The People Part of Politics

Years ago, for some unremembered workshop, or maybe sitting on some committee, I sketched out an alternative definition of a Power Pyramid.   It’s undated, but I kept it all these years, and it seems more impactful, un-gussied-up.

My definition: People, even a little united, have all the power, and power people with competing interest know this, and spend their time devising ways to keep the people divided and fighting amongst themselves.  Any person in power lives in dread of being found out.  You can fill in the blanks.

There are three crucial dates ahead:

First. (In Minnesota) Precinct Caucuses on Tuesday, Feb. 3.  They are open to all, most often attended by relatively few, and (my opinion) the most important political meeting one can attend.  My last caucus was two years ago.  It had very low attendance, due largely to very bad weather, and a few of us rattled around to elect delegates and propose resolutions for later levels of political conventions.  In my case, we surviving delegates had to reconvene twice to endorse candidates for legislator vacancies in our district.  The last endorsing convention, in December, 2025, 24 of us (out of over 28,000 registered voters) nominated the endorsed candidate for interim state legislator.  Our candidate was endorsed by 21 of the 24, won the primary (requested by the candidate who was endorsed by a single delegate), and ultimately won the general election on Jan 26 with near 98% of the vote (48 write-ins for other candidates).  The only reason I had a say in who was nominated and was subsequently elected was that I showed up on that miserable winter evening two years ago, and then came to the meetings to choose successor candidates.  Of course, the candidate for office similarly had to show up and campaign for office.  This is what democracy looks like, it is what democracy is.  (Each state has its own system.  So, if you don’t know your entry level political meeting, just ask someone you know who is political!)

The second crucial date: July 4, 2026: the 250th birthday of the United States.  More on that later.  My guess is that this summer will be complicated.  If you can, search out and watch for the first time, or again, Ken Burns series on the American Revolution which led to the United States of America.

The third crucial date: Tuesday, November 10, Election Day.  On this date every member of Congress will be elected, and many other offices, local, state and federal.  Know your candidates as ethereally are, and vote for all offices..

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Be sure to view the YouTube three minute Marsh family  song Minnesota Tribute, it’s beautiful.

from Mary: I did hear yesterday that Minneapolis is to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize – first time for a city.  Probably just a pipe dream but would be a fitting reward for the persistence of the activism.  And DJT would be furious!

from Larry: Excellent piece and the recent shootings took those two legislators out of the breaking news. Glad you brought up those victims. My God, Minnesota is turning into some kind of assassination/murder capital – something like NYC when it was run by the mafia. But in Minnesota’s case, it’s the federal gov’t under Donald Trump that is doing the shooting. Appalling! As Rachelle Cordova (known in social media as “Elle”), who is a Youtuber who grew up in Fargo and is a U of M grad, said in a recent “short” video essay: “Nothing will make Trump’s magabase turn against him...but he is losing approval points (with the general public) almost as fast as he’s losing his marbles.”  So true. LG

from SAK (two contributions):

Dear Mr Bernard, I was moved by your “We’re hanging in there, non-violently.  We’re concerned and we are also determined to make it through this.  We’re up to it.  Expect to see many of us on the streets in the future.”

It parallels 2 lines from Marilynne Robinson’s article which was on the front page of the Financial Times’ Life & Arts today, Saturday 31^st of January, 2026:

“This country is in a state of crisis that began decades ago and will continue for decades more, if we are fortunate. The worst outcome would be a quiet that meant the exhaustion of the public resistance to the post-democratic, post-constitutional movement that controls the government at present.”

Here is the full article:

The killings in Minneapolis

 

As American cities have been left reeling by the deployment of ICE federal agents, acclaimed novelist Marilynne Robinson explores the deeper conflict that lies behind Donald Trump’s show of force.

This country is in a state of crisis that began decades ago and will continue for decades more, if we are fortunate. The worst outcome would be a quiet that meant the exhaustion of the public resistance to the post-democratic, post-constitutional movement that controls the government at present. The disorder we are seeing now is a show of force for its own sake encountering resistance that is entirely to be anticipated, since, as a matter of common sense, these cities that have offered sanctuary to immigrants do not want to see them abused or expelled. If they were, in any significant numbers, the gangsters and criminals and the burden on resources President Donald Trump says they are, hundreds of thousands of people would not be turning out to defend them, to help them stay.

