Akrasia

Here's an insightful essay about ambivalence by Richard Ford: Tempting times [Guardian] It's about his reaction to the Democrats' defeat.

It's a short piece, so I won't spoil it for you by carving out my favorite chunks. Like a lot of people, Ford is self-consciously vacillating between righteous outrage and self-protective narcissism. It's tough to lose, especially when you can't quite decide what kind of defeat it was. Was it inevitable? Did we botch it? Was it a crushing defeat, or a minor electoral setback? If we're going to be outraged, who should we get mad at?

There's something perverse and demoralizing about being furious at many of the people whose oppression was outraging us in the first place. Ford understands the complex relationship between high minded moral sentiment and tribalism. In this election they seem to have fed off each other in complex ways. In the aftermath, it's a lot for our poor monkey brains to process.

Cf. Tom the Dancing Bug

Comments

[Herbert Browne]

We need better ideas? Hmmm, during the VietNam war the 'better ideas' were proposed by a smaller minority to a much more hostile majority. And yes- "we" still carry this national bifurcation around because of that. Those who still hang onto the "redeeming" features of war (eg that it was the bootstrap out of the Depression, that it created a sense of national unity, that we got to firmly believe that Allies did only "Good", while the Axis was only "Evil", etc) still yearn for those "good old days"... Nothing too obviously rational about it, but the emotional pull is tremendous- especially as that generation is shuffling offstage, now. There's also a guilty backlash at play, because of the way those VietNam vets were treated, &/or portrayed; and "we" don't want to be 'guilty' of THAT again. So, no logical or 'moral' ideas are resonating loud enough to clear away the notion of this "one last chance" for the baby boomers to engage in a 'noble', 'just' war before their parents are no longer available to witness the performance as a beaming, grateful audience.
Bummer... ^..^