Staying ahead of the reformers?

It's odd to see the 2024 race taking shape. Since 2016 there have been overt institutional improprieties, which have deepened since 2020, and there are now three different stances towards them, namely

1. to overlook them,
2. to see them as symptoms of a political malaise and
3. to take steps to stop them.

The organised nature of this institutional rot, for there's no way it would spiral out of control like this by itself, suggests that the intent behind it is not to cause the third stance, for that would mean paying someone to break the rules and then paying someone else to oust him, which makes little sense.

Such a show would only be staged to change the attitudes of the audience, not to reform institutions the public takes little interest in and is in no position to oversee.

If it was staged for the latter purpose, everything would hinge on getting the right reformer into office, but how to do that, when the public can't tell the right from the wrong one?

But if the purpose is to win the public over to a particular point of view that supports new attitudes in politics, the institutional improprieties can't deepen bottomlessly, for that would drive people into the third stance.

There seems to be an impasse, owing to the reluctance of the people to dance to the music. No amount of prodding seems to do the trick, all seems fair in love and war. If this continues, the eventual reaction will paralyse the country by mutual nullification and not cleanse it.

The I Ching foresees

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fire over earth, which means bold action with which people will fall in line, and given that no political avenues exist, we're probably looking at one emergency or another.