Grasping

[muckefuck]

monshu wants everyone to know that following careful consideration (and the strategic application of high-quality Swiss chocolate) he has decided not to "defriend" me. I had him over for lomo adobado last night and we got into a three-hour discussion of party politics, democracy and democratisation, nationalism, decolonialisation, social evolution, and the future of mankind. As usual with such conversations, no firm conclusions were reached, but we both felt very satisfied with our own erudition afterwards.

Afterwards, I called back my sister to plan our upcoming family wedding weekend and we ended up dissecting the elections. She lives in a swing state, so her experience of them was about as different from mine as it's possible to find. For starters: Two(!) calls from Laura Bush urging her to vote for highly-qualified and morally-upstanding local candidates. Federer, the Republican candidate for an open House seat (Gephardt's old district), mailed her a copy of a brochure distributed by Carnahan to GLB supporters along with a letter decrying his opponent's lax moral values. He lost, as did the other conservative running for the other open seat, but Blunt took the governor's mansion in a hotly contested race. No anti-gay marriage amendment passed--only because this had already been taken care of in the primaries.

deFriending total stands at: 2. I'm sorry to see rootbeer1 go, but I understand that he's following kitchenbeard's call for a full-on boycott of anyone associated in any way with the Republican Party. (They're in SF. They can afford that luxury.)

I was going to compose a post today expounding on the painful truth that, if you really are flabbergasted by the election results, then it only goes to show how out of touch you are with vast stretches of the American electorate. Fortunately, impeccably progressive topaz_munro tackled this already, giving it a much more positive spin then I think I would've been able to. (Edit: Be sure to scroll down to forceful response by jacflash, which says a lot of what I've been saying only better.) For the past year, I've been grumbling about the number of people I run into who seem to spend most of their time in self-contained progressive enclaves and left-wing echo chambers, failing to make any real effort to comprehend people who view things dramatically differently than they do. Well, here's the call to action: It's time to stop disparaging "religious nuts," "NASCAR dads," and "security moms" and redouble our efforts to determine how it is we've failed to win them over to our causes. They're not making the same effort to understand you and your ideas? Tough; the simple fact is that you need them more than they need you.

Comments

[darkphuque.livejournal.com]

You worte:
And, as an aside, both sides pandered to fears. Kerry did what
basically every Democratic candidate I can think of has and played on
worries about jobs loss.

Obviously, job losses are hitting your industry....You are not a part of the Job loss. They are not worries, they are realities...at least here in CA.

You continue: talking up a gruesome threat of outsourcing that
simply doesn't exist.

SBC, (formerly Pacific Bell) is considering outsourcing. There are only few major finanacial/credit/software companies who have not outsourced a large percentage of their work. A few years back, the only folks who were out sourcing were mfg companies....I your field, Daniel, outsourcing is not practical. YOU have little about which to worry.

You continue: Others warned about a reinstitution of the draft,which shows no signs of actually materialising,

Perhaps, but wars cannot be sustained without it.

You continue: and played up the weak
resemblance to Germany on the eve of fascism, as you have just done.

The historical comparisons are there...have we really learned from the past? I doubt it.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

What do you know about my industry? Just today, I learned that a piece of software one of my co-workers wrote might be putting a whole roomful of people out of work. Not a week goes by where I don't hear about how a substantial amount of the work of my staff could be outsourced. (Fortunately, there are some enduring obstacles to doing this--but that doesn't mean they will never be surmounted.) Everywhere I've worked, I've seen staff shrink and watched as projects that would once have been done in house have been awarded to outside firms. I've lived all my life with the threat of outsourcing and I know it's not what it's cracked up to be.

If wars cannot be sustained without the draft, I guess that means that the USA hasn't fought any since 1973. Pax Americana indeed!

I didn't say that the historical comparisons aren't there, rather that they are being overblown. There are also historical comparisons to be made to the Roman Empire--just ask cassielsander--but I don't see a risk of Jenna Bush ascending to the purple anytime soon.