Monitors can breathe while they run. Other lizards can’t. You can see the benefits of the former and the disadvantages of the latter, can’t you? The lizards run and stop, run and stop, run and stop. Fast, true, but only for a short distance. The monitors keep running. They’re the wolves and dogs of the reptilian world.
Political parties and their agenda are lizards. When they get into power, they run full speed, but they do so anaerobically. They run fast and abruptly stop when the other party comes to power. Then the process repeats with the new lizards, that is, the new people in power.
Problems, both political and social, are monitors. They run aerobically. The result is that regardless of a party’s desire to solve problems, it runs out of air, giving the problems a chance to overrun an agenda. And even when one party or one person takes total control, as for example, a Caligula, aTamerlane, a Stalin, Hitler—many others—the finite nature of life robs them of oxygen. The Roman Empire lasted a millennium; the Eastern Roman Empire lasted a millennium; the Holy Roman Empire lasted a millennium. Only the Shang and Qing dynasties among many other Chinese dynasties persisted into their fourth century.
All those in power, even the most confident, are anaerobic. They run out of air, if not by political process, then by death. And the problems they perceive they can solve? Well, they’re the monitors.
All analogies limp, as they say, and this one is no exception. While political parties are in power trying to solve perceived and actual problems, they give birth to monitors. Yes, strange evolution: One species giving birth to another. Lizards beget monitors—too many monitors to monitor. Lizards engender a new generation of aerobic problems that outrun and outlast them.
So-called solutions engender new problems. Remember Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society? The effort reduced the percentage of people living in poverty, but it created programs requiring mandatory government spending that now exceeds 60% of the federal budget. The debt born in previous “dynasties” now exceeds $80,000 per person. That per person includes you. Now you and any newly installed political power are the lizards being chased by the indefatigable monitors created in previous administrations.
Every solution appears to create another monitor, and every monitor seems to run with ample air. It appears to be our nature to demonstrate in politics our ancient evolutionary heritage, our reptilian limitations of running fast for a short distance.
Political parties and their agenda are lizards. When they get into power, they run full speed, but they do so anaerobically. They run fast and abruptly stop when the other party comes to power. Then the process repeats with the new lizards, that is, the new people in power.
Problems, both political and social, are monitors. They run aerobically. The result is that regardless of a party’s desire to solve problems, it runs out of air, giving the problems a chance to overrun an agenda. And even when one party or one person takes total control, as for example, a Caligula, aTamerlane, a Stalin, Hitler—many others—the finite nature of life robs them of oxygen. The Roman Empire lasted a millennium; the Eastern Roman Empire lasted a millennium; the Holy Roman Empire lasted a millennium. Only the Shang and Qing dynasties among many other Chinese dynasties persisted into their fourth century.
All those in power, even the most confident, are anaerobic. They run out of air, if not by political process, then by death. And the problems they perceive they can solve? Well, they’re the monitors.
All analogies limp, as they say, and this one is no exception. While political parties are in power trying to solve perceived and actual problems, they give birth to monitors. Yes, strange evolution: One species giving birth to another. Lizards beget monitors—too many monitors to monitor. Lizards engender a new generation of aerobic problems that outrun and outlast them.
So-called solutions engender new problems. Remember Johnson’s War on Poverty and Great Society? The effort reduced the percentage of people living in poverty, but it created programs requiring mandatory government spending that now exceeds 60% of the federal budget. The debt born in previous “dynasties” now exceeds $80,000 per person. That per person includes you. Now you and any newly installed political power are the lizards being chased by the indefatigable monitors created in previous administrations.
Every solution appears to create another monitor, and every monitor seems to run with ample air. It appears to be our nature to demonstrate in politics our ancient evolutionary heritage, our reptilian limitations of running fast for a short distance.
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