the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

PissDude Malone

has there been a grimmer moment in american politics in the last 30-odd years than right now, and if so when was it?

the Jim Crow era was pretty grim (esp for African-Americans) and lasted more than 30 years. though the past 30 years has sucked pretty hard.

my question was whether there has been a worse _moment_ in the past 30 years (since the early 80s).

Man, 2004 seemed a lot worse. I will take Obama over Kerry and Romney over Bush Jr any day of the week.

yeah

i mean, i agree that that 2004 was worse, or at least seemed worse from where i stand. esp post-election. not sure abt the head to head comparisons, tbh.

nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn[ ==============================yp76

^ cat's thoughts

Bush being reelected was the worst. Everything went wrong in his first term and we reelected the fucker cuz he threw a baseball and shouted into a megaphone, yeehaw.

i'm not just speaking of presidential politics.

I will take Obama over Kerry and Romney over Bush Jr

When we won't take any of them, we might get somewhere.

my question was whether there has been a worse _moment_ in the past 30 years (since the early 80s).

Here are a couple highlights for Americans:

2000: constitutional coup
2000: dot-com bubble bursts resulting in a decade of stagnant wages
2001: terrorists fly planes into the world trade center
2001-?: GWOT
2001-?: Afghanistan (America's longest war) badly mismanaged
2002-2003: build-up to the invasion of Iraq
2003-?: invasion of Iraq - Iraq grossly mismanaged
2005: Hurricane Katrina
2007: housing bubble butrsts and the world economy nearly collapses
2009: nemployment rate briefly hits 10%

Things aren't looking great right now, but I can remember a few other low points.

And I should include:

2001-?: The rapid evolution of the unilateral, emperial presidency

Things look much better when you don't watch cable news or the Sunday talk shows, guys.

imperial

plus, always assume things get worse

because they do.

Things look much better when you don't watch cable news or the Sunday talk shows, guys.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, June 8, 2012 9:35 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't watch TV.

plus, always assume things get worse

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, June 8, 2012 9:37 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

some things do, some things don't. we can't count on anything.

guys, the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself

well that and things always getting worse.

Can't believe I forgot

2010-?: Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill & ongoing environmental disaster

those are mostly familiar stuff getting incrementally worse. Prez facilitating star-chamber assassinations transparently is next-level shit.

(w/ Page One sympathy from the New York Times)

What worries most is the increasing privatization of public services, a trend that both parties encourage. I just ended a long teleconference in which what I consider an essential university service will be turned over to a "partnership" with a corporate entity. The assumption, based on four years of shall we say discouraging news from Tallahassee, is that we can no longer count on state money to pay for basic services. At one point I said to my boss, "Great! It means that in fifteen years the Florida Chamber of Commerce will 'partner' with the department of mathematics and thus eliminate the need for the state to give'em money for adjunct salaries and dry erase markers?"

You need to go become one of those private sector job-creators and quit complaining

What worries most is the increasing privatization of public services, a trend that both parties encourage.

This is basically a baseline assumption these days. Very destructive and hard to turn around.

You need to go become one of those private sector job-creators and quit complaining

I need to buy ILE, fire the lot of you, and replace you with right-to-work drones.

tbf, our pension plans are seriously underfunded

2000: constitutional coup
2000: dot-com bubble bursts resulting in a decade of stagnant wages
2001: terrorists fly planes into the world trade center
2001-?: GWOT
2001-?: Afghanistan (America's longest war) badly mismanaged
2002-2003: build-up to the invasion of Iraq
2003-?: invasion of Iraq - Iraq grossly mismanaged
2005: Hurricane Katrina
2007: housing bubble butrsts and the world economy nearly collapses
2009: nemployment rate briefly hits 10%
2011: Dave Cool stops posting to ilx

I don't think we can really blame all this on the commander in chief

airplanes are falling out of the sky, a baby is born and another one dies.

There will always be wars, disasters and things that come about with little or no warning, or method of aversion. I think what makes 2012 feel worse than, say, 2004, is that all this shit going on while the world teeters precariously on the brink of total economic collapse, which we all see happening (like climate change) and yet which the government (and, hell, most voters) seem to think can just be debated and argued into safe submission.

The world has been ending since 2800 BC.

I just wonder what I would have thought in the 70s, watching gas shortages, inflation, 18% interest rates, major American cities going bankrupt, rivers on fire, etc. and whether there was any hope of improvement.

as George Carlin said, "the world" vs "humanity" xp

I'll tell you what I thought in the late '70s: "Hey, we got rid of Nixon, and the government gave me a big grant for college."

I just wonder what I would have thought in the 70s, watching gas shortages, inflation, 18% interest rates, major American cities going bankrupt, rivers on fire, etc. and whether there was any hope of improvement.

http://www.bilerico.com/2011/02/Ronald_Wilson_Reagan_Cowboy_Poet.gif

The world has been ending since 2800 BC.

― Convert simple JEEZ to BDSMcode (Austerity Ponies), Friday, June 8, 2012 11:37 AM (13 minutes ago)

pretty otm afaict. the whole system relies upon selling us over and over again the belief that the world is about to end. not to be a dithering, equivocating blame-both-sides hack about it, but there's very little daylight between the left + the right when it comes to convincing constituents that the sky is falling (in the spheres of environment, religion, economics, politics, war, intellectualism, etc). i'd vote for a guy who said: "little that we do matters, and if we survive for another thousand years* no one will remember our names"

*itself a complicated question depending on a lot of factors we can see + can't see, and depending on a whole lot more than just who sits in the oval office for 8 years. tho i will admit that a psycho with nukes is def a big threat to humanity's survival and i have voted in the past based on who i think was less likely to spark a nuclear war.

Considering developments, you should consider who is less likely to aim drones at Americans without considerations of due process.

the least important election of your lifetime: 1789-2012 american general election thread

assuming the US is publishing history books in even fifty years, the best you can hope for is a paragraph about drones in the giant glossy "New Warfare Technology" pullout (that teachers never get to bc it's too recent history and there's too much to cover re WW2)

don't really have the history or the logarithms to contribute to/this but i just wanna give a shout out to the ~interconnected & disconnected global context~ for our present moment. since last year it does feel p novelly vertiginous to look at Syria (& likewise) or Japan or Afghanistan and Pakistan or Russia, &c.

i am still on a downer since the geoengineering article in the nyer, too.

i wish i hadn't italicised novelly, i know things are always complicated & maybe just worse when you're paying attention

Considering developments, you should consider who is less likely to aim drones at Americans without considerations of due process.

Eh, there are plenty more Americans.

Prez facilitating star-chamber assassinations transparently is next-level shit.

The transparent part is the only thing next-level about the US Prez ordering hits.

some grim hilarity in that the very belated senatorial "pushback" on all of this is not about arbitrary imprisonment and assassination but about exactly how and for whom those things are leaked. working the press is our prerogative!!

yes Viceroy, no one talked about Kennedy doing it til about 15 years later bcz it was thought an unseemly thing for the Leader of the Free World to be doing.

diff b/w 2004 and 2012: in 2004, we had a Republican in the White House, and non-Republicans could project their hopes (correctly or not, lol or not lol) on the Democratic candidate. in 2012 we have a Democratic President who played on those hopes to get elected 4 years ago, hasn't lived up to those hopes and (to some) has overstayed his welcome -- and the Republican is even worse.

don't try to convince me otherwise, that's why 2012 seems even worse than 2004.

^^^ agree with this.

tbh i think bush, cheney et al getting away with everything -- no impeachment, no post-2008 repercussions -- was the most demoralizing development of all.

eisbaer otm