All this anti-"Operation Hilarity" has me... a bit concerned. I should start by saying that, intellectually, I agree with the "it's best not to tamper" folks. However, this kind of thinking is exactly why the left has been losing ground for so many decades. It is a sickness born out of the desire for good intentions.
One of the things I've noticed about liberal-minded people in general: we (they) have this NEED to "make peace" with the very people who would just as soon see us destroyed. This isn't always a bad thing necessarily. It's where a lot of the courage for things like opposing war in the face of unrelenting propaganda come from.
But it's also very much present in politics. We see it again and again and again played out in the White House, the Senate and the House. Democrats just love the idea of a "grand bargain" and all that. They keep talking to the Republicans, even though to so many of us, it's obvious that the Republicans are not going to keep their word.
With regards to the political institutions, people tend to blame it on "Washington culture". That's not entirely wrong, but it also overlooks that aforementioned desire by people on the left to make peace. For all the bitching about "capitulation" by so many people on this site and others like it, I sometimes think to myself, "Yeah, but I bet if you were a Democratic Senate or House member, you'd do the same damn thing."
It's just some deep-seeded desire to get people who hate us to like us.
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