Well then, our troubles are deeper than we know.

On the right as long as you talk a good game on lowering taxes they’ll put aside any and all espoused convictions. See how quiet the Libertarians got when Roe v. Wade was overturned. Turns out any time I spent debating the preeminence of personal liberty and the NAP was a big fat waste of my time. Alas.

On the left we have an electorate that “…would rather be right than president,” and it turns out they get to be neither.

I keep ruminating on this argument, and it gives me deeply split feelings.

On one hand I keep thinking, voters need to grow up. Voting is how the populace gets to engage in self governance, i.e. politics, and as the aphorism goes, Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. Things that are easy aren’t solved by politics, and the voters need to accept that you’re often not going to get what you want and in governance you often have to settle for choosing the thing you hate the least.

On the other hand, I keep thinking I’m making the classic leftist mistake of demanding everyone should do what I think is right, because I am right, and then being frustrated when my rightness isn’t blindingly obvious to everyone.

Like the lady says, It’s like rain on your wedding day…

In the 80’s and 90’s there was strong undercurrent that activism couldn’t actually change anything. It was the end of history, all outcomes are and always were inevitable, voting with dollars was the only vote that really matters. Hippy punching was in it’s full flower. Environmentalism was seen as self indulgent and meaningless. “Save the whales,” was spit out as a sort of, ‘go waste someone else’s time,’ dismissal.

The 4th Dilbert collection from 94’ was Shave the Whales, which already struck me as a passe gesture at hippy punching at the time, though I couldn’t tell if Scott Adams was engaging in hippy punching or mocking the hippy punchers.

This is a good video on the subject

That is not an uncommon guess, but the argument against it is that these took some sophistication to make. This isn’t some disposable gewgaw. These were made with relatively tight tolerances and exhibited the best metalworking fabrication of the age. One theory I’ve seen seriously floated was that they were made as a demonstration of metal working competency, the equivalent of a benchy in 3D printing.