They should install public grappling hook points

politics to me feels a lot like that anecdote about the old farmer. the one where his fields flood, and everybody says “what a catastrophe!” and he’s like, “well, maybe.” and then the receding water reveals buried treasure, and everybody is like “what a wonderful thing!” and he’s like, well, maybe. and then bandits come and steal the treasure and kill some of his family, and everybody’s back to “what a catastrophe!” and the farmer is like “well, maybe.” and so on.

like yeah obviously the short term is really bad. but if your only lens on politics is the short term, you lose perspective. there’s no final triumph or final defeat that will end politics forever, in either the short or long term, and if you spend a lot of time following politics, over years and years, either you will get into this bipolar it’s-all-over-we’re-so-back cycle that will drive you crazy (and fill you with cynicism and anger and despair, probably), or you will hopefully eventually learn to take a longer view, to understand the necessity of a certain optimism of the will even when you are feeling very angry and pessimistic, and to temper both your negative and positive expectations of the future based on a nuanced understanding of the world.

i don’t know of any shortcuts to get there, though. read a lot of history? recent political history. general modern history. even ancient and medieval history. i think another part of it is just getting older. most people start paying attention to politics when they’re what, in their late teens? it takes until your late twenties or early thirties to really experience several back-and-forth swings of the political pendulum up close. a lot of things in my twenties that felt like moments of final political victory or defeat that could never be undone, well, weren’t. and gains that felt shaky and impermanent turned out to be surprisingly durable.

and keep in mind that donald trump is 78 years old, wildly unpopular for a president at this point in his term, and running an administration staffed by some of the stupidest people alive. he is capable of doing, and has done, terrific harm. but he’s not an inevitable excrescence of unstoppable historical forces. crueler, more cunning, and far more popular dictators than he have ended up swinging from the finials of their palaces. he is a mooncalf produced by the moral and political rot within the american right wing, not the Führer who stands athwart history as the avatar of the national spirit.