You get bullet points today. Because I’m overdue to post, but nothing stays in my head longer than a paragraph in the morning these days. Just pretend Introspection is back.
-I think I may be the person in the world most mutually excited about the return of Star Wars and Gilmore Girls. And not just because I live in an apartment where old seasons of the Gilmore Girls are on a loop in the background most waking hours and this offers the opportunity for new content. I’m also that guy who didn’t think the prequels were much of a departure from the originals – yes, there was stilted cheezy dialogue and poorly sequenced action. Watch the originals. Same thing. Doesn’t make me love Star Wars any less, nor should it for you. The intro music still gets me going. And the fact that Amy Sherman-Palladino will be back for Gilmore Girls salvages the whole project, since the last season of GG to date was pretty close to unwatchable. Now if only we can convince her to write one of the Star Wars movies, we’ll really be in business!
-Living in Louisiana is different. This is a trivial statement: all of the places I’ve lived are different. But in the New Orleans bubble of craziness and left-wing politics, it’s easier to forget that we’re in the Deep South, or at least an hour’s drive from it. Lately, Facebook ads have been trying to remind me. It’s very weird to see a barrage of ads criticizing right-wing Republicans for being too moderate or not Republican enough. My political views on Facebook are “Pacifist Socialist”. I have liked about 14 pages associated with Bernie Sanders. I am trying to make this easy for you. Granted, you don’t have “Pacifist Socialist” indexed in your political spectrum, but I promise I am not the droid you are looking for.
-All debate teams are the same. Again, this is kind of trivially untrue, because the tone set by leadership and the goals of the team can make the experience of the members of the team wildly different. But deep down, at a fundamental core level, the dynamics and interactions and aspirations are all the same. After debating on high school and college teams and coaching professionally, I find this deeply comforting as I start to get more involved with yet another college debate team, despite their being on a different league entirely. And for what it’s worth, slow NPDA is really not as different from APDA as you’d expect. There’s slightly more technical jargon and less overall creativity that comes from the pre-set resolutions (which are predictably topical, generally speaking), but the basics of speeches and what makes for success are easily recognizable. The problem with the league as I can discern it is that it’s so regionally fragmented that the event is completely different in different regions, much like LD when I was in high school. So the exact same performance could win a tournament in one area and go omnidefeated in another. Unfortunately, like every debate format in the world except for APDA and BP, speed has taken over the top of the national circuit, which is a thing Tulane will have to figure out if we’re going to go beyond regional success. Or we could just sit on the even fence of southern NPDA and southern APDA, I suppose.
-I really hope Joe Biden gets into the race. Not because anyone should vote for Joe Biden, but because 95% of his support will come from current Hillary voters. There’s no way that Biden can beat Bernie Sanders, but he can peel enough knee-jerk Clinton support to vault Sanders into a clear lead in the primaries. And all you people moaning about winning should be looking not only at Trump and Carson, but also at Obama and Trudeau and Greece and Corbyn… there is a wave of positive, left-wing populism abroad in the land that can also win here. And if the Republicans nominate a populist and the Democrats trot out the politician’s ultimate politician, it’s going to be a bloodbath. If winning is your primary (pun!) Democratic concern, then you need to take a long hard look at a general election scenario between Trump and Hillary. Turnout, energy, and excitement drive election results in this country. “Obvious” Democratic establishment choices drive the failed candidacies of Al Gore, John Kerry, and HHH. The last time an establishment Democrat won the White House (outside of a re-election campaign) was FDR in 1932.
