When Facebook Becomes Blogging

Hundreds of millions still don't get that we're living now in a very different country. A lot of older people bemoan the decline of bipartisanship on the national stage, but that was only possible because the US played by a very different set of rules on the world stage, where sentimentalism about the intentions of foreign actors gets more millions killed than would be killed if you accept you just have to do some pretty disgusting things. That is politics practiced as it is in reality, and that's what Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Steve Bannon, all practice. They brought all the rules of the Cold War back to the national stage in a way we hadn't seen since the days before Roosevelt. A lot of historians could call this era 'The Cold Civil War,' and like the Cold War, if it doesn't get hot, it's partially by luck. Bernie Sanders, whatever bad one can say about him, gets it just as Marxists around the world do, and he's playing by those same brutal rules to get the country he and his supporters want, just as anti-democracy right-wingers around the world like Mitch McConnell do. Joe Biden, whatever good one can say about him, is the perfect emblem of someone who doesn't get it, and even after all this believes in the good intentions of people who have none. To beat these obstacles, we need a good-hearted Machiavelli, and Joe Biden is not that. We did, though, have a nominee in 2016 who very well might have been....