GREAT ELECTION – LOVE & WILL IN A CLIMATE OF NOW – AN EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 9, 2008
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.”
Shakespeare
“Love really has nothing to do with wisdom or experience or logic. It is the prevailing breeze in the land of youth.”
Bruno Lessing, Nineteenth century American journalist
“The will of man is by his reason swayed.”
Shakespeare
“Prescribe no positive laws to the will; for you may be forced tomorrow to drink the same water you despised today.”
Thomas Fuller, Seventeenth century English clergyman
A WRITER WRITES:
Hello Jim,
You are a lightning rod. It's odd that bolts resulting from political discourse hold so much more voltage than those that challenge indictments of leadership in business.
Not to put words in your mouth, if asked to summarize your view, it seems to me poor leadership in business is a combination of manipulation from the top and the willingness of the worker to be manipulated.
In business, whether I have accurately summarized it or not, can be read impersonal. Rationalized away with a "that's not me" or "the leaders in my company are not like that," we convince ourselves that the environment in which we have chosen to maximize our potential is not the toxic environment described by scribes and philosophers. It is a different company and a different person who chooses to stay or ascribe to the leaderless environment.
Oddly, politics can be much more personal than work.
When in an unhealthy situation, from which one cannot leave, an easy defense is to become like an automaton, an emotionless, mechanical contributor void of drive, creativity and passion.
This is a contrived state of choice we opt to not exercise. Politics, on the other hand, is where we live. Because it takes place in the arena of our lives and impacts not only me but also my family (who I love) and neighbors (some of whom I love). We want our intensely personal choices from which we can't run to be reinforced.
When confronted with evidence to the contrary, we are shaken deeply - even down to our core values. Of course, one's core values can't be wrong. But, there might not be a rational way to refute the evidence. There are two choices left - both irrational, but self-preserving: Lash out at the source or ignore the source.
I don't always agree with everything you write. My education comes in the exploration of why. Why do I disagree? Why did you write that? How is this consistent with what you have written in the past?
Years ago you wrote a piece in support of President Bush. It set me off and I recall responding to it, probably in a disrespectful manner.
In retrospect, it contributed to my personal development. I learned that valuing opposing points of view is not accepting them.
If I had succumbed to an initial knee-jerk desire to stop reading your emails only I would lose shutting out a bright light that has helped illuminate my way through life.
Peace and wonder,
Michael
DR. FISHER RESPONDS
Michael,
Thanks for your perceptive and honest discussion. If in reading me, you introduce yourself to yourself in a new way, I have succeeded. I am an expert in nothing but curious about everything that touches my fancy.
My intention is not to proselytize but to provoke, to energize the reader to rethink, as you have done, that which imprisons us in the conventions of our mind, conventions often foisted upon us by our tradition with practices that often prove unreliable when dealing with the changing reality that confronts us. Theoreticians and media moguls, politicians and preachers know this and exploit it to advantage. They feed into the womb of our minds and corporate speak comes out of our mouths an echo of their will. As so it has been as long as man has been self-estranged.
With regard to president George W. Bush, you must remember I have been a lifelong Republican as well as a lifelong Irish Roman Catholic. I bought into ideas in my youth and put off thinking much about them. Age, time, experience and study find me no longer an ideologue in either instance, while recognizing we must have paradigms in order to have paradigm shifts.
So many things have impacted society in my lifetime. We quickly think of technology, but technology reinforces or improves essentially what already exists: information, transportation, socialization, communication, war, and religion. Technology is innovative rather than creative.
Science, on the other hand, is creative, pondering first principles and the mysteries of matter and the universe, developing theories and laws, which in one sense push back ignorance, but in another reinforce ambivalence about God, death, eternity, man's place in the cosmos, and how to harness science for the good of man. Einstein worried about the consequences of proving E = mc2, leading to the splitting of the atom and the Nuclear Age.
Technologists have used the laws of science to create weaponry that could introduce us to our last days which was the cry echoing throughout the Middle East 2,000 years ago.
There is one aspect of humanity where there has been no improvement. The most powerful weapon of society 2,000 years ago is equally powerful today. That weapon is love: love of life, love of our mates and siblings, love of our children, love of each other, love of our planet and all its beauty and mystery, love of God, whatever God may mean to us. The importance of love is that it emanates from within but is replenished by giving. The more love we give the more love we receive.
My wonder has always been why man with his extreme gifts of conscious intellect and cognitive intelligence cannot match the love of a child with Down's Syndrome.
Why does acuity so often corrupt rather than bless? Was it much different in the time of Jesus? I suspect not. I suspect the best educated then wouldn’t want to be seen by the dregs of society, much less be their constant companions. Yet the man of Nazareth surrounded himself with twelve such men.
I am a peripatetic reader, not an academic nor a scholar, not a theologian or historian, but a wanderer through the mind field of ideas.
Most recently I have been reading scores of books on early Christianity, Jesus the Son of Man, on the gospels of Mathew, Mark, Luke, John, Thomas, Peter, Paul and Mary.
Diligent scholars have prepared all these works mainly reading in and then translating them from the original Greek. I am now acquainted, for example, with Gnosticism and that particular heretic fringe. Moreover, once embarrassed by the Spanish Inquisition of Roman Catholicism, and well schooled in the martyrdom of early Christians, I was not aware of the murderous brutality of these early Christians towards nonbelievers. I've also reread Thomas Aquinas and Augustine, among others, and see them also in a new light.
What is apparent in such reading is the knowledge these men were creatures of their times, brilliant as they might be, but otherwise differing little with us in ours.
Take the gospels. Much if not most of what has survived was made up or improvised as it passed on generation after generation. Not a single original manuscript is extant. Add to this each page had to be recopied by hand of a text which was likely a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. Additionally, the copiers in the process often couldn't read, or the copiers who could would slant the story in favor of their historic icon.
I'm writing an historical novel of my time in South Africa forty years ago, and I know it is romanticized and flavored with the mind of the writer forty years older. That is the case of the writings of early Christianity with those early text not written until long after the death of Jesus, the earliest being forty years after his death and that by St. Mark.
Take away all the miracles, the virgin birth, the resurrection and you have a monumental love story of a man speaking simply, poetically and dramatically of the meaning of love.
I've asked myself, why are we so preoccupied with the historical Jesus and so little concerned with “the so what of Jesus,” which was love. The answer comes back simply.
Corrupt and loveless as it was 2,000 years ago, when Jesus talked of the last days, the corruption and amorality of today with all its technology and literacy, with all its erudition of man’s place in an expanding universe, “the why” still remains more important than “the what” with the last days still in question should love not survive.
What I find remarkable is that Jesus, and others like him, stepped into that loveless void so long ago, and personified love and understanding, whereas today there seems little love or understanding of the plight of modern man. Have we learned nothing from Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and Iraq not to mention earlier wars? Might not only fails to make right, but might spawns new hate and resolve.
I see little love or understanding in the Christian faith, little love or understanding in television evangelism, little love or understanding from the Papacy of Rome, little love or understanding of those who govern in Africa, Asia, Europe and dare I say it, the Americas, including these United States. Love has been supplanted by power.
Jesus was brought down not because he loved but because he was a threat to power. As the saying goes, the more things change the more they remain the same. Power is still the primary appetite of man. But power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Conversely, love is the antidote to power as it was in the beginning now and ever shall be.
It is almost inconceivable to understand that the followers of Jesus were illiterate neither being able to read nor write, including Peter. Only Paul, who came along later, was educated and comfortable in Greek, the language of progressive communication of the day. So, what is my point?
The Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran three-quarters of a century ago wrote of love in his book "The Prophet" in connection with Jesus as the embodiment of love.
If not familiar with Gibran, he is responsible for the quote that John F. Kennedy's speechwriters lifted from him, spoken to his Lebanese countrymen nearly a half century before Kennedy. The quote?
"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."
I knew it was his words as soon as Kennedy spoke them, but of course that was never publicized. Most people don't read Lebanese writers, but speechwriters do.
There is a part of me that now appreciates Adam Smith's laissez-faire "invisible hand ruling the marketplace" is not sufficient. It promotes power not love.
For a long time, I believed that my progress from so little was of my own doing, not realizing how much help I got along the way because of the way I looked, thought, and behaved. I had seen people more able than myself literally perish because they lacked the specific attributes in demand. Either they were of the wrong color, wrong sex, wrong stature, wrong religion, wrong ethnicity, wrong orientation, wrong motivation, or just plain wrong as perceived by others. Neither noninterference nor incentives were enough to get them up and about. They needed a helping hand.
I have come to realize governance has a role that the power of the marketplace will not or cannot fulfill. I have also learned that while the marketplace describes itself in terms of capital or money, the marketplace is all about power.
It is naive to think of the marketplace in any other terms, although my critics choose to see the marketplace designed to optimize opportunity for everyone including the disadvantaged. Horsehockey!
The marketplace is all about power and the few. When it is all about power, there is little room for love. Love is considered weakness, not strength. The rationale: “People will take advantage if you don’t put a little fear in them.” Most philanthropists while creating their wealth were great practitioners of this fear. Read a biography of any “great man,” not an autobiography or one written by a lapdog publicist. Philanthropy is easy when you have power. It is real when you have no power but great love.
I have seen -- and the current financial meltdown confirms -- people need regulation, intervention and governance to a certain degree, as they are not ready, not able or not conditioned to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. The original welfare state was not designed to uplift but to keep people in place. Lobbyists for unions didn’t want people learning a trade or glutting the market with skilled workers. It wanted to protect its own from competition, and it did.
Dignity is only realized with work. Work is love made visible. Handouts are a form of imprisonment. Those forced to take them know this only too well. When workers cannot compete, it is society's responsibility to provide them with the skills so that they can. It is not welfare. It is a form of collective love.
Not until I reached university did I encounter many African Americans, and then I was lucky to know those in science and engineering who understood the role and responsibility they had. I tutored black athletes as well. They saw university as mainly an opportunity to extend their athletic careers; professional football and basketball at the time were of only marginal significance. They were in it for the joy of the sport and weren't looking beyond. There were exceptions but that was the rule. Born too early to benefit from the lucrative payoffs in professional sport today, I've wondered how they have fared.
Bush's "compassionate conservatism" caught me in its web because I thought he was going to do some things that would fill the gaps I’ve described here. I still think he is a loving man who was ill advised and got caught in the web of these Neo Conservative (neocon) powerbrokers. I saw potential in "no child left behind," but was disappointed when Bush’s second term started with a drive for the privatization of Social Security.
Imagine the unintended consequences that might have caused had a fraction of laissez-faire policy become law. Consider where that would put many today in the present economic climate. The market was high (2004), then, and we were still in that optimistic Nirvana of "up, up and away" like Nietzsche's Superman. Time has corrected that hubris and euphoria.
The American people are wise as a people and they have spoken. Voters today are not doctrinaire as Liberals or Conservatives, but pragmatists between the two. I hope president Barak Obama heeds their message. We shall see.
Be always well,
Jim
Sunday, November 09, 2008
Saturday, November 08, 2008
ANGER & FRUSTRATION TO "GREAT ELECTION & STAYING POSITIVE" EXPRESSED & EXPLAINED
ANGER & FRUSTRATION TO “GREAT ELECTION & STAYING POSITIVE” EXPRESSED & EXPLAINED
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 8, 2008
“Anger begins in folly and ends in repentance.”
Pythagoras (582 – 500 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher and named for the “Pythagorean Theorem” in Geometry
I share this with you only because it illustrates the fever in this quadrennial madness, which always occurs every four years but it seems even more intense this year (see below under: PLEASE NOTE).
Dr. Donald Farr is one of the good guys, one of the selfless people who has taken on the load of creating a memory list of some 400 e-mailers of mainly former classmates and fellow town's people who grew up with him some fifty or so years ago in a place called Clinton, Iowa.
These people are scattered about the nation, if not the globe, and many have done well, but it would appear many have never loosen the hold of the place of their birth on their minds, beliefs or values. Some might think this is good; others might wonder why; and still others couldn't care less one way or the other.
Don has distinguished himself as a NASA scientist first studying science and engineering and then going on to take a doctorate in psychology. His work at NASA was primarily in ergonomics. He is now an international coach, counselor and advisor to individuals and corporations alike hardly slowing down at all.
We have never met but grew up in the same town at opposite ends of the community and went to different high schools, at the same time, he at Lyons High in the North end, and me at Clinton High in the South end. We both came from working class families as well.
One thing Clinton prided itself in those mid-twentieth century days was the quality of its schools.
I don't know if this was true of Don, but I sense that it was, as I took four years of English, two years of Latin, four years of science (including a year each of biology, physics, and chemistry), four years of math (including solid geometry, college algebra and introduction to calculus), and four years of history and social science. It was called "college preparatory," but even in my much larger school there were only a little over a dozen classmates in most of my classes.
I don't believe Don was an athlete but I believe he was active in band and orchestra and other extra curricular activities such as student government. I played four years of football, basketball, track and baseball during my high school years and was also active in student government and sports reporter for the school newspaper.
I tell you this for reason. In all that time, I never had a single student of color in any of my classes and I doubt if Don did as well. In athletics, I only had the opportunity to play one season in all those sports with an African American, and that was in my junior year in football.
Growing up in northeastern Iowa in a town of some 33,000 with less than 300 African Americans in the community, I never saw any blacks in department stores, at the movies, at the municipal pool, or in the factory l worked in during my summer vacations while in college. Looking back now, I realize I lived in the far north but in an essentially segregated town.
My family was poor, my da a brakeman on the railroad, very Catholic and very Irish. You would have thought we lived in Ireland. My da would put down anyone that said anything against Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, but he never went to church. My mother was devout, and remained so until her dying day.
My parents were staunch Democrats with pictures on the wall of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII. They could never understand how I drifted away towards conservatism and the Republican Party, which I did once I was in college, and continued so much of my working life until I worked abroad.
In a strange way, working around the world, retiring young, then going back to school to continue my education, then working abroad again, returning to teach and consult some, write and read tons, I came to look at the world differently.
I looked at it less through the lens of ideology, nationalism and religion and more through the lens of me, a single soul, in a vast sea of humanity in which I lived a privileged existence while most of the world didn't.
I encountered suffering, deprivation, humiliation, exclusion and yes, exploitation at every turn in the name of capitalism and progress, idealism and Catholicism, Americanism and greed.
A friend some fifty years ago said I was an angry young man, a psychiatrist more recently told me that my prime motivation was anger. They have been right when they said it but I think they are both wrong now. I think my lens has widened beyond my naked self. I find myself bleeding real tears when I see what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur, feeling helpless, ashamed and self-conscious.
If anyone were to look at the body of my writing, it is to widen the lens of ordinary souls such as myself and, yes, to energize those that read me to feel the same unnerving sense of guilt and waste and preoccupation.
It is my sense that we are in as unchartered territory today as was the case when George Washington assumed the presidency.
If you read history, you know he wasn't too bright, very well educated, and was known something of a boob.
Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, James Monroe and James Madison were far more gifted in matters of mind. But this is where he exceeded them: he had the wisdom to choose them for his cabinet, and he was a great delegator, never a micromanager.
What he had superior to all of them was a healthy ego and fine sensitivity, and we as a nation have profited since in LEADERSHIP written large.
He knew what he was and what he wasn't.
He knew he was the embodiment of the American Revolution although certainly not its greatest general.
He knew he had presence in being tall, stately and magnificent in a uniform. In fact, he was the Kevin Cline of his day being a great designer of clothes, especially uniforms.
He knew that what he did or didn't do was precedent setting.
He was the first to say, "So help me God" when he took the oath of office in front of the Federal Building in New York City on April 30, 1789. Forty-two presidents since have said the same words.
He knew he was athletic -- Jefferson called him the greatest horseman of his age -- handsome and a cutting figure in uniform. Consequently, he never allowed any of his staff or the public to see him less attired.
He had his quirks. For example, he never shook anyone's hand because he thought that below the dignity of the office. Yet, he didn't want to be called "your majesty," but preferred simply, "Mr. President."
He could have been president for life, but left office after his second four-year term. In both elections, he won 100 percent of the electoral votes, which has never been repeated.
We put so much stock in intelligence in leadership meaning, of course, cognitive intelligence, but Washington had emotional intelligence, a sense of time, place and space, along with absolute dignity, integrity and sincerity. He never dropped his mask.
Never in his life did he slip from that mantle or from the total awareness of his symbolic role in the survival of this young Republic.
Now, why have I wondered from president-elect Barak Obama to George Washington?
It is because I think where he is and what he is in this time, place and space is equally as treacherous as it was when Washington assumed the presidency.
Washington confessed when he assumed office in 1789 that he felt as if he were going to his executioner because there was no way he could possibly meet or live up to the expectations of the people. I sense that president-elect Obama has a similar trepidation.
Be always well,
Jim
_________________________
PLEASE NOTE:
This is why I asked to have my name removed from the Don Farr "memories list."
Sorry Paul, I did wish to let everyone know how some feel. Received MANY like yours and I am finished with anything POLITICAL...
I promise!
