How Do You Negotiate with Crazy People?

[marmar]

from Washington Monthly, via AlterNet:




How Do You Negotiate with Crazy People?


Politics isn’t supposed to be quite this difficult. It’s not like the parties have never sat down to negotiate a debt-reduction plan before. It’s happened plenty of times, and while agreements have never been easy, they’ve at least been possible.

But the equation changes when one of the major political parties, especially when it controls one of the relevant institutions, abandons any sense of reason. Jonathan Bernstein had a piece on this today, but it’s a point that’s been circulating for a while.

One really, really important point to remember about House Republicans right now: There’s a very good chance that a whole bunch of them just have no idea what they’re doing. (…)

How do you negotiate with people who just have no idea what they’re talking about? Here’s another example, from the NYT write-up of the party-line vote against (Cut, Cap, and Balance): “The outcome was a foregone conclusion and leaders of both parties said the Senate needed to dismiss the House plan to show Republicans that the proposal was dead.”

This is just depressing if true; it implies that an unspecified number of rank-and-file Republicans are, I don’t know how else to put it, either too detached from reality or too stupid or too incompetent to know that CCB was DOA without actually seeing the Senate results.

Right. In this case, Jonathan is referring to Republicans who don’t understand the basics of how a bill becomes a law. His piece on this highlighted a GOP House member, who’s likely to run for the Senate next year, who doesn’t seem to realize what it means when the Senate “tables” a bill. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/638371/how_do_you_negotiate_with_crazy_people/

[Tippy]

1. Been asking myself the same question ........The right has been worng for so long

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Seems to me that the "freshmen"/Tea Party "republicans" don't understand

the Constitution, Congress's way of legislating, and Robert's Rules of Order -- and they don't want to understand. They want to do things their way which is antithetical to democracy. It's like the Third Reich where the minority rules the majority, where the Will is mightier than Reason, where the loudest voice wins the debate.

[Hugabear]

15. There is no other logical explanation for why Michele Bachmann is a GOP front-runner

Someone like Bachmann would normally be considered a fringe candidate, a curiosity, but nothing more.

[HereSince1628]

3. This absurdity and political dead end is a logical outcome of partisanship

Over time American political partisanship has devolved from opposing alternative ideals to simply opposing groups.

Partisan supporters beg for more opposition and more confrontation from their partisan politicians.
The politicians become practiced at supplying it, the followers eagerly absorb it. Opposition becomes entrained as a laudable behavior.
The nation is led into a 'cul de sac' of absurdity characterized by opposition for opposition's sake.
Problems cannot be agreed upon, information needed to resolve problems cannot be agreed upon, solutions cannot be agreed upon.
Agreements to disagree cannot be agreed upon.

Governance grinds to a halt on expectations that preclude agreement of any kind.

[duhneece]

4. I watched "Hotel Rwanda" thinking I need to learn how he did what he did

I still don't know how to deal with truly crazy people, especially crazy people with power. As I struggle in my right-wing, fundamentalist community to express myself, fight for justice, I have much respect for those who have to do this hard work. I have such a hard time staying centered, not stooping to a low, ugly level in dealing with people who lie and care nothing for the truth, people who have no compassion for others.

[unblock]

5. threaten to take away their television privileges.

sadly, the crazies have taken over the asylum and hav full control of the remote.

[mnhtnbb]

6. Just been having this discussion with hubby who is a psychiatrist

His answer is, the right wing have become psychotic, which explains
why they don't respond to reasoning.

[cilla4progress]

13. Yes - I believe they are brainwashed,

for the same reason. I (scarily and without intention) ended up in a fundamentalist "Presbyterian" church in my right-wing community one Sunday several years back. The whole experience was brainwashing: from the big screen lowered down from the ceiling, to the chantings, to the minister who could have just as easily been a game show host, to the railings against "liberal religion" as the anti-Christ. I had this image of Jesus entering the back of the sanctuary in rags and dreds, shaking his head and saying this was NOT what he was all about, in the least....

[lonestarnot]

7. And a curious phenom is the crazy always appears to control, as small as a family unit, as large as

a country.

