Between Fogeyland and Dementia

Here comes a link to a thought-provoking review in the Sunday NY Times. In which a safer future may result from less civic engagement -- not more. In other words, what we're doing, in being politically active, may not be good in the long run.

Well, if nothing else, you can enjoy the whimsical map of the United States, which shows us South Floridians living on the border between Fogeyland and Dementia. I'm not going to post it here, for copyright reasons, I think, but you can see it at the link above.

"The Argument" on my bedside table

Here's another one of those books that says we Democrats are struggling to define our program for the future. Reviewed in the NY Times on Tuesday, "The Argument" by Matt Bai is my current political reading. The subtitle is "Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics."

Bai was a co-moderator of the presidential debate forum at the YearlyKos bloggers convention in Chicago early this month, and is clearly well-versed in the short history of the netroots world and its impact on politics. Those of us who saw Simon Rosenberg's presentation last spring on the dawn of the new politics will be pleased to see that he had an important role in getting concerned people together and leading them toward the Howard Dean wing of the party.

Not too far into the book yet, I'm dubious about Bai's comparing the Democrats to General Motors in the '70s. Seems like apples and oranges to me. Bai is afflicted with the NY Times writer's problem with inapt connections, such as Tom Friedman's "The World is Flat." No, Tom, even if you say so, it's not.

But there seems to be plenty of good history and analysis, and I'm plugging ahead. Sometimes I wonder if this incessant demand that we postulate a new philosophy is a way to keep us from concentrating on analyzing the world and deciding how to fix it. Philosophize, or act? Is that the question?