It is clear from what Trump frequently says about immigrants and the countries many of them come from that he quite sincerely despises them. He earnestly wishes that America could be the pure white country it never was. But there is a profounder issue here, that is, whether the American people really do have the right to govern themselves. Federal troops have surged into blue cities, cities that usually elect Democrats to govern them, that provide necessities and amenities to their populations with a freer hand than might be done elsewhere, that embrace new thinking about the definition of family or about environmental issues, for example. They tend to be prosperous and well educated, and to love themselves. And they tend to know their rights. Minneapolis is a prime example of all this. Renée Good and Alex Pretti were credits to their community.

This is the source of its present troubles. There has long been a controversy in this country about what a real America is or would be. Is it its history of change and reform, or is it the past that was lost in all that progress? There is something else in play now that has disrupted the old, frayed likemindedness, our former willingness, however grudging, to grant the other side a point or two. Now we have a president with no sense of shared history or purpose, who speaks of carnage in the streets and calls his opposition “left lunatics” and “very sick people” who hate our country and want to destroy it. Obviously this view of things is not compatible with the orderly transfer of power or any other civil virtue of democracy, or, frankly, of normal adulthood.

There is no better angel to be appealed to in his case. In demonising those who disagree with him he gives himself and his henchmen frightening licence to attack them. Having had so much more experience with the law than a law- abiding citizen, or non-citizen, he knows it can be thwarted or delayed, or weaponised, and that by this and other means he can enjoy more impunity than an honest man would desire or have any use for. We will learn sooner or later if the killings in Minneapolis will simply be one more demonstration of the effectiveness of his methods. We can hardly expect anything but chaos from him. The true variable here is the American in the street, the American in the voting booth.

We must hope that we are teaching our children to enjoy their rights and honour the rights of others, because this conflict may go on for generations. A weird offshoot of old controversies has sprung up, a subculture that rejects democracy. The Trump phenomenon has rested on the love and loyalty of “people”, who are more “people” than the rest of us because when they gather in crowds we are told we are witnessing “populism”. New Yorkers can amass in astonishing numbers, their worries and passions never becoming populism. Fairly or not, they are assumed to read books.

The coming Maga, or Magog, are definitely not “people” in this sense. They are masculinists with very inflated notions of their own intelligence and no respect at all for the generality of humankind. Enough of them are billionaires to make it fairly certain that their intertwined zealotries will persist and have influence. They want to make us all Christians — a tragic history there! — and they want to make us all emulate the values of Aristotle, a pagan before the word, or Word. It is all sophomoric, but with actual academic credentials and publications, a carefully constructed soi-disant elite is emerging who really wouldn’t want those Maga crowds or those Americans in the streets to know what they have in mind, once democracy is out of the way. Knowingly or not, aged Trump is preparing the world for them, a world that will claim to be Christian.

Surely nothing better can be said about the past than that it yielded the present. And no aspect of the present was harder won than the emancipation of Christianity from the state and from the custom and expectation of sectarian hatred and the repression and violence that so often made it unworthy of the name. People who call themselves conservative seem to yearn for those days, to feel the rush of that old certainty while doing sanctified harm to “very sick people”. It is still statistically true in America that there are Christians in any random group. Recently we saw soldiers gathered around a man they held prostrate. They beat him first. If Christ appears to us in this moment, he is not among the executioners.

Marilynne Robinson’s most recent books are the novel ‘Jack’ and ‘Reading Genesis’.

more from SAK, Feb 3:

To introduce Jefferson, not that he needs an introduction, this is what John F. Kennedy said at a dinner honouring Nobel prize winners:

“I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”  😊

Compare that with those dining at the White House these days – many of whom dined at an Epstein mansion or island  . . .

Well Jefferson wrote on one January 30^th a few years ago:

“Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. [England has since much improved one hopes . . . ] 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen [hopefully it will not be seen in one or more of these United States]. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem [I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery]. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.”

Sadly one must also admit that Jefferson kept slaves & had a long term relationship with a young slave who bore him many children that he did not acknowledge I think.

As a tender novel, The Go-Between, opens: “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” This is not meant to justify however.

Jefferson goes on to say:

“Our citizens can never be induced, either as militia or as souldiers [sic], to go there to cut the throats of their own brothers and sons,”

Sadly, as a famous Minnesotan sang, “The times they are a-changin’ . . .”, sometimes for the worse not better. Surely the pendulum has started swinging for the better though.