Monday, October 12, 2020

Our looming societal bereavement.

Some ramblings prompted by reading Andrew Sullivan't Weekly Dish piece "Dreaming of a Landslide" : 

As eager as I am to see Trump lose the presidential election, I realize I will have withdrawal symptoms - feel an emptiness from the loss of the constant entertainment provided by the media's obsessive focus on the attention grabbing orange clown's reality show. I will miss the horrified fascination I felt each time my prediction that 'surely it can't get any worse than this' was yet again proved wrong. 

One thing we can be very sure of is that a Biden presidency is going to be majorly boring in comparison. Extreme behaviors and political positions grab our attention, competent, sane, non-ideological problem solving does not. Polarization pays, driving the media quest for incendiary content that increases clicks What might rise as our new shiny object, our new circus? Schadenfreude over the tyrant's fall may suffice for awhile, but maybe people will finally fatigue from the divisiveness and decide to just get along with each other. 

Some rearranged clips illustrating conservative Andrew Sullivan's sentiments:

...a landslide is the only thing that can possibly, finally break the far right fever that has destroyed the GOP as a legitimate right-of-center political party, and turned it into a paranoid, media-driven, fact-free festival of fear and animus...A thumping defeat of the president, a serious shellacking, could help remove the tarnished toxicity of Trump from an agenda that, under younger leadership, could spawn a new, multicultural right-of-center majority...a reformist conservatism would seek to “level up” a society wracked by hyper-global capitalism...move toward defending the unskilled, protecting working families, guarding entitlements, resisting urban wokeness, checking free trade absolutism, restraining overseas intervention, and curtailing mass immigration.

1 comment:

  1. Alas, I think it's going to get very 'interesting', what with all the newly emboldened white supremacy groups. I think the first several months after Biden officially takes office are going to be peppered with news of demonstrations akin to the KKK rallies of old, as well as more violent outbursts from those remaining Trump supporters with the right combination of malice and contempt who find themselves suddenly without validation.

    I really hope I'm wrong. Personally, I'm ready for politics to be sane and boring again.

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