This is why I don't trust Democrats or Republicans or power

Democrats to start without GOP input

It's typical. It's arrogant. And it's exactly why I don't trust politics to fix most problems.

E.J. Dionne cheerleads these efforts with a recriminatory tone that typifies E.J.'s partisan work, these days. And which typifies why I don't trust so many liberal journalists, activists, nor politicians, these days.

Paublo Friere was so right. One group oppresses another, and the other group wins power only to look to oppress their oppressor. It's an endless, sad, pathetic cycle.

I am convinced that there is no way out of this cycle than to transcend this ugliness, in the same way that Protestants and Catholics found it within themselves to transcend their ugly power battles and civil wars during the 17th century. There is no way out of this cycle, I don't believe, except for looking deep within ourselves for something greater than who we are, today.

And I want no part of either this effort at liberal dominance or any conservative backlash that follows. I don't want to be in between or in the middle.

I want an honest political center that transcends this ugliness for good. I want people and politicians who listen to one another more than they take self-righteous stands. I want political observers and activists and scholars and journalists and leaders who genuinely engage one another with an genuine openness to the idea that they might be wrong and that their knowledge of their propensity to be wrong should be the most important self-check on their tendency to turn to power to resolve problems of any of the checks that they might face in a democracy.

I want all people to hold themselves accountable to the strongest standards of policy thought, where their fallibility figures larger than their propensity to get things right, all the time. And where fixed and rigid methods of handling problems are looked on with much skepticism for this reason.

One line from the Post article captures the problem well:

"For clues about how the Democrats will operate, the spotlight is on the House, where the new 16-seat majority will hold absolute power over the way the chamber operates."

What was it that Lord Acton said about power and absolute power?

He was right.

We can do better. But it means being better and trusting one another to be better more and confusing our cynicism for realism less.

Thomas Hobbes had a fundamental choice in the 17th century: to concede to the cynicism of a world racked by religious self-righteousness, sectarianism, and civil war, or to imagine a better world.

Hobbes chose the only realistic route.

To imagine a better world.

Love,
Ben