, and of course, it’s Boulder – lots of bikes, dogs, coffee shops, latte liberals and Prius’s. God I’m happy.

While here I’ve been dealing with the two extremes of our narrow, narrow philosophical spectrum – Budge at Electric City Weblog, and Jay at Left in the West. Each presents us with a failing in the American political system.

Budge presents as an intellectual, and puts forth a philosophy that is libertarian/capitalist/objectivist/WTF, and that simply does not work in in this uncooperative world. He thinks that because he works with, and not against, our failings as humans, that his path naturally leads to the best outcomes. If many don’t get to participate in the abundance our planet yields, it cannot be helped. Failure produces desire and makes a body work harder, and we all benefit. Eventually.

So he looks around at fifty million uninsured, and thinks that it’s all going to work out in the end, and in the meantime, it’s government’s fault for interfering with the market. We are just around the corner and the market is this close to delivering our goods. Last week he presented some YouTubes from the 1980’s showing us that blacks were well on the road to equality before LBJ messed them up. They were this close. Soon he’ll be telling us that Venezuelans were this close to solving their poverty problems until Hugo Chavez stepped in.

It’s a special kind of philosophy that he shares with Professor Natelson. They can’t be wrong. There’s no evidence out there that says they are wrong (or right). Whenever the world goes wrong, it’s the goddam government at fault.

Can’t win that one.

Then there’s Jay – anyone who knows me knows that I have a shorter fuse with Democrats than any other creatures. He’s in the process of doing two very important things right now: Rationalizing Max Baucus’s giveaway to the health care to the insurance companies, and Jon Tester’s giveaway of our few remaining roadless lands to the loggers. In each case he supposes that a process that yields less than we want is better than no process at all. Democratic leadership are, after all, leaders who live in a practical world, versus us lefties who are not willing to compromise.

He gives away the store, and then tells us that we are being obtuse when we won’t settle. Where Budge is grounded in an extreme philosophy that cannot be tested, Jay is lost in no philosophy at all, and deals with the frustration of a weak two-party system by internalizing the ineffectiveness of the Democrats as the best we can do in this imperfect world.

He lacks passion. Budge is passionate. Last night, I was pissed at both of them. This morning I wish them on each other. Maybe the middle ground between them is what they both might call “the left”. That’s us illogical passionate do-gooders who wont’ settle, who see the real world and yet want more and better, We are willing to butt heads with power to get it, have no respect for obtuse philosophies or weak panderers and quislings.

If the best that Montana Democrats can offer is Max Baucus, if the best our free market insurance system can yield is fifty milion uninsured and 25 million underinsured, then both Stevens and Budge are staring in the face of utter failure. Better to be passionate, to want more and better, than to be either of them.

Off with their heads!

Note: Jay has expressed strong dissatisfaction at the Senate Finance Committee (Baucus) this morning. But what did he expect? If he is surprised and disappointed, I can only wonder about his lack of incredulity.