Here's to a Change from Change

I have to chock up the last five years of presidential election campaigning as one of the darkest episodes in American history.

Ironically, the person who I thought was the best candidate won the election. I simply don't like how he won. As I care more about ideas than power, I worry about the ideas that will surface in his administration.

The primary problem I see at this point in history is that nature of the campaign that just gave a super majority to the Democratic Party. The Party used a very dangerous style of change campaign. The form of the effort is that you capture the press, and then assemble groups that simply agitate for change. In no time you have a shrill noise surrounding all political and economic issues.

As the divisions in society grow deeper and the ability to engage in discourse diminishes, the group the best organized group is able to step into the power vacuum.

I've heard several laud the change campaign as a non-ideological revolution.

The notion is that all of the problems of the past were the result of ideologies, or of religions. Therefore, if you have no ideas or beliefs, then paradise will ensue.

The change campaign has never been about ideology. It is a form for rising to power.

The change campaign is the very heart of radicalization. You can radicalize anything. You can radicalize socialism, you can radicalize religions. You can even radicalize pragmatism.

I find it absurd. We just gave a party a super majority for change without a discussion of the form of the change.

The biggest hope for the country is that Obama has enough sense to realize the negative nature of this effort.

I am an optimist. The American people are sick and tired of a corrupt bloated government. The result of this is that during both the Clinton and Bush administration, the nation moved in the opposite direction of the stated ideology of the president.

Personally, I have a very strong dislike for presidential politics. This is a part of the reason why I do such a bad job blogging about it.

I believe strongly that the direction that the people are taking has a bigger influence than the ideology of the president. The Clinton years saw a sharp turn toward the free market, and we had tremendous prosperity.

The Bush years saw a giant leap leftward. American businesses and investors stopped seeking innovation and were primarily engaged in finding ways to avert risk through hedge funds, reinsurance, credit swaps and complex formulas that used shorting so that they would win in both bear and bull markets.

People, driven by an irrational hatred of Bush were primed to fall for anything other than the person they were conditioned to hate.

Noam Chomsky knows that it is far easy to manufacture discontent than it is to manufacture consent.

Anyway, now that the change campaign has resulted in the designed power shift, we find ourselves in a situation where we need to dig ourselves out of a big financial pit.

Attempts to save the day with debt financed bailouts and stimulus packages have not achieved desired results.

In all likelihood, just leaving the market alone and letting it correct itself would do the job.

We are in a day when people are receptive to ideas. So, starting tomorrow, I will start blogging about what I consider to be the best set of ideas for turning things around.

For our nation to get back on track we need to realize what knocked us off track.

The point of this post is simply to reiterate my belief that the change campaign is part of the problem. The change campaign was the source of much of the current division in our country. It is the source of the lack of confidence in the investment community. Investors fear committing resources while a political party with a super majority has a mandate for unspecified change. Consumers don't buy cars or eat out fearing the change. Companies lay off workers in anticipation of the unspecified change as well.

The biggest problem is that that the change campaign has consolidated even more power in a Federal government that appears to be bankrupt and out of ideas.

So, starting tomorrow, I will stop doing what I dislike (blogging about politics) and start doing what I like ... blogging about ideas.