dagblog - Comments for "In the heart of tea party country, Kansas faces a new revolution: The rise of moderate Republicans"

Rust belt Gov. Kasich seems

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 20:53:33 +0000

In reply to This cross-link belongs on

Rust belt Gov. Kasich seems to be seeing this, getting this too:

John Kasich Sounds Like He's Over The Republican Party

Note that Dagblogger Richard Day comments on that thread that he likes Kasich, he could deal with Kasich. What more do you need to know? Yes, it's on personality and the personality says: I'm not a party guy, I don't march in lockstep with these crazy old parties and old polarizations, I look to the future.

This cross-link belongs on

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 20:46:36 +0000

In reply to 1st. I think one of the

This cross-link belongs on this subthread:

Can flyover country share the prosperity of Silicon Valley? The AOL billionaire is making it his cause

I'll go beyond the theme of the article and point out that it's two independent-minded pols going non-partisan here at the top of the article: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, a first-term Republican, and Ro Khanna, a newly elected Democratic congressman representing Silicon Valley

I think this is what a majority of voters including millenials really want, at least temporarily while waiting for ~~meaning to come back to life~~ Godot: types like these guys moving away from the standard old big party platforms, looking to the future. They don't like either party platform as is. It's like the famous old chant from a MASH episode: we want something else! Including Trump swings, they wanted something else. Obama managed to win re-election through styming attempts to paint him as Joe Liberal DNC all his presidency. I dare say even Hillary probably would have avoided her end downfall had she renounced DNC sooner, though she would have still been very polarizing only because of the al; the misfortunes of her past history with this country, how she had been so thoroughly labeled. Her history would have enabled continuing polarization, mostly by conservative and faux media dragging up old memes for sure. The big party platforms are so unappealing because they are simply repeating old polarizing paradigms that don't fit people anymore. There is nothing to be passionate about because the narrative of I, individual voter, doesn't feel he/she fits in those square pegs the party is offering. Like "white male" or "soccer mom"/

you really hit on something

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 18:59:43 +0000

In reply to I was thinking re: LInkedIn

you really hit on something with the word "romance" methinks, that really pegs a lot of things for me.

I see it in the art market, I been told it straight out by more than a few millenials, they like romantic narratives. They prefer illustration art with romantic themes to any other kind. I am talking someone like a wacky Korean American wannabe artist, she paints abstract but loves her some Norman Rockwell or N.C. Wyeth. Us oldsters have been gobmacked by this: they give a shit about connoisseurship, they want romantic narrative, they want romantic images. And it is all about the image, not the process. And I am not talking the bodice-ripper definition of the word, though that would also appy, yes precisely: heroic coal miners would work the meme too.

Edit to add: this has clearly in my mind filtered from the masses up, it is not top down. To the point where the Russian oligarch type will pay a pretty penny at auction for the type of art that stirs the millenial heart, he wants a "good image" above all, because he can see that is what has already been crowd approved.

Reporting for you from the

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 18:40:30 +0000

In reply to Interesting. Too many

Reporting for you from the front lines on the smoking issue. I'm a smoker so all the time outside buildings in NYC I not only see who are my compadres in my evil habit, but chat and bond with them. Because we are shunned we bond, apart from everyone else. In NYC the 23% or so diehard smokers that can't be cracked are very much working class or have the down-to-earthness of having come from a working class background. Very much non elite.

When in Manhattan, and other big cities, this much is also clear: lots of foreigners of the type who can afford to be tourists are part of our gang, not working class, need a light, will join in the chat. Asian and European and Brit...

I like to call this phenomenon neue pow-wow.

Edit to add: That said, been to raves and such with the youngsters where smoking tobacco (and most definitely not the electronic version of nicotine, they use electronic means only for hookah style parties) seems to be the next black. It is radical, is clearly why. And the elite celebs have picked up on that, as with the controversial selfies of the crew smoking in the ladies' room at the Met Museum Fashion Gala. The "streets up" thing is definitely operative here.

I learned a long time ago to

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 18:38:29 +0000

In reply to Reporting for you from the

I learned a long time ago to join smokers on smoke breaks or I'd lose out on the power decisions and useful bonding. But if the smokers aren't smoking, what will happen to this centuries-old ritualistic engagement?

