Are They getting the Message? (or Now is the Summer of Our Discontent.)

 A few friends of mine have remarked recently that this is the most interesting election cycle in their lives.  I tend to agree.  Putting aside scandals, which have had their own impact on the election cycle, what seems to be happening is that outsiders have hijacked the primaries.  On the left we have grumpy grandpa Senator Bernie Sanders drawing huge crowds and being responsive to activists, refusing to take money from the super rich and on the other we have billionaire Donald Trump and his brash, no holds barred approach to speaking his mind.

Both Mr. Trump and Senator Sanders have tapped into a deep discontent in the electorate.  A very different discontent on each side but a deep well in either case.  This is very interesting for at least three reasons.  First, it's stripping the veneer off the two party process.  We can at last see without obfuscation the baseline of both sides of the electorate.

 Second, it shows that the American Electorate can retake the process by backing non-mainstream candidates.  Heck, Senator Sanders isn't a Democrat!  He's an independent!  And a democratic socialist! But the grass roots section of the liberal aspect of America is thrilled by him in a way that no mainstream candidate is going to be able to recreate.  Trump is sort of the positron to the Sanders electron.  The polarity is different but the charge is still strong.  Trump is tapping into a section that has had it with being told what to do, what to say, what to think and being shamed by the left wing's version of the right wing's so-called hate machine.  (Sorry, Extreme Democrats, but you're haters too.  You just feel justified by hating and shaming the the 'bad' people to make them do 'good'.)

 Thirdly, it shows that Americans are tired of cookie cutter politics stamped out and presented as the only valid talking points in an election.  By backing Trump or Sanders the populace is organically redefining the public debate and raising issues based on what the people want to talk about.

  A fourth point of interest is that 42% of registered voters are independents, not tethered to any one party line.  This is a record high and means that the Independent Party ( de facto movement) is the party with the greatest plurality.  It means both Republicans and Democrats aren't representing America anymore.  They are being tolerated as a means to an end, for now.

   So, my question to the RNC and the DNC is this, "Are you getting the message?"  And if so, how are you going to change?  America isn't buying the usual line of half truths and poll driven policy this time around.  Being unresponsive to this new momentum isn't going to play well with the 42%.

  As to Senator Sanders and to Mr. Trump, like 'em or hate 'em, they are striking a nerve.

  Thanks for reading!  Feel free to comment.

Knowing Who We Are

Knowing Who We Are.

 Who Am I?

That's a question we all face during our lives.  We have a lot of things that help us define who we are.  We have families, friends, neighborhoods, hometowns, society and culture, religions (or lack thereof), schools, clubs of various sorts, class, countries, political parties, continents, a planet, and the list goes on.  It is easy for us to fall into a definition  of ourselves that is relative to SOMETHING.  Just as it is natural, and sometimes useful, to compare ourselves with those people and things around us so it is with finding out who we are.  We naturally look to our environment and see who we are in relationship to it.  Conversely, we also see the environment as being defined by it's relationship to us.  These are the obverse and reverse of our coin of our perception of the world around us.

For example we might say, "I am an American.  This is my country."  Two sentences that clearly show how identity and belonging work.  The words, I am an American, carry with them the idea that being an American, belonging to America, is an essential part of our identity.  The words, This is my country, imply a sense of ownership.  It's the same with everything on the list above and more.  We humans are trained from birth, and perhaps even genetically coded, to perceive what is around us in this manner.

For myself, the list might go something like this: I am an Anglican, a scion of the Long family, a Coloradan, an American, an amateur philosopher and historian, the husband of my darling wife, and an independent voter. I consider myself a part of, and therefor part owner of, in the same sense that membership implies a share in an organization, these things.

But that still leaves one aspect of who I am open.  Who am I without all of these things?  Who am I alone?  Without family?  Without country?  Without a religion?  Without friends?  Without all those things that make up the life that I lead day in and day out?

Well, it is not my place to presume that your answers will be the same as mine.  But perhaps the process of asking ourselves the question, Who am I without____________. (Fill in the blank.), can help us discover who we actually are sans all these things.  Help us find a deeper understanding of our own life.  Perhaps we will find that for us, there is no meaningful answer to the who am I dilemma outside of an environmental one.  Perhaps we will find that there is SOMETHING that is only a part of our interior environment that is hidden deep within us that is what we really are.  Perhaps we will find something entirely unimagined.

For those of us who try this exercise, it's sort of like taking the first steps on what Joseph Campbell called The Hero's Journey.  It may seem odd, silly, and pointless among other obstacles.  It may prove difficult to even imagine being without some of these things on our lists.  But there also might be gold hidden at the end that we can share with the world.

For me, I have to agree with Socrates, the unexamined life is not worth living.  This is one interesting exercise in examination of our lives.   We may already know who we are.  We may discover that we are more than we ever imagined.  The possibilities are endless.

Trusting the American Process

     America is a complex concept.  Even the origins of such icons as Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty and their impact on the self conception of the American Public is a complex topic.  The concept of America we'll be talking about today is pared down to America: the political system as a self correcting organism.

     Many of the folks I run into in my daily rounds about town, just living my life, are still lamenting or celebrating the GOP victory in November.  It reminds me strongly of how folks were crying or dancing over the 2012 elections.  Both sides of our Aisle like to claim temporary victories as 'mandates of the people' .  But to someone with no investment in either of our major parties it looks like the electorate as a whole using the ballot box to correct the course of the ship of state.

     One of the harsh realities of the two majors is that they are set up to actually represent the extreme end of their respective viewpoints. Most people aren't willing to lean that far to the left or right.  Given the choices presented in the elections by the two parties the only option open to the American People is to make sure that one party never has too much power for too long.  More often than not no American President has had both Houses of Congress held by his party for very long.  It is how a system of checks and balances works.

     It is also rather telling in other ways.  It implies an inherent lack of trust in the government as it is currently run.  It implies an inherent desire not too see power in the same hands for too long.  These are good things.  It isn't like our government has a good track record when it comes to fair dealing and honesty-just ask the people who were here when the Europeans arrived.  Then just ask the farmers and the ranchers.  Then read the news.  It's all there on paper.  It would seem that in America, at least in the USA, there is a long standing mutually wary relationship between those who administer the government and those who elect them.  And it is an axiom that power corrupts.  It is an axiom now for good reasons: the sheer rarity of those whom it has not corrupted when held for too long or given in too great a measure.  The cartoon character of the corrupt politician is ubiquitous.  It has been around for hundreds of years.  That's a good measure of the depth of credibility gap and it's length and breadth as well.

     So my point is this: there is no 'mandate of the people' for either party-ever.  It's just that your average voter has had enough of one group of extremists running things for a while.  Instead of running around patting yourselves on the back or lamenting the end of the world you might try looking at the underlying message.  It comes down to, "Y'all are nuts.  Can't we get a better driver for this bus?", every two or four years.

   And this is my observation: America is willing to change but like any organism the electorate can only handle so much at a time before it needs to get back to business.  We seem to favor the Democrats when we feel it's time for a little social change or we've just had enough of Republicans.  We favor the Republicans when we feel we need strong leadership internationally and economically, things the Democrats repeatedly fail at.  What We the People seem to want is social change at a pace that doesn't overly disrupt society and jobs.

     This is my prediction for the 2016 elections at almost two years out:  We'll see the GOP get the Oval Office and both Houses of Congress.  Don't be surprised if they lose one House or the other 2 years later.

     But like I said at the beginning of this blog, America is a complex thing.  And there is certainly more to it all than has been discussed here.  As always feel free to comment!