Managing Effective Organizations

Managing Effective Organizations

Many people who decry government, really government at all levels, claim that government is:

a.       Inefficient and therefore a waste of taxpayer money;

b.      Overly intrusive into the lives of ordinary citizens; and

c.       Ineffective, i.e., they never achieve their stated goals.

So, these voter-folks cast their precious ballots to elect people who espouse similar views, e.g., the Donald Trumps of the world. And the Donald Trumps of the world promise to reduce the size of government, its cost burden, and simultaneously, to make government work for all citizens.

Permit me to clarify my own views and how those views were formed; During my approximately 60 year working career, I worked for:

a.       large for-profit corporations—Firestone Guided Missile Division and Lockheed Missiles and Space Company as an engineer working on nuclear missile design and development;

b.      small-medium for-profit companies—management consulting at Management Systems Corporation and Peat, Marwick, Livingston (now KPMG), Practical Concepts, Inc., all carrying out program design and evaluation studies, both on aerospace projects, and later on public health systems;

c.       medium non-profit research at The Urban Institute, carrying out program evaluation studies;

d.      Large, i.e., Federal, government while working at the then Department of Health, Education & Welfare under both Presidents Carter and Reagan, running an evaluation office carrying out evaluation studies of public programs, mainly health related;

e.      And finally, my own nominally for-profit management consulting company carrying out studies in strategic planning, and program evaluation.

One of the many lessons I derived from this long working experience is that organizational size matters. That is, large, for-profit corporations resemble large government in many ways. They are equally bureaucratic, both share the same range of executive competence, both have dedicated and “casual” employees. So a large corporate entity can be compared with a federal government agency and you will find many shared characteristics.

There is also, obviously, a relatively large difference between the for-profit and not-for-profit world of corporate entities.  One could say, again obviously, that in one case the for-profit company seeks to maximize profit as its end game, while the other seeks to maximize its impact on its mission.  That distinction can reveal itself in many ways, some that we might view as undesirable, as for example when a Donald trump refuses to pay his  contractors and staff, thereby boosting his bottom line, or when a large banking entity decides to launder drug monies and establish offshore (i.e., untaxable) accounts for gangster drug lords.

Now consider the subject of high-level recruitment of executive staff for these varied organizations. One might assume that rational beings would always look for the most competent individuals to run organizations of any size, whether for-profit or other. On average, that assumption proves true, despite much evidence that we do not always succeed.  Many people believe, for example, that Carly Fiorina was a disaster as CEO of Hewlett Packard. Some arguably would disagree.

But few will argue openly that we would ever consider hiring someone who is basically antagonistic to the central mission and purposes of the entity they would manage.  For example, would you ever hire a global bank CEO who is antagonistic to the global banking end game? Someone, for example, who believed that global banks should be broken up because they are simply too large and counterproductive to world order? I think not.

So, why would we consider hiring people into the highest levels of government who are antagonistic to the central purposes of the agencies they will manage?

I am thinking here of Donald Trump’s list of cabinet appointments. Let’s look at one potential appointee: Betsy Devos to be Cabinet Secretary of Education.  Devos has zero experience running any large entities and, after inheriting her megamillions, has served as an advocate for the privatization of the country’s public school system. Neither she nor her children have ever attended public school and she advocates for what is called “school choice”, which seems to mean using public tax monies to finance private schools which are then largely unaccountable to the public.  According to Wikipedia:

“DeVos is a member of the Republican Party known for her advocacy of school choice, voucher programs, and ties to the Reformed Christian community. She was Republican National Committeewoman for Michigan from 1992 to 1997 and served as chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party from 1996 to 2000, with reelection to the post in 2003. DeVos has been a defender of the Detroit charter school system and she is a member of the board of the Foundation for Excellence in Education. She has served as chairwoman of the board of Alliance for School Choice and heads the All Children Matter PAC. DeVos is married to Dick DeVos, the former CEO of multi-level marketing company Amway, and is the daughter-in-law of billionaire and Amway co-founder Richard DeVos. Her brother, Erik Prince, a former U.S. Navy SEAL officer, is the founder of Blackwater USA.”

One can argue whether charter schools have been successful or not, and there is some considerable evidence they have been less than compelling, but it still seems at best odd that we would want Mrs. Devos to run a public education system with which she fundamentally disagrees.  She is a contradiction in terms as a Department of Education CEO.

Clearly, our elected representatives need to eliminate Mrs. Devos as a candidate for that position. Our children need and deserve an advocate for high quality, publically accountable, public education.

