Be sure to read part 1: https://howtoselectanamericanpresident.blogspot.com/2020/04/americas-next-steps.html)
I submit that citizens are overburdened with work, trying to survive, without discretion to devote time attending the cherished necessity to engage their government.
My books make it easier for citizens to catch up. I hope to reach the prospective leaders of the next generations to give them an advanced start at catching up, whereas the present leaders have left a deficit of knowledge, deficient plans, and topped with an enormous financial burden.
To where is this book headed?
I want to help my fellow citizens get a grip on a calamitous situation where our political and economic system is in disarray. Our institutions and systems will respond to the situation as best they can. I know my fellow citizens will be resilient. However, the challenges are unprecedented and clear thinking will be needed to chart a new path.
It isn’t a matter of picking up the pieces and returning to normal. Before the pandemic, our systems were already broken, and the economy was ready to slow down. The election process was compromised, not just by foreign intervention, but by Citizens United and “big money” overwhelming the idea of one person, one vote. The net steps aren’t easy for individuals nor for the institutions on which they depend.
As I close this chapter that launches a new wave of thinking, I asked my mentor, Daniel S. Appleton to review it. Dan has been a leading force of thinking and planning for the Department of Defense Acquisition Technology and Logistics Directorate as a contributor to the policies governing the National Information Infrastructure.
Here is his main idea response:
“In my thinking, it is questionable to posit that the current normal is bad and a new normal is required. All ‘normals’ are bad -- which is why "normal" is ever changing, never normal. By definition, normals can always be better. They are human. There will always be those who "know better," but changes to normalcy are evolutionary and, as a result, are largely unnoticed by those in the moment. I am reminded of the story about how to boil a frog. [1]
Normalcy cannot be engineered. History is cluttered with the detritus of failed societal engineers from Hammurabi, to Caesar, to Ivan IV, to Marx, Hitler, Lenin, Lincoln, Obama, and, yes, Trump. As our personal time travel through the evolution of the internet testifies: societies evolve heuristically by trial and error.
Think about it. Could you have engineered the present from 50 years ago? What makes you think you can engineer the future's normalcy from today's? Do you start with the TO BE or the AS IS?
I am not trying to rain on your parade, Jim. I am only saying that if your TO BE is to be a new world order of global sustainability, you will have to detail a path from here to there. The book must be about the path. Your effort to explain how to choose a president was focused on the path. While some of your political preferences showed thru, I liked the process approach.
I know! I am preaching to the choir. I guess I am saying that I think you will be more successful engineering the "new," pandemic enabled, path than engineering the TO BE.”
Appleton concluded that “The path must be more evolutionary than revolutionary.”
Then, as Dan often does, he saved the best advice until last. It is his trademark drop of wisdom.
“Most importantly, the path must be pleasurable! Pain moves people, but pleasure moves them faster and farther. Telling people they have to take one for the Gipper rarely works and even when it does, its half life is short. Pleasure beats pain – always!’
‘My final thought: Capitalism is fueled by the quest for pleasure aka demand. This is why Retail is on the pointy end of every successful economy, Retail fueled by an abundance of affordable energy. Capitalism must be the critical path to the future, particularly a Sustainment future, which is all about actualizing universal pleasure for humankind. A path that sacrifices Capitalism on the alter of Sustaiment is a dead end.” Dan Appleton.
When I worked for Dan, and we had conversations like this when I submitted a draft for comment, he would send me back to my office to think about it and to assimilate.
Economist, Dr. John Ikerd, wrote Sustainable Capitalism, A Matter of Common Sense, © 2005. He didn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. When I wrote Regenerating America with Sustainable Economics © 2017 Archway Publishing, I suggested developing a new model that leverages the best from Capitalism while balancing the “pleasures” by rewarding economic, social, and environmental responsibilities and regulating the pain when corporations and people don’t comply.
Defining the path ahead will be a pleasurable experience, mostly.
[1] “The boiling frog story is generally offered as a metaphor cautioning people to be aware of even gradual change lest they suffer eventual undesirable consequences. It may be invoked in support of a slippery slope argument as a caution against creeping normality. It is also used in business to reinforce that change needs to be gradual to be accepted.[5] Oppositely, the expression "boiling frog syndrome" is sometimes used as shorthand to invoke the pitfalls of standing pat.” David Bolchover (March 26, 2005). "What is ... 'boiling frog syndrome'?". The Times. London.
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