Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, January 28, 2016

Do You Know What Is More Anti-Establishment Than Running for President?

Literally everything.

2 comments:

Lorraine said...

Well I guess that's what's really painful about politics. Almost everything is more anti-establishment than running for president, but any anarchist could tell you that. What's really soul-crushingly depressing is the fact that if there's one thing even less anti-establishment, it's failure to vote for a mainstream presidential candidate. It's like you lose either way. What I like about you, the one weird trick that makes you different from the army of pragmatic scolds bearing the same message, is that at least you get it about the fact that you lose either way, combined with the way you're optimistic and encouraging enough to remind us that there's politics outside electoral politics. The Underground Railroad is several chapters of American history, while Frederick Douglass' presidential bid is a footnote in American history, etc.

Dale Carrico said...

One never arrives at complete justice, and that really never is the least bit okay, but the fact that it isn't okay doesn't change the fact that you might as well fight against waste and harm and for fairness and lose much too much while winning occasionally along the way, always saying as clearly as you can the way things could and should be, mobilizing all the disparate forces at hand to do the best you can, and reconciling yourself to the heartbreaking compromised reform that implements most of what little you get as you live and fight and celebrate and suffer right up until you die. It's the only game in town, after all, so there's no use wasting too much energy bemoaning it and there's plenty of reason to be as clear as you can about just what you have to work with to marshal the forces at hand to their best possible effect. I like the thought of being a pragmatic scold. I always have had a smidge of Mary Poppins in me.