What Technology Demands

NOTE:  This post is a bit of an experiment, involving three previous bloggers and a new contributor: regular posters, the brother-team of Carl and Chuck Hunt; Larry Kuznar, who has previously posted twice; and Carl’s friend, MacArthur Fellow Stuart Kauffman. [1]  We think it’s a sufficiently worthy topic that we thought we’d shoot for a multidisciplinary perspective: information technology, naturalism, anthropology and biology.  All of these disciplines are part of the connecting fabric of the American Promise.  This post commemorates our 50^th Blog Post! [2]

Carl:  Two weeks ago, my Samsung Galaxy IV told me I needed nine app updates.  Last week, it was another 13.  Every week, it’s the same thing.  Our smart phones are pretty darned smart the way they have us trained.  Don’t get me started about the constant care these things need in terms of recharging (feeding?)!  After years of similar experiences updating all the various versions of my Windows computers, I wonder less and less “who” the master is in this human-technology relationship: I’m starting to be convinced that it’s technology.  Larry, is this the future of mankind or is it the future repeating the past?

Larry:  This is very much the future repeating the past.  Our ancestors’ ability to develop technology has definitely been one key edge our species had over others.  That day (approximately 2.5 million years ago) an ancient hominid struck a sharp stone from a rock and used it to slice some valuable protein from a scavenged carcass set us on an irreversible path of technological dependence.  Today we are forced to adapt to our built environment (which concentrates the exchange of pathogens, relieves selection for heat or cold resistance, enables us to acquire mates without travel).  In fact, we adapt more to our built environments than to nature outside of our walls.

Chuck:  Larry, you are so right.  The issue about our “built environment” is huge!  We have to ask “where is our ‘think space,’ where’s our space to be human?”  In The Singing Wilderness, Sigurd F. Olson writes as though our technology-driven world, which is increasingly devoid of real things, is not optimal habitat for humans.  Hearing birds sing, smelling a field after a shower, or reading the skies are things that have been part of the human existence for thousands of years.  The abrupt shift, in human time anyway, to this stressful technology-driven life is likely causing behavioral and health dysfunction.  The biological foundation for Olson’s philosophy comes from a theory he proposed as “racial memory.”  He held that we humans have a biological need to connect with nature.  The societal ramifications of all of this will not be known for quite some time.  Generally, rapid shocks in habitat lead to species decline (or extinction), at least until adaptation occurs, which can take generations.

Carl:  The effects on nature and our interactions with it are a big deal, Larry and Chuck, and could indeed affect us for a very long time.  If we think of technology as a “living system” as Kevin Kelly writes in What Technology Wants, technology does seem to be better at adaptation than humans!

What really got me thinking about this lately was a Politico article entitled “How Google Could Rig the 2016 Election” based on some recent National Academy of Sciences research about the same topic.  I find it hard not to think of Google as a well-motivated and well-intentioned company, but what if technology is beginning to take on a life form that we are in fact are only now starting to visualize as Kevin Kelly claims?  Is it possible for our technologies to “rig a national election” without human intervention or intent?

Stu, you know Kevin Kelly and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt fairly well.  As a biologist and physician, is there something going on here that even transcends our human intentions and inventions?  Did biology enable technology or is it the other way around?

Stu:  Yes, something very big is going on.  Both the evolving biosphere and the evolving economy, including technologies, create the very possibilities into which they “become”, often beyond anyone knowing even what “can happen”.  First, Chuck is right. We are ever more alienated from Nature in late modernity to our rue and dysphoria.  We evolved as part of Nature, but now think we are separate and somehow “above” the Nature that is “ours” to command, not nurture.  Second, think of a web of economic goods and production functions, including technologies.  Once one exists, it creates “adjacent possibilities” into which it can become, although no one may have intended how the total system becomes.  These adjacent possible creations happen without a human plan.  This is Kelly’s What Technology Wants.  Somehow, we lost contact with our natural roots in the 18^th Century with the Industrial Revolution and the explosion of new technologies that enable the further explosion that rushes at us ever more rapidly.  We have not faced this in the past 50,000 years, nor do we know what is wise.  And, we definitely don’t know how much further this will drive us from our natural roots in the future: that’s just not prestatable, no matter how well we think we can plan for what’s ahead.

Larry:   And this is so much the story of human social (not biological) evolution. Technological innovations seem to have been entirely developed to solve immediate needs, with little or no consideration of their long-term consequences.  The earliest stone tools enabled a hominid with an increasing brain to feed this hungry organ, enabling an adjacently possible outcome of even greater reliance on intelligence and imagination as a means to adapt.  I doubt that any Homo habilis realized it was creating the foundation for metaphysical thought and the development of the World’s great religions.

Archaeologists have pretty well concluded that the domestication of plants and animals solved a problem of increasing hunter-gatherer populations, which meant increasing conflict over wild resources.  However, increased sedentism also enabled women to have more children, and these rapidly increasing human populations only engendered more conflict, which lead to the formation of tribal societies and ethnic violence.  A quick look at the world news demonstrates that we have anything but shaken off the mantle of tribal warfare.  The list goes on.  A technological innovation solves one problem, but opens up multiple adjacently possible pathways that humans never imagined.  As Stu said, these pathways are not prestatable!

Carl:   It appears that technology has learned how to build and exploit Stu’s adjacent possibilities better than we ever could.  Is this also what Kelly is telling us?  Has technology learned better the lessons that nature offered and we rejected to assimilate humanity rather than vice versa?  Could the possibility of a “rigged election” that the National Academy of Sciences study reflected be just another step in Kurzweil’s proposed “accelerating intelligence?”  Is it possible to think of technology, particularly information-based technology, as an emerging life form or species?  Does technology do a better job of fulfilling its demands from us than we do of it?

Chuck:   So now this discussion appears to be entering into the realm of philosophy or even ethics.  Perhaps the pace of technological change and our growing prowess is forcing us to take this issue more seriously, but it isn’t new either.  The pace may be accelerated and the impact may be new, but this is an issue that humans have struggled with since the beginning of applying technology to “make things better.”  Natural resource management abounds with examples of humans actually exacerbating problems through technology.

Just to offer one of countless examples and one with which I have been involved professionally, Tamarix, or Salt Cedar, was introduced to the United States from Asia in the early 1900s to help prevent erosion.  The goal was noble.  Erosion has many harmful affects including degraded water quality, loss of productive soils, lowering of the water table, etc.  However, within a short period, people noticed that Tamarix was taking over large areas, river flows decreased and water tables were actually receding.  Subsequent research showed that Tamarix actually are massive consumers of water and easily out-compete other vegetation.  Once lush, diverse riparian communities along rivers were becoming monocultures of Tamarix!  The environment of the American Southwest would have been greatly improved had Tamarix never been introduced.  It really was a technologically-derived dilemma.

The point is that mankind has been reckless in the application of all kinds of technology probably since the advent of “technology.”  As a result of Tamarix and other unhelpful exotic species, most nations have become more careful about introducing new flora or fauna to ecosystems.  However, I am not sure we have applied these lessons to the “human ecosystem” (which is really an integrated if artificial construct as well, isn’t it?).  Could we be disrupting our health through unchecked embrace of information technology?  Or, is an embrace of technology the only way to save us from the ecological effects of a human population explosion combined with rising standard of living expectations?

Hence, is this a philosophical debate or a debate concerning the survival of mankind, or both?  Likely it is both…we’re not going to reject technology and I hope we’re not going to stop being human; the question is how thoughtful should we be and how thoughtful can we afford to be.

