Friends,
Being in the “Future” business has its advantages if one is a usually accurate forecaster. You can write dozens of blog articles about tomorrow’s trends, place them into a “block stock” file and launch them sometimes up to a few years after they were written. If one is good at catching prophetic trends then the article will read fresh. Writing about today’s interests a few years earlier allows me the time and energy to dedicate to write and complete a couple of new eBooks. One is an almanac of prophecies for the coming year of 2011; the planned release for Predictions for 2011 is this Thanksgiving weekend or 1 December 2010. The second is a book about what may be the new millennium we missed in 2000, because “perhaps” the Mayan Calendar, which is rebooting its five-millennium-lasting “Long Count”, is a more accurate count of the true turn of the millennium in 2012. That eBook will be posted on Hogueprophecy Sales in early February 2011. I’ll make that deadline if my stock of blogs written a year or more ago can do my talking from the past for me in the present.What follows are two introductions for such an article. The first written one year and four months ago and the second written today (28 September 2010) sets up today’s topic about the future of third party movements in America. It was written in the first days of January 2008.
***
Introduction One (19 May 2009)
I wrote [The Party of Americans essay] in January 2008 for Predictions for 2008. It wasn’t the first time I posted articles about a new concept of a third party rebellion against the Democratic-Republican Party Duopoly. So many breathtaking things happened since I wrote this at the beginning of the Presidential Primary Election Season in 08. The national elections later that November brought on a core shift in American politics. Now it seems that change is even set to upend the duopoly transforming it into a Democratic Party monopoly, what with the Republican Party melting down, shedding its moderates — some of these like Senator Arlen Specter switching parties. The Republican Party becomes more hard-right wing and unelectable in the process.
I want to frame the article below with a few observations from today (19 May 2009).
There is still a silent majority of Americans who do not have a watchful eye or a voice reporting their political aspiration inside the bubble world of political commentators on CNN, MSNBC and FOX. Although many of these independents voted for Obama, a monopoly of power in the hands of the Democratic Party in the coming years could lead that party so far left that a rebellion of the independent moderate majority could still be waiting to happen as early as the mid-term elections of 2010. Eventually the Duopoly will be challenged because these non-aligned Americans won’t go back to the Republican’s either as long as they venture deeper into the political wilderness of the extreme right. Here’s the article:
Introduction Two (from today: 28 September 2010)
The duopoly is indeed set for a period of upheaval come this midterm election of 2010 and what I’ve said above about a Republican Party turning more right-wing and unelectable, I contend, will still be the outcome. Not in 2010 but in 2012. What has changed from May 2009 to today, is that the American people may chose to vote in a mandate of anger this coming November and reap the consequences. There could be two years of a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate that could see the GOP devour itself and its political credibility in the coming two years with infighting with its Tea Party members for supremacy. The latter faction cannot — will not — compromise and find common ground, thus reaping a political whirlwind that will give Barack Obama his second term in office.
As Lincoln said, “A house divided cannot stand.” A House of Representatives under the control of Lincoln’s present-day Republican Party injected with the intolerant anger of its Tea Party wing will not stand after the turmoil of the coming two years.
This timeline above is not the only one set before the American voting public, as I explained back in a blog posted in July: Uranus in Retrograde: A Chaos We can believe in? I will speak more on these two futures as we get closer to Election Day.
What is more important for today as the country ramps up for a wild political ride of last ditch campaigning in October is what I wrote back in January 2008. My “Party of Americans” essay came into the world a few days before the New Hampshire primary — the first of many Democratic and Republican primaries engaged that set in motion a process. Campaign promises kept and unkept in 2008 set in motion a four-year process that by the national elections of 2012 that may evolve third party movements coming out of the Tea Party’s current destructive, chaotically reactive, downright anger-driven and irrational political platform. The ungovernable US Congress of the next two years may create a climate in the land for something far more radical than extreme politics.
Can you imagine a shift from polarity to solidarity? Can you imagine a third party movement that seeks a balanced, middle-way solution for America’s many issues?
