Hey you twenty-something independent who voted for Obama but is now too bummed to show up. Who worked on the campaign and then felt dropped like a hot rock. I hear you. Lots of us do. But Tuesday is vital. This time you will be voting for control of the first branch of government -- Congress. Congress is all of us -- the peoples' house. Today it is the battleground between the past and the future. The terrain is open. You will be the soldiers, the field commanders and the generals of this inevitable revolution. The stakes are huge: How will we go forward as a nation in the world? How will technology improve our democracy? More immediately, how will we respond to the frustrations embodied by the Tea Party movement?
Our national challenge is cut out for millennials: you play well with others, are tech savvy and you want to change the world. On November 2, you must show the rest of us that teams perform better than solo acts, that a common good does exist and that you expect Congress to provide for it. Tuesday's mid-term deserves your participation just as much as the presidential election in 2008.
The problems with Congress today are not just ideological, they are institutional. It has failed to adapt to the modern era. Many Tea Partiers have legitimate complaints about these obstacles. But their cannibalistic solutions will make things worse. Tea party corporate benefactors might be invisible now -- coasting along on colonial coat-tails, but they will be the ones rearranging the House and Senate office furniture come January. There's nothing new here.
The revolution we need can't be bought. It must be built. Power is re-distributing outward from DC. This loss of central control makes everyone in the old system uncomfortable, but it is a boon for public entrepreneurs everywhere. Congress is an antique. It has not been reformed for decades. Incoming information is mostly sorted according to ad-hoc or backward looking categories. (In my field of national security, Congress still looks through a 1947 lens, global security isn't even on the radar) Time to start asking which functions of governing can be taken out of DC. Oversight? Information support? Global situational awareness? How will we organize ourselves for influence? Who can provide the best collective knowledge? How can we do a better job consistently supporting champions of change? Crowdsourcing public interest representation has just begun.
Improving Congress is a systems-thinker's dream -- 535 moving pieces, all waiting to be assisted, connected, leveraged. The local organizer's job is to help an elected leader find that place where political self interest and common goods no longer clash. This task is significant -- it will require vigilance in the form of visibility, surge capacity and venues for public discourse. We must think outside of elections. Voters are also citizens with policy expertise, important voices who can broaden the institutional blinders, ease the noise and dissonance surrounding decisions, create room to take risks on behalf of long-term goals.
There is no Congress App
The communications revolution is just now hitting Congress. At the same time, technology enabled participation is transforming societies across the world. From Cairo to Chicago, the DNA of self-governance is changing. Social media and the communications explosion are hugely important, but they alone will not fix institutional failures. New relationships need to be created and maintained. In politics, relationships will leverage technology, not the other way around. Congress is where the opposing camps of Malcom Gladwell and Biz Stone come together, where meaningful and sustained social change requires strong relationships inside and outside of the antique hierarchical structure. In Congress, power is constantly redistributing due to unforseen circumstances (someone dies, a bill is introduced, an earthquake happens, someone makes a speech, violence breaks out). Constituents who can provide credible adaptive knowledge will gain increasing influence. Its time to remember the lessons of iteration from calculus. Technology makes it possible.
Conventional political activism says we must make it costly to ignore the greater good... (Children, nature, peace). True, but why don't we also make it easier to act on their behalf?
I think we all know that the noise will not subside. Cognitive dissonance in our political lives will continue. The Tea Party has jumped on the human tendency to simplify, to create a stark choice between individual and collective identity. Their slogans are comforting but false.
The history of the world shows that communities of cooperators succeed. Even now, Tea Party candidates seem willing to rationalize inequalities that they'd find impossible to impose. Why? because they depend on the rest of us.
We have come to the point in our democracy where those that are extreme, consistent and well financed threaten to swamp our progress. This is not a time for ambivalence. Vote for the progressive candidate. Then take your hopes and make the change happen.
Follow Lorelei Kelly on Twitter: www.twitter.com/loreleikelly
YOUR generation is going to have to do more than just vote and support political candidates.
There are lots of old heads telling you to vote vote vote! Yeah that is not bad advice. It is just totally not enough to create a livable future for your generation.
You guys have to dismantle the past 30 years of governance by both Parties and their Corporate backers. You are going to have to change the RULES.
You have got to organize yourselves across the country -OUTSIDE of the political parties- they want to use you for their own purposes.
Talk with each other about things like:
Who has the political, economic and media Power & resources and how are they distributed in our nation?
Ask - Why are there so many problems in our nation right now?
Ask -What do we need to do in order to take power and control away from the older generation
Your parents generation is
NOT
going to leave you a future that you will want to live in....
They have hundreds of excuses for why things cannot be done differently. From the President to Corporate leaders they are not telling you the whole story.
Truth is that collectively they have grown one huge bubble across all sectors of our society that is bursting as we speak.
You have got to take the keys from the drunk drivers. It is up to you to save yourselves and your future children.
At a few times, in every countries history the serfs, peasants, mice have look past the controlled political power and made a better country for them selves. It will not happen in this election because none of the parties have given anyone a choice for that ever prominent word change.
Starting in 2011, a single upstart political group or party will state the obvious to America, the problem is the system not the government and allow the people a real choice for the future with out having to swing to the ends of the pendulum at every election. A party that will shamelessly steal the best from both parties and speak out on what to do to get America working and into a great future. A party will take on education, drug laws, crime in the streets, transportation, health care, Social Security because these are symptoms of the failure of the two parties in power.
The American party knows that labor and industry working together makes for a great USA. That free trade needs to be changed to equal trade and opening space to commercial interests will revitalize this country. Rebuild, retool and reeducate America. No other party will say this!
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Not only will many disillusioned young people fail to show up, those who do are much more likely to vote Republican than two years ago.
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So thanks, Mr. President, for speeding up a process from left-to-right that often takes a decade or so.
The people who fear it are the establishment.
Constantly throwing out "young people" is an old Democrat trick.
"Tastes Great!"
versus
"Less Filling!"