Here I am, Stuck in the Middle With You: A Moderately Open Thread

Go Middle! (2.00 / 2)

As a post-trauma mid-term election it remains my contention that the majority will vote for stability and continuity, leaving the risk of horse-switching to another day.  

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Sat Jul 14, 2012 at 15:38:48 PM UTC

America chooses: (2.00 / 3)

The decent human being or the plutocractic robot?  

The exotic Other or the man from central casting?

What will the middle go for?

I know where I'm going, but damned if I can say where everyone else is headed.


If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done subjunctively.

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by: janicket @ Sat Jul 14, 2012 at 20:08:27 PM UTC

I know my path. (0.00 / 0)

I am pretty sure the majority are on the same one.

There has to be a reason to vote out a sitting president. Hard-core partisan voters have no real play in this - they vote their line everytime - the mid-term is more than average a time for the majority to either choose to throw a bum out or to leave the dog lie.

Things just are not terrible enough for a change. Last mid-term we had was a very tempting time to turn and we chose not to, demanding a better explanation from the New Horse than was delivered. This time there is nothing like the same intense and broad focus on change, and the New Horse can't even get its own section cheering enthusiastically.

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Sat Jul 14, 2012 at 20:24:03 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Being left of center, (2.00 / 1)

I find a little bit of false equivelency between the tea party and the occupiers, but leaving that aside I tend to agree. One thing that strikes me as kind of crazy is the message of the GOP. They represent radical change. End Social Security as we know it, vouchers for Medicaid, upending a fairley moderate health care plan, bomb Iran. Nothing particulary "conservative" here.
  The thing that scares me: is America ready to reelect a black man who worked himself up from from a broken home over a man who started with all the advantages? Does America relate better to the man who started where they might be, or to the man they have no hope of being?

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by: creamer @ Mon Jul 16, 2012 at 16:51:15 PM UTC

We did that already (2.00 / 1)

is America ready to reelect a black man who worked himself up from from a broken home over a man who started with all the advantages?

His name was John McCain.

The "re" part doesn't have the same punch, after already "elect" him once. That shocking revelation has become a fundamental fact: America will elect anyone willing to put up with the process.

I think "equivalency" gives the wrong impression, though pragmatically correct. The TP and OO each have a matrix of characteristics which do not by any means directly coorelate, but which on the aggregate are quite comparable.

They both fail at effectiveness, but in different ways. The TP can at least elect some state and local reps, but mostly to do either directly or nationally suicidal things. Occupy Oakland - which for me is the poster-child of the... whatever it is - is ineffective in a more immediate, "Aw! But I'm angry now!!" way not surprising given its roots.

TP is the Right's way of throwing a tantrum, OO is the Left's. Both seethe with intolerance: TP in the cliche "everything I fear everything I don't understand" way typical of its retreating red end of the spectrum; OO with the pedantic face/palm irony of "I HATE ALL YOU FUCKING INTOLERANT PEOPLE!!! AAAHHHH!!" researchers reliably detect at the frenetically high-frequency blue end of the emotional rainbow.

Both are just too involved for folks who don't obsess with politics, and even many who do. Most folks aren't as terrified of someone stealing their God (or their kidneys, which is why they don't go on vacation Certain Places, because they might wake up in a bathtub full of ice, which is true because I read it on the Intertoob) as your average Tea Party Paradise charter member. Similarly most folks have neither the time nor inclination to spend trying to figure out who isn't tolerating whom, whether "tolerance" is really what we are after (and whether it is OK to be intolerant to the intolerant, because - you know - that isn't really intolerance. and it's satisfying. and the're all bastards anyway), whether some class or demographic is taking more than their share of cookies from the jar or whether the whole concept of jars isn't just a trap laid by The Man to pin the Deserving Poor back to the millstone.

So, not equivalent. How about: Separate but Equal.

;~)

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Tue Jul 17, 2012 at 23:19:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

In 1999 (2.00 / 1)

The "re" part doesn't have the same punch, after already "elect" him once.

My dad's best friend lived in Utah in 1999 and there was a tornado in Salt Lake City. I remember him talking about it and my dad asking him "Are tornadoes common there?" and my dad's friend responded "nah, this is the only one we've had. Once is a fluke, two is a trend."

That's what makes the "re" part more important.

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by: DTOzone @ Thu Jul 19, 2012 at 14:00:52 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This isn't a weather pattern. (0.00 / 0)

The complete, abiding, ubiquitous belief among all the cynics (which in America is "most people": we're like that) was that we are all too awful to elect a black president.

It turned out to be untrue.

Period.

This thread we are having is the fading-but-endless whine of the massive demographic who really, deeply want to be offended by something. People will be slicing this apple for a century trying to prove that people really are fundamentally racist scum.

