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[BEAT]

NO STAY

BE FRIENDS WITH ME

I'M YOUR FRIEND

[Sharkey]

I'm just going to pretend this is a relevant metaphor for something.

[Stush]

Beat is awesome, i'll totally be beat's friend!

Also, I am not scared of skulls, just complete skeletons!

[Sharkey]

There's one hiding inside you.

[Mongrel]

Now all I can think of are Blackwulf's bouncy pet rubber skull things from Wizards.

[Sharkey]

Or whatshisdick from Planescape. Oh! Or the clownskull from Chrono Cross. Man, we're just up to our tits in disembodied skulls here.

[Kazz]

Our predisposition to believe the world is falling apart is more worrying than anything that the world is actually doing.

[R^2]

To be fair, the clownskull in Chrono Cross eventually gets rebuilt into a full skellington playable character who joins your party after a bit of a sidequest. And if you're not willing to go through a sidequest to get a nigh-useless playable character on your team, why are you playing Chrono Cross?

Huh, that's an LP idea. Go through Chrono Cross skipping everything but story sequences and only recruiting required characters. Maybe trimming everything down would make the game better.

Nah. Nothing can salvage the last act.

[Pacobird]

Well, there are two things going on here.

One, there's the issue of the pervasive economic insecurity facing Americans under 35 when compared with previous generations.  Nobody's ever been in control of their political destiny, which is what the article's talking about, but that did not necessarily affect you on more than an intellectual level if you knew you'd be fed and dry.  Economic uncertainty breeds a very personal kind of fear and paranoia, and it seems pretty natural to me that this would color one's larger worldview, especially when that looming spectre of poverty encourages you to empathize with the great mass of poor people worldwide who are ceaselessly fucked by international conflict, no matter who wins.

The other issue is that people under the age of 35 today don't view US foreign policy as an aberration within a generally right-thinking political culture.  With Vietnam, the young could say it was a terrible idea and protest it but at the same time look to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and see a lot they agreed with, otherwise.  It was a simple thing to decide that the government was trying to do its best but the existential threat of a nuclear USSR was provoking it to do some dumb, dumb things. 

Today, the difference is the young no longer see American foreign policy as independent from domestic/fiscal policy.  After Iraq, there is just no way any of us are going to be able to separate war from profiteering, even in a hypothetical situation where a use of military force would be reasonable and just (I would submit Mali as the most recent example).  This really cannot be understated; young people today attribute all sorts of malfeasance and bad agency to their government, but very much unlike the hippies or even the Reaganites they feel they can't do anything about it, and this is unspeakably terrifying.

[Zaratustra]

young people today attribute all sorts of malfeasance and bad agency to their government, but very much unlike the hippies or even the Reaganites they feel they can't do anything about it, and this is unspeakably terrifying.

This comes from both parties being extremely right-winged right now; the big debates in politics right now are over extremist crap like whether poor people should be allowed to go to the hospital. This is not tenable long-term; sooner or later one of the parties has to run out of momentum and reorganize itself in different terms.

[Pacobird]

Yes, and I'd very much like to think Bill DeBlasio's nomination is a sign of things to come where younger voters just reject the Reagan vs. Clinton debate of the past 20 years, but we'll see.

[Royal☭]

I can tell you already read Peter Beinart's article about the New Left. It's a good read, and definitely shows a real analysis of how the Millenial generation is going to shape things (protip: they're a larger generation than the Baby Boomers, but nobody wants to talk about that).

It's articles like that, really, that make me cast of this idea that people are afraid and think a collapse or great disaster is coming. Liberal environmentalist may be in fear of the long emergency, but I suspect that most people in our generations, while they hate the current economic and political client, are organizing because they foresee a better future.

[Pacobird]

Yeah, I did read that article and the spadework makes sense, but he kind of ignores that the hippies who were so deeply opposed to Vietnam were all in on Iraq.  I don't think peoples' opinions become as intractable as he claims.

Again, I'd LIKE to think he's right but it's really just impossible to say at this point.  If DeBlasio can win in NYC, that's nice, but to extrapolate that into some sort of national shift is typical pundit bullshit.  Most self-described liberals I know are still in love with Obama.

EDIT: a DeBlasio win would be a massive victory in the push for living wages for service workers, though

[AČ]

To be fair, the clownskull in Chrono Cross eventually gets rebuilt into a full skellington playable character who joins your party after a bit of a sidequest. And if you're not willing to go through a sidequest to get a nigh-useless playable character on your team, why are you playing Chrono Cross?

Huh, that's an LP idea. Go through Chrono Cross skipping everything but story sequences and only recruiting required characters. Maybe trimming everything down would make the game better.

Nah. Nothing can salvage the last act.

I played a game of Chrono Cross where I recruited everyone and named them all "Serge"

[Pacobird]

Sybil: The Video Game

[Mongrel]

That article about the new left was pretty good. I remain moderately skeptical due to the entrenchment of extreme power imbalances, media fragmentation, and the complete disruption and near-total ineffectiveness of the occupy movement, but demographics usually do trump all.

