Partisan America

Even beyond the current administration there appear to be various objective indications that over recent decades the American populace has become increasingly divided politically, especially in terms of negative opinions of the other party, and Congress has similarly become very partisan. There are plausible theories about what happened and why: increasingly gerrymandered districts increasing the significance of primaries, distortions due to large campaign donations, the segmentation of news media markets, etc. It is frustrating living outside the US for a while and not now seeing much first-hand; my decade in Ohio was much more illuminating.

I wonder about the future: how stable the current strong divide is, how it improves or worsens. I do not see how it improves while people favor their echo chambers' demonization over constructive outreach; I cannot help but be thus reminded of Ozymandias' plan in Watchmen. I also do not see that it can get much worse although history does offer various examples of unpleasant social shifts that are both severe and surprising. Demography may favor the liberal progressives in the medium term but it is not as if conservatism has a monopoly on the narrow-minded.

It is not clear to me what will happen over coming years nor how. It may all be in the hands of a few, such as the Supreme Court, or perhaps the small acts of enough appalled individuals can still change the flow of the tides though I wonder how difficult it is to know which actions cause more good than harm. I have no more intuition on that last point beyond a vague, even trite, inclination toward substantively engaging with others, about concrete issues rather than abstract principles, while being slow to think ill of them.

The taste of tea

I rather enjoy The Taste of Tea (2004) but I have in mind the more generic topic of the taste of black tea. I have a memory of sometimes drinking really tasty tea. I have occasionally tasted a strong hint of this particular desirable flavor in good tea loaf (and its Celtic cousins). However, despite some effort in my own tea-making over recent years, I appear to not be recapturing it at all, let alone reproducing it reliably.

Perhaps there is some systematic reason I am failing to make such tasty tea. I could be using the wrong kind of tea; generally I favor Assam. I do not usually add milk or sugar but perhaps either or both are important for the taste I have in mind. Maybe I need harder water or even the correct kind of metal teapot rather than brewing in a ceramic mug. My memory could even be faulty: I may be pursuing a ghost though would be happy to try a range of tea loaf to render it again corporeal. Whichever is so, for the meantime the puzzle continues to linger unresolved.