Q: How important is politics?

@teinosuke said
Blessed is he who lives in a society where politics is not that important!

I sometimes find myself yearning to wake up and find that it was 1959 and that I could stroll to the polling station and cast my vote for Macmillan or Gaitskell and go to bed in the sure and certain knowledge that no matter who won, the country would be moderately well governed for the next five years...

“Blessed is he who lives in a society where politics is not that important!”

No such thing.

“I sometimes find myself yearning to wake up and find that it was 1959 and that I could stroll to the polling station and cast my vote for Macmillan or Gaitskell and go to bed in the sure and certain knowledge that no matter who won, the country would be moderately well governed for the next five years...”

Yes, indeed.

@dood111 said
Who the hell were Macmillan or Gaitskell and what election was that ? Election for president was 1960 and it was between Kennedy and Nixon.

There’s more to the world that your imploding piss-pot of a country.

@dood111 said
WHEN was Trump ever a race hater in his campaign?

All the time

@divegeester said
“Blessed is he who lives in a society where politics is not that important!”

No such thing.

I suppose by "a society where politics is not that important", I meant one where some people's lives and liberties don't hang on the outcome of elections, as they do in various ways in Hungary or Turkey or India, to name but a few.

Or maybe I mean a place where civil society is strong enough to ensure that the place of party politics in deciding the destiny of a country is relatively modest. This I suppose is another thing that draws me emotionally to 1959: institutions like the family, the civil service, the BBC, the Church, the monarchy were very much more robust than the are now and provided a stabilising influence against the ruptures of political change.

We lead our lives and plan our futures. I define "a society where politics is not that important" as one where an election won't seriously disrupt the futures we have planned.

@teinosuke said
Or maybe I mean a place where civil society is strong enough to ensure that the place of party politics in deciding the destiny of a country is relatively modest. This I suppose is another thing that draws me emotionally to 1959: institutions like the family, the civil service, the BBC, the Church, the monarchy were very much more robust than the are now and provided a stabilising influence against the ruptures of political change.

I am drawn to the sentiment and idealism in your words but I’m afraid that my rationality tells me that you are living in a nostalgic dream of your own making.

If 1959 was a better time, this it was because it was for because it was your youth. For others maybe it was because it was a time of much much more social compliance, and period of increasing liberty, leisure and prosperity where the class, educational and political systems were still sufficiently rooted in order to stabilise the creeping change.

But the BBC - “We are broadcasting from Crystal Palace” really?

The Church - riddled with undiscovered child abuse and in the early days of launching the millionaire evangelists

Civil service - it did what it was told by government in those days, I’ll give you that one!

The Monarchy - sitting atop it all looking down!

But while I disagree with you I also agree with you. Such is the complexity of life these days. 🙂

@cheesemaster said
Were you trying some rhetorical metaphorical BS on us?

The only ones trying to change America are the ones tearing down statues of Lincoln and Washington etc etc.

Burning down America? Go ask your BLM friends.

Why are you so willingly delusional?
Both sides have been in the wrong but you will never condemn any of the non whites...
Why?
Scared?
You probably think Bill Cosby and Micheal Jackson are innocent 🙄

Your heroes are the ones inciting violence in our cities, and God knows how much more violence if your anointed one doesn't have what it takes.

@eladar said
Exactly!

Christians cannot own businesses in the US without the possibility of having to deny their beliefs.

This is what happens when the government starts treating its citizens as subjects and the Constitution geys defined by political appointees.

Yeah, and whites are the most persecuted race in America.

Spare me your nonsense.

@dood111 said
@mchill
Prior to this election, I've only voted for president once , in 1976, because I didn't think who was president made that big a deal. I didn't vote in the last election because I didn't like Hillary or Trump, thought it was like being given a choice of which toilet I was given a choice to drink out of..
But this time it's important, because if the dems win we are screwed, they are the party of evil, and Trump has been an AWESOME president.

It's truly sad how you've been fooled by a liar.

@dood111 said
Who the hell were Macmillan or Gaitskell and what election was that ? Election for president was 1960 and it was between Kennedy and Nixon.

Your white privilege is even more stark because it is white American privilege.

@mott-the-hoople said
"citing three anonymous sources'

that game has been exposed ...try again.

Funny. You worship Donald Trump, but you don't even know him.

Not at all.

@teinosuke said
I suppose by "a society where politics is not that important", I meant one where some people's lives and liberties don't hang on the outcome of elections, as they do in various ways in Hungary or Turkey or India, to name but a few.

Or maybe I mean a place where civil society is strong enough to ensure that the place of party politics in deciding the destiny of a country ...[text shortened]... is not that important" as one where an election won't seriously disrupt the futures we have planned.

Obama at a recent stump speech for Biden:
“With Joe and Kamala you’re not going to have to think about the crazy things they say every day,” said Obama. “It just won’t be so exhausting. You might be able to have a Thanksgiving dinner without having an argument.”

He added: “You’ll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that Navy SEALs didn’t actually kill bin Laden. Think about that. The president of the United States retweeted that."


Ahh, I long for boring presidents.

It's been said the Chinese have a curse which says, "May you live in interesting times." I'd prefer a lot less "interesting" for awhile.

@divegeester said
I am drawn to the sentiment and idealism in your words but I’m afraid that my rationality tells me that you are living in a nostalgic dream of your own making.

If 1959 was a better time, this it was because it was for because it was your youth. For others maybe it was because it was a time of much much more social compliance, and period of increasing liberty, leisure ...[text shortened]...

But while I disagree with you I also agree with you. Such is the complexity of life these days. 🙂

I wasn't born in 1959; I'm 42 years old.

You'll be amused to learn that while I agree with myself, I also disagree with myself! I think I react against the quite widespread assumption that the 1950s has nothing to teach us merely because it was socially conservative. I think that in democratic Western Europe and the Anglosphere, it was a time almost unique in that stability was its goal - creating a society where there was a job, a house, a doctor and a pension for every man, and a school for every child - and I think that's something we could still learn from. These days, when I hear the word "change" I tend to want to reach for my gun!

I suppose that while all institutions are flawed, some seriously so, I think their role as a stabilising force remains vital. So I'd always choose to reform an institution, rather than overturn it, if it seems to have any good in it at all.

But I guess I'm imagining my 1959 alter ego as being in a relatively privileged position. I've said a few times (perhaps not on RHP) that I don't think there's been a happier fate in the whole of human history that to graduate from a university in democratic Western Europe or North America in c.1950. In the 1950s you could walk into whatever job you damn well pleased; in the 1960s you could buy a house at a modest price; in the 1970s inflation wiped out your mortgage; in the 1980s you were encouraged to take early retirement on very generous terms; in the 1990s you could go on holiday to Syria and Yemen; and now, when everything's rubbish, you'd be 90 years old and it wouldn't damn well matter anymore!

But the corollary of that is, of course, that not many people got to go to university in those days to start that whole agreeable series of events.