The Long Game

The Gravitron

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We often refer to American politics now as a circus. But it's a carnival ride that best illustrates the gravitational forces that created the mess we've made of our politics. Everything now is centrifugal — pushing us away from one another and away from the center — with almost zero countervailing force.


In this episode I talk about:


  • Our loss of imagination for how to overcome challenges through working with others, and how our ideas about influence are too narrow.
  • How this lack of creativity is fueling the dysfunctional politics we see playing out.
  • The twin hammer blows that have weakened political parties in America, which used to balance our healthy push toward individualism.
  • Reforms to party primaries were intended to democratize our elections, but have made them less democratic. The current system holds the majority of Americans in the "exhausted middle" hostage to the minority of Americans on the extremes of left and right.
  • A push for greater voting rights could be combined with changes to our primaries.


    • The sound clip of an amusement ride with voice at the beginning is from a wonderfully strange short film I found called "The Centrifuge Brain Project | A Short Film by Till Nowak."


    The song used in the interludes, and at the end, is "Red Hook (Live at the Jazz Standard New York, 2017)" by Jakob Bro, Thomas Morgan & Joey Baron from the 2018 album, Bay of Rainbows.

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    The Long GameBy Jon Ward
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