@lackthereof @jonathankoren i wish i had any clue how to find this bottom-up party of which you speak. i guess the ghost towns are so ghostly they don't let us know where they are or how to visit.
@lackthereof @jonathankoren at levels beneath Federal office, the Democratic party simply does not exist. i get hundreds of e-mails soliciting donations. no events soliciting participation, offering an opportunity to meet candidates. i had no opportunity to meet or get to know a damned thing about the Ds who ran for state reps. i don't think there was a competitive primary. ofc in the general i just voted for the D. you can't have competitive primaries if no one has a clue who these people are.
@jonathankoren yes. i’m not claiming some kind of breakthrough is impossible. Sanders almost overthrew incumbents’ grasp over the Democratic Party. he didn’t quite. but there was a real threat.
but time is of the essence. a Democratic Party whose insiders are comfortable despite their failures is not something we can really afford. (has anyone been held accountable for fumbling the fate of the republic 11/5?) 1/
@jonathankoren i’m for eg a lot of primarying. but i think that will require building alternative institutions, to which “mainstream Democrats” will be hostile, to counter their support for comfortable stasis. maybe the Working Families Party is an example of this. /fin
@jonathankoren there’s tremendous incumbency bias in the American system. it’s silly to blame the electorate (frankly it’s always silly to blame the electorate) for what is clearly a widespread institutional phenomenon. incumbents have rigged the game for themselves. health, even survival, of the republic depends on unrigging, really altering, that game into one that prizes flexibility over insiders’ stability.
deleon would not have won by highlighting feinstein’s dementia.
@jonathankoren but they punish primary challengers brutally.
you know the Democratic Party is the party of fairness, because whenever they have to decide who their leaders should be the question they ask is “whose turn is it?”
finance masters of the universe boasted and swung their BSDs and brought us the Great Financial Crisis. then Obama gave them a mulligan.
tech masters of the universe boast and are on the verge of giving us bigger, crazier crises.
i think what follows is an age of wrath. no telling who will burn.
every billionaire is a mad king in waiting.
you may say Donald Trump has achieved nothing, but he has performed a Christmas miracle. he has made Canadians impolite.
we keep arguing about immigration but i wonder if pretty soon we won’t be competing to emigrate.
@artcollisions probably our choices there get rather dark.
centrism as triangulation in the age of Trump.
do the drones negotiate a Christmas truce? refuse to kamikaze, light up a cigarette with their neighbors in the sky?
sick, perhaps getting worse. hmm. see a doctor? or wait a week + hope for the best because contributions to the calendar-year deductible disappear into a black hole now, make progress towards useful insurance in a week.
skin-in-the-game really renders health-care utilization choices more rational.
@jellyfriend @haskal and then it was weirdly fine that the solution to absolutely everything became JSON.
tonight Apple Pay asked me to authorize a payment, then billed me more than that. initially it was WTF? but eventually a receipt came through itemizing local + state sales tax beyond the authorized amount.
is this new? i think Apple Pay should solicit authorization of the full amount it will bill.
(also they charged rates much higher than the actual sales tax rate where i live.)
one reason the US is so mad at insurance companies is not because rationing exists, but because care is often rationed the same way firms ration customer service, by byzantine discouragements that only the most dedicated persist through. even the most dedicated can and often do die from delay.
“the destruction of American public transit in the middle of the 20th century and the suburbanization of the middle class and aspirants both came before the increase in crime rates” @Alon https://pedestrianobservations.com/2024/12/24/public-transportation-and-crime-are-not-about-each-other/
[new draft post] Wreckresentative democracy, "Secret Congress", and bee-sting theory https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/12/24/wreckresentative-democracy-secret-congress-and-bee-sting-theory/index.html