Denial

today's ditty:  Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed

The election is now only 2 days away.  And the likelihood that Obama will be re-elected is quite high. The most statistically sound of the polling aggregation websites, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, says that as-of November 2nd, Obama’s chances of winning have increased to 83.7%.  FiveThirtyEight’s forecast for electoral votes is 306.9 for Obama versus 231.1 for Romney.  Even the right entrenched RealClearPolitics website forecasts the electoral split to be 290 to 248 in favor of Obama. It takes a long string of improbable ifs to build a scenario in which Romney wins the needed 270 electoral votes.  

In his first term as president Obama did not perform as well as many of us had hoped he would.   I believe this was largely due to the stonewalling against the executive office by the Republicans, which was taken to an extreme beyond any seen in recent (and possibly all of) US political history.   The stonewalling was clearly beyond the realm of rationality.  Republican leaders in Congress were publicly saying things such as  “Our number one political priority should be to deny Obama a second term”.

So why the irrationality?  Why the denial of the likely outcome of the upcoming election?   I think this is not unrelated to the fact that these feelings and behaviors are largely coming from the same individuals and groups who are in denial over several recent major changes to our lives and to our world:

• Anthropomorphic global climate change is real - scientific consensus on this.  In the next 50 years and beyond, this will likely impact our environment greatly.  Already we are seeing big reductions in arctic ice coverage (skeptical science);

• The world has a limited supply of oil, and with the current explosive economic development across much of the world, the demand for this commodity is rising and so, in accordance with the rules of supply and demand in open markets, oil prices are rising. With this, the economies that are deeply dependent on oil and that do not have good alternative energy sources are suffering and will in the future suffer more;

• China is rising as a major world power at a very fast pace. With this, there is a dilution to the influence of the countries that have been the dominant world powers over most of the past 50 years - America is less influential than it once was and this is becoming more so.  And it's not only China.  Many Asian, South American and African  countries are also rapidly moving into advanced industrialization and are shifting the balances in world power;

• The demographics of the US are shifting - the average American is older (In 1990 the median age was 32.9, in 2010 the median age was 37.2. With this, there is now a higher ratio of dependents versus wage earners, and, health costs and our dependencies on social support networks are on the rise and wealth per capita is on the decline;

• Manufacturing and industry are hugely more efficient than in the past. With this, the numbers of jobs in these sectors is reduced. Right now all of America's industry and manufacturing needs can be supplied with the employ of less that 15% of the US workforce - even if we have no imports from China and other places.  And the trend to higher efficiencies yet continues. These sectors will not supply the jobs they have in the recent past.  To address unemployment issues we have to look elsewhere;

• We live in a world economy. The degree to which we can cooperate and rationally deal with other economies and governments will directly, and greatly, impact America's economic well being;

• The Technological Singularity is expected to occur in less than 15 years. As we approach this event the pace of change in our lives, our societies, our jobs and our world is accelerating.

So let’s recognize the denial for what it is and let’s move on.  In today's world there is much important change - sometimes bad, sometimes good and sometimes very exciting change.  We need to deal with it all.

Our politicians who are not willing to seek out positive ways to work with the changes need to move out of the way and pass the reins onto those who will.  And we need to push out of the way some of those who won't budge (a suggestion on who and how).