The 21st century hasn’t been terribly nice so far. We had the 2000 US presidential election fiasco, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, hurricane Katrina with the Federal govt essentially telling the people of Louisiana to go and fuck themselves; let’s see, then there’s the 2008 finanicial crisis, the 2016 election of Trump (and I’m not so thrilled with Obama’s presidency in retrospect, tho he did give us Obamacare, for what it’s worth), then the Jan 6th insurrection, the pandemic, and just as it seemed like that might be winding down, Russia invaded Ukraine, and when that seemed like it entered into a stalemate, then Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded with collective punishment of Gaza. I’m sure I’m forgetting lots of other important stuff (there are ongoing wars in the Congo we never hear about), but those are the things that stick out to me. Humanity is exhausted and demoralized; birthrates in many places around the world are taking a nosedive. I’m fortunate to only have been personally affected by the finanicial crisis and COVID, lots of other people have had it much worse. Someone will probably respond that it’s all a matter of perspective, and they’d be right, of course; perhaps I was spoiled by the relatively stress-free 90s. Maybe things will get better? I think it’s past time they did. Anyway, thus endeth my rant, thanks for reading.
I am no historian personally, but from what I am hearing, even if a former President had only had to deal with a tenth of the issues that Biden has - heck, just pick COVID alone out of that ginormous list - that he already has dealt average to above average with it. But when you put them all together - like you had a whole list and still didn’t get to huge concerns that people have like the border issue - then it becomes supremely admirable, in relation to what he has had to deal with.
I wonder if some of that may be due to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle early on in his Presidency, but even there he owned up to that, despite how it was Trump who caused >95% of it, and anyway that was years ago now. Another part is that the process he chooses to use to get things done is slow and boring, and then he doesn’t grandstand to the extent that past Presidents have done.
The media has consistently been instantaneous to blame Biden whenever there is the tiniest thread of a future thought that he might be to blame, but then when he does things like help out the train workers, or lower gas prices, those achievements barely register. This is “biased reporting”, arguably so much so that we are not “informed” by what they say and thus it seems not “reporting” so much as showing “advertisements” for things that bleed & lead.
Fox News is correct - hurk 🤮 - when it says that our “lamestream media has failed us”. Ofc it is also corrupt and it does even worse, but if that much at least were not a true statement then it would not have half the viewership that it does.
Like Brexit, we have allowed our government to fall into such disarray that we will never be seen the same way again on the global stage. Nor should we.
Keep in mind that people will PROMISE that, but then not deliver. Worse, they will promise it and then WILL deliver their distorted view of it - an example is Trump “draining the swamp”, which he did, sort of, so long as you define “draining” as “installing” and “swamp/corruption” as “efficient and capable leadership, using fact-based policymaking decisions rather than whoever donates the most gets to wear the shiny hat”.
If you can just remember that “good=bad” and vice versa, “up=down”, “forward=reverse” and so on, then the fact that conservatives want to “innovate” the nation to “remove corruption” is a “good” thing!:-)
Sadly, whether we vote on it or not, powerful people are going to implement the 4th Turning regardless. Possibly they will use corporations to become powerful lobbying groups and then after taking over the government from the inside turn around and use the facade of it to take over, or maybe they’ll just do an end-run around it altogether and let us have whatever silly little government we want, while they ignore it and do whatever they please free of interference from it. Most likely they will do both at the same time. Source: they have already been doing both of these for decades, and while corruption goes back beyond the dawn of humankind lately the swing does seem to have turned more towards rather than away from it.
Just FYI. By 4th Turning I mean the book. A couple of decades ago there was a book that takes about patterns in US history. The 4th Turning was about 2020 time frame if you followed the book. A turning from the books thesis is a time of political and social unrest. Weakening institutions. Usually a major war. We see signs of this all around us.
Edit: Feels very pre world war 2 too. America retreating into isolationism. Russia planning to expand. Lot of similarities.
I meant that people like Matt Gaetz and MJT are promising to make the 4th turning happen, by escalation of the existing obstructionism and even outright bringing about a second civil war. I do not think it will happen so quickly, but they will try again, and again, and maybe one day it will. So this is a time of “replacement”. But I did not read the book, just a wikipedia article about it, so probably I am not matching up the terms well.
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It’s the dementia.
