skells @skells@qoto.org
Joined Feb 2021
> Hochstein calls investor hostility to fracking "un-American"
i mean, he's not wrong
I have a suspicion that "game changing" is journo code for "gives you cancer"
don't care what you say, mike pence will always have a special place in my heart for this
the political system will always adapt to preserve itself as far as possible to the prevailing conditions - but these changes can only come from outside that system, either grassroots or new challengers
at this time things are in upheaval, there's more chaos and "events" for the WEF et al. to capitalise upon, but that sword cuts both ways - a total reform of the polical system is impossible, for that you need a revolution which is even more dangerous and unpredictable
but I wouldn't misunderestimate how much of a win it would be, for example, to get a DeSantis/Gabbard ticket through 2024, even if they are to some extent compromised. That system by definition will have to be more responsive to the forces that put it in place; you don't change the political system, you repeatedly infect it with your ideas in a way that it is forced to respond to in an adaptive rather than combative way.
elites are here to stay and we need to entrain aristocrats over oligarchs, of whom we demand attentive service to their locality over centralised control over their spreadsheets.
so maybe the leap of the MSM to crow the "end of trump" and DeSantis being touted as the 2024 candidate (along with McConnell getting kicked to the curb and talk of the end of the GOP as we know it) are this process in action.
this is not necessarily a bad thing, the question is if Trump has bulldozed enough for it to have a meaningful long term change - or if the trajectory of American politics has changed enough for the fresh blood to reinvigorate the system. too soon to tell.
representative democracies, and most forms of governance, will always have an elite of some form.
when you have people like Trump and events like Brexit, whose stated aim is to reform the system, there will be those within the system who will seek to co-opt and harness that groundswell.
without serious structural reforms, this will always happen; the oligarchic system is an organic entity and will adapt to change of circumstances.
Arrakis teaches the attitude of the knife — chopping off what's incomplete and saying: "Now it's complete because it's ended here."
Joined Feb 2021