Larry:  Great questions, Carl and Chuck!  Let me take an anthropological stab at each.  Does technology adapt to us better than we adapt to it? Historically, humans have been required to replicate technology, and the human environment has selected which elements would be replicated or go extinct.  Technology has been more like a virus or a domesticated plant or animal, basically dependent on its host for its replication. Had our ancestors been sufficiently aware of the effects of technology and how they wanted it to impact human life, they could have guided this evolution more rationally toward a desired end beyond our typically short-sighted need to solve an immediate problem.  For technology to adapt to us like an autonomous organism, it would need to have the ability to self-replicate.  With modern robotics and AI, some argue that technology appears to be gaining those abilities and may begin adapting better than us. [3]

Chuck, the Tamarix example is a great illustration!  I spent the better part of a decade conducting research on the Navajo Reservation, and indeed, Tamarix checked streamside erosion in the fragile biophysical ecosystem; but sheep and cattle can’t eat Tamarix, and its introduction further eroded a fragile human ecosystem, the traditional Navajo indigenous economy.

Is technology disrupting our health or saving us?  We are all familiar with the many ill health effects from the by-products of technology.  However, technology, through improved medicine, sanitation, and food production has caused global childhood mortality to plummet from over 40% to about 3% in the last 200 years. [4]  That’s a lot more people in the gene pool!  The net effect is astounding evolutionary success.  Of course, if the world’s 7 billion people increasingly demand and get energy from fossil fuels, they may destroy the planet’s ability to sustain them.  That would be an astounding evolutionary failure.  Talk about adjacently possible pathways!

Is this a philosophical debate or one about the survival of humankind?  I think it’s about the survival of ways of life that we value, and therefore, it is both.  When we’re concerned about what technology has done to our lives, we are expressing our concern about the state, or form, of things.  But evolutionary theory is a theory of process.

The questions that began this discussion reflect human values about the state of our lives.  However, all we may ever really understand is how we got to where we are and how we may proceed into the future; what the state of our future lives will be and how we would value it is, as our colleague Stu notes, just not prestatable.  By exploring the possibilities, though, we may avoid hurtling ourselves headlong into an adjacently possible future we would not want our descendants to experience.  Even then, we are presuming that our descendants will share the values we hold today.

Stu:  I think we are touching some of our deepest issues.  Larry and Chuck are so right about how we act in the biosphere with often unexpected consequences.   We were taught to stop forest fires, Smokey Bear, then learned that small fires were normal and we had allowed the understory to grow to enable vast fires.  DDT ravaged.  But the issues are very much broader, embracing not only technology, but the evolution of our economic system with its power structures, the banks too big to fail that evolve into a legal environment that itself evolves in often unprestatable ways as unprestatable loopholes are found in laws that enable new strategies with unknown payoffs that call forth new laws so the legal-economic-social system “becomes” in partially unprestatable ways, and finally into the opportunities that vault out of what is currently present.

Larry is also right-on about our “values”.  To borrow historian Thomas Cahill’s phrase, I think we are at a hinge of history, in which our thirty or more civilizations around the globe are weaving together, on a finite planet, where we still wage war: this is what the connectivity this blog addresses is all about.  What values will guide us?  It seems to me that this post touches, far beyond Kelly and What Technology Wants, how we “become” as a global set of interwoven civilizations, where what already is unleashes often unprestatable opportunities for good and ill into which we are almost ineluctably “sucked”.  If we cannot design what we become, our values must be our guide.

Carl and Chuck:  We are most grateful to Stu and Larry for joining us in this special 50^th Blog Post in Reconnecting to the American Promise.  While it may take a little imagination to see the connection to RAP and other important topics we’ve covered, such as reflected in the National Strategic Narrative, I think my friend Wayne Porter and his Strategic Narrative coauthor Puck Mykleby would agree that in the end it is our values, as Stu so eloquently concludes, that make us the nation we are and the individuals that form our society.  If in the end, we cannot prestate the design of how we Reconnect to the American Promise, perhaps we can reconnect to the great American values upon which we originally emerged as the United States of America.

End Note from Carl:  This morning, the date of the posting of this piece, my Galaxy Note IV needed only four updates.  That still seems a little needy, but at least not so demanding.

NOTES:

[1] Actually, some of Stu’s recent work has been previously mentioned in Survival at the “Hinge of History”, posted in this blog in June, 2015.

[2] This title is a bit of a takeoff on Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants, Viking Books, New York, 2010.  According to the book website, the topic “…suggests that technology as a whole is not just a jumble of wires and metal but a living, evolving organism that has its own unconscious needs and tendencies.”

[3] Martin Ford, Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future, Basic books, New York, 2015.

[4] http://ourworldindata.org/data/population-growth-vital-statistics/child-mortality/

Some Peace and Quiet, Please

How about some peace and quiet in this summer of 2015?  After all, does everything in America today have to be driven by a totally distracting and all-too-early political season?  Doesn’t America deserve a little peace and quiet?

This seems like reasonable line of inquiry.  It’s summer time and we’re supposed to enjoy a little vacation, right?  Why on earth would all those politicians involve themselves in the summer debate fray when they could be lying on the beach, hiking mountain trails or just spending time with their families?

We thought we might ask the leaders of our two major political parties a few questions about that.

Are the two parties missing a key narrative in the 2016 race for the Whitehouse (aside from not being able to read the calendar)?  Is it possible that the majority of the American people just want a little break and enjoy the summer?  Maybe there really isn’t a huge desire for change in America outside of a few key issues.  That’s our gut feeling anyway.

Here’s why…

It strikes us that since the 1960s and 70s, our two political parties have somehow managed to make happen most of the big changes that Americans wanted.  It’s starting to look like now the parties are creating a quest for continued change only for the sake of change and may be getting a little too creative.  It’s quite possible their quest for change is causing anxiety across the electorate.

It’s our sense that most Americans just want us all to take a breather and let things settle down for a while.  We know the scientific, technological and social fabrics of America (and indeed the world) are changing but is it really necessary to add political chaos to those changes?  We can adapt to those changes with just a little collective social objectivity, but politics don’t need to get in the way of that!

We believe a smarter approach would be for the parties to test a strategy to slow down and reduce the dramatic changes to our policies and enjoy what we have now, for just a bit at least: give some things a chance to work out.  Relook the National Strategic Narrative paper we pointed to in the earlier days of the blog.

There are a few areas we could still work on but we don’t have to pursue the increasingly lengthy frenetic political campaigns, just some good governance.

We believe a smart approach to better governance would be to tell American politicians that we, the American people, have had enough progress on right and left wing goals.  We now need to roll up our sleeves and just tackle a few changes where there is largely consensus.