Let the Games Begin

In a recent New York Times article, actual Trump supporters, women in this case, were quoted as stating the following. I have combined into one segment the several views of the women interviewed:

“I voted for Trump because I wanted change. I feel like our economy has totally tanked. People do not have disposable income. I feel the last eight years have been a joke. Obama was out for himself. I don’t think he really respected the office. I think it was more about him being a celebrity than a president”.  -- Obama was out for himself . . . it was more about him being a celebrity than a president? And you weren’t speaking of the definitive celebrity, Donald Trump, but of President Obama???

Trump’s a successful businessman, and I feel like that’s what America needs to bring our economy back. I don’t think Donald Trump is really Republican, to be quite honest with you. He’s not in a box. One of the most attractive things to me is he can’t be boxed. He wants to bring America back to what it was before. I don’t think it’s taking us back to women have no rights or slavery days. – Trump is almost the definitive unsuccessful businessman. He has had, I believe six bankruptcies. He does not pay the people, both staff and contractors, who work for him. Many/most of the things that bear his name are not produced by him. He engages in fraud, such as Trump University.  And he consistently indicates that he does not care about anyone but himself.

When Trump became my only choice, I felt he was the lesser of two evils. I had major issues with Hillary as far as ethics was concerned. It seems she feels that she is above the law and nothing ever seems to stick. I didn’t particularly like everything he was saying as far as building a wall, and doing this to immigrants. I looked at that more as bravado, his audience needed that to get the applause. – It is interesting to note how the Republican Party, Trump especially, laid on an image of Hillary that was almost wholly false.  People had issues with Hillary regarding her ethics?  And this Trump supporter had no trouble with Trump’s ethics? Really?

But there are allegations about killing people who get in her way — Vince Foster, people like that. Someone who has a big bravado is not as concerning to me as someone who might kill people who get in her way. – Another entirely fabricated event—the killing of Vince Foster, attributed incorrectly to Hillary so as to paint her as beyond all bounds of decency.  Foster committed suicide, and many subsequent investigations reached the same conclusion. Yet, the folks who hate Hillary (and Bill) continued to assign her at least partial blame, with absolutely no evidence. But when did Hillary-haters need facts to back up their cause?

I felt he had what it would take to get the country back on track. Being P.C. was going to kill the country. He speaks his mind and because of that, he’s not going to lie to you. I don’t want immigrants, accepting them without doing the background checks. I don’t want to live in a country where we have to worry about going to the movie theater or the mall. Let’s be on the offensive, versus the defensive.” – Really, Trump won’t lie to you? How do you know Trump is lying? Well, whenever he opens his mouth and words come tumbling out, he is lying.  Trump is afflicted with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as well as a Sociopathic Personality Disorder. Folks like him lie all the time. And he has been lying to us throughout his campaign, and he will continue to lie throughout his administration, until he gets impeached.  But that assertion has been well documented throughout the campaign, so it is not exactly a hidden story about the man.  So, to reject Hillary and accept Trump on the basis of which one lies is so absurd that it beggars belief.

So, really . . . actual sentient humans said those things?  

The last 8 years has been a joke?

Trump is the “lesser of two evils”?

This leads me to consider whether we are dealing with some form of cognitive dissonance.

Cognitive Dissonance -- In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress or discomfort experienced by an individual who holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values at the same time; performs an action that is contradictory to their beliefs, ideas, or values; or is confronted by new information that conflicts with existing beliefs, ideas or values.                                        

Dissonance is felt when people are confronted with information that is inconsistent with their beliefs. If the dissonance is not reduced by changing one's belief, the dissonance can result in restoring consonance through misperception, rejection or refutation of the information, seeking support from others who share the beliefs, and attempting to persuade others.

This describes almost perfectly what we can observe with Trump and his supporters throughout the campaign and subsequent to his victory via the Electoral College. All contrary views, regardless of their source, are rejected, and bubbles are formed around the supporters so they will receive nothing but supportive views about Trump.  And it is what Trump thrives on as a way of coping with his environment.

But why would folks follow down that path?

Because they’re racist or misogynist? Well, doubtless, some of his supporters deserve those labels, but perhaps not all.  That he still retains about 37% support suggests that something else is afoot within our population.

I think that we have a sizable population that has, a) been ignored for decades now, and b) finally heard someone call out to them in their perceived hour of need. The population believes itself to have been abandoned by our political system, while simultaneously being screwed out of life by people in power—mainly industrialists, bankers, and even, the government.  But note, please, that many people confuse the government with the industrialists when assigning blame for their personal plight.

