Getting into, or revisiting someone’s work when they die is a strange habit, and I’m not really sure whether it’s respectful or cruel. I suppose if you’re already familiar with the body of work, revisiting it as a tribute of sorts is understandable. If you’ve never tried it, though, it seems a little crass, as if you needed an extra-special something to find the impetus required to go through the work, and it just happened to be death.

I’m going to go read and re-read some J.D. Salinger now.

I used to think very little of Vampire Weekend (both as musicians and as a general ‘idea’). Over time I’ve come to appreciate not only their music, but more importantly, the whole idea of Vampire Weekend. Which makes me wonder. The band had their breakthrough in 2008, and since then they’ve been the primary representative of that whole trend of boat shoes and shorts and assorted ’summer for people with money’ accessories. They project an image of money and status (of non-musical provenance), the antithesis to most bands. I suppose what I’m wondering is, if post-2008, post-financial-crisis, in the current reality of poor employment opportunities and crushed dreams for young people, a band portraying a financially comfortable life of leisure isn’t just the perfect fantasy for everyone.

Aside: Too much of what I write starts with “I”.

I figured the year 2010 would be hard for Obama and the Democrats, but I certainly didn’t expect it to become so bad, so quickly. You wouldn’t necessarily expect one Senate seat to cause so much drama, but I think it’s mostly because of people’s pent-up anger and refusal to justify terrible governing anymore, rather than the loss of the seat itself. It certainly seems to have damaged the White House. The clearest sign that this moment might be the before-after split of this presidency is who gets the blame. Previously, left-leaning activists, progressives, and dedicated liberals were being targetted as the main obstacle for the Democratic Party. Their standards were too high, insiders said. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, Obama said. Fucking stupid, Rahm said. In the last few controversial issues, you could easily find a large contingent of the establishment blaming ‘the left’ for being unreasonable. This time, though, there is little of it. No one’s blaming Coakley’s defeat on how unreasonable her supporters are. It’s easier to blame when there is no consequence (losing votes), but when you’ve actually turned what seemed like an emerging Democratic majority into a huge mess, you’d be better off handling it very, very carefully instead of insulting the only people that can save you.

Scott Brown won because people in his state wanted him to represent them. Martha Coakley had every advantage possible, and still lost the elections. There are no exit polls to paint a clear picture on what exactly happened. There are some polls done by Research 2000, which focused on people who voted for Obama and then voted for Brown, or voted for Obama but decided to stay home this time. Obama voters who supported Brown or stayed home say that Obama has not been strong enough, his policies have not gone far enough, he has not been tough on Wall Street, and his healthcare proposals are insufficient (this is a state that already has mandates, keep in mind). People who voted for Obama and Brown, regardless of party affiliation, believe that neither Brown nor Coakley actually had their economic interests at heart. Even among Republican voters who supported Obama, those who claimed Brown represented them better were 42%, whereas 52% thought neither candidate represented them well. In general, the results show that those who voted for Obama and now voted for Brown (or did not vote for Coakley or Brown) aren’t satisfied with Obama’s performance, not necessarily his ideology, and the Democratic-leaning ones seem to be voting out of a punishment spirit rather than because of fear of liberalism.

Howard Dean was interviewed by Chris Matthews, and he tried to explain that he thought the results were partly a punishment to Democrats, intended as a wake-up call. Matthews seemed to find this idea incomprehensible, but it really isn’t. I would say that other than those who think of themselves as strategists, most people aren’t opposed to voting for any of the two parties, regardless of national majorities or party principles. It’s something that might elude people who see everything as part of a simple, straight line of ‘political ideology’.  It can seem strange to vote for a person that is less close to your ideal candidate than the opponent, but that’s only if you are only focusing on the maximum amount of good on that one particular election, not on any sort of long game.

Scott Brown was Massachussets’ choice as a representative for the state. Call me naive, but I would hope that, since this is supposed to be a representative democracy, he will actually represent his state. I don’t really think this is as simple an issue as “being in power = I do whatever I want, no matter how vastly different it is from what my state generally accepts”, regardless of what he said on the campaign trail. If he isn’t accepted by his state, they can always vote him out. Brown has to face re-election in 2012 since he is only finishing Kennedy’s term; unless he plans to run for President in 2012 (or has no concern for keeping the seat), I would imagine he’s not going to go full-blown right-wing. I don’t think it’d be a great idea. But what do I know? I just have this crazy notion that representatives should represent, but that might just be me.

Maybe Obama would do better if he was actually governing for someone. There’s that old saying that goes “if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one”. Something like that. Obama is kinda like that, I guess. Except it’s more like, if you try to please no one, you end up succeeding (and pleasing no one)”. He doesn’t really give the impression that he’s governing for anyone. He’s not really acting the way his supporters want him to act. I remember he used to quote an old line of FDR which went something like “I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it”. I don’t really disagree with the spirit of the line, but there’s a difference between making someone do it and having to beg someone to even consider it. A common theme in liberal writings these days is humiliation. They feel like they have to exert an insane amount of effort to receive the minimum attention from the person they supported, and they often don’t even get that minimum (single-payer advocates were kept away from health care discussion panels, for instance). No one is going to suffer through indignities willingly and forever, eventually they’ll stop voting or caring, and grow resentful of their tormentors.

