The Abdul situation

quote:

---

For the last twenty years, politics was our most fascinating news story and the most interesting thing on the Internet. Now, one senses huge portions of the electorate would rather take baths in battery acid than listen to even one more word from a politician. Americans have by now been screwed over so many times that the problem may no longer be that the government doesn’t work. It’s that government doesn’t work, and we can’t shut up about it. Other countries manage to deliver lousy economies and naked corruption without so much talking. Can’t we just be Mexico or Paraguay and have peace and quiet while things mostly go to hell?

---

quote:

---

From 2016-2024 one could argue there were four big factions in American politics: old GOP, MAGA, traditional Dems, and Berniecrats. After next week it’ll be Whatever Republicans Are, Schumer Dems, and the DSA, which is really just the DSA and a dispirited Everyone Else. Shepard Fairey’s iconic CHANGE theme won the day in 2008, but who’s still dying for “change” in 2026? I know there are polls showing large pluralities of voters clamoring for “complete upheaval,” but I don’t buy it. Americans need a break, not more upheaval:

---

quote:

---

This is why pundits next week will surely miss the larger point of a brutal repudiation of Trump. For some voters, sure, it’ll signal hope that progressive Democrats can solve our economic problems. From others, withdrawal of support for this administration — effectively ending the Trump era — will send a different message. Republicans by the end of next week will have gone through the whole cycle that begins with disillusionment with party, is followed by populist takeover, and ends in disillusionment with the populist takeover.

Democrats are only halfway through the cycle. Unfortunately, there is a large group of people in their ranks that’s observed the last 25 years of disaster and still believes the solution is giving the state wider authority to screw things up.

Fixing America should never have been so hard. The bulk of progress could have been made in areas like not invading places, allowing failed companies to fail, not subsidizing employers who export jobs or commit financial crimes, and not funding dangerous experiments for reasons like “because we can.” Just not doing dumb things would leave us the richest, happiest country in the world by a wide margin. Additional effort in areas like “paying people a tiny bit more” would work wonders. Now we have to hold on tight through the remainder of a Trump presidency whose commitment to law is suspect at best, while Democrats flirt with a populist movement whose platform’s central plank is concentration of power/elimination of checks and balances.

If we survive that, we just might make it out of this hellish time, back to a world in which politics goes back to being boring, and movies go back to being interesting. Is it possible we’re almost there? Can we hope that a candidate with a platform of reduced grandiosity and hostility mixed with four or five manageable policy ideas rises in 2028? Shouldn’t that be within reach now? Who still needs “upheaval”?

---