It is Up to Women

There is one thing the vast majority of Americans agree on in an otherwise deeply divided nation: we all wish this election would end sooner rather than later. Politicians have discarded the art of persuasion for crass tools of manipulation that strain our democratic sensibilities to the breaking point. The new American machine of political outrage has turned discourse into a bloodsport while the now-banal deployment of deceit has produced a leaden blanket of exhaustion that smothers our better spirits.

Notwithstanding vote counting shenanigans that could leave the results in question for days and weeks to come, at least the ads designed to scare us into voting for one candidate or against another will end on Tuesday. The streaming will, hopefully, quit screaming. That said, regardless of who wins, or appears to win on November 5th, Trump and his team of sycophants will work to assure chaos through at least early January. Chaos is, after all, the fundamental modus operandi of the charlatan; it keeps the truth always just beyond our grasp, and the fraudster out of chains.

Pollsters have been pulling their hair out trying to predict how we will vote. Millions of dollars have been spent on research and consultants to design messages to move us towards one candidate or another.  In an imperfectly divided America few, if any, understand Americans because traditional identifiers like race, religion, party affiliation, age, etc. are no longer explanatory, nor predictive.

While educational achievement remains a somewhat reliable predictor across all age groups, gender is the only significant marker of voting preference, principally among the youngest voters. When you combine education and gender there is an astounding 43 point spread between voters for Harris and Trump; college educated women prefer Harris by 27 points while non-college men prefer Trump by 16 points. The age-old dictum still applies: “It’s all about turnout.” We should also expect split-ticket voting—where people vote for candidates without regard for party loyalty—to reach an all-time high this election. The impact of the independent voter will continue to rise.

Eventually, the candidates and their donors will realize the mistakes they have made. Frankly, nearly all have run strategically inept campaigns. Only one candidate, Donald Trump, got it more right than wrong, and he only got it half right. Despite his outrageous and despicable character, he has had his finger on the emotional pulse of Americans better than Biden or Harris. Biden never understood it while Harris had it right initially, then she got it all wrong. Emotions—not facts—drive feelings, and in 2024 we will vote based on our feelings. Regrettably, Trump understands this much better than Harris.

Allow me to explain.

In America, we are nearing the end of the fourth period of crisis in our history. Trump may extend this period of crisis, but it will end eventually, consistent with the universal rule of impermanence. For the last several years we have been enveloped by a fog of various anxieties leaving many depressed. As a fog, it is difficult to recognize in real time as it creeps in, and once we can’t see well it becomes challenging to find a road out. The War on Terror, the Great Recession, the pandemic, climate change, and political dysfunction have all affected us in different, but negative ways.

In the process, the social, political, and economic fabric of our union has been severely compromised. If you are under thirty-five years of age, it is unlikely you even recall the relentless and optimistic spirit that defined America in the last half of the twentieth century unless you watched it in an old movie. Today, we are looking for a way out. It’s what humans do. At first, we cope, then survive, then (hopefully) prosper.

The new reality is that traditional demographic identifiers that pollsters use to slice and dice voter responses are no longer relevant; what moves us to vote has little to do with them.  In an angst-addled state, we tend to suspend the rational for the emotional. Although when pressed by pollsters or friends to answer why we are voting one way or another, we can still muster a plaintive response like “economy’” or “immigration,” or “reproductive rights,” or “crime,” or something else. But the truth is we will vote based on who makes us feel better, or at least doesn’t make us feel worse. In a hyper-divided America, we no longer fall neatly into groups; we have become complex and highly individualized beings with our own specific tangle of desires and aversions.

The things that depress or inspire Americans are very different for each of us. Those who feel they are losing their position in American society—are being disenfranchised—may be white, black, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, straight, gay, old, or young. Those who feel the American Dream of self-determination is being threatened also include people of varied demographic backgrounds. Those who feel their personal security is at risk can be an old white man or a young trans woman. Those who feel their best years lie ahead of them can be the young Hispanic male graduate, or the recently divorced middle-aged woman. The tech-bro engaged in AI and quantum computing may feel he is going to change the world, while the septuagenarian woman engaged in teaching mindfulness to her cohorts at the assisted living facility may view her life as reaching its pinnacle of fulfillment. In 2024, our personal outlook has little to do with our respective demographic profiles; feelings are everything.

Three years ago, in November 2021, I wrote an essay called “MAFGA” which stands for Make Americans Feel Good Again. I argued that it was “a simple and powerfully persuasive proposition.” I railed against the use of shame and fear as tools of manipulation that are not only ineffective, they are injurious. I further argued that “lifting people up has always proven more powerful than putting them down,” in hopes that candidates in the 2022 and 2024 elections and other social and political movements would change their ways.

Then, last year and again this year I reminded those seeking public office of the great success of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984 who, after another depressing period in America following the Viet Nam War, Watergate, super-high inflation, and the jeremiads of Jimmy Carter, simply offered Americans absolution while painting a bucolic picture of “Morning in America, Again.” Reagan’s absolution was, “You are not the problem, government is the problem.”

Harris initially had it right. At the Democrat convention and the immediate days that followed, she engaged in a MAFGA campaign. Not only did she aim at making Americans feel good about their lives, more fundamentally she was making Americans feel good about being Americans, again. It was about us, even as she introduced us to her own story. The Trump campaign was on its heels faced with a young optimistic new opponent. Trump, himself, slid into an apoplectic stupor. He had been erased from the headlines. Then, she took the bait.

She was goaded by her opponent and the media to get specific about policy after her mid-Summer meteoric rise in the polls following Biden’s abdication and the convention. She then relinquished her feel-good strategy and fell into the policy trap. Tax the billionaires! Everyone gets a down payment for an affordable home! Small businesses will get a tax break! And on. While it was certainly appropriate for her to articulate her policy proposals, she failed to connect them to the positive effects they would have on voter’s lives. She failed to answer the question, what does it mean to me?

Policies are features, and people don’t buy features, they buy benefits. Even a car salesperson understands the difference between features and benefits. Features are based in facts while benefits are based in meaning. How will this policy improve my life and my family’s future? How will it lift me up to make me feel proud of myself and my country? What does it mean to me? Features appeal to our rational state while benefits appeal to our emotional state. The latter will determine how we vote in this election. It is a distinction that makes a huge difference. One of my questions for Harris is, how can a campaign with a billion dollars not hire an advisor who understands this basic tenet of persuasion?

When her policy orientation caused her numbers to plateau, she shifted again, but in the wrong direction. She tried to out-fear the master of fear, Donald Trump. She ranted endlessly about how awful it would be if he were elected. It was as if she was channeling her inner Joe Biden.  Consequently, she committed the cardinal sin of campaigning: she put her opponent in the spotlight at the expense of her own campaign objectives. She made herself look like she was losing, and people at the margin—the undecideds—are unlikely to cast their vote for someone they think may lose. It’s not the way they want to feel. To modify James Carville’s old maxim, in the election of 2024, it’s how you make people feel, stupid!

The Harris campaign even dispatched Barack and Michelle Obama to shame men into voting for her even though shame seldom works—especially with men. As the columnist Maureen Dowd pointed out, Trump appeals to men who feel emasculated, who see Trump as the “antidote to shrinking male primacy.”  Trump pandered to enervated men while the Harris campaign shamed them. In effect, Trump invoked Reagan’s absolution: you are not the problem, Harris and the woke Dems are the problem. Which do you think would attract more voters—especially testosterone-loaded young men? Harris’s shame, or Trump’s absolution?

In short, Harris traded optimism and making Americans feel good again for mundane feature-based policies, fear-mongering, and shame. She abdicated the high road and cast herself as a struggling coming-from-behind candidate rather than the voice of a winner—of change and optimism—even while she was being supported by more than one billion dollars. Oops.