=;-Don
Paul wrote:
Please, Don, I don't like to use this kind of language, but if this is the kind of bullshit you intend to spread around using Memories Net, please remove my name from your list. I do not want to get my delete key dirty using it on stuff like this.
I'm serious. Either this crap gets stopped or take my name off your list.
PCR-LHS'51
Don,
Please remove me from the Memories List. I know you try to have balance but, hey, life is life and people are people. I am not an ideologue as you know, and obviously have little in common with the majority if not all on your list. I wish you well, and I think you do get work for people of a certain persuasion. I will still send stuff to you for your own curiosity if you like, but I'll remove your name as well if you like.
Always be well,
Jim
-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Subj: Re: Fwd: [The Peripatetic Philosopher] GREAT ELECTION -- STAYING POSITIVE -- AN E...
Date: 11/7/2008 6:37:02 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: dfarr@earthlink.net
Received from Internet: click here for more information
Sorry Paul, I did wish to let everyone know how some feel. Received MANY like yours and I am finished with anything POLITICAL...
I promise!
=;-Don
Paul Redin wrote:
Please, Don, I don't like to use this kind of language, but if this is the kind of bullshit you intend to spread around using Memories Net, please remove my name from your list. I do not want to get my delete key dirty using it on stuff like this.
I'm serious. Either this crap gets stopped or take my name off your list.
PCR-LHS'51
_______________
Previous Reference: “GREAT ELECTION -- STAYING POSITIVE -- AN EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 7, 2008
”Positive views of truth and duty are those that impress the mind and lead to action; negation dwells mostly in cavil and denial.”
Richard Whately (1787 -- 1863), Archbishop of Dublin
A WRITER WRITES:
Thanks, Jim, for sharing your thoughts and those of your friends regarding this election, etc.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 8, 2008
“Anger begins in folly and ends in repentance.”
Pythagoras (582 – 500 B.C.E.), Greek philosopher and named for the “Pythagorean Theorem” in Geometry
I share this with you only because it illustrates the fever in this quadrennial madness, which always occurs every four years but it seems even more intense this year (see below under: PLEASE NOTE).
Dr. Donald Farr is one of the good guys, one of the selfless people who has taken on the load of creating a memory list of some 400 e-mailers of mainly former classmates and fellow town's people who grew up with him some fifty or so years ago in a place called Clinton, Iowa.
These people are scattered about the nation, if not the globe, and many have done well, but it would appear many have never loosen the hold of the place of their birth on their minds, beliefs or values. Some might think this is good; others might wonder why; and still others couldn't care less one way or the other.
Don has distinguished himself as a NASA scientist first studying science and engineering and then going on to take a doctorate in psychology. His work at NASA was primarily in ergonomics. He is now an international coach, counselor and advisor to individuals and corporations alike hardly slowing down at all.
We have never met but grew up in the same town at opposite ends of the community and went to different high schools, at the same time, he at Lyons High in the North end, and me at Clinton High in the South end. We both came from working class families as well.
One thing Clinton prided itself in those mid-twentieth century days was the quality of its schools.
I don't know if this was true of Don, but I sense that it was, as I took four years of English, two years of Latin, four years of science (including a year each of biology, physics, and chemistry), four years of math (including solid geometry, college algebra and introduction to calculus), and four years of history and social science. It was called "college preparatory," but even in my much larger school there were only a little over a dozen classmates in most of my classes.
I don't believe Don was an athlete but I believe he was active in band and orchestra and other extra curricular activities such as student government. I played four years of football, basketball, track and baseball during my high school years and was also active in student government and sports reporter for the school newspaper.
I tell you this for reason. In all that time, I never had a single student of color in any of my classes and I doubt if Don did as well. In athletics, I only had the opportunity to play one season in all those sports with an African American, and that was in my junior year in football.
Growing up in northeastern Iowa in a town of some 33,000 with less than 300 African Americans in the community, I never saw any blacks in department stores, at the movies, at the municipal pool, or in the factory l worked in during my summer vacations while in college. Looking back now, I realize I lived in the far north but in an essentially segregated town.
My family was poor, my da a brakeman on the railroad, very Catholic and very Irish. You would have thought we lived in Ireland. My da would put down anyone that said anything against Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, but he never went to church. My mother was devout, and remained so until her dying day.
My parents were staunch Democrats with pictures on the wall of president Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII. They could never understand how I drifted away towards conservatism and the Republican Party, which I did once I was in college, and continued so much of my working life until I worked abroad.
In a strange way, working around the world, retiring young, then going back to school to continue my education, then working abroad again, returning to teach and consult some, write and read tons, I came to look at the world differently.
I looked at it less through the lens of ideology, nationalism and religion and more through the lens of me, a single soul, in a vast sea of humanity in which I lived a privileged existence while most of the world didn't.
I encountered suffering, deprivation, humiliation, exclusion and yes, exploitation at every turn in the name of capitalism and progress, idealism and Catholicism, Americanism and greed.
A friend some fifty years ago said I was an angry young man, a psychiatrist more recently told me that my prime motivation was anger. They have been right when they said it but I think they are both wrong now. I think my lens has widened beyond my naked self. I find myself bleeding real tears when I see what is going on in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Darfur, feeling helpless, ashamed and self-conscious.
If anyone were to look at the body of my writing, it is to widen the lens of ordinary souls such as myself and, yes, to energize those that read me to feel the same unnerving sense of guilt and waste and preoccupation.
It is my sense that we are in as unchartered territory today as was the case when George Washington assumed the presidency.
If you read history, you know he wasn't too bright, very well educated, and was known something of a boob.
Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, James Monroe and James Madison were far more gifted in matters of mind. But this is where he exceeded them: he had the wisdom to choose them for his cabinet, and he was a great delegator, never a micromanager.
What he had superior to all of them was a healthy ego and fine sensitivity, and we as a nation have profited since in LEADERSHIP written large.
He knew what he was and what he wasn't.
He knew he was the embodiment of the American Revolution although certainly not its greatest general.
He knew he had presence in being tall, stately and magnificent in a uniform. In fact, he was the Kevin Cline of his day being a great designer of clothes, especially uniforms.
He knew that what he did or didn't do was precedent setting.
He was the first to say, "So help me God" when he took the oath of office in front of the Federal Building in New York City on April 30, 1789. Forty-two presidents since have said the same words.
He knew he was athletic -- Jefferson called him the greatest horseman of his age -- handsome and a cutting figure in uniform. Consequently, he never allowed any of his staff or the public to see him less attired.
He had his quirks. For example, he never shook anyone's hand because he thought that below the dignity of the office. Yet, he didn't want to be called "your majesty," but preferred simply, "Mr. President."
He could have been president for life, but left office after his second four-year term. In both elections, he won 100 percent of the electoral votes, which has never been repeated.
We put so much stock in intelligence in leadership meaning, of course, cognitive intelligence, but Washington had emotional intelligence, a sense of time, place and space, along with absolute dignity, integrity and sincerity. He never dropped his mask.
Never in his life did he slip from that mantle or from the total awareness of his symbolic role in the survival of this young Republic.
Now, why have I wondered from president-elect Barak Obama to George Washington?
It is because I think where he is and what he is in this time, place and space is equally as treacherous as it was when Washington assumed the presidency.
Washington confessed when he assumed office in 1789 that he felt as if he were going to his executioner because there was no way he could possibly meet or live up to the expectations of the people. I sense that president-elect Obama has a similar trepidation.
Be always well,
Jim
_________________________
PLEASE NOTE:
This is why I asked to have my name removed from the Don Farr "memories list."
Sorry Paul, I did wish to let everyone know how some feel. Received MANY like yours and I am finished with anything POLITICAL...
I promise!
=;-Don
Paul wrote:
Please, Don, I don't like to use this kind of language, but if this is the kind of bullshit you intend to spread around using Memories Net, please remove my name from your list. I do not want to get my delete key dirty using it on stuff like this.
I'm serious. Either this crap gets stopped or take my name off your list.
PCR-LHS'51
Don,
Please remove me from the Memories List. I know you try to have balance but, hey, life is life and people are people. I am not an ideologue as you know, and obviously have little in common with the majority if not all on your list. I wish you well, and I think you do get work for people of a certain persuasion. I will still send stuff to you for your own curiosity if you like, but I'll remove your name as well if you like.
Always be well,
Jim
-----------------
Forwarded Message:
Subj: Re: Fwd: [The Peripatetic Philosopher] GREAT ELECTION -- STAYING POSITIVE -- AN E...
Date: 11/7/2008 6:37:02 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: dfarr@earthlink.net
Received from Internet: click here for more information
Sorry Paul, I did wish to let everyone know how some feel. Received MANY like yours and I am finished with anything POLITICAL...
I promise!
=;-Don
Paul Redin wrote:
Please, Don, I don't like to use this kind of language, but if this is the kind of bullshit you intend to spread around using Memories Net, please remove my name from your list. I do not want to get my delete key dirty using it on stuff like this.
I'm serious. Either this crap gets stopped or take my name off your list.
PCR-LHS'51
_______________
Previous Reference: “GREAT ELECTION -- STAYING POSITIVE -- AN EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 7, 2008
”Positive views of truth and duty are those that impress the mind and lead to action; negation dwells mostly in cavil and denial.”
Richard Whately (1787 -- 1863), Archbishop of Dublin
A WRITER WRITES:
Thanks, Jim, for sharing your thoughts and those of your friends regarding this election, etc.
Friday, November 07, 2008
GREAT ELECTION -- STAYING POSITIVE -- AN EXCHANGE
GREAT ELECTION -- STAYING POSITIVE – AN EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 7, 2008
“Positive views of truth and duty are those that impress the mind and lead to action; negation dwells mostly in cavil and denial.”
Richard Whately (1787 – 1863), Archbishop of Dublin
A WRITER WRITES:
Thanks, Jim, for sharing your thoughts and those of your friends regarding this election, etc.
Although we are in such trouble at this time, it is a breath of fresh air to be able to read something that is not filled with hate and malice towards another human being, and filled with positive thoughts and hope during these difficult times.
A great percentage of our people are hurting and those that aren't right at this moment are filled with fear of what is to come, how much longer they will have income and a home; the older generation who are retired worried about how long their retirement checks will keep coming, etc.
We sure don't need to read things so negative and hateful from others. We all need to keep positive and know that our courage is going to help us make this right if only we will be positive and not let fear take hold.
Not sure if I have made myself clear, but just wanted you to know that your thoughts and those of your friends are a positive influence and I have felt fortunate to be included in those thoughts.
A
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Dear A,
Being positive has a certain amount of gullibility to it, and that is the danger. It happens when we believe too much in the wisdom of our ways, and the precision of our thoughts. If this were the case, we are vulnerable to the falseness of flatterers. Our worst enemy, then, especially when we are in leadership positions, is in our own self-love. I say that only as preamble to what follows.
We are, indeed, tired of the negative that seems so endemic to every presidential campaign although each time the candidates promise otherwise. Your take on fear is also true. Those knowledgeable of the workings of Wall Street and the banking industry tell us the current recession is as much a matter of fear or lack of confidence and trust as it is of the concrete indices of financial collapse.
It is at such times a leader must rise above the white noise and speak with such confidence and authority that he garners our attention, as president Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1933 when he said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The president's speech didn't stop "The Great Depression," but it got the attention of the fear mongers.
My reason for voting for Barak Obama was because of the content of his character, the breath of his intelligence, his sense of history, and his narrative appreciation of a multi-cultural world, which will now surely be tested.
The 2008 presidential election was one in which ideology took a backseat, as it did in a much earlier age, as I will now outline.
I've been sharing missives on this election only because I have a feeling this is a transformational as well as transitional period, not only because we've elected our first African American president, but because the world must come to terms with the reality that war no longer is a viable option to resolving national and international conflicts, and one set of nations cannot profit at the expense of another set. We have reached the age, literally, of a global village.
This election will not impact our generation, or even our children's generation as much as it is likely to impact that of our children's children and theirs. I say this for reason.
A similar period was called "The Age of Jackson." This commenced with the election of General Andrew Jackson as President from 1829 – 1837, and continued through ten presidents including Martin Van Buren (1837 - 1841), William Henry Harrison (1841), John Tyler (1841 - 1845), James Knox Polk (1845 - 1849), Zachary Taylor (1849 - 1850), Millard Fillmore (1850 - 1853), Franklin Pierce (1853 - 1857), James Buchanan (1857 - 1861), Abraham Lincoln (1861 - 1865) and Andrew Johnson (1865 - 1869), who was impeached for his carpetbagger policies.
President Harrison died in office getting a cold on Inauguration Day; president Taylor died during his first year in office; president Lincoln was assassinated at the beginning of his second term.
Jackson avoided the Civil War on his watch by calling vice president John Calhoun's bluff with the South's proposition of the Nullification Act -- the South didn't want to pay the taxes to its cotton that the government demanded.
Jackson was totally self-educated, tough as nails, courageous as an Indian brave, not afraid of anything or anyone, taking on the banking establishment of the East, and going directly to the people over Congress.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams found him uncouth, but this self-made man out of the hills of Tennessee created an age, and gave birth to the imperial presidency, making the executive branch the strongest of the three: executive, legislative and judicial.
President Barak Obama steps into this new void, which although different from that of the "Age of Jackson,” offers a challenge and opportunity of similar gravitas.
One thing seems certain, as it was true of Jackson's presidency, and that is president-elect Barak Obama may define more than a presidency but may also give his name to an age.
The new president must have an instinct to govern and a decisiveness that takes no prisoners but manages matters of State that involve everyone at every level and of every interest, tipping the scale to the special interest or advantage of none.
This is not "the American Century," but calls for a partner with the world-at-large because the United States of America is no longer an isolated nation between two major protective bodies of water.
I'm not suggesting that president Obama should act like Jackson did, but Jackson laid the groundwork for the presidency of Lincoln, which Andrew Johnson derailed when he was assassinated.
The Jackson Age saw the United States expand "from sea to shining sea" by the work of a much neglected president Polk who broadened and widened the boundaries of these United States, consistent with the Jackson legacy.
What will be president Obama's legacy?
My prayer is that president Obama composes a narrative and policy to heal some old wounds, and to lay the groundwork for a plan that creates not only more healing but energizes the American people to be more aware and empathetic towards the rest of the world.
Be always well, and as always, it is good to hear from you,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 7, 2008
“Positive views of truth and duty are those that impress the mind and lead to action; negation dwells mostly in cavil and denial.”
Richard Whately (1787 – 1863), Archbishop of Dublin
A WRITER WRITES:
Thanks, Jim, for sharing your thoughts and those of your friends regarding this election, etc.
Although we are in such trouble at this time, it is a breath of fresh air to be able to read something that is not filled with hate and malice towards another human being, and filled with positive thoughts and hope during these difficult times.
A great percentage of our people are hurting and those that aren't right at this moment are filled with fear of what is to come, how much longer they will have income and a home; the older generation who are retired worried about how long their retirement checks will keep coming, etc.
We sure don't need to read things so negative and hateful from others. We all need to keep positive and know that our courage is going to help us make this right if only we will be positive and not let fear take hold.
Not sure if I have made myself clear, but just wanted you to know that your thoughts and those of your friends are a positive influence and I have felt fortunate to be included in those thoughts.
A
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Dear A,
Being positive has a certain amount of gullibility to it, and that is the danger. It happens when we believe too much in the wisdom of our ways, and the precision of our thoughts. If this were the case, we are vulnerable to the falseness of flatterers. Our worst enemy, then, especially when we are in leadership positions, is in our own self-love. I say that only as preamble to what follows.
We are, indeed, tired of the negative that seems so endemic to every presidential campaign although each time the candidates promise otherwise. Your take on fear is also true. Those knowledgeable of the workings of Wall Street and the banking industry tell us the current recession is as much a matter of fear or lack of confidence and trust as it is of the concrete indices of financial collapse.
It is at such times a leader must rise above the white noise and speak with such confidence and authority that he garners our attention, as president Franklin Delano Roosevelt did in 1933 when he said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The president's speech didn't stop "The Great Depression," but it got the attention of the fear mongers.
My reason for voting for Barak Obama was because of the content of his character, the breath of his intelligence, his sense of history, and his narrative appreciation of a multi-cultural world, which will now surely be tested.
The 2008 presidential election was one in which ideology took a backseat, as it did in a much earlier age, as I will now outline.
I've been sharing missives on this election only because I have a feeling this is a transformational as well as transitional period, not only because we've elected our first African American president, but because the world must come to terms with the reality that war no longer is a viable option to resolving national and international conflicts, and one set of nations cannot profit at the expense of another set. We have reached the age, literally, of a global village.
This election will not impact our generation, or even our children's generation as much as it is likely to impact that of our children's children and theirs. I say this for reason.
A similar period was called "The Age of Jackson." This commenced with the election of General Andrew Jackson as President from 1829 – 1837, and continued through ten presidents including Martin Van Buren (1837 - 1841), William Henry Harrison (1841), John Tyler (1841 - 1845), James Knox Polk (1845 - 1849), Zachary Taylor (1849 - 1850), Millard Fillmore (1850 - 1853), Franklin Pierce (1853 - 1857), James Buchanan (1857 - 1861), Abraham Lincoln (1861 - 1865) and Andrew Johnson (1865 - 1869), who was impeached for his carpetbagger policies.