And what is that plight you might ask? Well, their economic outlook is in the toilet, and many cannot make ends meet.  Coal miners would be a prime example. Mines are closing and have closed, and, often, coal miners have no alternatives. They are undereducated, having learned their trade on the job. Miners are similar to the mill workers of old, who complete a modest level of education, then go immediately into their trade. In olden times, the companies actually built homes, schools, and stores, so the workers were almost literally surrounded by the company for their entire lives, and then their kids would take their places.  You can find many similar examples throughout US industries, including the automobile industry. One can imagine that, even high tech would give rise to similar situations. The key is that the workers, however skilled they become at their chosen trade, acquire no flexibility when presented with an end to their particular jobs, as companies close, or shift their production to regions with lower wage levels.

And why do companies shift production to other lower wage regions? Well, they have to compete with other countries with lower levels of income. The companies must either become more productive, through such approaches as automation, or more simply by moving their means of production to low wage regions.  Note, even if the companies adopt more productive means of production, e.g., automation, the workers will still lose their jobs.

A solution to such problems might be to re-educate the workers in some other field wherein they might become more employable.  When the old Cannon/Pillowtex mills closed in Kannapolis, NC, for example, workers were offered a chance to obtain education/training in another field.  The problem with that solution is that many workers are middle aged and have no interest/capacity to undergo such training to retrofit their lives to the new environment.

So, we are left with an increasing population of workers who are unemployed and often unemployable.  Those workers will become bitter over time and look to officialdom for rescue.  When no rescue is forthcoming, they will become desperately unhappy and will continue to look for someone to blame.

As unions shrink in size and importance, union jobs also shrink in size and importance. The formerly union workers will continue to look for solutions from “officialdom”. Finding none, they will also be separated from the economy and will be angry.

Now, these folks will provide a ready audience for any political demagogue—see Donald Trump.

But we have in America an even larger audience for such demagogues. For example, almost immediately after Barack Obama was elected, the “Tea Party” was formed with support from people such as the Koch Brothers.  It now seems clear that the Tea Party really is the KKK wing of the Republican Party. So, we have a core of folks who might fit the racist label.

We also seem to have a large group who really, really dislike Hillary. Some women, for example, never forgave Hillary for staying with Bill after he rather publically managed to obtain a blowjob in the oval office, while eating a pizza and talking on the phone.  So, Hillary is forever a lost cause to that group. And they, apparently do not care what Trump does and says he does. And they also do not care that Trump has been married three times.

So, when you add up the pile of disaffected voters, they apparently give you that 37% who continue to support him, despite his deplorable record and behavior.  Now, whether that group will desert him as he continues to lie to them and fails to deliver on his promises is a question that is open at the moment. But, having committed themselves to this weird course, I would predict that they will allow him to lie in his defense, and to lay the blame for his failures at other doorsteps.

So, let the games begin. And may the worst of outcomes be avoided, although, at this stage, I cannot see how that might happen.

Minyan for a Grassroots Movement

Interesting life stage. No, not the current mess outside . . . all that ice covered with snow. No, I mean our mess just beginning in Washington. And the Drumpf isn’t even yet on board.  But his various swamp creatures, Paul Ryan, et al, are already hard at work dismantling what is left of the Great Society legacy of FDR and his followers.

Right out of the box, of course is the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). It will be replaced, I understand, with Trumpcare. What is Trumpcare you might ask? Well, Trumpcare is a promise to provide health care at some future stage, currently undefined to all those 20+ million folks who signed up for Obamacare. They won’t have any health care protection for a while, but hey, they didn’t have any before Obamacare kicked in either.  So, what’s the big deal? You must understand that the Drumpf first has to build his wall that the Mexicans are going to pay for (hahahahahahahahaha).  Oh, and while he is killing Obamacare, he plans to defund the Planned Parenthood clinics, through which a lot of folks get their prenatal care and cancer screenings. Republicans really hate it when all those folks get health care.

But Paul Ryan is a big thinker. He’s after way more than Obamacare. He wants to kill Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, and thinks he has them in his sights.  It is not yet clear how he plans to disenfranchise the many millions who currently collect from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Paul Ryan is a big thinker, but he doesn’t seem to be real accomplished at actually doing anything.  On Medicare, and perhaps even Medicaid, we think he wants to give folks vouchers to buy health care from your friendly neighborhood health insurance company—makes me wonder whether Paulie has his stock portfolio chocker-block full of private insurance company stocks.  A voucher. Yeah, that’s what we need . . . a voucher.  No rules of engagement. Just a voucher and a note saying, “Good luck, Paulie”.