Our recommended platform would be no new regulations and programs or laws for the next four years with the exception of:

• Address income inequality. We’re not perfectly sure what this looks like, but the top CEO and officers of companies do not need to make (or are worth) 300 times more than the average employees.  Please Red: get serious about this one and pay attention to mainstream America for a change.  This could be provided for by enhanced visibility of salary rates for the public and shareholders for senior officers in organizations: things will tend to work out from there.  We’re not real sure what else to propose, but we believe the public would support something to start the trend towards more transparency and equality of opportunity for all to succeed.
• Contain the cost of college tuition and medical care. Cost increases in both these sectors are far above average inflation and are hollowing out the middle class.  No one is bothering to explain to the rest of us why this is taking place.  Both Red and the Blue should think hard about this and act together on behalf of America!
• Give the middle class a tax break by lowering the payroll tax to 5% and remove the cap on wages subject to the tax. This would provide an immediate boost to our economy and help stabilize the social security fund.  Again, this should appeal to both parties.
• Remove incentives to offshore business operations, headquarters and profits. This would bring jobs and investment home.  Red, we need some help on this one.
• Control our borders and provide for orderly and at least for a while, less immigration. Increase the penalties further for hiring illegal immigrants and enforce existing laws.  This could possibly apply a little upward pressure on wages and help address income inequality.  We’ve read that in some parts of the country summer jobs are almost a thing of the past for native born Americans because so many jobs are now taken by immigrants.  We want to offer economic opportunity for everyone but America must be stable in its own right before we can offer stability to the rest of the world.  Blue, you can particularly help here.
• Improve our infrastructure. Pass a long-term infrastructure bill funded by a five cent increase on gas taxes.  This will make jobs and help provide long-term economic security for the country.
• Lift the ban on oil exports but place a reasonable tax on oil exports that is strictly earmarked to develop alternative energy.  Make alternative energy our “space program” of the 2020s.  It is the right thing to do for our economy, our future (e.g., our kids’) energy security and the environment long term.  Come one, Red and Blue…get on this!
• Develop a bipartisan carbon tax law to address climate change challenges and consider a tax on importation of goods from countries that are not complying with greenhouse reductions agreements.  Blue and Red: show more interest in the science here, now…please!

9)      Implement a freeze on all entitlements except for Social Security.  This will get people to the table to improve service delivery and change eligibility requirements.  On Social Security, gradually increase eligibility ages (again) and implement a comprehensive disability re-evaluation program to reduce the number of fraudulent recipients.  Both Red and Blue have an important role to play here.

Successful outcomes in tackling these nine areas would not solve all our problems, but we believe each would be valuable steps in the right direction.  They would give the public a breather on at least some fronts where a delay won’t be lethal.  We are confident many Americans would support most of these proposals.  And it’s something we could do together regardless of political affiliation.

We realize there are a lot of issues we don’t address here, including one of the most important: fair and equal treatment for all, considering gender and race in particular.  We offer no excuses for this, and will simply defer to the Principles of RAP.

What do you say…should we start enjoying the seasons now, the coming holidays included, instead of running for offices not even up for election for another year?  Do this for America, you two!

Posted by Chuck Hunt and Carl Hunt, 8/13/2015

Survival at the “Hinge of History”

By Carl W. Hunt

In 1987, the Library of Congress and the Florida Center for the Book collaborated on the publication of an essay entitled “Reading for Survival” by my all-time favorite novelist, John D. MacDonald. I’ve read my collection of Travis McGee novels by JDM (as aficionados call him) at least four times and I’m even meandering through them once again, slowly and with great relish. Chuck has read them all at least three times.

Together, Chuck and I have quoted JDM and his near-mythical Florida beach bum-salvage consultant hero, Travis, dozens of times in papers and blogs and I even cited a Travis quote in my dissertation!

“Reading for Survival” was probably JDM’s last published work and was the culmination of a project first proposed by Jean Trebbi, Director of the Florida Center of the Book, in 1985. It took JDM a long time to create the timeless insights that all of us can now read in the 30 or so printed pages that compose the final product – he clearly thought long and hard about one of his “final” contributions to the future of America. Chuck and I have read the essay a number of times and still marvel at how much relevant history, philosophy and meaningful prognostication JDM packed into some 7000 words.

Chuck and I both re-read “Reading for Survival” this last weekend. In reading it again, I learned that sometimes you just don’t have enough knowledge and experience for sage words to mean what they can…you have to wait until you’ve read another piece of great insight or experience life just a little more before things clarify. That’s what I experienced this weekend.

I had recently read another essay, one from the United Nations Academic Impact site co-written by my good friend and dissertation co-director, Stuart Kauffman and several others, including another friend, Caryn Devins. The essay, “Searching for Transcendence at the Hinge of History”, is one of those pieces that set the stage for understanding and appreciating anew the brilliance of both John D. MacDonald and my friend, Stu Kauffman. But, I had to read both within close proximity to put the pieces together.

Stu and company’s essay reflects the best of what some call nonlinear thinking. This is important because life is not a linear phenomenon even though time seems to pass that way, one moment followed by another, day after day, year after year. Life really isn’t just “one damned thing after another” but rather lots of things happening all at the same time, spread across lots of people and places: life is full of nonlinearity and massive interactions, a major theme of this blog.

The “Hinge of History” essay, something of a spin-off of Thomas Cahill’s series of books of the same name, eloquently raises the possibility “that we are unleashing the largest extinction event since perhaps the Permian, thereby destroying the accumulated living wisdom of thousands of species with no thought that we almost surely cannot recreate what we are losing,” [1] but that simultaneously, humanity’s “hinge of history may be the most staggering opportunity the globe faces.” We’re the problem and the solution at the same time!

How we become the problem and solution simultaneously is both the gist of Stu, Caryn and their co-authors’ essay and it’s a marvelous example of nonlinear thinking. A meaningful way to think about the passage and flow of time then might be found in the UN essay as follows:

“…the past provides ‘actual situations’ that become ‘enabling constraints,’ which at once restrain and encourage the development of the future. In other words, the enabling constraints from the past ensure that we cannot mold the world from scratch, but that we can build on what exists to create novel possibilities.”

In this way, we’re able to think beyond the past and its apparent linear unfolding and create a future that guides rather than forces the next turn of events. This is nonlinear thinking!

Let’s examine one of JDM’s examples in “Reading for Survival” and compare it to the “Hinge” essay. In this passage, JDM is describing the nonlinear, but elegantly “organized” mind of Travis’ great and brilliant friend Meyer. Here’s how Travis thought Meyer’s mind might work:

“When you and I think, it is a fairly simple process. A lot of fuzzy notions bump about in our skulls like play toys in a roiled swimming pool. With brute force and exasperation we sort them into a row and reach a conclusion, the quicker the better. With Meyer it is quite a different process. He has a skull like a house I read about once, where an old lady kept building on rooms because she thought if she ever stopped building she would die. It became an architectural maze, hundreds of rooms stuck on every which way. Meyer knows his way around his rooms. He knows where the libraries are, and the little laboratories, the computer rooms, the print shop, the studios. When he thinks, he wanders from room to room, looking at a book here, a pamphlet there, a specimen across the hall. His ideas are compilations of the thought and wisdom he has accumulated up until now.”

It’s just possible that my friend Stu thinks the same way and that’s why he’s so capable of conceiving these kinds of solutions to global planning problems in such a marvelously nonlinear, bottom-up driven fashion. Who would have thought and proposed what he and his coauthors did: that we could leverage this “Hinge of History” at which point we seem to exist today and seek to solve many of our societal dysfunctions not with new plans and designs but with a “vision of global change through adaptive institutional change at all levels…first and foremost at the local level. It is not a vision of design or command and control or engineering and rational forecasts. It is a vision of enablement. We enable global change by enabling local governance.” I think Meyer would approve!

In the end, we have to ask “Why is this at all important to how we Reconnect to the American Promise?” Well, I’ll take a shot at that answer: we can’t effectively reconnect to something that we can’t rediscover our intent to connect to in the first place…we really have to intend and desire to reconnect.

In their essay, Stu and company borrowed from Alfred North Whitehead’s thoughts on how the “future exerts its influence on the present, in the form of intention.” At the same time, they admonish us to recognize “that our intentions, and the realities they enable, can often create a widely divergent pattern of becoming, much like the evolving biosphere, political systems, and the economy.”

In large part, failure to recognize these divergences, aggravated by the super-connectivity of Information Technology, brought about much of the disconnection we’ve experienced in America since World War II. IT has helped to obscure and diffuse our desires and intentions to cohesively remain connected to our Founders. In finally recognizing this condition and leveraging technology to connect rather than disconnect, we’ll find the seeds to Reconnecting to the American Promise. I think it will help in the quest Stu, Caryn and company seek to fulfill, too.

