Good point and I sadly agree. I’m hopeful, but hopefully not utterly delusional, that tools like bitcoin and nostr will help a more critical mass of folks look outside the existing system. But you’re certainly right. Parliamentary system would create much more space for constructive clashes of a wider array of ideas.

Despite RFK ending his campaign, I’m hopeful that there’s an emergent groundswell of independent political voices in the U.S.

Voices that are heterodox, non-monolithic, beholden to neither of the two ossified existing parties.

And I hope this leads to a politics with less theater and more real human interaction; less doctrine and more ideas.

Americans are a deeply innovative people. Our country’s founding itself was a tectonic innovation in governance.

Back then it was the tyranny of a distant monarch. Today we live under the tyranny of the two-party system and the ubiquitous media machine that supports it.

There’s a frontier beyond this paradigm, though, and I hope we can find a new frontier in our politics, too. Something more than merely recycled Reagan or FDR.

It’s why I feel so strongly about #bitcoin. Because it aids in the subversion of this paradigm. Same with #nostr.

Other than education, I’m not sure there’s anything in America more in need of innovation than our politics.

I see glimpses of something new, whether it’s Vivek walking around talking to everyone, even passionate detractors, impromptu and unscripted, without handlers or teleprompters.

Or RFK, taking on big pharma, crusading for clean food, healthier lifestyles, and a detoxified world for our children, and doing it all while a massive, coordinated censorship campaign sought to banish and discredit him into obscurity.

I occasionally even see some of it in a guy like John Fetterman who, after his hospitalization, has made the radical decision to just say what he thinks, haters be damned, party marching orders be damned.

I don’t agree with any of these people on everything. But that’s perfectly okay. And that’s the point.

What I want to see is a politics of PEOPLE, warts and all, debating ideas; not of vast machineries producing newer vessels for the same shit.

We are a nation capable of generative, even revolutionary heterodoxy. We awesomely, transcendently weird. But we’ve allowed our political imaginations to atrophy on a 24/7 diet of mainstream media, algorithms, and the virtue-signaling regime that makes us all self-censor.

Polarization went from being a temporary bug to being fundamental. Grievance is now both a business and an infinite regress. Activism is a profession.

If you listen closely you can hear the song of the trapped who has grown to love its cage.

But I’m hopeful there’s a rumbling of something new on the horizon.

The purest form of democracy is Gilmore Girls. Got it!

my bitaxe is pulling 69 sats a block on ocean

just sayin'...

In my mind, the folks who constantly talk about how the Bitcoin exchange rate is going to moon any day now must also be the type who enjoy blue balls.

All I heard from Trump was how bad everything is, stoking fear, and how he’s going to fix everything. Empty promises, nothing new. And yup, Elon is a chump.