Some More Politics

2023 Reflection: I did a good little bit of editing on this particular entry, first published in February, 2021. I believe that my own personal life has paralleled the course of the world. My experience has prefigured, so some degree, what was to happen to society as a whole. In the 1990s, as I experienced the civil rights situation at Nortel, and attempted an awkward win-win response to it, I began to feel closed in, cut off, manipulated, marginalized. 

I believe that millions of others had the same thoughts as I. Uncountable throngs of the population have felt as though their freedom, their humanity, was being stripped away slowly, almost imperceptibly. As normal humans, we all defaulted to the classic "Just ignore it. It will go away." Except this time it didn't go away. My experience with the U of M Regents, and then with Nortel, prefigured a generalized problem in society, where good people making good decisions, would be at best ignored, at worst mocked and marginalized, simply for asking questions. 

The public was, therefore, being trained along the way, not to notice what's going on behind the curtain; not to question things that seem wrong; and to become reliable allies on the way to erecting two eternal classes in humanity: the few at the top with all the power and wealth, and the rest of humanity. The Rest would be told where to work, where to live, what to spend money on, and to keep their crazy ideas to themselves. 

I know how that feels. 

My life trajectory was such that my life and experiences seemed to prefigure what eventually happened in the greater world around me. In the 1990s, I was beyond encouraged at the promise of the Internet. In the corporate world that occupied me during the decade, I was living the future of human progress, that is, until my idealism got battered upon the rocky cliffs of reality. 

Ethics is the future of human development.

Creative people will dominate the New Economy. 

The customer is always right. 

In popular culture, certain best sellers became my tomes for business and politics. 

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Emotional Intelligence

The Road Less Traveled and People of the Lie

In management, it was all about . . . 

Total Quality Management

Leadership and Team-Building

The Competing Values Framework

All of these factors were custom-made for me, my talents and passions. 

But it all ended up being just a lot of talk; a lot of fluff. For a few years, these eternal and universal principles were emphasized and encouraged. But the dark side of all of it is that people had to endorse such values, because it was the way to keep your job, and advance. In hindsight, it now appears that participation in such positive programs came grudgingly. Deep down we really do not like listening to others, nor serving them. 

In politics, I stressed the dignity of every single individual. I promised that every single person would have an equal voice, I showed them how I would do it. But people chose their collective groupthink, and the security of their partisan loyalties, over the elevation of their own personal dignity. 

I came to be personally acquainted with people that would get into local politics. I admired most of them. I held them up as paragons. But over and over again, I watched as they a little power turned into cynical pols. The same machinations of ambitious people, that drove Washington crazy, was also present in Dexter, Michigan, albeit on a lighter scale. 

A heretofore honorable local leader, a respected teacher from my high school days, tried to persuade me to go back on a campaign promise, in order to vote in favor of a proposal he had championed before he got defeated for re-election. But his form of persuading went beyond logical argument. He got in my face. Insulted me. Shouted vulgarities in my face, within earshot of my neighbors and kids. 

As Lieutenant Worf might say, on Star Trek "They have no honor."

And  honor was something that not only was getting into short supply . . . it had become a magnet for ridicule. Honor was an outdated concept. 

What was happening in the microcosm of my life, was happening everywhere. People were getting frustrated. Good people were being marginalized and thrown to the curb. 

In 2004, I might as well have said, to Republicans: "If you don't do something about healthcare, you're going to get Barack Obama."

And to Democrats: "If you don't start listening to people on the other side, you're going to get Donald Trump."

I could have said that . . . I had thoughts very similar to that, for years. 

Was 2020 a mess? Well . . . what did you expect?

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