I sound cranky about modern politics bc when I'm not on Twitter I spend my time buried in Congressional hearings of the 1950s and 1960s. And members of Congress then were so much more, I don't know how to put it, substantive. Then I look up and it feels like an idiot parade.
Today members mispronounce words, read written statements, and obviously have no idea what they are talking about. Many don't even know that you're supposed to have substantive knowledge, because they don't think their job is to govern and make important decisions. It's weird.
Members back then were so much clearer. I dislike today's wonk aesthetic not bc I don't like substance but bc I do like it. Complexity in policy is inevitable, but complexity in communication doesn't mean you're substantive it means you don't know what you are talking about.
It's everything. It's the debates, which are ignorant and not really debates. People sometimes freak out that members hand-write laws on the floor. These are lawyers! That was common. Congressional dependence on the office of legislative counsel, the in-house law firm, is weird.
This is probably true across society. My guess is the quality of thinking in business and academics has declined radically too. Scientist friends of mine tell me there's less discovery in general, for some reason. It feels there's a Soviet-izing thing happening here.
I don't think it's payoffs or corruption, and I think it's widespread among leaders and people everywhere. It's a form of learned helplessness, a fear of facing up to the reality that life is messy and men in suits pretend to but don't know the future.
We've taken our greatest scientists and turned them into grant-writers. We've taken our greatest lawyers and turned them into merger and tax avoidance specialists. We've taken our greatest minds and pointed them at getting more clicks on ads.
It's true! There were a lot of economists in the 1950s and 1960s who noticed and thought about banking innovations and what that would do to monetary policy.
No! That's 100% not true! Members in the 1950s often came from one year country law schools. Today's Congress is probably more credentialed than it ever has been. How many members today didn't go to college?
It's the same point. She's equally unqualified. An Ivy League degree and experience in Congress today doesn't mean much as very few turn that into substance (Elizabeth Warren excepted). So yeah, Oprah is just as unready as most Dems.
