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Yeah, never in my lifetime. I remember a college prof in the late nineties telling me she though Reagan was the worst president in the country’s history. I reme

by aksss 6y ago

Yeah, never in my lifetime. I remember a college prof in the late nineties telling me she though Reagan was the worst president in the country’s history. I remember thinking at the time, “jeez, that’s a bit much for a variety of reasons”. At the time though there was as much vitriol against Clinton. I guess a difference may have been that legislators weren’t as accountable in the same way as they are today, and had more room to negotiate and engage in generalized reciprocity. Today, politics has a very distasteful air of religious zealotry, where “sinning” against the orthodoxy of the true believers on both sides is shamed, purity idolized. So everyone is fighting tooth and nail for the barest majorities and procedural tricks to let them manifest their will with nothing more than that. On one hand I find the accountability good, but on the other I wish as a nation we cared less about “national conversations” and thought/acted more locally. National solutions are rarely a well-suited or efficient fit, so in a way, the harder it is for party zealots of either side to enforce their will across fifty different states, the better, IMO. The threat that either side will be successful is what keeps everyone overly-anxious and hyper-engaged/enraged. In a way, having confidence in the inefficiency is good medicine.

jfengel 6y ago
I definitely wish people thought more locally -- really locally, like their towns. I don't think it's a coincidence that the time frame I outlined above is the same as the emergence of 24 hour news, which rapidly became 24 hour infotainment -- the news as a big Manichean football match. I believe that pushed people into thinking about Big Issues and lost any focus on things that actually matter in their daily lives. If there was a "golden age" of national collegiality, it was the postwar era -- exactly the time we were busily building infrastructure that made interstate commerce and travel much easier. That ended when genuinely national and world issues came to the fore -- a push to end minority abuse in some states, and a war that forced young men to participate. I believe that the lines were set then and we continue to re-fight that same fight. The issue in TFA is exactly the kind of thing that needs a national-level response: the only thing more distasteful than a national rule about robocalls is going to be 50 state rules about robocalls that would require federal court litigation anyway. Past interstates and airplanes, the Internet has replaced ordinary telecommunications, and blurred state lines almost to invisibility.
kelnos 6y ago
> On one hand I find the accountability good, but on the other I wish as a nation we cared less about “national conversations” and thought/acted more locally. There are two main problems here, I think: States and localities are usually not funded very well. With the exception of high-tax states like CA and NY, most states don't take in enough revenue to do anything of significant size, and residents are generally against tax hikes. While the federal government was designed to be fairly limited, that's not remotely the case anymore, and even when states get money from the federal government, they're limited in what they can do with it. For example, several CA legislators would love to set up single-payer health insurance in CA, but federal Medicare dollars come with too many strings attached (and only the US Congress can grant CA the ability to use that money in different ways). I feel like in many ways we have the worst of all worlds. The federal government doesn't want to invest in services for citizens, but the states and cities don't have enough money to do it themselves, and aren't allowed to do things with much of the money they get.

by aksss 6y ago

jfengel 6y ago

I definitely wish people thought more locally -- really locally, like their towns. I don't think it's a coincidence that the time frame I outlined above is the same as the emergence of 24 hour news, which rapidly became 24 hour infotainment -- the news as a big Manichean football match. I believe that pushed people into thinking about Big Issues and lost any focus on things that actually matter in their daily lives. If there was a "golden age" of national collegiality, it was the postwar era -- exactly the time we were busily building infrastructure that made interstate commerce and travel much easier. That ended when genuinely national and world issues came to the fore -- a push to end minority abuse in some states, and a war that forced young men to participate. I believe that the lines were set then and we continue to re-fight that same fight. The issue in TFA is exactly the kind of thing that needs a national-level response: the only thing more distasteful than a national rule about robocalls is going to be 50 state rules about robocalls that would require federal court litigation anyway. Past interstates and airplanes, the Internet has replaced ordinary telecommunications, and blurred state lines almost to invisibility.

kelnos 6y ago

> On one hand I find the accountability good, but on the other I wish as a nation we cared less about “national conversations” and thought/acted more locally. There are two main problems here, I think: States and localities are usually not funded very well. With the exception of high-tax states like CA and NY, most states don't take in enough revenue to do anything of significant size, and residents are generally against tax hikes. While the federal government was designed to be fairly limited, that's not remotely the case anymore, and even when states get money from the federal government, they're limited in what they can do with it. For example, several CA legislators would love to set up single-payer health insurance in CA, but federal Medicare dollars come with too many strings attached (and only the US Congress can grant CA the ability to use that money in different ways). I feel like in many ways we have the worst of all worlds. The federal government doesn't want to invest in services for citizens, but the states and cities don't have enough money to do it themselves, and aren't allowed to do things with much of the money they get.