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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   18873 thread views

USA Election Day 2022 Megathread

Tuesday November 8, 2022 is Election Day in the United States of America. In addition to Congressional "midterms" at the federal level, many state governors and other more local offices are up for grabs. Given how things shook out over Election Day 2020, things could get a little crazy.

...or, perhaps, not! But here's the Megathread for if they do. Talk about your local concerns, your national predictions, your suspicions re: election fraud and interference, how you plan to vote, anything election related is welcome here. Culture War thread rules apply, with the addition of Small-Scale Questions and election-related "Bare Links" allowed in this thread only (unfortunately, there will not be a subthread repository due to current technical limitations).

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Oh, boy, it's time for the annual political spin and deflection season!

I'm going to dispense with any poll-tracking or statistic-tealeaf-reading and go with my gut here. I think the Republicans will gain the senate while Dems squeak by in the house, making no one happy and reverting the system back to the 2nd-term Obama status quo. This is good for dramacoin. Nothing makes Americans more politically engaged when their legislature starts throwing DNS errors. The imperial presidency grinds on...

'22 is only significant, in my mind, as the pre-season for Trump Strikes Back '24. Fetterman and Oz is a preview of a greater contest, between a mental invalid and a scruple-less grifter. As much as my little accelerationist heart quivers at the idea of the VP debating Trump, it's most likely that we are witnessing the Last of the Boomer Civic Nationalists fight it out. The last of the people who value a liberal rules-based international order will croak in the next eight years.

God help us all.

Who will gain control of America's imperial hegemonic power? The right-populists, or the left-populists? Will the civil war be averted for another generation, or will it happen in my lifetime? The fate of the nation may very well be decided on which geriatric old man has a fatal stroke first. What you see today in politics - the insanity, the terror - this is not the nadir of the republic's fortunes: it is merely the threshold unto the abyss.

In time, we will look upon the misfortunes of our day as a golden age lost to time and tragedy.

But perhaps it doesn't matter. Perhaps electing corpses is the future of American politics. We have the technology to continue the life of brain-dead patients indefinitely. In the Oval Office, there is a mighty chair beneath the Resolute Desk, a Golden Throne, that will sustain the president's life for as long as it needs to be. A thousand infants are sacrificed each year to feed the device's need for adenochrome, perpetuating the beacon of boomer power from Washington, DC forever.

Anything to avoid electing someone from Gen X.

The last of the people who value a liberal rules-based international order will croak in the next eight years.

Why do you think this happened? I tend to agree with your points even if I think you're being a bit overdramatic.

Is the Internet really all it takes to make us revert back to tribal lines?

The fundamental bargain of neoliberal capitalism is that you'll forgo radicalism, tribalism, and religiosity in exchange for bourgeoise prosperity. It worked, until the gains of industrializing the world ran out.

The internet didn't cause the problem, it just makes it obvious that A) everyone is getting poorer and B) your elites still expect deference for riches they no longer provide.

So why care for a system that no longer works for you? Why care for global prosperity when you're getting none of it? When you bear the burden of upholding the order?

Populism will prevail, and the world will burn while the Americans prosper off the chaos.

it just makes it obvious that A) everyone is getting poorer

US inflation-adjusted incomes (whether personal or household) were declining slowly from around the dot-com bust through the end of the Great Recession, but have since made back the decline with a lot to spare. House sizes never stopped increasing, uptake of new technologies is faster than ever ...

and the world will burn while the Americans prosper off the chaos.

If we take the perspective of "the world" (though isn't this a bit of a digression, in a thread specifically about American polarization in a post specifically about American elections?), even recent American economic growth aren't as impressive as the average growth in the rest of the world. State-of-the-art tech is great, but catch-up growth is easier and more important. Living in a bigger house is nice; not watching your children die is nicer. The gains here have not started to run out.

People feel poorer because they can't own homes and they can't start families. That's a qualitative reality that no amount of quantitative statistics can capture. Something that, I note, that our much poorer ancestors accomplished (albeit, with effort, but not an impossible amount of it.)

I think that people feel poor because they have a ton of exposure to people more rich than them. Status is always relative, and the advent of social media (and really modern media in general) has made the wealth and lifestyles of the very rich extremely legible to the middle class. It's that differential that drives people "feeling poor", imo.

As a newly minted social conservative, bullshit.

Having a house and a family was within reach of the working and middle classes decades ago. Social media is a cope. People just have to compare themselves to their own parents to know that something's wrong. Seeing insta snaps of someone's conspicious consumption might annoy the superficially narcissist but if you rent a tiny apartment and you're single in your thirties you know that someone has fucked you.

Populism will prevail, and the world will burn while the Americans prosper off the chaos.

Why do you think Americans will prosper off the chaos? American hegemony can't last forever and China seems much more ready and willing to fight for the gains than anyone in the west these days from my view. I agree with the rest of your post but I don't see things working out as well for the US.

History belongs to those that show up. In other words, when your population will be half seniors by 2080, you're not a competitive Great Power, no matter how much automation you have.

To put a blunt point on it: no matter how many Chinese boomers have a boner for aggressive foreign policy, they can write checks that their youth can't cash.

I for one liked the prose, it was inoffensive and fair.

Gack, my memory is hazy. You are correct.

I'll leave the mistake as it is, as a mea culpa, but I believe the rest is essentially true.

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