• Registered: 2015-06-21
  • Posts: 4,910

Re: American Politics: Discuss and Debate

EarthPrime.com is going to be taking SLIDERS REBORN down. They are going to be refocusing their site on their current team. I appreciate their gracious message letting me know, and I am grateful for how they gave my fan fiction series finale a home for 10 years. Strangely, my primary response is... political.

I have been slowly converting SLIDERS REBORN to an ePub friendly format for Archive of Our Own. At times, I've stepped back from the task. I've been focusing on my communications work, volunteering for an autism support organization, and honestly, my main priority these days is making my employers, sisters, mother and now my girlfriend happy. I love SLIDERS, but I haven't had as much time to put into it as life has demanded more from me.

It is interesting to look at my writing from 10 years ago and see that SLIDERS REBORN is an artifact of a very specific era of tentative optimism that neoliberalism was a negotiable evil and that racism, homophobia, fascism, jingoism, scientific misinformation and economic inequality were fighting a losing battle against a new generation of thinkers, builders, workers, advocates and activists. SLIDERS REBORN believes that a golden age could be ahead of us and leaves the sliders at the edge of hope. It was a story for the time.

That time isn't today. Racism and fascism have come back strong. Scientific illiteracy is forming public health policy and dominates government to the point where vaccination and masks have become political issues instead of factual matters of epidemiology and particle physics. The working class of America has, by popular vote, decided to support and celebrate and declare their loyalty to the billionaires who pillage and rob and hoard more wealth than they could ever spend and leave workers in poverty. Transphobia and bigotry have become standard operating procedure for government.

EarthPrime.com deciding to take down SLIDERS REBORN reflects how SLIDERS REBORN was a story for a time that has passed in a place we aren't in. For the time being, it's on Google Docs, people will be able to find it via TV Tropes and a link on Archive of Our Own. It's all here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/19GS … it?tab=t.0

But ultimately, all of it is archival material and it should go to Archive of Our Own.

I think a SLIDERS today should always be an inverted mirror of today, and today is a different world, and that inversion is more like this:
https://sliders.tv/bboard/viewtopic.php?id=490

  • Registered: 2015-06-22
  • Posts: 3,456

Re: American Politics: Discuss and Debate

So Trump is doing something really dumb at the moment, which is to say that "affordability is a con job."  Now he's already pivoting away from it, but telling people the economy is great when people know that it isn't is such a dumb strategy that would never work, no matter how charismatic you are.  The solution here seems to be simple and something Trump does with everything else - which is to blame Biden.  I think he could get 2-3 years of runway out of his base if he blames Biden.  He does this as well when he says "we inherited the worst economy of all time" or whatever nonsense he spews, but telling people that are struggling that they're not struggling is very dumb, even for Trump.

Especially when the people who elected him are going to struggle a ton.  The "I know how to get elected but have no idea how to govern" crowd continues to shoot themselves in the foot.

Another interesting thing I've been thinking about.

2024 - Republican
2020 - Democrat
2016 - Republican
2012 - 2012 - Democrat (Incumbent)
2008 - Democrat
2004 - Republican (Incumbent)
2000 - Republican
1996 - Democrat (Incumbent)
1992 - Democrat
1988 - Republican
1984 - Republican (Incumbent)
1980 - Republican

In other words, we flip flop in every election since 1988, which was the last time that the presidency stayed in the same party with a different candidate.  Not only that, we're getting more impatient.  We used to give the president the full 8 years, but we aren't doing that anymore.

If we have fair elections in 2028, not great for JD Vance.  And it might mean that incumbents don't have the same protections they used to have either.

3,543 Reply by pilight

  • From: Where the action is
  • Registered: 2015-11-16
  • Posts: 604

Re: American Politics: Discuss and Debate

Slider_Quinn21 wrote:

We used to give the president the full 8 years, but we aren't doing that anymore.

If we have fair elections in 2028, not great for JD Vance.  And it might mean that incumbents don't have the same protections they used to have either.

Actually, the Clinton/Bush/Obama run of two term presidents is an outlier. It's the most consecutive two-termers the US has ever had.

The outlook for Vance would be grim regardless. Incumbent VPs are almost never elected president. GW Bush is the only VP more recent than Martin Van Buren to win as incumbent.