Liberals will do themselves a favor inasmuch as they STFU about what a bunch of horrible creatures people are. But they won't, of course, because the search for the worst is such a large part of being on the left to begin with. "Hey you abc 's! Stop being horrible to those xyz's!" If someone isn't being unfair to someone else there almost isn't a point in being liberal in the first place.

Yes, it bugs the crap out of me.

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Tue Jul 24, 2012 at 11:20:41 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

We aren't too awful to elect a black president (0.00 / 0)

We may be too awful to let him govern.  

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by: DTOzone @ Wed Jul 25, 2012 at 04:50:35 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

And if we did let him govern, you would say we were too awful to respect him. (0.00 / 0)

and if we did respect him, you would say we are too awful to like him.

and if we did like him, you would say we are too awful to love him.

and if we did love him, you would say we are too awful to be like him.

and if we were like him...

You notice a pattern developing here?

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Sun Jul 29, 2012 at 18:35:15 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

You're right. (2.00 / 2)

because the search for the worst is such a large part of being on the left to begin with

That's part of being a liberal. That's how we can make a better world. First, you eliminate the worst thing you can find then you look around for the new "worst."

This is not a recession. It's a robbery.

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by: John Allen @ Mon Jul 30, 2012 at 07:21:07 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Yes, and it is a useful process. (0.00 / 0)

It just numbs the soul after a while. We should almost have a rule that nobody has to be a liberal for more than five years in a row.

Obama's "Hope" campaign and Clinton's smiling jazz musician persona seem to clash so well with liberal leanings. Perhaps that is part of the appeal, the contrast makes them stand out...?

Conservative politicians on the other hand so often come off as such a bunch of sourpusses, but conservatives as a whole are generally much more pleasant and optimistic as a group.

This is going to take a good bit of pondering to, um, ponder...

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Mon Jul 30, 2012 at 11:25:54 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

So obviouslyif everyone was liberal the world would be a better place. (2.00 / 1)

I find myself so politizied and polarized that I have a hard time thinking of a reason for conservatives. Is it just to be the anti-liberal?

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by: creamer @ Mon Jul 30, 2012 at 16:50:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Problem with the heart, problem with the head. (2.00 / 2)

It would be a very sad world if nobody got upset about the way things are, it would be a very dangerous world if everybody was upset all the time.

As John said, liberalism is very much about getting upset. Railing against the way things are and arguing that they should change. That is a critical function in society that is a definitional part of liberalism.

Conservatism by definition serves a braking action against that. An article in the current Scientific American on the mechanisms of cellular senescence caught my eye this morning and speaks to the kinds of dynamics the liberal/conservative function serves. The fine points of the article get into the finer points of this l/c dynamic (for our purposes here: showing how either too much change or too much resistance to change both lead to cancer).

As in the molecular mechanisms that keep us alive, there is in reality no such thing as "a liberal" or "a conservative". Either in pure form is instant death. The most liberal person who exists outside an asylum does not actually want everything to change every moment without end, the most conservative person outside of a cave does not literally want every single thing to stay the same forever.

What we see as "Liberals" and "Conservatives" on television or among political debates we have in person are not the living examples of either. Even if they were, neither are as pure as they appear or even as pure as they believe themselves to be. The two examples that come to mind from my own experience - Bill Redpath the Chair of the Libertarian Party and Cxxxxx Sxxx my former far-left Californian neighbor: both extreme examples of the behaviors that drive their political opposites to distraction - have stated to me directly that they do not embrace untainted versions of their own ideologies. Debate politics with either of them from the opposite side of the issues and you may well come to believe that they are both absolute examples, but neither is.

Personally I am specifically worn down by overexposure to the acidic angst of Liberalism. I do not believe the world to be so terrible in all ways that I can spend such a large majority of my time hearing the kinds of complaints, criticisms and insults that are part and parcel of that socially necessary point of view. So, like a body starved of an element I currently crave the comfort and optimism of conservative viewpoints like the (I kid you not) sweet old hillbilly couple here at the hotel from Mt. Airy, NC who have been in town for a evangelical Tent Revival Meeting (they still do those, who knew?). I don't assume them to be without fault, but they managed to have a conversation with me about racial and sexual-orientation issues without ever spinning their heads around, vomiting pea soup or in any more subtle ways displaying the hatred many of those I have spent the past few years around would eagerly attribute to them.

It takes all kinds, few of them are Bad, and most of us are most of them.

"Conway, whom experience had taught that rudeness was by no means a guarantee of good faith, was even less inclined to regard a well-turned phrase as a proof of insincerity."  James Hilton, Lost Horizon

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by: Chris Blask @ Tue Jul 31, 2012 at 14:26:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]