In the meantime, to reflect nonlinearly how we could think and reconnect to our Founders as Americans of the 21^st Century, consider JDM and “Reading for Survival.” You’ll be amazed at how timely Travis and Meyer’s chat of 28 years ago is to our current world and our current disconnections. Read it for America…please!

Originally posted 6/30/2015

NOTES:

[1] See for example: “Earth is on brink of a sixth mass extinction, scientists say, and it’s humans’ fault” for a recent mainstream media version of this report, by Sarah Kaplan, Washington Post, 6/22/2015.

Disconnecting America

When we were kids growing up in what was probably a “lower-to-middle” middle class neighborhood in southeast Houston, we rarely thought about politics at any level. Carl does remember the JFK nomination and election when he was in the third grade, primarily because some kids were actually walking around the playground carrying signs that read “Kennedy.” Chuck remembers a Jimmy Carter town hall meeting around 1976 and the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan as events that started his thinking about the US political process.

However, neither of us remembers politics particularly dividing the nation in the 60s and 70s. From the little we saw in those days, there were different philosophies, and of course the Vietnam War was a divider (with apologies to Clausewitz…we recall that war “is the continuation of politics (policy) by other means”!). But both parties usually knew when to say “that’s enough politics” and to put America first. That’s all changed!

We started this blog precisely because we do remember the days when politics might drive elections and guide policy, but it didn’t tear apart the nation so deeply that America actually became two nations: Redtopia and Bluedreamia. It was this tearing apart that convinced us we had to say something. As we contemplated this blog, all we saw was increasing acrimony across the aisle facilitated by partisan media organs that had just gone too far…it was getting so bad that America was becoming dysfunctional and the country we love was at risk.

What we thought of as personal experience and intuition when we started this blog came to light for us this month thanks to a Washington Post Op-Ed piece by Dana Milbank, titled online as America’s new cycle of partisan hatred. “Up until the mid-1980s, the typical American held the view that partisans on the other side operated with good intentions. But that has changed in dramatic fashion, as a study published last year by Stanford and Princeton researchers demonstrates,” Milbank wrote. As Milbank and the Stanford/Princeton study indicate, it’s worse than we thought. [1]

Occasionally it takes a long time to circulate important insights about the changing nature of the American electorate, given the study Milbank cites came out last June; however, the implications of this study are worthwhile nonetheless. This is no longer the 60s, 70s and 80s.

When we started the blog, perhaps we were guilty of still living in the good ole’ 80s. We thought the political divide that facilitated the edge-driven politics we’ve cited many times was created by office-seekers and power-hungry politicians who couldn’t find anything good to do for America. But, as Walt Kelly said in Pogo “we have met the enemy and it is us!” [2]

The authors of the study Milbank cites, Shanto Iyengar and Sean J. Westwood, claim that Americans have allowed politics to pull us away from compromise that led to the foundation of the United States and towards the edges that politicians do in fact exploit. “Our evidence demonstrates that hostile feelings for the opposing party are ingrained or automatic in voters’ minds, and that affective polarization based on party is just as strong as polarization based on race. We further show that party cues exert powerful effects on non-political judgments and behaviors. Partisans discriminate against opposing partisans, and do so to a degree that exceeds discrimination based on race.” [3] The American electorate is in cahoots with politicians in creating our disconnects and divides!

As the authors and Milbank note, partisan political discrimination has replaced race as the main reason for keeping Americans from the Center. This politically driven partisanship inhibits and now apparently disincentivizes the function of compromise and cooperation that has been the root of American success and national prosperity. Political partisanship is trumping putting America first, and American voters are enabling it whether by design or by neglect.

Milbank writes that “partisanship is more tribal than anything — the result of an ill-informed electorate.” As Westwood, one of the paper’s authors, told Milbank for his Op-Ed piece, “…most people understand their side is good and the opposing side is bad, so it’s much easier for them to form these emotional opinions of political parties.” Redtopia and Bluedreamia now form the basis for tribes that insist on fighting against each other rather than moving forward together for America.

This is saddening to say the least, and politicians feel perfectly free to exploit it: “elected officials and professional partisans then reinforce the tribal tendency in the electorate with overheated rhetoric, perpetual campaigns, negative ads and increasingly partisan media outlets,” Milbank notes from the Iyengar and Westwood study. [4]

In other important ways, the social fabric of America is changing as well. “Americans increasingly live in neighborhoods with like-minded partisans, marry fellow partisans and disapprove of their children marrying mates from the other party, and they are more likely to choose partners based on partisanship than physical or personality attributes,” Milbank continues.

Instead of using the Connected Age to bring us closer together as a nation, our political tribes and those we elect to represent us use information age technologies to disconnect us across political party lines. Yes, this is most saddening indeed. The Connected Age is tearing us apart when it comes to politics.

What is the answer?

Sadly, it is almost impossible to write anything that won’t seem hopelessly naïve given the situation in which America finds herself, but here’s a stab. America: sober up! The right and the left edges driving politics today might be best viewed as drug pushers that are willing to take the nation down for their own short-sighted, selfish goals. To enhance their power, they feed us edge-driven ideological hallucinogens that reinforce and even build our fears and insecurities.

Just as we have had “Just say no” drilled into us in the past, it now seems time to “Just say no to extremism and personal attacks.” Our nation is truly at stake. Anytime a politician personally attacks his or her opponent, push away.

In our youth, we don’t recall many people personally attacking Presidents Ford, Carter or Reagan, as much as making light of them. There weren’t serious efforts to dehumanize them. Sure there were disagreements about policy, but we didn’t see nearly the same level of personal attacks we commonly witness today.

Since our politicians refuse to be adult, it is up to the voters to be “the adults in the room.”

Again, at the risk of being naïve, just say no to extremism and personal attacks. Could it be as simple as civility? We’d love to hear from readers…let us know if we’re off-base here!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 4/22/2015.

[1] The news story of this study was also reported in The Stanford News as “Political animosity exceeds racial hostility, new Stanford research shows,” 10/4/2014 and “What Is Really Tearing America Apart” in an NPR blog post, 10/15/2014, by Linton Weeks.

[2] This quote was apparently originally provided by Walt Kelly for an Earth Day poster in 1970, something that seems appropriate given the publication date for this post.

[3] Shanto Iyengar and Sean J. Westwood, “Fear and Loathing Across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization,” June 2014.

[4] The restraints against this type of socio-political disconnect are self-feeding. Milbank continues in his Op-Ed: ‘“Unlike race, gender and other social divides where group-related attitudes and behaviors are constrained by social norms, there are no corresponding pressures to temper disapproval of political opponents,” they (Iyengar and Westwood) conclude. “If anything, the rhetoric and actions of political leaders demonstrate that hostility directed at the opposition is acceptable, even appropriate. Partisans therefore feel free to express animus and engage in discriminatory behavior toward opposing partisans.”

An Air of Disloyal Opposition

When we started this blog over a year ago, we not only began posting our thoughts about the creation and sustainment of a New American Center, we also proposed a framework of Principles that might guide our analysis and writing about the events that shape our nation. Our intent was for these principles to fully embrace and support our American Constitution. Several of our early posts referred to using our electoral processes to ensure our leaders at the national level could appreciate the value of loyal opposition, regardless of disagreements; this was and always has been fundamental to our success as a nation.

