The Democratic and Republican parties are both playing their own special game of monopoly leaving Millennials with the worst deal since the Indians sold Manhattan for only $24!

James Lyman BSAE, BSEE, MSSM

So how do the Democrats and Republicans play monopoly? Easy . . . taking their turn, each throws the dice, then moves their token piece those number of squares, pauses and looks at the token for a few seconds, then moves it back to square one. The other party does the same thing, returning to square one, then the process repeats, with no one playing any further around the board than that first throw. They stay on square one and don’t do anything else in playing the game. They accomplish absolutely nothing! There are frequent news reports and political commentaries about how the youth of America, the Millennials and Z-Generation, are disenfranchised with the two political parties, and this is why. Neither are doing anything about solving the problems of the youth, rather the parties are just farting around playing silly nonsensical games. Neither party is doing anything to help the young people to win the game!

Consequently, the young people of America are . . . most assuredly . . . getting the worst deal since the Indians sold Manhattan for just $24.

So no wonder the youth, the future of America, show no interest in either party . . . why should they when there’s nothing in the game for them? Why would a party’s nonsensical way of playing the Monopoly game hold any interest to the youth, when you’ve seen the whole game after just a few moves, and you know that nothing is being done to win the game? Now you may ask, ‘So just how are the two political parties playing this game in reality?’ Simple! For both parties, their only interest goes no further than campaigning to win elections, even when elections are two or more years away. They are fully absorbed in the mechanics and machinations of running political campaigns, their event horizon going no further than winning . . . or losing an election. Just that first move from square one, then start all over again.

That doesn’t win any games, because no problems are ever solved. And you don’t have to watch too many days of national news before one sees they are accomplishing absolutely nothing worth while. It’s just one big monkey-fight straight out of a Jane Goodall documentary film. Just a gaggle of hominids struggling to dominate and control the others for no other real reason than to dominate and control those of their species. You look at news reports and political commentaries and it’s all about polls, style, images and political strategies . . . where the news anchors have become little more than color announcers for some kind of political football game with their only dialogue being about the scores, points, touchdowns and fouls of the game, nothing of real substance or about the problems facing the Millennials and Z-Generation, let alone any real discussion about viable solutions to those problems. Nothing about obsolete people and displacement by technology, nothing about lost and limited opportunities, about how the young are slowly being squeezed out of the system . . . how for so many of them, there isn’t anything of a future to look forward too, to work towards. If you do see something like these items, it’s just a 2 minute 10 second filler because there’s nothing else to fill air time with. How do you seriously cover an important topic such as the availably of oil in just 2 minute 10 seconds, a topic that easily takes an hour to do any justice to understanding the problem. And without that understanding, you don’t have a prayer of successfully addressing a problem.

While the Democrats and Republicans play their silly little game of Monopoly, never getting past square one, and while the reporters, political pundits and newscasters have a wonderful fun filled time talking about the game and what individual politicians should do or not do to score a touchdown, the youth of America are being continually squeezed out of the social economic system. With 20 to 25% new college graduates unemployed or under employed, and 32% of young people still living at home because they can’t support themselves, the squeeze out is easy to see. And for my generation? Many feel and say that they’ve got their share of the pie, and therefore ‘so what’? What they don’t realize is we, the baby boomers, the Americans that are over forty, we are depending on all of the Millennials and Z-Generation to maintain a viable healthy economic system in America to support us. Because fix income people are the very first to suffer from the collapse of an economy, as we’ve seen many times in the last few decades.

Being squeezed out of the social-economic system by the three forces of: 1) technology displacement, 2) alienation and 3) the increasing cost to keep individuals in a high technology society, is why the young shun the two political parties. They feel they have nothing in the game, so why should they pay any attention. All the while we of the older generations, just blindly follow the goings on of the political scene, just as we do with any other sporting event, concerned only with seeing points scored by our team. So many of us don’t stop to consider that these ‘points’ have no real meaning in life, because they don’t solve any problems.

So the Monopoly game just goes on and on with nothing ever being accomplished.

And we never think anything about the absurdity of it all!

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