From Ross Douthat:

It wasn’t so much that LaPierre’s performance made no concession whatsoever on gun restrictions or gun safety — that was to be expected. It was that he launched into a rambling diatribe against an absurdly wide array of targets, blaming everything from media sensationalism to “gun-free schools” signs to ’90s-vintage nihilism like “Natural Born Killers” for the Newtown tragedy. Then he proposed, as an alternative to the liberal heavy-handedness of gun control, something equally heavy-handed — a cop in every school, to be paid for by that right-wing old reliable, cuts to foreign aid.

Unfortunately for our country, the Bloomberg versus LaPierre contrast is basically all of American politics today. Our society is divided between an ascendant center-left that’s far too confident in its own rigor and righteousness and a conservatism that’s marched into an ideological cul-de-sac and is currently battering its head against the wall.

The entire Obama era has been shaped by this conflict, and not for the good. On issue after issue, debate after debate, there is a near-unified establishment view of what the government should do, and then a furious right-wing reaction to this consensus that offers no real policy alternative at all.

I don’t agree with the entire piece, but it broadly explains my discontent quite well. Less about the gun debate specifically, more about the larger dynamic.


Category: Statehouse

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3 Responses to My Current Disillusionment With Politics, In A Nutshell

  1. Kirk says:

    Interesting article on the “Strange Death of the Technocracy.” You’re not the only one who’s disillusioned.

    http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/777441d0-183a-11e0-88c9-00144feab49a.html#axzz2GMzIxoGQ

  2. Kirk says:

    Also, the WSJ article “The Power of Negative Thinking” greatly questions (among other things) goal-setting, which is one of the hallmarks of modern management.

    http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324705104578147333270637790.html?KEYWORDS=the+power+of+negative+thinking

    “Research by Saras Sarasvathy, an associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia, suggests that learning to accommodate feelings of uncertainty is not just the key to a more balanced life but often leads to prosperity as well. For one project, she interviewed 45 successful entrepreneurs, all of whom had taken at least one business public. Almost none embraced the idea of writing comprehensive business plans or conducting extensive market research.”

  3. Kirk says:

    I just read the case study on GM. Wow…

    http://whysmartexecutivesfail.com/

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