Events of this month of March, 2015 have indicated that there is in fact a body politic that manifests an air of disloyal opposition. Both the GOP sponsorship of the appearance of the Israeli prime minister before a “joint session” of Congress and the recent letter to Iran by a partisan body of GOP senators reflect this semblance of disloyal opposition. It’s up to voters to decide if in fact the electoral process we described in the Principles is working to create a loyal opposition or not, but this month’s turn of events seems to indicate the electorate is looking the other way as we vote for our representatives.

About 5½ years ago, a New Zealand commentator named Paul Buchanan wrote a piece called Disloyal Opposition in the United States. [1] Buchanan proposed a definition of “disloyal opposition” that’s worth reading and reflecting about how things seem to be headed in the US today. Buchanan wrote:

Disloyal oppositions are, by definition, unprincipled. Not because they lack conviction in their beliefs (some do), but because of their disrespect for the rules of the democratic game. Their view of political rules and procedures is purely instrumental: if they suit the pursuit of ideological or policy objectives they can be used. If not, they can be circumvented. The goal is to bring down the government of the day regardless of cost or consequence. Hence disloyal oppositions hold little regard for established rules and institutional norms even if it suited them when in government or as a historical precedent…For disloyal oppositions, politics is war and the ends justify the means.

Interestingly, Buchanan wrote this piece about the imminent battle lines America’s Fox News and the recently inaugurated President Obama had apparently drawn. His commentary reflected thought and analysis that could have inspired our own thinking about the lengths partisanship activities have taken in this nation since 2009, even as revealed by an international perspective.

A relevant sense of perspective is now starting in our own nation, as well. No less a voice than the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker, a self-described conservative, wrote about it in her 3/11/2015 column in the Post, “Tom Cotton’s Grandstand Play”. Parker noted in her assessment of the letter to Iran, “So what was the rush to tell Iran, essentially, ‘You’re wasting your time’? The 47 senators are like food critics who condemn a chef before he has finished preparing the entree. Their letter also signals to the world that they have zero respect for our president, or for the other world powers attempting to try diplomacy first.”

Parker also wrote that “there are other ways to accomplish our goals than profiling for political profit. The 47 may have felt like Zorro, inking their opposition with the bold felt tips of their swords, but they were acting like children at the school fair whose single purpose is to dunk the principal.” It was important for the President to make this effort so that America did in fact deliver “… a message to the world that, if and when we do take military action, it will be as a last resort.”

Another Washington Post conservative commentator, Michael Gerson, substantiated Parker’s perspectives. “This was a foreign policy maneuver, in the middle of a high-stakes negotiation, with all the gravity and deliberation of a blog posting. In timing, tone and substance, it raises questions about the Republican majority’s capacity to govern,” Gerson wrote. “Congress simply has no business conducting foreign policy with a foreign government, especially an adversarial one,” Gerson added, noting how important the negotiations might ultimately be in future attempts to isolate Iran.

Retired US Army Major General Paul Eaton characterized the 47 senators’ actions as “mutinous.” The Post reported that Eaton said “‘What Senator Cotton did is a gross breach of discipline, and especially as a veteran of the Army, he should know better…I have no issue with Senator Cotton, or others, voicing their opinion in opposition to any deal to halt Iran’s nuclear progress. Speaking out on these issues is clearly part of his job. But to directly engage a foreign entity, in this way, undermining the strategy and work of our diplomats and our Commander in Chief, strains the very discipline and structure that our foreign relations depend on, to succeed.”’

We are willing to assume that intellectual laziness, partisan “combat fatigue” or just sloppiness may account for some of the 46 other senators who signed the letter of their freshman colleague, but it is still a serious lapse in carrying out their Statesmen roles and responsibilities. Credit goes out to the GOP senators who refrained from this reckless behavior. We can only hope that they exercised their restraint in the interest of maintaining a loyal opposition. [2]

What the vast majority of the GOP senators did was to declare to the world that the concept of loyal opposition was not in their vocabulary. These elected leaders reflected what Buchanan wrote in his definition: “disloyal oppositions hold little regard for established rules and institutional norms even if it suited them when in government or as a historical precedent.”

These 47 senators certainly set precedence, but the voters in these senators’ states should next time look in the direction of loyal opposition as a foundational component of our success in America. We have no room for an air of disloyal opposition in this nation.

Posted by Carl Hunt and Chuck Hunt, 3/15/2015

[1] Unfortunately, the title to the piece was misspelled as “Disoyal (sic) Opposition in the United States,” but we took the liberty to correct this misspelling here.

[2] The Washington Post recorded that the list of GOP senators who declined to sign the letter included Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker of Tennessee, Maine Senator Susan Collins, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, Indiana Senator Dan Coates and Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran.

Washed-Up Thinking

by Carl W. Hunt

My wife and I are fortunate to live near the beach. As I’ve described before, we live in Lewes, Delaware, where the Atlantic Ocean and the Delaware Bay meet at Cape Henlopen. The bay and Cape Henlopen were first discovered by Henry Hudson; none other than William Penn, the first governor of the Pennsylvania colony, set aside Cape Henlopen to be a family “park” in the designation of some of the first public lands in America.

We can walk to Lewes Beach on the Delaware Bay side, but have to drive or bike to the Atlantic beach at Cape Henlopen State Park. We often find sea glass or pottery from sunken ships washed up on the shore…walking the beaches and looking for these simple treasures are a pleasurable pastime for us as coastal residents. This week we found a piece of well-weathered green sea glass washed up on the bay-side of Cape Henlopen Point. This discovery struck me as symbolic of what my brother Chuck and I have intended to demonstrate with Reconnecting to the American Promise.

In addition to just walking on the beach, bloggers are often inspired to write about news events or commentaries they’ve recently read…sometimes we feel compelled to make our thoughts known relative to our frame of reference. I found a bit of inspiration from that piece of sea glass and a commentary I read this week for work, tilted “The Menace of Menace” by Anna Simons, a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School.

The observant reader might note the small seashell trapped in the mouth of the bottle-top of the glass my wife and I found. Perhaps the small creature originally in this shell simply got lodged within the glass by the movement of the water in the bay, or perhaps it sought protection and wedged itself in. In any event, this shell was not going anywhere without being damaged if was removed…it was stuck.

According to Anna Simons, America is stuck in a cycle of thinking and acceptance of being stuck that is damaging our present and dimming our future. This thinking cycle is disconnecting us from the American Promise.

Simons, an anthropologist like our friend Larry Kuznar (author of two posts in this blog), describes our thinking in the context of the “menace” of terror and violence that America and the West have helped to promulgate in the veil of social structures that exist today. “By having helped market to the world the notion that menace is an acceptable lifestyle choice, we have helped make atrocities more rather than less likely” Simons writes.

I had to go back and make sure I knew the dictionary meaning of “menace” to confirm I understood Simons’ use of the word, and in terms of what the social thinking of America and the West in this generation has empowered, she nailed it. We don’t use the word today as much as we have in the past, but the word is appropriate to the current age. Dictionary.com defines menace as “something that threatens to cause evil, harm, injury, etc.; a threat” or “a person whose actions, attitudes, or ideas are considered dangerous or harmful.”

Simons continues “We Americans have come to lionize menace on the big screen, the small screen, and the computer screen, in the music industry, the fashion industry, and the sports industry. Look at how legions of Americans dress, and listen to how they talk—with expletive-laced vitriol…It is not just those who portray menace, but also those who produce and direct menace-as-entertainment.”

I’m old-fashioned…I admit it. I find the “expletive-laced vitriol” as part of everyday language difficult to take. If this and “menace-as-entertainment” have become as mainstream as Simons writes, America is indeed supporting the acceptance of menace as a socially acceptable behavior and it’s pouring over into the rest of the world without our realizing it. This collective social acceptance is not only disconnecting our own people from the American Promise, it’s disconnecting the rest of the world.

