Tamara's line for times like these is "Events leading up to...," that part at the beginning of a history book (or maybe a chapter in an especially thick one) recounting the factors, actions and events before some kind of noteworthy change for good, ill or maybe just very different. Steamships, wars, disasters, revolutions: Archduke Ferdinand's murder, the promulgation of the first written code of laws, landing on the Moon, the Russian or American or French Revolutions: they didn't happen in a vacuum.
We're living in "Events leading up to," but leading up to what, I can't say. I don't know. It's a cusp, a discontinuity. The three branches of the Federal government are at war among themselves and with the public; it's a low-key, slow motion war (unless you happen to be Ilhan Omar, a tree on a public golf course in Washington, D.C. or an immigrant with less than spotless papers or less than impressive wealth) but it's unsupportable nonetheless. You can see it in the polls, in the President campaigning in what should be safely Republican states and districts, making dire warning that he may be "the last Republican President."
As an amateur student of history, that particular warning doesn't bother me. While the United States of America has had a de facto two-party system almost from the outset, they've not always been the same two and their disagreements haven't been consistent. The emerging parties named themselves the Federalists (more or less Hamiltonian, big-government as their day saw it) and the Republican-Democrats (roughly Jeffersonian, generally small-government), but only one has survived to the present day, and it with only half its name and few of the original principles or core issues intact, due to the changes under Andrew Jackson,* Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. On both sides, party names and key issues have come and gone. Who remembers the Whigs, the Know-Nothings, the Anti-Masons? The spot the Republicans now occupy has seen the most changes of name, and both sides have had huge discontinuities, with the emergence of Jacksonianism for one and the collapse of the Whigs for the other. Nobody weeps for them now except students who didn't study hard enough for the test.
The thing about historical discontinuities is that although the term is bloodless, the real-world working out is not always so. Things are not great now. They could be much worse and I don't have any confidence they won't be.
It's time to stock up on canned goods again. Just in case.
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* I somehow managed to conflate him with Hamilton in an earlier draft, resulting in "Alexander Jackson," a hybrid who is best not speculated about.
Update
1 year ago
10 comments:
Happily, one could make the point that the Republican party has already begun the inevitable Underbusing of Trump. If there is a Blue Wave next month, this will probably accelerate hard. But even if it's close, he's still an unpopular lame duck.
Politicians are people who have some feel as to how the wind blows, and very few want to become former politicians. They'll need to show that they're not part of the MAGA mess, and are shocked, SHOCKED! at all the corruption & stupidity.
But we'll have to see what happens.
It's always interesting to see how people can see the same data and come up with a different outlook that is on both sides of the spectrum. I do agree on the canned goods thing. Stack deep!
I keep a proper larder for events leading up to... whatever. So its a rainy day, dried pinto beans, salt pork plus an onion in the pot after a proper soak.
Puts a wonderful oder in the house and I'll have beans for a few days that
will go with everything and it rotates the stock. Looking forward to a plate
of frijoles con huevos.
Ah... are you referring to "Andrew" Jackson?
Yeats's classic poem "The Second Coming" seems very appropriate at times like this.
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
One day everyone will have always been against this.
Just when we had almost used up all the Y2K stores. :-(
And by golly, I'm petty enough to be keeping a list...I might have to light up a hypocrite down the line.
We need to finish stocking up for winter storms, so perhaps we'll add another case of toilet paper beyond normal (we just barely survived the Covid TP run with our normal winter stock) and have a good pile of canned veggies and Spam...because we like Spam. :)
It does look like the evil is going to escalate exponentially. The obvious push to favor Russia over Ukraine, the crazy "energy emergency" EO to ram through fossil fuel and nuke energy projects (no solar or wind, of course), and the outrageous move to ultimately declare Rep. Omar's citizenship void and deport her and her family...we're at the knee of the curve and heading up, sadly. And my Congressional delegation, to a person, refuses to recognize the runup to WW III, and at least one of them is old enough to have lived through the runup to WW II. Alas, he has no spine, and has chosen comfort instead of his Oath to Defend and Protect.
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