I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that people who voted for Obama wouldn’t support any of his policies if they weren’t coming from him. If he had ran on most of the things he’s done, he wouldn’t have been received enthusiastically. It’s not really uncommon to find examples Democrats disparaging Republican healthcare proposals during the 2008 campaign and now accepting them (or similar ideas) because they are part of the terrible Democratic health care plan. People can only do this for so long. For Bush, it was about six years, before his popularity collapsed completely and he became a sitting duck. For Obama, it looks as if it’s less.

I believe in democracy, I guess. I mean, I’m not crazy about it. It’s not the greatest thing in the world or anything. It’s alright. Democracy is often going to yield results I don’t like, and that’s alright. That’s just the way it is. I do think an effort should be made to govern for everyone, not just for your own coalition (ideally, the benefits of your form of government will reach everyone so you’ll convince them). I don’t necessarily think that just because conservative-leaning individuals didn’t get their guy elected for President, that means they should be safely ignored and treated like garbage (though I enjoy doing that). It’s certainly a good thing that an elected official tries to actually pay attention to what the entire country thinks. That being said, it’s better to represent someone (the people who elected you and supported your platform) than to represent no one. If you are being criticized by ‘the left’, and you are being criticized by ‘the right’, and you are also being criticized by ‘the center’, then what exactly are you accomplishing? Nothing at all. You are doing a crap job.

I don’t like saying that people are stupid. It’s a convenient excuse for political outcomes. It’s also only partly true. People are stupid about some things. They’re very perceptive about some other things, though. I think that, today, a lot of us realize that arguments against Obama that we thought were silly during the campaign season were actually pretty accurate and truthful. Similarly, arguments to defend Obama that we thought were reasonable ended up being complete nonsense. This all happened even though we thought those people were so crazy, and our guys were so sane, and how could anyone possibly vote for anyone other than Obama? This tired defense of Obama’s administration that goes something like “he’s doing what he can! he’s being pragmatic! this is what I expected him to do” is ridiculous, and people aren’t stupid enough to fall for it. People can tell that there’s a difference between ‘trying to do something, and not succeeding entirely’ and ‘doing the exact opposite of what you said you’d do’. Obama’s ‘pragmatism’ is mostly doing the opposite of what he campaigned on. That’s not really a compromise, or pragmatism, or ‘centrism’, that’s just shameful lying. People aren’t stupid, they know there is a difference between Obama, say, not being able to remove lobbyist influence entirely, and Obama actually making backroom deals with pharmaceutical lobbies. he can’t sell his idea that he is trying hard but it takes time, fellas, when it’s clear that he’s not trying at all.

I’m pretty interested in seeing what happens during the 2010 elections. I can’t see them being positive for Democrats at all unless they seriously accomplish something this year, something tangible and undeniably good that no one other than hyperpartisans will oppose. I can’t see that happening unless Obama actually leads the party to achieve outcomes that are favorable for voters in reality. Not outcomes that they’ll try and sell as positive, but outcomes that will feel as positives to voters. There’s no real evidence that Obama can do this, or for that matter evidence that he would actually believe in the inherent good of these outcomes. I’m not really expecting him to try and do anything because of some awakening, some revelation that he must be a good President. I just hope he realizes he needs to try and save himself.

There’s something about David Foster Wallace where the sporadic good parts are so good that I’m willing to forgive how absurdly long everything that surrounds those good parts is. I’ve been going through Infinite Jest for what feels like an eternity now, and there’s really a lot of segments that are just a chore to read through, but every once in a while he’ll try and explain something about a small aspect of life and it’ll be so engaging that you wonder just why he had to surround it with these endless descriptions and a narrative that goes nowhere for hundreds of pages. It really defies my understanding of what “good” and “bad” writing is and it’s infuriating but odly compelling.

I saw the film Brief Interviews with Hideous Men some time ago and it suffers from the same issue, perhaps more justifiably since it’s an adaptation of a short story collection. It’s not really a ‘good’ film. It’s not even really much of a film. It’s just a collection of scenes so loosely connected that perhaps it would have been better to simply present them as shorts. They’re not entirely consistent and only a few are one hundred percent successful, but the good scenes are so compelling, the monologues so interesting and revealing, that you end up concluding that it’s worth watching even though it’s not good, perhaps even because it’s not “good” it can achieve this different kind of success.

One of the things I really enjoy about his writing is that he never really presented himself as a disembodied ‘expert’ on anything; even when he’s writing about something where he clearly has much more knowledge than the average person, he doesn’t explain in a didactic, non-personalized way. It’s always clear that it’s David Wallace, A Guy, telling you what he thinks (which, depending on the subject, might be unarguable), and not simply an academic-styled screed. He had a real sense of humility and used it well in his fiction. It’s something I’ve found impressive, since the most traditional issue I have with anything that I might write is whether it seems honest about who the writer is.

Now, I can’t lie and say that I wish his writing hadn’t been edited down to a truly manageable length (almost one hundred pages for a chronic about going on a cruise ship goes far beyond ‘pushing it’), that might have made it lose the charm. Reading some of his writing as presented in magazines suggests it would.

This year’s resolution should be writing more, though god knows that didn’t work so well last year.

Avatar was really… something else.

The Road needed a driving force.

A Serious Man made me laugh way too much at things that aren’t really funny.