There are probably several underlying causes of this social trend in America, but one stands out that’s consistent with this blog’s published philosophies about small towns and community-based living. Simons notes that “one downside to so few of us living in small-scale, face-to-face societies, villages, or communities is that bad social actors used to be objects of withering scorn and thus served as object lessons for how to not behave.” This is really important because it suggests the critical need for communities to be cohesive, be socially responsible and to police themselves.

Behaviors generated from the lower levels upward are the true builders of culture and society. This is right in line with what our friends Wayne Porter and Puck Mykleby have published in the National Strategic Narrative, also a source of blog posts for RAP.

According to Simons, we’ve stopped thinking about our responsibilities in growing good communities and culture in America and have let our society slip away as we accept and even nurture the growth of menace in the world. That’s where we as a nation have drifted in the wrong direction and gotten stuck in the sea glass, as it were.

It’s not too late to get unstuck, Simons writes: “…the only effective way to rescue future generations here and abroad from further innovations in crude violence…is to make less of menace. Otherwise, without doing something about the proliferation of this meme, the menace from menace will only intensify.”

To that, I would add that this acceptance of menace has washed up on our shores, just as that piece of sea glass, and we need to toss it right back into the water and get back to Reconnecting to the American Promise. Let’s not get stuck in washed-up thinking.

Originally posted by Carl W. Hunt, 2/8/2015.

Feeling Like an American

by Carl W. Hunt

The January-February, 2015 issue of the Atlantic Magazine recently published a cover piece titled “The Tragedy of the American Military” by James Fallows. I’ve known Jim since 2007 and consider him a friend. His article this month shows Jim to be a friend to America as well, as did the writings of the accompanying pieces “Gun Trouble” by Major General Robert H. Scales (US Army, ret.) and “How I learned to Love the Draft” by Joseph Epstein. All three were published in the magazine as a “block” of related stories.

These three articles stirred me to write a bit about my own experiences with our nation’s military, particularly my service, the United States Army, and how it is related to Reconnecting to the American Promise. [1]

In this post, I’ll talk about the military draft, its effects on my life, and introduce a couple of thoughts from Jim’s very fine piece on the state of the United States military and what he describes as the “Chickenhawk” nation that “supports” our military. Since mine are mostly personal experiences, they don’t always agree with the articles, but all three of these pieces are very important reading for the entire nation.

Yes, I was drafted. My start-and-stop (and start-and-stop, and start-and-stop) military career began September 18^th, 1972, a day I still “celebrate” every year…I celebrate it as a milestone date that set the course of my life. [2]

I reported to the draft station early that September morning in downtown Houston, was sworn in and on the bus to Fort Polk, Louisiana by mid-afternoon. On the bus with me were some 40 or so other young men, some of whom would become my new “Army buddies.”

To this cohort at the reception station at Fort Polk were added other young men from Dallas, New Orleans and many other towns in between. They represented a variety of vocations including carpenters, plumbers, an accountant and even a laid-off school teacher. All of the races in America were represented, although most in my basic combat training unit were white. I was drafted off of the Houston Police Department having received a deferment to complete my probationary period to become a fully qualified radio patrolman, so even though I was only 19, I may have had a slight advantage on the organizational side.

The variety of young men with whom I “matriculated” through basic training at Fort Polk far exceeded the diversity of any group I’d met in Houston…it was a true American “melting pot.” My new buddies “came from all social and economic classes” as Joseph Epstein noted in his Atlantic article. Even though I was familiar with self-discipline and unit cohesion from my training with the Houston Police Academy (at which probably half were Vietnam War vets), many of my fellow new soldiers were learning about it for the first time.

Those early Army experiences made almost all of us teammates and taught us about collaboration and cooperation. For those that did not learn those lessons well enough, the Army had ways to deal with them…it involved washing a lot dishes, scrubbing a lot of garbage cans and a whole lot of pushups. By the end of Basic and Advanced Individual Training, we all learned about service above self and understood more about what it meant to be an American. As Joseph Epstein wrote in his “Draft” article, “I have never felt more American than when I was in the Army.” Since the Vietnam War Armistice was signed during this time, I and many of my fellow draftees went to South Korea and learned to appreciate being an American even more.

My brother Chuck and I have written about service to our nation in other posts and there are surely many ways to serve America, including outside the military and law enforcement and a host of first responder organizations. What the draft did for me, and many others, however, was to focus our appreciation for being part of something bigger than ourselves even to the point of representing our great nation overseas. I appreciated Joseph Epstein’s perspectives and his story brought back some great memories. [3] (I’ve long since put most of the “bad” memories out of mind.)

I also truly appreciate those who choose to teach our nation’s children and adults who go on past high school: theirs is indeed a great service. I also respect those who chose not to serve through government as many of these Americans strengthen our economy and our culture and perhaps most importantly, can serve by strengthening the debate about how we use our military. That’s where Jim’s fine article comes in.

What Jim’s (and Joseph Epstein’s) article did for me was to remind me how distanced too many Americans have gotten from the principles of service for something bigger than themselves. I’ll close with a couple of important thoughts from the “Tragedy of the American Military” article and ask you to assess for yourself if these observations affect how Americans have been disconnected from our destiny as a great nation.

Jim claims our nation has become a “Chickenhawk Nation” for “the derisive term for those eager to go to war, as long as someone else is going.” If this is correct, and Jim presents strong evidence to make his case, it’s no wonder the disconnect from the American Promise has grown in the last decade or so of “The Long War.” Both our military and our population at large must have at some point questioned how our political leadership makes decisions about the use of the military and what outcomes it seeks. But these questions have still not really been addressed adequately, and it has greatly cost our nation in lives and treasure. I believe the disconnect surfaces because we don’t persistently and sufficiently challenge our leadership with those important questions, and our electoral process isn’t sufficiently challenging anymore either. Correcting these shortcomings is how all of us can better serve America.

The other significant point I’ll make in this post is related: Jim calls it the “Chickenhawk Economy.” He notes how the economic environment of America since the beginning of the “Long War” has increasingly been dominated by congressional budgeting decisions on modernizing weapons platforms based on job creation in their districts or political power aggregation rather than the true needs of the military. General Scales’ article supports this narrative, as well. This also speaks to the role that Congress and the Administration have had in further disconnecting Americans from their nation and what our Founders intended, the real theme behind this entire blog. [4]

If more of us want to experience “Feeling Like an American” it’s way past time to step up and serve our nation, both in and out of uniform, by challenging the Chickenhawk spiral we’re experiencing as this new year kicks off. It’s time for all of us to feel like an American and Reconnect to the American Promise.

Originally posted on 1/12/2015.

Notes

[1] The main article by Jim and the “Draft” article by Joseph Epstein spoke most intimately to me. General Scales’ piece was mostly about the troubles the military has had finding a reliable rifle for combat and how frequently the M-16 malfunctioned. It’s easily possible to generalize that narrative to the increasingly complex weapons systems we as a nation buy, as Jim Fallows does with his recounting of the F35 story in the article, but that’s beyond this current blog post.

[2] I left active duty after 3 ½ years, used the GI Bill to get an education, went back in on a direct commission, got out again (remaining in in the Reserves), and finally “permanently” went back on active duty to complete a total of 30 years of active and reserve service. I finally retired from the Army in 2006. It’s still tough deciding what it is I want to do when I grow up!

[3] My greatest memories were in meeting my wife and having our son grow up as the child of a member of the military. The role and support of family in the military is the absolute core strength of our nation.

