Candidates for the legislative and executive branches of the U. S. federal government collectively spend billions of dollars (Congress: $9.9 billion in 2020 and $8.9 billion in 2022, and the White House: $5.1 billion in 2016 and $6.5 billion in 2020) to market themselves and insult their opponents. Said differently, consulting, marketing, public relations, and advertising firms make billions of dollars in their heartfelt efforts to keep Washington, D.C. running as the well-oiled, fine-tuned, digitally remastered, Constitutionally grounded, best-and brightest machine that it is.
As an unaffiliated voter, I receive solicitations for money—daily nowadays—via snail mail, email, and text (for which which I’ve never given permission) from both Democratic and Republican candidates, their respective national committees, celebrities, and assorted PACS and associations that are sure they are fighting for the heart, soul, kidneys, and colon of the country. I actually admire and agree with some of the folks who write to me—or, more accurately, with the folks who have given permission to use their names to write to me and ask for money.
I often disagree with, don’t particularly care for, and occasionally write about some other folks and what they say, especially when their messages are hyperbolic and/or easily refuted.
Also, I do understand that these candidates are stuck in a system that they’ve helped create and continue to perpetuate and that the business model includes tapping “folks like you” to “donate $50, $25, or any amount” because technology has made it easier to get $25 each from 10 million people than to get $250,000,000 from a smaller number of contributors who will want something specific in return for their bribe contribution.
I know that you have your own version of this.
To be clear, no one who knows me calls me “Reginald A.”, but that’s what the technology has captured, so I have to read that every time someone wants me to pitch in.
I’ve shared what’s above in order to write what follows.
While I clearly see the stark differences between the two major parties, and I prefer many of the candidates who are associated with the Democratic party that, while it definitely spins stories and engages in motivated reasoning (as we all do from time to time), does not spend its billions, as the Republicans do, in order to proffer outright lies that are provably false (as most of us—at least most of the folks I know—don’t), to only honor election results when they win, and who call criminal and civil litigation brought against one of their members “witch hunts” while they publicly celebrate litigation brought against their opponents.
To paraphrase Mac McAnally, it’s a small, crazy world, but they live there.
There is, however, one area in which these two parties march in tandem. Whether it’s because they have too much to lose, or because they are afraid to tell the truth, or because they are truly ignorant, a combination of these, or something else is anyone’s guess.
Here’s the thing: the finite, modern, winner-take-all, exploitative, binary game that they are both committed to playing is dying—and not just in the United States, but everywhere on Earth. Yes, that’s the planet on which we continue to kill off species, on which per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are found in every molecule of water on the planet, on which corporations create demand for unnecessary products in order to maximize and keep profits and pay the interest on their debts while externalizing the costs of and damage done by their products to the rest of us (leaded gasoline, PFAS, DDT, Agent Orange, PCBs, and many, many more, for example).
To paraphrase Daniel Schmactenberger, biology and physics have more to say about the biosphere than any economic policy or market strategy can or will, or, to quote him directly, “Stop trying to win at the dying game…the game that’s killing everything.” Our planet is in trouble and electric cars, solar panels, and fast-food salads won’t save it. Or us.
Dr. Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti (aka Vanessa Machado de Oliveira) at the University of British Columbia tells us in her 2021 book, Hospicing Modernity, that “the sense of separation and superiority implanted by modernity is a social disease in all of us, that requires collective healing”1 and that
“We are living off expired or expiring stories…. lethargic or stuck, they can’t move things in generative ways anymore, but we often feel we cannot let them go. Many of these stories give us a sense of security, purpose, and direction—precisely because they seem stable and solid….we become attached to them and get used to their weight in our lives. If we notice they are dying, we refuse to accept it and we put them on life support…”2
The biosphere, along with the stories that contaminate it, is dying. The authors-perpetrators are Capitalists, Communists, Socialists, Libertarians, democracies, autocracies, and theocracies—they share this story, but their narrative styles, imagery, metaphors, and characters differ. The Democratic and Republican parties in the U. S. share this story and the diverse ways of telling it as well. No one has an ending that’s good for sentient beings.
Yet, they seem to think they need billions of dollars for marketing to campaign for public office. They make it clear that it’s up to folks like me, who are willing to donate any amount, to perpetuate a dying game. And yet, many of them, especially those who are honest, are doing the best they can. And, again, in the twenty-first century, the Republican party has abandoned the reality-based community and any authentic relationship with truth and truthfulness.
What’s a human to do?
Stay tuned for more questions. Be careful around folks who claim to know the answers.
Recommendation: Begin to read or listen to Daniel Schmactenberger. There’s a lot to take in. This is one place to begin:
Something to Consider: If you own a phone or motor vehicle, and you live in a house, apartment (condo, etc.), and you eat food, begin to explore where the “materials” for these originated, what happened to the land, who mined, built, or grew them, and how much they were paid to mine, build, or grow.
Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism, (North Atlantic, 2021), xxiv.
Ibid., 15.