Social Security is a bit tougher. I mean, how does he replace automatic payments each month from the government? Maybe, a voucher with a note saying, “we’re giving you discount coupons to WalMart.”

But then on other fronts, the republicans also seem to want to kill public education. And guess what, there too, they want to give folks vouchers to just go buy education for your kids.  A little unclear just why they dislike public education . . . maybe because it’s . . . public. They do seem to hate everything associated with Government, aside from, of course, themselves.  So, bye bye public education.  Oh, and then there’s that relationship between education levels and voters who support democrats.  Can’t have that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (Washington, DC) we still await the arrival of the new first family—the Drumpf and his daughter (surrogate first lady). I guess Melania will stay in New York, while Ivanka helps daddy-poo entertain all those important people. I guess Ivanka speaks English, so she’s less likely to embarrass her daddy-poo. Maybe Melania will oversee The Trump Towerland, while Daddy and Ivanka oversee the real action. One of the guys will meanwhile hold down the fort at Maralago, entertaining all of daddy’s Russian lenders, who seem to be manifold. Can’t have all those Russian and Chinese “investors” unhappy, can we?

All that makes me wonder where Vlad the Impaler will house his KGB-US headquarters.  Probably New York, but Maralago would make for relatively easier coming and going by submarine, wouldn’t it? Oh, it’s all going to be so entertaining, until someone shuts it all down, and we all enter the collective global toilet. But, until then, have fun folks.

On the subject of what to do, what to do, a dear friend came up with an idea. Barbara Thiede, a writer for our local newspaper, and a rabbi has come up with an idea she is calling Minyans for a Grassroots Movement. What is a Minyan, you might ask? Well, in the Jewish tradition, a Minyan is a group of at least ten folks who would form a quorum needed to say prayers. So, on this political front, the idea would be to gather a small group to send messages—phone calls, mail, e-mails—to our local, state and National political representatives on specific issues of concern. If any of the ten decide to prepare a message, they will send that message to each member of the Minyan. The members can then decide to write something similar, or cut and paste a supportive message. Then if each member sends that message to friends, the friends can also become supportive members, and so on.

The central idea is to get as many people as possible writing, or calling legislative representatives, whether those reps are of the same or different political persuasion. If your reps, like ours, are to the right of Atilla the Hun, they still need to hear from constituents, otherwise they will imagine they are acting with the complicit support of their voters.  Don’t let them think that.

So, that’s the message for the day.

Write or call your elected representatives. Do it often. Let them know how you feel about what they are doing or thinking of doing. Just do it.
Here is at least a starting list of elected representatives' contact information.

NORTH CAROLINA legislature:

Paul Newton = State Senator

Paul.Newton@ncleg.net 

Some House representatives:

Larry.Pittman@ncleg.net

Linda.Johnson2@ncleg.net 

US House & Senate:

Thom Tillis

202-224-6342

https://www.tillis.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email-me 

Richard Burr (US Senate)

202-224-3154

https://www.burr.senate.gov/contact/email 

Richard Hudson ( US House, district 8 in NC)

202-225-3715

https://hudson.house.gov/email-me/ 

Robert Pittenger (US House District 9)

202-225-1976

Ta ta . . .

2016

2016

I keep wondering. Have I ever seen a year like this?  And the answer is, hmmm . . . Yes, of course.

                .               Famous folks died . . . think 1963

                .               economic screw-up . . . think 1929, or 2000, or 2008

.            world in a mess . . . well, when wasn’t it? In my brief time on this spinning globe, we have had the Great Depression, WW II, the Korean “police action”, Vietnam, 9/11, and every year since

.            a screwed up election . . . hmmmm . . . maybe there you have something different.  I am told that the Rutherford Hayes election of 1876 bore some similarity in terms of corruption and awful characters. Samuel Tilden won the popular vote handily, but lost in a disputed recount process that awarded the needed electoral votes to the republican Hayes . . . hmmm . . . sound familiar?

.            And then there was that election in 2000. Remember that one, where Florida votes had to be hand tallied, but then our most corrupt justice in history, Tony Scalia, basically intervened to award the presidency to George W. Bush. Remember him? And that worked out so well, didn’t it? But still, the 2016 election is a standout. Not only did the Drumpf lose the national vote-count, but he seems not to understand what he actually has won. He may be our only President who can’t read.

