So, I'm no Democrat or anything, but the impending Republican party breakup has me totally stoked, and I have personally been drooling over the prospect since before the elections. However, the Democratic excitement about it has me befuddled.
I just don't understand why staunch two-party supporters on the left think the loss of a substansive opponent on the right won't rip them assunder as well. Much as Rome turned in upon itself with no external enemy after the end of Carthage, so have the Democrats already started drawing lines between themselves. The only real question that remains is whether the currently bi-polar political structure will maintain itself in an increasingly diverse political arena where a multitude of special interests pull votes and voters in various directions at the same time. Personally I hope not.
And so with vile words flying from side to side, as well as between factions within the two sides, we find ourselves in a situation where we can choose something totally new, or manifestly perpetuate the false precept that history repeats itself and just patch up our status quo.
That there are patterns of human responses to similar stimuli traceable throughout the historical record is undeniable. What repeats though is not the actual history itself but the choices we make when the choices are important. And with human reluctance to embrace change, this leaves us only the option to reflect on what we did last time we were in a situation similar to this, making all of our choices involve the repetition, or avoidance of something historical.
Will President Obama make a Graachian mistake in the face of his current dilemas, which resemble those the famous brothers faced 2k years ago? Could such a mistake lead to the last hundred years of our republic, or will someone step up and seek change no more radical than that of the American and French revolutions which culminated in the modern rights we enjoy in the West. Not that I think these are the only possible outcomes in front of us, but regardless of whether it is a inadvertent, well intentioned mistake by a populist representative, or the forcible maintenance of a faltering two party system, if we just keep patching it, eventually there will be no original material left. Somewhere there is the right mix of holding on to what is working, and radically changing what is not, I hope we find the recipe soon.
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Another idea-- one that's been whispered in poerson, though I'm not sure where on the blogosphere-- is that the President was elected in order to stave off this derailment of the political system; that all of his talk of "change" is little more than a mantra to quell the rabid folks on the left while the rabid Rigtht factions (secessionists, the evangelicals,, even some of the populists if you ask on the right day) tear each other apart. In that case, then maybe that all-0too scary S word the proto-Nazis on the other side keep throwing around is just what we need.
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