The More Things Change...

Professor J,

As I watched the Kearns/Stewart clip I thought about how we hear the exact same sentiment from the right. Everyone drones on about how we aren't the country we use to be, things are getting worse, and we are headed for disaster. I chuckle to myself when I remember listening to Glenn Beck on the radio in the fall of 2008 claiming he had an "inside source" and that "we won't even recognize this country in two years."

Hmmm...still have the Patriot Act, war, spying on American citizens, corrupt politicians, corporations calling the shots, polarization, misinformation, and sound bite thinking.

Looks pretty recognizable 5 years later. 

The reality turned out to be that this president is more of the same than anyone anticipated. On the right or left. (I know you hate these trite left/right descriptions and plenty of people are all over the spectrum about various issues, but I'm trying to be concise.) Conservatives long for the 1950s which they view, as people generally do about the past, as better than it was. We often hear talk show hosts, pundits, or friends talk about how much worse things are in our country now.

I often ask "worse for who?"

Women? African Americans? Our gay friends? Children? Employees? A young woman who wants to be a doctor or lawyer?

And yes. I'm noticing how liberal that sounds. ;)

On the "left" I think part of the seeming depression is just profound disappointment. People who were true believers in Obama (by this I mean they expected more than just another politician) are having to deal with things like revelations of domestic surveillance, the use of drones, and things like healthcare and being slow to move on other promises. His supporters believed his promise about transparency and it hurts to find out one politician is just very much like another. And the reasons for that are uncomfortable to think about. Does power just corrupt so quickly, were people fooled all along, or did a man with good intentions get elected to find out he really isn't going to be allowed to do much by the people with the real power?

Frustrating, isn't it, that we will likely never know the real answer.

And so much seems out of our control. I think people feel increasingly powerless, no matter what their political leanings and it leads to that escapism and diverted attention. In the course of busy lives and trying to make ends meet people wonder why they should get so upset about things they don't feel like they can change. I have a feeling it's like that saying about books: You don't have ban them if people don't bother to read them. Likewise, no elected official has to bring about real change or solve problems if people aren't asking the hard questions or expecting things to be different.

And as Kearns pointed out in the aforementioned interview, much of that is the job of the press. Were you as shocked as I was to hear her say that journalists were given 2 years (!) to work on a story? Now a Twitter post qualifies as news.

I find it impossible to predict what the biggest stories or trends might be next year. Some days the world seems to be changing by the moment and other times I look at Gibbon on the shelf and think nothing much has changed at all.