Stage Green vs Yellow Progressive Politics

[Bno]

"Yet an Observation is not a Judgment, and a Description is not a Condemnation. We would benefit a great deal from noticing the difference." - Neale Donald Walsch

Many asked after the 2016 Presidential Election, "How did we get here?" "How do we fix our problems?"

What problems am I referring to here? Our country's? Our countries'? Our planet's?

Is the solution to just get rid of Donald Trump? Should we focus our energy on researching information on him and those close to him exclusively to try to get him out of office? Or is there something deeper? Why did people vote for him? Why did he win?

From my understanding, a stage green spiral dynamics person would put most of their energy on Trump and those close to him. When discussing about politics, most of the conversation will be about how horrible he is, how much of an idiot he is, how incompetent he is, etc. Will this approach solve our problem? This has lead to people developing "Trump Derangement Syndrome," in which any action he does is seen as the problem and no deeper insight is searched.

A stage yellow person would go deeper. They'd focus their energy researching the system that gave us Trump. What led people to vote for this guy? Well, let's take a look at what he was promising.

More jobs
Protection from immigrants who are "stealing the jobs"
Ending the wars which are being spent with our taxes
Ending trade agreements like NAFTA and the TPP which are taking jobs away domestically for cheap labor overseas
Draining the swamp

Why did people want this? Weren't the Obama years great for people? Well, let's take an actual look at what Obama did that may have made people unhappy with their financial wellbeing.

He overcompromised with the Republicans
He took money from the same corporations that fund Republicans
He expanded the wars on "terror" (oil) from 2 (Iraq and Afghanistan) to 7 (Syria, Lybia, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen)
He bailed out wallstreet (cost trillions)
Got rid of habius corpus
Joked, laughed, and said the water in Flint, MI was fine (it wasn't)
Overproduced oil in the US
Increased fracking in the US
Increased sanctions on several foreign countries and oversaw coups
Gave us Obamacare, which on paper is essentially Romneycare, not what he promised in 2008 or 2012
Made the Bush tax cuts on the rich permanent
Passed no economically progressive policies when he had the majority of the house and senate in 2010
Had his cabinet handpicked by the banks that funded his campaign
Was promoting for the TPP and NAFTA even on his last days in office

Whew, ok! I think that's just some of the stuff.

So we can say many people were upset that we didn't get the "hope and change" we were promised and instead just got some tweaks around the edges after the detriments cause by the Bush years.

Do you think people were going to be excited enough for a Democrat who made it apparent that they were going to continue the Obama legacy, saying everything is fine and that we can't have progressive policies that the rest of the developed world has like universal healthcare and free public college? You know, fixing the problems from their day to day lives? Ensuring more money in their pockets and not having to worry about expensive medical bills?

Do you think many progressives were going to remain enthusiastic about supporting a candidate who legitimately cheated the progressive candidate during the democratic primaries? Who used her power and her billionaire donors that own the MSM to smear the progressive and spread misinformation? Who told the MSM to run hours of footage of Trump's empty podiums at the start of the race and ignore Bernie's stadium-filled speeches?

https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/

Should it be a surprise that the states that were most affected by the TPP, the midwestern states, voted for Trump? Were they all just dumb racist Trump supporters? No, many were two-time Obama voters... And Clinton didn't bother to campaign in those states.

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/05/it-was-obama-trump-voters-in-the-midwest-with-econ-anxiety.html

The thing is, Trump is by far not the problem. He is a symptom of a much deeper problem that has led us to more and more corporate corruption and bigger income gaps.

And the corporate Democrats that colluded with Hillary, like Neera Tanden, John Padesta, Debbie Wasserman Shultz, Donna Brazil, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, all continue to refuse taking responsibility for their loss. Instead they blame people with no money and no power like third party voters (which studies show actually would've had no significant effect, half the eligible voters didn't even vote, that is more significant), people who didn't go vote (why does our system make it so hard to take time to do it then? If they were enthusiastic enough they more than likely would've gone), Bernie supporters (more Bernie voters voted for Hillary than Hillary voters voted for Obama), black lives matters, Bernie Sanders, activists, etc.

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/third-party-voters-2016-election

And then there's the fake "Resistance" in which the corporate Dems (Pelosi, Schumer, Warren) vote for Trump's horrible cabinet picks, his increases in the military budget and war interventions on other countries.

So if we want to fix the problem, a stage yellow person would acknowledge these issues. They'd focus their energy on these rather than criticizing a symptom which would only instigate further social divides.

Rather than just concluding that we got him because people are stupid and voted for him or that it was racism or a foreign entity that helped him despite there being legitimate evidence, why not accept the systemic issue here?

I will also add that it's one thing to acknowledge that there's a systemic issue (stage green stops here), it's another thing to acknowledge it and actually do the research to accurately understand the systemic issue (stage yellow).

Stage green personal attacks on Trump can dangerously lead to culture wars, tribalism, and further social division. I'm not saying to never criticize Trump, I'm saying a stage yellow person would also criticize the system that gave us Trump even more. We (the 99%) need to remember that we are all united in our economic beliefs. The grand majority of us, Republican or Democrat or Independent, want economic reforms that'll benefit us and we want to put an end to corporate greed influencing our politicians and elections.

As Kyle Kulinski also put it, you want to win over the people who voted for Trump by giving them the economic things they want, not shame them and call them bad as the Hillary-wing of the party has done.

https://youtu.be/wt3G7WJj1ww

Edited December 8, 2019 by Bno