The “status quo” is the way things appear to be at a certain time.
But nature does not stand still. To maintain the status quo bias is also to oppose change. America would not even exist if the status quo of King George had not been challenged: And so it is with the status quo bias of Lake County and others across the United States, locked into some tradition that subverts responsible change.
The preservation of tradition has a place in life but not to recognize the need for change is to live in the past with increasingly decayed conditions: throughout America and in Lake County, there”s the smell of rot.
Squopus (coined here) is the social disease of a status quo, a failure to recognize change in social, economic, political and spiritual systems that have become rigid, fossilized and unhealthy denials of reality.
The political status quo bias requires energy (and usually the people”s money) to maintain cognitive defenses such as rationalization, denial, bias and delusion (and other defenses) to quell the effects of squopus or decay from interfering with the status quo bias.
Media, business and government all tend to support a status quo as their income, job and even meaning in life usually depend upon its structural integrity. But some begin to wonder why businesses fail and the people fail to thrive as a hint of decay wafts in the wind.
The smell, as visual and economic evidence of squopus, becomes so noxious that denial and other cognitive defenses used against the reality no longer work. Sooner (hopefully) or later, squopus eventually leaks through the defensive cracks to undermine the status quo.
Many suffer far too long from the proliferation of decay and deleterious effects of a status quo bias.
Authorities in government, media and supporting bureaucracies are blinded by the benefits of the power and security of a status quo and fearing change, cling to old ways, often concealing unconsciously, the expanding rot of squopus.
Lake County”s status quo and squopus condition is thus described. I
Its media, business, and government orientation has tried to maintain a status quo for many years, failing to give proper attention to watershed and lake conditions that now undermine the status quo with decay and conditions that drive away tourism and investment.
With years of scientific evidence to the contrary, the status quo trance is not easily dispelled. Many millions of lost revenue per year and still the rot is painted over, its evidence squelched with denial, false statement and avoidance by a county chamber of commerce, local media and government.
Status quo propaganda is promoted still as if lake waters were getting clearer or better and where the proliferation of noxious and harmful cyanobacteria are just natural lake functions.
Summation: The conservative politics of a status quo bias opposes change to the point where it becomes detrimental to growth and healthy living conditions (in many areas and levels of social behavior).
It unethically and adversely affects proper governmental decision and infects the news media by its bias and propaganda, substantially excluding reality to promote a status quo detrimental to the greater good.
Maurice Taylor
Clearlake
