Reading the news these days you'd think that politics was an awfully complex business. House bills and Senate bills, reconciliations and filibusters, amendments, White House pressure, signing statements, committee votes and floor votes, pro tem and ex officio – as Lenny Bruce used to say, "yada yada". Keen students continue to read Locke and Rawls, Montesquieu and Dworkin, Burke and Smith and Rousseau and the rest of the gang, searching for information and enlightenment on this seemingly intractable subject.
In truth, nothing is simpler than politics. The entire field boils down to a single infallible and universally applicable rule. A first iteration was articulated by that underrated philosopher, lyricist Bert Kalmar, as interpreted by Groucho Marx in the 1932 classic, Horse Feathers:
I don't know what they have to say,
It makes no difference anyway --
Whatever it is, I'm against it!
No matter what it is or who commenced it,
I'm against it.
Today this doctrine has been refined by Kalmar-Marx disciples and distilled to the one and only law of politics: Whatever they're for, be against it. The derivation is inexorably logical. Until proven otherwise, their interests are not yours. More than likely, their interests are in opposition to yours. Therefore, whatever they're for, be against it.
The practical applications of the Kalmarxian universal law are infinite. So much so that some indeed have tried to hijack it, postulating that, for example, the GOP opposition to health care reform is an example of "whatever it is, I'm against it". This attempt to obscure the law's true application to the issue is deeply cynical and easily refuted. Instead, the correct Kalmarxian analysis of the health care reform debate would proceed as follows:
Insurance and pharmaceutical companies seek only profits for themselves.
They can only profit at your expense.
They favor perpetuating the health care status quo, so oppose it.
The relevance of the universal law is obvious for every pressing issue. The oil and coal industries and environmental reform. Big banking and bank regulatory reform. Defense contractors, the Pentagon, and military spending reform. The educational establishment and education reform. There are hundreds more.
Application of the universal law permits us to see through the behavior of the so-called centrist Democrats in determined opposition to health care reform. There is much hand-wringing over this. How can they oppose the interests of their own constituents, their own party, and their own president by sabotaging the administration's program? Easily. They are merely proxies for the preservers of the status quo, the paid minions of big insurance and big pharma. Their interests are their interests and not yours. Therefore – but you know what to do.