The 21st century hasn’t been terribly nice so far. We had the 2000 US presidential election fiasco, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, hurricane Katrina with the Federal govt essentially telling the people of Louisiana to go and fuck themselves; let’s see, then there’s the 2008 finanicial crisis, the 2016 election of Trump (and I’m not so thrilled with Obama’s presidency in retrospect, tho he did give us Obamacare, for what it’s worth), then the Jan 6th insurrection, the pandemic, and just as it seemed like that might be winding down, Russia invaded Ukraine, and when that seemed like it entered into a stalemate, then Hamas attacked Israel and Israel responded with collective punishment of Gaza. I’m sure I’m forgetting lots of other important stuff (there are ongoing wars in the Congo we never hear about), but those are the things that stick out to me. Humanity is exhausted and demoralized; birthrates in many places around the world are taking a nosedive. I’m fortunate to only have been personally affected by the finanicial crisis and COVID, lots of other people have had it much worse. Someone will probably respond that it’s all a matter of perspective, and they’d be right, of course; perhaps I was spoiled by the relatively stress-free 90s. Maybe things will get better? I think it’s past time they did. Anyway, thus endeth my rant, thanks for reading.
I am no historian personally, but from what I am hearing, even if a former President had only had to deal with a tenth of the issues that Biden has - heck, just pick COVID alone out of that ginormous list - that he already has dealt average to above average with it. But when you put them all together - like you had a whole list and still didn’t get to huge concerns that people have like the border issue - then it becomes supremely admirable, in relation to what he has had to deal with.
I wonder if some of that may be due to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle early on in his Presidency, but even there he owned up to that, despite how it was Trump who caused >95% of it, and anyway that was years ago now. Another part is that the process he chooses to use to get things done is slow and boring, and then he doesn’t grandstand to the extent that past Presidents have done.
The media has consistently been instantaneous to blame Biden whenever there is the tiniest thread of a future thought that he might be to blame, but then when he does things like help out the train workers, or lower gas prices, those achievements barely register. This is “biased reporting”, arguably so much so that we are not “informed” by what they say and thus it seems not “reporting” so much as showing “advertisements” for things that bleed & lead.
Fox News is correct - hurk 🤮 - when it says that our “lamestream media has failed us”. Ofc it is also corrupt and it does even worse, but if that much at least were not a true statement then it would not have half the viewership that it does.
Like Brexit, we have allowed our government to fall into such disarray that we will never be seen the same way again on the global stage. Nor should we.
It is the 4th Turning. That would be one interpretation.
Keep in mind that people will PROMISE that, but then not deliver. Worse, they will promise it and then WILL deliver their distorted view of it - an example is Trump “draining the swamp”, which he did, sort of, so long as you define “draining” as “installing” and “swamp/corruption” as “efficient and capable leadership, using fact-based policymaking decisions rather than whoever donates the most gets to wear the shiny hat”.
If you can just remember that “good=bad” and vice versa, “up=down”, “forward=reverse” and so on, then the fact that conservatives want to “innovate” the nation to “remove corruption” is a “good” thing!:-)
Sadly, whether we vote on it or not, powerful people are going to implement the 4th Turning regardless. Possibly they will use corporations to become powerful lobbying groups and then after taking over the government from the inside turn around and use the facade of it to take over, or maybe they’ll just do an end-run around it altogether and let us have whatever silly little government we want, while they ignore it and do whatever they please free of interference from it. Most likely they will do both at the same time. Source: they have already been doing both of these for decades, and while corruption goes back beyond the dawn of humankind lately the swing does seem to have turned more towards rather than away from it.
Just FYI. By 4th Turning I mean the book. A couple of decades ago there was a book that takes about patterns in US history. The 4th Turning was about 2020 time frame if you followed the book. A turning from the books thesis is a time of political and social unrest. Weakening institutions. Usually a major war. We see signs of this all around us.
Edit: Feels very pre world war 2 too. America retreating into isolationism. Russia planning to expand. Lot of similarities.
I meant that people like Matt Gaetz and MJT are promising to make the 4th turning happen, by escalation of the existing obstructionism and even outright bringing about a second civil war. I do not think it will happen so quickly, but they will try again, and again, and maybe one day it will. So this is a time of “replacement”. But I did not read the book, just a wikipedia article about it, so probably I am not matching up the terms well.