[4] I strongly encourage our readers to review Jim’s article and make the comparisons for themselves.

The Paradox of “Political Leadership”

by Carl W. Hunt and Walter E. Natemeyer [1]

In the American version of the English language, we often string together two words to make a more descriptive term. Some of these eventually become targets for jokes, such as “military intelligence” a term those of us who served in the military often lampooned as an oxymoron. Other examples include “sweet sorrow” and “deafening silence.” Some used to call the early versions of “Microsoft Works” an oxymoron.

The two-word term we’re going to talk about in this post shouldn’t be an oxymoron. However, in this current age of what passes for governance in the halls of our Congress and our Executive branch, the term “political leadership” is probably more of an oxymoron than we’d like to think…it’s certainly become a paradox.

Today, political leadership has become focused on using power to achieve the goals of one’s political party, not working to do what is best for our country overall. At the federal level, leadership is about getting congressional members to align with their party leaders’ demands and cast their votes accordingly – the needs of the American people have become an afterthought.

In fact, an observer might think that our elected leaders no longer have any interest in being the leaders of the American people. Sadly, it appears our political leaders forgot how to apply leadership skills to inspire and motivate the people of our nation to achieve new heights, although they like to claim they speak for the American people. Perhaps it’s time to remind our nation’s “leaders” about true leadership.

The responsibilities and functions of leaders in a purer sense of the practice of leadership are numerous. It’s worthwhile, however, to highlight two very important characteristics of leadership. If our national, state and local leaders would just practice these concepts even a little more, the citizens of our nation could become more cohesive and once again start Reconnecting to the American Promise.

We want to focus on two leadership characteristics in this post: Creating a Shared Vision; and Creating the Environment for Achieving Common Agreement. These leadership principles are fundamental responsibilities for leaders of any type, whether in government, industry or academia. This is particularly true for the leaders of our nation today as we face increasing competition and threats from other nations and adversaries which would see the United States weaken or fall.

Our founding fathers recognized that open, honest debate and a willingness to cooperate were essential ingredients for democracy. Yet today we seem mired in political win-lose battles where our citizens are the big losers. Since when was American governance built upon “winner-take-all?” What can we do to break out of this destructive game? [2]

Let’s start with the idea of Creating a Shared Vision in America.

The first thing leaders can do to create shared vision is to break away from the traditional win-lose philosophy in politics today and start focusing on creating win-win scenarios based on collaboration, cooperation and yes, compromise. Beginning to think about win-win situations works great when leaders can create a sense of shared vision built on freedom and opportunity, backed by a framework for security and prosperity. The Framers turned out to be quite good at this as they created a foundational document of such a shared vision. This shared vision launched what became our United States of America.

It surely wasn’t easy, and it required a number of years before the Constitution was ratified by all the states. The Framers’ efforts eventually delivered a vision that was transparent and forward-looking, shared among almost everyone in the nation (even today). It also sought win-win situations for the most part that did not exist anywhere else in the world at the time. [3]

Next, Let’s Create an Environment for Achieving Common Agreement Across America.

The Constitution and the Convention in which it was developed also Created an Environment for Achieving Common Agreement. The Framers did this by moving from Win-Lose to Win-Win, applying the essence of an outline Walt has developed over his 40+ years of teaching leadership and management at all levels of government and business.

Walt’s list of steps for “Moving from Win-Lose to Win-Win” provides a framework for immediate application in all levels of our government as we seek to move towards Reconnecting to the American Promise. His steps include the following, and could (and should) be initiated by either political party towards the other:

• Take initiative to start progress toward cooperation
• Increase/improve communication
• Listen/strive to understand one another’s point of view
• Build trust by keeping trust
• Admit your mistakes
• Identify “common” goals and work together toward them
• Collaborate on behalf of the nation
• Be willing to compromise/take reasonable risks together
• Stay rational/avoid being emotional
• Never throw the first stone and resist the urge to retaliate
• Reiterate advantages of cooperation and dangers of excess competition
• Recognize/reward cooperative effort
• Remember: two winners are better than one

Leadership’s greatest challenge is in achieving success through marshaling the human resources they have on their teams. America elects its own leadership team to marshal those resources and to demonstrate effective leadership on behalf of the electorate. Congress and the Administration seem to have forgotten that one simple but important concept; and so leadership on behalf of our people has suffered.

“Political leadership” may have become an oxymoron but the representatives we elect to lead America can break out of that mold starting today and begin to be real leaders once again. We think it will be amazing what they can accomplish once they stop trying to be an American Paradox.

Originally posted on 12/11/2014.

NOTES:

[1]  Dr. Walter E. Natemeyer is the CEO of North American Training and Development, Inc., Houston, TX. He taught at the university graduate level for over ten years before devoting full-time effort to teaching basic and advanced leadership skills in business and government sectors, including teaching at the Johnson Space Center in Houston for over 40 years. Dr. Natemeyer is a leading authority on “Situational Leadership,” employee motivation, strategic planning and team building. He has authored numerous books, articles, and training instruments on these and other management topics.

[2]  We articulated several more of these important leadership qualities and potential outcomes of good leadership in The Principles of RAP, which have accompanied this website since its foundation in February, 2014.

[3]  As we’ve mentioned elsewhere, the Constitution did not resolve every issue of freedom in the late 18^th Century, but we must hope that America is making progress on that front as our history unfolds. Additionally, we have chosen not to address the recent US Senate report on US intelligence activities (released on 12/9/2014) as it is still too early to discuss its relationship to Reconnecting to the American Promise.

Reclaiming Independence through Independents

Or: We’re Sick and Tired of Common Sense Ideas tossed off as “non-starters!”

October 17, 2014 could have been a bit of a watershed for readers of the Washington Post. The Post published an interesting convergence of ideas in what otherwise might have been viewed as three diverse columns by Michael Gerson, Catherine Rampell and Fareed Zakaria:

“Ebola challenges America’s ability to adapt”, by Michael Gerson, typically a conservative perspective. [1]

“Is sex only for rich people?” by Catherine Rampell, typically a Millennial (and often progressive) perspective. [2]

“Obama needs to dial back his Syria strategy” by Fareed Zakeria, typically a global and politically moderate to liberal perspective. [3]

These three seemingly disparate pieces are worth reading together, with an eye towards synthesis and integration, terms we rarely hear in our politics anymore. We won’t describe the contents of the columns, other than to say even though each of these authors comes from different points on the political spectrum, their arguments are persuasive and reasonable (certainly in the spirit of Public Reason we discussed last time).

Our “watershed moment” occurred as we discussed the futility of centrist politicians presenting reasonable and common sense options given the lack of “public reason” in our current political system. We thought about how we can and must do better in the exchange of ideas in this nation…that’s the power of public reason.

These three excellent columns, and the fact that they are practically useless within the context of the train wreck that now passes for American public policy, should cast a spotlight on the need for a way around the polarizing Democratic and Republican Parties. The way our two parties “work” together today is placing our American Experiment at grave risk.

With a little intellectual curiosity and imagination, taken together, these three Post columns suggest how to bring about meaningful and effective change and get America back on track, relying on a handful of states to elect Independent and Centrist candidates.

The November, 2014 election offers the seeds of a “work around” to the current mess. The candidates we mention here may not be optimal…they rarely are. Many might even say they are flawed by ambition or wrong-headedness. Admittedly, we don’t know because we only distinguish them by what we can read in the magazines and papers…these candidates aren’t on the ballots of our home states. But these candidates do potentially represent our future. For this, we urge objectivity and “public reason” to the voters who can elect these candidates.

