As frustrating as they have been, the string of fiascos which characterize the chronic dysfunction of the Democratic Party are also very interesting. There have been all sorts of investigations and analyses, and poking, and prodding, and soul-searching, all of which have provided countless illuminations to work with, which in turn raise all sorts of interesting questions.
One of those questions is this: how does all of that incompetence and haplessness stick together so coherently? Amidst the dazzling complexity and the constant chaos of our troubled political system, there is a striking coherence and predictability of failure and botchery among the party elite.
They've had two decades - at the very least - to work all of this out, and that is two decades full of very clear and apparent crises with clear and apparent causes and clear and apparent solutions, and still it goes on. The system's dysfunction is ignored and the incompetent give a leg-up to the incompetent and everyone manages to stick to the club together and keep the whole charade running.
I mean, these people are sitting atop perhaps the greatest concentration of material wealth in human history, and a vast reserve of actionable and digestible knowledge, and the labor reserves to put all of it into motion, yet they quarrel among themselves for greatest title of ruiner, while beating back all attempts of well-meaning people to actually do something.
There is plenty to be said about the nature of the genesis and dissolution, the rise and fall, of the myriad movements that make up the dynamism of our social systems. There are lessons here in the nature of our economic systems, of how they are behaving and changing, of power and ego, of social dynamics and networks, and all the rest, lots of which I've had a ball writing about previously.
I had a more general point though.
One curious aspect of reality - as illustrated by Plato's advice to "carve nature at the joints" - is the tendency of things to grow into being together in distinct couplings, and then to pass out of being together. "Joints" imply joinery and the binding together of distinct and coherent things, say of muscle and bone whose hardness and compactness allows for continuous and distinct activity, that is, of the existence of a distinct living thing.
And it seems these things come into the world together, and they do indeed become interpenetrated by the outer world, say in the form of energy, food, water, waste, and daily maintenance and reproduction, but then not past a certain point, and then they depart together.
