You know, it's hard to feel whimsical and funny when (1) it's been 90 degrees and 100-percent humidity, (2) you feel as though your fingers are the size of sausages (the 100-percent humidity) while the rest of you is blobby and tired, and (3) the state of the world is just freakin' crazy.
Remember how awful welfare reform was? Remember how we seriously debated whether Clinton needed to resign for lying about having sex? Reasonable people could have different opinions! Remember how Al Gore was just so plastic, and how could anybody vote for him, because he was just so boring boring boring? In 2000, I had a friend who wouldn't vote for Gore because Tipper once fought to label music with explicit lyrics. This was a dealbreaker for her.
Today, of course, we have a fresh assortment of things over which to summon legitimate outrage. And it's not even just what the current administration does that's the problem. It's the way that things are normalized; what's acceptable has shifted. Remember when nukes were the unthinkable option and something we sought to reduce? Remember how we feared nuclear annihilation by the U.S.S.R.? First there was Dick Cheney and his tactical nuclear bunker busters. (Because what good is a weapon if you can't have nuclear fallout?) Now nukes are just one more tool in the arsenal, among Democrats. How is that even possible?
On slightly less existentially catastrophic fronts, I've been stunned to see the way that Republican talking points on social and economic issues have permeated, even among Democrats and progressives. This is all, of course, highly anecdotal.
Exhibit A: I attended an employee retirement-planning meeting at the educational institution where I work (no tycoons present). The Q&A session involved employees asking questions about how they should plan their estates to best avoid the "death tax." I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Exhibit B: A friend of mine, a very liberal man in his 50s, declared to me that Social Security was going bankrupt.
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