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Persuading those in power to limit their power via "consensus"doesn't work. Both the legal system and the horse-trading politicsof "consensus" have failed. How do you get "consensus" in politics? You horse-trade. You give everybody something they want. You cuteveryone into the deal. That passes for "consensus" in politics:divide the swag. If you want to understand President Obama's failure as a leader,ask (as my friend G.F.B. did) where did he learn politics? In Chicago. Big-city politics boils down to getting the ward bosses,ethnic-neighborhood leaders, Chamber of Commerce and public unionstogether and making them all happy with concessions, give-aways orsome other slice of swag so they all agree to to support some minorpolicy tweak of the Status Quo. Any constituency left out of the swag distribution squeals like astuck pig and kills the "consensus." This "making sausage" consensus is passed off as "the only way toget anything passed," but the truth is that it's the politics offailure: nothing meaningful can possibly get done in the politics of"consensus" because 95% of any useful reform must be traded away toget everyone willingly on board. What you end up with after all the horse-trading "consensus" is2,319-page monstrosities of self-defeating complexity like the"Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act"or the 2,074-page healthcare bill. I have addressed these simulacra "reforms" many times: What If We're Beyond Mere Policy Tweaks? (February 6, 2012) America Is Just Going Through the Motions (November 19, 2010) The theory is that tiny baby-steps of hopelessly complex (and thushopelessly corrupt) "reform" that everyone has been bought off toaccept will eventually restore equilibrium to a political andfinancial system heading for a cliff. In this view, President Obama had to trade away this to Big Pharmaand that to Big Banking and so on, in order "to get the billpassed." This bribery-based "consensus building" is the politics of failure. Those engorging themselves at the trough of Federal swag and powerare the very forces that need corraling, yet they are the sameforces that must be persuaded with give-aways and concessions toagree to limit their own power and revenue stream. Dodd-Frank and Obamacare are two examples of what you get with thissort of politics of failure: the underlying problems have not been addressed or solved, they'vebeen made more intractable. Those feeding at the trough of swag and power will never willinglyagree to limit their share of the tax revenues and power. Big-city horse-trading works when a mayor needs to get everyone inpower to agree to a new subway line; there are billions of dollarsin "free" construction money to give away, so there's plenty ofswag to distribute to buy agreement. Limiting power and shrinking budgets cannot be accomplished withbig-city type "consensus." Nobody "agrees" to their power and budget being slashed or theirpower base and revenue stream demolished. That sort of structuralreform can only be accomplished by those in power losing to thewill of the people: either fix what's broken or we'll vote thewhole lot of you out next election. This kind of national revulsion at the "consensus reforms" of theStatus Quo does occur from time to time, and the political StatusQuo is thrown out en masse. American jurisprudence may also have a hand in the politics offailure. 25 out of the 43 presidents (Grover Cleveland served twice) havebeen lawyers, and so having a law degree (or self-educated, in thecase of Andrew Jackson) does not in itself qualify or disqualify acandidate for the presidency. But as "it depends on your definition of it" Bill Clinton proved, alaw background colors one's understanding of ethics and power. Whatis just and right has lost all meaning in a system based on"getting the best deal possible for your client" regardless ofguilt or justice. "Justice" has devolved to persuading a jury orjudge that your client is blameless or justified, and "guilt" isnow a PR pantomime of rationalizations slicked down with ablatantly insincere and hurried apology to the injured parties. Indeed, we can understand President Obama's signing of the NationalDefense Authorization Act (NDAA) as the perfection of the currentlegalist mindset: claim authority over a wide range of action and limit any legalconstraints on that range of action. Indefinite Detention, Endless Worldwide War and the 2012 NationalDefense Authorization Act () Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 1: Our One Last Chanceto Preserve the Bill of Rights (March 26, 2012) Obama's legalist power-grab mindset is also clearly revealed in hisOrwellian Executive Order National Defense Resources Preparedness. Welcome to the United States of Orwell, Part 3: We had to DestroyDemocracy in Order to Save It (March 28, 2012). Once again we see the President's clear legal intent: claimunconstrained authority over the entire infrastructure and populaceof the U.S. so his future "freedom of action" is unlimited by legalconstraints. Read the Executive Order yourself if you doubt this: National Defense Resources Preparedness .(www.whitehouse.gov) The politics of horse-trading power-player "consensus" fitsperfectly with a legalist mindset that places a premium on "gettingthe best deal possible" and claiming wide authority via ExecutiveOrder. Has the legal mindset poisoned politics, or has power politicspoisoned our understanding of the law, ethics and justice? Perhaps both law and politics have drunk from the poisoned chalice,and President Obama's abysmal failure as a leader and his vastpower-grabs via Executive Order are the result of gulping thepoison twice: once as a lawyer, and again as a politician. Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change(print $25) (Kindle eBook $9.95) Read the Introduction (2,600 words) and Chapter One (7,600 words) for free. We are like passengers on the Titanic ten minutes after its fatalencounter with the iceberg: though our financial system seemsunsinkable, its reliance on debt and financialization has alreadydoomed it.We cannot know when the Central State and financialsystem will destabilize, we only know they will destabilize. Wecannot know which of the State"s fast-rising debts andobligations will be renounced; we only know they will be renouncedin one fashion or another. The process of the unsustainable collapsing and a new, moresustainable model emerging is called revolution, and it combinescultural, technological, financial and political elements in adynamic flux. History is not fixed; it is in our hands. We cannot await a remotefuture transition to transform our lives. Revolution begins withour internal understanding and reaches fruition in our coherentlydirected daily actions in the lived-in world. Go to my main site at /blog.html for the fullposts and archives. Read more posts on Of Two Minds » I am an expert from magneticfloating.com, while we provides the quality product, such as China Magnetic Levitating Globe , Magnetic Pop Display, Magnetic Floating Display,and more.
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