Thelma Delgers was raised in a small American town. Her family was of some affluence. After high school, Thelma moved to the big city — and away from her parents’ supervision. Like many young people, Thelma found herself in a party-party culture — and she adopted its values. Failing college, she returned to her town and found a regular job. But she continued with her new lifestyle.
Eventually, life events collide such that Thelma has to question that lifestyle. She then abandons it. Facing some loneliness, she takes on a second job to occupy her time. At this second job, she befriends a co-worker, Stacy Mabrall, another young lady but with more sensible values. Stacey helps Thelma through her life transition.
Thelma adopts a lifestyle that is more based on education and community service. She accidentally finds a local chapter of Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG), which is dedicated to building a different kind of democracy for the USA. She is now the de-facto leader of her local group. Under Thelma’s leadership, this TDG starts moving outside of its shell of self-governance and into the local community.
Thelma is the main character in my second TDG novel Confessions of a Future Politician. She is a minor character in my first novel Diary of a Future Politician, and she is a spiritual character in my third novel Circles of a Future Politician.
I have been working on the TDG since 1997. I’ve had more than a few naysayers tell me that building the TDG is pointless because the current holders of power will never let go of their power. Besides, humanity does not have the skills to make the TDG work.
Are the naysayers right?
An Analogy of High School Basketball
To answer that question, let me digress with a real-life story. About four years ago, my son got cut from both basketball teams at his high school. Knowing how much he wanted to play and how much effort he had expended to developing his skills, I went to the school to investigate. The coach of the second team told me: “We have a lot of talent in this town. If someone would coach a third team, we’ll find a place for these boys to play.” And that is how I became a high school basketball coach.
Being the third team, we were relegated to the less desirable times to use the gym for practices. I had eight to 12 teenage boys attending our 6:00 a.m. practices, twice a week! Think about that!
It would have been so easy to forego those practices and just play the exhibition games the second coach had set up for us. After all, these players are the rejects. They are probably going to lose anyways.
They are probably going to lose anyways.
They are probably going to lose anyways.
They are probably going to lose anyways.
Can you imagine this mantra being played throughout all amateur and professional sports: “We could lose the game, so there is no point in practice.”
I made the effort for the boys to play basketball. They rose to the challenge. We lost all of our games, except one.
Back to the Naysayers
I have divided the building the TDG into four stages. Thelma was building the first stage: the Early TDG. The Early TDG is where we get the practice for the other three stages and eventually a new democracy.
If the TDG naysayers have their way, there’s no point for anyone to put any effort into the Early TDG.
The naysayers would say that Thelma Delgers is an American fool for putting her time into a pointless cause. It would have been better for her to stay with her party-party lifestyle. That is a better American way, right?
Life has Risk
There are no guarantees in this world, even with the greatest and wisest of efforts. My basketball team lost games despite our 6:00 a.m. practices. Yet each team member learned something important about life, probably a different lesson for each one. They needed to wake up early to get those lessons.
Thelma’s TDG could fail. In fact, I predict some TDGs will fail. But I can see important lessons being learned from these failures. Eventually these TDGs will re-constitute themselves with those lessons. But they need to go through the 6:00 a.m. practices of building their local TDG.
There is one thing I can predict for sure: if we don’t put ourselves on the TDG practice field, the TDG won’t be built.
How much longer are we to endure western democracy because we don’t want to practice and learn a new way of governing?
Published on Medium 2023
Leonard Pash: American Hero or American Fool?
