The present now will later be past. That's a promise.

Don't try this with a real bagel. Especially if you're using real water! But if you do, don't panic, you'll probably be fine. Image from Swimline Water Sports.

Corey Robin, yesterday:

There’s a certain type of person who came of age around the time that I did—or just before or not long after—whose entire political identity is shaped around the idea of being realistic, of shedding childish enthusiasm and adolescent dreams. They were anarchists or activists or God knows what in high school or college. But now they know better. They can sling phrases like “How are you going to get it past Congress?” with all the bark of a short-order cook. They’re unafraid of clichés. They’re more mood than mind. And their world is about to come to an end.

Me, in comments:

I go back further than that, to when we used to say, “Soyons réalistes, demandons l’impossible [Let's be realistic and demand the impossible]," which still seems like the best stance to me. And Sanders further yet, from the generation that said, “I don’t know what’s wrong with those fucking hippies, why don’t they behave with decorum on the rare occasions when they show up at meetings.” The answer was that the meetings were intolerably stupid, clichés slung with abandon and ricocheting off the walls. And they never did accomplish much of anything as far as I know, though some of those people had definitely gone South to help with voter registration in an earlier phase and that was pretty wonderful. Then again, they did that part in tandem and (nervous) collaboration with a corrupt old establishment that was actively legislating on the same issues.

I’m bored to death when people pull that line of “you have to be realistic”. The issue to me shouldn’t be about what you can’t do but what you can, if for example you get over your natural repulsion and try to work with the bourgeoisie on matters of mutual interest, such as health insurance (ask GM!), or marriage rights, or getting beyond fossil fuels, or getting more spending money in the hands of relatively poor consumers, or whatever. It is through workers’ cooperation with relatively enlightened capitalists that socialism such as it is was achieved in France and Germany, under the rule of those ancient vampires De Gaulle and Adenauer!

In response to somebody else's comment, Corey explained what he meant about the world of the realists being about to end; it's not with a bang or a whimper, but a lengthy and gradual evolution:

The political calculations that have underwritten that sense of realism for the last half-century — hew to the center, nothing left can appeal, etc. — are changing. Whether it happens in this election or one or two down the road, the younger generation skews left and will drive politics leftward.

Which is a way less eschatological spin, but in that case I don't see why you would insist that it hasn't started yet and that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for instance, wouldn't be part of the process, at however primitive a level. "The times they have been a-changin for some time, and it's likely to go on for a while yet," and, "You'd better start swimmin or you'll sink like a bagel, sooner or later."