Most pundits believe history repeats itself. It doesn't

[Nevilledog]

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Francisco Taveira
@jftaveira1993
.@johnastoehr: "If today’s conventional wisdom had been applied to the 1982 midterms, Reagan and the GOP should have been doomed. Yet the outcome was virtually unchanged from the results of 1980." https://editorialboard.com/most-pundits-believe-history-repeats-itself-it-doesnt/… #UnitedStates

editorialboard.com
Most pundits believe history repeats itself. It doesn’t
When it comes to the midterms, keep your own counsel.
1:04 PM · May 24, 2022

https://www.editorialboard.com/most-pundits-believe-history-repeats-itself-it-doesnt/

Something normal people should bear in mind as we enter the summer months, during which campaigns for the coming midterms will gear up, is this: members of the Washington pundit corps, whose opinions about politics shape the opinions of normal people, are invested in their reputations as shrewd thinkers with access to secret knowledge.

Their influence is proportional to your faith in them.

Don’t have faith in them.

Truth is, members of the pundit corps aren’t special. Like voters, their opinions on current affairs are usually retrospective, not progressive.

By that, I mean everything reminds them of something that already happened. They do not, typically do not, use the old to see the new.

So the opinions of the pundit corps, which become the opinions of normal people, are oriented to a static understanding of history without awareness of the present being a product of the past.

*snip*