Happy New Year all
Millions upon millions of good hardworking value conscious Americans have gone completely bat poop crazy. Why? Actually this has been discussed, primarily on liberal channels but it does need mentioning.
The collapse of real conservatism began decades ago, but really hit it’s stride with the advent of Fox News. Fox News began convincing the conservative audience that only policies that promoted corporate capitalism were the true conservative policies. Sure they promoted a few social positions, but mainly the protection of large corporations and the rich were the protection of conservative values which began a road to cognitive dissonance in a large portion of their audience. And this was intended no matter what Mr. Murdoch says.
Large swaths of the American people were told by supporting these policies their values and livelihoods would be protected and grow. Well for the working and middle class it didn’t and what is known as the wealth gap grew and grew. Yet day after day these same hard working Americans were fed the same lie over and over again.
Eventually they began to realize things were not getting better for them and slowly were getting worse. The one percent had built a huge firewall of protection with their support for years and the massive lobbying in Congress they had done over the same time. Now this audience understood something was wrong, but because of the constant lies and disinformation they had been fed for years they didn’t know who was their true enemy. The years of hearing the Democrats were bad, socialism was bad and the Democrats were out to get them added up. Yes, the Democrats are clueless and have not had a new policy idea since the 1960′s, but they are not the enemy. It came to the point where you couldn’t tell a significant portion of Fox News viewers this though. The Democrats being the enemy had become ingrained into their heads. And the word enemy was important.
Yet they were feeling the disconnect. For all the talk the Republicans spoke of being on their side they were beginning to realize something was amiss. They couldn’t put their finger on it, but still felt it. And then along comes Donald Trump, who basically told them what they were ready to hear. Washington was against them and that was the Democrats fault; the Republicans needed him to drain the swamp and fix what was wrong with Washington; and eventually bring back the promises the Republican party had been saying all along and that Mr. Trump was the man to do it. He had some vague policy pronouncements, understood their anger and went to town.
Now four years later, the disconnect has so destroyed all these basically good people’s brains so completely they are hallucinating that madness is the answer.
This is not a unique analysis and has been addressed in various articles, opinion pieces and by talking heads for a few years now. And most of these by people more well versed than I, or at least paid like it. The problem is none of these people offer clues as to how to fix the problem. Or at least that I have seen that seem pragmatic.
And as you know I have been the living experiment of the question if a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a sound. I have been screaming we need new parties for decades, but apparently I am the tree in the woods and no one is hearing the sound. Enough of my whining though.
We need new parties, however for right now one will do. And yes the obvious is we need a new centrist to moderately conservative party to bring back or maybe for the first time ever produce true public policy that benefits that vast majority of Americans and the country as a whole over the few. This party, along with better public policy, would be charged with two unspoken tasks.
Slowly but surely start the rebuilding of trust that many of the Trump supporters lost in our government and even in their fellow countrymen. This will not be easy and will not happen overnight. In fact most of the rebuilding of our democracy may take at least ten years to a generation and the faster we can start showing people rational governance is still possible the faster we can start rebuilding this trust.
And then no matter how good the policy becomes, be prepared to ride out years of absolute madness. The policy should be aimed at building up the economy for the working and middle class and quickly to help overcome the feeling of alienation most Trump supporters were beginning to feel from what was said by the Republican party versus what was happening to them. The madness will continue until enough start to feel this change. Then over time begin to whither away.
Their cognitive dissonance runs deeper than an alpine lake and is just as cold. Warming them up for new ideas will not be easy. And the best way to do that is to start immediately creating new policies that have immediate impacts on the average Americans’ lives.
The problems we face are Joe Biden is not an immediate answer as President for change, the Democrats really do not have a strong base to coalesce around (they have always been a hodgepodge of various sub groups), neither party has any practical public policy that effects positively the economy long term for the working and middle class, and the establishment in Washington of both parties has no real desire for change since they are caught up in their own power greed. McConnell and Pelosi both should have been gone as leaders a long time ago. And yet right now, if they step down we have massive Trump insanity on one side fighting to take over and a few Representatives who are pulling the Democrats too far to the left to be productive in fixing our current debacle.
So, we need a new party that is made up of a whole host of people who care more about the future of this country, democracy (okay representative republicanism), and understand they are facing large groups of this country who are brainwashed beyond belief. Yeah, put that in your pipe and smoke it. The air is going to be foul and no matter how many windows we open the stench is going to take a long time to clear. And do not get me wrong, it is not the people that is the stench, but the lies they were told, the power grabs, the greed, and much more that has hung over Washington for so long that needs to go. Basically this new party will need to fulfill the Trump promise of draining the swamp as part of the plan. And those in the swamp will fight just as hard to stay in power as the good Americans Trump and his sycophants fooled are fighting to keep him in power.
Crazy enough for you yet?
Yet, if you, like me, still love this country and what it promises, please look to help with the changes and the first is to split off from both major parties and begin the work this country needs to survive. I have written in this blog a whole of host policy ideas. Whether or not they are the best I am not sure, but all of them are designed to change the trajectory of who benefits the most from government policies versus the few that do now. So my challenge to you is: time to put up, don’t shut up and let us find the answers we need. I have proposed a few, lets start looking to see what can work or what better ideas you can have.
Cheers
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