DL Open Thread Wednesday September 29th – “Both Sides”
From 1642 to 1651 the English fought a series of civil wars that ended with King Charles v1.0 killed and King Charles v2.0 in exile. Having suffered under successive horrible Kings, the first thing the English did after getting rid of the King was look around for a new King. Except for a few kooks and crackpots, nobody could conceive of a country without a King in charge. As a fish is unaware of the fact that it lives in water – the English were unaware of the fact that monarchy was not some inviolable natural law, but in fact bullshit.
Bothsiderism, Glorious Moderation, The Benevolent Virtues of Centrism, these are all lazy but widely accepted paradigms. They are world-views based on nothing but consensus. They may have worked to explain the world for a while, but they could not be more toxic now. That’s the bad news. The really bad news is that it takes generations to change consensus world view…and we don’t have 50 years, let alone generations.
After seemingly hammering Republicans for blocking debt ceiling, NBC News host Chuck Todd then falsely blames “both parties”
When the lords of the gentry wanted to do a coup in 1688 they just went and got the monarch from another country to come and be their king. Lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution
I dont care if its real or not, but this headline makes me laugh since its so brilliant….
“Putin hired an attractive female translator to ‘distract’ Trump during a summit, Stephanie Grisham book says”
So the English got an intolerant puritan to lead them instead. The kings were pretty bad, but not every alternative is a good alternative.
For fuck sake.
If missing the point was an olympic sport, you’d be its Mark Spitz. My point was it took another 150 years for the idea of “we don’t need no king” to get a footing.
We don’t have another 150 years for the ‘centrism above all’ scales to fall from your dumb baby boomer eyes.
I think its time we have a king. i nominate ryan reynolds
“…these are all lazy but widely accepted paradigms. They are world-views based on nothing but consensus. They may have worked to explain the world for a while, but they could not be more toxic now…”
“all men are created equal” is an equally fake idea, but some level of cognitive dissonance is required to keep society functioning.
Dems need to either push the button and demolish the filibuster, or accept (and practice) centrism. They can’t have it both ways and they are going to lose their opportunity to advance ANY agenda if they don’t find a strongman to keep their membership on the same page.
Jason, you said they should have been able to imagine a leader who wasn’t a king. In fact, they did imagine that and ended up with Oliver Cromwell. Not a king, but bad in a different way. In the later case of William and Mary (who you didn’t mention but REV did), what you said is true, but that happened only after Cromwell. Maybe somebody less extreme would have been better than Cromwell, but I guess they couldn’t imagine it.
“Less extreme” by what standard? Cromwell was a far better option in the context of 17th century Britain. Guy won three parliamentary elections.
I mean America could have done better not electing slave-holders as our six of our first eight presidents I suppose.
Of course they couldn’t imagine it
I think the desire to be rid of the filibuster is actually quite an old one as I remember flare ups in past decades as well. The fact that the senate is perhaps the ultimate good old boys club has much to do with it as long term members do tend to tear up at the thought of any change, and Joe Biden is one of them. As for the “centrists” the Republicans long ago purged the non believers from their party, the result was indeed unity of purpose, but also a dramatically smaller tent that resists doing what is needed to be popular and what seems to be a long, slow death. We gave both Carper and Coons a primary, they still stink, and their still here. But then again so are we.
REV, I think you make a good point about Cromwell. Everybody was pretty extreme back then, when life was nasty, brutish and short. Cromwell was just a man of his time. Ruling with an iron fist seemed necessary to puritans and royalists alike. They just abused different people.