It's amazing how often I log on to find the internet absolutely savaging Dem leadership for ... not getting more out of Republicans. Even supposedly nonpartisan journalists do it! Like, it's Dems' job to deal with sociopaths; it's everyone else's job to judge their performance.
Normies will see headlines: "Pelosi defends $600 checks," and they'll think "terrible, cursed elites!" Somehow it never quite gets conveyed that Dems were fighting & fighting for more & Rs were fighting & fighting for less. That the Rs *could have done otherwise*.
In US politics, Republican sociopathy is treated like a natural feature of the landscape, like a river or something. Only Dems have agency; only Dems are making choices. We all sit around & rate how well they do navigating across the river. "Ha, Nancy, you call that a boat!?!?"
Somehow the media covers the details but manages to muddy the bigger picture, which is that if Dems had their way, they'd be dumping $3 trillion into the economy. Covid aid is going to be pathetic & insufficient BECAUSE OF REPUBLICANS. That's what they wanted & fought for!
That's not to say people can't critique Dem leadership -- of course they can -- but it would be nice if all the insiders and insider-wannabes could occasionally take a break from savvy analysis & make sure the larger context is clear to Americans. The GOP is making choices too!
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
One of my conservative dad's (& semi-conservative brother's) most enduring beliefs about liberals -- by which they mean everyone to the left of Rs -- is that they walk in lock step, all think the same, & are on a mission to make everyone in the US think the same.
Everyone on the left agreeing with how I think ... has not been my experience.
I think it is one of the weirder cases of projection on the right. Somehow, allowing multiple races, cultures, and belief systems to live side-by-side as equals under a set of neutral laws & principles is dogmatic & narrow ...
Nothing is more fundamental to the worldview of the Very Online, over-educated, hyper-verbal, A-student left than the notion that WORDS ("messaging") are the skeleton key to politics, the answer to every political challenge. Nothing can dissuade them from this belief.
All right I'm gonna stop tweeting today but I gotta clarify the above, since "messaging" tends to conflate two distinct things. On one hand there's message development -- finding clever/viral/sticky/effective combinations of words & phrases. On the other hand ...
... there's message distribution, i.e., the mechanics of getting the message to, & into the heads of, the public.
It is the first that lefties tend to fixate on. It's what they spend their time online doing & often mistake for actual politics. They're all experts at it.
This week I posted a 3-part interview w/ @dcullenward & David Victor, authors of the new book Making Climate Policy Work. It's about CO2 pricing -- mainly cap&trade systems, which comprise most real-world CO2 pricing -- & why it doesn't live up to its aspirations. A thread.
Part 1 is about the allure of the theory behind economy-wide CO2 pricing (it really would be nice if it worked!) & why, in the real world, the "economy-wide" part never actually happens. volts.wtf/p/why-carbon-p…
Part 2 is about carbon offsets, which are also alluring in theory & also fall short in practice. In reality, there's enormous incentive to hold prices down & very little incentive to ensure quality CO2 reductions. volts.wtf/p/carbon-offse…
I can say this without spoilers: every single solitary frame in which Boba Fett appeared this season delighted me down to my toes. Just intensely satisfying.
Got my new Mac laptop in the mail today. Good lord it's a dream.
I love setting up a new computer. But there's one thing that really ought to be easier: making it so that the desktops on two computers mirror one another. It's wild what I have to do to make that happen.
When I took this thing out of the box & fired it up, it was fully charged. I've had it on ever since (~6 hrs), I've installed two OS updates, a dozen programs, synced w/ Dropbox, etc. etc. -- it's now at 50% battery. Still haven't plugged it in the wall. Amazeballs.
My take on Pete as Transportation Secretary is that it probably won't matter much one way or the other.
I'll say one other thing about Pete, which is sure to bring me grief: the left's cool kids are way, way too eager to shit all over the hyper-conscientious, ambitious, striving, Tracy Flick-type personality that Pete so perfectly exemplifies.
Yeah, Pete's a classic A student with his hand always up. But that means, if you give him homework -- like "make the Dept. of Transportation work better" -- & tell him it's the route to advancement, he'll definitely do it! He'll think hard & work hard on it. Could be worse.