Every great love starts with an origin story. It’s Politically Strange Bedfellow Wednesday when we dish on the odd couples speaking now or forever holding their peace about Veterans Day Voting.
How
They Met
While waiting in a long line at a polling station on a workday, Veterans invited Election Day out for coffee. They slowly stirred their coffee and their feelings for each other. Their engagement was a long one.
Their
First Fight
Where and when to have the wedding? Election Day wants Veterans Day to move in, and Veterans Day wants Election Day to move in. They both stubbornly dug in their heels and possibly a hole too deep for their relationship to climb out of.
Kiss
and Makeup
They discussed it at length and decided that the turnout for the wedding would be much larger if Veterans Day was moved to Election Day. Some guests would even be able to make it a four-day weekend.
Why Care?
Moving Veterans Day to coincide with Election Day proposes a profound fusion of honor and democracy, where the act of voting serves as a tribute to those who safeguarded our liberties. This shift promises to bolster participation in our democratic process, offering a day rich with patriotic spirit and reflection. It ensures our gratitude for veterans is matched by civic action, intertwining the celebration of service with the exercise of our most cherished civil duty. A single, powerful holiday would magnify national unity, amplify informed citizenship, and deepen the value of each vote cast and each service member remembered.
SPOILER
ALERT
If you’d prefer first to roleplay this week’s puzzle, then swoop on over to the…
Puzzle of the Week
Puzzle Drop Introduction
MONDAY
Should Veterans Day Move to Election Day?
Tiebreaker
TUESDAY
Ironing Out the Wrinkles of Moving Veterans Day to Election Day
Now, with tongues firmly in beaks. Here are the…
Odd Couples
Leaning Against
Moving Veterans Day to Election Day
Federal Payroll (22) &
Billionaires (8)
How They Met: At the grand debate over shifting Veterans Day to share a spot with Election Day, Federal Payroll and Billionaires exchanged skeptical glances, and dropped their guard on their personal space.
First Fight: Tempers flared over the prospect of change; Federal Payroll about changing work schedules, while Billionaires bristled at market interruptions.
Kiss and Makeup: In the end, they clasped hands in the moonlit glow of tradition, agreeing that not moving Veterans Day protected their work-life balance.
Social Media (16)
& Seniors (12)
How They Met: In the cross-generational forum discussing the potential Veterans Day move, Social Media and Seniors found common ground in their reverence for historical significance.
First Fight: They sparred over potential outcomes; Social Media wants to milk the controversy for all its worth, while Seniors feared the loss of a reflective day.
Kiss and Makeup: Reconciling over shared values, they concluded in unison that not moving Veterans Day preserved the integrity of its solemn observance and constant chatter.
Deep Reader Independents (14)
& HMOs (28)
How They Met: Within the hushed corners of a town hall meeting on the holiday shift, Deep Reader Independents and HMOs quietly acknowledged their introverted preference for contemplation over expediency.
First Fight: The air crackled with tension as Independents lamented the potential for shallow discourse, and HMOs fretted over knee-jerk health policy reforms.
Kiss and Makeup: They shared relief over deciding that Election Day, untouched by the veterans’ honor, allows for ample policy consideration and rock-steady healthcare policies.
Landlords (8)
& Utilities (28)
How They Met: At a civic gathering to discuss the merging of Veterans Day with Election Day, Landlords and Utilities connected over their mutual concern for maintaining order in the commerce of everyday living.
First Fight: Disagreement surged as they debated the implications, with Landlords fearing higher utility bills and Utilities wary of higher rents.
Kiss and Makeup: Embracing under the banner of pragmatic harmony, they agreed that not moving Veterans Day meant maintaining the regular flow of business and utility use they both relied on.
Odd Couples
Leaning In Favor of Moving Veterans Day to Election Day
Gun Owners (1)
& Activists (7)
How They Met: At a patriotic rally discussing the merits of moving Veterans Day to Election Day, Gun Owners and Activists found camaraderie in their shared passion for action and advocacy.
