Showing all posts in Afterthought

All year, I beat my head against my desk looking for the words to explain Trump’s unorthodox mode of “Trumping”. Time and again, those who disagreed with his goals said that his methods would fail. It would be easy, but in sufficient, to chalk it up to “wishful thinking” on their part. Over Christmas, it all came to me in a word: gadfly. That’s what Trump does.

The gadfly bites horses and makes them jump. Socially, the figurative “gadfly” prods and pokes at the comfortable status quo, stirs unrest, and splashes ice-cold water on the slumber party—all to provoke thought and change…

…Ah, change… Change is annoying and difficult. That’s the thing about it. We love to talk about change in results, but we rarely want to take the annoying and even painful steps to get those results. We tell ourselves that we want the results, but all to often we would rather live in the comfort of compromise and unreceived gifts.  · · · →

Western culture has gone off the deep end. Too many people construct their own sets of values, merely based on the notion that it “seems like a good idea”. They do it with political-economic principles, with religion, business, relationships, spirituality, even science.

Why is it such a big secret that ideas aren’t right or wrong because they “seem good” in our ignorance? If an economic idea is good, then it will solve money problems. If a war strategy is good, then it will win the war. If an exercise method is good then it will lead to a healthier, stronger body. If a business idea is good then the business will grow. But, if money has problems—if the war is lost—if the body becomes injured or unhealthy—if the business fails, then the ideas that led to that failure can’t possibly be good ideas.

People don’t seem to have this figured out these days.  · · · →

You may have noticed that news stories haven’t changed much over the last month. This scandal here, Mueller’s unfinished investigation there, Trump vs mass media over there, the tax bill is full of theatrics, Republicans don’t get along, the Democrats are about to take over the world—this time for real—, and the most missed story: While everyone is distracted with repeating headlines, Trump is ramming a very Conservative agenda through Congress.

Why recycle headlines? It seems that the country just doesn’t care anymore about the news. Maybe the lack of interest is tied to a lack of any news to write about—which may also be tied to the floundering new industry. It’s a tossup anymore—how many articles can you view this week without being asked to buy a subscription at the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Financial Times, or the Washington Post?

Is it possible that, for whatever reason, a decade of bad employment drove people to invent their own businesses; now, the economy is headed up, everyone is working—one way or another—and, so it seems, people either lack the concern or the time to worry about Washington?  · · · →

We live in a world dominated by tone of voice. It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter why you say it, it doesn’t matter what evil you mask behind what you say, it doesn’t matter if you lie in what you say—it only matters how you say it. That overemphasis on “teamwork” and “going along to get along” has downsized the necessary disruptors that made companies successful and made the country too anemic to deal with the political environment today.

Everyone gets verbally abusive, given the right circumstances. We all want progress in some area. Our squabbling is usually about which areas of life and country need the most progress. When things don’t go our way, we start verbally bashing.

For far too long, we thought politics were okay because the president didn’t get verbally abusive. But, half of the nation was fed up with mellow tone of voice without progress where they wanted it, so they elected someone who had the anti-nice tone.  · · · →