So perhaps 2016 will go down in history as one of our more memorable years, maybe on its own merits, but more likely based on the likely disasters that will follow on the heels of electing the least qualified person in American history to the most important job our nation has on its books.

Now, to be fair, we still await the outcomes in his presidency. So, I may be writing a different kind of message at the end of 2017, assuming it is still legal to write about President Drumpf. And always assuming that our president does not start WW IV, the “war to end all wars” because it eliminates humankind. So, we will just have to wait and see what our “enfant-terrible” has in store for those of us who did not actually vote for him (a majority of voting Americans as it turns out).

So, bring it on 2017. We await your pleasure . . . or whatever the hell you actually deliver.

The Electoral College Has Spoken

So, it’s official. We have formally elected a deeply flawed and apparently amoral man to be President of our United States. One person with whom I am “friends” on Facebook posted a piece suggesting that, with the election of Donald Trump, God had answered the prayers of the Christian Faithful. And I thought, “Really, your concept of your God is that he decided that a narcissistic-sociopathic, congenital liar, and sexual predator who is incapable of ingesting written information so as to inform himself about the world, and who has been consistently a failure at virtually everything he decided to “manage”, should now be the leader of the Free World?  Wow, what a statement about your God.  See that might describe the actions of a “Satan", rather than a “God”.

But, let’s be rational, folks. My thought for the day is, the US election is the final proof that, either there is no God, or if one exists, She really does not care about or act upon the affairs of humankind. What more do we need to know . . . nothing to see here folks, move along . . .

And if that is true, as surely it must be, then why are we here at all?

Well, if we were not here, how could we eat snickerdoodles at Christmas time, or enjoy a cool brew from the Cabarrus Brewing Company? See what we would be missing? Oh, but I get your question . . . you mean, why are we anywhere?

Well, I guess there are two views on that subject. One view is that God waggled his/her finger and poof, we are all here. I know, I know, that’s really silly. But then there is the view that we are here because life exists everywhere, and if life exists everywhere, then why not here, and why not us? See, it could be simply random creativity, acting over billions of years on millions of floating rocks that are attracted to fiery things we call suns, or stars. And given enough millennia on all those floating rocks, we are as likely to emerge as a monarch butterfly. Turns out anything is equally plausible.  See, I could as easily have turned out to be a dragonfly. But I didn’t . . . maybe in a past life?

Ok, so we’re here. Now how does that explain the Donald?

Well, here’s where the randomness thing enters this equation. Turns out not all creatures are created equal after all. Our brains are wired differently, partly due to our genes, and partly due to simple variations on a theme. Some folks are darker in skin tone than other folks. Some have blond hair, while others have black hair. Who knew? And internally, even more variation shows up.  Some people seem programmed to prefer calculus to surfboarding. Some folks look up at the sky and wonder why . . . while others look at the sky and run for the UV blocking crème.  Even funnier, some folks turn out to be guys, some are gals, and some are both or partly this and partly that. Some resemble guys, but are really gals, and vice versa. See, it’s all just variations on a theme, and if you keep producing variations for enough millennia, you get a lot of really different things and folks.

Think. Over time, that variation machine produced Julius Caesar, Jesus Christ, William Shakespeare, Adolph Hitler, that Mussolini dude, Adlai Stevenson, Franklin Roosevelt, Jack Benny, and even Donald Trump.  So, the Donald ain’t all that unusual. Many dudes are similar to him, as it turns out, but most fade into oblivion because they aren’t born into extreme wealth and a racist family.

Now, it’s also the case that most of the Donald Trumps of the world don’t come into great power, including the many dudes who have his deep flaws. Mainly, I guess we can blame his money which, when combined with his character flaws led him to become a kind of silly television actor. Well, actor is the wrong term and insults all real actors.  Apparently, “reality TV stars” are not real actors, although they employ the same kind of public venue.

See here we have another variation on a theme, produced by our perpetual variation machine—a personality warped by whatever produces narcissism, sociopathy, ADHD, and then further warped by exposure to unlimited amounts of personal money, and then finally to unlimited exposure to millions of fans on TV, producing . . . MonsterMan. This particular personality disordered creature seems to fail at anything it tries to actually “manage”, but seems successful at appearing in public in front of large audiences and insulting people.  He/it is really good at that game. Just don’t let him be “in charge” of anything.

