A NEW POLITICAL PARADIGM
Traditional Shadow Puppetry in Indonesia
Impressions / McCoy Tyner
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John Fraim
One of the more insightful writers on my substacks today is Ross Barkan. I’ve been on his substack for six months and his view is usually from 40,000 feet rather than ground level. On August 14, just days before the DNC Chicago convention, Ross had a particularly interesting post titled “The Leaderless Left.” (https://rosselliotbarkan.com/p/the-leaderless-left).
In part he wrote, “Defined leaders, so crucial to left politicking and activism over the last 60 years, seem to be melting away. Today’s activist class has few heroes, and the concept of the famed civil rights leader, feminist icon, or public intellectual organizer is fading.”
There is a paradigm shift in political power away from the attraction of a leader to the manipulation of a puppet. This has been apparent in the Biden presidency and looks to be true with Biden 2.0 in Kamala Harris. Rule is via hidden controllers rather than out-front leaders.
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This new political paradigm of power calls out for new strategies against it. A basic formula might be devised somewhat like the following:
Less of a leader = more of a puppet = more controllable by others.
More of a leader = less of a puppet = less control by others.
The old strategies are based on battles against leaders on the side of the opposition. The belief that the Democrat leaders believe what they say. That the words are their own and not someone else’s read off teleprompters.
Opposition strategy of the Republicans needs adjustment to the reality they are battling puppets of the hidden controllers. It is likely these direct domestic controllers have global connections. The battle of the out of power opposition party against the incumbents is made all the greater by this reality. Not only is the conservative opposition battling against the incumbent liberal administration, but also the overall liberalism of the globalists. It is a large battle. Various nations in Europe constantly move back and forth between conservative and liberal but the European Union is very liberal and global. And socialist in approach.
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Puppets of leadership was symbolized in the film The Year of Living Dangerously where shadow hand puppets are projected against the wall. Our current political situation seems much like these Indonesian hand puppets. The puppet president just shadows on the wall with those controlling the shadow, out of sight. Unseen. Off stage.
There are many ideological clashes between the two parties today. But in my opinion, the most important is whether one wants hidden or unhidden powers controlling the presidency. In effect, whether one wants puppets or leaders running the nation.
The presidency of Biden has started the era of the puppet president for Democrats. A man in mental decline has proven to be a good beginning for the era of this puppet presidency. Now, Biden’s VP Harris, coming into the DNC convention with the lowest ranking of any VP on record, offers a new puppet to the controllers of the Democrat Party.
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Again, a reminder of my formula above for control of puppets applies to the Kamala Harris we have seen so far, across all political media. It is the perception of less of a leader as VP and a failure in her border mission and her awful record as a boss to work for. Of course, much of this past history can be controlled by today’s controlling media. A person can be made into a mythological figure these days – like Kamala – in just a few weeks of media praise and saturation.
The lack of leadership of Harris makes her more prone to being a puppet. Owing her power to others outside herself rather than forces within her. Like the inside forces of Kennedy or Reagan.
But there is a great power and dynamics of a person who searches for their true self. There is little question that her opposition, Donald Trump, knows who he is no matter what one thinks of him. There is the strong need for Kamala Harris, it seems to me, to find out who she truly is. This means her race in a very large way. There is a photograph I recently viewed that showed Kamala with her Indian family. This is part of her search for who she is. Part of her future dynamics (and the dynamics of the nation if she becomes president) is whether or not she undertakes this search for her self. Or not.
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It is not an always fun trip of discovery. Most often it’s scary, this trip to discover who one is. This is the dynamic that might come to energize the Harris campaign and take it outside the bubble of reading off of teleprompters. She has to break away from being always planned to being accessible and friendly.
The dynamics of the next few months are set between Kamala and Trump. A person who knows who he is and a person still attempting to define who she is. This is not to make any political statement on the two but simply a statement made from my own observations of the two over media.
But let’s see if Kamala and Tim are still the candidates after Chicago in a few days.
