Extinction

This is an expansion of something I touched on at the end of my last post. There's definitely a consensus in the blogosphere that Republicanism is irrelevant now. They had their chance and they blew it. The architects of their apparent dominance--Rove, Cheney, Norquist, whoever--turned out not to have been so prophetic after all. The party, having lost control of all aspects of federal government, is doomed to indefinite decay as its territory shrinks to the deepest of the deep south and the country's demographics slowly tick-tock away its electoral viability. Having fallen prey to the darkest corners of its fringe base, the GOP will grow rumpier and rumpier until it's down to its barest nub, at which time presumably the now-swollen Democratic party will undergo its own schism, leaving the country with a new dividing line.

I think that's a bunch of balls. The Democrats met with not two but three stinging defeats, only to rise again for what were really very ordinary reasons--a dissatisfactory war, a scandal or two, a mismanaged natural disaster, a financial upheaval. There's no reason to think that perfectly analogous events won't happen during the next four-to-eight years, and still less reason to think that if they do, voters will capriciously give a rebranded Republican party a second chance. The current GOP regime may be doing a terrible job at pretty much everything, but it's not as if the Democrats are offering up a pleasant contrast, nor do they seem particularly willing to or capable of taking steps to get government to be the way they want it and to fix the daunting problems the country is facing. Give people a few years to rose-tint 2002-2007, a few years of a sluggish economy, a few years of escalation in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a few years of Nothing Getting Done (for which the last few months serve as an inglorious template) and they'll be crawling back to Sarah and Bobby and Charlie and Michele and inviting them in for tea (or a tea party).

Continue?

Since this job appears to have nearly limitless boredom potential, I'm coming back to this blog as a way to combat the tedium.

Plenty has happened since I "left" in October. New president, and another semester gone by for me. I'm working at the Uris Library security desk, though it's not certain yet whether I'll be funded--if not, I'm in trouble. The job consists of sitting at the desk, keeping track of the alarm gates, and, apparently, blogging and otherwise fucking around on my laptop. Again, everything could fall through with the internship funding, but for now it seems about as plum a job as a fundamentally lazy, uninspired, unattractive, unmotivated person could wish for. Full time, as well.

In other personal news, the time from October to now has seen very little in the way of personal development. I finished the fall semester and had an uneventful but enjoyable Christmas, highlighted by the arrival of a new dog, Pippin, canis insignis cutitate. I waddled through the spring semester, in which I took criminally few credits but still came out the other end with remarkable stress and unlovely grades. I had a Very Happy Birthday, and am as we speak frittering away my first day as a working man.

I'm growing increasingly more cynical about politics. I'm slowly coming to realize that the only correct stance is "I don't know." Nobody is fully informed about this stuff. Nobody has the answers. Opinions are equally fervent and fervid on each side, and logic only ever supports what the would-be logician likes. There are damned brilliant people everywhere you turn, each saying perfectly convincing yet mutually irreconcilable things and making wholly sound yet mutually defeating arguments. To assert that one has any special knowledge about anything is inherently an affectation.

That said, none of my substantive beliefs has changed. I'm still a boilerplate progressive on nearly everything, conflicted about abortion, completely clueless about trade, unforgiveably ignorant about economics, climatology, history, political thought. I'm jaded and frustrated by Obama--to see such a charismatic and gifted man make so many mistakes and betray so many promises saps me of all optimism. If he can't, who can? I'm outraged by the behavior of much of the Democratic senatorial caucus--Nelson, Bayh, McCaskill, Reid, Specter--and, along with the entire blogosphere, I'm in apoplectic awe at the continued dominance of the right of every aspect of political discourse. I'm ashamed of living in a country controlled by people who revel in rejecting human decency and the rule of law.

Other than that things are great.