i know i’m getting old because of how frequently i look at current problems and see immediately, to a degree i didn’t fully appreciate in my youth, the chain of causation leading to them and how path-dependent are current options are
Yeah, it’s hard to make the case because what people will remember, obviously, is what just happened, not “look at three presidents ago, it’s his fault.”
the answer to “this thing sucks” is unfortunately often “yeah, and maybe we’d have better options now if we’d done things differently back then, but we didn’t so all we can do is move ahead from where we are now and wishing otherwise won’t actually change the paths open to us”