President Harrison died in office getting a cold on Inauguration Day; president Taylor died during his first year in office; president Lincoln was assassinated at the beginning of his second term.
Jackson avoided the Civil War on his watch by calling vice president John Calhoun's bluff with the South's proposition of the Nullification Act -- the South didn't want to pay the taxes to its cotton that the government demanded.
Jackson was totally self-educated, tough as nails, courageous as an Indian brave, not afraid of anything or anyone, taking on the banking establishment of the East, and going directly to the people over Congress.
Thomas Jefferson and John Adams found him uncouth, but this self-made man out of the hills of Tennessee created an age, and gave birth to the imperial presidency, making the executive branch the strongest of the three: executive, legislative and judicial.
President Barak Obama steps into this new void, which although different from that of the "Age of Jackson,” offers a challenge and opportunity of similar gravitas.
One thing seems certain, as it was true of Jackson's presidency, and that is president-elect Barak Obama may define more than a presidency but may also give his name to an age.
The new president must have an instinct to govern and a decisiveness that takes no prisoners but manages matters of State that involve everyone at every level and of every interest, tipping the scale to the special interest or advantage of none.
This is not "the American Century," but calls for a partner with the world-at-large because the United States of America is no longer an isolated nation between two major protective bodies of water.
I'm not suggesting that president Obama should act like Jackson did, but Jackson laid the groundwork for the presidency of Lincoln, which Andrew Johnson derailed when he was assassinated.
The Jackson Age saw the United States expand "from sea to shining sea" by the work of a much neglected president Polk who broadened and widened the boundaries of these United States, consistent with the Jackson legacy.
What will be president Obama's legacy?
My prayer is that president Obama composes a narrative and policy to heal some old wounds, and to lay the groundwork for a plan that creates not only more healing but energizes the American people to be more aware and empathetic towards the rest of the world.
Be always well, and as always, it is good to hear from you,
Jim
A GREAT ELECTION -- HELP US INSPIRE --AN EXCHANGE
A GREAT ELECTION – HELP US INSPIRE – AN EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 7, 2008
“There is a deity within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated.”
Ovid (43 BCE – 18 CE)
A WRITER WRITES:
Jim,
This was a good read for me. I am sad about your Chicago friend but I’m not quite sure why. I conclude that he is out of work in his field and looking. He has experienced nastiness in his city that we abhor (I love to be in Chicago, especially the Loop; I know what you mean by feeling alive there.)
He could be black or maybe not, but he does seem to know that Obama has to be the kind of President that we must have.
I have to admit I would like revenge for all the nastiness in the campaign that was unfairly directed at him. But that would not help us. I would like to tell Joe Lieberman to get lost! But that would not help us. Is that what your friend is saying? If so, I agree with him and I believe Obama can conduct the business of our country without that kind of bias. That’s why I voted for him.
Yes, to save us! Save us from all that he can save us from! Inspire us, too. I really think he is going to call on all of us in America to take a part in the recovery of our country! How? I don’t know but he will call on us to help! (I caucused for Joe Biden in the primary and when he wasn’t viable, we had to choose another candidate then and Gene and I went to Obama rather than Hillary or Richardson or Edwards as some of our Biden people did).
C
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Thank you C for your note,
First of all, my Chicago friend is as white as I or you are, but that is not even relevant. He is a passionate man who has paid his dues, and for no apparent reason has been made redundant and now has to pick up the pieces and go forward.
Proof of his character and, yes, viability is that he didn’t get depressed, didn’t retreat into himself, but wore out shoe leather calling on neighbors and other Chicagoans to bring out the vote. Moreover, he is focused and involved “in getting his grandkids” off to school.
I shared his situation with my readers because it is easy to be involved when everything is going swimmingly fine for us, but a true test of character and will is when things are not. I admire him, respect him, and applaud him for being the person that he is.
With regard to president-elect Barak Obama, now comes the hard part. He has made many promises to Main Street, but he cannot deliver even a fraction of them unless he gets Wall Street on board, and confident that he is its president, too. That is the challenge.
Currently, Wall Street has the jitters as a drop of 1,000 points in the DOW Jones Industrials since the election indicates.
Ultimately, a president has to move to the center, which means several difficult decisions concerning the Left, while appearing to give into the Right, which are unlikely to satisfy (totally) either constituency.
And he doesn’t have much time. In a short two-years, mid-term elections will reflect how effectively he has bridged this divide. That will be when he receives a major report card measuring his efficacy.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gives president-elect good advice in a column in The Tampa Tribune today (November 7, 2008):
"To justify our confidence in you, you must show confidence in us. End the politics of fear. Treat us like adults. Help us to understand people from distant lands and cultures. Challenge us to work together. Remind us that America's finest hours have come not from dominating others but from inspiring people everywhere to see the best in themselves."
It is wonderful counsel from a sage woman. I hope our new president heeds it. I think he will,
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 7, 2008
“There is a deity within us who breathes that divine fire by which we are animated.”
Ovid (43 BCE – 18 CE)
A WRITER WRITES:
Jim,
This was a good read for me. I am sad about your Chicago friend but I’m not quite sure why. I conclude that he is out of work in his field and looking. He has experienced nastiness in his city that we abhor (I love to be in Chicago, especially the Loop; I know what you mean by feeling alive there.)
He could be black or maybe not, but he does seem to know that Obama has to be the kind of President that we must have.
I have to admit I would like revenge for all the nastiness in the campaign that was unfairly directed at him. But that would not help us. I would like to tell Joe Lieberman to get lost! But that would not help us. Is that what your friend is saying? If so, I agree with him and I believe Obama can conduct the business of our country without that kind of bias. That’s why I voted for him.
Yes, to save us! Save us from all that he can save us from! Inspire us, too. I really think he is going to call on all of us in America to take a part in the recovery of our country! How? I don’t know but he will call on us to help! (I caucused for Joe Biden in the primary and when he wasn’t viable, we had to choose another candidate then and Gene and I went to Obama rather than Hillary or Richardson or Edwards as some of our Biden people did).
C
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Thank you C for your note,
First of all, my Chicago friend is as white as I or you are, but that is not even relevant. He is a passionate man who has paid his dues, and for no apparent reason has been made redundant and now has to pick up the pieces and go forward.
Proof of his character and, yes, viability is that he didn’t get depressed, didn’t retreat into himself, but wore out shoe leather calling on neighbors and other Chicagoans to bring out the vote. Moreover, he is focused and involved “in getting his grandkids” off to school.
I shared his situation with my readers because it is easy to be involved when everything is going swimmingly fine for us, but a true test of character and will is when things are not. I admire him, respect him, and applaud him for being the person that he is.
With regard to president-elect Barak Obama, now comes the hard part. He has made many promises to Main Street, but he cannot deliver even a fraction of them unless he gets Wall Street on board, and confident that he is its president, too. That is the challenge.
Currently, Wall Street has the jitters as a drop of 1,000 points in the DOW Jones Industrials since the election indicates.
Ultimately, a president has to move to the center, which means several difficult decisions concerning the Left, while appearing to give into the Right, which are unlikely to satisfy (totally) either constituency.
And he doesn’t have much time. In a short two-years, mid-term elections will reflect how effectively he has bridged this divide. That will be when he receives a major report card measuring his efficacy.
Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gives president-elect good advice in a column in The Tampa Tribune today (November 7, 2008):
"To justify our confidence in you, you must show confidence in us. End the politics of fear. Treat us like adults. Help us to understand people from distant lands and cultures. Challenge us to work together. Remind us that America's finest hours have come not from dominating others but from inspiring people everywhere to see the best in themselves."
It is wonderful counsel from a sage woman. I hope our new president heeds it. I think he will,
Be always well,
Jim
Thursday, November 06, 2008
A GREAT ELECTION -- AN EXCHANGE WITH DR. KENNETH MURRELL
A GREAT ELECTION – AN EXCHANGE WITH DR. KENNETH MURRELL
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 6, 2008
“Unclaimed promises are like uncashed checks; they will keep us from bankruptcy, but not from want.”
Francis Ridley Havergal (1836 – 1879), English poet
“He who promises runs into debt.”
Talmud
DR. KEN MURRELL WRITES:
Jim
Let me thank you in order of your gifts to me.
First, thanks for the connection in Germany, I am only there for a few days but I will see if there is a way to connect.
Second, thanks for the wonderful response and the point I wanted to make clearer was that I do believe the individual does make an impact but if he or she is alone, or in the case of Cheney in the shadows the impact is far more destructive than developmental.
One person can do so much damage and it may take thousands of us to fix it. But then that provides a call for thousands to be of service and this next generation in many ways is understanding of this concept.
We don't want to thank Cheney but without his abuse perhaps we would not have elected an agent of change.
Third, the Arab world, yes, indeed, does have a long history and it is not the same as the world of Islam. When the two became entangled, much was lost, but of course many would also be quick to identify the positive side of this as well.
The best I have seen on the Arab view of the world is in the book by Patai "The Arab Mind.” Many years ago I would quote that chapter and verse. There are likely more up to date sources out there but this book set out the pattern of their worldview. Both within and across cultures
Fourth, and very important while many of us are basking in the glory of the election last evening, your warnings of Cheney are most impressive and critical to be sensitive to as a new ruling party is being framed.
I feared the man (Cheney) and knew that with him and Rumsfield in the same room something close to evil might be cooking.
Surprisingly, when the twin towers came down, I immediately thought of those two and was fearful of what they would do the next day.
Do you recall that I left the country for Cairo after being downsized by Rumsfield after only a few years as the international OD person at G.D. Searle? Rummy was clearly a political being and as a manager quite a disaster. He led a reorganizing effort that was done only as a political operative could.
Rumsfeld’s researchers for this major change were two young not that experienced MBA students he had met while teaching a course on strategy at Northwestern. These were two folks, one of whom had taken some of our OD Programs, but essentially had very little deep knowledge of the discipline. The other was a typical staff manager who knew how to follow orders.
Of course Rummy fired the OD VP right off and from that we all knew where we were going. At this point in time, Searle had one of the best if not the best internal OD teams in the world. Then of course all of us were gone within a year and the company was later broken up and sold to make the family and many others with ownership positions very, very wealthy.
Oh yes, and Rummy did get our mess of R&D records at Searle reviewed by the FDA and lo and behold "asparatame" was approved before even some of our own researchers were satisfied we had made the case for its safety. Limit your diet drinks. I do.
Now to repeat myself, the fifth thanks is to thank you for being exactly what your title suggests--you are a grounded philosopher who keeps a moral compass leading him into tilting at the broken windmills that many can not even see.
Keep up this work; your review of Cheney alone is worth its own blog space. I will not share this though since you like so many of us are walking some thin lines where if we go head to head too often with the ideologues and true believers we may not be around to really get close to what is really happening.
My management department here is full of good people who believe in the politics of what is good for them is good for everyone. I once was so naive when I read all of Ayn Rand and worked on the Goldwater campaign. Both of these were fun and challenging times but I was not very worldly and very, very young.
That makes the perfect condition for narcissism to bloom and in me it sure did. Now we have a culture that wants to love itself and yet also take all of its material wealth with it to the grave. Intellectualism is suspect and anyone who works for the benefit of another is suspicious. What is this culture really based on?
If you have followed any of the work of Clare Graves and his spiral dynamic model, then you know there are ways of making some sense of this lower stage of human development. We all do have a chance to change and grow up but as we can see from so many of our political leaders that is not necessarily a value to many in this culture.
That is what makes this election so important, as a nation we may be growing up just a little. And in the decision we collectively made last night there is hope we can continue to mature and actualize a value set that shows as much concern for others as it does for self.
I am now more hopeful but also very aware that we have set the seeds for our next generation needing all the help it can get and then perhaps earning the label that we have attached to our father's and mother's generation of being the GREATEST GENERATION.
We are making that an imperative and in so many of this younger generation I do see that potential. But they can’t get there without a lot of help so please don’t give up what you do so well
Ken
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Thank you first for your kind words, which are reinforcing in my somewhat solitary walk through this phase of my life.
I’ve often marveled with my Beautiful Betty why I am caught up in the contemporary madness of the times in one sense, and almost a dispassionate observer in the other.
In my long life, I’ve also marveled how little material comfort, or even money means to me, when it is the measure of nearly all things American in terms of significance.
We appreciate say, Dr. Paul Krugman, winning the Nobel Prize for Economics, as much for the $1.3 million that comes with it as to the relevance of his research. We leave it at that, saying the research must be important otherwise, why the prize, right? How many of us will attempt to understand how his research might impact world economics in the future?
We read books almost exclusively on the bestseller lists failing to realize that such a list reflects our limitations and mediocre tastes rather than challenging our cerebral attentiveness. Few stop to think that their favorite authors churn out a new bestseller or two a year with plot lines and storyboards of only marginal difference.
We want to be entertained, not challenged, to be comforted with pleasure, not reminded of our pain. Ever noticed that the themes of most popular fiction are so surreal they seem only a cut above soap operas? My wonder is why we are so preoccupied with sex for entertainment when we have so little understanding of our shared commonality or diverse differences in our genders.
We want to be taken out of ourselves, not reacquainted with ourselves. We judge neighborhoods by their exclusivity and not by their neighborliness, and yet we are moving ever closer to each other, while remaining strangers to ourselves.
This describes the landscape of your work, and what is ironic is that the behavior of Donald Rumsfeld with the two MBA graduates, and the subsequent fall out at G. D. Searle & Company was as predictable as night following day. It reflects the objectivism of Ayn Rand, the self-interest that is eclectic and visceral rather than well thought out and cerebral.
I’m sure Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney see themselves as patriots, good people, and servants at the pleasure of The Republic. They have been operatives for years in the halls of power, sitting on the shoulders of State, and directing it here and then there, as if they held remote controls in their hands.
Before I was five, I lived with my Aunt Annie and Uncle Martin Dean. They would let me color the comic strips in The Clinton Herald as I sat on the floor before their rocking chairs.
I still remember to this day coloring a particular “Brick Bradford” comic strip. My hero found his way inside the head of a mechanical monster that was wreaking havoc. Brick Bradford took over the controls of the monster’s actions, dismantling the machine so that it could no longer destroy the planet.
The metaphor of that machine has stayed with me all my life. It has taken on the character of society, a society that seems increasingly to resemble a machine on automatic pilot, or is it a machine with some shadowy despicable genius at the controls?
The shadow metaphor of Dick Cheney is mine, alone, and not the writers of the books to which I refer. It comes however from this latent memory of a little boy long ago. As events have unfolded, with decent people such as Colin Powell caught up in its web, and as my own life has unfolded, I have been made aware of how important the controller.
The damage done to our society, dissipating our great wealth in preemptive wars was done less by the president (George W. Bush) than those who took the controls from his hand. Yes, it is “W’s” presidency, but he was not equipped to manage the responsibility. He allowed himself to get caught up in the rhetoric of “compassionate conservatism” by the religious right, which is as brutal in its ascendancy to power as any of our enemies.
You may use what I have said in my missive because it comes out of the books of experts and observers who still have the freedom to research and report and publish whatever they find to be the case.
No, I am not familiar with Clare Graves or his spiral dynamic model. I find myself reading at the moment many books on early Christianity, which I might add, is every bit an OD phenomenon.
If I listed all the books I’m currently reading or have read, BB would be appalled at how little I’ve written on my novel. But the Jesus story is terribly compelling.
This is especially true when taken out of the context of God and all that, and focusing instead on the incipient nature of this religion, and how a religion of such inauspicious beginning came to such dominance.
This, alone, is as disturbing as it is striking. Dan Brown uncovered a kettle of worms with his “Da Vinci Code.” Most of what he writes cannot be confirmed, and even then remains highly speculative. The Jesus story defies human understanding, especially if you have any foundation in cosmology or quantum mechanics, or the idea of an expanding universe of billions of planets and other solar systems.
That said the Jesus story is moving as a piece of our humanity, and a great OD project.
Finally, I have great respect for you as a practicing OD professional. OD is still a young field, and not enough research is being done in it.
I did a great deal in preparation for the writing of WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, and amplified on that research in SIX SILENT KILLERS. The core of both works while remaining relevant has been neglected. Dr. Thomas Brown did all he could to bring it to people’s attention and fruition.
I think the failure can be however put to me, as it was not quite a textbook and certainly not designed to salve the ego or conscience of executives. These books were not written to make money (maybe that’s the problem), but to illustrate what worked so effectively for me in my long career. Sadly, virtually everything that has happened in the last several decades in the complex organization is explained in these pages.
Sure, there are the demographics, psychometrics, profiling, and other number games, the questionnaires and the reifying with statistics, but how many longitudinal OD studies such as those being done in epidemiology? These two books were longitudinal studies of my career.
