...Some politician on TV (you'd never guess her name) proclaimed, "The future is [identity politics]," which is just about the most depressing thing I have heard.
The two major parties used to proclaim they were "big tents;" now they're encampments of mutually-suspicious allies-of-convenience, each one with a "No Dogs Or Irish" sign on the palisade wall, for various and wavering values of "canine" and "Hibernian." They'll feed their own into the fire for ideological deviationism as readily as they'll stab the other side frontally or from ambush, and trumpet their opponent's shortcomings as if they were their own laboriously-gained virtues.
I have watched it get nastier and nastier for years, and allowed many of you to excuse it. Not any more.
This past campaign season, I was hoping what I was seeing was the two parties falling apart, to begin reforming along more-consistent lines. Oh, not my own pet fave of Western Civilization vs. neo-barbarians, we'll never be that fortunate, not in a lifetime of Sundays, but something that fit more people better than the distorted garments left after multiple lifetimes of redefinition.
Fat chance! Nope, they're both getting worse, and the more askew from reality they both become, the more frantic and shrill they get.
Parlous times? No -- idiotic times. I've reached my limit of idiots for now.
Update
3 days ago
