“The chief business of the American people is business.”
- Calvin Coolidge, 1925
“I went back to Ohio / But my city was gone”
- The Pretenders, 1984
My 1980’s childhood growing up in Worcester, Massachusetts was a blessing that perhaps I never fully appreciated until having sons of my own, now ages 9 and 10, and especially so through the darkness and despair of this political season.
It’s just hasn't been easy to try to explain to them how the nation I love so much - the nation of Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt, and Washington...
...has come to this.
National conversation so unattractive - from its lack of intellectual rigor, of manners, and of even lip service to that most blessed of American virtues -freedom and the role that limiting the size and scope of government plays in its preservation.
So as a father and a businessman, what is the best explanation and response?
How do we communicate and embody that beautiful and so admirable concept of Virtue, the “sense of our own interest in the preservation and prosperity of a free government” without sounding like a total hypocrite or a “martyr” through standing on principle as others propel themselves forward on bread, circus and nonsense!
Now, both by constitution and choice I pride myself as an inveterate optimist but try as I might I can’t reframe this in a fully positive light.
Something very special, civic idealism, has been fundamentally lost.
I feel this loss badly for my sons, who unfortunately will not grow up in a world as I did where admirable role models could be found in the national conversation.
But...
These modern times of ours, so empowered by technology, are filled with inspiration and empowerment like never before.
We just need to find them in different places.
Places beyond the standard societal institutions, beyond government and traditional education, religion, and health care.
I mean really, who do you think is more likely to solve the challenges of modern transportation - innovation master companies like Tesla and Uber, or the State of California and the National Highway Administration?
Or address the challenge of delivering high quality, low-cost health care - legendary winners like Apple and Walmart or the AMA and the VA?
Or educate our children, edupreneurs like Coursera, edX, Khan Academy, K12, Minerva, and Udacity or tired bureaucracies like the public teachers unions and mandated standardized testing regimes?
Or, for peace and friendship amongst people and nations - Facebook, LinkedIn, and Airbnb, or the fundamentally conflicted synagogue, church, and mosque?
A pair of important points to be made here.
First, all of us, through connections made around the world for business and pleasure by the click of a button, are able to be empowered and inspired in ways big and small.
So while it is sad that my sons will not get to live in that decent, homespun, and wonderfully dignified America of Arnold Palmer and Vin Scully, it is beyond awesome they will live in a world connected, working and playing together like never before.
The second point is that developing personal and professional proficiency in this brave new world is a beyond full-time vocation, habit, and way of being.
Doing so can and should easily “crowd out” any / all time and energy wasted in following and engaging with that which passes as “news.”
So sure, it is sad that our national life has come to this.
But this discouraging reality is far outweighed by the world of commerce, connection, learning, doing, possibility, and inspiration only growing more remarkable and awe - inducing by the day.
I suggest focusing on the latter.
Both your psyche and your wallet will thank you.