Triangulating

I have been aware lately about a way of communicating and operating that is now coming to an end.  To this point it was successful.  It was effective; so effective that it has proven to be the preferred way of communicating and operating for the top leadership in our country.  There are other terms for it, but I am going to call it “triangulating.” 

Communicating and operating by triangulating is the art of talking politics.  Veteran politicians can enter a room, sense its atmosphere and talk successfully about a myriad of topics in a way that pleases a crowd.  They then can enter another room and talk about those topics to a different crowd with different views, pleasing them as well.  How does he do it?  Triangulation.  Many topics are so complex that they are made up of several subtopics.  Where supporters of gun control might have vastly different view than 2^nd Amendment Rights advocates, a skilled triangulator can easily know to talk about the sub-parts of those issues that both agree on.  Both sides are against crime.  Both sides want their family members safe.  So the skilled politician learns to speak around a topic, only talking about the areas of agreement.  He triangulates the issue. 

I believe that people are now exhausted from the triangulation of politicians.  Take a look at what is happening at this moment.  There is a divide between politicians and voters and I think it is because of this exhaustion that voters feel.  When you identify the politicians’ and the pundits’ top choices for leading challengers for the Presidency, you come up with Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, maybe Mike Huckabee. .  When you look at the people’s choices you get Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, and now Herman Cain.  What is the difference?  The first group triangulates.  The second group speaks boldly and shoots straight to the issues.  The first group attempts strategies to find positions that claims the least negatives.  The second group tells you what they think and then invites you to like it or not. 

Right now I think this phenomenon is not limited to politics.  I can sense that people are generally tired of the triangulation approach to all of life.  There is a new openness for truth about God and truth about life’s issues.  Triangulation is really the avoidance of the main issues.  Society is tired of avoiding them.  In our personal lives and in our culture, I believe we know that we cannot avoid the central issues anymore.  The truth is not complicated.  It doesn’t take triangulation for us to understand it.