Incidentally, I wrote a book that was never published “Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land,” in which I explored some of this stuff in great depth. But as you have correctly identified, I am more a philosopher than a tactician. I’m glad you find my ideas useful because that is why I continue to post them.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 6, 2008
“Unclaimed promises are like uncashed checks; they will keep us from bankruptcy, but not from want.”
Francis Ridley Havergal (1836 – 1879), English poet
“He who promises runs into debt.”
Talmud
DR. KEN MURRELL WRITES:
Jim
Let me thank you in order of your gifts to me.
First, thanks for the connection in Germany, I am only there for a few days but I will see if there is a way to connect.
Second, thanks for the wonderful response and the point I wanted to make clearer was that I do believe the individual does make an impact but if he or she is alone, or in the case of Cheney in the shadows the impact is far more destructive than developmental.
One person can do so much damage and it may take thousands of us to fix it. But then that provides a call for thousands to be of service and this next generation in many ways is understanding of this concept.
We don't want to thank Cheney but without his abuse perhaps we would not have elected an agent of change.
Third, the Arab world, yes, indeed, does have a long history and it is not the same as the world of Islam. When the two became entangled, much was lost, but of course many would also be quick to identify the positive side of this as well.
The best I have seen on the Arab view of the world is in the book by Patai "The Arab Mind.” Many years ago I would quote that chapter and verse. There are likely more up to date sources out there but this book set out the pattern of their worldview. Both within and across cultures
Fourth, and very important while many of us are basking in the glory of the election last evening, your warnings of Cheney are most impressive and critical to be sensitive to as a new ruling party is being framed.
I feared the man (Cheney) and knew that with him and Rumsfield in the same room something close to evil might be cooking.
Surprisingly, when the twin towers came down, I immediately thought of those two and was fearful of what they would do the next day.
Do you recall that I left the country for Cairo after being downsized by Rumsfield after only a few years as the international OD person at G.D. Searle? Rummy was clearly a political being and as a manager quite a disaster. He led a reorganizing effort that was done only as a political operative could.
Rumsfeld’s researchers for this major change were two young not that experienced MBA students he had met while teaching a course on strategy at Northwestern. These were two folks, one of whom had taken some of our OD Programs, but essentially had very little deep knowledge of the discipline. The other was a typical staff manager who knew how to follow orders.
Of course Rummy fired the OD VP right off and from that we all knew where we were going. At this point in time, Searle had one of the best if not the best internal OD teams in the world. Then of course all of us were gone within a year and the company was later broken up and sold to make the family and many others with ownership positions very, very wealthy.
Oh yes, and Rummy did get our mess of R&D records at Searle reviewed by the FDA and lo and behold "asparatame" was approved before even some of our own researchers were satisfied we had made the case for its safety. Limit your diet drinks. I do.
Now to repeat myself, the fifth thanks is to thank you for being exactly what your title suggests--you are a grounded philosopher who keeps a moral compass leading him into tilting at the broken windmills that many can not even see.
Keep up this work; your review of Cheney alone is worth its own blog space. I will not share this though since you like so many of us are walking some thin lines where if we go head to head too often with the ideologues and true believers we may not be around to really get close to what is really happening.
My management department here is full of good people who believe in the politics of what is good for them is good for everyone. I once was so naive when I read all of Ayn Rand and worked on the Goldwater campaign. Both of these were fun and challenging times but I was not very worldly and very, very young.
That makes the perfect condition for narcissism to bloom and in me it sure did. Now we have a culture that wants to love itself and yet also take all of its material wealth with it to the grave. Intellectualism is suspect and anyone who works for the benefit of another is suspicious. What is this culture really based on?
If you have followed any of the work of Clare Graves and his spiral dynamic model, then you know there are ways of making some sense of this lower stage of human development. We all do have a chance to change and grow up but as we can see from so many of our political leaders that is not necessarily a value to many in this culture.
That is what makes this election so important, as a nation we may be growing up just a little. And in the decision we collectively made last night there is hope we can continue to mature and actualize a value set that shows as much concern for others as it does for self.
I am now more hopeful but also very aware that we have set the seeds for our next generation needing all the help it can get and then perhaps earning the label that we have attached to our father's and mother's generation of being the GREATEST GENERATION.
We are making that an imperative and in so many of this younger generation I do see that potential. But they can’t get there without a lot of help so please don’t give up what you do so well
Ken
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Thank you first for your kind words, which are reinforcing in my somewhat solitary walk through this phase of my life.
I’ve often marveled with my Beautiful Betty why I am caught up in the contemporary madness of the times in one sense, and almost a dispassionate observer in the other.
In my long life, I’ve also marveled how little material comfort, or even money means to me, when it is the measure of nearly all things American in terms of significance.
We appreciate say, Dr. Paul Krugman, winning the Nobel Prize for Economics, as much for the $1.3 million that comes with it as to the relevance of his research. We leave it at that, saying the research must be important otherwise, why the prize, right? How many of us will attempt to understand how his research might impact world economics in the future?
We read books almost exclusively on the bestseller lists failing to realize that such a list reflects our limitations and mediocre tastes rather than challenging our cerebral attentiveness. Few stop to think that their favorite authors churn out a new bestseller or two a year with plot lines and storyboards of only marginal difference.
We want to be entertained, not challenged, to be comforted with pleasure, not reminded of our pain. Ever noticed that the themes of most popular fiction are so surreal they seem only a cut above soap operas? My wonder is why we are so preoccupied with sex for entertainment when we have so little understanding of our shared commonality or diverse differences in our genders.
We want to be taken out of ourselves, not reacquainted with ourselves. We judge neighborhoods by their exclusivity and not by their neighborliness, and yet we are moving ever closer to each other, while remaining strangers to ourselves.
This describes the landscape of your work, and what is ironic is that the behavior of Donald Rumsfeld with the two MBA graduates, and the subsequent fall out at G. D. Searle & Company was as predictable as night following day. It reflects the objectivism of Ayn Rand, the self-interest that is eclectic and visceral rather than well thought out and cerebral.
I’m sure Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney see themselves as patriots, good people, and servants at the pleasure of The Republic. They have been operatives for years in the halls of power, sitting on the shoulders of State, and directing it here and then there, as if they held remote controls in their hands.
Before I was five, I lived with my Aunt Annie and Uncle Martin Dean. They would let me color the comic strips in The Clinton Herald as I sat on the floor before their rocking chairs.
I still remember to this day coloring a particular “Brick Bradford” comic strip. My hero found his way inside the head of a mechanical monster that was wreaking havoc. Brick Bradford took over the controls of the monster’s actions, dismantling the machine so that it could no longer destroy the planet.
The metaphor of that machine has stayed with me all my life. It has taken on the character of society, a society that seems increasingly to resemble a machine on automatic pilot, or is it a machine with some shadowy despicable genius at the controls?
The shadow metaphor of Dick Cheney is mine, alone, and not the writers of the books to which I refer. It comes however from this latent memory of a little boy long ago. As events have unfolded, with decent people such as Colin Powell caught up in its web, and as my own life has unfolded, I have been made aware of how important the controller.
The damage done to our society, dissipating our great wealth in preemptive wars was done less by the president (George W. Bush) than those who took the controls from his hand. Yes, it is “W’s” presidency, but he was not equipped to manage the responsibility. He allowed himself to get caught up in the rhetoric of “compassionate conservatism” by the religious right, which is as brutal in its ascendancy to power as any of our enemies.
You may use what I have said in my missive because it comes out of the books of experts and observers who still have the freedom to research and report and publish whatever they find to be the case.
No, I am not familiar with Clare Graves or his spiral dynamic model. I find myself reading at the moment many books on early Christianity, which I might add, is every bit an OD phenomenon.
If I listed all the books I’m currently reading or have read, BB would be appalled at how little I’ve written on my novel. But the Jesus story is terribly compelling.
This is especially true when taken out of the context of God and all that, and focusing instead on the incipient nature of this religion, and how a religion of such inauspicious beginning came to such dominance.
This, alone, is as disturbing as it is striking. Dan Brown uncovered a kettle of worms with his “Da Vinci Code.” Most of what he writes cannot be confirmed, and even then remains highly speculative. The Jesus story defies human understanding, especially if you have any foundation in cosmology or quantum mechanics, or the idea of an expanding universe of billions of planets and other solar systems.
That said the Jesus story is moving as a piece of our humanity, and a great OD project.
Finally, I have great respect for you as a practicing OD professional. OD is still a young field, and not enough research is being done in it.
I did a great deal in preparation for the writing of WORK WITHOUT MANAGERS, and amplified on that research in SIX SILENT KILLERS. The core of both works while remaining relevant has been neglected. Dr. Thomas Brown did all he could to bring it to people’s attention and fruition.
I think the failure can be however put to me, as it was not quite a textbook and certainly not designed to salve the ego or conscience of executives. These books were not written to make money (maybe that’s the problem), but to illustrate what worked so effectively for me in my long career. Sadly, virtually everything that has happened in the last several decades in the complex organization is explained in these pages.
Sure, there are the demographics, psychometrics, profiling, and other number games, the questionnaires and the reifying with statistics, but how many longitudinal OD studies such as those being done in epidemiology? These two books were longitudinal studies of my career.
Incidentally, I wrote a book that was never published “Nowhere Man in Nowhere Land,” in which I explored some of this stuff in great depth. But as you have correctly identified, I am more a philosopher than a tactician. I’m glad you find my ideas useful because that is why I continue to post them.
Be always well,
Jim
GREAT ELECTION -- A SECOND EXCHANGE
GREAT ELECTION – A SECOND EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 5, 2008
“Hope is a lover’s staff; walk hence with that, and manage it against despairing thoughts.”
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), English poet and dramatist
A CHICAGO PROFESSIONAL MADE REDUNDANT WRITES OF THE ELECTION OF BARAK OBAMA AS OUR 44TH PRESIDENT
Hello Jim,
Waking up this morning was not very different from any other day. The same prospects - get the grandkids off to school (which was a bit more difficult as we all stayed up to watch Barack's acceptance speech) then resume the job search.
Fortunately, I was able to use a lot of my "downtime" to actively support Obama's campaign. I couldn't give much cash, could give him some shoe leather. I couldn't respond to your inspiring pieces on the election.
There are a lot of "how far we've come" retrospectives being delivered today with more to come. Growing up in inner city Chicago, I lived it. And, because of that, this to me is not that earthshaking, not that watershed event the pundits are making it out to be.
It has unfolded as if natural. The speech last night was delivered a few miles north of where Dr. King was struck by a thrown brick while marching in Marquette Park. He described the crowd as more hateful than any he had encountered in the South.
After King's assassination, rioters and looters ran past me from Cabrini Green to the shopping district on Chicago Avenue. I didn't feel endangered. The 1968 convention – the city council wars after Harold Washington's election as mayor, and then after his sudden death; police torture of black suspects; and many more blemishes on the city – were eased but not erased last night as Chicago celebrated the ascendancy of one of its residents.
I understand why the media was dominated by on the street interviews of blacks. This moment has so much meaning to people who have been actively suppressed. Let's not miss that the disaffected center over the last eight years got a taste of what it feels like to be ignored by the self named "education President," to be cheated out of their life’s savings, to be fodder for a war initiated by lies, to be pitted against each other by a government that promoted a scarcity mentality. This day has meaning for all of us.
The inclination to pile on is great, but it's counterproductive. We have a thoughtful, reflective president, with a multiple challenges. With this as a model, we may begin to change the course from one in which we climb over others to one in which we pull each other up.
Regards,
Michael
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Michael, I’ve always been impressed with your mind, your literate style, and strong almost powerful emotion that leak between your words. I know you have paid your dues. Now, when you want to collect on that lifelong investment, leveraging your expertise in the workplace to advantage, the opportunity has been withdrawn from you.
I’m glad you’re not bitter because that serves no one leastwise yourself. I am confident you will find the connection to do the good that cries out in you to be expressed. In a strange way, your situation and thousands perhaps tens of thousands of others like yours, seem to be in sync with John Dos Passos and his classic novel “U.S.A.,” which I am now rereading, although published in 1930.
Volume one of “The 42nd Parallel” describes working stiffs like us in the first quarter of the twentieth century, which the twenty-first century is becoming unhappily to resemble. If you get a chance, read at least this first volume of the trilogy.
As I’ve often written, we seem to repeat the same errors and to politicize our confusion with the same venom failing to understand why we must sometimes step back to move forward.
What President Obama will do in the present climate remains to be seen, but there is no advantage to him or to us to be polarized or paralyzed by the label of the “liberal” card.
Some people use the word as if it is an incurable disease. The force behind the concept is the myth of the average man. Man, having experienced more change in the last several decades than the previous two thousands years, has found the average man in something of a cage. Circumstances are such that he will unlikely rise above mass culture, mass technology, mass superstition, or, indeed, mass rhetoric without help.
It moved Jean-Jacques Rousseau in “The Social Contract” (1762) to reflect, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, has written a book “Conscience of the Liberal” (2007). This suggests his theory of trade and globalization is consistent with the wider world.
We need people such as yourself in the trenches motivating, monitoring, mentoring, and channeling people into productive lives. I see resurgence on the horizon of worker-centered operations in which equality of opportunity is front and center, where appropriate skill training and development are in demand. This is not QCC’s. This is the needy gritty of an electronic economy. Our schools are failing us; our workers are neither trained nor motivated to perform the tasks required of an up temple economy. The reality is the workplace is ever changing in its internal tension and external demands.
That is all I have to say on this subject, but I feel simpatico for you in your inner city experience of Chicago. I’ve carried a quote since grammar school of Carl Sandburg’s (1878 – 1967) description of the city:
“(Chicago) Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling City of Big Shoulders.”
It may sound romantic or idealized, and it is probably both, but Sandburg’s description pulsates with energy of the city. It is no accident that I love the place and places like it.
My da’s parents lived on the South Side of Chicago in the Irish ghetto. He was born during president Woodrow Wilson’s administration at Cook County Hospital. His mother died in childbirth, and his da took off for parts unknown never to be seen or heard from again. What an inauspicious beginning.
His Irish maternal grandmother reared him in Clinton, Iowa. He attended the same parochial Catholic school that I would attend, St. Patrick’s, dropping out after the seventh grade returning to Chicago as a teenager trying to make a living first as a bellhop and later as a bartender.
He met my mother, who was academy trained in St. Mary’s in Davenport, Iowa, while on one of his sorties back to his grandmother’s.
Months later I was born, they married, and returned to Chicago, where I remained with them until my sister was born. Thereafter my mother was confined to hospital for more than a year; my da returning to his own haunts in Chicago, while my sister and I were passed off to relatives separately and later together to foster parents.
We did not become a family again until I was five, my da now working in Clinton in president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s welfare program, the “WPA.” It was the Great Depression, and in many ways, although young, I would be more scarred by it than he.
My da, now in his early twenties, loving Chicago and the liberation of the Jazz Age, trying to get his Irish legs under him, was constantly bowed by defeat and humbled by failure, finding the pickings not too good, if existing at all. He retreated to the safety and less taxing climate of this crescent city on the Mississippi where his children and wife resided, leaving the city of Chicago he loved but didn’t love him back.
It is strange in a way growing up in a town of 33,000 at its height during World War Two preferring the city. My da worked during the war on the Chicago & North Western railroad as a passenger brakeman. We would get passes for the whole family, and he would invariably use them to go back to Chicago, or to Detroit, New York City, Washington D.C., Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Vacation was always an extended train ride about the country.
It was from this experience that I would always yearn for the city, the city streets, the noise, the anonymity, the streets glutted with people, with street cleaners and venders in kiosks, cars pumping their horns, trucks revving their engines, taxis watching the meter, and tourist buses screeching past, bellowing out impersonal history of the place in loud speakers, people walking with heads bent towards an imaginary wind, drunks or druggies staggering along (or were they sick?), faces approaching then sliding out of sight, the cacophony of the constant beat of dancing feet shuffling to a rhythm that spelled “hurry,” looking into show windows of department stores with dummy models dressed to the teeth, or bookstores with the latest best sellers and the promise of untold riches inside, going up elevators to the 75th floor like climbing a mountain, then descending cement steps in narrow interruptions in the sidewalks and into the bowels of the tunnels below to climb into packed subway cars, watching with fascination as these trains scampered through the boroughs filtering into lodgings and tenements as they whizzed by, or waiting on the empty subway platform for the next train to come watching welders in masks leaning into sheets of blue flame repairing car tracks.
As busy as the eyes, only the ears were busier, catching the speech of many English dialects, foreign languages, or colloquial expressions foreign to the ear. The ears are caught tight by the tendrils of the phrases, of the off colored jokes, the singsong fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence, the linking tendrils of speech twining the identity of the speakers region of birth, or the well dressed lady seemingly refined flicking her cigarette butt to the tracks below like a gangster in the movies, punching the air with the f-word in disgust, having missed her train even though another would soon be arriving.
Here in the city amongst the gray faces trembling in the grind and gears of metropolitan life I have always felt most alive, dieting on their collective energy and angst as if it were my life’s blood.