First Fight: The air was electric as they debated; Gun Owners were adamant about bearing arms in public, and Activists not abiding needless gun violence.
Kiss and Makeup: They found resolution in the realization that moving Veterans Day could be a salute to both rights and reforms, a day to champion both the ballot and the bullet.
USA Made (19)
& Importers (15)
How They Met: On the bustling floor of a trade expo, USA Made and Importers discussed the economic ripple effects of having Veterans Day double as Election Day.
First Fight: A volley of concerns was exchanged, with USA Made anxious about domestic focus and Importers about global ties.
Kiss and Makeup: They eventually embraced, seeing that moving Veterans Day could weave together the threads of national pride and global commerce, bolstering markets both at home and abroad.
Urban Full-Time (5)
& Rural Full-Time (3)
How They Met: At a suburban forum about merging two significant American holidays, Urban Full-Time and Rural Full-Time workers shared a vision of increased civic access across the landscape.
First Fight: Dissonance arose with worries of disenfranchising either urban density or rural sparsity.
Kiss and Makeup: As they reached across the aisle of the urban-rural divide, they found common ground, deciding that moving Veterans Day could better help the middle class at the heart of our democratic republic.
Civil Servants (23)
& Business Groups (15)
How They Met: In the marbled halls of a government building, where the debate to move Veterans Day was in full swing, Civil Servants and Business Groups nodded to each other, recognizing the potential for streamlined operations.
First Fight: They both got red-faced over the red tape debate and why each can’t understand the other’s position.
Kiss and Makeup: Yet, in the quiet after the storm, they found a united front, agreeing that moving Veterans Day could marry civic duty with commercial opportunity, optimizing both their flows.
PolicyKeys
is based on the
Four Kinds of Love
Self-sacrifice is giving of one’s self with no expectation of reciprocation. Think of a firefighter rushing into a burning building.
Nurture is helping someone grow into their potential and keep up their momentum. Think of a coach, a parent, or a mentor.
Tough-love is being able to invest in the personal pain of watching someone learn from their mistakes. Think of a boss, teacher, or a loved one drawing a line in the sand.
Self-love isn’t narcissism. It’s knowing you can’t love another until you take care of yourself. Think about putting on your oxygen mask in an airplane before helping someone else.
It’s ironic how much hate there is arguing about what kind of love should dominate public policy. The Golden Rule barely holds on to be worthy of the US Public Policy Leaderboard. What’s your mix of the four kinds of love on your best day?
Should Veterans Day Move to Election Day?
POLI had support as NEAR CONSENSUS. Our editors were a bit less convinced. Nevertheless, we predict a 79% ±2% (6 roles) VAST SUPERMAJORITY of roles in this country to support Moving Veterans Day to Election Day, including a majority of each of the four sides of the political table, making this US Public Policy Leaderboard (US-PPL) worthy idea.
90% and up Near Unanimous
80% – 89% NEAR CONSENSUS
75% -79% VAST SUPERMAJORITY
67% – 74% Strong Supermajority
60% – 66% Supermajority
50% – 59% Majority
By Contrast
SCOTUS’s approval rating is 40%,
the media is 27%, and
Congress is 13%.
The average score of the policies on the PolicyKeys™ US Public Policy Leaderboard (US-PPL) Sweet Sixteen is 76%, with many above 80%—Politics 4.0 is already a 2x to 5x better model of US political sentiment and direction than politics as usual.
The Four Dark
Political Emotions
Envy in Politics
- Consumers: Jealous of affluence, some support luxury taxes, disregarding potential harm to small businesses and their workers.
- Workers: Envious of higher pay, some advocate for wage caps, ignoring potential skill disincentives and loss of professional standards.
- Professionals: Chasing perfection, they may push for rigorous industry standards that, while well-intended, can limit consumer options.
- Owners: Coveting government influence, some call for privatization of liberty, causing less justice for others.
Spite in Politics
- Consumers: Upset with corporations, some call for tough rules, forgetting that this can increase costs for professionals and themselves.
