America the Unstable

It's clear that America is in a deadlock that won't be resolved anytime soon. Here are several stories that best point out this dysfunction:

A prolonged stalemate?
The Disunited States of America
It looks like it may come down to which side will be beaten into submission because I don't see this ending well for anybody--the parties or the voters.

The science is clear: People love fear
If it weren't the case, there would have never been that overreaction to Ebola last year and ISIS's role in last week's Paris attacks. The American public have clearly thrown FDR's famous quote into the trash heap of history. Also, I hope those political scientists from 1950 are happy.

Americans Are Sick to Death of Both Parties
Can the American public finally start ditching the lesser of two evils talk every other year now? Or at least after next year's elections? We needed a third party like a decade ago!

Democrats are in denial. Their party is actually in deep trouble
The Emerging Republican Advantage
In the age of Trump, there are plenty of people who support presidential candidates that are more than willing to utilize the Sailer Strategy en route to the White House.

Also, what is going to happen if key demographic groups don't show up next fall? Blacks and college students are subject to voting restrictions in Republican and some swing states. Younger voters may have an enthusiasm gap in '16 as opposed to '08, especially if Bernie Sanders doesn't win the Democratic nomination. On the other hand, blacks may stay away if he does win the nomination in Philadelphia. Hispanics are another group to look out for. President Obama has deported more immigrants than anyone else, and as an additional demerit, moderate Senate Democrats squashed the DREAM Act in the summer of 2010. The result is that most Hispanics may sit out the 2016 election because Democrats failed to deliver on their promise when they controlled both houses of Congress and Republicans nominate a candidate who is openly hostile to their interests.

The Democratic Party Keeps Screwing Up
America is long overdue for a political realignment, but it's a matter of which party (or someone else) gains the upper hand. Assuming that the author in Link #5 is proven correct, then, the party of FDR & JFK is in for a very big world of hurt that may see them in the same company as the Federalists and the Whigs at worst and relegated to being a Northeastern party at best. If disillusioned progressives do get into a pattern of backing third parties like the Greens, then, what recently happened in Seattle may prove to be an excellent way of toppling the whole two party diagram.

America Is Ripe For Authoritarianism
This could likely be the ultimate result of that prolonged stalemate mentioned in the first two links. All it would take is another Great Depression as a solution. That, and a second Civil War.


The Big Picture: An overhaul is badly needed in this country because the two party system has failed America. The first step to correcting this mess is to dump the current first past the post/winner take all voting system in favor of some type of proportional representation or an entirely new system that requires a brand new centrist party in order to govern so that the extremists are kept in check.

In a diverse nation of 320 million people, I find it unfathomable that we are still using a system that was intended for a much more homogenous society. If the Republicans do rule for the next couple of decades, then, it will get to the point where the establishment and the Tea Party factions splinter. Once that happens, then the latter group will either join the far-right Constitution Party or form their own party outright.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the spectrum, it's no secret that Democrats have taken its coalition partners for granted for years if not decades. When it comes to the two biggest minorities--blacks and Hispanics--it is not all that inconceivable if the ushering in of a true multiparty system results in new parties that specifically caters to each community's needs. There could be one party per each race or there could be multiple black and Hispanic parties. Another group that has received lip service from Democrats is the party's progressive wing. If Hillary is nominated (or is that coronated?) next year, these lefties may jump ship to Jill Stein's Green Party and continue doing so in future elections. By then, the breaking point will have happened. After all, the DNC changed the rules to keep Larry Lessig out of the debates because he ran on an electoral reform platform. If the party is willing to keep out someone who had little chance of winning, then, it can continue to feel complacent about its other wings because the business wing thrives on complacency.

Exposing Local Elites

This YES! Weekly cover story talked about bloggers creating gotcha moments that never happen. Well, given that the Greensboro-High Point region is now the hungriest in America, somebody's gotta keep those in power honest because there's no real investigative reporting here. The TV stations only do typical sweeps month pieces because they are in bed with the elites.

When I lived in the Triangle, there were (and still are) alternative publications that at times keep the powerful in line. Here, YES! Weekly did that for a while, but once the backlash to the "Downtown Babylon" cover story occurred, current and former editors and reporters have gone from being brashly antiestablishment to currying too much favor with the entrenched interests. Take for instance the DGI debacle at the start of the year. The evidence of rotten eggs was there, but many people decided to believe the power brokers of an organization that was more concerned about protecting their self interests than actually advancing downtown Greensboro as a whole.

Another problem is that the elites constantly show their inferiority complex. Area leaders seem to build things that don't make sense because they want to be better than Charlotte and the Triangle. If the UNC System shuts down A&T's nursing program, then that much bandied research campus at the corners of Lee (I'm not calling it Gate City Boulevard, folks) and S. Elm Streets may never take hold. And don't even get me started on the overhyped performing arts center.

