The World Has Moved On
pluralistic.net
pluralistic.net
The humble Hot Pocket is the perfect analogy for this. Since the dawn of time, every single Hot Pocket included its own crisping sleeve, that served as both a cooking vessel and eating utensil. The perfect microwaveable snack. And yet, in all of their wisdom, our corporate overlords have declared that they've "cracked the code" through various ingredient changes, to where it's no longer necessary, and through a combination of that plus some vague language around environmental concerns, we no longer need it. So now every Hot Pocket costs the same as it ever did, but gives us a strictly inferior experience. Copy and paste this "Screw you, I don't care because I know you'll just have to deal with it" attitude across all of society, and you get what we have today.
> An army of wreckers, led by the demagogue John Farson (who styles himself "The Good Man") are slowly but surely conquering the land, laying waste to those few remaining outposts of civilization and conscripting the young men in the conquered lands to march on their neighbors.
What he's leaving out is that in the novels Farson explicitly was a rabble-rouser pushing for democracy, egalitarian rule, and the downfall of the aristocratic class--and he used that to cloak anti-social behavior and butchery.
Sound familiar?
(Not that Cory is a butcher--hah!--but that he's deliberately eliding the "type" of demagogue Farson is. Consider why that might be.)
That narrative certainly had appeal in decades past when we appeared to be headed towards totalitarianism from the other direction. I was there for it, then. But then the corpo gloves gleefully came off, and the main thing that remains of the prior dynamic is referencing it as a soothing strawman.
Conservatives, whose core ideals are personal responsibility, individual freedom, and limited government, are the ones who want to "be a child with no cares" again, with their needs taken care of for them? Their entire world outlook and identity is the exact opposite of that. Going to stop reading right there.
Trump took advantage of a party already weakened by the Tea Party, and successfully turned it into a cult of personality at a time when the opposition was ideologically unprepared to deal with very real policy issues that their constituents were observing.
This explains why Cory has been very irritated for a long time. If your outlook is world is objectively worse than 50 years ago, or even 20 years ago - then it makes sense why you're constantly upset at things.
"The arc of the technological universe is long, but it bends toward progress."
If the pollsters somehow stumbled on a pocket of people who don't age, this would be the most stupendous example of burring the lede I've ever encountered.
A lot of what we're seeing is yet again due to the largest generation in US history (the "boomers", so called because they were a population boom) progressing through their lives. Everything from the summer of love (when they discovered hormones) to the OMG we're old! vibecession.
I wouldn't disagree with that, but the author in question doesn't seem to follow that line of thinking so it seems irrelevant here.
These two words lend themselves to that, because of what we use them for. I would not reject them, though. Naming things remains useful; and whatever words we would replace these 2 with, and we would, out of necessity: they'd receive the same treatment.
The words are not the problem here. Using them without thinking is.
But this doesn't mean I can't read something that has been written still using the word "conservative" as a lazy synonym for Republican, suspend my particular frustration about the terminology, and understand the point the author is making.
Do you consider this to be nondisruptive policymaking?
Do you consider this to be helpful to those close to you?