So, see, that God thingy did not have to have anything to do with producing the Trumpster. He’s just another variation on a theme, however unlikely it might seem. I mean, who would have predicted Adolph Hitler? Happily, for all of us ordinary dudes and dudettes, the rules of chance seem to favor producing more Gandhi’s or Churchill’s, than Hitler’s or Trumps.

So, in this season of supposed good will, we ought to try and act like it, at least towards our family and folks we think of as friends. Try to smile and think happy thoughts, especially toward those who might be less fortunate than we are.  Sharing some of our good fortune with others seems a nice thing to do, regardless of our dark thoughts about The Drumpf.

And then, after the season of good cheer, begin thinking and even acting so as to rid the nation of the influence of the Donald. We’re stuck with him and his companions in evil for a while, but we need to begin working on getting rid of them . . . legally and peacefully.

So, smile for a while, and then get serious.  This Nation has not yet run out of smart, caring people who are willing to seek public office. Look around. They will appear.

Happy holidays folks.

Lifetime Special Events

If one is fortunate enough to live a long life, it is likely that a series of events will be witnessed that are transformative, either personally, or of the world, sometimes both. We accumulate these events in our memory bank, and they never leave, but instead form a collective view of the world in which we live.

When I was still pretty little, December 7, 1941 occurred. I was a mere 7-almost, when we listened to the radio broadcast announcing that catastrophic event. Two thousand of our countrymen died in that attack, and our world, indeed even my little world changed as a result.  We lived at the time in Manhattan, in a little flat on Second Avenue, and even though I knew little of the world, it became clear that the world had changed suddenly and might never again return.  I knew it from blackouts, and rationing, and my uncle becoming something called a Seabee, and going overseas, eventually into the South Pacific.  We listened to frequent radio broadcasts by the President and life became The War.

And life went on, and somehow we survived.

Fast forward to 1962 . . . more specifically October 1962. Here is a clip from The State Department Office of the Historian:

“The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was a direct and dangerous confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and was the moment when the two superpowers came closest to nuclear conflict. The crisis was unique in a number of ways, featuring calculations and miscalculations as well as direct and secret communications and miscommunications between the two sides. The dramatic crisis was also characterized by the fact that it was primarily played out at the White House and the Kremlin level with relatively little input from the respective bureaucracies typically involved in the foreign policy process.”

I was an engineer, engaged at the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company in Sunnyvale, California producing the Polaris missile, a submarine launched ballistic, intercontinental missile capable of reaching the Soviet Union.  When we became aware of the ships carrying missiles to be placed in Cuba, and aimed at the US, and we listened to the broadcasts emanating from Washington, we would gather outside of work at a local pub after work. We sat there and engaged in lengthy conversations about where we should all go, were the missiles to begin flying.  Should we leave the Bay Area and head for the mountains? Might it be safer somewhere along the coast? Given the relatively dark professional world in which we were engaged, producing missiles that could carry ten nuclear warheads each, capable of destroying a large swath of the world, our speculations were not idle.  And since this “event” lasted over several days, with the outcome always in doubt, it was nerve wracking at the least.

And again, the world survived, and we remained within that world.

Fast forward now to 1963, specifically November 22, 1963. We lived in San Francisco at the time, and my home office for the consulting firm in which I now worked was in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I had flown from San Francisco to Boston that day.  As I was driving in my rental car from the Boston airport to our Cambridge office, a news flash came on the car radio—John F. Kennedy had just been shot while in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Slowly, the agonizing news kept coming. Then that dread announcement; the President was dead. John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. I sat in the car, in the driveway of our office, unable to move, almost unable to think. How . . . why . . . who would do such a thing???

I think I never recovered fully from that shock. I became aware of personal mortality. It could happen to anyone if it could happen to JFK. None of us at that office knew what to say, or how to grasp fully what had just happened. When I finally flew home to San Francisco, I was aware of a new thing—a fear of flying.  It never fully left me.

1969 . . . summertime. We were in the process of relocating from Boston to Washington, DC.  We arrived back in the US of A from our four years in India in the summer of 1968. We settled into Sudbury, Massachusetts. Then, winter arrived. Then snow arrived . . . a lot of snow. Springtime finally arrived and we began talking about leaving the snow country for some place more compatible with our mentality. We had lived in California for almost a decade, followed by four wondrous years in India, where snow arrived only in far off Himalaya’s. So, we decided to leave the snow country and settled on Washington, DC.  Yeah, yeah, it could snow there, but not like Boston.

