I started typing a quick response to James Shirmer’s Google+ post and just ran with it. So here’s a Quick Thought that I must post before I think better of it….
So very tired
I’m tired. Are you guys tired? Politics sure sucks the blood out of me. This is why watching Colbert and TDS is so cathartic. Also drinking.
I have had to mute two Facebook friends. One is a Republican, the other is a Democrat. Both emit a dull, hate-filled noise in my ears, which is impressive because I’m just reading, you know, text.
But what do I expect? We’re supposed to have feelings. We’re supposed to care. Right? I do. Re-reading all the comments in this thread drives that home. Of course, the tone is much kinder than damn near anywhere else (outside maybe Buzz). But it sure doesn’t change my feelings of stupidity.
My attempt to understand all the economic blubbedy-blub hasn’t gone well. I can point at some neat graphs. I know one or two facts. Broadly, I come down on the side of the vague generalities posed by progressives. But that’s more due to loathing the Tea Party. You don’t get the small government gold star sticker when you’re keen on perpetuwars, drug wars, and invading everyone’s uterus.
I don’t know if it means I am a progressive. I look at party affiliation the way most of us look at tuberculosis. It’s icky. Best not to catch it.
My few meager scraps
- Obama could have raised the ceiling and dared the Republicans to fight it in court. He didn’t.
- Obama is a centrist president. This doesn’t surprise me, in general, but the intensity of his desire to be the centrist president does.
- Andrew Sullivan’s piece smacks of the bland hope of the outside shot. I can’t say it’s wrong, but that’s only because my time machine is in the shop.
- The crisis may be manufactured by the right, but somebody was going to fabricate it. Those deficit graphs keep inching upward.
- Many pundits on the right are lambasting Republicans because they didn’t squeeze harder.
- I’m increasingly convinced that much of our political culture’s polarization stems from structural problems in government.
I don’t know what’ll happen, but, yeah, I think things will get worse. But, what does that look like? I’m already buried in debt. Increasingly large numbers of acquaintances are without jobs. I feel powerless. Where’s the bottom in this hole?
Obligatory generational thingie
When I pull back and use my generational thinking cap, I predict a future of more economic suck.
Eventually, malaise will trigger a mass uprising that makes the Tea Party look like, well, a tea party, like with little girls and stuffed pandas. More change will come to disappoint us, but something valuable will make it through. Maybe later, we’ll get in another war (goodie!). Within the context of the moment, it’ll be considered an existential threat.
Other things: The government will tax the hell out of us. Boomers will mostly die, which will create an uncompromising principles vacuum that will, no doubt, be filled, especially as my generation gets older. 
Maybe, in the mean time, we can do some of that boring structural framework, what with us not collectively bitching about gay marriage and stem cells anymore.
Maybe the cascade of suck will turn into a kind of improvement. I’m sure the people suffering in the Great Depression never thought their nation would become a major power, land a man on the moon, and then stumble into superpowerhood, when – oops – their mortal enemy crumbled.
But, I don’t know. This, too, is nothing but a gamble. It’s also ceased being a response. It’s now a post. I didn’t see that one coming and I’m writing the damned thing.
Ask me again what I think about the economy.
