If Politics Feels Hopeless, Think 25 Years Ahead
In 25 years, Donald Trump will be dead. Within 30 years most Fox News viewers will be gone. This is how political change really happens. Old political actors just die. New ideas come to life.
These ideas aren’t necessarily good. They’re just new. The organizing of today creates the organization of the future. That’s why it’s important to do what’s right, even if it feels impossible today. Because you’re not changing today, you’re changing the future.
Cause And Effect
We live in the past. Laws, customs, beliefs — these are all made in the past. This sucks for the present, because we’re all the slaves of some long-dead economists. It is hopeful for the future, however, because we can free (or fuck with) them.
The simplest way to understand this is children. If you 3D print a human in your womb, feed, clothe and teach it; in 25 years it’ll be out there affecting the world. It’s the same with ideas. In fact, younger people physically carry ideas into the future.
Cause and effect on a political scale is generational. Life cycles, not news cycles. Decades, not years. This is somewhat hobbled by the fact that politicians never fucking retire, but the ideas circulate nonetheless.
We Live In The Past
We don’t live in the present. We live in the 80s. In America, both Republicans and Democrats still live in Ronald Reagan’s world. The framing is still business good government bad, with the effects being felt today. Hence today, in 2021, the stock market is going up while Americans are sick and freezing to death. This is small government. It doesn’t work. It’s tempting to look at the dickhead Republicans today, but they’re essentially mindless. The cause was actually 40 years ago, longer if you count the economists that Reagan distilled.
China also lives in the 80s. ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ came from Deng Xioping. His ideas about hybridizing capitalism (“black cat or white cat, if it…
