Monday, October 22, 2007
(9:29 AM) | Adam Kotsko:
Writing About Politics
Lately I've been wondering why no political posts are occurring to me, and I have arrived at an answer: nothing seems to be happening, or at least nothing new is happening. For instance, what is there to write about the primaries? On the Democratic side, we're being asked to parse subtle nuances, whereas on the Republican side, we're treated to a mob of angry white men trying to outdo each other with insane statements. The Democrats are still useless on national security and constitutional issues due to their abject fear of being thought "soft on terror," and their majority is small enough that the Republicans are easily able to block any domestic initiative.Closer to home for me, Illinois continues to be badly governed by cowards who are trying to squeeze out one more year of jerry-rigging the budget before having to do what is apparently absolutely unthinkable: raise taxes by a trivial amount. This behavior is nearly universal across the country, as everyone seems to have bought into the idea that public goods that can't be had cheaply aren't worth having at all. I fear that such an attitude may interfere with attempts to provide universal healthcare and do anything else that might be even moderately good. (For wars, of course, we can apparently just print money by selling bonds to the Chinese.)
It's really depressing to me that the Democrats really are significantly better than the Republicans. These are our options. It's a miracle that the US hasn't yet wiped out all life on earth.