It should come as no surprise that I have spent my entire adult life living in such places as Chicago, Louisville, Tampa, London, Paramaribo, Brussels and Johannesburg, while working in scores of others about the globe. Interestingly enough, my children have all gravitated to the hustle and bustle of the city.
I return to my hometown with a sense of appreciation, but as a stranger. I had an idyllic youth, which I’ve written about, a two-parent family, parochial grammar school education, public high school and a land grant university education. There I had good guidance counselors, mentors, coaches, teachers, priests and nuns, and not to forget my attentive parents and supportive peers. So, I have been blessed with my Iowa connection. I mention this for reason.
It was Iowa, of course, that launched Barak Obama on the path to the presidency by preferring him to Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the Iowa Caucuses on his nearly two-year trek to the White House. I hope he will not forget Iowa. When the Iowa Caucuses turned their back on Hillary and chose Barak, it was a defining moment.
This peripatetic philosopher was thinking these thoughts as he walked today, of you his Chicago friend, who has demonstrated through diligence and commitment in Barak Obama’s presidential campaign that he will not be bowed by a temporary setback. My only suggestion is that you use the momentum of the work you have done for free now be turned to profit for you and your family.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 5, 2008
“Hope is a lover’s staff; walk hence with that, and manage it against despairing thoughts.”
William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616), English poet and dramatist
A CHICAGO PROFESSIONAL MADE REDUNDANT WRITES OF THE ELECTION OF BARAK OBAMA AS OUR 44TH PRESIDENT
Hello Jim,
Waking up this morning was not very different from any other day. The same prospects - get the grandkids off to school (which was a bit more difficult as we all stayed up to watch Barack's acceptance speech) then resume the job search.
Fortunately, I was able to use a lot of my "downtime" to actively support Obama's campaign. I couldn't give much cash, could give him some shoe leather. I couldn't respond to your inspiring pieces on the election.
There are a lot of "how far we've come" retrospectives being delivered today with more to come. Growing up in inner city Chicago, I lived it. And, because of that, this to me is not that earthshaking, not that watershed event the pundits are making it out to be.
It has unfolded as if natural. The speech last night was delivered a few miles north of where Dr. King was struck by a thrown brick while marching in Marquette Park. He described the crowd as more hateful than any he had encountered in the South.
After King's assassination, rioters and looters ran past me from Cabrini Green to the shopping district on Chicago Avenue. I didn't feel endangered. The 1968 convention – the city council wars after Harold Washington's election as mayor, and then after his sudden death; police torture of black suspects; and many more blemishes on the city – were eased but not erased last night as Chicago celebrated the ascendancy of one of its residents.
I understand why the media was dominated by on the street interviews of blacks. This moment has so much meaning to people who have been actively suppressed. Let's not miss that the disaffected center over the last eight years got a taste of what it feels like to be ignored by the self named "education President," to be cheated out of their life’s savings, to be fodder for a war initiated by lies, to be pitted against each other by a government that promoted a scarcity mentality. This day has meaning for all of us.
The inclination to pile on is great, but it's counterproductive. We have a thoughtful, reflective president, with a multiple challenges. With this as a model, we may begin to change the course from one in which we climb over others to one in which we pull each other up.
Regards,
Michael
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Michael, I’ve always been impressed with your mind, your literate style, and strong almost powerful emotion that leak between your words. I know you have paid your dues. Now, when you want to collect on that lifelong investment, leveraging your expertise in the workplace to advantage, the opportunity has been withdrawn from you.
I’m glad you’re not bitter because that serves no one leastwise yourself. I am confident you will find the connection to do the good that cries out in you to be expressed. In a strange way, your situation and thousands perhaps tens of thousands of others like yours, seem to be in sync with John Dos Passos and his classic novel “U.S.A.,” which I am now rereading, although published in 1930.
Volume one of “The 42nd Parallel” describes working stiffs like us in the first quarter of the twentieth century, which the twenty-first century is becoming unhappily to resemble. If you get a chance, read at least this first volume of the trilogy.
As I’ve often written, we seem to repeat the same errors and to politicize our confusion with the same venom failing to understand why we must sometimes step back to move forward.
What President Obama will do in the present climate remains to be seen, but there is no advantage to him or to us to be polarized or paralyzed by the label of the “liberal” card.
Some people use the word as if it is an incurable disease. The force behind the concept is the myth of the average man. Man, having experienced more change in the last several decades than the previous two thousands years, has found the average man in something of a cage. Circumstances are such that he will unlikely rise above mass culture, mass technology, mass superstition, or, indeed, mass rhetoric without help.
It moved Jean-Jacques Rousseau in “The Social Contract” (1762) to reflect, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, has written a book “Conscience of the Liberal” (2007). This suggests his theory of trade and globalization is consistent with the wider world.
We need people such as yourself in the trenches motivating, monitoring, mentoring, and channeling people into productive lives. I see resurgence on the horizon of worker-centered operations in which equality of opportunity is front and center, where appropriate skill training and development are in demand. This is not QCC’s. This is the needy gritty of an electronic economy. Our schools are failing us; our workers are neither trained nor motivated to perform the tasks required of an up temple economy. The reality is the workplace is ever changing in its internal tension and external demands.
That is all I have to say on this subject, but I feel simpatico for you in your inner city experience of Chicago. I’ve carried a quote since grammar school of Carl Sandburg’s (1878 – 1967) description of the city:
“(Chicago) Hog Butcher for the World, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler; Stormy, husky, brawling City of Big Shoulders.”
It may sound romantic or idealized, and it is probably both, but Sandburg’s description pulsates with energy of the city. It is no accident that I love the place and places like it.
My da’s parents lived on the South Side of Chicago in the Irish ghetto. He was born during president Woodrow Wilson’s administration at Cook County Hospital. His mother died in childbirth, and his da took off for parts unknown never to be seen or heard from again. What an inauspicious beginning.
His Irish maternal grandmother reared him in Clinton, Iowa. He attended the same parochial Catholic school that I would attend, St. Patrick’s, dropping out after the seventh grade returning to Chicago as a teenager trying to make a living first as a bellhop and later as a bartender.
He met my mother, who was academy trained in St. Mary’s in Davenport, Iowa, while on one of his sorties back to his grandmother’s.
Months later I was born, they married, and returned to Chicago, where I remained with them until my sister was born. Thereafter my mother was confined to hospital for more than a year; my da returning to his own haunts in Chicago, while my sister and I were passed off to relatives separately and later together to foster parents.
We did not become a family again until I was five, my da now working in Clinton in president Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s welfare program, the “WPA.” It was the Great Depression, and in many ways, although young, I would be more scarred by it than he.
My da, now in his early twenties, loving Chicago and the liberation of the Jazz Age, trying to get his Irish legs under him, was constantly bowed by defeat and humbled by failure, finding the pickings not too good, if existing at all. He retreated to the safety and less taxing climate of this crescent city on the Mississippi where his children and wife resided, leaving the city of Chicago he loved but didn’t love him back.
It is strange in a way growing up in a town of 33,000 at its height during World War Two preferring the city. My da worked during the war on the Chicago & North Western railroad as a passenger brakeman. We would get passes for the whole family, and he would invariably use them to go back to Chicago, or to Detroit, New York City, Washington D.C., Atlanta, New Orleans, Los Angeles or San Francisco. Vacation was always an extended train ride about the country.
It was from this experience that I would always yearn for the city, the city streets, the noise, the anonymity, the streets glutted with people, with street cleaners and venders in kiosks, cars pumping their horns, trucks revving their engines, taxis watching the meter, and tourist buses screeching past, bellowing out impersonal history of the place in loud speakers, people walking with heads bent towards an imaginary wind, drunks or druggies staggering along (or were they sick?), faces approaching then sliding out of sight, the cacophony of the constant beat of dancing feet shuffling to a rhythm that spelled “hurry,” looking into show windows of department stores with dummy models dressed to the teeth, or bookstores with the latest best sellers and the promise of untold riches inside, going up elevators to the 75th floor like climbing a mountain, then descending cement steps in narrow interruptions in the sidewalks and into the bowels of the tunnels below to climb into packed subway cars, watching with fascination as these trains scampered through the boroughs filtering into lodgings and tenements as they whizzed by, or waiting on the empty subway platform for the next train to come watching welders in masks leaning into sheets of blue flame repairing car tracks.
As busy as the eyes, only the ears were busier, catching the speech of many English dialects, foreign languages, or colloquial expressions foreign to the ear. The ears are caught tight by the tendrils of the phrases, of the off colored jokes, the singsong fade of a story, the gruff fall of a sentence, the linking tendrils of speech twining the identity of the speakers region of birth, or the well dressed lady seemingly refined flicking her cigarette butt to the tracks below like a gangster in the movies, punching the air with the f-word in disgust, having missed her train even though another would soon be arriving.
Here in the city amongst the gray faces trembling in the grind and gears of metropolitan life I have always felt most alive, dieting on their collective energy and angst as if it were my life’s blood.
It should come as no surprise that I have spent my entire adult life living in such places as Chicago, Louisville, Tampa, London, Paramaribo, Brussels and Johannesburg, while working in scores of others about the globe. Interestingly enough, my children have all gravitated to the hustle and bustle of the city.
I return to my hometown with a sense of appreciation, but as a stranger. I had an idyllic youth, which I’ve written about, a two-parent family, parochial grammar school education, public high school and a land grant university education. There I had good guidance counselors, mentors, coaches, teachers, priests and nuns, and not to forget my attentive parents and supportive peers. So, I have been blessed with my Iowa connection. I mention this for reason.
It was Iowa, of course, that launched Barak Obama on the path to the presidency by preferring him to Hillary Clinton and John Edwards in the Iowa Caucuses on his nearly two-year trek to the White House. I hope he will not forget Iowa. When the Iowa Caucuses turned their back on Hillary and chose Barak, it was a defining moment.
This peripatetic philosopher was thinking these thoughts as he walked today, of you his Chicago friend, who has demonstrated through diligence and commitment in Barak Obama’s presidential campaign that he will not be bowed by a temporary setback. My only suggestion is that you use the momentum of the work you have done for free now be turned to profit for you and your family.
Be always well,
Jim
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
NOVEMBER 4, 2008 -- GREAT ELECTION DAY -- AN EXCHANGE!
GREAT ELECTION DAY – AN EXCHANGE
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 4, 2008
“In all science error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.”
Horace Walpole (1661 – 1724), English author
A PROFESSOR WRITES:
Jim
Thanks for the note.
I am teaching in Germany this spring. I start off our German MBA program each year.
If your friend were near Mannheim I would enjoy meeting him.
One note on your missive, if you recall, I lived and worked in Cairo for two years and learned much while there.
Islam is one of our newer religious movements so your dating of it for nearly two thousand years -- “a thousand awake and a thousand asleep” -- is off by about 800 hundred years.
Mohammad’s rise to influence was in the 8th century, and from that point on it has been a complex set of forces at work that few really understand. Their influence on the larger world has ebbed and flowed but if you examine the number of followers some are suggesting a resurgence of influence.
But again, think in terms of the many complex and not easy to understand forces at work that are primarily associated with only the last 1200 or so years.
Resurgence in a society few outside understand may mean something very differently. In there basic economic assumptions, there are significantly altered perspectives of what is right and wrong.
These differences are often far more critical to understand than even the different assumptions about gender roles.
I do much agree with your notion of intelligence might be a critical factor in our President but the whole idea that any modern society can build such a dependency on one single human being is our best evidence yet that as a species we really do not understand the role that social intelligence plays (my italics because I plan to address this in the reply).
This hero worship could well be called delusional except that as a projective technique it does keep us from really challenging most of our social and political assumptions.
In my short life, I must say I have almost never witnessed any significant act by a single leader unless the act was primarily destructive. An individual may destroy much but for any real leadership I have been saying for years we should now put the emphasis on the SHIP and not just the captain.
We need all of us working together and then eventually we will create new forms and models for the means to create the leaders we need.
My favorite leader model is in line with self-organizing systems. For years, I’ve hoped for a chance of self-management being respected for its potential. Both terms, self-organizing and self-management are barely understood by the organizations I work in or consult.
We are still a young species so there is hope. I assume the same hope exists for us today in that people, hopefully in record numbers of voters, will make a better choice than any one of us could have made alone.
No matter who is elected this SHIP needs a number of great leaders and what each of us do with our own lives presents to us the information of whether we again as a species have the chance to grow and flourish.
Perhaps our best days could be behind us. To some people the human race is either so immature or even perhaps so toxic that this planet does not deserve us. For me, I have always had hope we may be able to grow up a bit and selfishly I would like to think my own life is evidence of some level of maturity.
A nice dream anyway.... time well tell.
Ken
PS Keep writing the sparks you create have impact on many of us even when you have no idea how the great collective mind is being formed. Like in this election today, several million people will be making individual choices that will indicate to those of us curious about what kind of world we live in and what to do next.
The patriots among us will want to try and help our country move forward no matter what the results today are. I hope I am capable of doing that even if I have no idea why the people voted as they did.
If we can all work together then we have a chance, if not our future will not be good. So, to the patriots that keeps the hope alive to move forward this one-day means far less than for those that believe their citizenry responsibilities are measured in moments at the voting booth. Today, is mostly about information, tomorrow we go back to work. k
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Ken,
Good to hear from you. I was speaking metaphorically of the Arabian culture, which, of course, predates Muhammad. I am not used to people reading me much less reading me literally, but it is a nice feeling having someone such as you bring my error to my attention. I will endeavor to be more careful subsequently, and, of course, you are correct.
With regard to my friend, here is the information you might find useful:
Manfred Fiedler
Meisenweg 9
63484 Hanau
Tel: 06181/85 03 39
Fax: 06181/98 95 36
Email: g-m.fiedler@t-online.de
When I was director of human resources planning & development for all of Europe, some 13,000 employees in eight countries, Manfred was director of human resources for Germany out of Mannheim.
I left Europe and then Honeywell in 1990, while Manfred went on to be executive vice president of human resources, international operations, working out of Minneapolis, MN.
His two sons – MBA graduates from American universities -- are consultants, I believe, working mainly in the US and across the globe. The Manfred's have a daughter a couple years older than my youngest. My daughter Jennifer will be 34 later this week. Jessica took a Ph.D. in pharmacology here in the US, and is located on the West Coast.
BB and I have stayed with the Fiedlers in Hanau, which is near Frankfurt, as you may know. Gerda is Manfred's wife, and the two are simply a delightful couple, well read, well traveled, and spirited. Should you meet them, you will be delighted with them.
OTHER THINGS MENTIONED IN YOUR PIECE
In one sense, I agree with you, and until quite recently I totally agreed with you, that "one single human being” couldn’t be assigned the leadership to which we may elect him or her. That is, until I started reading about the shadowy deception of our "co-president, Dick Cheney" and the George “W” Bush years (2000 – 2008).
This period indicates the implicit danger assumed when THE SHADOW of an administration comes to man and manipulate those elected to its own devices, as many authors have concluded (the list of which will be provided at the end of this piece).
Dick Cheney has been a marvel, and always in the shadows so that when push came to shove he never got bruised.
From one expert observer I read:
"Cheney by nature is a high functionary and inside operative, ready to learn and eager to ferret out the background of people and events, both the things he is supposed to know and the things he is not."
He demonstrated that as far back as in the Ford Administration with aplomb, almost as if in the present context that fact is a forgotten aberration.
Over the past three decades, Cheney has crystallized his thinking about the advantages of recessive stance. Now, this is different from my passive aggression as it is quite active and powerful in its efficacy as I intend to relate here.
Cheney has the ability to get behind a charmer, such as Reagan, treat him as if a paper doll cut out, knowing that the person, Reagan or more recently George “W” Bush, are disinterested in the fundamentals of day-to-day governing, and actually are glad to hand it off to such a man, believing unwisely that he will protect them from taking any real flack.
Reagan took his naps and "W" spent hours in the gym to survive the day, while Cheney ran things and people. There are a number of books I could recommend on the subject in case you're interested.
What amazes me -- and I'm still surprised I can be amazed -- Cheney's reign at Halliburton saw its stock dive from $54 to $9 a share between August and December 2000, and it didn't touch him. Reminds me of Mike Bonsignore at Honeywell. It was the reason I wrote CORPORATE SIN that nobody read.
Turn OD inside out and upside down, and you have Cheney who was a connection maker, a facilitator, a speculative explorer of large innovations, and a stone face with brass balls that never showed his cards.
He gathered a cadre of folks around him of like-minded spirits who implicitly followed his WILL without having to have it stated in bold type.
There was Irving Kristol, Richard Perl, John Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby -- I could go on and on, people always in the news while THE SHADOW (Cheney) was far from sight.
An aside: I am part of a burgeoning "think tank," and know I must be cautious because the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a clone of Cheney with bright, bright people who behave as pawns on his chessboard, perhaps without knowing it. We brainy types are often finessed on our own petards.
