Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Kathleen McCook's avatar

Alert -- very inside baseball post below.

I lost all faith in the DNC May 31, 2008 when the rules were used to give Obama the nomination over Clinton. I watched this on C-Span.

The DNC Rules Committee left the room and viewers could not see that part.

They came back and made sure Obama got the nomination over HRC.

The Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee considered two separate challenges concerning the seating of delegations from Florida and Michigan at the national convention in Denver.

Formal presentations were heard from the challengers and representatives of the Florida and Michigan state Democratic parties and the presidential campaigns of Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The committee then broke for an extended lunch, after which they heard motions on the challenges and remedies to provide representation by delegations at the convention. The committee voted to seat the full delegations of both Michigan and Florida with each delegate casting one half vote. YOU CAN STILL WATCH this.

Thus Iowa in 2020 was no surprise to me.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?205768-1/democratic-rules-bylaws-committee-meeting&event=205768&playEvent

Expand full comment
KAL's avatar

Amen. Signed, overeducated, underpaid and sexually frustrated.

A tad more serious, a half decade ago, I got the vague vision that I wanted, in fact, needed to "drop out." I felt like a crazy person because I hated the world I found myself living in and the systems and relationships I found myself a slave to. Everyone else seemed to be happy enough in it, why couldn't I be?

I hated the the fact that I felt more like a two dimensional avatar then a three dimensional person. Most people seemed happy enough to live out a life on social media. Maybe they made peace with their fate? When the average person can't afford to have children, to own a home, to afford land to grow things or raise things, to afford to be able to try to launch a business or several businesses, or even to run for office--- all accomplishments in the real world... I guess doing things in a digital world is satisfying enough? It wasn't for me, I felt like I was wasting away.

I deleted my social media accounts and felt better but it still wasn't enough. I felt infected with the shallowness of relating that is an effect of over a decade of hollowing out of possibilities, topped off with people failing to actually develop real lives and real personalities... so surprise, surprise they don't have much interesting to say in conversation, except to repeat memes.

As fate would have it, I found a way to drop out. I'm moving to an 11 acre rural property in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains in South East Ohio. It's a decidedly unhip place (I tried Austin and Los Angeles) that no one is rushing to move to. My neighbors will be Amish families, antiques collectors and other characters, who still live in the analog world.

I love it. My goal is to ween myself as much off digital life as I can. And live some kind of neo-romanticism and try to rebuild an off-line life and community as much as possible with like minds.

As I shared my crazy vision with others, I was shocked about how many other people had the same longings...

Expand full comment
604 more comments...

No posts