On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Reading something about past political events written in 2016 is crazy because we now know what happened. Not only did Trump win, but then he won again after Biden. Trump did put in two Supreme Court justices that sided with his politics and even was able to turn Roe vs Wade over to the states – and before you get all up in arms about the evil Republicans, the Democrats had a super majority twice. They chose not to make Roe vs Wade an actual law and kept it as fundraising bait instead, and lost playing chicken with the Republicans.
Watching how the Democrats dealt with Trump that first term and how the Democrats treated their four-year term with President Biden, I have become even further left. If the system that only allows two parties a monopoly makes it that the very fabric of democracy is on the line, it isn’t an excellent system, especially when both parties are getting paid by the same corporations and Israel. The system is broken, not the choices.
But I do still agree with myself that involvement in your local politics will have a bigger impact on future elections than just waiting every four years to worry about the future of our Republic and being taken over by Christian White Nationalists, but to invest in the future by putting in good people in local power. First off, these positions have a direct impact on you and your community, so you want people to stand for you and not developers, but also to give these people you agree with the chance to gain significant experience in creating policy and politics.
Meditation for July 29th
How To 3rd Party
A lot of you are upset that you will be picking between the lesser of two evils this November (God! We don’t vote till November! We have to endure this for another three months!?!). Some of you will be ‘voting your conscience’ and choosing to vote for a third-party candidate like the Libertarian Party, Gary Johnson, or the Green Party, Dr. Jill Stein. Some of you feel too burned to vote at all.
It would be beneficial to inform people that, at this point, voting for a third-party candidate is a good idea, but electing Trump to the White House is a too-scary prospect, especially with one to three Supreme Court Justices potentially up for nomination in the next four years.
I get it. You want to vote for someone you like. You don’t like Hillary (Biden or Harris either). You think she is a cruel, lying status quo politician. You see all the scandals surrounding her. She was using her AOL email to send state secrets (it wasn’t AOL, but it’s funnier to say). The DNC fucked Bernie to make sure she became the frontrunner. You don’t like her. She is not a likable person, but right now, she is the best choice in the system we have, and that is telling how corrupt and broken the system is.
We don’t have another system. We don’t have a quaint coffee shop dream system where people who are pure and ideal are running for office and can get voted on. We have Narcissuses who are protecting billionaires’ interests. We don’t have a system where you don’t need a billion dollars to run for office. (In 2024, Harris raised just under a billion dollars to lose.) We have a stupid system run by two parties that don’t differ all that much anymore. Unless you’re a hardcore party member, you can’t tell the difference between the Republican Coke and the Democrat Pepsi. (I chose Pepsi for the Democrats because they are a tad sweeter, but I hate it. We could use a flavored seltzer water with zero calories and no sugar, but I digress.)
The Republicans ratchet our politics right while the Democrats keep our politics from going left.
Let’s look at how this election is a lot like baseball. There is no salary cap in baseball, so a team can spend as much money as it wants to win. Right now, the Los Angeles Dodgers have spent the most money this year, spending just slightly more than $227 million. Most of their payroll consists of free agents who have requested high salaries due to their talent. Last year’s World Series winners, the Kansas City Royals, spent $112 million.
The Dodgers made it to the playoffs last year, but they didn’t get their monies worth. What is the 100+ million difference? The Kansas City Royals developed their own players, while the Dodgers acquired theirs.
What does this have to do with politics and 3rd parties having a chance?
Stop voting like a Dodger fan. Stop just coming out to vote in the presidential election cycle. This is not where you change a thing. This is where the buck stops. Be like the Kansas City Royals fans and endure years of rebuilding, only to finally have it all pay off.
This means getting into local elections. This means caring about midterm elections. Vote for a third-party candidate in local and regional elections. Volunteer. You start at the bottom and change the culture there before you change the culture elsewhere. We have a top-heavy political system where most people vote only in presidential elections. If we have more mayors, state legislators, and commissioners from third parties, we will have more people with political experience from those parties. They can then run for higher offices and have a resume.
Will this change anything overnight?
No. But you haven’t even tried to do this before. There was a small try at this in the 60s, but those people got older and became our parents, who then forgot what the fuck they were fighting for, and they are the ones who are scared we won’t vote for Hillary.
This will take time. This will take educating those who come of age every few years. This will mean keeping the fight going for the duration. We can’t change the present, but we can change the future. It takes time and a slow game. I know that we live in an instant gratification society, but we need to know that this is more important than reacting to what is happening, so we can start responding.
People will talk about how Lincoln was a third-party candidate. He was at the right time at the right place. The Whig party was imploding because of its indecision on slavery. The Republicans left an already failing party and started their own to fight slavery. The Whigs wanted a stronger Congress and a weaker executive branch, while the Democrats wanted the opposite.
Now look where we are. We get distracted by presidential elections like they’re the only thing that matters. You want a system that works; you have to make it. You. Not the people in the system. They can’t be trusted because they are in the system that you don’t want. They are getting paid already. The Democrats make more money losing. Why would they remove their paycheck? You have to make the system you want, and that means voting locally. That means voting all the time, and that means helping other people vote.
Now stop being a suicide bomber and put the bomb vest down and help Hillary to win. You might not get fucked by a Trump presidency, but a lot of our brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers will. Now I will get off my soapbox and return to funny meditations tomorrow.