Not sure any single thing has impacted my thinking on democratic politics more than really internalizing that it is the “slow boring of hard boards”.

And that’s not always a bad thing. Moments of punctuated equilibrium are often catastrophic. Revolutions are usually terrible in both the short and long run. Slow-and-steady progress is far better than one step forward / two steps back.

People are generally far too optimistic about what “radical change” would entail, who it would empower — hint: almost never the intelligentsia! — and where the settling point would be.

Political movements that eventually win always lose for a long time first. And those victories occur because the ideas and organization are in place when the economic structure shifts (but not before it does).

And politics usually doesn’t go backwards at the macro level. “History” has ended bunches of times. We don’t even talk about most of them anymore.