(no subject)
Apparently, my subconscious has decreed that it's time for my once-every-eighteen-months post in this journal. I will say that I'm very impressed at the technological progress LJ has made since last I was here.
There's lots I could write about, but my impulse is to mention this post from three and a half years ago, in which I wrote:
With Nate Silver having said even before the Obamacare rollout debacle
"Our best guess, after assigning probabilities of the likelihood of a G.O.P. pickup in each state, is that Republicans will end up with somewhere between 50 and 51 Senate seats after 2014"
and with historical evidence strongly against any party holding the Presidency for more than eight years...
...did we just watch the Democrats blow themselves up?
ETA: actually, they just ended the filibuster for judicial nominees. Still, this doesn't seem too bright. If the Republicans should take the Senate, they'll now have cover when they end the filibuster for legislation too, since the Democrats did it first.
I am not at all surprised-- since it wasn't much of a stretch-- to have been proven right about a lot of that. I admit not to have predicted Trump's win, though I did feel that with the general level of insularity and cluelessness in the American elite, there would be a blowup at some point along the line. In situation after situation, though, throughout life, the real trick is not so much predicting what will happen as answering the far more difficult questions "when?" and "to what degree?"
My Friends List on Facebook is chiefly composed of opponents of Trump, whether they're actual liberals or not, and I've been amazed and disgusted at the degree of wallowing in misery they seem to enjoy. It's not enough for them to know about everything he's doing; no, they have to post about it and wail and rehash it with cross comments, as though they either 1.) actually enjoyed feeling this way or 2.) as if they thought that doing that were actually accomplishing anything. Both seem unlikely, but I've had to impose Social Fixer on Facebook, eliminating most political posts, just to be able to use it at all.
What I wish they would do (apart from trying to exit their own intellectual bubbles) is to focus on how the Democratic Party should change. Just to start out, there was a truly amazing amount of wishful thinking in it orbiting the permanent Democratic majority idea. I could have told them no such thing was possible, just as I can tell you right now that for precisely the same reasons, there is no such thing as a Permanent Republican Majority. The Democratic Party will return to power at some point. What I want to know is, why is exploring the question of "on what terms" will it return to power ("When? And to what degree?") not far more attractive to the liberals on my FB FL than the extended exercise in sociointellectual masochism they're indulging in? Kübler-Ross, were she still with us, might well have rearranged Bargaining at the end, since half the Left seems stuck in Anger and the other half seems to be vacillating between Anger and the later stages of Depression and Acceptance. This isn't death, people, with which no bargains can be struck. This is democracy.
There's lots I could write about, but my impulse is to mention this post from three and a half years ago, in which I wrote:
With Nate Silver having said even before the Obamacare rollout debacle
"Our best guess, after assigning probabilities of the likelihood of a G.O.P. pickup in each state, is that Republicans will end up with somewhere between 50 and 51 Senate seats after 2014"
and with historical evidence strongly against any party holding the Presidency for more than eight years...
...did we just watch the Democrats blow themselves up?
ETA: actually, they just ended the filibuster for judicial nominees. Still, this doesn't seem too bright. If the Republicans should take the Senate, they'll now have cover when they end the filibuster for legislation too, since the Democrats did it first.
I am not at all surprised-- since it wasn't much of a stretch-- to have been proven right about a lot of that. I admit not to have predicted Trump's win, though I did feel that with the general level of insularity and cluelessness in the American elite, there would be a blowup at some point along the line. In situation after situation, though, throughout life, the real trick is not so much predicting what will happen as answering the far more difficult questions "when?" and "to what degree?"
My Friends List on Facebook is chiefly composed of opponents of Trump, whether they're actual liberals or not, and I've been amazed and disgusted at the degree of wallowing in misery they seem to enjoy. It's not enough for them to know about everything he's doing; no, they have to post about it and wail and rehash it with cross comments, as though they either 1.) actually enjoyed feeling this way or 2.) as if they thought that doing that were actually accomplishing anything. Both seem unlikely, but I've had to impose Social Fixer on Facebook, eliminating most political posts, just to be able to use it at all.
What I wish they would do (apart from trying to exit their own intellectual bubbles) is to focus on how the Democratic Party should change. Just to start out, there was a truly amazing amount of wishful thinking in it orbiting the permanent Democratic majority idea. I could have told them no such thing was possible, just as I can tell you right now that for precisely the same reasons, there is no such thing as a Permanent Republican Majority. The Democratic Party will return to power at some point. What I want to know is, why is exploring the question of "on what terms" will it return to power ("When? And to what degree?") not far more attractive to the liberals on my FB FL than the extended exercise in sociointellectual masochism they're indulging in? Kübler-Ross, were she still with us, might well have rearranged Bargaining at the end, since half the Left seems stuck in Anger and the other half seems to be vacillating between Anger and the later stages of Depression and Acceptance. This isn't death, people, with which no bargains can be struck. This is democracy.