Open Thread for Sunday October 1st – The Vanished Center

Two reading from the Book of “We are really in the shit now”. One from Steve Newton via FB, and one from William Butler Yeats.

The secret to maintaining a Democracy is creating a system in which the losers can lose with dignity. It needs to allow the runner up think, “Well… we lost, but the system is fair, so we’ll get ’em next time.”

We once had that. We don’t anymore, so I guess we are pretty well fucked.

Steve Newton – via Facebook

The center disappears.

Once upon a time it was possible to be a “classical liberal”–which would have been generally thought of as a “conservative Democrat,” a “liberal Republican,” or a “moderate.”

This viewpoint held that there existed a real but limited public sector; an obligation to both pay taxes and to operate government frugally; to value service and community without slipping over into coercion and collectivization.

It used to be that Presidential candidates ran to their base during the primaries (because that’s who votes in primaries) and back to the center in the general election (because that was where the votes to win resided). The 2004 Presidential election changed that, as both Bush and Kerry realized at the end of the primaries that there were more votes to be hand by more thoroughly scouring their own bases than by running back toward a shrinking center. Since then, running back to the center has been a losing strategy in most races, most places.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.