There's really no way to exaggerate how fatalistic I feel about the next decade of US politics. nytimes.com/2021/11/12/us/…
“The prospect of being in the minority with Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House and Jason Smith as chairman of the Budget Committee — God, I could go down the list — is horrible." washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/styl…
Republicans have made Congress so viscerally unpleasant that it's making Dems want to retire, which of course is part of the point. If governing is nothing but endless reality-tv culture war, people who care about governance will flee.
To clarify: when I say fatalistic about "the next decade," I don't mean I expect things to suddenly get better in a decade. I just mean, beyond that, the future is utterly opaque. I expect the US to descend into something akin to Hungary ...
... which at some point will cause civil unrest, which will likely lead to a period of chaos & violence, which may then result in something better? I mean, who knows? But things are definitely going to get much worse before they get any better.
I mean, North Carolina just basically made Democratic control of the legislature impossible, no matter how many Dem voters there are. That's a state that is no longer a "democracy" in a meaningful sense. And it's just the beginning. vox.com/policy-and-pol…

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More from @drvolts

15 Nov
A lot of commentary about COP26 seems to forget this basic background. COP agreements are just lists of voluntary national policies. The action is in domestic national politics. COP agreements can't make anyone do anything or punish anyone for failure. vox.com/2015/12/15/101…
There's no "breakthrough" at COP26 because that's not where policy is made -- it's made in national governments. Diplomats can only report what national governments will do, not determine it.
The best way to think about a COP is as a flash for a camera: it shines a big light that reveals where everyone is. And that's a good thing -- transparency & peer pressure can move national gov'ts sometimes. But a COP has little motive force of its own -- such is int'l politics.
Read 4 tweets
14 Nov
Zuckerburg, Jack, Musk ... they all started with mixed tendencies & over time have become utterly horrible (Jack is an inflation truther now!). IMO this has to do with the epistemic bubble that surrounds wealthy people in the US.
One of the best tools the 1% has developed is that when someone gets super-wealthy, there's a whole industry, a whole apparatus, that descends upon them to flatter them & fill their head with reactionary bullshit. Prevents any class traitors from emerging.
Adding: this also explains Joe Manchin, IMO. Sure his Dem colleagues plead w/ him, but in private, on the yacht, with his *real* buddies (other rich white guys), everybody just *knows* progressive policy is silly & unrealistic & causes "entitlement."
Read 4 tweets
14 Nov
Thinking about the swing trend makes me think about how, back in the 90s, pop culture was still slow enough to allow a trend to clearly start, flourish, & end -- it had a kind of legible lifecycle we could move through together.
These days every young person is hyper media savvy before they're out of diapers. Social media is ubiquitous. Trends start, are critiqued, prompt backlash, prompt backlash-to-backlash, & lead to weary ironic over-it meta-takes ... all in a matter of hours.
Read 5 tweets
13 Nov
I'm old enough to remember when, around midnight, TV would just ... end. The 2 networks would play the national anthem & then show static until the following morning.

Kids These Days can't imagine anything different, but the 24-7 hose of content is a relatively new thing.
Er, 3 networks. Weird typo.
I'm also old enough to remember when VCRs came along (at like $500 a pop at first). Kids These Days probably can't imagine, but the default until then was that video content (TV or movies) aired once & then ... was gone forever. *Owning* a piece of content was a mind-blower!
Read 5 tweets
12 Nov
This is like ... anti-journalism. The public a) already knows gas prices -- the signs are everywhere, b) overestimates the significance of gas prices relative to other econ metrics, c) thinks politicians can "solve" high gas prices. With one image, this purported journalist ...
... has failed to clarify any of those misunderstandings & indeed likely exacerbated some of them. Rather than inform the public, it reinforces their folk myths in a bid for man-of-the-people authenticity.
This is also true when talking heads discuss deficits or gov't budgets or wars or the stock market or so many other subjects -- rather than correcting common myths & misunderstandings, they echo them. It "sounds right" to the audience & creates affinity/clicks/views.
Read 5 tweets
11 Nov
It's amazing that we've got this whole national dialogue about "free speech" & "cancellation" & "self-censorship" -- all these vague generic terms -- when the real issue has always been is that people want to be able to say racist & homophobic things without consequence.
These cases are never about differences over economic policy or the nature of human rights or the proper form of gov't or whatever. No one's ever "cancelled" for that stuff. They're all about racism & homo/transphobia!
It would be 1000% more honest if we just debated what we're debating: "have racism and homophobia been excessively stigmatized? Should we socially sanction a little more racism & homophobia?" That's what this is all about. It's telling that the people pushing it hardest ...
Read 4 tweets

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