Who else would like politics to be humdrum?

[Eric the Green]

(02-02-2022, 10:54 PM)nguyenivy Wrote:

(01-14-2022, 03:33 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(01-14-2022, 09:48 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(01-13-2022, 03:26 PM)Anthony Wrote: While I'm not old enough to remember when Truman and his "vital-center liberals" (as Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called them) "dueled" with Eisenhower's "modern Republicans" for control of the country, I sure hope that I live long enough to see that arrangement - or something closely resembling it - return.

But this, of course, will require the Culture Wars to end - and so long as the fires of Roe v. Wade and what if anything to do about it continue to rage, that will clearly not happen.

I think you miss the point here.  Most of America is monolithic in the political sense of the term.  I've lived in Blue areas and Red areas, and the only chance I've seen in my 50+ adult years is an ongoing decline in tolerance by both for the other.  Of the two, the Blue areas support more rational ideas of how we should live, and the Red areas are simply ready for a fight.  Yes, our culture wars exacerbate the problem, but it's been there for a long, long time.  

Don't hold your breath for a return of comity.  That takes a massive crisis to trigger, and, so far, our crisis is mostly virtue signaling and demogoguery.  If it turns violent, then the aftermath will be (as) you desire ... or ashes.

We are certainly up to our ears in crisis already, and it's been building up since 2008. Decisions being made now, by the supreme court to throw out vaccine mandates, and 2 DINOs to block voting rights and build back better, will ramp up the crisis even more. Fire and flood are already at every citizen's doorstep. Our democratic republic is at best on life support. The pandemic now threatens to sicken and kill us all. All because of bad decisions we and our leaders have made and are making. War threatens from abroad too against Russia and China as well as the Islamic terrorists. We'll see if the growing crisis goes even more massive, but as of now I don't see how it could do anything else-- and very quickly. And we have only 7+ years now to turn it all around, and the next 3 seem already to be taken away from us, and perhaps all 7.

I am more and more pessimistic. The reform era I forecast for this decade is being reversed as we speak. Even if the voting rights bills pass, they may not be strong enough to end gerrymandering, which will take the House away again in 2022 from the people and turn it over to the Proud Boys and the oligarchs. The massive progressive turn I thought the Millennials would make seems to be blocked or forgotten. So yeah, I wouldn't hold your breath for a return to comity. The way we're going, the only thing we can look forward to is escalating disaster, and no further chance for redemption or reform.

Is the 2026 midterms / 2028 general election just way too far off to consider as another chance for the reforms the US needs if we can't do it in 2022 / 2024?

As I see it, 2028 will be too late to do too much. The first turning will be arriving. Remember what the authors of T4T said. Once the first turning gets going, actions and demands for change get shoved into the closet. What is done in 2028 will depend on whether in the 2026 era the blue side wins the fights. I see 2026 as like 1944; the country will be too caught up in conflict to pass reforms. Revolution? Maybe. But if the fight is won, then 2028 could be like 1945 or 1865 or 1787; not mere reforms, but constitutional changes, founding of new institutions. I se 2028-2029 as decisive years in the fight too. 2022-2024 was supposed to be the time like the early 1960s or 1930s when legislation might be passed. The Build Back Better and Voting Rights acts were exactly the kind of reforms I was expecting to be made in 2022 and 2023. They have already been watered down, and one or two senators are blocking the way. The Republicans say the American people don't want transformation. But now is the time for it, or the time won't come again. The cosmic symbol for this is, among a number of others, that Pluto, the planet of transformation and of the destruction and building of civilizations, which has figured strongly in all such moments in history, is now in the same place, for the first time, where it was when the nation was founded.

Just think, the icecaps are melting, fires are burning, methane is escaping from under the permafrost. A tipping point could come any day. And one or two senators and maybe one or two supreme court justices get to decide if the earth tips into an unlivable hothouse for centuries or millennia to come. Now a Democratic senator from New Mexico is out because of illness for 4 to 6 weeks. That's just what we needed to happen to a Republican senator instead.