In The Jury Box: 2023

By David Eide

A FEW NOTES ON ELECTION '24

In politics nothing is a better ally than a fierce enemy. The fierce enemy will smell out your weakness and shove it in your face so you will deny it as a weakness and treat it as a strength. It is only with great losses and new perceptions that the political idea see's the trick the mind is playing and accepts and integrates the dreaded judgement as an attack on its weakness. The conservative weakness is its non-acceptance of the secular form of problem-solving, its lack of rationalism, its lack of experience in the world as-it-actually-is from top to bottom, and the liberal weakness is the loss of root in "love of nation of birth" and "faith".

October 5, 2024

Disparity of wealth is multi cultural, it is not one race or one geography. This is why it's so complex and impossible to solve through "identity" politics. It won't be solved until poverty is recognized across all boundaries and the effort for upward mobility is strong and united. That requires a confident middle-class.

To teach that the "society" is the beast that needs to be overcome is the most cruel joke of them all. How exactly does a person who believes society is evil surrender to that society to gain its benefits? That person doesn't, is permanently divided and suffers as a result. The foundations need to be firm before a real critical view can gain credibility within the person or a group.

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A lot of the political types are upset because they feel that a "non-commitment" to Harris supports Trump. In California, of course, the question was settled long ago. Harris wins. The sticking point with me is that anyone who is seeking the vast power either Trump or Harris are after, needs to be questioned, probed, investigated, held to account, put under pressure with feet against the fire. If this doesn't happen you don't have an honest election. And you end up with questionable leadership without credibility. Kamela Harris is appealing in a number of ways. I question whether she can execute decisions, programs, policies etc at the level that they require. I don't see evidence of that at any rate. I don't know of any Democrat who does not raise the question, "who is this person and why is she in this position?" It is not an unfair question to ask. Somewhere between, "she has the same qualifications as a man," to "she's a woman and person of color therefore not trustworthy," is some approximation of the truth, if you can use a loaded word when it comes to politics. She has the great advantage of running against Trump, making any alternative moot.

Anyone with a fair sense of democracy is put to the test, "it's either Kamala or else." That's pretty soft support if you ask me. And it begs the question, "then who should the Democrats put in there?" The Republicans should address the same question. The next four years will determine who comes forward as leaders in these parties, but there will be political dysfunction no matter who the President may be. So will I mark my ballot for Kamala? Most likely but then I'm not positive. Perhaps I will conjure up the next four years and decide to write in someone no one has heard of.

October 14, 2024

I don't like the arrogance of the left. They want to be unquestioned factoids and impose a view on everyone else. Where did that come from? It came from their successful struggle to gain power in all the institutions. It came from academia that didn't have any competing ideas against the orthodoxy. The right has a kind arrogance but one never looks to the right for answers or solutions. They are only appealing as the old progressive party decays, before a new one is built.

Arrogance of the left versus nuttiness of the right; an unbalanced culture produces this. Wealth and "freedom" produces this condition. Human nature produces it in large measure as the mind attempts to confront the modern world and, if not the world, then the American portion of it. The hardness of the political line is a tell that there is no substance to the line.

"Understanding first, then go to the root." Says the odd citizen who can't relate to either party.

October 19. 2024

Democracy starts with the individual, extends to all that the individual-is-not. What if trust breaks down between the citizen and not-citizen?

What happens when the "society" appears to be indecipherable to the normal mind? What happens when the Republic becomes a complex monstrosity no one can fully comprehend or understand? What happens when the criminal is more attracted to public office than the "good"? What happens when the culture is denatured of its pride and wants to end or be turned over?

It's plain to me that when the spirit of democracy is killed in the mind and spirit of the citizen, in a large segment of the citizens, then democracy is impossible.

What happens if a majority of people are "living well" yet the Republic is disintegrating?

Whether one is talking about democracy or not it's always about power. In a democracy you can become power or you can oppose power and often the roles reverse. The healthy structure is going to have a lot of checks and balances to keep things off-balance for the tyrannical nature human beings possess.

I don't want to believe it but I think either candidate will preside over a disastrous Presidency. Harris, with little leadership ability against a storm of resistance, Trump with his kleptocracy and lack of governing ability will produce, hopefully between '25 and '29 a new. vital political imagination that will fill the liberal democratic idea with vitality again. A whole new vision. And then let the 30's work out the details. That depends on the creative class abandoning the failures of the left and right and leaping into the undiscovered space between the polarities.

Forty years of "white vs black", "men vs women", "urban vs rural", "environmentalists" vs "developers" and on and on and on. This election has brought all of this to the fore. The winner will not decide the winners and losers of these conflicts. Whoever wins will inherit political dysfunction. The only winners will be those who oppose the US, either as a political model or as a geopolitical force.

What people see, somewhat rightly, is that women have leveraged the system on their own behalf to gain power in the culture. They were able to do this better than minorities and, in the process, marginalized a lot of males, black and white. They shouldn't be blamed for it. They voted, for the most part, to protect themselves by ensuring they could handle their own money and body. I doubt, however, if they will be treated with kid gloves going into the next few election cycles. It was a reason Hillary was defeated, it was a reason Roe V Wade was overturned, it might be a reason why Harris will lose. It's difficult to prove these things, just as it's difficult to know how much race plays into the final decision of a voter. Still, the Democratic party has become a feminist party, an elite party, a kind of woke Republican Party and the outlier groups are going to start making demands on them. They may start demanding that these excluded males, black, brown, and white, get some of the protections and privileges the females got on their way to power. If government leverage is a form of success it would benefit the society to corral these groups and bring them back into the rational fold instead of letting them find heroes out in the wild. There's nothing more dangerous than a mass of males with no purpose, no meaning, no energy, no sense of power. Armies can be formed from those types of males. It's not the fault of women who strive for their best selves. But it is a phenomenon that needs attention by those who are concerned about "democracy" and the health of the society.

