Not a magic wand but a sledgehammer!
(Image by (From Wikimedia) The National Guard, Author: The National Guard) Details Source DMCA
Asking our current political leadership to reform itself is like expecting a rabid dog to seek out medical treatment and find a path to full rehabilitation.
It's quite obvious our "professional politicians" are now infected and controlled by an anti-democratic brain-eating virus, are well-compensated, septic purveyors of raging, exponentially-spreading corporate tyranny and ruling class oppression -- a tenacious systemic disease which the brilliant, unfortunately late, political theorist Sheldon Wolin called inverted totalitarianism.
Which means if anything is to get done on behalf of the everyday citizens of this country, it will have to be initiated, engineered, and advanced by "outsiders" -- that would be you and me, working with future political office holders who have not so far been and will not ever be sucked into the slipstream of the neoliberal, rapacious capitalism-at-all-costs juggernaut.
We must particularly remain keenly aware of and rigorously vigilant against spoilers in our midst. For example, we shouldn't for a single, inattentive moment think we can count on any of the pseudo-progressives who are now, with the Trumpenstein monster's ball in full swing, capitalizing on their resurgent popularity on dance cards of the desperate. There's no question, we're in big trouble. Our democracy is in the middle of an existential crisis. That hardly suggests we should turn to those who have been participating in, have often been instrumental in engineering the mess, to see what their latest bright ideas are.
Time for some new blood! Some fresh thinking!
We especially must not be fooled or sidetracked by what has been appropriately dubbed the McResistance, those who would lead a false challenge and short-lived charge against the current order, then in the end just cave to more crippling, insidious compromises on behalf of the ruling elite. We might not want to admit it but we do know who they are. They include such political rock stars as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
How, then, do we know who to trust? How can we determine who is merely engaged in another round of the tomfoolery that has destroyed our democracy, buried the American Dream under mountains of jingoistic puffery and comic book exceptionalism, gutted the hopes of everyday Americans, keeping them from participating in the enormous potential and opportunities which our country is supposed to represent for all its citizens?
There are times when 'bold and simple' are better than 'nuanced and complicated'.
Yet, there is always a temptation to make something bold and simple more tentative and complicated than it needs to be. However, there's no need here for wishy-washy thinking, waffling, Aristotelian cogitation, or utopian daydreaming. So . . .
Let me be clear about the purpose of the candidate contract strategy.
This might sound insultingly simplistic to some but I'm going to say it anyway.
The purpose of the candidate contract strategy is to get the good guys elected and throw the bad guys out of office.
Period!
And since in my view most of the current legislators and certainly the president falls into the 'bad guys' category, most of them should and -- if the strategy is successful -- will be replaced by a whole new freshman class of 'good guys'. Yes, I'm talking about . . .
Regime change in Washington DC!
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