Trump Is The Football, Lucy Is The Court

What do we do when we keep finding ourselves falling into a pattern of saying things like,

“Based on the rules, this is the way it should go.”

but it doesn't?

“This is the way decent, normal people would react.”

Then they don't?

“Without them abiding by these rules, they won't be allowed to get away with it.”

Then they are?

Over and over and over and over again. With us constantly charging our emotional credit card to be happy now by purchasing that happiness based on a situation in the future we're banking on happening. Happening based on the rules we've always trusted. The support we've always assumed we've had. The behaviors, decorum, and lines we all assumed people would exhibit, would embody, and would not cross, respectively.

And yet we're never actually *in* the situation that *is* the definitively successful issue put to bed, from which to derive any salient satisfaction. We simply derive satisfaction from what we assume *will* come, and are constantly disillusioned to see that, once again… it hasn't.

Because people keep getting away with it, people keep not abiding laws to prevent it, and people keep not behaving in ways ethical nor decent that would otherwise uphold these laws, these mores, these standards of decorum and decency.

Do we just keep acting as if we can expect a positive outcome… based on all of these things that keep showing us the architecture of these hoped for outcomes are just not really being supported? But which, instead, are continually showing us that yet another breach from every single thing that we've counted on to support our pursuit of fairness, decency, and a functioning society… it’s these breaches, themselves, which *are* continually being supported?

Do we keep pretending that there's nothing to see in terms of every norm that's being bent repeatedly towards perverse outcomes?

Or… do we finally acknowledge that we're seeing a trend of bent and broken rules and agendas to pervert justice, and promote collusion to thwart any fair progress towards an outcome that is anything but destructive? And after acknowledging that, do we finally start talking about what to do about it in light of that, rather than continuing to talk about it as if the rules will be followed, and that the expectations based on these supposedly followed rules are to be reasonably counted on, and based on these behavioral norms, are not going to lead us to even more continually disillusioned outcomes as they've so consistently been doing up through this point?

When do we start talking about what to do in light of the fact that all the rules are being perverted by people not being stopped from doing so? When do we start talking about what to do within the actual parameters of *that* reality, rather than within the one we used to take for granted which no longer seems to be upheld anymore by anyone of overarching positions of empowered consequence?

When do we begin brainstorming within the parameters of that reality, instead of keeping our brainstorming sessions within the parameters that our adversaries have demonstrated repeatedly, they are in no way beholden to, nor in any way being held accountable for, by anyone we previously would have expected to ensure they would be?

When do we stop trying to define strategical pathways to success through the parameters of rules that no one else seems to be following but us?

When do we start talking about how to play smarter with rule-breakers who have support for their breaking them, rather than simply playing harder by repeatedly trying to enforce rules that no one is ensuring they’d actually be enforced against them? Except in our mind’s eye of some future eventuality we tell ourselves is coming, as we keep seeing this get kicked like a can further down the road each time we think we're about to approach it, leaving us in a recurrent pattern of outraged disillusionment from the latest round of this?

When do we stop telling ourselves that this time… we should still position ourselves with the specific aim, focus, and trajectory towards the goal, as if this is the time Lucy will actually let us kick the ball? Unlike last time. Or the time before that. Or the time before that. Or the time before that. Or the time before that. Or the time before that. Ad infinitum.

Lucy keeps making us think it's about us kicking the ball based on her dutifully holding it there. As we keep dutifully approaching it to kick, as if these rules will truly define the parameters of the next engagement. But we know… we’ve seen… repeatedly…she's not going to hold it there in the future no matter how much she makes it look like… this time… she will.

So how do we approach Lucy once we finally acknowledge this likelihood of pathological fake-out recurrence, without simply following through like a destined-to-be flat-on-our-back Charlie Brown… yet again?

And most importantly… how do we do so, how do we avoid being Charlie anymore… but without becoming just another variant of the Lucy we want less of, not more of on the field?

Who is a third persona through which we may engage from here?

What is the third way, that is neither a further contribution to the dysfunction, nor is the previously adhered-to, exploited rule of convention?

Schroeder and Peppermint Patty seem to have some things going for them.

A little fringe, off to the side, still humanly vulnerable, yet uncompromised, true to themselves, through which they keep productively moving forward with themselves… and with others… to get things done…

be it a good ballgame, or a mini concerto.

They’re unstoppable.

And yet, they don’t have to stop anyone else from being so, for them to continue being so.

What’s the through-line to their approach?

How, through all of this, do we be more ‘them’… to, let alone stop the nonsense, to no longer even let it get a foothold?

It seems this sensibility, however we figure to translate it into this legal unaccountability merry-go-round of madness we’ve all been on, is one from which the beginning of real productivity in brainstorming regarding how to strategize through the rule-contorting, goal-post shifting, thumb-pressing-on-the-scales-of-justice forces that are just waiting for us to diligently run up to the the football yet again, and take another naïve kick.

Don’t know what answer we’ll all come up with. But I do know, we’re going to have to stop merely coming up with any more of Charlie Brown’s various tried approaches to this ball anymore.

And then start asking…

how might Peppermint Patty be playing this?

But I’m just spitballin’ here.