Time to Admit the Truth

A recent article published in the New York Times tells the story of a crisis within the Democratic Party: They have no money. Part of the reason seems to be that there are too many different ideas about where the party should go.

Sure, there are people such as Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York City, but his way represents only one option in a deeply divided party. He may do well in managing the city, but there is little chance of someone like him unifying the nation.

Despite his popularity, it is not possible to scale up any particular economic system, be it socialism, capitalism, or anything else, and expect it to still function effectively. When institutions get big enough, changing them fundamentally becomes nearly impossible. The only way is to replace them with smaller ones.

Meanwhile the Republican Party is bankrupt in a different way. They have lots of money, but their moral compass has been shattered into multiple fragments for some time by now. The apparent unity under President Trump is a false one, based on the fear that the Trump administration will destroy the career of anyone who opposes it. So, the factions are definitely there, but remain invisible as most of those who oppose him remain silent for now.

Even more silent are the millions of people who no longer vote. I don’t believe them to be lazy, but rather disgusted with the current bickering and negative campaigning in which the two parties are increasingly engaged. If the message repeated on both sides is “Don’t vote for my opponent, he (or she) is an incompetent, corrupt, evil person!” then the overarching message ends up being “don’t vote.” If both candidates are seen as unfit for office, then there is no sense in voting for either of them.

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I take two things from this. First, the two dominant parties are no longer viable, on the national level. Second, they have lasted this long because few people can agree on what to do without them.

Everyone alive today grew up with this political system. Republicans and Democrats. That was it. This duopoly of national political power was as ever present as the air we breathe.

Now, we must face their abject and colossal failure without ever having experienced any alternatives! No third or fourth party has ever gained any real traction, mostly because our system of voting, including primaries, caucuses, and general elections, is riddled with biases that favor having only two parties. Trying to use our existing flawed voting system to substantially change the voting system itself is extremely unlikely to succeed. You might as well try to rebuild the jet engine of a plane while it is in mid flight.

Some people claim that if the Democrats win majorities in Congress this fall, they will save the day by blocking or ejecting the Trump Administration wholesale and bring peace to the land.

But the problem is, the Trump administration is not the main cause of our malaise, but merely the result of a collection of much more vast and deep problems that we are facing as a nation. These problems have grown more complex and intense for decades by now. Blaming everything on Trump, or the Republicans, is distracting us from working to create a new vision for the future.

When we as humans feel hurt by something, it’s natural to feel angry and seek someone or something tangible to blame. We evolved this way in order to protect ourselves from immediate harm by a present danger.
But what if no one person or group of people is actually to blame? What if it’s a set of assumptions or cultural traditions that are the true source of our pain instead? You can’t win a fist fight against a meme. There’s nothing to hit.

We cannot proceed by continuing to fight with each other. It’s extremely tempting to try, but in the long run, it’s just a waste of our energy. We must now admit that our existing political system has run its course and will not continue. Trying to fix it or prop it up will do no good.

And yet, admitting that something we’ve depended on for our whole lives is now over is quite challenging! Our tendency is to maintain the fantasy that things will somehow be fixed up and “get back to normal.” But there is no way that that will happen. Too many things have changed by now for any such “normal” to exist anymore. We are at the threshold of creating an entirely new normal and it’s going to be awhile before it takes shape.

In times of rapid change, patience may seem nearly impossible, but that is exactly what we need at this moment. This is certainly not the first time in history where the present is unsustainable, and yet the future is shrouded in the fog of uncertainty. Humanity survived then, and it will again now.

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Notice that I said, “on the national level,” above. If it seems that the “highest levels” of government are failing, then we must turn to the “lower levels,” such as the states, the cities, and even local community groups, for resilience. It may seem counterintuitive that a local neighborhood group, for example, could do much to solve today’s problems, but there is plenty of positive change that can take place on the local level. And plenty of examples that you can find just by searching the web or talking with people where you live.

For example, I give as much financial support to my local food pantry as I can afford. They use that money to buy food to serve anyone who shows up. I don’t care which political party the people who need food support, and it doesn’t matter to the folks who run the pantry, either. Families are hungry and we are able to give them the food they need.

The same thing goes for people in a rescue boat, approaching a house surrounded by floodwaters. No one asks the flood victims who they voted for. They just help them step into the boat and take them to safety on dry land.

When someone calls 911, the EMTs who arrive never inquire of the caller’s opinion on the economy or the President, they just perform life saving measures without question.

You see, on a personal level, when the need is obvious, hyper partisanship goes out the window. There are no political factions when people are in need. There is, instead, the basic human value of “help thy neighbor.”

It is on this foundation that we will build our lives, going forward. On the ground. Face to face. Heart to heart.

It may seem unlikely, but by helping each other in this way, we foster a trend to reduce our reliance on the giant institutions that are now failing. We have the ability to share information and resources among ourselves and with other groups, without giant bureaucracies or other intermediaries.

The long term trend is to get more things done in smaller groups that can then network with each other without “going to the top” anymore.

In the comments, I’d love to hear stories of how efforts on the local level have made a difference where you live.