Winning the “New” Political Game

Unquestionably, the Democrats were masters of the old political game -- of political bosses speaking for a disempowered citizenry -- much as the union bosses did in the mass production assembly line age that has given way to the new age of customized lifestyles by an empowered, educated, technologically- and media-savvy generation that defies control by the power brokers of old.

Yet the old powers that were, are reluctant to “let go,” and are insistent that everybody “stay in their places,” until somebody dies, and then everybody can move up in seniority by one. For many of today’s talented, that pace of upward mobility is not enough, and they are curious to take on the world now and see how they will fare in the big ocean -- rather than the severely constricted ponds by which many of the big fish could remain the biggest fish because nobody was allowed to grow any bigger than they are.

That kind of status quo could easily be maintained as long as Hawaii was geographically the most isolated place on the planet -- and information could be easily controlled by the labor unions in the communications/media industries of old. But when there is “virtual” information -- or information not filtered and controlled by the self-designated “authorities” anymore, it’s a whole new ball game in which the best information has a chance to get out as much as that which is controlled by the old information controllers -- who were the media, schools and universities.

One would think that those in the universities would have a distinct advantage in the resulting leveling of the playing field, except that academia choose to go on a path that while entrenching themselves in the old world of information, doomed them in the new -- because their tactic was to adopt jargon that excluded participation, rather than appealed to the universal. This was a critical error in an age in which expertise was judged mainly by the ability to connect with as broad a range of audience as possible.

The carefully targeted message could still reach the resonating million person audience -- distributed over the entire world, and not just in the area of one’s specialty in which one no longer had to prove their “leadership” in the field. People no longer care how long one has been doing what one is doing -- especially indifferently, dispassionately, with the only topic of concern being how much they are going to be paid -- with no expectations that such compensation should be commensurate with any ability other than their demand for “More” each year.

In the new world, benefits are calculated periodically with costs so one cannot be expected to continue in their patterns of behavior because that’s what they’ve always done before -- and that is the only way to do things because the information of any other than the officially sanctioned are expressly prohibited. So deservedly, the media, schools and universities should be those scrambling now to rediscover their relevance in an age that increasingly says they aren’t.