[cilla4progress]

8. Republican "fundamentalists"

Fundamentalism - hard-bitten, intolerant, no negotiate, instransigent, non-compromising, "my way or the highway" positioning leads to much destruction, whether taking down the biggest economy in the world, or, in extreme circumstance, taking out lives of those expressing a different belief system...i.e, Oslo.

[treestar]

9. Ignorant voters, too

Electing ignorant and crazy people to high office.

I've had it with Republicans and their stupidity! The rest of us will have to suffer. They'll have to suffer the consequences in order to prove it to them that the default is a bad thing.

[B Calm]

10. YOU DON"T Negotiate with TERRORISTS

[reformist2]

11. They are not crazy, they are hostage takers. You have to give them what they want.

All you can do is hope for an opportunity down the road (e.g., the 2012 elections) to move in and rescue the hostage.

[hobbit709]

12. The same way Korben Dallas did in The Fifth Element

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oKwg6W05MU

[oldhippie]

14. Historically, it's been with violence and war ....

One of the things I have been doing since I retired is studying the last few thousand years of European history. Just trying to fill a few cultural holes in my earlier education, which was primarily engineering and business. It has become pretty clear to me that there have always been such impasses and disagreements between nations, peoples, clans, parties, and even within dynastic families. Many times one just was not able to come to an agreement with an opposing party.

Almost always, these disagreements led to violence and war. I don't see where human nature has changed that much. Many will say that that was all long ago, and we are much more civilized now, and we don't do such things. Well, we do. There are dozens of such wars and actions going on around the world at any given time, we just don't hear much about them. But wait, you say, those are all among savages and barbarians, not modern civilized society. How long ago was Bosnia? The former Yugoslavia may have been a false construct, geopolitically, but Eastern Europeans were certainly not savages and barbarians. They have had a long history of culture and society going back many thousands of years, sometimes ahead of Western Europe.

So, how do you negotiate with crazy people? Historically it has been with weapons.

[starroute]

16. It's not just the crazy -- there's this whole "common sense" thing

I'm not sure where it came from -- whether it was pure brainwashing from the start, or if there was some legitimate political philosophy to it at one point. But over the last few decades, we've increasingly been afflicted by the fake-populist notion that the experts and professionals are out of touch with reality and that all the country needs is a dose of down-to-earth, soccer-mom common sense to set it right.

Of course, experts certainly can get out of touch, so caught up in tweaking the numbers that they forget their decisions are having negative impacts on the lives of real people. But that's not what the "common sense" crew has in mind. Their attitude is that running the country is no different from keeping house or maintaining a small business and would benefit from the same kind of seat-of-the-pants decision-making.

We see this in the budget-cutting rhetoric about tightening your belt and eating your peas. But what's even more unfortunate is that it has led to the election of a lot of Republicans who honestly don't know any better, who don't understand the Constitution or how a massive federal bureaucracy operates, and who aren't even aware of their own ignorance.

These people may appeal to voters, because they come across as just like them and as speaking in terms they understand. But you put them in Congress, and suddenly you have 80 representatives who think that the US defaulting would be no different from a family maxing out its credit card one month and having to prudently rein in spending as a consequence. That's their only frame of reference, and there's no way to pry them out of it.

[kelly1mm]

18. While I agree with your premise, isn't that populism, not fake populism?

That is why populism is dangerous.

[starroute]

19. There are a million different definitions

The only common factor is appeal to "the people" as opposed to "the elite." Left-wing populism tends to be deeply democratic and has real faith in the wisdom of the people. Right-wing populism uses some of the same rhetoric but tends to go in for demagoguery, xenophobia, and know-nothingness.

Both forms can be traced back to the 18th century and in that sense may be equally "authentic," but I used the term "fake-populism" to convey a sense that the right-wing version is typically intended to perpetuate the dominance of elites while only pretending to have faith in popular wisdom.

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=RQh&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&q=populism&tbs=dfn:1&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=4wsrTruNEIfZ0QG96v3JCg&ved=0CBkQkQ4&biw=1143&bih=644

[kelly1mm]

20. Thank for the clarification. I understand you point now. nt.

[CaptRandom]

17. maybe spiking the water supply with Lithium isn't a bad idea...

I jest...i jest..