Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

A strange post.  Wow, being President after Bush is going to be a lot of work.  No kidding.  Offering McCain a silver lining for losing—that he might not get the personal glory he might have been hoping for—suggests that Bainbridge doesn’t truly believe that only McCain puts country first.  I mean, if you win, you’ll have to make tough decisionds!  Egad.  Yeah, cleaning up this shitpile isn’t going to be easy, and it isn’t going to be fun.  Honestly, I’m an Obama partisan but I give McCain way more credit than that.

Professor, I respectfully disagree. In fact, anyone who ascends to the “throne” and brings about even a marginal improvement to our current situation would receive a great amount of credit. Franklin Roosevelt won an election during a depression, and then won three more elections, even though the depression never really ended, and the United States was involved in World War, under his watch. I think it depends on the voters’ mood. If they are already pessimistic, they may be grateful for any small change brought about by a new President, and I doubt they will expect great things from him.

Most of these situations have existed for years.  (Although when I was a lad, it was the Japanese, not the Chinese, and the Russians had a much bigger saber.) I know that people in faculty lounges and newsrooms have it as an article of faith that the past eight years have been the worst in history, but I really don’t see why 2008 is so much worse than most years.

"I really don’t see why 2008 is so much worse than most years.”

Look harder.

“(Although when I was a lad, it was the Japanese, not the Chinese, and the Russians had a much bigger saber.)”

Oh, yes, the good old days of WWII and nuclear brinksmanship.  Those were definitely worse times than 1983-2003, so no biggie, we can just go back to the 30s, 40s, and 50s, I mean, really, “most of these situations have existed for years.” (What situations?  Multiple bank failures and massive numbers of foreclosures and a declining dollar? Two regional wars?) We had about 20 years of nearly uninterrupted peace and prosperity, and now we don’t, but I don’t see what the big deal is.

Apparently y81 has a comfortable existence that isn’t threatened by the market crisis.  I’m not sure how else to explain his casual contempt for the fact that economic hardship hurts real live human beings in the here and now.  Just because previous generations suffered hardship doesn’t make it a good thing to have now.  Wasn’t the point of previous sacrifices to make life better for the next generations?

Friend, your life is in its final decades, but most of us are planning on being around in 50 years and can tell that American hegemony is over and that there are huge resource challenges facing the earth that are going to flatten the differences in middle-class standards of living across the world.  We wanted to pass on a country with more prosperity and opportunity for our children that we started with, like previous generations did for us.  And now that that has all been threatened, your response amounts to “what’s the big deal?” Forgive me for taking it a little personally.

I’d like to believe that y81 is merely another blind optimist of America, who presumes future success based on the success of the past.  The alternative explanation for y81’s cluelessness is that he or she is just too self-centered to understand other people’s perspectives, and that there’s been a whole generation of Americans who grew up without massive external shocks to their way of life.  Yes, we are/were spoiled.  If seems like y81 resents that and want for us to accept that such challenges are inevitable in the grand scheme of history.

Well, I don’t think so.  Change is inevitable, but the bad policies of the past administration has put us years behind where we could have been, and more people are going to have a tougher path to security and happiness because of it.  Just because we will probably bounce back and thrive as a nation is no reason to blithely blow off the threats that we face now.  It might not be a big deal to y81.  Good for him.  That he can’t tell that it is a big deal for younger generations feeds into that unfortunate caricature of grumpy old people.  “When I was a lad...” Maybe this comment was satirical, and if so, brilliant work, I fell for it.  But it is a sentiment I’ve read elsewhere. 

Guess y81 is voting for angry John McCain along with Phil “mental recession” Gramm.