My take on this is that our political system makes it impossible for popular liberal majorities to enact solutions to problems before they become crises, even when their leaders have power, so their only recourse is to get louder in various ways. slowboring.com/p/fake-crisis
Had we let the people with solutions govern after they won, the climate crisis would be a more manageable climate problem; minorities would not be allowed to govern in perpetuity. But we didn’t.
Now, after years of ignoring problems, they have metastasized into acute crises. And the response is to hope that a clean energy standard can survive reconciliation, consecutive minoritarian gerrymanders don’t cost us another decade, and the insurrection fizzles out. Not great!
To this day, a lot of the angst Matt writes about would dissipate if majorities could govern. But instead solutions STILL go unheeded, and warning signs of crises mount. Maybe external interventions will ameliorate them, but you can’t ask people to bet on god from the machine.
Meanwhile they ransacked the Capitol on the premise that when they lose elections it doesn’t count, kicked everyone who doesn’t agree with that out of the party, and retained enough public support to gerrymander and subvert their way into unaccountable power.
Maybe it’s not as bad as it looks and we’re over-reacting; but who could be confident of that?
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