From Idealism to Realism

From a comment by Lawrence Krubner to this post:

This has been one of the big shifts I've seen in my lifetime. When I was a little kid, back around 1980, and listening to my parents and older brother argue politics at the dinner table, I had the impression that it was left-of-center factions that were engaged in the purest expressions of idealism divorced from reality. Nowadays, everything is the opposite. The left-of-center groups have, proudly, become the "reality based community" - something no one on the Left would have been proud to say of themselves back in 1980, when the Left was suppose to be committed to changing reality.

This is one of those rare moments in American history where sobriety and lucidity have come under the sole ownership of folks who are politically left of the current political center.

There seems to be something of a lag between the stereotypes that people have of the hippy dreamer liberal and the hard-headed conservative and the way the respective ideological factions are currently aligned to reality in actuality. We need to let people know -- we've moved out of Cloud Cuckoo Land quite a while ago and the Conservatives moved in. Now we just drive by once in a while and tut-tut their bizarre choice in landscaping.