But first we had to find a place to live.  So, we decided to spend the summer in Chincoteague, where the kids could enjoy the beach, and I could commute from DC on the weekends.  It was a Sunday afternoon. We were sitting in the little dining room of our summer cottage, having our first gin and tonic of the approaching evening. We were watching a small black and white TV, transfixed. The first landing of man on our moon was taking place, in front of our eyes. There we were, surrounded by our family, and close friends from our India days, all with mouths agape, watching Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

Man had left our spinning globe and was now on that tiny thing we observed way up in the sky. It was not like flying. No, this was something fundamentally different, capable of altering our whole concept of our place in the universe. When I had worked at Lockheed, in addition to the Polaris missile, our plant also developed and built the Agena satellite system. The Agena Target Vehicle (ATV) was an unmanned spacecraft used by NASA during its Gemini program to develop and practice orbital space rendezvous and docking techniques and to perform large orbital changes, in preparation for the Apollo program lunar missions. So, I was vaguely aware that we were moving toward space travel.

But actually watching an American astronaut set foot on our moon, was an astonishing event—first that it was actually occurring, and second that we were witness to the event.  We were all changed forever.

Many important events happened in the many years and decades after that magnificent achievement.  Richard Nixon ascended to the throne on the empty promise of ending that awful war in Vietnam, after which we endured another half decade of killing in that benighted land.  We elected an empty-headed movie actor, St. Ronald of Reagan to that same high office. And when he spoke of welfare queens arriving in their Cadillacs to mooch off of our goodness as a people, I understood that racists were now coming out of their closets, and it was ok again in America to be a racist.  And then that same man espoused the Laffer (Laugher??) curve as his economic policy, producing the largest fiscal deficits we had ever known, I realized that our President was also a moron, albeit a well-meaning and happy one.

Still, nothing quite prepared me for November 8, 2016. We had all grown weary of watching the parade of fools masquerading as GOP candidates, while on the other side, Hillary was marching toward the throne, and we were being entertained by Bernie. It was always hard to disagree with anything Bernie told us, so much so that we actually voted for him.

But it slowly became clear that the GOP was dissolving into a pool of empty rhetoric, with hate forging the anvil of their message. The Donald, whom nobody could take seriously, slowly began destroying his opposition. Really??? Donald Trump?? A billionaire circus clown??? That’s the best you can do Republican Party?? Really???

But then, as we approached November 8^th, the race actually tightened between the two remaining candidates. How this could be was astonishing. It was clear to the entire nation that the Clown lied all the time. How would you know he was lying?? Well, whenever he opened his mouth and words came tumbling out, that would mean he was lying. And the astonishing thing??? He accused Hillary of being the liar.  Well, to be fair, he accused everyone who opposed him of being the liar.  It’s what he does.

But then, Hillary seemed to be leading, even if only marginally.  As we watched the returns, it began to seem altogether too close. But still, we assumed Hillary would prevail. We knew it would not be over til way past our bedtime, so we closed out the TV and went to bed.

I arose early the next morning and turned on the radio to NPR (we never watch TV news). And what to my wondering ears did appear . . . but a notice that the Clown, the Drumpf, had been declared the winner by virtue of his likely take in that creature called The Electoral College. See, we have a really strange system. We make believe we are voting for a candidate when we cast our ballot for Mr. X, or Mrs. Y. But in reality we are voting for an unknown “elector” who will later vote for the real candidate. It’s called “let’s Pretend Democracy”. See, our founders didn’t really trust us to act responsibly, so they dreamed up this make believe voting system, to keep us happy-- dumb, but nonetheless happy.

So, The Drumpf was being declared President-Elect. I called upstairs to tell my dear wife Carol of this remarkable event. She burst into tears.  Later, when I spoke with our daughter who was enroute to her medical practice that morning, she too burst into tears.  How could this be? It was like being told that Barnum and Bailey had arrived in town and had decided to buy the country and install their chief clown as the headman. And if we didn’t like it, why we could stuff it.

And so endeth the tale of events, or in this case, the trail of tears. We had elected a narcissistic-sociopath with advanced ADHD as President. A man who was unable to read or write because he could not focus long enough.  And now, we are both the laughing stock of the world, and pitied at the same time.  We look forward to a long, dreary set of years ahead, with feeble hope that the Clown does not blow up our entire universe, a not unlikely prospect.

Sigh . . . yet another of life’s defining moments. Let the new (Hunger??) games begin, folks.

