Just like falling off a bike

I’m trying very hard to return to writing my stories here on headstuffing.

My problem is that there is just too much to say. The world has gotten so strange.

“Just write”, I tell myself. “Just write something”.

You have to start somewhere right?

“Just get back into it”.

Just start typing a bunch of words and it will all come back to you – like falling off a bicycle – right?

What? It’s supposed to be “like riding a bicycle – not falling off one?”

Okay – well which is easier? Falling off, right? No? Well you must be pretty good at it then.

When I fall off a bike the thought before I hit the ground is always “… man this is going to hurt”.

And it always does.

But I’m not going to write about falling off a bike. That would simply be a waste of everybody’s time. Mine and yours. Hell, you probably already stopped reading.

“But what CAN I write about?”, I ask myself.

“I could write about Trump?”

See there’s a problem right there. That’s all anybody talks about anymore.

It’s way too easy to discuss Donald Trump. And it’s way too difficult. How could you come up with anything new that the late-night talk show guys or the political pundits on both sides haven’t already come up with?

Well, let me give it a whirl.

I’m a John McCain conservative.

“We don’t like John McCain because he lost the election – to Barack Obama” say the Trump base. The newly proclaimed “conservatives”.

“He lost because he ran with Sarah Palin” I reply.

“But we love Sarah Palin” reply the Trump base.

And this makes you come to a level of understanding. We should have seen this whole Trump era ushered in when the Republican Party got behind Sarah Palin. “I Can see Russia from my back yard [in Alaska]” – that Sarah Palin.

Ahhhh ….

John McCain was a war hero. He was a prisoner of war (which is Donald Trump’s reason for disliking him – because he got caught). He knew how to reach across party lines, and get stuff done. That used to be considered a huge positive attribute for a politician. To work together with a colleague of a completely polar opposite point of view to come to a mutual agreement to pass a bill that benefits both sides of that opposite polarity boundary. A win-win result.

We used to call it compromise. A negotiation to a positive conclusion. But now we call it concessions. I looked it up the word compromise in an old Webster’s dictionary from 1978 that  I keep still on my bookshelf and it read: “To reach an agreement of mutual benefit by two opposing sides”

Then I looked up the definition on-line. This is what popped up:

“an agreement or a settlement of a dispute that is reached by each side making concessions.”

Concession means ‘give up’. To Concede. Not exactly a positive win-win mentality anymore.

So now, to compromise Is now to concede or give up your position.

And that’s sad.

Both sides of the political spectrum now believe this. And the negotiation tactics of the day reflect this. The left and the right. It either has to be all the way to the left or all the way to the right. The negotiation tactics of today are that there will be no negotiation with “the other side”.

You have to pick a side, they will say. And if you’re not with us then you are against us.

And the pendulum swings back and forth faster than ever before and the faster it swings the higher the end of the pendulum reaches at each swing. More extreme. Because those in the middle of each “your either with us or against us” side keep switching sides because the other side swung just a little to far on that last swing.

Right?

No Left – No right – damn it’s left again, wow did we ever go right, Holy cow the next swing left will really be extreme – and the next swing right even higher.

The momentum of it is hard to stop.

But we have to figure out how to slow this political pendulum down. We need this pendulum to spend more time in the middle.

Or civil war is going to break out.

And this swing of the pendulum is not just “an American condition”. It’s global. You see it across the world.

Look around the globe. Look at the places where the pendulum doesn’t swing it all. It always stays locked in the extreme position. Places like Iran and China. Places like Russia and North Korea to name only a few. Their political pendulums are stuck so high that if it swung on a clock face the pendulum would be frozen at one or eleven o’clock.  

Notice that these places are all the same places led by regimes where the leadership in control will stop at nothing to enforce their ways? They concede only the bare minimum to avoid a populous overthrow – like we saw in the Asian Spring era earlier in this decade. And they enforce with an iron fist.

But they all eventually fall. All that hold too tightly to power eventually lose their grip – and fall to their demise. The higher up the pendulum, the farther the drop.

Left or right. It doesn’t matter. And Those on the left will say the examples I gave above are all on the right. And those on the right will disagree and say those examples are all on the left.

No negotiation. No compromise.

Compromise means concession now, remember?

And this has happened throughout history. The result has always meant the downfall of every civilization that has come before. Every empire before us has fallen or greatly diminished to less dominant state.

Power will shift. But to others who simply want to attain the control. Sometimes on the same side of the pendulum, and sometimes all the way to the other side.

At some point we have to re-embrace the original definition of compromise. We have to get back to looking for win-win solutions to our problems.

We all have to recognize each other again. Or maybe we all need to start recognizing each for the first time?

It should be as easy as riding a bike. All it takes is balance, eh?

But if we can’t find our balance, we will fall off that bike.

And if we all fall off, man is that going to hurt.