Meanwhile, in spite of his ugly disposition and complete lack of any semblance of policy credibility, Trump continued to do what he does best: tweak the fears—the emotional anxieties—of distressed Americans, especially men. In the late stages of crisis, those driven by anxiety outnumber those who are content. This, and Harris’s strategic mistakes, is why Trump could win—maybe even by a large electoral margin. Trump could never be optimistic—could never execute a MAFGA strategy—but he did engage with feelings even if they are our lesser feelings—our anxieties. He owns the market on fear and anger and he played on feelings much better than Harris down the stretch.

Obviously, I don’t know who will win any better than the pollsters, but I do understand how people will vote in 2024. It is both complicated and obvious. People don’t fit neatly into old categories and may never again. Welcome to our infinitely diverse world, pols and pollsters!

For years now at my blog, and in my 2020 book, Saving America in the Age of Deceit, I have characterized Trump as a wannabe fascist. Many suggested that I was guilty of hyperbole. It is now clear that if anything I should have dropped the adjective, “wannabe.” Even the venerable ninety-two-year-old historian, Robert Paxton, who first resisted the label for Trump, calling it a “toxic label” in 2017, believes Trumpism is fascism today drawing comparisons to his studies of how fascism swallowed France in the early 1940s.

Four more years of Trump will be devastating for our country and the world. If Trump gets his way on tax cuts and tariffs, and allows Elon Musk and the Project 25 bros to run wild destroying government agencies, it could produce an American economic tragedy that could rival the Great Depression; similar to what President Hoover and Treasury Secretary Mellon did that preceded the crash of 1929. Politically, what could happen may mirror the rise of fascist tyranny in the late 1930s that we were warned of by Sinclair Lewis in his 1935 dystopian novel, It Can’t Happen Here.

Alas, Harris had her shot. Had she stayed on the MAFGA path (where Trump could never compete), I expect she would have won in a landslide. Instead, she decided to try to compete on Trump’s platform of fear. It is as if Taco Bell, whose core competency is cheap tacos, decided to abandon tacos to compete with McDonalds in selling hamburgers and fries. I imagine the taco giant’s next decision would be made in bankruptcy court: chapter 7 (liquidation) or 11 (reorganization).

I do truly hope Harris eeks out a victory. I hold out hope for an upside surprise—that the pollsters have it wrong (as they most certainly will), but in her favor rather than his, this time.

Let me be clear, it is up to women—especially Gen Z women—who can pull it out for Harris. My late mother would be so pleased that her granddaughter, Corsica Steding, and her peers, might have the power to swing a presidential election. In 2010, President Obama penned a letter to my mother on her 87th birthday stating, in part, that “You have witnessed great milestones in our Nation’s history, and your life represents an important part of the American narrative. I hope you are filled with tremendous pride and joy.” At the time, not many 87-year-old white women supported Barack Obama, but my mother did. She had hoped a woman would become president in her lifetime, but was nearly as pleased when a black man did; she recognized his wisdom and grace as her own. My plea to women across the country this Sunday is that my mother’s narrative does not die on this coming Tuesday, and that my daughter can live the life my mother worked so hard for her to have.

Like many Americans in the center, I am not as much for Harris as I am against Trump. I struggle with several of her policy positions and her inability to answer questions clearly and succinctly, but for those of us for whom character is paramount and who care about the founding principles of our nation, it is an easy call. She has certainly won the dollar-donation polls, so perhaps that proves to be a better indicator. However, if Trump wins (as the bond market and gamblers at Polymarket and Predictit expect), I will certainly understand why.

I expect most of us will escape Trump’s tyrannical wrath, but we will all know some of his victims—some may even be friends and family. His tariff proposals alone will severely harm the American consumer (mostly middle class) and our economy will endure yet higher inflation and an exploding deficit—even economists at the very conservative American Enterprise Institute concur with this assessment. As for our democracy, as Harvard’s Steven Livitsky and Daniel Ziblatt have argued, our last pathway to save the republic may be “societal mobilization.” In sum, if Trump wins, the decline of the American empire that many international relations scholars suggest peaked in its power in 2001, will accelerate. And, it will have been our choice—our doing.

If there is any good news, it is that there is life after empire. Good people will still lead good lives. The pendulum will swing again from darkness to light as it did in the late 1940s. World order will be remade; as multipolar rather than unipolar. In the process, the United States will lose its stature as sole superpower. Perhaps the indomitable spirit of earlier Americans will be reborn in our next Americans. Our spine of character is being tested as it was during Crisis I: the American Revolution; Crisis II: the Civil War; and Crisis III: the Great Depression and World War II. So far, our character has stood the test of time.

Whatever the outcome of this election, hopefully we will shed the many bad behaviors we have accumulated over the last couple of decades and our narcissism will be replaced by a new order of personal responsibility founded in the stewardship of our communities and of our fragile environment. We may even begin to respect each other, again. Perhaps also set aside manipulation in favor of persuasion. I won’t hold my breath, but I will certainly use it to find a sense of calm.

Please don’t hold your breath either; breathe my friends, breathe.

By |2024-11-17T13:37:34+00:00November 3rd, 2024|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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America Needs a (Moral) Hero

“Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Look up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”

American media has created many heroes throughout my lifetime and our culture produced many more in real life from popular presidents like Kennedy, Reagan, and Obama to social activists like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks and, perhaps the largest category of all: athletes like Michael Jordan, Muhammed Ali, and Joe Montana to name just three. Recently, women have produced more heroes than men in America like Taylor Swift and Caitlin Clark who are notable and legitimate heroes to millions of American women and girls.

Generally, heroes play a much greater role in our fantasy lives than in our real lives, although the line between the two for many of us can be faint. In fiction, some might suggest they are critical to a novel’s success for without them, and some seemingly insurmountable challenge they must conquer, we wouldn’t turn the page. Recently, I participated in a literary discussion where the role of heroes was debated to find their proper role in great works of literature. I was left pining for heroes. I even suggested, “what America needs—what I need today—is a damn hero” for which I was admonished by one participant for falling in to the trap of the “great man theory” of history, even while I am enough of an historian to know that while heroes do not explain all history, I acknowledge how important hero-leaders are to moving society forward. Where would we be without Washington, Franklin, Lincoln, Roosevelt, or King? Admittedly, we often don’t recognize heroes in real time, but fortunately we have historians to illuminate them later.

The role of heroes—imagined or real—seems to be critical to our collective well-being. The “better angels” Lincoln referred to in his first inaugural address that might guide us to practice more virtuous lives are the essence of the value of heroes: they bring out the best in us. They provide a model against which to measure our own worth. By their example, they hold us accountable. What kid in my generation did not want to be like Superman? Advertisers have shamelessly understood the allure of heroes for years. The Gatorade advertising campaign, “Be Like Mike” directed us to do what Michael Jordan does and load up on their carb/electrolyte/sugar drinks (which did not improve my jump shot one bit). Heroes show us how to live.

Of all the things that have been written about Donald Trump, few recognize how he has flipped the role of hero on its head. To be clear, for many he is their hero; even seen as a savior—the new chosen one for many evangelicals. A condition I expect Jesus would have a hard time reconciling. And what he has accomplished for too many is to demonstrate how to behave, or perhaps more accurately, misbehave. Unfortunately, Trump’s flip comes in the fact that rather than demonstrate virtuous behavior to summon our better angels, he has single-handedly given permission to those vulnerable to his fear-based manipulation to engage in inappropriate behaviors that violate our laws and established norms of behavior. Everything from attacking the Capitol on January 6th to abusing flight attendants on commercial aircraft can be laid—directly or indirectly—at Trump’s feet. In essence, if you don’t like something, or somebody, or someplace, attack it by whatever means you have available from simple disregard to wielding fists and weapons. As Trump has suggested many times, rules and norms are for suckers and losers!