Alt-Right=NeoNazi

We really need to stop being so politically correct about Donald Trump and his Neo-Nazi henchmen. Referring to the “Alt-Right”, or “alternative right wing” is covering horseshit with a nice handmade quilt.  I read an article about Steve Bannon recently, in, of all places, the New York Times. The article tried to make nice with Mr. Bannon’s image. In it, the author was at great pains to inform us that Mr. Bannon is not an actual racist. He has black friends and colleagues, after all.  I’ll bet some of his best friends are Black . . . or Jewish . . . or Muslim . . . or Gay.

But that seems to me to miss the only point of relevance.  That point would be, “is the web site Mr. Bannon managed a racist, or Neo-Nazi site, i.e., does the site espouse views than can reasonably be described as ne-Nazi, racist, homophobic, or misogynistic? If the answer is Yes, then it matters little whether Mr. Bannon’s personal proclivities are of the racist persuasion.  It would be like asking whether Hitler was actually anti-Semitic. See, the answer would not matter, since he oversaw a regime that killed six million Jews, and other folks they deemed UnGermanic, and therefore unworthy.  What matters is how folks act, or how they direct actions to be taken. If Steve Bannon runs an organization that is widely considered to be anti-semitic, racist, et al, then he is by definition all of those things.

And our Free Press needs to begin calling a spade a spade. First, we really need to drop use of this term, “Alt-Right”. Because it doesn’t mean anything.  Breitbart is a white supremacist organization. Which term describes the KKK, and the Neo-Nazis.  So, by inviting Mr. Bannon into his cabinet of advisers, Mr. Trump has opened his doors to Neo-Nazis and the KKK. We know, by his own personal actions that he is a misogynist, likely a racist, so it comes as no surprise that he would invite such folks into his cabinet.

By dressing up Mr. Trump in fine clothing, and dandifying his advisers, the Press is giving up its claim to be speaking “Truth to Power”. That should be the main aim of a Free Press under our system of Democracy. See, we need an active Free Press, all the more because our President-Elect specializes in lying, creating about him Fake News, and encouraging some of our more energetic enemies—Russia for example—to mess with our “news" and even, apparently, our elections.

Mr. Trump actively engages in business with nations with whom we are not on especially good terms politically, e.g., China, Russia, and The Philippines. Has he gotten around to building a Trump Tower somewhere in North Korea that we are not yet aware of yet??? It is, in any case, a phenomenon we have never before seen—a President-Elect using his newfound political stature to continue building his Brand.  He claims he will step down and away from his businesses, allowing his children to manage the entirety of his mega-chain of enterprises.  But does anyone still resident on Planet Earth believe that claim?? It seems absurd on its face. One problem there is that, because we have little experience with such a man as President-Elect, we have no plausible solutions to this problem.  So we might need to simply observe all transactions that Involve Things Trump and inquire within—can we link a transaction to a Trump-President meeting or contact? If so, the Free Press needs to call it out for what it is. His business Brand could arguably suffer as a consequence, but probably not more than it is already suffering from association with this mentally deranged man, soon to be President. Have we ever had such a complex situation before?

We have had deficient presidents surely. Think Ronald Reagan; think George W. Bush, both bottom of the barrel presidents. But each of those deficienistas still could lay claim to some understanding of our government and its workings, even as they proceeded to trash that system. With The Drumpf, we have a whole new landscape with no experience base.  The man seems to have no understanding of anything associated with our government, or our political system, no understanding of global political dynamics, and little ability or experience in negotiating the shoals of diplomacy. He is a novice in all regards. But more, he likely does not care whether he knows nothing. His interests lie in promoting himself and his personal interests. Full Stop.

So, now, more than ever, we require a vigilant and intelligent Free Press. I expect nothing from Fox News, because Fox News is not a real news organization. It is a PR media outlet whose intent is to promote the business interests of the far right. They are not of the racist, neo-Nazi persuasion necessarily. They do not care about such things. Their interests lie in promoting big business, the oligarchs of the world. So, we should have no expectations of that source.  But at least for most of the rest we hope for better things than they have so far demonstrated.

I know that it is tradition that the Press and the commentariat provide some wiggle room to the incoming folks. Give them a honeymoon. But, what I have seen since the election goes way beyond. The Free Press seems to be moving away from watchdogs of democracy and towards lapdogs of democracy. We need for them to drop this façade of uber-politeness, and become once again OUR (the people’s) spokesmen.  They need to remain firmly on the side of our Nation’s system of Constitutional government.  It is not clear to me they are quite positioned to be such a spokesman.

Oh and maybe we need to take away Mr. Trump’s Twitter account from him. It is, at the least, embarrassing to the Nation.