Celebrating Celebrity - a shallow and hollow New World

Based on the recent nominations over the past week, we are witnessing a blatant and full scale attempt at unraveling any competence in government for the next cycle of the scheduled American revolution. In fact, the cabinet picks, thus far, are a deliberate first strike of the match to burn the house down altogether. Metaphoric pitchforks and torches in the form of stun guns, pepper spray, baseball bats and flagpoles are no longer needed. They don't need to hide underneath horn hats, guillie suits or disguises. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/style/capitol-riot-tactics.html)

The first version of the upcoming 2.0 was more haphazard and incompetent due to the inherent chaos under an invisible and clueless hand with a lack of leadership and understanding of governance. Now the plan is laid clear via more deliberate design around Project 2025. The made for TV figureheads will be perfectly positioned to parrot any messaging that would make dittoheads blush. TV killed the radio talk show stars or, at the very least, has amp'ed up the rhetoric with prettier faces and smoother delivery. The smug Millenial Veep personified and signaled this hollow New World during the debate - act smooth, lie and smile at the cameras. Reality TV and truthiness are valued; reality and truth are passe.

As a counterpoint and alternative narrative for change and resistance, we can only hope for patience and resilience from cooler heads involved. They will need to fan out any major flames that would endanger the walls of our democratic structures and strive to reinforce any pillars at risk of significant damage to their support. The instruments may come in the form of blunt sledgehammers by defunding entire departments, programs and projects or sharp micro-incisions over time that may signify symbolic flesh wounds with outwardly visible blood or latent and slow death via a thousand small cuts over time. My biggest personal concerns are centered around the military and medicine but time will tell what else is threatened.

the ends of Tripartisanship - a means for moving Forward

Over the years, the political pendulum has swung back and forth via blue and red waves, tsunamis, storms or some other climate-based metaphor in a scenario a meteorologist or pundit only views with accuracy through the post-event review and 20/20 retroscope of historical perspective. Outcomes are portrayed as hard-earned and deserved or surprisingly shocking and even outrageous but they're always predictable: a victorious narrative of strategic prowess and tactical expertise emerges for the winners; retrospective rationalizations, sine wave cycles of conventional wisdom and random happenstance for the losers. In the end, it's the American ethos, U.S. economy or geopolitical space as explanations.

Results of these contentious elections cause some to celebrate their momentous battles won while others malign their fellow warriors in a war they feel they lost. It's a predictable end state when the one and only direction, each time, seems to be right or left of a stable center that almost always feels wrong. The fight, typically what they call it, is ultimately exhausting for all involved and, quite frankly, wasteful when you look back at the battleground ruins from financial, practical and political operations - so much treasure, time and lives. Especially on this Veteran's Day when a political fight is so much less dramatic than the real battles or wars we fight overseas, I take pause to ponder an alternative world.

As a person who has often sought (or at least yearned for) the Middle Way, as described by Eisenhower, or the aspiratinal common ground, via overpaid leadership consultants, I'm convinced, now more than ever, reliance on and continuation of the two party system is misguided and broken. My old school barber in Brighton back in the 80's had a fun and snarky sign hanging between antique ice skates and quirky pictures along these lines: "I support the two party system; I drink on Friday and Saturday nights!" Unfortunately, for the stability of our nation and a predictable direction for our country, we are wandering and straying from an accessible and accountable model that gives us anything but an unpleasant hangover every two to four years.

Cronies from both sides cling to processes that favor their own slippery grip on power... until it's gone... for which they then rinse and repeat with the hope to coax the pendulum back to their direction again. Like blunted talons clipped in a bird sanctuary, the grasp is fleeting because the roost is ruled on borrowed time, bought influence and begged votes. During a recent effort to lay flat the power dynamic for local city council elections in Ann Arbor, outside money (the left normally portrays as inappropriate) was used to taint the proposal and reinforce their own position. A highly misleading and blatantly red mailer showed up in mailboxes a couple weeks before the election with former President Trump encouraging citizens to vote for the non-partisan election proposal on the docket. This ironically partisan mind trick was funded by a Lansing-based political machine that favors left-leaning efforts. Even the League of Women Voters comments were misconstrued when they didn't necessarily take a stand against the proposal's core concepts and goals of non-partisanship; they simply said it couldn't be implemented without ranked choice voting, an option neither party has endorsed at the state level due to the threat it could pose. The effort was admittedly a chicken before the egg in a screwed up scramble.

The only direction we should have is moving forward as a nation, deferring the inefficient back and forth noise of lies and rhetoric in favor of a stronger and receivable signal of principles and ideas. One interesting movement has even adopted that moniker by naming their new political party the Forward Party, abbreviated FWD. The planks in their platform are around structural changes that would shift the power dynamic such as nonpartisan and independent primaries, ranked choice voting and independent redistricting commissions to guard against gerrymandering.

We're better than either of the two parties as a nation:

• They have failed to find candidates who could offer anything but how to portray every problem as a reason to fight or fear monger. They have relied on personality and identity politics with an emphasis strong on celebrity and weak in substance.
• They have offered simplistic and often naive solutions that are always tempered, when proposed and passed, by the practical and realistic mechanisms of legislation, enforcement and interpretation.
• They have settled on shifting positions and diatribes, easily digestible in 5 second sound bites with no sustenace, ignoring the complex nature of leadership, management and governance.

The significant shock waves and intense heat of this situation are, at times, overwhelming but I'm optimistic in the democratic process. We did not have any major disruptions by ballot box observers or guardians. We did not have signs (nor have we seen any evidence in prior elections) of voter tampering. We anticipate a peaceful transfer of power.

Ultimately, we will rise above the lumbering mechanisms we have in our American tradition of democracy not because of the politics but despite them. We really need a voice beyond the two current choices. Maybe we could think about three in the form of tripartisanship because we have certainly not moved forward with two.

(AI image via Google Gemini on 11/11/2024: create an image of an eagle emerging from purple and white clouds that are above two different images that swirled together including blue waves in the lower left that incorporate a donkey and red flames in the lower right that include an image of an elephant WITH EDIT Change the image above so that the eagle is flying majestically toward the left upper corner of the picture and in scale with the other two animals)