I was thinking re: LInkedIn

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 18:35:00 +0000

In reply to One thing that hit me right

I was thinking re: LInkedIn this morning that with all the announcements of breakthrough tech here, breakthrough business strategy there, it translates to say a half million people working in an Amazon warehouse or a call center or something else not terrible attractive even though not terribly dangerous or hazardous either. For all its faults, maybe the coal mine and factory were better, more inspiring, more movie hero-like in some way, life's drama. Of course the janitor at NASA who was "helping put a man on the moon" redefined his own narrative, but that's also putting a man on the moon, not coming up with a new app for speed dating or putting taxi drivers out of work.

Is anyone really "individual" any more? wait, let me check my Facebook feed, I can answer that myself....

I also see the Eurotrash backpackers of yore turned into the kind of middle class mundane travelers that the Catcher in the Rye guy worried about becoming - they have all the details of their travel worked out, even the map's on smartphone with a data connection, they have recs for which places they should see or things to do. It's a world away from my hopping a plane with not enough money and knowing next to zilch about where I'm going, not even where I'd stay or how to survive. Granted there's probably a happy medium, but I don't see the romance in the current trends, and at some point we still need romance or we'll create more drama just because.

One thing that hit me right

artappraiser — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 18:24:56 +0000

In reply to Thanks for this Q. Yes to

One thing that hit me right away reading your comment: I suspect that millenials would not cotton to being life-long loyal IBM men to give their life "purpose" either. If they learned anything from the Don Draper "narrative" which most probably know quite well. Especially as they grew up with the whole "start up" narrative where the Gates-Steve Jobs-Zuckerberg-Musk follows his idiosyncratic dream. Individualism is like written into their D.N.A.? The hope is always to do "it" on the internet, attracting people you don't know to your own narrative. Hives form but they aren't meant to last long, things coalesce and shit. On just one topic, issue, like "Girls Who Code." (This is why the anti-Trump women's march was so amazing, it truly was the greatest flash mob of all time so far.) I don't get a sense where one can find "meaning" from that. Is in Lena Dunning's writings, she's become one of the successes and her answer on finding meaning is still that the only meaning of life is you just live it.

Now this is one is truly babble, but I am going to hit send anyways, just in case there's some there there for someone else.

Thanks for this Q. Yes to

Obey — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 17:42:36 +0000

In reply to 1st. I think one of the

Thanks for this Q. Yes to most of it. Plays into some things Artappraiser has been saying about the newer values taking over.

"Meaning" is what I was trying to get at with the more binary descriptions in terms of feeling engaged or attuned, empowered or enfranchised or in the flow. And I was saying it in response to some of AA's comments about the current disconnect between near full-employment and radical politics on both wings. Basically there needs to be a sense of hope, of where one's individual efforts can build to, of where collective efforts can build up to in terms of a meaningful future. And hopping from one internship and one network building unpaid gig to the short-term consultant contract isn't going to give shape to the former as much as the current centrist "resistance" politics isn't going to give shape to anything concrete other than a future somehow without this or that asshole right-winger. Not a millennial, but none of mainstream politics makes any kind of sense to me. Bernie and Trump both become vessels for people's frustrations by just being shouty grumps calling out mainstream politics as bullshit. Bernie is however less of a fascist, imho. And he is creating at least some of a positive movement with all the left-wing engagement in terms of separate networks of electoral candidates.

Hope all is well with you up in the north!!

p.s. I will look into Frankl. Let me know if you have any other interesting ideas off the beaten track.

Conservatives have talked

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 05:55:19 +0000

In reply to 1st. I think one of the

Conservatives have talked down education as just being a den of leftist thought, while placing military as the honorable alternative (suppor the troops, tho a lot of these trenchant conservatives have never served a day). They don't provide solutions, or reasonable alternatives, but somehow their persuasion gets through to Joe Cracker where it shouldn't. Why? Makes him feel good somehow, us vs. them fight?

Interesting. Too many

PeraclesPlease — Sun, 11 Jun 2017 05:47:00 +0000

In reply to So Q's comment got me

Interesting. Too many thoughts, but one jumps out - why is Germany doing so well, along with many other socialist-capitalist EU countries, and why such an enemy? Maybe Merkel's insistence on Syrian immigrants, but is that it?

Also thinking the road to kill smoking will anger a lot of people on the way to an excellent end - what will people do with their hands during ling hiurs of pub time (drinking continuously is dangerous and not drinking or smoking for an hour is unlikely), plus what replaces smoke breaks?