- Workers: Angered by robots taking jobs, some want trade barriers, overlooking trade wars that hurt consumers and the economy.
- Professionals: Unhappy with industry shifts, some cling to old ways, missing the chance for growth and innovation that owners can bring.
- Owners: Annoyed by unions, some move their businesses overseas, neglecting local workers and weakening demand for their own products.
Sloth in Politics
- Consumers: Unhappy with product quality. Some abstain from political action, allowing inferior companies and poor regulations to persist.
- Workers: Dissatisfied with wages. Some avoid labor unions, missing an opportunity for change.
- Professionals: Aware of flaws, some stick with the status quo, risking harm to consumers and their livelihoods.
- Owners: Comfortable in their lifestyle, they don’t reinvest in their businesses to increase capacity and profits.
Greed in Politics
- Consumers: Drawn to low prices, some buy imported goods that risk local jobs.
- Workers: Attracted to job security, some back grandfather clauses harming new hires.
- Professionals: Eager for profits, some lobby for lax regulations that compromise ethics.
- Owners: Focused on the bottom line, some advocate for lower safety standards, risking worker well-being.
Love
Extremes
When taken too far, each political strength is prone to a political weakness.
Self-Sacrifice – Envy: Individuals who prioritize the needs of others might be prone to envy, as they may feel overlooked or undervalued compared to those they’re helping.
Nurture – Spite: Those who nurture and care for others may be more susceptible to spite when they perceive harm or injustice being done to those they care about.
Tough-Love – Sloth: Someone who employs tough love might feel it’s not reciprocated or effective, leading to a tendency toward sloth—why bother pushing others if it yields no result?
Self-Love – Greed: A focus on self-love could tip into greed, where self-care becomes self-serving to the point of disregarding others.
Politics goes negative fast. Does it have to? A political parrot by any other name still stinks.
Methodology
Politics 1.0 is each party wanting to be a one-party system. Politics 2.0 is the two-party gridlock that blocks the silent supermajority from getting what they need. Politics 3.0 is all the noise from special interest groups trying to influence us to see things their way. Politics 4.0 is to rank solutions with a nonpartisan score and let the best ideas rise up the leaderboard so the people can choose.
Our One-Page Narrative Tool, game board, and AI are based on a ground truth:
There’s a time to save
and a time to spend,
a time for freedom
and a time for laws.
Where can we agree?
This yields four legs of the political table: Abundance, Thrift, Governance, and Commerce, poetically our Political DNA, ACGT.
A Level Playing Field
The four sides of the table are…
Abundance Governance (AG)
National Public Sector and NGOs,
Abundance Commerce (AC)
Technology and New Businesses,
Thrift Government (TG)
Local Municipalities, Guilds, and Consumers, and
Thrift Commerce (TC)
Established Supply Chains and Jobs.
Each side has a bias for change and a bias for the status quo. We scan these eight Information Walls for Key YES and NO Reasons, no cherry-picking.
The Four Laws of
Public Policy Formation
The First Law of Public Policy Formation is that people with short-term focus will naturally protect their wages, jobs, status, profits, and wealth.
The Second Law of Public Policy Formation is that people with a longer-term focus will naturally place bets to make life better, longer, easier, or different.
The Third Law of Public Policy Formation is that the clash between the short-term and long-term naturally causes noise, angst, conflict, and harm.
The Fourth Law of Public Policy Formation is to take into account various solutions’ nonpartisan scores before making up your own mind.
A Treasure Hunt
We search for solutions with the highest hypothetical nonpartisan rating. Something that would solve 80% of the problem with the simplest 20% solution. The Pareto principle, hence a parrot-topia.
The Political Parrots have a Key reason they don’t want us to know about because it ruins their argument. We search for these, like a treasure hunt, and sort them using our EMIT format: Emotions, Money, Information, and Timespan. We listen for these key signals in the political noise.
Key Reasons can look similar, so we edit for redundancy and look for errors, omissions, and innovations.
Definition of
Political Parrots
Are you making up your own mind or marching to the beat of a political parrot?
- Political Parrots get paid to squawk the same thing over and over again.
