"... and I'm sitting here waiting for the news to come in, sampling the dribbled out exit polls, and fretting. But at the same time, I feel complete assurance that as soon as the outcome is known, I'll fully accept it... Despite all this political blogging, I'm not really all that political.... It is equanimity that flows through me. Time for a nice glass of win, a plate of pasta with Bolognese sauce, and a calm absorption of reality. UPDATE: 'A nice glass of win' — ah, so hope does live on! Time for a nice glass of wine and toast to hope! A glass to be refilled later, perhaps, in a quenching of sorrow!"
Said I, in my first election-night blogging, back on November 7, 2004.
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22 comments:
Professor - You wrote "a nice glass of win" - Freudian Slip?
You caught it quick I see...
Although a nice glass of win tonight may lead to a few beers.
Freudian nothing! I think that was Ann's slip.
Yeah, I was pouring a glass of wine this evening and it brought back the memory of that "nice glass of win" 10 years ago.
My all-time best typo, I think.
Was that Russ Feingold that you wanted to see win? He was attractive as Senators go.
Sharing the recipe for the Bolognese sauce is more important than all of the election news combined.
Interesting to review the names of commenters in the older posts. Some I recognize, but they haven't commented recently.
I wonder what the life cycle of a commenter is?
What makes you think it's any good, Dan? She's anosmic!
ah, I will do any gloating here, if there is gloating to be done, anonymously.
While it will be interesting to see what the voters decide today, I've been thinking that in the long run, it probably won't make much difference. The American electorate is made up of two large groups (35-40% each) with competing visions of what the proper role of government, and the relationship between the government and the governed, should be, with a significant group in the middle that tends to be apolitical but votes anyway because that's what they feel like they should be doing, regardless of whether they are knowledgeable or informed on the issues. The last group is fickle, tending to become disillusioned with the governing efforts of the party in power and turning them out of power after a few years, only to remember why they hated the other guys, too. To use a football analogy, politics is played between the 40-yard lines. Nobody is going to score a touchdown, they're just maneuvering for position to try to kick a long field goal to win the game.
The pendulum swings back and forth. This time around, it's Obama who is the unpopular president after six years; last time around, it was Bush. The voters will have their say, and the only real question is whether the Democrats' defeat will be beyond the margin of cheating and fraud. As noted, however, the pendulum will swing again, even if the Republicans pick up the Senate this time around. The fickle middle will soon go back to their "Dancing With The Stars", fantasy football leagues and other distractions.
There are other places in the world that are far more serious about their politics and dealing with their political enemies. ISIS, for instance, has nothing on Pol Pot and the Cambodians, back in the day. Rather than re-education camps, they just round up their defeated enemies, whole villages and tribes, men, women and children, and shoot them. Such ruthlessness is not only instructive for others who might resist them, but in exterminating their enemies root and branch, they don't have to worry about their enemies coming back to fight them in the future. It's not a new strategy, of course; it's the same one pursued by people like Alexander the Great and Genghis Khan: Surrender and give up your treasures, or be part of the pyramid of skulls outside of the ruins that once were your city. Such barbarous cruelty can create a system that is seemingly very stable, until it either collapses from within from factional infighting or is crushed by an external enemy. Nothing is forever, and even such vicious regimes as the Soviets, the Nazis, Pol Pot's Cambodia, etc., eventually were destroyed. ISIS, too, will eventually get their comeuppance.
"The possibility of getting off it in the fastest possible time once you notice you're on it again is the possibility of being equanimitous.
This is a possibility I invented for myself and my life: the possibility of being equanimitous. Then, after I'd invented being equanimitous as a possibility for myself and for my life, I then discovered this: officially there's no such word in the English language as "equanimitous". Really. There isn't. There should be. But there isn't. Look it up. You'll see.
There is, however, such a word as "equanimity" which is where I got the idea from.
Where google took me trying to put together "abstemiously equanimitous", which by now has emerged as possibly redundant... ha! here is the Madison Rotunda again.
The sauce recipe is from the great Marcella Hazan cookbook "Classic Italian Cooking." I've been making it since the 70s. Everyone loves it.
As for anosmia, I think that's something that's happened in the last few years. Not relevant to 2004 and surely not relevant to the 70s.
"... it will be interesting to see what the voters decide today..."
It might, if you could see it through the fraud.
That description is the way I felt about 2000. I was not that fond of Bush and had supported McCain as a volunteer. I thought Gore was the adult between him and Clinton. Boy was I wrong !
I must say, I think Gore lost his sanity after 2000. He seemed pretty level headed, if dull, before that. Even Tipper left.
Here's the recipe. I'm not typically a bolo-guy, but one of my favorite bars in Chicago makes Bolognese fries...they also serve the best burger in town, bar none.
I think Gore lost his sanity after 2000.
I voted for Gore in 2000, and today I wonder why??
I don't know where and when I made comments in those days, but by election day 2004 I had been following the Althouse blog for about a month.
"I feel complete assurance that as soon as the outcome is known, I'll fully accept it."
Sounds like a tested serenity recipe. I plan on borrowing that one.
Oh my lord you are so pretentious, so ostentatious, such a dilettante. Did you even make the sauce?
Another of my hints for good writing, even though I know my grammar is not always the best, I try not to use words in a way that makes it look like I just got them from a thesaurus.
but if it is to be Kerry, Kerry can handle the job too.
I wonder if you still think that?
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