If you got an A in Questioning Authority, you flunked.
Oct
24
2016
The Nice Guys
A pretty good indication that a movie's going to be good, or at least
interesting: directed and co-written by Shane Black.
It is set in the funkiness and moral rot of mid-70s Los Angeles. In the
opening scene, that kid from Iron Man 3 swipes one of his dad's
porn mags (for our younger audience: a magazine with pictures of naked
women; how retro) and is perusing a picture of one "Misty Mountains".
When, unexpectedly, a small car plummets off the nearby freeway,
crashing entirely through the young man's house. When he checks out the
wreckage, the dying victim is … Misty Mountains, herself, posed just
like in the mag, except for a lot more blood.
An ultra-Dickensian coincidence, to be sure, although one Dickens might
not have come up with himself. Whatever. We're off to concentrate on our
protagonists: Healy (Russell Crowe), whose profession is beating up
people for money. And March (Ryan Gosling), a widowed
sad-sack semi-sleazy private eye, way
too fond of booze and cigarettes, bringing up a precocious 14-year-old
daughter on his own.
March is not above taking clients' money for worthless cases, namely
investigating whether Misty is still alive.
He and Healy are drawn together when Healy is hired to dissuade him from
even a bumbling investigation. Gradually, they become aware that a lot
of people involved in shooting Misty's final porn movie are turning up
dead.
Amid all the carnage, there's a lot of hilarity. According to
IMDB, this was originally going to be a TV series. (And it's
slightly reminiscent of the series The Good Guys.)
Against Democracy?
You might think this might be a very short book. Page one:
Democracy has given
us Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as major party nominees this year.
Democracy sucks. Q.E.D., baby!
But Jason Brennan, a professor at
Georgetown U, probably wanted to deliver a more scholarly takedown, and
he has. It's difficult to avoid noting that, even though
a lot of the book was probably written before 2016, it's
hard to read it without finding current events illuminating and
supporting his thesis.
Brennan is immune to the feel-goodness and bovine sacredness of
the word "democracy". Let's ignore all that, he says, and ask the sober
question: what does democracy have to recommend it? Not that much, he
argues. As individuals, the democratic poltical power we wield is
insignificant, but it does tend to "stultify and corrupt" us, turning
us into "civic enemies" with excuses to despise our neighbors.
Worse, our votes are woefully outnumbered by the thoughtless and
irresponsible. (The data is irrefutable.)
What possible argument could there be allowing those
masses to hold political sway over us? We wouldn't pick a random person
from the phonebook to do our plumbing or to remove our appendix — why do
we entertain the idea that they're entitled to have a say in national
issues of peace, prosperity, and liberties?
Brennan's an entertaining and accessible writer, aiming (I think) at the
bright-undergraduate level. I appreciated the Monty Python reference to
the "women lying in ponds distributing swords" form of government. More
seriously, he divides the populace into "Hobbits", "Hooligans", and
"Vulcans". Hobbits are apathetic and ignorant about matters political.
Hooligans are the "rabid sports fans of politics"; they are too
interested, cheering on their side, unable or unwilling to consider
alternatives. Finally, Vulcans are the holy grail of political
participants, making their views dependent on evidence, self-aware of
their own limitations and uncertainties. (But even Vulcans, I think, can
have incompatible political visions and values.)
Brennan convincingly argues that Vulcans are nearly invisible and have
at best minor influence.
The cliché is: democracy is the worst system of government, except for
all the others. Brennan feels the force of that argument, but asks us to
consider various possible schemes of epistocratic government;
granting a larger share of political powers to those who (in some
manner) shown themselves more likely to exercise them responsibly.
One approach I wish Brennan would have considered more carefully:
instead of restricting the political power of voters, approach
things at the candidate side. A requirement for running would be to
subject yourself to a battery of tests to measure your intelligence
(maybe an IQ test); general knowledge and academic achievement (something
like the SAT); maybe a quiz on current affairs (where's Aleppo?) or
general civic knowledge; maybe specialized queries on economics
or science.
You wouldn't disqualify anyone based on test scores, but you would
publicize everyone's scores. Would voters pay attention? Maybe enough on
the margin to improve results.
The actress said that her rejecting Trump then led to
a story in the National
Enquirer, which instead claimed Trump said he wouldn’t
date the actress because she was “too short.”
Ms. Hayek is, indeed, short; 5 foot 2, according to IMDB. Is that
s a credible excuse for not dating her? We're only hearing her side of
the story, sure, but Trump sounds like a high school petulant loser.
Oh, right: he always sounds like a high school petulant loser.
“We are going to ask the wealthy and corporations to pay their fair
share,” she said at Wednesday’s
debate. “And there is no evidence whatsoever that that will slow
down or diminish our growth.”
Aside: to repeat a point I've made in the past, I despise the
intelligence-insulting lie embedded in that small word "ask". If/when a
tax increase is passed, nobody will be "asked" to cough up more money to
the US Treasury. That money will be demanded. By implying
otherwise, Hillary might as well add: "I'm wording things that way
because I think anyone listening is stupid enough to believe me."
That lie is nearly always accompanied by the bullshit phrase "fair
share", which I've also loathed for a long time. Exactly how much
is that fair share? Why, my friends, it always really means "more than they're
paying now".
In 2013, the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers (those with AGIs below
$36,841) earned 11.49 percent of total AGI. This group of taxpayers paid
approximately $34 billion in taxes, or 2.78 percent of all income taxes
in 2013.
In contrast, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers (taxpayers with AGIs of
$428,713 and above), earned 19.04 percent of all AGI in 2013, but paid
37.80 percent of all federal income taxes.
In 2013, the top 1 percent of taxpayers accounted for more income taxes
paid than the bottom 90 percent combined. The top 1 percent of taxpayers
paid $465 billion, or 37.80 percent of all income taxes, while the
bottom 90 percent paid $372 billion, or 30.20 percent of all income
taxes.
It's my devout wish that someone would corner Hillary, or anyone else
braying about "fair share", show these numbers, and ask: Is that "fair"?
What would the numbers have to look like to make them "fair"?
But I've been wishing that for a long time, and I don't think I'll see
it in my lifetime.
Er, where was I? Oh, yeah. Continuing with Hillary's claim that there's
"no evidence whatsoever" enacting her proposals "will slow down or
diminish our growth": that turns out to be a lie as well:
Two independent analyses conclude that by raising taxes so dramatically
on the wealthy, her program will crimp investment and economic growth,
though they disagree on how much.
Clinton, whose candidacy is largely built on her foreign policy
experience, described the Iraqi city of Mosul as a "border city," when
it is in fact, 75 miles from the nearest border in one direction, and
100 miles from the border of Syria in another direction. As U.S.
News and World Report's Steven
Nelson noted, "Ireland is closer to Wales. Montreal is nearer to New
York state and Damascus, Syria's capital, is closer to Israel – either
its de facto or internationally recognized borders."
Speaking of "fair", shouldn't all candidates get asked the same set of
"gotcha" questions? Again, not holding my breath.
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