Let's Be Real

 Oh, I love politics. Rather, I love it again. Years I used to love it. Then for a long time I hated it. Now I love it again. I love watching the story of America play out in its politics. I spent a lot of my childhood fascinated by this, which I which I can speak about the mood of the American electorate, as observed from first hand experience, from about 1967 onward. The politics of that era is familiar to me, even though I was three years old. Except in the times I've tuned out politics (like during the mid 1990s, when I was distracted by the demands of graduate school and the decadence of Austin), I have a direct recollection of most of the story. 

The last couple years have felt like a holding pattern in the story of America and civilization, setting up the pieces for the next chapter. Many people have a strange sense of time since 2020, where everything seems to have happened very quickly. For older folks like me to experience this is nothing new, but the young are reporting the same sensation, ones of age who should have a very slow-moving sense of time during the years of childhood. Something has been wrong. I'm intrigued by theories of why this has happened.

The funess of politics, I believe, is completely synonymous with the joy of following the characters of the drama.  There have only been two interesting characters recently, for many years. One character is Donald Trump. The other character is everyone who hates him, who is a mob-lke entity where individuals take utter direction, like a swarm of insect, from the leaders. 

None of the Democrats has been interesting because they are all the same person, repeated over and over without deviation in any expressed opinion. Being a Democrat is about recognizing what you are supposed to believe and say at any given moment. Intelligence is measured by how quickly and deeply one adapts to whatever opinion has been introduced into the "program."

Most Republicans are secretly Democrats. To the rest of us, in the Real Resistance, the Republican-Democrats (not to be confused by the Democratic-Republicans of the era of Jefferson), are the worst of all because they pose as opposition, when in fact they simply want the same thing as Democrats (which is to be admired by other Democrats for their intelligence [see definition of intelligence in previous paragraph]) . Lukewarm. Republicans want to be applauded by Democrats (via the media) for their courage in going against the other Republicans.

Trump broke the paradigm because he was willing not be applauded but condemned by the Democrats.  Being condemned by the Democrats used to be political death sentence. Even Reagan gained their applause by the end of his term, which is why the nation elected his successor George Bush in a landslide, and after that we were thoroughly fucked as a nation. There was no return from his Presidency.

Bush was a dictator, the secret point man of the Global Elite that had reformed in a new internationalist coalition of the wealthy banking and aristocratic classes after the Second World War, during which many of the old Establishment were wiped out. It was great for America because our Elite moved in and took over. Americans led the global Establishment.  America built an Empire and we all lived its benefits.

Now it's coming apart. in part because the designers and creators of this order have long since left the scene, and only their watered down successors are left. They are watered down because they could not possibly duplicate the intellectual rigor and psychological discipline that curated among the first wave of Americans after World War II. Americans had to do this, to outcompete their rivals, especially the British, who were the top of the pyramid of the pre-war Establishment. Americans knew they needed classical training. You couldn't just fake it until you made it. You had to be, at least partially, real. Absent that you were liable to get your head blown off by someone who knows the true consequences of failure to be real.  

So why is politics interesting again? Because the Democrats, for the first time, are at each other's throats. It's the best thing for country. They are trying with all their might to remain "one person", with a common voice of opinion about say, whether Biden should stay or go, but the constant sloshing again is creating tidal frictions that result in permanent, acrimonious fissures in the party. These fissures will save American, and civilization. Once their unity is broken, they will scatter.