Stickybuffalo.com

Okay, normally I think that spending election night in eager anticipation of “the results” is just stupid. I mean, the results are what they are; can’t it wait a day? Or even a week? I think this impatience for instant results is not especially compatible with fair, secure and accurate elections and vote counting, either.

Still, I’ve spent all evening sitting here by my Mac anyway, doing work. And I’m not quite such a prig that, this being the case, I haven’t made a couple of visits to cleveland.com where early results are the leading headlines.

And, yeah. Regarding my advance review of Ohio’s 2011 election, from yesterday, it looks like I was right about a lot of things. Issue 2 seems to be going down in flames, unsurprisingly. It looks like I was also, unfortunately, very astute in proposing that this outcome would not represent much in the way of any resurgence for progressives/Democrats, and that even with a “win” over Issue 2 we wouldn’t have much to celebrate, really, in this election’s results.

It looks like I was right about all of this, and wrong primarily in my offhand guess that Issue 3 would be defeated; the “Health Care Freedom” act thing appears set to be the one statewide Issue which voters approved.

And so, given this and the also surprising rejection of a broadly-endorsed amendment raising the age limit for judges, I’m going to declare the unifying theme of the 2011 Ohio Election to be: frustrated voters direct a big “fuck you” toward forces largely beyond their control. (more…)

“What are they?”

“Indifferent.”

“Bad…?”

“Wicked.”

Wicked times, indeed. I’m mostly back following the news again, but serious trepidation remains. Last night I visited Uncle Paul’s blog for probably the first time in more than two weeks, and it was just like, “how did I ever look at this on a daily basis?” I like and respect our scruffy-bearded friend, of course, and find little to disagree with… but confronting it all at once, it just struck me that his blog seems to pointedly ask and leave unanswered the question “why don’t I just slit my wrists?”

I must assume that other people manage to avoid quite so intense a reaction, but for me at least that seems to be the inescapable quandary posed by reading a bunch of Krugman all at once. Not that it’s so much him, I imagine, as it is the situations he’s focusing on. Still, I can’t cope with so concentrated a distillation; I hope it really isn’t quite that bad, after all, and if it actually is, I just don’t see why I would really want to know.

Meanwhile, if for some reason you’re jonesing for one of my own laments with that utter-despair flavor, do check out “America’s Locust Years.” It really feels like something I might have posted, here, almost word for word.

Six months that could have been spent boosting the long-run growth potential of the American economy through infrastructure investment, educational reform, or an overhaul of health-care financing – greatly easing America’s long-run deficit and debt dilemmas in the process – have been lost.

During the run-up to World War II, Winston Churchill, speaking in Parliament, lamented “the years that the locusts hath eaten” – the period during which preparatory action to face the great crisis of his day (the rise of Continental fascism) could have been taken, but was not.

Have we pretty much reached that point, here, finally?

I have to say it feels like that to me. I’m ready to get out, if I could/can figure out the inconvenient little details like how to support myself. Of course, I have just a bit of a nomadic instinct… But honestly, I’m not sure that you really need that any more. I’m really at the point where I think I would advise young people beginning their own lives to look seriously at beginning them somewhere outside the United States. Do it now, before your life gets complicated, and when you still have yet to form many of the connections which emigration in your 30s will involve writing off at considerable expense.

I would advise this even though, especially as I’m not going anywhere for the time being, in any sort of fantasy scenario where young people had the least interest in my opinion I probably should be telling them “no, don’t go.” Telling them please, stay here and get involved, register to vote and help nominate better candidates and then help elect them to office and then help hold them accountable, and do all you can to stop our society going over the cliff in the first place.

But, y’know, that’s sort of like “strategic voting;” in that realm as in this, my advice is contingent on how many people are realistically likely to be persuaded by it. Which, of course, is usually “none.” And if there should be anyone at all who did want my advice, on an individual level I think it would have to be “go west, young man or woman.” Or east, or north or possibly even south, so long as you go far enough in any of these directions to take you to a state which isn’t badly in need of an intervention and long rehab. (more…)