[Thad]

With ietnam, the young could say it was a terrible idea and protest it but at the same time look to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and see a lot they agreed with, otherwise.  It was a simple thing to decide that the government was trying to do its best but the existential threat of a nuclear USSR was provoking it to do some dumb, dumb things.

but

Most self-described liberals I know are still in love with Obama.

but

Yes, and I'd very much like to think Bill DeBlasio's nomination is a sign of things to come where younger voters just reject the Reagan vs. Clinton debate of the past 20 years, but we'll see.

This is an interesting set of contradictions to try and unpack.

I think it's fairly obvious that sir, Obama's no Jack Kennedy, nor Johnson, but on the other hand he's still fairly popular and I definitely think he's got that thing going where people who want to stay the fuck out of Syria still generally like him and agree with him.  Then again, I think domestic stuff like the various surveillance programs may be chipping away at people's opinion of him, and his signature accomplishment, while a step in the right direction, is nothing like the seismic shifts that were the Apollo Program and the Civil Rights Acts.  Indeed, I don't think it escapes my generation's notice that both NASA and civil rights are being chipped away.

I'd love to see a shift toward more legitimate liberals as Democratic nominees, and it's not impossible -- hell, it's probably not even quite as much of an uphill battle as it's been these past 13 years since Nader.  I think conventional wisdom continues to be that the way to beat a Republican is to run just one tiny iota to his left, but the rise of the Tea Party has probably made that a less appealing proposition.  The Right has gotten so far right and so unappealing that the Democrats want to put a more visible distance between themselves and their opponents.  I think it also means that you can go pretty far left and still manage to win, because people straight-up aren't going to vote for the other guy.

I think it's safe to say that the Democratic Establishment isn't going to figure this out.  But primary voters might.  After all, Obama's primary victory in 2008 came partially from a groundswell of support from people who thought he was a lot more liberal than he actually is.

[Brentai]

The problem you run into is, as always, you can't just assume that the Democratic Establishment as a whole actually wants to be liberal.  It's easy to find a few shining examples, but most of those guys and especially their leaders are really somewhere to the right of Obama, as is natural for an contemporary elected official.

[Pacobird]

With ietnam, the young could say it was a terrible idea and protest it but at the same time look to the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and see a lot they agreed with, otherwise.  It was a simple thing to decide that the government was trying to do its best but the existential threat of a nuclear USSR was provoking it to do some dumb, dumb things.

but

Most self-described liberals I know are still in love with Obama.

but

Yes, and I'd very much like to think Bill DeBlasio's nomination is a sign of things to come where younger voters just reject the Reagan vs. Clinton debate of the past 20 years, but we'll see.

This is an interesting set of contradictions to try and unpack.

I think it's fairly obvious that sir, Obama's no Jack Kennedy, nor Johnson, but on the other hand he's still fairly popular and I definitely think he's got that thing going where people who want to stay the fuck out of Syria still generally like him and agree with him.  Then again, I think domestic stuff like the various surveillance programs may be chipping away at people's opinion of him, and his signature accomplishment, while a step in the right direction, is nothing like the seismic shifts that were the Apollo Program and the Civil Rights Acts.  Indeed, I don't think it escapes my generation's notice that both NASA and civil rights are being chipped away.

I'd love to see a shift toward more legitimate liberals as Democratic nominees, and it's not impossible -- hell, it's probably not even quite as much of an uphill battle as it's been these past 13 years since Nader.  I think conventional wisdom continues to be that the way to beat a Republican is to run just one tiny iota to his left, but the rise of the Tea Party has probably made that a less appealing proposition.  The Right has gotten so far right and so unappealing that the Democrats want to put a more visible distance between themselves and their opponents.  I think it also means that you can go pretty far left and still manage to win, because people straight-up aren't going to vote for the other guy.

I think it's safe to say that the Democratic Establishment isn't going to figure this out.  But primary voters might.  After all, Obama's primary victory in 2008 came partially from a groundswell of support from people who thought he was a lot more liberal than he actually is.

difference:

deblasio was nominated in nyc and i live in the upper midwest

[Thad]

The problem you run into is, as always, you can't just assume that the Democratic Establishment as a whole actually wants to be liberal.

Wouldn't dream of it.

It's easy to find a few shining examples, but most of those guys and especially their leaders are really somewhere to the right of Obama, as is natural for an contemporary elected official.

Right.  I believe now, as I always have, that any change on the party will have to be forced on it against the leadership's wishes.

Which hasn't been working out so well for the Republicans, mind, but again, the "center" has been skewed so thoroughly that the Democratic Party can move pretty significantly to the left and still be in step with the mainstream.  They'd need to get a lot better at messaging, though, and it's tough to imagine someone who's got as natural a gift for it as Obama, and while he's been able to achieve reelection he hasn't been able to break gridlock.

difference:

deblasio was nominated in nyc and i live in the upper midwest

And you know where my ass is sitting.

Albeit in one of the more liberal districts of Arizona.  We elected an openly bisexual Congresswoman!