A New Story: Politics for the 21st Century

January, 2017 I have been, like many, reading the post mortems on this campaign, and it has been very frustrating. I see intellectual arrogance and naive realism (tendency to think that everyone views the world in the same way) aplenty. And I know of what I speak as I have been intellectually arrogant and suffer from naive realism myself. As I tend to always look internally when I am wrong, I have been doing much soul searching. I worked on the Clinton campaign in 1992, at the DNC and several other gubernatorial campaigns before becoming a History, Anthropology, and Economics teacher. I thought I had a good grasp on politics. Apparently, I don’t. But some clarity has arisen for me. In the back of my mind, I always had these nagging questions. How could blue collar democrats vote for Reaganonomics, which was so obviously skewed to help the wealthy, in 1980? How did Dukakis have a 17 point lead in the summer of 1988 when statistically the country was doing well and th...

The following is an excerpt from my novel, The Campaign. It is the first of four speeches delivered by the candidate, Jackson Turner, about the "Bulwarks against change". It's been a while since I have used this blog, and reading through my first attempts shows that I am still concerned about similar issues. The Campaign, Chapter 28 “Thank you for your warm reception. I hope that by the end of this speech I will have earned it.” More applause. “When I announced my intention to run for Senator, I made a pledge that this campaign would be about uncovering the realities that we all face, and the forces which keep us largely in the dark. The forces which support the status quo of injustice and inequality. One of my favorite quotes from anthropologist Marvin Harris led me to see things that we are not supposed to see. He made the claim that “Art and politics fashion the collective dreamwork that prevents us from understanding the realities of our social lives.” ...

There are some foundational, yet quite simple and elegant, ideas that inform my consciousness.  I have already touched on a few but let me be more specific. "There is no one right way to live"  Daniel Quinn in Ishmael . I have greatly enjoyed Quinn's books for they forced me out of the ineffective spiral that is issue based politics into a more holistic approach to what has been going on here.  The idea above is so simple yet if you lived by it, so meaningful.  What does "there is no one right way to live" imply? If there is no one right way then most of the folly of the world is put into a different focus - as attempts to make people live what one group deemed the "one right way".  Timely is the disintegration of the Iraqi "state".  Josh Marshall nailed it when he said the long term causes lie at the feet of the map drawers in 1917 in Paris and London, but nonetheless, the basic premise of the Iraq war was the Unites States trying to m...

The first thing that we have to do is establish what the "gumption traps" are to making change happen in the world.  The first one we have to tackle is "human nature."  We have all been in a conversation with a defender of the status quo and probably had them on the ropes.  Frankly, it is hard to defend this or this .  At some point though the conversation will turn toward solutions and the best that most leftists can come up with is a fairer distribution of wealth, and the wealthy sacrificing (or something along these lines).  At this point, our status quo friend says, "aha, that is contrary to human nature."  And then they gleefully go and get another drink, as you sit frustrated because you don't know where to go next.  Today, I hope to give you some ammo. The common understanding of this concept of human nature is this; "selfishness with meaness/lack of caring".  Let's unpack this.  It is not only that people do things in their bes...

I have basically stopped following the news.  I jump back in around elections and scan a few blogs from time to time, but the stories of savagery that confront me every day are simply too much.  It is debilitating.  There are so many battles to fight and I gotta make a living and raise a family.  I have given up on issue based politics as I watch many more tens of millions being pored into an abortion debate that seems to defy logic.  Mistakes happen; idiocy happens - that is the human condition - thus abortion is with us.  The only question is whether it is only for the rich, very dangerous, or widely available to all.  The rest is just noise.  And that is how I feel about the vast majority of news today.  It ignores the "reality" of situations and allows the focus to be on idealistic and unattainable goals.  War on Drugs anyone? So here I am at my desk, typing away for no one.  My political consciousness has been forged by a fin...