Notwithstanding the fact that many of Trump’s followers now get their meals on fiberglass trays through a slot in their prison cell doors, many others still follow his path of permissible destruction. He has made being really bad really cool for too many Americans. His anti-hero modality has yet to be countered by a new American hero. Americans need more than Joe Biden whose low ratings are probably due in part to the fact he doesn’t impress as hero, or even hero-adjacent. His Dark Brandon character wearing aviator glasses just doesn’t leap any tall buildings. (Please, Joe, do not even try to jump!) We need somebody to come forward and be our new hero; to reestablish the expectation of better angels. To shift the spotlight back to moral goodness and civility.

Inasmuch as we need a moral hero (as opposed to the next super-hoopster like Michael Jordan or Caitlin Clark) I recognize this is a big ask. America is much more capable of producing athletic heroes than moral ones. When I looked around for prospects, there are plenty of dead moral heroes (Aleksei Navalny the most recent), but few live ones, and I doubt the Dalai Lama is willing to relocate to Chicago. A reasonable expectation is that he or she would come from organized religion; perhaps even American Christianities. But these institutions have become captives of their overlords who are much more interested in institutional preservation and the grandiosity of their leaders.

We are left with the promise of physics, in this case, that pendulums swing. Jesus + Einstein. As pendulums swing to and fro, I have confidence this condition will self-correct; that a new moral hero is emerging even while we can’t name him or her, yet. Heroes and anti-heroes enjoy a kind of perverted symbiosis: they need each other. In the era of Trump, it is simply the nature of Nature that a new moral hero would rise. When he or she does they will not claim the throne of heroism; there will be no fanfare. Moral heroes gain distinction in their humility, not their spray-on orange-hued puffery. In the meantime, perhaps Trump’s kryptonite—the truth—will begin to deplete his kinetic energy so gravitational potential energy can prevail in favor of a new hero.

Now, look up in the sky! It may just be a bird, or a plane, but one never knows where the next hero will come from. Hopefully for America, sooner rather than later.

By |2024-04-21T13:22:33+00:00April 14th, 2024|General, Leadership, Recent|0 Comments
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For MLK, Jr: “Fierce Resilience”

Big mountains

Big snow

Big wind

 

Scoured stone

Frozen in time

Stasis preserved

Unscarred

 

Millennia speak

Through perseverance

Change swirls

Permanence unrivaled

 

If the peaks spoke

No trivia

Just just wisdom

Low resonance

 

Fierce resilience

Their message

As the world churns

Forever present

By |2024-03-29T14:37:17+00:00January 15th, 2024|Leadership, Recent, Spiritual|0 Comments
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Dear President Joe: What About Us?

Dear Joe:

On November 9, 2016, the day after Trump was elected our 45th president and you, Joe, started packing your boxes after living in the Naval Observatory for eight years, I posted “From Hope and Change to Fear and Change: A Letter to My Children.” In it I suggested that,

In the short run, expect the uncertainty that swirls around a Trump presidency to produce a significant amount of economic, political and social stress. Trade, foreign policy, healthcare, the Supreme Court; there are many places to expect him to exercise his power in nefarious ways.

In closing, after imploring them to “focus on your own physical, psychological, economic, and intellectual strength” as a survival strategy, I also suggested that their generations (millennial and Z) had the power to mitigate any damage he might do. I wrote, “You have the power. Do not squander it through apathy or neglect. In the end we all—individually and collectively—are responsible for Trump and what happens next.” Seven-plus years later I still believe that; perhaps now more than ever.

From the beginning of Trump’s presidency, I never subscribed to the hope that somehow the office of the presidency might reform him making him behave like a president—at least like the 44 who preceded him. As we all have learned since, what most of us (including yours truly) did was under-imagine and underestimate just how feral his selfish depravity might become.

Today, we face not only the possibility but, if the polls are correct, the probability of his election once again to the presidency in 2024. I agree with you, Joe, this would be the beginning of the end of our democracy. But standing up and angrily making that case as you did in your campaign launch on January 5th—that we should all be anti-Trump because of the threat he poses to American democracy—will not save us. Moreover, it will not get you reelected.

I suspect that I hurt your feelings late last summer when I suggested you gracefully bow out and act to mentor your replacement for the nominee for president of the Democratic Party in 2024 (“Let’s Get Really Real,” September 10, 2023). I apologize. Forgive me further when I suggest that your feelings, and the robust ego that defends them, are unimportant to me (as they should be to you) given the peril we face in a second Trump presidency. The stubborn reality is that your advanced age is abundantly obvious and disqualifying to most voters—regardless of the facts that support a mostly productive presidential record. And, please remember your pledge in your last campaign that you would be a one-term “transition president.” That said, I am grateful that you stepped up when you did to give us a four-year reprieve even while it feels like it wasn’t much of a reprieve.

I hear you; you are unwilling to give up the Oval Office. But, if you insist on persisting, you need to realize that extremely important voter blocks, including my children as well as blacks and Hispanics, will not automatically show up for you in November as they did in 2020 if you simply run on an anti-Trump message. The reason lies in the numbers and they suggest—loud and clear—that everyone has made up their mind about Trump. Those who have been for him still are, regardless of his felony-count total, and those who aren’t, aren’t. Conducting an anti-Trump campaign is like howling into a black-hole in outer space; it will produce no new votes for you, but it will keep the spotlight on him, which he is preternaturally skilled at turning into donations and votes.

The further reality is that Trump supporters will show up to vote for him, while those who are repulsed by him may or may not show up for you depending on whether they believe you will be able to improve their lives by serving their needs. That doesn’t mean these folks don’t care about American democracy as much as you do, they simply don’t believe an octogenarian white guy understands, let alone can deliver, the changes they need to secure their future. This is the hurdle you must clear if you have any hope of being reelected.

Don’t speak to us about the dystopic future of a Trump America, speak to us about reestablishing our many rights of self-determination, which Trump has compromised. How will you act to restore women’s rights to control their bodies—their healthcare? How will you assure the young Hispanic kid that a good education and job opportunities remain available to them? How will you show us that crime can be brought under control without terrorizing young black men? How will you secure our border while maintaining America as a beacon of freedom? We don’t need you to rail against Trump; frankly, that is just annoying. We need you to explain how you are for us.

Joe, it’s not just democracy that is on the ballot (as you like to proclaim). Our dreams are on the ballot, too. Don’t just express your concern for America, show that you are concerned about Americans, too. You must make the connection between our democracy and our dreams!

I still harbor the hope that you will figure out a way before or during the Democratic National Convention to pass the torch to someone who shares your agenda but not your age. I believe Americans will turn on a dime—perhaps even rejoice—at an option that is neither you nor Trump. That much is clear in the numbers, too. It is still a long time—in political time—to November 2024. Perhaps as yet unforeseen events will produce a change in our options for president in 2024. Maybe we will be delivered from the impending nightmare of a second Trump presidency by some form of divine intervention.

Regardless, what Americans do not want is more fear. What we want is an aspirational vision of the future where all of us—from the old, angry, white man to the young, transexual, Gen Z artist—can believe once again that America is the greatest nation in the world because it remains the one nation in the world where anyone’s dreams can come true. That is the promise I grew up with, and it’s the one you need to reestablish, Joe.

So, respectfully, quit wallowing in Trump hysteria and get off your skinny Scranton-reared ass and get the job done. Quit talking about Trump and start talking about us! Show us how a second Biden term will restore the American Dream. How will you enable our dreams? Be our beacon of hope, Joe, not the Grim Reaper of despair; we get enough of that negative crap from the large Orange One.

Sincerely,

A guy who cares about America and Americans, too.

By |2024-01-15T15:20:02+00:00January 7th, 2024|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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And the Winner is: None of the Above

What was most remarkable about the second Republican debate of the non-Trump presidential aspirants and the almost-but-not-quite shutdown of our federal government was how few Americans seemed to care. According to the Nielsen ratings service, viewership in the second debate dropped 38% from 12.8 million to 9.3 million—the lowest viewership since Trump became a candidate in 2015. As for the prospective shutdown, people were much more interested in the budding romance of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. (Creepily, they do look like siblings.) And, somewhat disconcerting to Democrats, a YouGov poll showed Dems (in Congress plus Biden) were blamed for the looming shutdown as much as Republican members of Congress, although more—44%—blamed both.

