Orson Card Card, politics, the temperature of tap water, etc.

[nancylebov]

So james_nicoll linked to Card about the election and various other things on his mind.

Firstly, the temperature of tap water-- it's quite true that there's a big difference with the seasons. I will also note that there's much more hot water for showers precisely when long hot showers are least desirable.

I have seen complaints about Card's long discussion about tap water, but I found it fairly engaging, certainly much more so than Card's political rants. I was reminded that I used to be a Card fan.

I dropped him in the 80s or thereabouts. I realized that he had a recurring pattern of older males being physically and emotionally abusive to boys, and I was getting squicked. It actually seemed like psychological progress when Card had a father in Alvin Maker who wasn't comfortable with wanting to kill his son. Also, I got fascinated by Card's character torture in a way I didn't feel good about. People would look at me as though I was crazy when I talked about dropping an author for those reasons.

Anyway, Card likes McMullen, and in the comments to James Nicoll, Sean O'Hara links to an interview with McMullen.

No, McMullin said, the GOP is already mostly right on the issues. The party's real problem is something much more fundamental. "The Republican Party has a problem now with people, candidly, in its ranks, members and some voters, who don't embrace, I think, some foundational truths upon which our country was founded and which it has drawn nearer to over time."

"Number one is that we are all created equal," McMullin continued. "That is something that Donald Trump, I don't believe, has embraced, nor have some of his supporters. And it's a deep problem in the Republican Party, and that's just the truth."

...


McMullin explained that he, like other Republicans, has heard for years from Democrats that the GOP is racist. He always rejected that kind of thinking. He rejected it, that is, until the last few years, when he worked in a senior staff position for the GOP in the House of Representatives.

"I spent a lot of time in the Republican Party believing that that was something Democrats and liberals would say, [people] who weren't interested in really understanding who we were," McMullin said. "But I have to say in the time that I spent in the House of Representatives and leadership and in senior roles there, I realized that no, they're actually right. And Donald Trump made it ever more clear that there is a serious problem of racism in the Republican Party. That is the problem. Not conservative ideals. Racism is not conservatism. And that's what I'm talking about. That's the problem."

Weirdly, the Washington Examiner page looks vaguely like Facebook while being less cluttered and less readable. I have no idea how this is possible, but I'm forced to conclude that creating the Facebook look is harder than it seems.

Not connected to the Nicolls piece, but how American politics shifted from interests to values, and why this is a problem. I'm not sure this is right, but it's at least interesting and plausible.

Comments

[redbird]

Tap water temperature is interesting, potentially moreso than yet another rant about any of the presidential candidates, but I wasn't expecting it there, and after a few paragraphs I got to "this isn't why I followed this link" and went back. That sort of "I will ramble about something for a few minutes, then say 'and that reminds me' and switch to a very different subject" approach takes great skill because the writer/speaker has to make all the subjects interesting. If I know a columnist is going to talk about (say) Chinese history, baseball, and gardening, I might open the page to see if they were talking about an aspect of gardening or history that interested me. I'd be less likely to wade through 10-12 paragraphs on the Kansas City Royals in the hope of then learning something about the Tang dynasty or lilac bushes. Meanwhile, the baseball fan has wandered off from the previous column about the Tai'ping Rebellion without ever learning whether it segues into the last time the Cubs won the World Series.

[siderea]

I give McMullin a point for admitting he was wrong, and deduct about 20 for not figuring it out earlier, and 50 for it not yet having dawned on him that maybe in light of the racism problem he's conceded his party has, maybe, just maybe, he ought to re-evaluate the party's stances on the issues to see if maybe, just maybe, there are some racial dimensions to them of which he has been, and apparently still is, wholly oblivious.