October 30, 2024

It's a few days before the election. The one thing that stands out in my mind, the only number that makes sense is that 68% of people don't like the direction the US is going. Only 28% approve. And that 28% would include the "elites" and those who had projected dire fears against Trump. So it comes down to how far will the people go in their dissatisfactions. Will they cross the threshold and elect the "big bastard" or will they play it safe and elect Harris? "Safe" in that the status quo won't change one iota, the elites will not be effected, and common sense says that there will be a lot of resistance to anything she tries to do.

The big bastard in US business history comes when there is a new invention afoot or new development like the telephone or airplane, computer certainly and in the competitive rush to get the invention to market there are many cross-purposes that work against the efficiency of the new invention. The big bastard comes along and imposes his will on the market, drives out the competition, the technology and delivery systems are made efficient. Then the political culture gets rid of the big bastard who has made a lot of enemies. The question is, can you treat the liberal democracy and Constitutional law in that fashion? My guess is no unless you are in a crisis moment. We live in a difficult moment but not a crisis one. A civil war is a crisis moment, World War II was a crisis moment. This is a tired moment but that's not a real crisis. That may predict a crisis down the line if the ratio between dissatisfied and satisfied doesn't balance out more.

I always go back to the "free, liberal democratic citizen" which is a literary concern and not a political/scientific concern. If the national government is derived from the people, then all manifestations of the national and local governments would bend back into the citizen. I wanted to look at that relationship, a common one certainly. If the citizen took in the whole of that government I'm sure that citizen would evaporate in both BS and corruption but be that as it may. If that relation is not maintained you then consign the government and, eventually, the society over to the jackals. Yet, how is it possible that the "citizen" receives and process that which "derives from him and her?" A question. I don't know what the answer is but I would start there if I were concerned about the future of democracy and a source of its difficulty.

November 3, 2024

When democracy is good there is always another day, no matter the result. And you learn over time that you win some, you lose some. I voted for Harris on weighing the preponderance of the evidence. Now she joins McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry as unsuccessful votes by this particular political animal. The experts are saying that the real divide is not race, gender, religion but education. That's been known since I was a college student back in the 60's. And oh, how the rural folk hate the arrogance of the educated! But aren't you educated in order to know things beyond the provincial? Don't you travel and get into larger communities in the urban areas to leave your provincialisms? It's that trust and mutual respect, both necessary in a democracy, has collapsed between them.

I do assign blame to the Democratic party and its "identity politics", its hostility to "nationalism" and its disdain for the spiritual. There should have been a firmer commitment to limit Biden to one term and then have a primary season. Now we'll see if Democrats become that wonderful role player, the "loyal opposition." If they project hatred onto Trump they will blow it. Simply criticize him intelligently and build up a portfolio of opinion that can be taken up in 2026 and 2028. It's almost impossible to see ahead for the next four years. Harris gave a decent concession speech that simply said she was a nobler spirit than Donald Trump. Her calls to keep fighting were a dud since people are absolutely wiped out by this election. It was long, nasty, dire and the outcome, always predicted to be razor thin, was an anticlimax once the proceedings got going.

Whenever I hear race or gender I switch off and stuff it in the "past politics" barrel. The women and people of color I saw on the grounds of Howard University are doing a lot better than a great many white kids in these god awful rural and semi-rural places. And I'm glad for the women and people of color but, next time, take up your poor white brothers and sisters as well and don't divide them by political affiliation. Said the odd citizen to no one but the political atmosphere.

November 5, 2024

Trump is true to form with his appointments and will either modify the government in odd ways or collapse that government. However, before that happens I expect to see what happened to Joe McCarthy, happen to Trump. Someone credible, someone from the Republican Party denounces Trump at just the right time and his support will collapse. He will shrivel like a punctured balloon and, along with age and health factors, it will bring him down. If at the end of the process you have a slimmer more efficient government, less corrupt, more imbued with service than power, then something good got done. We need to know if the society can operate with less government or find out how much government we actually need. A clarification of this would do good in the political area. I have little confidence in Trump or his appointees but time will reveal the facts of the matter. It could be that pulling the plug on an agency or department simply opens up a flood of godawfulness. I have no doubt his "mass deportation" is a fantasy. It may begin but will end shortly as there are mass protests and legal opposition. Trump has done one thing Biden couldn't do, however, and that is send a signal from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, not to come up to the US. "Your services are not wanted until there is a rational border in place." Where, in other words, people can be vetted, processed in a way that allows for the absorption of those people into the communities they are going to. I think eventually people will see that illegal immigration was used to build a new labor force, in preparation to an expanded economy. Nothing else explains the lax and stupid conflict at the border. And now the brim is filled. In my day it was the entrance of women and minorities into the economy that expanded it through the 80's. Then came the global workforce that expanded economies throughout the so-called advanced countries. The largess was not evenly distributed as we have come to discover. The slack has been taken up by the illegal immigrants.

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