Why? Because we're basically into an almost intractable political situation in the US, where the biggest liability in the years ahead will be to actually be in power at the time of any given election. It will be much easier, as economic and ecological conditions continue their entropic unraveling, to rail against the ruling party than to actually propose something constructive and helpful. And maybe the best thing of all, party-politics speaking, would be for Presidential and Congressional power to be split, so that each camp can blame national deterioration on good ol' gridlock. Think about it: who would actually want to be in control of the national situation right now, especially with an American attention span that can only process a few months of 'history' at a time, at best? 

I envision a pretty successful mid-term season for the GOP this fall -- not majorities, but healthy gains certainly. Then, I would expect Obama to be a one-term President (again, excepting some enormous economic turnaround in the next year and a half), with Republicans taking back the White House and possibly the whole Congress (at least one half, I would say). But then, since the Republicans have no actual plans that will right the ship of state, despite their caterwauling about fiscal discipline and small government, they will cock things up again, and be in line for their own comeuppance in 2014. At which point the cycle begins again. Except that we likely won't make it that far with business as usual. More probably, there will be some major systemic breakdowns at the most basic levels of society and economy, and we will have either succumbed to more draconian, totalitarian leadership, or, hopefully, will have pulled the energy out of the whole top-down corrupt plutocracy from below by creating more sustainable social forms.

But back to the musical chairs analogy. How did we get to the point where it may be more advantageous, for electoral reasons, to be out of power than in? To understand this strange state of affairs, it may be helpful to return to the subject of two of the earliest posts on this blog site: The Conservative Story and The Liberal Story. In these posts, I outlined what I believe to be the rough contours of the main narratives that conservatives and liberals use to understand the world. For political operatives and wonks, ideas and sound-bites and polls are all-important. But for regular people on the street, what really matters are the stories in their heads about why things are the way they are. Humans are story-telling animals, and narrative structures are how we remember, categorize, and prioritize experience. The Culture Wars of the last few decades are thus really not about ideologies, but about the stories we tell ourselves. 

The dominant feature in both the conservative and liberal narratives is theodicy. In theological terms, theodicy is the question of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? Who or what is the devil? How do people overcome evil?, etc. But in the political realm, I think that our conservative and liberal theodicies are designed to explain the American Fall: that is, how did we go from the triumphant, muscular, dominant player in the world after WW2, to the debt-ridden, flabby, China-dependent, oil-dependent, culturally-debased crapscape we have now? Both mainline parties have to explain this general perception of American decline, not because it is the most obviously-important question or the most accurate framework for understanding reality (indeed it isn't, in my opinion). But accounting for America's fall from grace is necessary for two reasons: to address the general American mood of national pessimism, and to win elections in a winner-take-all electoral structure.

I encourage you to go back and read my full accounts of the Conservative and Liberal Stories (links above), but here are the quick versions. Conservatives see American decline as the result of liberal ungratefulness for, and rebellion against, the bedrock institutions that created our superiority in the first place: God, family, and country, not necessarily in that order. Like a spoiled teenager, we have mocked and abandoned these vital conservative institutions, instead embracing the reckless destruction of sexual license, cultural obscenity, and vocational laziness. In the conservative story, the virtues of civilization don't just happen; they must be guarded, cultivated, preserved, and vigorously defended. Without this jealous and diligent defense, our country has gone down the slippery slope of relativism, secularism, and blasphemy.

In the liberal story, the triumphs of WW2 were followed up by the full flowering of the incipient American ideals of freedom and justice. Blacks, women, and gays all made heroic strides in the 60s and 70s, winning rights that had for centuries been squashed by oppression and marginalization. These movements were not ungrateful and pointless rebellion, but rather fulfillments of the greatest values inherent in the founding of the country. All are created equal. Unfortunately, this project of equality and justice, which may have eventually made its way to economic rights for all, was derailed by a conservative backlash. Regressives of all types came out of the woodwork, to defend the ingrained privileges of race, gender, and religion. The Old Boy network and the entrenched white power structure could not abide the emerging autonomy of the masses, so they repackaged their bigotry and sexism as a battle over religious and cultural morality. Wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage were thus ginned up as acceptable proxies for more nefarious motives, operating as maximum mobilizers of electoral energy.

Ah, elections. This brings us to the other part of our major political narratives, and why they're not very good at explaining reality. In the paragraphs above, we looked at the general theodicies of conservatism and liberalism. Both have elements of truth, and both are, in some way, crafted to address the free-floating anxiety of an American public that senses long-term decline. But as a genuine picture of what has caused the major socioeconomic shifts of the last few decades, neither story even comes close to be satisfactory. Where is the ecological component, the understanding of how global economic and population pressures are squashing every major natural system on the planet? Where is an objective account of technology and its long-term impacts on the ratios of work-hours to salaries to macro-economic health? Is there any type of attempt to explain the general emergence of massive imbalances in power and wealth, both between countries and within many advanced countries like the US? Where is the recognition that consumerism is the prime mover in what many, both liberal and conservative, perceive as the dumbing-down and increased violence of our culture? Where is an account of how race relations are intricately tied up with the steadily-ballooning prison population and cycles of poverty? Rural blight and the collapse of family farming? 

You get the idea. In area after area, our main political stories have nothing to say about the real levers of change, and how we might cooperatively attack the challenges of the present and future. Instead, we're subjected to morality plays, scapegoating, blame games, and oversimplifications of the stupidest sort. We're told that Democrats are evil socialists who want to destroy religion and set up a world government. Republicans are all knuckle-dragging gay bashers, hypocritically concerned with fetuses more than actual, full-fledged people. Voting records and omnibus spending bills are data-mined for endless attack ads about how Joe Blow wants to rape my babies or burn the elderly for winter heat. 

Why all this crap? Because our political narratives are built for just one thing: winning elections. They are not there to uncover the truth, or advance the condition of the country, or pursue any kind of sustainable civilization. Like all aspects of business, the political outlook is short-term. Will it help me return a profit in the next quarter? Will it win the next election? And as the American electoral landscape has evolved over the last few decades, the business of winning elections has essentially become the entire political process itself. The actual legislative, executive, and judicial guts of the system have been completely given over to plutocratic interests, leaving nothing but the horserace crap for us regular citizens to sup on.

Really, nothing will change this political inertia in the near future. There are no "reforms" or "regulations" that can reverse the capture of government by big business. The only things that could even come close to turning around this charade of representative government are not likely to be implemented by those who would be ousted by the same innovations: proportional representation, public funding of elections, hard campaign spending caps, instant runoff voting, etc. 

So prepare yourselves for some bumpy rides in the next couple election cycles. But don't despair, because in the new situation of musical chair politics, set within the downslope of the Long Emergency, today's crushing defeats are just preludes to the next cycle's inevitable reversals. As these spectacles continue to unfold, their ultimate ridiculousness will emerge eventually. Here's hoping that we will have turned our attention to more substantial, bottom-up arenas of potential social change in the meantime, rendering all this mainstream political posturing superfluous.