Saturday, July 15, 2017 4:41 PM
Fresh Start (2017Jul15)
It’s time we stepped back from this obsessive focus on ignorance, obstinacy, and dysfunction—yes, it’s a deadly danger, but if we can’t impeach it, at least let’s stop voting for it, next time. Let’s give our figurehead the pin-drop silence he deserves. My time (and yours) is too valuable to waste on hearing about how the president is incapable of shaking hands like a normal person. (Ironic, though, isn’t it, for a politician?) Our time is much better spent seeing to our own works, our own futures—what are we going to do?
It’s sad to lose a touchstone like the American Presidency—to see it tarnished and trampled under the feet of galoots—but we have business to take care of. Perhaps we could start a different kind of political party—one whose charter is to create a platform full of specifics, and whose candidates would run on the understanding that these specifics be implemented.
The Conservatives don’t really need a platform—they just need a perceived propensity towards the reactionary and the authoritarian—that’s their advantage—that they are more a personality profile than a political platform. And we see this now—with the triumph of the Tea Party revealed as a bunch of puppets who’ve given zero thought to the legislative mechanics of their last decade’s rhetoric—a party so focused on defeating the Democrats that, having done that, they see little reason to do anything other than play golf and tweet.
But we need a platform—nay, a presentation even—a ‘shovel-ready’ prescription by a panel of thoughtful people (who accept modern science). Gone are the days when we could just elect someone idealistic, like Obama, and let him do all the heavy lifting. Democrats need to do the thinking, before the nominating—we need to start thinking, not in terms of a who, but in terms of what, exactly, we want to see happen—and then find someone who’ll agree to enact it, as our candidate.
We need to take the narrative out of the hands of a mass media held hostage by uber-capitalists—and put it back in the hands of career statesmen and legislators who can look ahead and steer our country towards the future. But even more importantly, we need transparency up the wahoo. We need town halls that are about policy, not about personality—not complaining to the acting official, but planning what we want from our next one. Media can’t help but shift the focus to the personal—and that has to stop being our Pavlov’s bell.
With so many idealistic young people wanting to enter the political arena, it is imperative that we reach a consensus on what it means to be progressive and pragmatic in a fast-changing global environment. Planning, in the form of unconscious conspiracies, has been more evident in the GOP than in the Democrats of late—the Democrats seem hung up on beating Donald’s Q-rating, rather than presenting a blinding vision of tomorrow to the voters. Positive action must replace rancor and blame in our public discourse—otherwise, the terrorists win?
