Please indulge me with a yarn sure to resonate like a fable. It involves a string and a kite.
A kite without a string is bursting with ambition but aimless; it wants to go everywhere and do everything; it is analogous to a three-year-old in a grocery store clamoring for pop tarts, Yoo Hoo, and jellybeans. The string, or insufferable pragmatist, informs the kite, “You may select one item from the junk food aisle, then we are dashing over to the produce section where we can load our cart with items that won’t kill us.” The kite in this fable is an explorer with an unquenchable thirst for novelty. The string will indulge the kite as long as it pursues its novel ambitions with one foot squarely on the shoulders of ancestral wisdom. The kite without the string lacks direction. The string without the kite is immobile. Each is useless without the other. And that concludes our fable, otherwise the principles of liberalism and conservatism. Both are noble principles but can only fulfil their potential when they cooperate.
For those wondering what is “MAGA” beyond a simplistic slogan: it represents the nation’s laborers the Clinton’s cut loose when, in their second term, they made their push toward corporate elitism. Meanwhile, the republicans didn’t care to woo this sect of the electorate because they were too busy aligning themselves with law and order and constructing their war-for-profit agenda—the latter is a drum the democrats currently beat with gusto. Time past. Trump burst onto the scene and more or less said: Hell, I’ll build a coalition with these poor, two-party system no-wants desperate for a home and, as a result, and perhaps paradoxically, ended up decapitating both parties.
Since the late 90s, I’ve have considered myself politically homeless. I am a 62-year-old tail-end boomer who grew up in a political climate that saw the democrats as the party of labor and the republicans the party of management. Since the late nineties and early aughts, America has been devoid of a labor party and has had thrust upon her two management parties—otherwise a duopoly—fighting for universal supremacy. My hope was that the current parties would cannibalize one another and a viable third party would rise from the carnage. (I’m a cockeyed optimist.)
For decades, it has persisted as a given that those whom we elect to manage our polity are captured by market forces. Unfortunately, the institutions we depend on—the FDA, CDC, NIH, etc… —have also suffered market capture. The consequences? America is about to witness an arms race of epic proportions. For years, BIG FOOD has had its way studying psychology and formulating addictive foods. BIG PHARMA hit back with Ozempic and other inhibitors that have cut into BIG FOOD’S bottom line. The race is on! Doubtless, we will get caught in the middle while the government helplessly spectates and grovels before the mighty, or donor class. Moreover, the legacy media, once upon a time our sense-making apparatus, will choose sides and wave their pompoms at the behest of their corporate overlords and vilify all those who dare dissent.
Nevertheless, I will begin this new administration as I always do: Cautiously optimistic. But if one were to take away anything from the Covid crisis, the sensible exercise would be to align oneself with “team skeptic.” Irrespective of where we sit on the political spectrum, we must reconcile that political parties are not our hometown baseball teams deserving of blind devotion because, after all, they play for us. Lastly, we must never surrender our agency and remain hyper vigilant of influence peddlers whose values and concerns misalign with WE THE PEOPLE.
Michael's Corner 
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