(no subject)

[proximoception]

Now that default may actually happen I'm feeling more bemused than worried. If it does a bunch of people will certainly die, something that happens when many bunches of people go broke, so it's a terrible thing, one not at all to be desired. But part of me is getting very curious about how the different groups will look at one another, after. Obviously I know more or less how the people with sewn-shut eyes will be, and the ones already alert. But the rest, the sleepers! 2000, 2001, 2004, 2008 - who was at fault was clear enough to those looking, but they weren't caught red-handed by the drifting and distracted. But this - it will be impossible to not look this time. Will looking mean they'll see?

Comments

[mendaciloquent.livejournal.com]

Will looking mean they'll see?

Never.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

I think you're right. But why are you right?

[mendaciloquent.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure. There's something at stake, and whatever it is has a value that exceeds that of the truth. There's some kind of loss in repudiating a legacy even after it's beyond any hope of rehabilitation. But what's lost? That's what I don't get.

One possibility is that the value of the truth for some people is extraordinarily low, with little or no inherent benefit in acknowledging it without it being tied to some other form of advantage.

The other possibility is that "the legacy" (of the right) is so deeply coded to the old/white/male/Christian patriarchal order, that anything it ever staked its reputation on must be defended, or at the very least its failures must be forgotten, in the hope of maintaining the integrity of the whole -- or at the very least, the idea of the "good fight". And I think there are whole groups of camp followers (middle-class women, most notably) who've hitched themselves to that task and who resent anything that reminds them that it's sliding into demographic oblivion.

[proximoception.livejournal.com]

Yeah, all that. Sunk cost fallacy, confirmation bias, projection, cornered animal rage, misplaced loyalty. No one thing, pretty much all the things.

Watching it break apart is something to live for. To the extent I let myself believe it will.

[mendaciloquent.livejournal.com]

I think we may live to see it break, with the stipulation that nearly everything else will break first.