In an admittedly somewhat twisted manner, the current disinterest Americans feel toward presidential candidates and Congress warms my heart. I will take it as a sign they are now doing what I have long advocated: turning their attention toward their own lives and their communities to pursue their welfare through means other than our federal government. Building informal neural-styled networks to focus instead on the development of stronghold communities and looking only occasionally at the circus in Washington D.C.—principally as a masochistic form of entertainment. If “Traylor,” “Tayvis,” or is it “Swelce”(?), transform their romance into a presidential ticket, my money is on them. And yes, Ms. Swift would be at the top of the ticket.

After I did watch the second Republican debate, which reminded me of a bunch of kindergartners just before a much-needed nap time, and observing the complete dysfunction of Republicans in the House of Representatives who are controlled by the pervy and peevish Mr. Gaetz, it is apparent the only plausible prospect for new inspired leadership resides on the Democrat side of the political ledger.

If you are Donald Trump, Joe Biden, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Tim Scott, Asa Hutchison, that guy from North Dakota, Marianne Williamson, or Cornel West, you actually share something in common besides running for president: the majority of Americans do not want you to be the next president of the United States.

Get over yourself and get off the stage.

Nor is a “No Labels” or other third-party candidate what America needs because that would virtually assure a Trump election inasmuch as it would dilute the vote for whomever the Democrats put up against Trump—presumably Biden. What we want are new candidates in both parties; preferably under 60 and not under indictment.

Is that so much to ask?

In my post of September 10th, “Let’s Get Really Real,” I called for Biden to step aside, give his blessing to a new roster of Democrat presidential prospects, and allow a process of debates, primaries, and the convention to sort out a new nominee. Several others—from pundits to columnists to scholars—followed with the same plea, but to no apparent avail. It turns out Biden, who promised he would be a “transition president,” has an ego, too.  Since then, the data for his prospects of reelection continue to be highly uncertain, especially if there is a third-party candidate and in the face of growing discontent of younger voters who may just sit this election out. Notwithstanding the fact that millions of older Trump voters have passed on since 2020, if younger voters don’t show up that potential advantage for Democrats is lost.

I would not be at all surprised if neither Trump nor Biden were inaugurated in January 2025. I know it seems improbable today, but both are weak and getting weaker.

There is another way to save the 2024 presidential election, although it will be messy. The old-time brokered convention. Smoke filled rooms. Arm twisting and enemies who magically become friends, or at least temporary political allies acting in the interest of a majority of their party. This is the way we named nominees for decades. Convention delegates actually arrived at their conventions as free agents once the first ballot resulted in no clear winner. Eventually, this process was seen as undemocratic and the parties schemed to rid themselves of the cigar-smoking arm twisters like, for the Dems, creating so-called “super-delegates” (which itself is highly elitist and undemocratic). The move to a more transparent and ostensibly inclusive process was heralded as an advancement for democracy. It (sort of) made sense but, today, does it? Might it be relatively more democratic today to let delegates duke it out, especially with the level of burnout/apathy amongst the broader electorate?

Furthermore, the stranglehold the geriatric class of politicians have on America today, coupled with their insatiable appetite to stay in power, including Biden, Trump, McConnell, Pelosi, and Grassley—collectively the dentured not-so dynamos—there is an obvious oligarchy who represent a form of political constipation that today threatens democracy more than the party convention arm-twisters of yesteryear.

Our federal government needs an enema.

The last time a candidate was selected in a contested/brokered convention was Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952, after which he served as president for two terms. Before that it was FDR in 1932 who served for twelve years. Generally, though, the concern at the party level has been to unite the party after such a contentious process. Yet, today, we need more choices. We need to have a pathway for as-yet undeclared candidates to see that it may be worthwhile to throw their hat in the ring, or be drafted by delegates. My expectation is that once one does others may follow if only to claim they are positioning themselves for 2028. Furthermore, it allows the party to (at least) force the incumbent—Biden in this case—to consider other alternatives for his choice of running mate which, in the case of Kamala Harris, allows the party to replace her with a stronger backup to Biden and enhance his chances next November.

Based on today’s polling that shows a high dissatisfaction with declared candidates, it is simply too early to lock-in candidates for either party. Incidentally, the Republicans may be forced into a brokered convention if Trump’s legal woes manifest into higher uncertainty as to his capacity to serve another term. If that occurs, it is even more critical that the Democrats open up their process to have an equal advantage to consider all the possibilities.

We are thirteen months out from the general election. Neither party is served well with their current frontrunners. Strategically, openness and flexibility in the nomination process fits with periods of high uncertainty and long lead-times. Many, like Obama’s former advisor David Axelrod, argue it is too late; to which I—as politely as possible—respond, bullshit. The American electorate is hungry for more and better choices and is quite capable of turning quickly in favor of new intrigue—as in Traylor/Tayvis/Swelce from the world of celebrity couples. The party that understands this first may significantly improve their chances later not only with a better candidate, but with a reinvigorated electorate—including independents who will likely decide the winner, anyway.

It will take some courage but that is, after all, a foundational characteristic of leadership.

By |2023-10-29T12:42:38+00:00October 6th, 2023|General, Leadership, Recent|0 Comments
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Searching for Rainbows

Scared. Overwhelmed. Angry. Hopeless. These are the words Americans are using to describe their lives. The American Psychological Association reports that 87% of Americans feel the last two years have just been a relentless stream of crises without a break. Covid-19, our democracy in peril, war in Ukraine, inflation, gun violence, climate change, and a Supreme Court apparently determined to re-impose medieval cultural norms have Americans focused on survival rather than hopes and dreams for the first time since the 1930s. According to a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll just 13% of Americans believe the country is on the right track. Just when people think it can’t get any worse, it does. Then, it does again. We seem to be in a self-fulfilling spiral of decline.

As the Stoics suggested hundreds of years ago, the key to any crisis is not the crisis itself; rather, how we respond to the crisis. Thus far, we have responded with an array of coping behaviors; we have put our heads in the sand while pointing in any direction other than ourselves to assign blame. The sale of weighted comfort blankets and drugs and alcohol have been big winners. Denial and self-deception are natural by-products of the Age of Deceit that has persisted in America since the early 2000s. As many analysts point out, the irony is that many factors social scientists use to measure human welfare have never been better. The perils of life—even with the pandemic—are at historical lows. And, we have more than enough wealth sloshing around the country and world to solve every problem we face. The problem is something no government or political party, or corporation, or any of today’s organized religions can fix. The problem is personal. The problem is character.

Take a moment and look again at our list of crises. Of the seven named above, only one—Covid-19—is natural, which is to say not caused by humans. This is good news! This means we can mitigate, and/or eliminate every other crisis that threatens our well-being through the principled application of willpower with existing knowledge and resources. In short, leadership. But we can’t do any of this while hiding inebriated under a blanket, and while expecting others to solve our problems. We need to wake up, sober up, reflect on the values and norms that actually did make America great, and demand more—much more—of ourselves. This begins with better decision-making in all aspects of our lives: personal, professional, and social. Above all, we must set aside deceit in all of its forms in every decision we make. Continuing to fool ourselves is not the path to redemption or renewal. We must put truth back on its pedestal where it belongs.

Let’s stop down for a moment so I can explain the elements of decision-making and illustrate its modalities throughout the last hundred years or so in America. All, so we can understand how we got in the mess we are in today, and to find a path out.

