Monday, October 21, 2024

It's not the economy, stupid

Just over two weeks to go now...   How strange it feels to be waiting, in hideous suspense, to see if you're going to be living in a flawed but functioning democracy or a fascist state reigned over by a moral and cognitive degenerate.  


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One of the most surprising things about the times we live in is that that people are not voting in their economic interest. 

By any objective measure, the US economy is roaring. 401(k)s soaring. Jobs plentiful, inflation plummeting. Interest rates cut.  Prospects rosy for the future.  Economy envy of the world. All the traditional bellwethers favor the incumbent party. 

But people are ignoring the rosy economic outlook - pretending not to see it, disbelieving the official metrics, the expert opinions, the punditocracy.

They are instead voting on the basis of their values - and on what they prefer to believe is the other tribe's incompetence and malevolence, their America-hatred. 

Voting for your principles, not pocket book issues or self-interest: I suppose that would be admirable, if the values weren't so ghastly and evil, so cruel. 


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The USA is like conjoined twins. One twin has its issues but is basically sane and pragmatic. The other twin is mentally ill, living in delusion... opposed, with a Tourettic frenzy and ferocity, to whatever its other half says or does...  so consumed with resentment against the other twin, it seeks to thwart and injure its symbiotic other half, even at the cost of its own survival. 

This is why I have thought for some while now that the only future for this country would involve either Reconstruction or Partition. Yet neither is practical. The former would involve a mass program of cult deprogramming. The second - the surgical option -  would involve the transplanting of entire cities - islands of blue or red within red or blue states - to other parts of the country. 

Perhaps, in time, internal migration will incrementally bring about the partition scenario. But really the two countries live side by side - there's hardly any place where there are no MAGAs at all, hardly any place where there aren't isolated progressives keeping their heads down. It's actually not unlike The City and The City - people sharing the same physical space but living in different realities. 

Even if Harris wins, this fever will not subside soon, perhaps not in my lifetime. There is an economy built around its furtherance, its escalation.  An economy of stupidity.