I do some of my best thinking in the shower, and this morning I was struck at how our electioneering system (and to a certain extent lately, our political system as a whole) is more like the "state of nature" that I studied OH SO MANY years ago in college. Those who are not political junkies, or who did not spend most of their time in college reading political philosophy tomes, might think that a natural state doesn't sound too bad, perhaps. But the "state of nature" described by Hobbes and other writers of his time was characterized as "nasty, brutish and short". They believed that mankind had elevated itself by progressing out of this natural state, where every person had to fight and scrabble for existence, and into one where political institutions would provide a better quality of life.
But since we have not moved in the direction of public financing of election campaigns at the national level, we instead have a system where an anonymous private donor can give $5M in one lump sum to a super PAC who will cover the airwaves with negative advertisements about the "other guy".
We had a meeting at work yesterday where several people (including myself) brought up the concept that we should treat each other as if we believed in the good intentions of the other person. I personally have eight teams of people out in the field that report directly to me, and it is honestly hard to serve them all equally well all of the time. Sometimes we get into adversarial relationships, and I have to remind myself that we all wear the same uniform, we all took the same oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and that we are trying to get to the same goal, we just have different strategies for how to get there.......
Our basically two party political system here in the US has created an extremely competitive environment which is going back to the "state of nature" rather than resulting in civil and productive discussions. Our elected senators and congresspeople cannot even get their act together and fix our budget crisis, because they are all engaging in black and white thinking, and seem to believe that if the cede ANY ground on ANY topic, that is unacceptable!
And since the election process seems to take about two years from start to finish (for the president, anyway) we have nearly 10 months before we are out of this miserable state.
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| [Just in case there is any doubt about who I am supporting!!!] |
But since we have not moved in the direction of public financing of election campaigns at the national level, we instead have a system where an anonymous private donor can give $5M in one lump sum to a super PAC who will cover the airwaves with negative advertisements about the "other guy".
We had a meeting at work yesterday where several people (including myself) brought up the concept that we should treat each other as if we believed in the good intentions of the other person. I personally have eight teams of people out in the field that report directly to me, and it is honestly hard to serve them all equally well all of the time. Sometimes we get into adversarial relationships, and I have to remind myself that we all wear the same uniform, we all took the same oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and that we are trying to get to the same goal, we just have different strategies for how to get there.......
Our basically two party political system here in the US has created an extremely competitive environment which is going back to the "state of nature" rather than resulting in civil and productive discussions. Our elected senators and congresspeople cannot even get their act together and fix our budget crisis, because they are all engaging in black and white thinking, and seem to believe that if the cede ANY ground on ANY topic, that is unacceptable!
And since the election process seems to take about two years from start to finish (for the president, anyway) we have nearly 10 months before we are out of this miserable state.
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