People make decisions—both big and small—by accessing their knowledge and beliefs to inform their choice. That sounds pretty straightforward, almost like, “Duh!” However, as one who has studied this process of decision-making to a degree of ad-nauseum, I found it is anything but simple and predictable, let alone straightforward. The model of rational humans quickly falls apart when trying to understand why people do what they do, which is to say the very concept of rational decision-making is, well, irrational. To some degree, this has always been the case, but today it has become normative.

Knowledge is based on empirical facts and experiential truths. This is the realm of decision inputs we gain through education and experience—as a matter of reason. Collectively, let’s call this the head. Beliefs are based on ideas we accept as truths that are acquired through indoctrination and socialization—as a matter of faith. Collectively, let’s call this the heart.

In early twentieth century America, the head was promoted as the dominant set of decision-making inputs. As we emerged from the post-Civil War era and entered the modern industrial age, people were expected to largely set aside the heart in favor of the head that drove what I have termed the “scientification of everything.” The concept of “rational man” was ascendent. From the invention of modern production lines for the automobile to the widespread mandate of scientific method, we Americans thought we could make everything rational and predictable. Coincidentally, it should be of no surprise that religiosity (a completely faith-based “heart” endeavor), while always present at some level in our society, entered a period of remission in the early twentieth century. It was in the private sphere (where it always is), but less so in the public sphere and, after the Scopes Monkey Trials in the 1920s, nearly vanished from the political sphere.

But the heart doesn’t remain quiet forever. In the second half of the twentieth century, it became apparent that the head could only carry us so far. The concept of “rational man” was incapable of dealing with issues like human and civil rights, and also produced whopper mistakes like the popular “domino theory” that justified getting into the Viet Nam War, as well as scientific breakthroughs like DDT that killed pests, but was also killing us. Head-based decision-making needed to elevate its game. It needed to mature from rational decision-making to a higher level of judgment inasmuch as our scientific head didn’t understand enough of an increasingly complex world to avoid making tragic mistakes. Having tapped out the capacity of the head, we reached again for beliefs, or the heart, to improve our game. Inherited truths, which emanate from cultural beliefs carried from one generation to the next, returned to support this need for higher-level judgment. For roughly three decades, we came as close as we ever have to a truly holistic and balanced approach to decision-making. This produced one of the greatest periods of invention, innovation, and wealth creation in U.S. history. Incidentally, heart-based religiosity came rushing back into all three spheres of influence: private, public, and political.

Toward the end of the twentieth century, the scales of decision-making tipped in favor of the heart. Again, unsurprisingly, religiosity (especially more fervent Christian fundamentalism) was at an all time high. This shift collided with another transformational development in technology that proved both a blessing and a curse. This was the dawn of the digital age which, among other things, ushered in much higher levels of productivity resulting in yet higher levels of wealth and affluence. One critically significant negative side-effect of these developments was that the costs of bad decisions were often absorbed into the frothiness of affluence, which created unprecedented slack in the natural system of consequence. Bad decisions went unpunished and the learnings that accompany mistakes were also lost. In hindsight, we were not nearly as smart as we thought—making many poor decisions—without paying the appropriate price. Wealthier does not equal smarter. This is when things really started to go off the rails resulting in the mess—social, economic, and political—we have today.

One might expect that we would adjust our mix of head and heart to meet the decision-making challenges of the day, but without appropriate consequences and the learnings born therefrom, we went in an even more dangerous direction. We set aside knowledge and beliefs—both the head and the heart—in our decision-making and slipped into the realm of greed and delusion. We decided the truth didn’t matter; we entered the Age of Deceit. We started acting like spoiled entitled brats who believed we deserved whatever we wished regardless of any social, economic, political, environmental, or moral consequence. And, we modeled these behaviors for our children and grandchildren.

Today, we look at Millennials and Gen Zs and wonder why they can’t seem to get their act together; why won’t they seize the day and take America to the next level of superpower dominance? But, let’s all stop for a moment and ask ourselves: what have we given them to believe in? Hard work? Personal responsibility? Empathy? Humility? Altruism? Any notion of civics whatsoever? We don’t even teach virtues anymore, let alone model them in our own behaviors. (I know, you and I are exceptions; it’s everyone else who is lame. Big wink.) To make matters worse, we now have a group of leaders at the national level—in government and business and religion—who are some of the most selfish base hucksters of all time. They make the Wizard of Oz, flailing behind his curtain, look like a Rhodes Scholar in a think tank.

I am an ardent advocate of the American Dream. I believe when you consider our traditional American values collectively, their fundamental intention is to assure everyone has the chance to be whatever they want to be. Freedom, equality, liberalism, pluralism—all exist to enable our dreams. However, when we abdicate the truth found in our head and heart—when greed and delusion become fundamental modalities—we destroy confidence in the collection of values and tenets that undergird America. The result? There is no foundation upon which to build one’s dreams. We end up where we are today: feeling disenchanted and forlorn. If we want our children and grandchildren to set the standard for the world to follow, as was the aspiration our parents and grandparents had for us, we need to clean up the mess we have made.

It starts with demanding that the truth returns to the center of our decision-making. And, that the values and tenets that established America are renewed as touchstones in everything we do. Finally, for the Boomers (or older) among us, this should be our final act after which we exit the stage in favor of much younger leaders. Just because modern medicine keeps us churning doesn’t mean we get the last word. Maybe the occasional deep word, but not the last word. It is time for a new generation of leaders to emerge. They won’t be able to rise if we continue to block them. For the first time in our history, the majority of both political parties do not want their frontrunner—Biden or Trump—to run again. Perhaps younger leaders can get a new grip on reality, based in truth, to rebuild America. They will (as we did) make mistakes. And, if they endure consequences they will learn. So, please, Biden, Trump, Schumer, Pelosi, McConnell and all the rest of the geriatric class who hold power in Washington D.C., go home. Redemption and renewal—searching for rainbows—is for the young (and honest) in both head and heart.

By |2022-08-02T14:38:20+00:00July 15th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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Please Join Me Under One Flag

This July 4th, let’s declare our unity by reclaiming our independence.

I am one of those stubborn political independents who believe that solving problems is more important than winning ideological fistfights, and I deplore politicians whose interest is limited to being a cult leader’s toady. I believe in empowering people to achieve their objectives, rather than oppressing others and bending them to the will of my particular beliefs. I have learned to see Americans as neither Republican nor Democrat, nor any of the other meaningless and often dangerous ways we try to classify people to break them down and treat them differently. Mine is a learned (and often dismissed) disposition in a political system that otherwise demands group affiliation. On the surface, it seems easier to classify people to wage a desired political agenda and affect public policy but, today, it often just inflames conflict and compromises success—especially at the national level. Perhaps it’s just my advancing maturity, but I find little affirming value in belonging to groups, and I wish folks would wave just one flag: the American flag, without changing its colors. Until and when we rally around one flag—with one set of colors: red, white and blue—we will continue on our current course: flirting with authoritarianism in the face of a democracy in chaos. Meanwhile, our adversaries throughout the world lick their chops. Our disunity is their opportunity.

The prevailing mindset in America today is Us vs. Them. Try and find a group today that is not beset by this condition. The other prevailing characteristic many groups share is that they believe they are the exception—that they conscientiously subscribe to inclusive consensus-building practices. But spend more than five minutes in their group discussions and the Us vs. Them mentality quickly percolates to the surface. It is astonishing how fast it rises and equally astonishing how blind participants are to its existence. And don’t dare call them out; you will be banished in a heartbeat. They are like alcoholics who believe that everyone but them are drunks; claimed with cocktail in-hand. As a scholar, I have studied the effects of Us vs. Them righteousness and certitude that historically emanated from organized religions—especially monotheistic religions. I have traced and illustrated religion’s effects on American foreign policy. However, in the last ten years or so, politics has supplanted religion as the locus of righteousness and certitude. There is no need to trace religion to politics; today, politics is religion.

