Adaptive Challenges and other Scary Monsters

I was watching the debate between Biden and Ryan and keeping tabs on the Steelers game at the same time.  Besides being a demonstration of my mad-crazy remote skills, it was actually rather more instructive than anything talked about by either of the candidates.  Let's start with what I noticed about the debate, granted it's not an earth shattering revelation, but it came through loud and clear as I watched the debate.  It is a reality that challenges the very mythology of American democracy and Western supremacy: they don't know what to do.
They want you to believe they know, they may even have deluded themselves into thinking they know, but they don't.  I don't either, nor does anyone else, and if they say they do they are either selling you something or they are perhaps just maniacal enough to believe their own delusions.
It all started to seem very familiar.  I had heard this sort of futile wishful thinking somewhere else... but where?
Oh right, at church, and in Presbytery committee meetings!  See I'm a pastor, and as such I am a leader of a group of people who hold certain core convictions, but who also have very different ways of living out those core convictions: a lot like America as a nation.  What I heard last night was a larger scale version of the same angst that has riddled the church for about 40 years.
The reality for the church and for our nation, is that the world has changed.  The world has changed fast and it has changed completely.  A global economy that was not even remotely possible in 1950 has emerged and, thanks to technology, has accelerated to a speed that seemed like science fiction, even in 1980.  Empires have collapsed and America, the youngest of the bunch, is the last samurai.
The church has come to realize that this reality is not going away, and we have at least started to grapple with what that means.  Fortunately we have 2000 years of history and intellectual tradition to tell us that we can survive such things.  Our nation, however, in fact nations in general, have no such track record.
The characteristic traits of the global culture are complex, the stakes are high, and the conflicts are often intractable.  Which is why it is so disturbing to me that politicians so blithely offer up their dogmatic positions, claiming that all will be well if we listen to them.  Just once, I want to hear someone admit that the challenges that face us are not surmountable by political sleight of hand.  Just once, I want to hear someone admit that, if we are going to grow into facing the adaptive challenges of the world, we are going to have to adapt.  Just once, I would like to hear someone honestly tell the American people that adaptation might hurt.  I would vote for him or her.
Football, and sports in general, have rules that are well known and enforced.  The rules change a little at a time to tweak the safety or the fairness of the contest.  If, at halftime, the referees of the Steelers - Titans game had suddenly re-written the rule book and not told any of the coaches or players then you would have seen what adaptive challenge was all about.  You would know what our politicians truly face.  Trying to devise a good strategy would be impossible playing by the old rules.  The reason why we love sports and hate politics is because sports are technical challenges: plan better, practice harder, execute more perfectly and you will win.  The world is a lot more complicated than that, and all I want is for someone, somewhere to at least understand that the rules have changed.