- They don’t listen if you’re not paying.
- They don’t fully understand what they’re saying.
- They are charming and sport every color.
We look to filter out the GRIFTERS, Gaslighting, Red-herrings, Idolizing, False-dilemmas, Tunnel-vision, Exclusions, Reductions, and Straw-man arguments. We think you can think for yourself. Where can we agree?
Birds of a Feather AI
Once the Key Reasons are set, we prescore the puzzle using the Birds of a Feather AI for loose ties to beliefs, attitudes, values, and ethics. Over 16 million combinations are possible for the 128 roles. The game board starts balanced at zero, with an equal bias for change and the status quo.
We then prescore the puzzle using 56 arch-type roles that best embody each of the 56 loose ties. This yields a general bias for change or status quo and reveals ties.
The editors review all 128 roles for specific reasons and overrule the general AI where necessary. These are noted in the Tuesday Tiebreaker article.
Then, we score the puzzle on all four sides of the Political Table: eight Information Walls, sixteen Subcultural Windows, sixteen Bias Columns, and sixteen Influence Rows.
SAT9 AI
When the scoring is done, a second AI looks for inconsistencies using the SAT9 AI filter (Situational Assessment Tool). This is 256 ‘supreme courts’ where each role is the chief justice in a presumed 5-4 and 4-5 bench. This generates a ± error margin.
The engine for the AI is our One Page Narrative Tool (OPNT) which we gamified for role-playing at policykeys.com. We call our AI, POLI for Political Omnibus Leadership Initiative.
You can read more about PolicyKeys™ in the upcoming book, Politics 4.0: How Gamification, AI, and National Idea Leaderboards Can Help You Depolarize the World. The Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI) at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has recognized PolicyKeys™ for digital engagement.
Weekly
Puzzle
A new PolicyKeys™
Where Can We Agree?® puzzle
drops every
Monday at 7 a.m. Eastern at PolicyKeys.com.
PolicyKeys™ Where Can We Agree? is a real-life role-playing game. Each week, there are sixteen sets of eight ‘rival’ roles. Sit awhile in each of their eight chairs and predict whether a majority of people in those roles would say Yes or No to the week’s question.
The best ideas land on the US Public Policy Leaderboard (US-PPL) if a majority of each of the four sides of the political table agree.
YOU CAN PLAY THIS WEEK’S PUZZLE AT POLICYKEYS.COM.
Cue the
Patriotic Music
Imagine an America not paralyzed by political squawking. A Parrot-otopia oasis in a desert of division. Where the sounds of the silent super-majority drown out the droning of the hyper-partisan parrots.
We’ll be freed from the cages of entrenched ideology to fly higher in the big sky of American beliefs, attitudes, values, and ethics. To boldly go where no political parrot has gone before—rating solutions with a nonpartisan score.
Anthem
Where Can We Agree?
(Why Don’t You Want To Know?)
Fly
higher
Empower Voters 2.2
American Academy of Arts and Science
Armistice Day (Veteran’s Day)
Wikipedia
Combine Election Day with Veterans Day and give democracy a boost
CNN: Opinion
Move Voting Day to Veterans Day
Politico
OPM Announced Paid Time Off for Federal Employees to Vote
OPM
The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population
Pew
Last U.S. World War I Vet, Dies at 110
History.com
Make Election Day a National Holiday
Brookings
Bipartisan Bill to Make Election Day a National Holiday
Press Release
Should Election Day Become a National Holiday
ProCon.org
Nineteen States Have A Holiday for Election Day
Represent.us
The Effect of Making Election Day a Holiday: A Study
Bringham Young University
Five Reasons Election Day Should Be a National Holiday
Global Citizen
Views of Election Policy Proposals
Pew
Election Day Should Not Be a National Holiday
Inc
ABA survey finds support for election holiday, expanded polling hours, voter IDs
American Bar Association
Why Tech Companies are Making Election Day a Holiday
Tech Crunch
Election Law
Cato
It takes guts to see things from all four sides of the political table.
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