Recovering from and analyzing the implications of the election have been taxing (heh). Plus I was forced to spend some time in Las Vegas speaking to dairy producers.
But two recent items helped me makes some sense of these events.
First a reminder we are the Purple States of America:
I think shifting to this image from the red-blue digital mode is a better model for our brains to use. We have stark divisions enough without introducing an arbitrary and inaccurate choice of two options.
Today I also read something that may help explain why current events are so troublesome for many: the pace of change is really remarkable.
Whether we intended to or not, whether it was sufficient or not, whether we liked it or not, we have been living through a remarkable period of political change in these last few years. We have bored through so many hard boards that we’re no longer surprised when we reach the other side, and we mainly wonder why we haven’t gotten through more of them, or why we didn’t choose different ones. But viewed against most other eras in American life, the pace of policy change in these last few years has been incredibly fast. Historians, looking back from more quiescent periods, will marvel at all that we have lived through. Activists, frustrated at their inability to shake their countrymen out of their tranquility, will wish they’d been born in a moment when things were actually getting done, a moment like this one. [More well worth the time]We do get tricked into forgetting all the changes we have seen. Perhaps we have become better at adapting. But there is a pace that discomfits us. I think we have met or exceeded that for many, and will continue to face difficult adjustments.
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