Wednesday, September 04, 2019

Things Change And What Seems Unsurmountable Suddenly Becomes Surmountable

The Soviet Union collapsed.  The Berlin Wall came down.  Apple was housed in a garage when IBM was one of the most powerful companies in the world.

As a grad student I heard a visiting professor talk about his study of groups.  As they get bigger, they factions develop, and eventually spin off as other groups.  We forget this until cracks start to show on the surface of organizations like the NRA.

Here's a Washington Post article on Rep. Justin Amash, Freedom Caucus co-founder in Congress, that essentially paints him as going through political adolescence.  He's called for Trump's impeachment and become an Independent.   I'm guessing that the fact that his parents are a Palestinian and a Syrian probably is not irrelevant.  Here's just one short excerpt:
"Today, one of its [the Freedom Caucus] founding members, Mick Mulvaney, is Trump’s acting chief of staff and budget director, helping oversee historic spending and ballooning deficits. Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) have become some of the president’s loudest defenders, even as he stretches the limits of executive authority, declaring a state of emergency on the southern border in order to divert funds to pay for his wall.
It’s all basically “performance art,” said Amash, who was not shocked by their turn toward Trump as a way to “survive until the next season.” You’d be surprised about what these same people say about the president when the camera is not on, he said.
Soon after the dust-up over Sanford, Amash decided he’d had enough of the show. The next day, he pressed send on a tweet calling Trump’s visit a “dazzling display of pettiness and insecurity,” and decided to take a little time away from the Freedom Caucus."
The whole article is worth reading.  (I have mixed feelings about sending people to the Washington Post.  While I'm sympathetic to the plight of newspapers today, WP is owned by Jeff Bezos who's trying to take over and privatize the global market place.  I don't feel good about buying a subscription to his paper.  Other papers need my support more.)

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