The following was written after the “oracle” brought before my inner eye a seemingly impossible, far off future that it presaged campaigns in 2008 for better or worse would set in motion.
***
A Party of Americans (January 2008)
A revolution is looming in the American body politic in 2008. It’s not a revolution of centrists; it’s a revolution of balancers, of reckoners. It will not come from a grass roots movement, because the current two-party grip on American politics wears Dumbo-publican and Donkey-cratic masks over a political mafia of the elected governing of the lobbyists, by the lobbyists and for the lobbyists.
The people are steadily losing their representative democracy to a new plutocracy — an elite governing class of special interests. Though a vast majority of Americans ache for a refreshing change in their democratic misfortunes, they may have to wait for a rebellion of the electors within the plutocracy because the electorate as of yet has no powerful voice or means to stage an effective third party or independent rebellion. The Republican and Democratic Parties run the 50 state governments that make the ballot access rules. Third parties and individuals running as independents often are forced to jump through hoops of extra criteria to get their name on the ballot. In many states, there are registration fees and Herculean petition requirements. Republicans and Democratic candidates don’t have to jump over these obstacles to get on the ballot, but you, Independent candidate, might have to find hundreds of thousands to sign a petition just to get on one state ballot and there’s more than a dozen other states requiring the same.
Those who are already entrenched in the system are the only ones who can break free of it. They’ve got to have some Charles Dickensian, Scrooge moment. See the light. Foresee the dire state of the future of America revealed by the angel of Christmas Future playing Politic’s Future before “Bah! Humbuggering” the body politic with a political duopoly. And when enough Republican or Democratic political scrooges turn their hearts away from Lobbyism to Populism again, you will see the next great party born in the coming 36 years.
I call it the American Party.
It is not politically Left. It is not Right. It is not spendthrift or greedy, Green or Libertarian. Its party platform is about fair and balanced government finding common ground amongst all Americans. In the end, despite their many differences, this country has ever been a party of Americans.
What do Americans all share in common?
A love of country, freedom of speech and religious belief. A fairness in rights given and access to fair wages and opportunities. Generally, Americans are fiscally conservative yet socially tolerant. Change allied with merit and practical reality. Whatever the differences in religious beliefs, the American Party follows the golden rule: “Do unto other Americans as you would have them do unto you.”
The American Party can be born overnight when a dozen Republican and Democratic Senators with 20 to 30 members of the House of Representatives pledge to abandon the duopoly and special interest groups that got them into office. The government will not function unless the Left and the Right come in from the extremes of ideology, making fair and equitable compromises to gain the American Party’s voting block to break deadlocks and to move forward. Special interests may have gotten them there, but once elected they could serve out their terms winning a majority of American voters over to their cause with the merits of progressive legislation that brings the government back to one that is of, by and for the American people. If this handful of legislators succeeds in making real change, the people will vote them back into office regardless of what Lobbyism dictates.
The American Party could begin with a conversion of just one man or woman who oversees the Executive Branch of the government. The political climate in Washington DC could see partisan passions evaporate overnight if neither party had the president in their political pocket. A consensus-oriented American Party President in the White House forces the two parties to work out compromises because he or she will veto anything too ideologically extreme or dictated by special interests.
***
The prophetic narrative in my annual almanacs is a continual flow of predictions (such as above) that often enlarge upon the vision of tomorrow’s events beyond the mere temporal straight-jacket of the year in question. Indeed many of the predictions set for each year tend to be more like a birthday point of forecast trends that may surface in the year in question yet evolve for many years to come, such as the account above of third party movements.
That is why I recommend you consider reading Predictions for 2008 and Predictions for 2009 as well as reading Predictions for 2010 if you haven’t already done so. Even though 2010 is drawing to its close, much of what I wrote for its, well as books on 09 and 08, looks far into the future of the next ten to twenty years. I also cover issues and prophecies not seen in the blog postings.
No need to wait for what’s going to happen in 2012. We are in times of upheaval and revolution right here and now.
John Hogue
(28 September 2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment