I've had some thoughts jumbling around in the ol' noggin, though I have had a hard time figuring out which parts to get into, and in which order. (again).
It doesn't help that it's the end of the semester, which means I mostly have been putting it aside to focus on homework.
Part of the issue is that I can't figure out what 'story' I want to tell. The way you frame the issue shapes everything. So, for example, I could go with a "We're headed for World War II and we're all going to die!!!" or "Here comes the American version of the French Revolution!!!" or any other disastrous prediction.
Or I could go with some version of "Nothing to see here, move along". After all, the status quo is a powerful force - right up until it isn't. (I distinctly remember some analysis on intelligence efforts that discussed the problems with accurately predicting the future. There's so much incentive to foresee - and hopefully forestall - negative events that predictions are slanted towards disaster, even though most of the time those dire predictions don't really occur. The only problem with that is we then become complacent and assume that the status quo is going to stay, right up until the Soviet Union topples or the French revolt or whatever. All of which we can find the evidence for when we look back, yet always miss when surrounded by the regular white noise of our own time.)
After all, despite the noise and furor over whatever horrible news story is out there today, most people are still quietly just going about their lives, doing their own thing. (Though there are undercurrents of potential problems. There always are. I heard a couple people say we need to completely overhaul or system, maybe have another Constitutional Convention. People are pretty fed up with the system as is, and they're looking for alternatives. In counterinsurgency terms - the public has grievances. It remains to be seen whether our system can address those grievances legitimately (i.e. through elections, as we've done - more or less - for the past couple of hundred years) or whether the perception that our elite have locked down the system to such an extent that elections are useless will grow. With potentially dire consequences down the road. (God, I hate predictions like that! You can't really set a time or date. Can't say if it's 10 years, or 100 years...and there's so many things that can happen to forestall or foster such an event that it's almost useless to say. And yet...and yet there's the ring of truth to it. Mostly for reasons I planned to cover in the jumble of a post coming up.)
It also doesn't help that we, Americans at least, put serious pressure on ourselves to always be upbeat and positive. I find that I don't really want to write anything too negative for a couple of reasons - it's probably not going to get that bad, too dire a prediction doesn't really give us much of an option to do anything about it (i.e. if World War III is right around the corner, then screw it! I'll stop trying to be sensible and just blow all my money living it up until we die in a nuclear conflagration. Yes, I'm exaggerating that for dramatic effect), but mostly because I hate feeling like a Debbie Downer.
So most of what I shoot for is clear-eyed, open analysis of our system that confronts our problems head on while making it clear there's still room for hope.
Which is tricky. For example, when I said "we're losing our democracy" in an earlier post, it was meant more as a call to action, a dire prediction meant to help encourage a discussion regarding what we can do to avert that disaster. Not as a cynical statement of hopelessness.
It doesn't help that it's the end of the semester, which means I mostly have been putting it aside to focus on homework.
Part of the issue is that I can't figure out what 'story' I want to tell. The way you frame the issue shapes everything. So, for example, I could go with a "We're headed for World War II and we're all going to die!!!" or "Here comes the American version of the French Revolution!!!" or any other disastrous prediction.
Or I could go with some version of "Nothing to see here, move along". After all, the status quo is a powerful force - right up until it isn't. (I distinctly remember some analysis on intelligence efforts that discussed the problems with accurately predicting the future. There's so much incentive to foresee - and hopefully forestall - negative events that predictions are slanted towards disaster, even though most of the time those dire predictions don't really occur. The only problem with that is we then become complacent and assume that the status quo is going to stay, right up until the Soviet Union topples or the French revolt or whatever. All of which we can find the evidence for when we look back, yet always miss when surrounded by the regular white noise of our own time.)
After all, despite the noise and furor over whatever horrible news story is out there today, most people are still quietly just going about their lives, doing their own thing. (Though there are undercurrents of potential problems. There always are. I heard a couple people say we need to completely overhaul or system, maybe have another Constitutional Convention. People are pretty fed up with the system as is, and they're looking for alternatives. In counterinsurgency terms - the public has grievances. It remains to be seen whether our system can address those grievances legitimately (i.e. through elections, as we've done - more or less - for the past couple of hundred years) or whether the perception that our elite have locked down the system to such an extent that elections are useless will grow. With potentially dire consequences down the road. (God, I hate predictions like that! You can't really set a time or date. Can't say if it's 10 years, or 100 years...and there's so many things that can happen to forestall or foster such an event that it's almost useless to say. And yet...and yet there's the ring of truth to it. Mostly for reasons I planned to cover in the jumble of a post coming up.)
It also doesn't help that we, Americans at least, put serious pressure on ourselves to always be upbeat and positive. I find that I don't really want to write anything too negative for a couple of reasons - it's probably not going to get that bad, too dire a prediction doesn't really give us much of an option to do anything about it (i.e. if World War III is right around the corner, then screw it! I'll stop trying to be sensible and just blow all my money living it up until we die in a nuclear conflagration. Yes, I'm exaggerating that for dramatic effect), but mostly because I hate feeling like a Debbie Downer.
So most of what I shoot for is clear-eyed, open analysis of our system that confronts our problems head on while making it clear there's still room for hope.
Which is tricky. For example, when I said "we're losing our democracy" in an earlier post, it was meant more as a call to action, a dire prediction meant to help encourage a discussion regarding what we can do to avert that disaster. Not as a cynical statement of hopelessness.
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