My parents taught me that to exclude people in politics—or any other persuasive endeavor—is foolish if you want to win. Political parties call this the “Big Tent Strategy”; something they give lip service to when attempting to feign inclusion. Candidates today love to judge, shame, and condemn others in a feeble attempt to bolster their standing—especially with donors. They rarely address the needs of their constituents. To me, we are all just humans trying to find a secure, predictable, and fulfilling path to live our lives. Many would call me an outlier, and I am often looked upon with curious contempt from hardcore blinders-on partisans. But the truth is we independents—while only informally and generally involuntarily associated—now make up the fastest growing political segment in America as more folks abandon the quagmire of left/right traditional thinking in favor of political pragmatism. My home state of Colorado calls me “unaffiliated” on the voter rolls as if I am a wayward orphan. However, we outnumber both Republicans and Democrats in the state. We make the purple, purple.

That is not to say we independents are by any means cohesive in our ideological convictions. Our diversity does not lend itself to forming a group, which is both our strength and our weakness. Among independents, you will find a wide range of positions on many issues. Some are independent because Republicans are not conservative enough, while others are because Democrats are not liberal enough. The vast majority, however, sit in the middle-way of America where reason and wisdom and, moreover, calm resides. We are the new jokers in the deck of the traditional two-party system. What we share is the realization that our political system in the United States has completely collapsed rendering our government unable to serve our interests—to support basic public goods that have been the elements of a social contract between the government and the governed since the founding of our country, first put forth by the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1762. What we also share is a simple and clear proposition that defines what Americans want: stability and the right to self-determination. We want our political leaders to focus on safety, security, fairness, and predictability, and do so in a manner consistent with their oath of office. That’s it.

Sounds simple enough, but there is a natural tension between stability and self-determination that must be understood to balance these aims. Stability requires norms, laws, and structures to assure order. Self-determination tests those institutions as personal liberties must be expressed in a manner that does not violate them or otherwise risk their collapse. Partisan zealots who dominate both parties today have adopted similar strategies: pursue liberties and related political objectives regardless of the institutional guardrails that assure stability in a civil society. Every hot-button issue today—from abortion to guns—are hot for one reason: advocates or adversaries who want to impose their beliefs on others at the expense of stability—of civil society. Historically, shared American values have provided the touchstones to dull the sharp edges of political discourse and support the prospect of compromise. Trump threw those norms away and Democrats have followed his lead. When only you are right and everyone else is wrong, entropy is inevitable.

Traditionally, Republicans have advocated for rules and structure and compliance in hierarchical and often patriarchal regimes of command and control where discipline is more valued than creativity. Democrats have taken a much more laissez faire approach to social and political order where personal liberties and creativity are favored over boundaries, and government exists to nurture, support, and protect such individualism. Today, in many ways those profiles have flipped. Trumplicans don’t want to follow any rules (as modeled by their namesake) and woke-Democrats are imposing new rules (often through shame-based tactics) in a frankly awkward attempt to be the bigger bully. The result? Bullying has become the modality of the dominant-extremes in both parties. And we wonder why people are fleeing politics or, as I have done, rejected both political parties by declaring independence. The question now is which party will get control of their bullies (and attract independent voters like me) in time to win in November? The party that figures that out first could be in power for the foreseeable future.

The irony of the chaos that characterizes all aspects of American life today is that what Americans want from their politicians has never been simpler or clearer. Recent research shows that Republicans want conservative ideas (some of which Trump advocates) without Trump style. They want competence in execution—an ability to actually govern—rather than lies, corruption, and hysterical fear-mongering. Conservative ideas with Eisenhower’s executive capabilities and disposition. As for Democrats, they want the humanity and openness that is safeguarded by democratic institutions and assured by liberal society, which is to say fair, open, and inclusive. They want the fortitude and convictions of Teddy Roosevelt —especially toward the middle class and the environment—with the calm demeanor of Barack Obama. Today, all of us want to see strength and determination in setting America on a new path to sustainable prosperity. We know we are in trouble—no need to scare us further about that. We also know some things must be broken, which include everything from outdated and outmoded congressional rules like the senate filibuster, to our tax code, to narrowing the scope of government in order to right the ship of America. We want to see courage from our leaders and a self-effacing commitment to empowering Americans to pursue their particular American dreams. Is that too much to ask?

Pundits argue that the Republican Party is in disarray with Trump continuing his modality of divisiveness in every political race in America. To my eye, that just means they are as confused as Democrats have always been in seeking any sense of cohesiveness. Traditionally, Republicans are like the duck on the water that appears completely calm and at-ease while paddling like hell beneath the surface where all the organizational work is done to maintain power, like redistricting, voter registration (and suppression), and the appointment of judges and justices. On the other hand, the traditional Democratic duck squawks and flaps its wings creating all manner of surface disturbance—often espousing grievances and claims of victimhood—while it can’t seem to paddle in any particular direction whatsoever. I want a calm and determined duck that glides across the water leaving a smooth wake in its path. Those are the ducks this independent voter will support.

Both parties need to realize that the strength and determination we prefer is found in neither intimidation nor whining. Attempting to bend people to your will (the Republican modality) or extolling grievances and victimhood (the Democratic modality) have this in common: they both convey weakness. Neither bullies nor victims are icons of strength. Some folks will support intimidation in the short run, but when they realize it only benefits party leaders, they become disenchanted. Meanwhile, those attracted to victim narratives similarly are left wondering why they were, in the end, never liberated from their oppression (real or imagined). Strength is necessary to persuade people you can deliver stability and restore self-determination, but it is a strength based in American values that respects its democratic institutions. In short, strength deployed with integrity.

This is where the current Democrat-controlled congress has failed. Americans have easily seen past the provocative slogans and have found plenty of bickering, but little legislative substance. Running around with your hair on fire just leaves one bald and, eventually, out of office. This reality coupled with historical midterm voting patterns stacked against the Democrats will undoubtedly spell disaster for them this November. All, right when the Republican Party is as vulnerable as it has been since Nixon fled the White House on Marine One in August 1974.

Republicans understand how to organize, execute, and win elections. They understand that to get what you want you must have power. However, at the hands of Trump, McConnell, and McCarthy, they have fallen into the abyss of selfishness, dishonesty, and cruelty that is beyond disgusting, it is abhorrent. Just last Friday, the Trump/McConnell-loaded Supreme Court did what it has never done before: it rescinded an established individual right when it overturned Roe v. Wade. Is it any surprise the target was women? They won’t protect children from assault rifles, why would they protect women’s rights? The only shocking thing is that we are shocked. The Republican Party needs a massive purge of their crazies (especially its libertine misogynists), yet it’s mostly nutjobs that are winning primaries because that is what the few who participate at this stage in the process want: the nuttier the better. When a Cheney is the voice of moderation in your party, you might want to pause for a moment of reflection.

What’s surprising today is that neither party has figured any of this out. They have been captured by their extremes who care more about their personal beliefs and grievances than serving Americans. Do we really need to suffer complete societal collapse before we get back to restoring civil society? Leadership really isn’t that complicated when your head and heart are in the right place. That’s what this American wants, and I’ll bet I’m not alone.

Happy Independence Day. Now, go exercise your independence under one flag that is red, white, and blue. It may seem paradoxical that declaring our independence is the pathway to unity, but it is the only avenue I see. Until we realize there can be no Them, only Us, we have no chance of meeting the challenges of the day. Americans have achieved the impossible to save the republic before and we must do so now, again. To my Democrat friends who cringe at waving our flag, get over it. Allowing Republicans to claim the flag as exclusively their own is a strategic political error your party made that has persisted for decades and must end, now. It is your flag too. You are patriots too.

One America, one flag.

By |2022-07-15T13:34:56+00:00June 26th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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Summer of ???

