The cycle of US politics.
Maybe as an artifact of our two party system, it seems to me that the parties go through this cycle.
Pragmatism. The party out of power becomes dominated by pragmatists who generate ideas and policies that address real problems for real people. As some point this starts to resonate, and their power and influence grows.
Ideology. Once they gain enough power, the ideologues take over. Pragmatism starts taking a back seat to purity of ideology. Over time, the ideology starts to fragment, dividing the party up into factions with slightly different believe systems.
Cannibalism. The sectarian strife between the different factions reaches a full boil. Those who don't follow the factional credo get knifed at every opportunity. This is usually the peak of power. Until the other party gets the pragmatists, the factionalism gets larger and larger and becomes the main focus of the party in power.
Victimhood. Once the fall from power occurs, the different factions spend all of their time hiding behind trees and under rocks on the off chance that they may be required to say something and risk taking a stand. They vainly hope that by being quiet, no one will notice and inertia will return them to office. They fight will all their might any attempt by the pragmatists to do anything because that risks rocking the boat.
The length of time that is spent at any phase of the cycle depends on a host of factors. The Democrats were in the Pragmatism stage a long time before they moved to the pure Ideology stage, although the two overlapped for a long time. Likewise, the Ideology and Cannibalism stages overlapped for a long time. They are currently in the Victimhood stage, with only a few glimmers of Pragmatism as of yet. The Republicans had only a short Victimhood stage in the wake of Watergate. Their Pragmatism stage overlapped pretty quickly with the Ideology one, and there is already signs of moving to the Cannibalism stage, having left Pragmatism in the dust a while back.
Which is why we need a party that is fundamentally founded on pragmatism. Both other parties have ideology at their core. Now both have had their pragmatists, but the pragmatists have never been the core. And every time the pragmatists have been silenced, the parties have fallen. By taking pragmatism as a core belief, likely these big cycles that abuse the country can at least be moderated.
One can hope. |