Item: AEI has been transformed through Cheney’s neocons’ intervention from an independent think tank into an institute for the promotion of laissez-faire economics, militarized foreign policy, and the dismantling of the welfare state. I must confess I once had the fantasy of working for AEI with the prospect and freedom to think. I know now that I would have been kicked out once I opened my mind to its inhabitants.
Please bear with me. It was Cheney who advocated as long ago as 1993 a prescription of "action against emerging threats before they are fully formed." He reechoed that sentiment in 2002 at West Point. “W” went along with it in 2003 for real in Iraq.
Cheney is the master architect managing and promulgating the rationale for (a) extreme interrogation; (b) drowning torture; (c) renditions to rogue nations with experts in such torture as Egypt: (d) the creation of a class of stateless persons-without-human rights (Guantanamo), and (e) tagging such prisoners with the explosive language of "enemy combatants."
Poor "W" has been a clone to THE SHADOW. It was Cheney who impressed "W" with the maxim that negotiations were a sign of weakness and a form of surrender.
You look at Cheney, this grandfatherly old man with the bad heart and white hair talking out of the side of his mouth in a television interview as if no one can hear him, and you realize that the danger in our society is not the people we elect, but the people the elected appoint and, alas, Congress confirms, or in the case of Chaney, piggyback on the president as vice president.
Cheney was originally appointed by "W" to ferret out possible candidates for his vice president. He bypassed the process and told "W" he was his best bet. It didn't stop there. Virtually every member of “W’s” cabinet was first vetted and recommended by Cheney and confirmed by "W." If that is not a little scary, consider this.
Cheney along with the so-called neocons saw themselves, as an alternative culture as they disregarded the boundaries of respectable American opinion and imposed their own will. According to the experts, Cheney’s province was all things military, also domestic and foreign policy, natural resources, energy policy, and when it came to nominations, he made the appointments, of course, with “W’s” approval.
Neocons take pride in defying intellectuals as do-nothings and going nowheres. Neocons think but don’t regard themselves as thinkers, again taking pride in being cut off from intellectual society for the most part, reading selectively and purposefully.
I was surprised to find Allan Bloom's CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND set up a new set of prejudices for neocons with hostility to individual liberty, and an almost shocking love affair with new technology. They appeared friendly to religion as a guide to morals, but more importantly as a powerful engine of state. In a word, neocons with Cheney’s leadership imposed a substitute culture of satisfying density, and it has wreaked havoc on this country for nearly a quarter century now.
What appalls me the most is that it comes out of "managerial intellectual judgment," something of which I have had some acquaintance, as do you.
I share this with you because of your comment -- "one person cannot lead," which I find misleading, especially when the person doing the damage is essentially a SHADOW.
Unfortunately, one person can create a substitute culture that can selectively and successfully plow down old values in a short time as Cheney & Co.have done with the approval of their unwitting stooge, "W."
About none of this has Cheney been called by a subpoena from Congress or an urgent demand from the press to answer questions regarding the extent and legality of his innovations or his operatives if even obliquely. Yes, there is Lewis Libby Affair, and his special prosecution, but I mean more manifestly.
It is as if people do not believe THE SHADOW bears close watching much less careful scrutiny. I'll quote an expert now that says what I've attempted to say in my missives and books:
"Why not? The reluctance shows a tremendous failure of nerve, from the point of view of democracy and public life. But there is logic to the sense of futility that inhibits so many citizens who have been turned into spectators. It comes from the dynamic of the co-presidency itself, to which the press has grown acclimatized."
I claim this is true of our whole society.
Henry Kissinger once said that, "You bring your capital with you" when you're in the hot seat negotiating or making decisions. Intellectual capital is what he is speaking about, and it is what I've been writing about for thirty years.
An expert writes of "W": "The fact that Bush's answers are so inadequate, from a defect of mental sharpness and retentiveness as well as dissimulation, kills the appetite for further questions."
The special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald put it best about the Libby Affair and all the concomitant innuendos that surrounded Cheney & Co.: “That cloud is something you just can’t pretend isn’t there.”
Ken, you are much more an optimist than I am. I hope you are right and I am not.
Be always well, and thank you once again for taking the time to enlighten me.
Jim
PS Some books of possible interest on the subject of Cheney et al. are: “The Dark Side” by Jane Mayer; “Angler” by Barton Gellman; “The Way of the World” by Ron Suskind; “Takeover” by Charles Savage; “What Happened” by Scott McClellan; “The Bush Tragedy” by Jacob Weisberg; “Cheney” by Stephen Hayes; and “The War Within” by Bob Woodward.
JRF
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 4, 2008
“In all science error precedes the truth, and it is better it should go first than last.”
Horace Walpole (1661 – 1724), English author
A PROFESSOR WRITES:
Jim
Thanks for the note.
I am teaching in Germany this spring. I start off our German MBA program each year.
If your friend were near Mannheim I would enjoy meeting him.
One note on your missive, if you recall, I lived and worked in Cairo for two years and learned much while there.
Islam is one of our newer religious movements so your dating of it for nearly two thousand years -- “a thousand awake and a thousand asleep” -- is off by about 800 hundred years.
Mohammad’s rise to influence was in the 8th century, and from that point on it has been a complex set of forces at work that few really understand. Their influence on the larger world has ebbed and flowed but if you examine the number of followers some are suggesting a resurgence of influence.
But again, think in terms of the many complex and not easy to understand forces at work that are primarily associated with only the last 1200 or so years.
Resurgence in a society few outside understand may mean something very differently. In there basic economic assumptions, there are significantly altered perspectives of what is right and wrong.
These differences are often far more critical to understand than even the different assumptions about gender roles.
I do much agree with your notion of intelligence might be a critical factor in our President but the whole idea that any modern society can build such a dependency on one single human being is our best evidence yet that as a species we really do not understand the role that social intelligence plays (my italics because I plan to address this in the reply).
This hero worship could well be called delusional except that as a projective technique it does keep us from really challenging most of our social and political assumptions.
In my short life, I must say I have almost never witnessed any significant act by a single leader unless the act was primarily destructive. An individual may destroy much but for any real leadership I have been saying for years we should now put the emphasis on the SHIP and not just the captain.
We need all of us working together and then eventually we will create new forms and models for the means to create the leaders we need.
My favorite leader model is in line with self-organizing systems. For years, I’ve hoped for a chance of self-management being respected for its potential. Both terms, self-organizing and self-management are barely understood by the organizations I work in or consult.
We are still a young species so there is hope. I assume the same hope exists for us today in that people, hopefully in record numbers of voters, will make a better choice than any one of us could have made alone.
No matter who is elected this SHIP needs a number of great leaders and what each of us do with our own lives presents to us the information of whether we again as a species have the chance to grow and flourish.
Perhaps our best days could be behind us. To some people the human race is either so immature or even perhaps so toxic that this planet does not deserve us. For me, I have always had hope we may be able to grow up a bit and selfishly I would like to think my own life is evidence of some level of maturity.
A nice dream anyway.... time well tell.
Ken
PS Keep writing the sparks you create have impact on many of us even when you have no idea how the great collective mind is being formed. Like in this election today, several million people will be making individual choices that will indicate to those of us curious about what kind of world we live in and what to do next.
The patriots among us will want to try and help our country move forward no matter what the results today are. I hope I am capable of doing that even if I have no idea why the people voted as they did.
If we can all work together then we have a chance, if not our future will not be good. So, to the patriots that keeps the hope alive to move forward this one-day means far less than for those that believe their citizenry responsibilities are measured in moments at the voting booth. Today, is mostly about information, tomorrow we go back to work. k
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Ken,
Good to hear from you. I was speaking metaphorically of the Arabian culture, which, of course, predates Muhammad. I am not used to people reading me much less reading me literally, but it is a nice feeling having someone such as you bring my error to my attention. I will endeavor to be more careful subsequently, and, of course, you are correct.
With regard to my friend, here is the information you might find useful:
Manfred Fiedler
Meisenweg 9
63484 Hanau
Tel: 06181/85 03 39
Fax: 06181/98 95 36
Email: g-m.fiedler@t-online.de
When I was director of human resources planning & development for all of Europe, some 13,000 employees in eight countries, Manfred was director of human resources for Germany out of Mannheim.
I left Europe and then Honeywell in 1990, while Manfred went on to be executive vice president of human resources, international operations, working out of Minneapolis, MN.
His two sons – MBA graduates from American universities -- are consultants, I believe, working mainly in the US and across the globe. The Manfred's have a daughter a couple years older than my youngest. My daughter Jennifer will be 34 later this week. Jessica took a Ph.D. in pharmacology here in the US, and is located on the West Coast.
BB and I have stayed with the Fiedlers in Hanau, which is near Frankfurt, as you may know. Gerda is Manfred's wife, and the two are simply a delightful couple, well read, well traveled, and spirited. Should you meet them, you will be delighted with them.
OTHER THINGS MENTIONED IN YOUR PIECE
In one sense, I agree with you, and until quite recently I totally agreed with you, that "one single human being” couldn’t be assigned the leadership to which we may elect him or her. That is, until I started reading about the shadowy deception of our "co-president, Dick Cheney" and the George “W” Bush years (2000 – 2008).
This period indicates the implicit danger assumed when THE SHADOW of an administration comes to man and manipulate those elected to its own devices, as many authors have concluded (the list of which will be provided at the end of this piece).
Dick Cheney has been a marvel, and always in the shadows so that when push came to shove he never got bruised.
From one expert observer I read:
"Cheney by nature is a high functionary and inside operative, ready to learn and eager to ferret out the background of people and events, both the things he is supposed to know and the things he is not."
He demonstrated that as far back as in the Ford Administration with aplomb, almost as if in the present context that fact is a forgotten aberration.
Over the past three decades, Cheney has crystallized his thinking about the advantages of recessive stance. Now, this is different from my passive aggression as it is quite active and powerful in its efficacy as I intend to relate here.
Cheney has the ability to get behind a charmer, such as Reagan, treat him as if a paper doll cut out, knowing that the person, Reagan or more recently George “W” Bush, are disinterested in the fundamentals of day-to-day governing, and actually are glad to hand it off to such a man, believing unwisely that he will protect them from taking any real flack.
Reagan took his naps and "W" spent hours in the gym to survive the day, while Cheney ran things and people. There are a number of books I could recommend on the subject in case you're interested.
What amazes me -- and I'm still surprised I can be amazed -- Cheney's reign at Halliburton saw its stock dive from $54 to $9 a share between August and December 2000, and it didn't touch him. Reminds me of Mike Bonsignore at Honeywell. It was the reason I wrote CORPORATE SIN that nobody read.
Turn OD inside out and upside down, and you have Cheney who was a connection maker, a facilitator, a speculative explorer of large innovations, and a stone face with brass balls that never showed his cards.
He gathered a cadre of folks around him of like-minded spirits who implicitly followed his WILL without having to have it stated in bold type.
There was Irving Kristol, Richard Perl, John Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby -- I could go on and on, people always in the news while THE SHADOW (Cheney) was far from sight.
An aside: I am part of a burgeoning "think tank," and know I must be cautious because the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) is a clone of Cheney with bright, bright people who behave as pawns on his chessboard, perhaps without knowing it. We brainy types are often finessed on our own petards.
Item: AEI has been transformed through Cheney’s neocons’ intervention from an independent think tank into an institute for the promotion of laissez-faire economics, militarized foreign policy, and the dismantling of the welfare state. I must confess I once had the fantasy of working for AEI with the prospect and freedom to think. I know now that I would have been kicked out once I opened my mind to its inhabitants.
Please bear with me. It was Cheney who advocated as long ago as 1993 a prescription of "action against emerging threats before they are fully formed." He reechoed that sentiment in 2002 at West Point. “W” went along with it in 2003 for real in Iraq.
Cheney is the master architect managing and promulgating the rationale for (a) extreme interrogation; (b) drowning torture; (c) renditions to rogue nations with experts in such torture as Egypt: (d) the creation of a class of stateless persons-without-human rights (Guantanamo), and (e) tagging such prisoners with the explosive language of "enemy combatants."
Poor "W" has been a clone to THE SHADOW. It was Cheney who impressed "W" with the maxim that negotiations were a sign of weakness and a form of surrender.
You look at Cheney, this grandfatherly old man with the bad heart and white hair talking out of the side of his mouth in a television interview as if no one can hear him, and you realize that the danger in our society is not the people we elect, but the people the elected appoint and, alas, Congress confirms, or in the case of Chaney, piggyback on the president as vice president.
Cheney was originally appointed by "W" to ferret out possible candidates for his vice president. He bypassed the process and told "W" he was his best bet. It didn't stop there. Virtually every member of “W’s” cabinet was first vetted and recommended by Cheney and confirmed by "W." If that is not a little scary, consider this.
Cheney along with the so-called neocons saw themselves, as an alternative culture as they disregarded the boundaries of respectable American opinion and imposed their own will. According to the experts, Cheney’s province was all things military, also domestic and foreign policy, natural resources, energy policy, and when it came to nominations, he made the appointments, of course, with “W’s” approval.
Neocons take pride in defying intellectuals as do-nothings and going nowheres. Neocons think but don’t regard themselves as thinkers, again taking pride in being cut off from intellectual society for the most part, reading selectively and purposefully.
I was surprised to find Allan Bloom's CLOSING OF THE AMERICAN MIND set up a new set of prejudices for neocons with hostility to individual liberty, and an almost shocking love affair with new technology. They appeared friendly to religion as a guide to morals, but more importantly as a powerful engine of state. In a word, neocons with Cheney’s leadership imposed a substitute culture of satisfying density, and it has wreaked havoc on this country for nearly a quarter century now.
What appalls me the most is that it comes out of "managerial intellectual judgment," something of which I have had some acquaintance, as do you.
I share this with you because of your comment -- "one person cannot lead," which I find misleading, especially when the person doing the damage is essentially a SHADOW.
Unfortunately, one person can create a substitute culture that can selectively and successfully plow down old values in a short time as Cheney & Co.have done with the approval of their unwitting stooge, "W."
About none of this has Cheney been called by a subpoena from Congress or an urgent demand from the press to answer questions regarding the extent and legality of his innovations or his operatives if even obliquely. Yes, there is Lewis Libby Affair, and his special prosecution, but I mean more manifestly.
It is as if people do not believe THE SHADOW bears close watching much less careful scrutiny. I'll quote an expert now that says what I've attempted to say in my missives and books:
"Why not? The reluctance shows a tremendous failure of nerve, from the point of view of democracy and public life. But there is logic to the sense of futility that inhibits so many citizens who have been turned into spectators. It comes from the dynamic of the co-presidency itself, to which the press has grown acclimatized."
I claim this is true of our whole society.
Henry Kissinger once said that, "You bring your capital with you" when you're in the hot seat negotiating or making decisions. Intellectual capital is what he is speaking about, and it is what I've been writing about for thirty years.
An expert writes of "W": "The fact that Bush's answers are so inadequate, from a defect of mental sharpness and retentiveness as well as dissimulation, kills the appetite for further questions."
The special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald put it best about the Libby Affair and all the concomitant innuendos that surrounded Cheney & Co.: “That cloud is something you just can’t pretend isn’t there.”
Ken, you are much more an optimist than I am. I hope you are right and I am not.
Be always well, and thank you once again for taking the time to enlighten me.
Jim
PS Some books of possible interest on the subject of Cheney et al. are: “The Dark Side” by Jane Mayer; “Angler” by Barton Gellman; “The Way of the World” by Ron Suskind; “Takeover” by Charles Savage; “What Happened” by Scott McClellan; “The Bush Tragedy” by Jacob Weisberg; “Cheney” by Stephen Hayes; and “The War Within” by Bob Woodward.
JRF
Monday, November 03, 2008
"THE PERIMETERS OF HATE" -- AN EXCHANGE!
AN EXCHANGE WITH REFERENCE TO “THE PERIMETERS OF HATE”
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 3, 2008
“I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy; hate cant; hate intolerance, oppression, injustice, Pharisaism; hate them all with a deep abiding hatred.”
Frederick William Robertson (1816 – 1853), English clergyman
A WRITER WRITES:
Jim:
I have read your message in its entirety and I agree with most everything you said. If you’ve been reading the “memories” emails, I got sucked in and could not resist fighting back. No one seemed to speak up and I had to do it!
You know…. I am a liberal democrat and I am not ashamed of it but I also agree that both parties need to wake up and realize we need to get rid of the “hate messages”. I don’t believe in the mud slinging…it does no good.
I am reading The American Presidents: Biographies of the Chief Executives from Washington through Clinton (eighth edition) by David C. Whitney and revised and updated by Robin Whitney.
When I can’t sleep at night (on occasion) I read this book. I find that the scandals and mud slinging went on since Jefferson, Hamilton and most recently read about Harding and his two lady friends on the side and all the corruption that he didn’t seem to know was going on in his cabinet.
There has been lots of intrigue and human failings in the past presidents. They were human and as you rightly stated, we are all blaming someone else for the present problems and want someone to say they can fix it.
We need someone to say we all need to sacrifice. Obama has begun to touch on this note recently. I too see a decision maker and a thoughtful person who I feel won’t get us involved in something without considering all options and consequences. I hope I am right.