What these power brokers just don't get is that the infrastructure simply isn't there anymore--that ship has sailed. Greensboro was the second largest city in the state back in 1960. A few years ago, Durham (maybe permanently) passed Winston-Salem to become NC's fourth largest city after those two cities traded the #4 and #5 spots for five years. Given that the Triangle has grown at a much more rapid pace than the Triad, it is possible that the Gate City could end up swapping places with the Bull City by the time the next census is revealed in five years' time.

The bottom line in all of this is that this area's journalists can either blow the lid on things that keep this area mired in mediocrity or they can continue punting until it's too late and all the dirt gets dished when the area is in a state of irreversible decline and everyone wonders why no one exposed things earlier.

High Point's in a generational time warp

Five years ago, Brian Clarey went to Oak Hollow Mall on the last day of the spring furniture market and he noted how few people were there. This line caught my eye:

Oak Hollow Mall came to be in 1995 which, even if you figure that the Triad is generally five years behind the rest of the nation, is pretty late in the game for a shopping mall.

When it comes to High Point politics, this really rings true because there's a real generational lag. When downtown was at a crossroads 20 years ago following the defections of Sears and Chick-Fil-A to the mall, the Silent Generation was still firmly in control of High Point politics--even though the nation as a whole witnessed Baby Boomers replacing Silents in positions of authority. So, the planners must have been a '60s/70s mindset of focusing on the suburban areas while abandoning the center city when they let the furniture makers have downtown all to themselves (it's worth noting that 1995 was about the time that Rust Belt cities began their revivals, and downtown revivals took off about 5-10 years after that).

After all, it was only in 2012 that the city elected its first Boomer as mayor after 20 years of Becky Smothers and Arnold Koonce. Even though the current city council is 2/3 Xers, Boomers still control the overall political infrastructure so it's no surprise to me that Milennials are going to Greensboro after the movers and shakers have openly discouraged them.

FIFA is worse than the Mafia

At first, I was ready to compare FIFA to the Mafia, but that whole thing about Sepp Blatter providing essential services to Third World countries turned out to be a lie as the AP explained it.

The results spell out the unsettling truth

• No trickling down of money to minor leagues
• Youth players (i.e. supposed future World Cup stars) using old equipment
• The inability of semipro players being unable to buy equipment or play on an appropriate field because soccer officials in some countries would rather pay their executives to stay in lavish hotels

The Future of Sports Leagues

The Grantland article brought up some interesting possibilities:

• Sports leagues being partnered by networks. This almost happened in 1998 as NBC and TNT lost NFL coverage to CBS and ESPN. The Peacock and Billionaire Ted strongly considered forming their own pro football league to compete with the NFL.
• Some multibillionaire deciding to fund his own league either because he's unable to get a franchise in one of the four major sports leagues or because a certain market isn't being served.
• Sports leagues fracturing due to market size. All of the major markets would likely stay in their current leagues but the rest would form new leagues.
• The next work stoppage might actually be the catalyst for multiple sports leagues. A 2011 ESPN the Magazine article brought up a scenario where the NBA players could have bolted to form a new player-run league during that sport's lockout.

Black political tuneout?

For all of the talk about how much progress blacks have made, we surely have seen lots of rollbacks over the last six years.

Oh, you didn't know? Let me count the ways:

• Deliberate reversals of Civil Rights Era voting measures


• Open season on black males courtesy of stand your ground laws and legalized police brutality


• Nonindictments of police officers in Ferguson and on Staten Island after they killed unarmed black men


• A growing acceptance of whites using racist language--coded and overt


• This year's all-white Oscars in the only categories much of the public cares about


• "Selma" getting dissed for allegedly not "playing the game"


It could be very possible that once the current POTUS leaves the White House, blacks completely tune out of the political process. Of course, the big difference between the post-2017 and 1877-1965 periods is that the former would be a (mostly) voluntary disengagement as opposed to the Jim Crow Era's poll taxes, literacy tests, and death threats.

What would the impact of such black separatism have on society in general? For me, a potential negative could mean that blacks could have more animosity towards outsiders.

On the other hand, there are two upsides: First, the black infrastructure could be rebuilt. Rather than relying on false imagery like bling, tomorrow's black youth could look up to the Black Wall Streets of the 21st century as a way of getting rich. Second, political separation could provide a chance for the black community to "clean up" so to speak. Neither the promotion of anti-black ratchet music nor illegitimacy would be tolerated if there were strong black leadership.

And the Oscars are out

So, everyone's buzzing about what happened with the Oscars nominations--namely that there was a dearth of black nominees. At this point, why should anyone be surprised? After all, this is the same industry that once listed an overtly racist film in its top 100.

Do Denzel Washington playing a crooked cop in Training Day, Halle Berry sleeping with an old white man in Monster's Ball, the praise over movies like 12 Years a Slave, and "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" winning an Oscar for Best Original Song have anything in common? These movies all have black people in stereotypical or subordinate roles for which there were lots of critical acclaim. That the people behind Selma failed to send screener DVDs to the voters and the uproar over how LBJ was portrayed by the 37th president's apologists as may have been the movie's undoing is really a sign to me that there's still a lot of old boy club mechanisms at work.