In several of my pre-November 5th articles, I had said something like: “If the Republicans win the election, some Americans might be ready to consider Tiered Democratic Governance (TDG).
Well, the Republicans won. Here we are. It is time to get more serious.
So I have changed my Medium strategy. I used to write 5 to 10-minute articles, often dovetailing current events, politics, and pundits into building the TDG. My plan was: “If I am gentle with my potential audience, they will be more accepting of my out-of-the-box ways.”
This wasn’t just some far-off hypothesis. Previously, when I wrote directly about the TDG, traction went way down, compared to my gentle articles. “Direct” got fewer eyeballs and fewer Medium shekels. By Medium reward and Medium punishment, I was encouraged to write gentle articles.
But the gentle approach found no TDG builders. Clearly, that was not the result I was looking for. And the USA has entered a new political era.
So my post-November 5 writing has been more direct to the TDG. One advantage of this new style is that I don’t have to play “gentle” games. Just find a TDG topic, write to it, and publish it. With 2 to 4-minute direct articles, I have no trouble writing an article every day.
The Result
It’s been over a month. My Medium shekels per article have diminished. The graphic below shows a drop from a tall cliff:
Author’s Excel worksheet: 7-day weighted average
In other words, Tiered Democratic Governance is just as unpopular as it was before. If anything, it’s less popular. Not even another Donald Trump presidency can dissuade Americans to look elsewhere for solutions.
My drop in earnings suggests the USA is doomed to be governed by Democrats and Republicans for another decade. New ways are so unthinkable.
Some would argue that my unpopularity is deserved. I am not writing something that readers want to read. But we have another Trump presidency. For sure, he is going to move the oligarchy/democracy greyscale closer to the O side. How far, I’m not willing to provide an educated guess. There are social/political/economic forces to thwart many of Project 2025 objectives.
The Democrats have had three attempts to sideline the Trump movement. They have failed to do so. When will we realize that the Democrat Party cannot bring the USA to a better place?
How much further do we have to go down before it becomes sensible to investigate this unpopular TDG idea?
Published on Medium 2024
Addendum
By January 20, 2025, it became clear that Medium readers were not interested in the TDG. I reduced my Medium writing from daily to twice-a-week. I started re-publishing my post-November 5 articles to Substack. Despite being new to Substack, my traction on Medium and Substack was similar. But my Substack traction never really improved.