Summer evenings when the heat breaks, breezes flow, and the sounds of softball in the park drift throughout the avenues beneath the freshly-greened boughs of maples and elms and cottonwoods are America at its best.  In the long days of summer, the sun sets with a sense of stubbornness unlike winter when it sinks even before the family dog has been fed her supper. I live where seasons matter, or at least I think so, although admittedly it may just be because where I live nature still dominates—you can’t ignore its seasons. Maybe in the city seasons are marked less by nature than by changing advertising campaigns and storefront merchandise, or which pro athletes dominate billboards. Those who live in the sunbelt, where I suppose your electric bill knows best what time of year it is, live in a sameness I would find maddening, but to each his/her own. As happy as I am to see a new season come, I am equally happy after a few months to see it go in favor of the next one. Maybe that is when sunbelt folks adjust their shades?

Will this be the summer we have been waiting for since the onset of Covid in early 2020? The Hot Vax Summer where vaxed and waxed and ready to party is the cry of pandemic liberation? The onset of summer for me was accompanied by a big not-so-fast “Gotcha!” Omicron BA.2 cut my liberation short. My first airline trip in almost a year gave me a dose of the Covid crud, accompanied by flight cancellations that are apparently the new norm. I crawled home with enough N95s to boost 3M’s second quarter earnings. I have never known so many people infected with Covid as I do today, but it should be no surprise as everywhere is packed and few bother with masks. My doc put me on Paxlovid, which works well if you can stand having your mouth taste like acid-washed pennies for five days. Thirty pills roughly the size of Hummingbird eggs come in packs of three as big as an appetizer at a high-dollar hipster eatery, which I suppose is a good thing since I was hungry for little else. Those few extra winter pounds went bye-bye fast. Ten days out I am clear, waiting for the other shoe to drop—the Paxlovid relapse bounce—that may be yet to come. But hell, it’s summer!

“Turn on, tune in, drop out” was Harvard professor and LSD advocate Timothy Leary’s call to action that ushered in the Summer of Love in 1967. Open to everything was the basic modus operandi. Sex, drugs, and Rock ‘n’ Roll was the popular to-do list. The Mamas and the Papas told us to “be sure to wear flowers in your hair” as the Haight Ashbury district in San Francisco became the place to be and be seen. It was an era of similar furor by and between political parties and democratic institutions in America. Violence was usually in the form of bombs—fire bombs, mail bombs, and car bombs—until the next summer, 1968, when assassination-by-gun started trending. Without four-hundred million guns in 1967 America, what else was a psychopath to do? Blow it up! Love was, then as now, limited to sharing with those with whom one agreed politically. Openness always has its limits. At least they weren’t mowing down third graders with assault rifles. Back then, pro-life actually applied to the already-born too, unless you were a member of the Viet Cong. Ah, those simple times! Peace, baby! We survived. Sort of.

Unfortunately, the summer of ’22 may be known for its sadness more than its love. Deadly violence in America and feckless political leadership in red states and at the national level means many more will die. The Supremes are poised to act to save little clumps of cells; at least zygotes can become blastocysts regardless of a woman’s choice in red states. These budding humans will be safe at least until they are born. Blue states are fast becoming havens for heathens. (I am trying to grow my horns now.) Meanwhile, both the Supremes and the senate will assure every angry young man retains their right and access to the guns of war in the event they are offended by a grade school. Cruz, McConnell, McCarthy and friends will continue to ring their cash registers with the blood-money of the gun lobby. The prevailing condition in America today is not openness or free love, it is very dangerous cowardice. We absolutely know what the right things to do are, but we are—collectively—moral cowards. That scene in Uvalde, Texas with hundreds of cops armed with lots of guns and cowboy hats standing around while innocent children had their bodies ripped apart says it all. To quote a common contemptuous Texas saying: “Big hat, no cattle.”

If only Professor Leary and those damn dirty hippies had not offended Tricky Dick Nixon, we would be decades ahead of where we are in employing psychedelics to better treat mental illness and give us all a more pleasant glidepath to end-of-life serenity. Addiction, PTSD, and many other mental disturbances marked by neurotic ruminations would clearly be better managed by psychedelics than with guns and alcohol with a splash of meth. The gun-loving Republicans who claim mental health as the primary issue causing gun violence in America should jump on the psychedelic bandwagon. Or, at least take a hit now and then. (Can you imagine McConnell on Ecstasy?) It feels like if we could migrate the American psyche back towards an even-keel center and away from the lunatic fringe we might be able to save ourselves. All anger does is fill politician’s pockets and keep funeral homes busy.

But, here we are: shame, suffering, and sadness are what we have and, arguably, what we deserve. The Age of Deceit—of lying to ourselves and compromising fundamental American values—has come home to roost. No outside enemy did this to us, we did this to ourselves. Yes, Xi is dangerous and Putin is evil, but our wounds are self-inflicted. While they would love to take credit for our current circumstances and consequences, we have only ourselves to blame. We did a poor job of picking our leaders. Most of us didn’t even participate in our democracy. We pointed at each other to play blame-and-shame.  When everyone is a victim in their own mind, who is left to take responsibility? I am not a Pollyanna about fixing this mess. I know it will take hard work and harder truths. But, if we don’t start calling ourselves out now, the first better day in America will continue—always—to be tomorrow.

Now, it’s summer. Go put flowers in your hair, and maybe gnaw on a ’shroom or two. I hear the game in the park might go into extra innings.

By |2022-06-19T13:04:03+00:00June 7th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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The Dynamic Duo: Empathy and Dignity

Years ago, when I worked in the corporate world, the most valued executives were the turnaround artists. Those who could see things as they were, and then as they should be, without being blinded by entrenched legacy thinking. This skill-set enabled them to strip out the anchors—both big and small—that were causing the enterprise to drift, or worse, sink. Clarity, both in terms of vision and focus—coupled with simplicity—were often all that was needed to set a new path to victory. The most rewarding thing for me, when I filled the turnaround role, was not the subsequent organizational victories or even my own compensation. It was watching those team members who had been there, both before and after the reset, have their outlook on life transformed as well. To see them regain their sense of dignity. It was as close as I have come to witnessing people being born again. Helping people believe in themselves is the highest calling of any leader.

I have been around since the Soviets launched Sputnik which, among other things, popped America’s balloon of esteem and sanguinity that had prevailed since World War II. It made Americans doubt themselves and their leadership. The Soviet message: “We are coming for you. Yes, we helped you beat the Nazis, but we, not you (America), will be the world’s next superpower.” That history has now been written. The doubts instilled by Sputnik were met by Americans with resolve and ingenuity. We won. The United States responded not just with a superior ideology founded in capitalism and democracy, but with a sense of fortitude based in responsible individualism, perfectibility (making things better than the way they were found), and the guiding light of exemplar exceptionalism (setting the example for others to follow). These values resided in our collective commitment to humanism; in the dynamic duo of empathy and dignity.

To be clear, as many scholars and pundits and detractors have argued throughout the period of America’s ascension to the role of lone superpower, we didn’t come close to getting everything right, and many people were left out of the fruits of success. Women and people of color shared much less of the spotlight or bounty. However, on the whole, a rising tide did lift all boats. Until, of course, intoxicated by success early in the twenty-first century, responsible individualism morphed into narcissism; perfectibility was sacrificed for an adolescent sense of entitlement; and, exemplar exceptionalism gave way to hubris. The turnaround artist in me, tasked with describing what had happened in a particular company to its board of directors, would ascribe these shifts to tactical drift; an admittedly genial assessment. A more accurate characterization might be that like drunken sailors we fell into the bay of stupidity. The core strategic cause of America’s current decline resides deep inside our moral conscience. We have abdicated our commitment to empathy and dignity, which are (surprisingly) relative newcomers to the lexicon of humanity.