I hope Obama makes it to the Presidency. One thing I hope for is that we will show the world that America can elect someone from our minority. I think we will grow in the sight of the other nations of the world for that reason alone. I hope others read your notes about “hate”.
Carole
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Carole,
I am somewhat of a statistical nut. Numbers have always fascinated me.
When I was a practicing industrial/organization psychologist, I used psychometrics as much as possible to corroborate or refute my empirical hypothesis.
There is a saying, "Statistics don't lie but liars keep statistics."
There is some truth to that as a famous study called "The Bell Curve" by Charles Murray Richard Herrnstein confirms. They found whites superior in intelligence and capability to other races especially blacks. In my own experience, data empirically derived or from experience, I have found little evidence of this. In fact, some of the most brilliant people I've known are African Americans.
That said you are the only one I have heard from with this missive. Statistically, that suggests people are (a) too busy; (b) overwhelmed with all the political hype; (c) somewhat intimidated with the prospect that hate might just be a factor in their decision making, especially in terms of presidential preference; or (d) simply deleted it once it came up which, of course, is their prerogative.
I'd like to tell you of an interesting endorsement of Senator Barak Obama that you may have missed. It is another one of those "Forrest Gump" connections that I have.
When I was a young man, and lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, I was in the "Great Books Club" of Broadripple, a suburb of Indianapolis, where we met at the library.
This past Saturday I saw an editorial by William D. Ruckelshaus, who was chair of that little study group of about ten people so long ago. I only knew the man from that group, and in no other way. But I did follow his career.
Bill Ruckelshaus was involved in a rather famous event in our American History known as "The Saturday Night Massacre."
It was a bloodless affair during the Watergate fiasco, but turned out to be quite significant.
On Saturday, October 20, 1973, some thirty-five years ago, President Nixon forced the resignation of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and had the Special Watergate Prosecutor, Archibald Cox fired. Richardson had refused to fire Cox.
Bill Ruckelshaus, who had been Director of the FBI before becoming Deputy Attorney General under Richardson, tendered his resignation but was fired before it reached the president's desk. The event for all intent and purposes ended Nixon's presidency, forcing him to resign from office.
Ruckelshaus also served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
I mention all this about Ruckelshaus because an editorial by him in The Tampa Tribune, Saturday, November 1, 2008, says similar things to what I say in my missive, ending with this line, "This is what is at stake in this election, and that is why we are endorsing Senator Obama as our best hope of achieving that goal (of credibility in the world)." Like me, Ruckelshaus is a lifelong Republican who has made the switch.
We will know soon who our next president will be. You voted your conscience, as should every American. I am proud of you for that. Voting is a privilege that no American should take lightly.
Be always well,
Jim
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© November 3, 2008
“I will tell you what to hate. Hate hypocrisy; hate cant; hate intolerance, oppression, injustice, Pharisaism; hate them all with a deep abiding hatred.”
Frederick William Robertson (1816 – 1853), English clergyman
A WRITER WRITES:
Jim:
I have read your message in its entirety and I agree with most everything you said. If you’ve been reading the “memories” emails, I got sucked in and could not resist fighting back. No one seemed to speak up and I had to do it!
You know…. I am a liberal democrat and I am not ashamed of it but I also agree that both parties need to wake up and realize we need to get rid of the “hate messages”. I don’t believe in the mud slinging…it does no good.
I am reading The American Presidents: Biographies of the Chief Executives from Washington through Clinton (eighth edition) by David C. Whitney and revised and updated by Robin Whitney.
When I can’t sleep at night (on occasion) I read this book. I find that the scandals and mud slinging went on since Jefferson, Hamilton and most recently read about Harding and his two lady friends on the side and all the corruption that he didn’t seem to know was going on in his cabinet.
There has been lots of intrigue and human failings in the past presidents. They were human and as you rightly stated, we are all blaming someone else for the present problems and want someone to say they can fix it.
We need someone to say we all need to sacrifice. Obama has begun to touch on this note recently. I too see a decision maker and a thoughtful person who I feel won’t get us involved in something without considering all options and consequences. I hope I am right.
I hope Obama makes it to the Presidency. One thing I hope for is that we will show the world that America can elect someone from our minority. I think we will grow in the sight of the other nations of the world for that reason alone. I hope others read your notes about “hate”.
Carole
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Carole,
I am somewhat of a statistical nut. Numbers have always fascinated me.
When I was a practicing industrial/organization psychologist, I used psychometrics as much as possible to corroborate or refute my empirical hypothesis.
There is a saying, "Statistics don't lie but liars keep statistics."
There is some truth to that as a famous study called "The Bell Curve" by Charles Murray Richard Herrnstein confirms. They found whites superior in intelligence and capability to other races especially blacks. In my own experience, data empirically derived or from experience, I have found little evidence of this. In fact, some of the most brilliant people I've known are African Americans.
That said you are the only one I have heard from with this missive. Statistically, that suggests people are (a) too busy; (b) overwhelmed with all the political hype; (c) somewhat intimidated with the prospect that hate might just be a factor in their decision making, especially in terms of presidential preference; or (d) simply deleted it once it came up which, of course, is their prerogative.
I'd like to tell you of an interesting endorsement of Senator Barak Obama that you may have missed. It is another one of those "Forrest Gump" connections that I have.
When I was a young man, and lived in Indianapolis, Indiana, I was in the "Great Books Club" of Broadripple, a suburb of Indianapolis, where we met at the library.
This past Saturday I saw an editorial by William D. Ruckelshaus, who was chair of that little study group of about ten people so long ago. I only knew the man from that group, and in no other way. But I did follow his career.
Bill Ruckelshaus was involved in a rather famous event in our American History known as "The Saturday Night Massacre."
It was a bloodless affair during the Watergate fiasco, but turned out to be quite significant.
On Saturday, October 20, 1973, some thirty-five years ago, President Nixon forced the resignation of Attorney General Elliot Richardson, and had the Special Watergate Prosecutor, Archibald Cox fired. Richardson had refused to fire Cox.
Bill Ruckelshaus, who had been Director of the FBI before becoming Deputy Attorney General under Richardson, tendered his resignation but was fired before it reached the president's desk. The event for all intent and purposes ended Nixon's presidency, forcing him to resign from office.
Ruckelshaus also served as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
I mention all this about Ruckelshaus because an editorial by him in The Tampa Tribune, Saturday, November 1, 2008, says similar things to what I say in my missive, ending with this line, "This is what is at stake in this election, and that is why we are endorsing Senator Obama as our best hope of achieving that goal (of credibility in the world)." Like me, Ruckelshaus is a lifelong Republican who has made the switch.
We will know soon who our next president will be. You voted your conscience, as should every American. I am proud of you for that. Voting is a privilege that no American should take lightly.
Be always well,
Jim
Friday, October 31, 2008
PERIMETERS OF HATE IN THE QUADRENNIAL MADNESS OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
PERIMETERS OF HATE IN THE QUADRENNIAL MADNESS OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 30, 2008
“We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.”
Caleb C. Colton (1780 – 1832), English clergyman
BEING IN BUT NOT OF POLITICS
In the presidential campaign of 1964, when incumbent President Lyndon Johnson ran against Senator Barry Goldwater, I was president of the Young Republicans of Marion County (Indianapolis, Indiana). I had previously been asked to run for the House of Representatives by a delegation of Republicans from my district, which had been recently gerrymandered to ensure a Republican Representative in Congress. I demurred. I was involved in politics but I was not of politics.
I had gotten involved in politics, as I was a friend of Mayor Settles of Lawrence, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, where I lived. He appointed me Secretary to the Board of Zoning Appeals of Lawrence Township, which was in a rapid growth mode at the time. As leader of the Young Republicans, I was active in the Goldwater Presidential Campaign, organizing canvassing and a Young Republican rally in which the governor of the State of Indiana and senator Goldwater’s son took part.
You get a sense of the energy, excitement, and contention surrounding presidential politics within and without the “perimeters of hate.”
It is a surreal climate made more so when you find yourself sitting across the kitchen table in a lawyer friend’s home (Lloyd DeWester) with Governor Matthew Welsh and Lee Hamilton, a member of the House of Representative from Noblesville’s, going over campaign strategy.
Forty-two years later, Representative Hamilton, now a private citizen, along with James Baker, formerly of the George H. W. Bush administration, would head up the “Iraq Study Group Report” and present it to President George W. Bush in 2006.
Now, nearly a half-century later, you remember the intensity, irrationality, and the hysteria surrounding the campaign, and look back seasoned with life at the madness of it all.
QUADRENNIAL MADNESS TODAY
Hatred and vituperation if anything have increased exponentially over forty-four years (1964 – 2008).
Decency, proportion, humor, reason, and good will have gone up in flames fueled by slanderous rhetoric, negative ads, and improbable promises. I voted by mail as soon as it was possible, and given what is to follow, I feel obliged to tell you I voted for a Democrat, Senator Barak Obama. He doesn’t come unscathed in this missive nor does his opponent.
That said I never expected the day would come in my lifetime that I, a white middle class American, would have an opportunity to vote for a black man. But that is not why I voted for him. His intellect and sober bearing resonate with my spirit, as much as his rhetoric does not. I think of Adlai Stevenson, also of Illinois, twice nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, but in the twentieth century where eloquence and elitism were held in contempt.
Senator Obama shares a common eloquence with Stevenson and another man from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. The challenges for the new president, should Obama be elected, are as huge as they were for Honest Abe. Like Lincoln, he is mainly untried but shares Lincoln’s smarts, turn of mind, and brooding power.
There are several dimensions to this quadrennial madness, which is bounded by what I call “the hate” of why, what, where, and how. Negative campaigning is abhorred by both candidates, who always promise to maintain a positive campaign, but ultimately resort to mud slinging because hate in politics sells, and nowhere better than on the Internet where legends can be created that don’t have a grain of truth to them.
“THE WHY” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
The United States of America in the truest sense is neither a democracy nor a republic, but a fragile linchpin between the two attempting to be both.
Once a member of the House of Representatives is elected, there is more than an eighty percent chance that he or she will be reelected until he or she dies or becomes caught in some type of scandal.
Since Congressman are elected every two years, they spend most of their time campaigning for the next election, while spending from Tuesday to Thursday in Washington, D.C., if that much time with the balance in their home district or on some jaunt about the globe at the taxpayers expense.
Senators are elected for six-year terms, and also reelected more than sixty-five percent of the time. Senators Stevens of Alaska, recently found guilty of corruption, is running for reelection, while Senator Byrd of West Virginia, former member of the Ku Klux Klan, has grown old in the senate where he has been since 1958.
Longevity is much the same for federal and municipal court judges, while Supreme Court Justices are lifetime positions. The only level where longevity is not the norm is at the governor’s level. They can serve only two four-year terms, and often fall short of that.
Currently, the Congress of the United States enjoys popularity in the single digits with the electorate, which is even below President George W. Bush.
Presidential campaigns find the candidates going on the road and getting in the trenches where they romance the electorate, while the electorate plays its part in the charade by venting its frustrations. Large rallies like those that once graced the coliseum in Rome become common fare. Here the ghost of wrath is exorcized from the belly of the beast with campaign rhetoric and promises as the remedy.
It is a dreamlike experience and nothing short of a religious transformation as one candidate is meant to personify change and hope while the other more of the same and despair. One candidate is charismatic transporting the electorate to the promise land while the other candidate is seen to block the path to this utopia.
The charismatic candidate lifts the electorate out of its passivity, if only for a moment, while the other candidate is seen to offer no lifelines.
The candidates know there is powerful need to believe. So, they look for hooks like in a popular song to create slogans and catch phrases to ride the tide to victory.
Voters long for the assurance that the candidate can wave a magic wand and quell their fears. This means candidates play on voters’ self-ignorance. If voters don’t know themselves than they are vulnerable to the puppet master, to the magician that has the sleight-of-hand skills to manipulate the moment to his candidacy. This strategy of quadrennial madness is based on hate.
“THE WHAT” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
The nightmare of fear is one its boundaries.
The brokers of fear play on voters’ sense of lack, that is, the belief that voters cannot extricate themselves out of their paradoxical dilemma without governmental help. Credit card debt is not their fault. It was necessary to maintain their standard of living, which they no longer could afford. Having obsolescent skills is not their fault. Employers expected them to get more appropriate technical skills on their own time and at their own expense. How could they do that and keep up with the Jones? Voters are reminded of what they lack every four years with presidential candidates promising to mitigate this lack once in office.
The brokers of fear play on voters’ sense of limitations, that is, the belief that they don’t have the brains or brass to embrace their challenges. They need asset relief because what they are and what they have is all they see themselves capable of doing. They are a painted bird, victims of a society that has marginalized them. They believe they need help, and it is music to their ears when the candidate informs them help is on the way. Overachievers are the enemy.
The brokers of fear play up the hindrances to voters’ well being. Political speak is of barriers to economic, social, political, ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, psychological and personal justice. These barriers are seen as unjustly keeping voters from being all that they could be. They need the candidate once elected to knock down these hindrances, as they cannot see doing it on their own.
The brokers of fear play on voters’ paranoia, that is, those invisible but silent invaders lurking in the shadows that voters see compromising or stealing their identity or security.
Presidential candidates use quadrennial madness with the precision of religious zealots postulating doomsday scenarios as if this is the end of days. Voters are reminded of the enemy without but never the enemy within, which is a greater threat to their security. It is easier to sell other directed hate than to turn the light on self-hatred.
In voters’ lack, they see a champion who will erase their nightmares. In their limitations, they see a leader who will remedy their anxieties of low self-worth. In being haunted by barriers, they see a social engineer who will lift these hindrances. In a climate of deception, they see a straight shooter who will ease their paranoia.
“THE WHERE” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
The prize of the presidency may be an ambition that the candidate has harbored since a lad. Lincoln confessed as much to a friend saying, “I’ve always wanted to be president even as a small child.”
So, the heart of the candidate wants his moment with history. It probably never occurred to him that the obstacle to this ambition is where hate resides. In good times, hate transmogrifies easily into personal attacks that vary from the petty to the scandalous, but these are not good times. Troubles are poignant and disaster looms on the horizon. It is a time when quadrennial madness must vent its spleen. It is a time of war between MAIN STREET and WALL STREET, as if they had nothing in common.
Candidates make Wall Street the fall guy for the sins of Main Street. It is an easy target because the wealth creators and brokers of wealth live the life that books and films are made of, and so Wall Street is an easy to hate.
But it takes two to tango.
The subprime meltdown took buyers as well as sellers to the cleaners. They were co-conspirators who didn’t mind playing quick and dirty with real estate loans, loans both buyers and sellers knew were bogus contracts. But who’s to worry, house prices always go up, don’t they?
Hedge fund operators didn’t mind increasing the risk and complicating the process because it was only paper transactions. They took their cut and moved the derivatives on. Everyone was complicit in the affair. With every economic collapse, there must be a rogue and a victim. Main Street was the victim and the roguish greed of Wall Street was the scoundrel. No one mentions that greed works two ways. Main Street was living beyond its means.
This failure of Main Street to grow up and act adult and Wall Street to act responsibly has come to roost. Public trust has gone up in smoke. Panic has reduced the climate to bailouts, rescue and stimulus packages with money that does not exist. The Federal Reserve says, “No problem, we’ll print more.”
Hate always finds a culprit. What better one than deregulation and the failure of oversight? The fact is Wall Street has created such a web of financial wizardry with its instruments of intrigue that nobody, and that means nobody knows what will and won’t work because the problem is buried in the deception.
Before Americans were no longer buying American made automobiles, before air travel became as uncomfortable as covered wagons, before the steel mills were shutting down and Americans were importing steel, before American manufacturing became a hollow industry, before exports were only a fraction of imports, before quality education became measured by money not performance, before high school graduates couldn’t read and write, before college test scores in science and math were the lowest in the international community, before our roads, rails, bridges and rivers were wanting for attention, before our dependence on foreign oil was a punishing reality, the man on Main Street and Wall Street knew there was a problem, but chose rhetoric to resolve. Presidential candidates know this and use it to suit them.
“THE HOW” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
Presidential candidates have a way of transcending reality creating a motion picture in our heads. They take us out of our angst and into our pleasure zones, bypassing the dark corners of our minds that terrify us. It is the same mechanism used in religion. Religion draws our attention away from “what is” to “what could be” without any need for proof or verification. Have you ever notice God is always telling preachers to do this or to do that, and no one accuses them of schizophrenia?
Well, presidential candidates do the same. They tell us they are going to cut taxes, boost incomes, create jobs, and give relief on school loans. They promise to find a way to offer universal health coverage and to see that everyone has access to a college education. They have a drop-dead date when we will no longer be dependence on foreign oil, and promise to reduce hydrocarbon emission by 80 percent by mid-century, of course, when they are no longer in office. They paint a picture of sparkling clear water, fresh air, green pastures, and money in our deep pockets. You don’t have to die to enjoy paradise for it is heave-on-earth.
The rhetoric is successful because we as voters want to believe. We want our ambivalence dashed to pieces. It is all about want and not about need.
