☆ CA governor debate displays Dems lost in a bell jar of their own making
In The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (above), the protagonist famously likens her collapse into mental illness to a descending bell jar that distorts her view of the world. Giovanni Giovannetti/Grazia Neri, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Cristabel Cruz can't help but play therapist and try to help Dem candidates escape their denial, cognitive rigidity, and constrained worldview when it comes to CA's chronic problems. An OppNow exclusive.
The Dems are stuck.
That's my overwhelming takeaway from watching the February 3 gubernatorial farrago in S.F.
And I mean really stuck.
All the Dem candidates heartily acknowledge the whopping failures of Newsom's tenure. But--and here's the main point--they frame those failures as simply mistakes of implementation, not strategy.
They all basically say: Jeez, if some strapping new technocratic manager (like them!) could come along and:
Tweak some regs,
Boost some taxes,
Squeeze some more efficiencies,
Implement a few more big one-size-fits-all schemes...
... hey, we'd all be en la abundancia.
Meh. I'm no loquera, but it's clear as a highrise in the desert that the Dem's prevailing political worldview can't even begin to entertain the notion that, maybe CA's chronic misgovernment derives from this fact:
That their long-held governing assumptions and strategies are simply wrong from the get-go.
And irredeemably so.
Put in a way my high school English teacher would like: they're stuck in a bell jar of their own intellectual making.
So this Super Bowl weekend, I sought out some voices to help our Dem friends find a way out of their worldview prison.
Main conclusions:
It takes work, but you can break free of a worldview that's been coerced onto you.
Politicians dump worldviews all the time, they're just clever about it.
The best way to avoid the bell jar is to keep moving.
I hope my amigas take these thoughts & readings to heart and accept them as they are offered: in good will.
You have nothing to lose but your chains.
--Cristabel Cruz for the OppNow team
This weekend's new readings
Step one of breaking free of constraing worldview is to realize that our worldview has been taught—not chosen.
https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/we-are-not-our-worldview
Political parties reinvent themselves with the times--they're just clever about it.
https://www.opportunitynowsv.org/blog/the-art-of-political-reinvention
Poetry: Wanderlust and free minds.
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