Conservatives have always had a functional misunderstanding of how government works and what it’s for— the idea that a government should operate under business principles of profit and loss begs the question: profits for whom, and defined how?
The “profit” good government produces is the health, prosperity, and security of its citizenry. That form of profit isn’t measured in dollars and cents. Using business metaphors to critique government is about as helpful as using sports metaphors to critique medicine.
“Good governance” isn’t and can *never* be “good business.” Government isn’t a business, it isn’t a household— it doesn’t and never has operated by supposedly “traditional” economic rules.
This is why the current #GOP government in the White House and the Senate has utterly failed to govern effectively in the current #CoronavirusPandemic— they literally don’t understand what government is.
Conservative political theory is deeply flawed when it compares government to business, obsessing over deficits, worrying about “economic efficiency”, displaying a gross incapacity to deal with the actual issues and problems of governance.
Under the best circumstances, conservatives provide a necessary check on progressive passions, a reality check on idealistic ambitions, but as they’ve proven time and again during eras of crisis— conservatives can’t govern.
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Sunday political 🧵: Federalism is the hope and the scourge of progressivism in America. The U.S. has a federal system of political power division; conservatives understand this on a practical political leverage level, progressives don’t.
Up until recently, every school kid learned about the federal system (I don’t know if they still do; schooling has changed a lot since I went), but mostly in our daily lives we ignore it and think we live in a unified nation governed by a single set of laws. We actually don’t.
We I say “federal” you probably think “the Government” and you think of Washington as the seat of government. But that isn’t what federal means at all. Its basis is “federation”— and if you’re a Star Trek fan, maybe the penny is dropping.
A question I’m often asked at conventions is “How do you break into comics?” I have no idea— the last time I tried it was 1967. But a better question might be: “How do you write a ‘good’ comic?” For that, I have a few ideas.
First, foremost: Read. Read a lot. Don’t just read comics, read books. Lots and lots of books. Always have a book with you and read at every opportunity. Read at lunch, be that weirdo. Read on the bus. On planes. On trains. Don’t read while driving.
Second, vital: Keep reading. Read fiction, read non-fiction, read history, science, economics, more fiction, “literature,” mysteries, science fiction, westerns. Stuff yourself with words. Ideas. Odd facts and bits of legend. Poetry, Shakespeare, e.e. cummings, doggerel.
People often asked me this past year*— “Gerry, how do you maintain a mostly cheerful attitude in your daily life, despite daily news accounts of misery, death, and human stupidity?”
“Well,” I tell them, “I practice the patented DDD Sanity Preservation Self-Protection System™!”
*nobody asks me.
What is this patented system of DDD Sanity Preservation™, you may ask? I shall be happy to explain. Thusly.
I have very loud neighbors. Just putting that here.
It’s like living next to a sports bar.
To put this in perspective, this is a quiet suburban neighborhood. The folks who own the house and live in it are 30-40-something with kids. Like the Dunphys in Modern Family. They’re now singing drunkenly, loudly, out of tune.
Spoiler free reaction to Zack Snyder's JL: I wish the man who made this movie had made "Man of Steel" and "BvS". Maybe Snyder took to heart some of the criticism of those two movies, because tonally this is a different piece-- a paean to the power of hope and healing.
I also understand why Ray Fisher was so upset by the "restructuring" of the film (aside from his reports of abusive behavior): The major human emotional arc of this film belongs to Victor Stone, and its loss in the theatrical JL cuts the heart out of the story.
I don't know whether it was because of WB's demand for a much shorter film, and the necessity that created for reshoots to elipsize chunks of plot, which in turn rushed the CGI work, but, boy, does this "rebuilt" cut kick ass visually.
I’ve heard some on the left worry @JoeBiden won’t be progressive enough, won’t fight back against #GOP perfidy, etc., because he’s always been a moderate. Hey. Who a President was, politically, before he becomes President, and what he “stood for”, is historically irrelevant.
Lincoln wasn’t in favor of abolition when he ran for President; he ran as a “moderate” against slavery’s expansion, not its elimination. He fought against emancipation for months until he finally came around. His opponents in the South forced him to change.
FDR ran as a fiscal, social *conservative* in 1932, promising a balanced budget and no deficits. His political party had other ideas— most New Deal legislation was a result of FDR watering down those ideas, not pushing them forward. He took bold action because he *had* to.