Sorry I haven’t been writing much. Nobody else has been saying much notable & I got distracted by this neat book called They Thought They Were Free by Milton Mayer. Not sure where I’d get the idea to read a book like that in a time like this. Unlike 2016, this election went just as everyone expected: Democrats barely win the House & barely lose the Senate.
If Democrats have any spine, the best they can do is cockblock Republican bills like Republicans did to Obama & pressure the Hairpiece administration into revealing its dirty laundry. I hope they a’least do the latter, as that will a’least be intriguing. ¡Don’t be boring for once in your life, Democrats!
According to DailyKos, this is 1 o’ the biggest waves ( keeping in mind that, in Democrats’ defense, they were unlucky with few senate seats up for grabs ). That’s not too surprising: 1 o’ the reasons I’m rather optimistic is that the obvious rancidness o’ Hairpiece has made mo’ people turn their nose & overtly oppose Republicans — when self-described centrists are mo’ & mo’ ending this “both sides” shit & going, “Yeah, no, clearly 1 side is much smellier than the other”.
For god’s sake, The New York Times, a newspaper that a decade ago was ‘fraid to call torture torture is warning ’bout fascism. Reddit, a forum with a somewhat undeserved notoriety with their alt-right forums & weirdness, has its main politics subforum mostly dominated with furious Democrats. While 538 tried to keep a nonpartisan visage, its comments are full o’ people sad when Democrats lose & happy when Democrats win, & you could see in Nate Silver’s mea culpa for his infamous misprediction o’ Trump’s loss that Nate Silver considered Trump, & to an extent, the Republicans in general kind o’ a joke. ¿& who could blame him? Halfway moderates have always known that Republicans are dumb; they just always tried to handwring round it ’cause they feel it’s too mean to tar an entire political class, ’cause they make that wrongheaded conflation conservatives try to feed that people who choose certain morals are the same as people who don’t choose their race, gender, sexual orientation, or economic stature ( a’least as much ), e’en though moral behavior is exactly what you should judge people on if your society is to survive. Turns out, this moral nihilism o’ “both sides are wrong” on behalf o’ centrists leads to a complete flouting o’ morals, & only by actually punishing those who flout good behavior do you actually lead people to act morally.
1 thing’s certain: intellectuals are certainly veering e’en mo’ ‘way from conservativism, which isn’t surprising, considering the geniuses they have. Studies prove it. This, ‘gain, we already know by the way conservatives attack intellectuals & colleges.
This is why I’m, as odd as it may seem for a cynic like me, totally dour ’bout the future. People compare conservative America to Nazi Germany but forget what Germany is like now: a progressive social democracy. That’s ’cause, if you look back @ history, you learn that, in the long run, the intellectuals always win, ’cause ideas are the only thing that outlasts people & are what basically all development comes from.
This is already happening. Climate change denialism is looking mo’ & mo’ ridiculous to mo’ & mo’ people; mo’ & mo’ moderates are becoming less enthralled with the ol’ “Washington Consensus” o’ neoliberalism. Economists who praised Bush’s tax cuts now roll their eyes @ the conspicuous cynicism o’ Hairpiece’s tax cuts. LGBQT rights has gone from a controversial issue to an issue as black-&-white, good-&-evil as racial equality, so that e’en nonpolitical children’s shows aren’t ‘fraid to embrace them.
Yes, there are still outspoken conservatives; but there are also outspoken flat-earthers. Mo’ & mo’ people are finding it hard to distinguish ‘tween the 2 — & most o’ those who can’t are ol’, &, in their defense, were raised on irrational ideas so long that it’s hard to break from them. Something you don’t e’en need empirical evidence to see is that the ideas o’ the young will definitely win in the long-run, since in the long-run, the young will be the only ones left.
That’s not to say that the US’s politics will get so good so quickly, since it is e’en mo’ corrupt than is dawning on moderates now. ( Though e’en normal people are starting to see it, as we shall get to soon ).
Which brings me to the actual important wins: Florida allowing ex-convicts to vote & Missouri passing a bill to weaken gerrymandering. The former will be vital since Florida is such a strong, unpredictable swing state, & Democrats tend to win when mo’ people vote, ‘specially lower-class people.
On the other end, you have righteous fury @ Georgia for letting someone running for representative monitor & control the very election machines. Conveniently, they had a shortage o’ machines in mostly inner-city, black areas. Then ‘gain, this is the same guy who “lost” voting records when they got sued.
Anyway, I may continue tomorrow, when I’m not too tired to write. ¿Why’d it take so long to get all these results? 2014 everyone knew by 8 PM.
