I think the only truly useful long-term measure in politics is progress or regression in the fundamental principles we supposedly stand for. For me, that primarily means civil liberties, which Bush decimated and Obama has shown the merest twitch toward protecting.
The overall trend is clear: we’re in an era of more invasive government and diminishing personal privacy. I support a lot of socially progressive policies, but the notion that an American president of any party can lock up American citizens without charge? That shouldn’t be negotiable, let alone policy. It cancels out concerns like social policy–when the house is on fire, you don’t worry about where the pictures hang.
Those anti-civil liberties problems, along with blundering lie-based belligerence, are what drove me to complete opposition to Bush and his Republican Party (anybody see that Bush today has claimed to be a “dissenting voice” re: the Iraq War? No, really. I guess he was just kidding in all those speeches. Why stop making stuff up just ’cause you’re retired?).
The Democrats are hardly doing much better–they just seem less intent on the extremes. That the Republicans own the House for a while isn’t going to change these overall trends, so I guess we’re back to what the below video (via Boing-Boing) portrays as our glorious two-party system. Hard to care very much.
For me, the worst to emerge from yesterday’s election is the defeat of a man who has repeatedly stood up for civil liberties in passionate fashion: Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold. That’s a true bummer. Doesn’t bode well for the health of the Internet re: Net Neutrality, either.
The best to emerge from yesterday is the muscle-flexing of the Tea Party–I firmly believe they will prove to be a major GOP albatross. Much as I find their generalized rage useless (and a comic goldmine), it’s a shame that an attempted third party is nothing but a rebranding of the extremes of one of the two “major” parties.
So here we go–the results of the 2010 midterm elections. Yessir, it’s change from the last change! Again!:
