160. buddy larsen:

–it’s just so strange that now here we are [...] longer lives, better food, cleaner cities, less disease –why would a doomer want to kill off a share of the human race [...] on the grounds that the history of mankind developing [...] the basic necessities of life is going to suddenly slam on the brakes?

I’ve been smirking lately, as I’ve had the sneaking suspicion all along that the Obama/Biden ticket is the Left’s last-ditch, desperate attempt to forge their post-democratic “controlling authority” on the global scale, before the global demos pulls them back.

The con is often the first to know that his jig is up.

The writing has been on the wall since the first OPEC oil embargo. And the cobwebs have only thickened in the ensuing 3-decades:
1. Environmental regulations, scarcity of fuels and coercive labor unions continue to strangle the Northern city-states like Chicago and Detroit that rely on manufacturing and transportation for their revenues.

2. The race-grievance industry’s fractious tactics have been gradually losing their edge. The US’ generosity to Africa since Reagan and the rise of the Black American middle class were gradually pinching the racket’s options…and the left’s framing of Islamic terrorism in the American racialist lexicon after 9/11 didn’t help much either. From Tawana Brawley to A.A., from “hate” speech to America’s “first black President” (a.k.a. Bill Clinton), from the UN’s latest “Conference on Racism” to Barack Obama’s pastor’s “God Damn America” – I think that as early as John Kerry’s electoral rebuke (remember Kerry’s ad that implied George Bush dragged a black man behind his pick-up truck) it has been clear that the nation was tiring of the Left’s cheap race-baiting.

3. The American Democrat(ic) Party has long suffered from an identity crisis. At least three competing personalities pull this “party” in three different directions: its urban cronies force it to subsidize a corrupt, urban, “bike-path” polity; its populists moor the party’s elites to a ‘crude’ working class nationalism that finds its only expression as local unionism; it’s internationalists lead the party inexorably to the UN’s courts where they effectively evade republican checks on their salaries, projects and tenures. It’s always been just a matter of time – the wheels are gonna come off this gypsy’s rickety caravan.

4. The Left has failed to convince the world that its way is best. In 2009, capitalism, treaties forged between partnering nation-states (“Unilateralism” instead of “global,” top-down, UN-ism) and competing constitutional democracies are still the operable models to follow. China’s been watching.

I could list a couple more, but I’ve got to go to work.