We strongly recommend the voters of Kansas, South Dakota and Georgia (and maybe even Kentucky) consider voting for the candidates who actually appear to offer an independent streak. Greg Orman in Kansas and Larry Pressler in South Dakota are officially on the ballot as Independents. Imagine how powerful it could be for our Senate for these gentlemen to caucus with the other two Independents in the Senate – to be a strong voice for a Center of America which cares less about politics and more about our nation. Those four Senate voices and votes could be huge.

For example, consider how amazing it would be to hear that these four Independents refused to vote for the present leadership of the Senate—Republican or Democratic. This could set the stage for the beginning of a change our nation so desperately needs.

Rick Weiland is the Democrat in the South Dakota race. He may also be a good change as it appears he may have an independent streak, as well. In a sense, he is appealing since the national Democratic Party has shunned him for not being Harry Reid’s pick. However, we find it hard to not encourage a vote for a viable Independent whenever it is an option given the urgency of our current state of affairs.

We also include Georgia and Kentucky because we believe Michelle Nunn, even though she is running as a Democrat, to be very centrist. And, we feel we have to consider Kentucky also. Allison Grimes’ election would displace one of the current polarizing leaders of the Senate and send a message that the status quo is no longer acceptable. In a world of Independent thinking, we’d like to see both Nunn and Grimes say that they are disinclined to support present leadership of the Senate, as well. That would be courageous and independent…and maybe even what voters really want to hear.

We’ll also note that we have a lot of respect for Lamar Alexander and Susan Collins, Republicans from Tennessee and Maine for their centrist approach, but unfortunately they would almost certainly vote for the would-be Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell.

These hopefully independent thinkers and would-be legislators who are unfortunately affiliated with one of the two currently dominant parties could make a difference if they only showed more concern for America than their party. We believe Nunn and Grimes are more apt to do that compared to their highly partisan opponents.

But, even four Independents would make a difference if they can somehow remain as independent and strong as the current two have. Four Independents might also attract some of the independent nature of those in the major parties who decide America comes first!

In a more “independent world,” we would love to see Nunn, Grimes and even some of the current Republican candidates, running and legislating as Independents. In reality, we understand that it’s almost impossible to win as an Independent. After all, we see the national Republican machine rushing to the aid of Pat Roberts and Mike Rounds in Kansas and South Dakota. That’s what party politics does.

We can only hope the voters of Kansas and South Dakota at a minimum will seize this opportunity to vote to secure “a way around” our present political disaster. We so desperately need these voters to exert some independent influence in the Senate and in their home states and reinvigorate the flow of good ideas and solutions for our nation.

Yes, we are so tired of common sense approaches being non-starters. Four Independents who believe in the original Independence of our nation and our politics could make a real difference for America!

Originally posted by Carl and Chuck Hunt, 10/19/2014.

[1] The Gerson piece is focused on learning lessons at the federal level, on both sides of the aisle.

[2] The Rampell piece is focused on leveling the playing field about sex education across all parts of our population, taking the politics out of such an important and pervasive topic.

[3] The Zakaria piece is focused on getting strategy and rhetoric aligned and reducing the political influence on another tricky Mid-East situation.

The American Promise and “World Order”

by Carl W. Hunt

This week, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reviewed another former Secretary of State’s latest book, expressing some insights common to those we publish in Reconnecting to the American Promise. Clinton published a thoughtful book review of Henry Kissinger’s book World Order, comparing the chaos of past and present world events. [1] 

This RAP post is not specifically a review of Kissinger’s book but more a review of Clinton’s review. While her appraisal of Kissinger’s book is enlightening, so are Clinton’s thoughts about how the America of today must meet our own obligations to our people while continuing to inspire a world in which enlightened leadership is so desperately needed. [2]

The contrasting and complementary reflections of a Secretary who served a Republican administration during the more global Cold War and a Secretary who served a Democratic administration during several regional hot wars are interesting. According to Clinton’s review, there are actually more complementary thoughts than contrasts. And, there are significant agreements between their perspectives that are worth noting in light of the theme of RAP.

Perhaps paradoxically, RAP has not sought to discuss a great deal about world events, preferring to address issues related to helping America focus more on equal access to opportunity and the political environment that we need to bring about that focus. That, along with restoring the voice of the American Center, comprises the key principals of RAP. It was gratifying to see that Hillary Clinton’s review emphasized that as well: “Sustaining America’s leadership in the world depends on renewing the American dream for all our people,” she wrote in her Washington Post book review this week.

We’ve created a distinction between the American Promise and the “American Dream” in this blog, primarily to emphasize the leadership responsibilities of our elected officials to both create and enforce access to opportunity. In other posts, we’ve commented on the failures of our politicians in that area, so no need to dwell further there.

The main point here and in Clinton’s review is that ensuring opportunity for Americans is central to our nation’s ability to inspire, lead and even motivate other nations in the world to embrace what both she and Kissinger called a “bipartisan commitment to protecting and expanding a community of nations devoted to freedom, market economies and cooperation” that worked successfully during the Cold War.

Thanks in large part to an America that has politically curtailed the concept of domestic cooperation in the last few years, it’s hard to know if we still actually maintain that kind of globally-focused bipartisan commitment Clinton discusses. After all, bipartisanship is a word rarely used to describe American political leadership any longer. In fact, it would appear we’ve forgotten as a nation not only our responsibilities globally but also nationally in terms of bipartisanship and cooperation in an increasingly chaotic world as described by both Clinton and Kissinger.

This is the sad point that we’ve not addressed in RAP: the danger in forgetting these responsibilities to act in a bipartisan way is not just to America (and its failure to fulfill the American Promise of access to opportunity), but it’s also to the rest of the world. The dangers we create in pulling away from the responsibilities we’ve met in past times of global chaos affect the world in significantly different ways today. Kissinger and Clinton both point this out with their insights about globally distributed social media and diverse and diffused political perspectives.

However, when it comes to ultimately recognizing and discharging global responsibilities, America in the past has indeed been the leader. There is just no other nation in the history of our world that can meet these responsibilities – as Clinton and Kissinger both point out, that’s just the way it is!

In this day and age, America is the only nation that can “relate ‘power to legitimacy’” Clinton writes, quoting Kissinger’s book. That’s an enormous responsibility, burdened by the pull of the chaos that exists in this world today. But, we are the only nation that can take on this responsibility and help ensure both our own national security and freedoms and help the world see the value in emulating some of our better nature.

Most importantly, we can only live up to these responsibilities on a framework of cooperative and collaborative bipartisanship here in American government (at all levels). That has been the enduring theme of Reconnecting to the American Promise. This time, however, we need to look at this theme through the lens of America at home and abroad…we certainly will in the future.

Originally posted by Carl W. Hunt, 9/7/2014.

Notes:

[1] World Order is scheduled to be released Tuesday, 9-9-2014, by Penguin Press.

[2] In my cursory examination of various other reviews of Kissinger’s book, I found a gamut of perspectives that included critiques that Kissinger was calling for America to form a new “world order.” As a graduate of the US Defense Department’s National War College in 2003, and recalling the readings of Kissinger at the time, I don’t think that’s what he’s saying…I’ll have to read the book to be certain, of course. But, by my review of Clinton’s piece in the Washington Post and a look at other online reviews, I think what Kissinger is pointing out is that a new “world order” is taking place whether America wants to be a part of it or not and that if we don’t figure out how to play a distinctly American role, as described by Clinton, this new “world order” will leave America increasingly irrelevant. In my view, failure to engage in any opportunity to shape an equitably beneficial “world order” should not be acceptable to any American.

* Image of World Order, courtesy of multiple book review sites, including Amazon.com, Google Books and Publishers Weekly.com.