Different family law attorneys approach their cases from different philosophical perspectives. Some seek to unite, some seek to divide. Some seek to pacify, some seek to inflame. For me, the way to cut to the chase on someone else’s strategic thinking is to figure out their end game. What do they want? When you figure that out, the how they get there becomes less of an issue.
Tonight’s post is not about family law, though, that just frames the issue because that is how I evaluate things. Tonight’s post is about the other end games that I can’t figure out just yet.
It’s a big week for big issues in our country. The U.S. Supreme Court issued its 5-4 opinion in a significant election funding case, McCutcheon, deciding again, in the wake of Citizen’s United, that money equals speech and the more of it you have, the more right you must have to speak. I think it is inarguable that money influences politics, and in less than preferable ways. So what is the end game when more and more money further corrupts our political process to obtain worse and worse results? I get that the 500 or so people in the nation that the previous contribution limit impacted would like to have even more power, but laying aside the remaining millions of us, which the Supreme Court did, do these 500 not know human history well enough to realize that the return to feudalism that they seek means forever winnowing the wealthy down to one King and a few Lords, Earls and Barons? They are destined to eat each other. That can’t be a happy prospect. What is their end game? Why does our nation up for sale to the highest bidder sound like a good thing to them?
The other big issue this week is climate change. The IPCC is releasing its next report. In a nutshell, the report confirmed that our situation is bad, getting worse quickly and will quite soon be substantially beyond redemption. I get that the people who make money off of doing business as usual don’t want to change. But given how radically and rapidly our world is changing, I cannot fathom how even the largest monied interest envisions his children and grandchildren enjoying and thriving in their lives in the face of such catastrophe. I don’t care how deep their bunker is or how well stocked their food supply, it is still a bunker. It is still stored food. There are still the masses without a bunker and stored food and who would very much like a piece of that. “Let them eat cake,” doesn’t sound any better the second time around. What is their end game? Their head in a basket?
So we have these huge, quite related issues impacting us to our very core. And the folks who ostensibly benefit from these horrid results are going to suffer like the rest of us, perhaps it will take longer but they will suffer, too. Except for suicide, what is their end game? I keep thinking that if we could figure that out, like in family law, we could find a better process to effectuate it. One that doesn’t entail selling our country to the highest bidder or wiping out most of the ecosystems on the planet.
We need to figure out their end game sooner rather than later, or their end game will be the end of us all.