We seem to have this fucked-up system where the two parties literally WANT to take turns - Republicans (until Trump came along) back themselves into a corner wrt e.g. Climate Change, then depend on hope that a Democrat will get elected and actually take care of it, then they will still “blame” them for all that “hippy stuff”; and then Democrats want to lower taxes on the wealthy so depend on hope that a Republican will get elected and make that happen.

An example is the border crisis: there are real issues there, that both side want to do something about, yet both sides are also leaning so heavily into politicking that they cannot manage to accomplish anything at all. It even/especially got so bad that they did finally manage to do something, almost, before Trump made some phone calls and shut it all down.

Just like the stock market, the appearance of things somehow matters more to them than reality. “Game theory” predicts that you simply cannot stamp out such a type of “cheating”/“gaming the system” set of behaviors - it’s literally impossible, and can even work to the favor of the overall system in odd ways (like viruses infect cells, which ngl is bad for the individual cell, but as they do they can bring along genes that trigger behaviors inside of them, which exceedingly rarely but in a population rather than individual sense can save the whole damn species from an extinction-level event, especially for bacteria where the number of cells and infection events are both exceedingly large and they already exist more in a population rather than individualistic mode to begin with) - but such modelling also predicts (iirc) that when the threshold is reached that not only a few people cheat it but it BECOMES the system, then it all begins to break down.

At that point, people either need to move on to another new system that has not yet been fucked up, or else the whole thing crashes down. Either way involves a lot of pain.

For myself, I have lost faith in democracy, as it seems most people have alongside of me. That is not to say that we should ignore our responsibilities, it is just that I don’t think they will counter these trends towards evil behaviors of greed and exploitation. I used to hold out great hope, but now I think that was naive, wishful thinking. But the only thing to do is move forward, and we’ll see how it plays out I suppose. Maybe this is one of those things where like “it always seems darkest right before the dawn”?

On the other hand, what exactly are the actions that we (liberals) are doing to counter the effects of both globalization and automation? (links to any resources explaining that would be welcomed, though not your responsibility ofc - I will find them eventually!) We did manage to raise the minimum wage - that’s excellent - but for the most part while the other side seems greedy, we seem lazy.

Case in point: abortion. While the overturning of Roe v. Wade is solely within the purview of the Supreme Court, why don’t more states have more laws on the books or in the works to add protections in at the state level, as conservatives are doing on the other side of that issue? Diligence wins the day, regardless of who does it (as the phrase goes: you reap what you sow) and yeah I know about slow & steady wins the race but… are we merely slow, or are we living in a fantasy dreamland where somehow everything will magically fix itself without any effort on our parts? People are dying over there, and while we must allow others to live however they choose, why not enshrine some protections for “ourselves”? THAT much at least, is not something that can be adequately explained (imho) as “it is the Republicans fault” - wouldn’t that lie solely within our own purview?