Keep Moving Forward
“Don’t expect TV news organizations to act accountable, fair, and objective…they’re not their to report the news; they’re there to make the news.”
“How can we also trust you to get very little done and maintain the status quo?”
“It was like a reality show that needed you to assume a role to survive”
“Running for president requires qualities that would make you a terrible leader”
“In national politics, it turns out, you’re not as much the CEO as you are yourself the product”
“The process through which we choose our leaders neutralizes and reduces the capacities we want most in them”
— some excerpts from my incomplete reading of the new Andrew Yang book released a few weeks ago: Forward — Notes on the Future of our Democracy
YANG GANG — I think what Andrew Yang does not see about himself and maybe even his team — or perhaps he chooses not to define it — is that his campaign helped people balance their chi; that he even helped balance the chi of the whole country. Not completely of course. There is still a long way to go. But the forward has motion has started. Andrew Yang is a big player in making that happen. He will continue to do whatever is most appropriate in bringing real change to the system. His actions thus far have proven that. A successful entrepreneur starting from no political background to run for president to help fix a problem that he felt like only he could see properly. Joining the CNN panel after dropping out to insert himself into the mainstream political commentary was nothing short of brilliant. Making a podcast to further dissect the issues that he is focused on most with keen insight on how to address them makes him sound more down to earth than anyone else. Running for the mayoral office of New York to continue demonstrating his willingness to make the political process work for him showed dedication. And now leaving the democratic party to start the independent Forward Party in an attempt to address the growing polarization in our politics and society will ensure his ideas do not get dismissed simply because of his party affiliation. What might be even more appealing about him than his theories regarding universal basic income and automation destroying jobs without replacing them is his sheer humanity. He would be a president that speaks fluently and his able to articulate himself without his emotions skewing his message. His hearty laugh is almost iconic, a sure sign of a man who has full confidence that no matter how bad things may seem, he knows there are real solutions at hand that will work. In fact he founded an organization called Humanity First to test his universal basic income policy on real families that needed it. We may have never seen the much needed stimulus pandemics that came during the pandemic if he had not popularized the idea of UBI. He is reminiscent of Obama in some ways except in that he has a much better chance of making real change happen. This is due to advances in technology that allow the people access to him and him access to the people as much as the fact that he is not part of what Trumpers like to call the “swamp” of Washington. Four years of trying to justify my support of Trump was not only exhausting but painful too. I did not identify with a lot of the Trump base. I just knew that the direction our country was headed in was wrong. There were serious problems that were being overlooked or completely ignored due to out of touch partisan squabbles at the expense of normal people. Trump was symptomatic of a lot of the country’s problems, a point Yang often makes in interviews. The more the media attacked him, the more heads the hydra would grow. Discovering Andrew Yang at the beginning of 2020 was the best month of my life. I thought 2020 was going to be the best year ever. Life had other plans as we all discovered. Yang dropped out shortly after I discovered him and could get involved. A huge celebrity, Kobe Byrant, died suddenly and tragically in the city I was living in. A global pandemic happened. It was like dark forces on the planet wanted to test our 2020 visions, saying: are you humans really prepared to do what is necessary to make a better planet, or are you all just talk? 2020 was a year we all became social justice warriors if we spent any time at all participating in our internet communities. Protests erupted on both sides. Issues that should have been clear cut became political battlegrounds. It was all I could do to not get sucked into the polarized extremes at times. It does not appear to have died down as much as it should have following the election. Things have worsened. Yet their are balanced people out there working hard to sort this situation. Yang is definitely one of them. I consider myself another. I follow in his example, trying to create a healthy middle ground everywhere I go. I hope more people will join us over the next few years. We need all the people we can get.