What we need is a dwelling to live in but what we want is a fancy house we can’t afford. What we need is transportation to get to and from work but what we want is a huge gas-guzzler that puts us high above the traffic. What we need is a balance diet of meat, fruits and vegetables but what we want are empty calories in food and drink that makes us overweight but feel good. What we need is exercise to maintain mind and body health but what we want is a pill to bypass the need.
We voters know what we need but we don’t want presidential candidates to remind us of what we need.
We voters desire the good life, and look for presidential candidates to assure us that one; we deserve it, and two, that their candidacy has the formula to provide such satisfaction.
We don’t want to hear life is not fair, that some are more gifted than others. Neither do we want to hear about equal opportunity nor about the small business owner who works twelve or fourteen hours a day seven days a week to meet the bills with little profit, but about the employees who work for the owner who haven’t had a raise in five years.
“The how” of the politics of hate operates playing one group against another, dividing and conquering, while talking almost incessantly about building a community. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if MAIN STREET and WALL STREET were pulling in the same direction rather than pushing against each other?
That is not possible in “the how” of the politics of hate because there has to be a fall guy, the Bush Administration, some ethnic group, something that can build the consensus of hate at one pole against the opposite pole. If a sitting president’s popularity is low, as if president Bush’s, he is the punching bag of both presidential candidates. You would think the president is an authority on to himself.
Supposedly, the Executive Branch of the presidency is checked and balanced by the Legislative Branch or the US Congress, and they both are checked and balanced by the Judicial Branch or the US Supreme Court. Where were these other two branches in the affair? Do we have a putative dictatorship? I don’t think so.
Why do we have 435 Congressmen and women, 100 Senators, and nine Supreme Court Justices if the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, the collapse of the economy, the high energy prices at the fuel pump, rising unemployment, the pressing recession, and all the rest if they are the exclusive fault of the president?
THE MYTH OF QUADRENNIAL MADNESS
Every four-year voters look for a new president to rescue them from the reality of their ways. They love the utopian platforms of the two parties, which deceive them with hope. This approach is successful because there is something in them for everyone. The candidate’s words sooth us as they tell us we come first when we know better.
It is music to our ears when our favorite candidate tells us change is on the way but we don’t have to change, don’t have to tighten our seatbelts, don’t have to make sacrifices, don’t have to grin and bare it at all much less for a year or two, don’t need to do anything but go out and vote because “as soon as I am elected . . ..”
Presidential candidates talk about change, change in administration, change in policies, and change in parties. They talk about reform, reform from the way it is to the way it will be. But doesn’t change and reform require sacrifice? Don’t they involve failures and setbacks as the change models work out the flaws? Won’t things get worse before they get better? If so, why are we not hearing about this?
Voters understand there is no possibility of reform or change without pain and inconvenience except cosmetically. Change and reform take nine times more courage than hope. Courage involves action; hope waits for results.
There is little talk in a presidential campaign about austerity, about the possibility of losing our dominate status in the world community, about the language and technical skills required in a global economy, about the changing complexion of the new world order, about the US being a player but no longer the dominate player, about the danger of embracing the world as it was not as it is, about progress no longer being our most important product, as the planet is dying because of the insanity of progress.
With more than two billion souls on this planet making less in a year than the average American makes in a week, and with Americans consuming 25 percent of the world’s energy resources while being only 5 percent of the world’s population, there is a disparity of wealth and health that must be addressed, or the world may one day self-implode.
James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 30, 2008
“We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.”
Caleb C. Colton (1780 – 1832), English clergyman
BEING IN BUT NOT OF POLITICS
In the presidential campaign of 1964, when incumbent President Lyndon Johnson ran against Senator Barry Goldwater, I was president of the Young Republicans of Marion County (Indianapolis, Indiana). I had previously been asked to run for the House of Representatives by a delegation of Republicans from my district, which had been recently gerrymandered to ensure a Republican Representative in Congress. I demurred. I was involved in politics but I was not of politics.
I had gotten involved in politics, as I was a friend of Mayor Settles of Lawrence, Indiana, a suburb of Indianapolis, where I lived. He appointed me Secretary to the Board of Zoning Appeals of Lawrence Township, which was in a rapid growth mode at the time. As leader of the Young Republicans, I was active in the Goldwater Presidential Campaign, organizing canvassing and a Young Republican rally in which the governor of the State of Indiana and senator Goldwater’s son took part.
You get a sense of the energy, excitement, and contention surrounding presidential politics within and without the “perimeters of hate.”
It is a surreal climate made more so when you find yourself sitting across the kitchen table in a lawyer friend’s home (Lloyd DeWester) with Governor Matthew Welsh and Lee Hamilton, a member of the House of Representative from Noblesville’s, going over campaign strategy.
Forty-two years later, Representative Hamilton, now a private citizen, along with James Baker, formerly of the George H. W. Bush administration, would head up the “Iraq Study Group Report” and present it to President George W. Bush in 2006.
Now, nearly a half-century later, you remember the intensity, irrationality, and the hysteria surrounding the campaign, and look back seasoned with life at the madness of it all.
QUADRENNIAL MADNESS TODAY
Hatred and vituperation if anything have increased exponentially over forty-four years (1964 – 2008).
Decency, proportion, humor, reason, and good will have gone up in flames fueled by slanderous rhetoric, negative ads, and improbable promises. I voted by mail as soon as it was possible, and given what is to follow, I feel obliged to tell you I voted for a Democrat, Senator Barak Obama. He doesn’t come unscathed in this missive nor does his opponent.
That said I never expected the day would come in my lifetime that I, a white middle class American, would have an opportunity to vote for a black man. But that is not why I voted for him. His intellect and sober bearing resonate with my spirit, as much as his rhetoric does not. I think of Adlai Stevenson, also of Illinois, twice nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, but in the twentieth century where eloquence and elitism were held in contempt.
Senator Obama shares a common eloquence with Stevenson and another man from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln. The challenges for the new president, should Obama be elected, are as huge as they were for Honest Abe. Like Lincoln, he is mainly untried but shares Lincoln’s smarts, turn of mind, and brooding power.
There are several dimensions to this quadrennial madness, which is bounded by what I call “the hate” of why, what, where, and how. Negative campaigning is abhorred by both candidates, who always promise to maintain a positive campaign, but ultimately resort to mud slinging because hate in politics sells, and nowhere better than on the Internet where legends can be created that don’t have a grain of truth to them.
“THE WHY” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
The United States of America in the truest sense is neither a democracy nor a republic, but a fragile linchpin between the two attempting to be both.
Once a member of the House of Representatives is elected, there is more than an eighty percent chance that he or she will be reelected until he or she dies or becomes caught in some type of scandal.
Since Congressman are elected every two years, they spend most of their time campaigning for the next election, while spending from Tuesday to Thursday in Washington, D.C., if that much time with the balance in their home district or on some jaunt about the globe at the taxpayers expense.
Senators are elected for six-year terms, and also reelected more than sixty-five percent of the time. Senators Stevens of Alaska, recently found guilty of corruption, is running for reelection, while Senator Byrd of West Virginia, former member of the Ku Klux Klan, has grown old in the senate where he has been since 1958.
Longevity is much the same for federal and municipal court judges, while Supreme Court Justices are lifetime positions. The only level where longevity is not the norm is at the governor’s level. They can serve only two four-year terms, and often fall short of that.
Currently, the Congress of the United States enjoys popularity in the single digits with the electorate, which is even below President George W. Bush.
Presidential campaigns find the candidates going on the road and getting in the trenches where they romance the electorate, while the electorate plays its part in the charade by venting its frustrations. Large rallies like those that once graced the coliseum in Rome become common fare. Here the ghost of wrath is exorcized from the belly of the beast with campaign rhetoric and promises as the remedy.
It is a dreamlike experience and nothing short of a religious transformation as one candidate is meant to personify change and hope while the other more of the same and despair. One candidate is charismatic transporting the electorate to the promise land while the other candidate is seen to block the path to this utopia.
The charismatic candidate lifts the electorate out of its passivity, if only for a moment, while the other candidate is seen to offer no lifelines.
The candidates know there is powerful need to believe. So, they look for hooks like in a popular song to create slogans and catch phrases to ride the tide to victory.
Voters long for the assurance that the candidate can wave a magic wand and quell their fears. This means candidates play on voters’ self-ignorance. If voters don’t know themselves than they are vulnerable to the puppet master, to the magician that has the sleight-of-hand skills to manipulate the moment to his candidacy. This strategy of quadrennial madness is based on hate.
“THE WHAT” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
The nightmare of fear is one its boundaries.
The brokers of fear play on voters’ sense of lack, that is, the belief that voters cannot extricate themselves out of their paradoxical dilemma without governmental help. Credit card debt is not their fault. It was necessary to maintain their standard of living, which they no longer could afford. Having obsolescent skills is not their fault. Employers expected them to get more appropriate technical skills on their own time and at their own expense. How could they do that and keep up with the Jones? Voters are reminded of what they lack every four years with presidential candidates promising to mitigate this lack once in office.
The brokers of fear play on voters’ sense of limitations, that is, the belief that they don’t have the brains or brass to embrace their challenges. They need asset relief because what they are and what they have is all they see themselves capable of doing. They are a painted bird, victims of a society that has marginalized them. They believe they need help, and it is music to their ears when the candidate informs them help is on the way. Overachievers are the enemy.
The brokers of fear play up the hindrances to voters’ well being. Political speak is of barriers to economic, social, political, ethnic, racial, religious, cultural, psychological and personal justice. These barriers are seen as unjustly keeping voters from being all that they could be. They need the candidate once elected to knock down these hindrances, as they cannot see doing it on their own.
The brokers of fear play on voters’ paranoia, that is, those invisible but silent invaders lurking in the shadows that voters see compromising or stealing their identity or security.
Presidential candidates use quadrennial madness with the precision of religious zealots postulating doomsday scenarios as if this is the end of days. Voters are reminded of the enemy without but never the enemy within, which is a greater threat to their security. It is easier to sell other directed hate than to turn the light on self-hatred.
In voters’ lack, they see a champion who will erase their nightmares. In their limitations, they see a leader who will remedy their anxieties of low self-worth. In being haunted by barriers, they see a social engineer who will lift these hindrances. In a climate of deception, they see a straight shooter who will ease their paranoia.
“THE WHERE” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
The prize of the presidency may be an ambition that the candidate has harbored since a lad. Lincoln confessed as much to a friend saying, “I’ve always wanted to be president even as a small child.”
So, the heart of the candidate wants his moment with history. It probably never occurred to him that the obstacle to this ambition is where hate resides. In good times, hate transmogrifies easily into personal attacks that vary from the petty to the scandalous, but these are not good times. Troubles are poignant and disaster looms on the horizon. It is a time when quadrennial madness must vent its spleen. It is a time of war between MAIN STREET and WALL STREET, as if they had nothing in common.
Candidates make Wall Street the fall guy for the sins of Main Street. It is an easy target because the wealth creators and brokers of wealth live the life that books and films are made of, and so Wall Street is an easy to hate.
But it takes two to tango.
The subprime meltdown took buyers as well as sellers to the cleaners. They were co-conspirators who didn’t mind playing quick and dirty with real estate loans, loans both buyers and sellers knew were bogus contracts. But who’s to worry, house prices always go up, don’t they?
Hedge fund operators didn’t mind increasing the risk and complicating the process because it was only paper transactions. They took their cut and moved the derivatives on. Everyone was complicit in the affair. With every economic collapse, there must be a rogue and a victim. Main Street was the victim and the roguish greed of Wall Street was the scoundrel. No one mentions that greed works two ways. Main Street was living beyond its means.
This failure of Main Street to grow up and act adult and Wall Street to act responsibly has come to roost. Public trust has gone up in smoke. Panic has reduced the climate to bailouts, rescue and stimulus packages with money that does not exist. The Federal Reserve says, “No problem, we’ll print more.”
Hate always finds a culprit. What better one than deregulation and the failure of oversight? The fact is Wall Street has created such a web of financial wizardry with its instruments of intrigue that nobody, and that means nobody knows what will and won’t work because the problem is buried in the deception.
Before Americans were no longer buying American made automobiles, before air travel became as uncomfortable as covered wagons, before the steel mills were shutting down and Americans were importing steel, before American manufacturing became a hollow industry, before exports were only a fraction of imports, before quality education became measured by money not performance, before high school graduates couldn’t read and write, before college test scores in science and math were the lowest in the international community, before our roads, rails, bridges and rivers were wanting for attention, before our dependence on foreign oil was a punishing reality, the man on Main Street and Wall Street knew there was a problem, but chose rhetoric to resolve. Presidential candidates know this and use it to suit them.
“THE HOW” OF THE POLITICS OF HATE
Presidential candidates have a way of transcending reality creating a motion picture in our heads. They take us out of our angst and into our pleasure zones, bypassing the dark corners of our minds that terrify us. It is the same mechanism used in religion. Religion draws our attention away from “what is” to “what could be” without any need for proof or verification. Have you ever notice God is always telling preachers to do this or to do that, and no one accuses them of schizophrenia?
Well, presidential candidates do the same. They tell us they are going to cut taxes, boost incomes, create jobs, and give relief on school loans. They promise to find a way to offer universal health coverage and to see that everyone has access to a college education. They have a drop-dead date when we will no longer be dependence on foreign oil, and promise to reduce hydrocarbon emission by 80 percent by mid-century, of course, when they are no longer in office. They paint a picture of sparkling clear water, fresh air, green pastures, and money in our deep pockets. You don’t have to die to enjoy paradise for it is heave-on-earth.
The rhetoric is successful because we as voters want to believe. We want our ambivalence dashed to pieces. It is all about want and not about need.
What we need is a dwelling to live in but what we want is a fancy house we can’t afford. What we need is transportation to get to and from work but what we want is a huge gas-guzzler that puts us high above the traffic. What we need is a balance diet of meat, fruits and vegetables but what we want are empty calories in food and drink that makes us overweight but feel good. What we need is exercise to maintain mind and body health but what we want is a pill to bypass the need.
We voters know what we need but we don’t want presidential candidates to remind us of what we need.
We voters desire the good life, and look for presidential candidates to assure us that one; we deserve it, and two, that their candidacy has the formula to provide such satisfaction.
We don’t want to hear life is not fair, that some are more gifted than others. Neither do we want to hear about equal opportunity nor about the small business owner who works twelve or fourteen hours a day seven days a week to meet the bills with little profit, but about the employees who work for the owner who haven’t had a raise in five years.
“The how” of the politics of hate operates playing one group against another, dividing and conquering, while talking almost incessantly about building a community. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if MAIN STREET and WALL STREET were pulling in the same direction rather than pushing against each other?
That is not possible in “the how” of the politics of hate because there has to be a fall guy, the Bush Administration, some ethnic group, something that can build the consensus of hate at one pole against the opposite pole. If a sitting president’s popularity is low, as if president Bush’s, he is the punching bag of both presidential candidates. You would think the president is an authority on to himself.
Supposedly, the Executive Branch of the presidency is checked and balanced by the Legislative Branch or the US Congress, and they both are checked and balanced by the Judicial Branch or the US Supreme Court. Where were these other two branches in the affair? Do we have a putative dictatorship? I don’t think so.
Why do we have 435 Congressmen and women, 100 Senators, and nine Supreme Court Justices if the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, the collapse of the economy, the high energy prices at the fuel pump, rising unemployment, the pressing recession, and all the rest if they are the exclusive fault of the president?
THE MYTH OF QUADRENNIAL MADNESS
Every four-year voters look for a new president to rescue them from the reality of their ways. They love the utopian platforms of the two parties, which deceive them with hope. This approach is successful because there is something in them for everyone. The candidate’s words sooth us as they tell us we come first when we know better.
It is music to our ears when our favorite candidate tells us change is on the way but we don’t have to change, don’t have to tighten our seatbelts, don’t have to make sacrifices, don’t have to grin and bare it at all much less for a year or two, don’t need to do anything but go out and vote because “as soon as I am elected . . ..”
Presidential candidates talk about change, change in administration, change in policies, and change in parties. They talk about reform, reform from the way it is to the way it will be. But doesn’t change and reform require sacrifice? Don’t they involve failures and setbacks as the change models work out the flaws? Won’t things get worse before they get better? If so, why are we not hearing about this?
Voters understand there is no possibility of reform or change without pain and inconvenience except cosmetically. Change and reform take nine times more courage than hope. Courage involves action; hope waits for results.
There is little talk in a presidential campaign about austerity, about the possibility of losing our dominate status in the world community, about the language and technical skills required in a global economy, about the changing complexion of the new world order, about the US being a player but no longer the dominate player, about the danger of embracing the world as it was not as it is, about progress no longer being our most important product, as the planet is dying because of the insanity of progress.
With more than two billion souls on this planet making less in a year than the average American makes in a week, and with Americans consuming 25 percent of the world’s energy resources while being only 5 percent of the world’s population, there is a disparity of wealth and health that must be addressed, or the world may one day self-implode.
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