☆ Reclaiming authentic political choice
Franz Kafka's 1925 classic, The Trial, explores how rigid, unbending bureaucracies strip people of agency and dignity. © Foto H.-P.Haack, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Our Cristabel Cruz confronts the bogus, false choices offered by CA Dems running for governor, and advocates for breaking free of governmental bureaucracies that undermine honest democratic alternatives. An Opp Now exclusive.
Choice can be an illusion.
A gloomy thought, to be sure. But let's get real. When you walk down the cereal aisle at La Plaza, you see lots of different brands, right? But they're all the same sugared flakes.
Or--more to the point--when you listen to the carbon-copy Democratic candidates for governor spouting their poll-tested soundbites: Son todos iguales.
So it kinda begs the question: Why? What wrong turn did we take to turn democracy and capitalism into a spectacle of bogus alternatives?
It may be this: The choices have already been made for us.
Real estate expert and fellow Opp Now contributor Mark Burns got to the heart of the matter on X recently when he commented, re: SJ's inability to build new housing at scale:
"You can make national policy prognostications all you want but that local planning department bottleneck has had 50+ years to perfect their methods and processes. A generation of staff and electeds need to move on before reform can start and costs can come down. It won’t change anytime soon."--Mark Burns
Put another way, the choices have already been made by SV power structures--gov't, nonprofit, and business bureaucracies. And they enforce a rigid status quo regardless of the statements of hapless politicians who only pretend to lead them.
So for this weekend, I went looking for some voices who see pathways out of the bureaucratic maze that imprisons us at the ballot box, in the market, and in our life choices. And hopefully, won't require Boomers shuffling off this mortal coil. They're worth listening to,
--Cristabel Cruz for the Opp Now team
This weekend's new readings
It's why they call it Kafka-esque
https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/its-why-they-call-it-kafka-esque
headline: How to escape from bureaucratic prisons
https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/its-time-to-escape-from-bureaucracies-in-govt-and-business
Curing local gov't sclerosis
https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/fixing-local-govt-sclerosis
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