Election Aftermath – 1 – www.USAparadigm.com

One of the original pages I wrote for this web site is entitled A Major Paradigm Shift Well Underway. It is under the Main Menu heading The Situation Today. Based on the results of yesterday’s election, I don’t think anybody could deny that the existence of a paradigm shift has been confirmed, and that many of the details will begin to fill in as we move forward from this point. The key takeaway is that the Current Paradigm is rapidly drifting into the past, and either already is or very soon will be the Old Paradigm — and what the New Paradigm will ultimately look like is rapidly coming into view.

To quickly summarize the definitional part of the A Major Paradigm Shift Well Underway page, “paradigm” is simply a term to describe how things work, the “rules of the game”. In the context of the American governmental system, it’s our “three separate but equal branches” system established under the Constitution. In the context of the political “system”, it is the two-dominant-party system, the rules the Senate and House have each developed over many years, the committee structure within each of these components of the legislative branch, the process used to appoint the Chairs of those committees, etc.

At least in theory, our governmental system seems to still be okay. It’s the political “system” that has produced the current polarized, dysfunctional environment — and that is why this paradigm shift is underway. That “system” simply is not working any more — within it, we aren’t able to solve problems, and we aren’t able to drive toward new initiatives.

I intend to do some “number-crunching” when all the results are finally in, and I will develop some future blog posts from my findings. My goal is to publish one post per day for the next week, kind of an “Aftermath 1, Aftermath 2, …” series in upward-counting sequence similar to my downward-counting sequence “Down The Stretch 7, Down The Stretch 6, …” leading up to Election Day. However, since there’s a lot of data I’ll need to parse to do what I have in mind, I’ll have to get a feel for the level of effort before I’ll know if I can keep that schedule. If I can’t, I’ll publish whatever content I come up with on whatever frequency I can. After that series is done, I’ll make some assessments as to what future direction I will take with this site and the blog associated with i

For now, I think the main challenge before our new President is not getting his agenda underway as soon as possible. It is finding a way to at least begin the process of bringing some degree of healing to the bitter divide in this nation that has been building for at least a decade, exacerbated in a big way by the campaign that has just ended. It’s absolutely critical now that we avoid reverting to “digging in” to our respective bunkers and designing ways to “block the other party no matter what”, and build on this conciliatory atmosphere and MOVE ON. In my opinion, Mrs. Clinton’s concession call in the wee hours of this morning, Mr. Trump’s victory speech around 2:00am CT, Mrs. Clinton’s concession speech around 10:00am CT, and Mr. Obama’s address around 11:00am CT were all excellent, rise-above-the-details speeches, and collectively a good start toward healing the wounds from this campaign.