The word empathy has only been with us in the English language since 1903. It came to us from the German word, Einfühlung, which means “in feeling with.” Initially, it meant projecting one’s own sense of aesthetics into another object—especially in contemplating art. It wasn’t until psychologists co-opted it to mean our capacity to understand the thoughts and emotions of other human beings in the 1930s that empathy came into its current meaning. That doesn’t mean we did not have, or practice, empathy prior to 1903, we just didn’t know what to call it. However, when you don’t know what to call something it is very difficult to understand it, let alone teach it, or develop it within a society. Until the early twentieth century, the notion of empathy was like an orphan: no one knew its name and few would take responsibility for it. When people were “in feeling with” something or somebody it was often by accident.

Dignity is also a relatively new word, at least in how we apply it today. In “A History of Human Dignity” (https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/theforum/a-history-of-human-dignity/), Remy Debes illustrates how dignity, which today means the “inherent or unearned worth that all humans share equally” meant something quite different until after World War II. Until then, dignity was earned as a matter of merit; it was bestowed to describe social status “of a kind associated with nobility, power, gentlemanly comportment, or preferment in the church.” As in “dignified” or “dignitary.” It is understandable, then, why dignity does not appear anywhere in our Declaration of Independence, nor in the Constitution. Perhaps if we had embraced its current meaning at the founding, the phrase “all men are created equal” might have been applied across gender, race, and religion. But, no. Its first meaningful application in establishing itself in the moral conscience of America did not come until 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations.

The relative youth of these terms does not, however, diminish their power as essential considerations in the manner which we conduct our lives or, for that matter, in how our country contemplates its role in the world. Standards of behavior and the words that describe them do evolve. Empathy and dignity are fundamental values we must re-embrace if we are going to heal the division in our own country and wage a moral vision that is, once again, how we will win against authoritarianism that is on the march in more of the world every day, and in the Trumplican Party here in the United States. The capacity to walk in another person’s shoes and grant them the same respect we expect for ourselves is today’s keystone in the proverbial arch of humanity. Without it, there is no humanity. When the keystone falls out, other stones/values crumble into a pile of rubble. Which, today, is sadly and regrettably the honest state of affairs at home and abroad.

The good news is that during the twentieth century in America we exercised empathy and assured the dignity of others when we were forced to compete with those who wished to destroy the sanctity of civil society for their own nefarious aims, placing humanity itself in great peril. To a large degree, that is what World War II and the Cold War that followed were all about. Today, we must understand that Trump was the warning shot across our bow of morality, and Putin is the missile of devastation attempting to take our world back to the Hobbesian days where morals do not exist and the currency of life is coercive power. When you observe those who are angry about their lot in life, like the Trump supporter who fears they are losing their social/economic/political position in America, or the young black man being targeted by cops, or women who see their reproductive rights being stripped away, they have this in common: they believe that their dignity—their fundamental sense of self-worth—is under assault.

Although the state of humanity was indeed consistent with Thomas Hobbes brutish view of man for centuries, I would like to believe we have it in ourselves to do better. We can debate whether morality is innate or learned, but this much is clear: the moral foundations of empathy and dignity, as historically expressed in America as a commitment to responsible individualism, perfectibility, and exemplar exceptionalism, must be restored if we are to remain a free and prosperous people. In the end, whether you are a turnaround artist or the leader of the free world, transforming people’s lives is about winning in a manner consistent with cultural dispositions and with due care for people’s sense of dignity. Peaceful communities will only be sustained when people are seen, heard, appreciated, and respected on their own terms. The urgency of this calling—by leaders of all stripes and responsibilities—must not be ignored.

By |2022-04-29T14:20:34+00:00April 12th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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Buck Up, Bucko. (What Biden might have said.)

Yes, you are special. Yes, your rights have been violated. Yes, I hear your grievances. Yes, you most certainly are a victim who deserves recompense. Poor you.

Now, buck up, Bucko.

You also have responsibilities, much to be grateful for, and you owe your community, country, and the world more than your whining. And, that person seated next to you? They may even be more special than you are. Who knew?

The world is a mess, but this condition is also not special—not new. Human civilization has been more often a mess than not in its long history. Variables outside of our control—exogenous variables—will forever conspire to challenge our aspirations. What matters is how we deal with variables we can affect—endogenous variables—to turn chaos and threats into order and opportunities.

This is the lesson Ukrainians are teaching the world today. Against all odds, they knew that if they did not stand up for themselves and their country the life left over would not be worth living. Chaos and threats did not break them. They know that life as a Putin pawn means a bleak future living in a world like their Russian neighbors where the color spectrum of life ranges from gray to black and liberty is as rare as truth. Ukrainians prefer their bright blue and yellow, and while their flag may be stained by their own red blood, they are forty-four million souls who will fight for their home long after their buildings are felled and oligarchs lose their yachts.

There is not enough Botox in the world to fix what Senator Romney called Putin’s “feral eyes.” Putin’s destiny is assured as just another evil madman whose pasty reptilian skin will blister and fester under the blaze of damnation. Unlike many other political leaders, especially those in America, Putin is in many ways more forthright—more predictable. Yes, he deploys subterfuge, distraction, and deflection as a tactical effort at confusing and disorienting his foes, but his evil aims are pursued in an obvious and direct manner while barely feigning morality or decency.

Meanwhile, we Americans melt down if our barista puts butterscotch syrup in our latte instead of hazelnut. “I’ve been violated!” “Who will save me?” “Someone must pay!” “You will hear from my attorneys!” As children in every city in America go to bed hungry every night.

Performative activism on social media, which has become an acceptable yet meaningless expression of American character, must be replaced by redirecting our energy from rights to responsibilities; from grievances to gratitude; from condemnation to empowerment; from passivity to action. Posting a borrowed meme on Facebook while chewing your corn syrup-laced red licorice does not qualify you as a candidate for citizen of the year. We must stand up, speak up, and act in a manner that honors our past, provides stewardship of the present, and secures the future for those who follow. The challenges of our time are not insurmountable. We must simply decide to trade victimhood for victory.

We know the difference between right and wrong, or at least we did when we were in kindergarten; before we lost ourselves to the imperative of entitlement. In the age of abundance, we have been confused by a lack of consequences. Rather than raise our hands in service, we stretch them to grab our unfair share. We conjure enemies as anyone who doesn’t affirm our fragile egos or satisfy our limitless desires. How special we aren’t.

To be clear, Ukrainians are not superheroes; they are humans too. They are not better people than Americans, they just behave better. There is something about the prospect of losing everything—especially your freedom—that is both sobering and empowering. It stiffens the spine. In America, we are losing our democracy and the values of world stewardship—of exemplar exceptionalism—that should have made us leaders in the fight against climate change. We now stare at our dumbphones, while chewing our licorice, oblivious to our self-inflicted impending doom. As long as the next Amazon parcel arrives, what could possibly go wrong?

I write to you as one of those Americans. I don’t care for red licorice, but my dumbphone is always on and my Amazon shopping cart usually has something ready to “buy now.” However, I am also an historian who knows that American power was not won from the comfort of a couch. That the brilliance of our founding documents has more meaning than a Kardashian tweet. That those same documents gain their meaning not from their scrolled parchment; rather, from the behaviors of Americans who honor their aims with a duty of service.

Name one great American living today. Time is up. Stumped? Me too. Although it is true that greatness may not be obvious in real time—that it reveals itself after the fact—we should be able to name a number of prospects for the accolade. And yet, crickets. Leadership in our society is hard to find. Selflessness is a quaint notion hidden in the pages of books gathering dust in the library. Courage means more than surviving being unfollowed. Duty means putting down Wordle and getting to work.

There is greatness in every human being. Ukrainians are finding it the hard way—while staring down a murderous madman. It is time for Americans to put away their dumbphones and get off the couch. Self-pity will not change the course of history. We must renew our commitment of care for each other and the spaces we call home. We must re-engage in the spirit of perfectibility: to leave things better than we found them.  We must, once again, endeavor to set the example for others to follow. This is the American story of our past when unity and determination led the world. It is time for the sequel.

By |2022-03-10T15:45:34+00:00March 4th, 2022|General, Leadership|0 Comments
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