2013 IN PERSPECTIVE

2013 was like any other year. We found new ways to be humane and inhumane. The frontiers of knowledge advanced both in discovery and dissemination. Creative genius existed next to odd people and events that were undeserving our attention.

Throughout these past twelve months, there were also patterns and trends that appeared or expanded into our lives. These will shape our existence in 2014 and merit further discussion.

SOURCE VERSUS SUBSTANCE
The quality of civil discourse declined along with its quantity. Rational thought, critical thinking, and reasoned engagement all declined sharply among politicians and pundits. Save for rare instances of good governance at state and local levels, hyper-partisanship reined supreme. The continued collapse of functional democracy was on vivid display in Washington, DC. To the credit of Americans, trust in Congress sank to historic lows and support for President Obama fell to his lowest ebb.

Incompetence, corruption, and deceit played their roles in the deterioration of our civic culture. However, the biggest factor was the expanding inability of people from across the political spectrum to keep an open mind when encountering opposing views. Who was saying something trumped what was being said. Even the old adage that “a stopped clock is still right twice a day” was discarded.

Shutting out differing viewpoints closes the mind to new ideas and prevents everyone from obtaining important “reality checks” for their actions. On a good day, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow provides cogent and insightful analysis. On any day, Fox’s Charles Krauthammer is the most knowledgeable and articulate pundit on an amazing range of topics. We need to return to a time when no one should have to pass a litmus test prior to pulling a fire alarm in a burning building.

CORE VERSUS FRINGE BELIEFS
Pope Francis was named Time’s “Man of the Year” for many good reasons. His most universal contribution was returning to the core message of his church – anyone seeking salvation will be granted it. Communicating and embodying the Catholic Church’s core message immediately welcomed back those wishing to return to its faith and opened a dialogue with all others desiring a caring and tolerant world. In one masterful leap, Pope Francis made his church relevant in the 21st Century.

Pope Francis’ accomplishment should be embraced by the Republican Party. A movement of faith or policy is not the sum of its parts. Its core values and beliefs inform and guide its parts. Specific issues will come and go, but its core should remain timeless. Transient passengers should not be allowed to steer the ship.

WASHINGTON VERSUS AMERICA
Our traditional concerns over government over-reach, and our dismay over its incompetence, were joined by a new and disturbing issue – fairness. “Crony capitalism” moved to the forefront of America’s psyche. The record disparity in wealth has made increasing numbers of Americans wonder if the “America Dream” has been hijacked by a well-connected oligarchy.

These fairness concerns are not about depriving productive people their well earned rewards. It is about those in power rigging the game for everyone else. Special interest tax breaks, regulatory waivers, and program funding have created an undemocratic oligarchy constructing a public trough from which they devour the spoils. This has worsened as large companies and banks continue to get away with wanton abuses, as long as they pay a small percentage of their “ill gotten” gains to complicit overseers.

One of the great missed opportunities for real change occurred when political powers did everything possible to keep the Tea Party from allying with Occupy Wall Street. Both groups arose out of a deep mistrust of established power and concern over unaccountable and incestuous elites perverting America. Such an alliance was the one true chance of a third party challenging the status quo.

In the wake of Washington dysfunction, corporate statism, and consumer exploitation, Americans are growing more restive. The latest Gallup Poll reported that seventy-two percent of Americans say big government the greatest threat to the U.S., a record high in the nearly 50-year history of this question. Unfortunately, Americans are disengaging from activism, even voting, feeling that little can be done. Opting out is a recipe for civic decline.

AMERICA VERSUS THE WORLD
America continues to suffer from not having a global strategy since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Our “war of terror” fixated on misdiagnosing symptoms in one region of the world. America’s role in the world, it competing with 200 other countries for economic well-being, and preventing slippage back to 18th Century amoral adventurism have been absent from meaningful dialogues.

The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are willingly filling the void. These nations view 18th Century style power politics as their salvation from their respective internal failings. America’s missteps and miscues are being exploited to the detriment of global stability and morality. A world dominated by any country other than America will be nasty and brutish.

America remains the most parochial world power in history. Only a third of Americans currently hold passports (that’s fifteen times more than in 1970) . Only 19% of Americans travel outside the U.S. and most of them go to North American destinations. Americans consistently score near the bottom among developed nations on geographic knowledge. Much of this is based on the fact that America’s imperialism occurred within what is now its own borders. While European armies, traders, and missionaries spanned the global, Americans conquered our own continent. Except for the Spanish-American War, America’s overseas military activism was not acquisitive. Certainly, American brands and culture remain the top influencers of world consumption, but only a microscopic portion of our corporate and political leaders have actual overseas experience.

SECURITY VERSUS PRIVACY
You do not improve your chances of finding a needle in the haystack by creating more haystacks. That is the fundamental flaw in America’s counter-terrorism strategy. In the 1970’s, Americans worried about who was on President Nixon’s enemies’ list and who his minions bugged. Now we are all on our government’s enemies list and we are all bugged. This is not progress.

No amount of Orwellian intrusions will find and stop every terrorist. The odds will always remain in favor of the lone zealot or psychopath. Security forces have to get it right 100% of the time – they will never achieve this certainty. Innocent people will be killed or maimed when bad people slip through these defenses.

They key to success is to remove the roots of terrorism. Unless and until moderate Islamic leaders end the official teaching of hatred, and the perverse interpretations of the Koran, there will always be a threat. Until we establish policies and processes to recognize and treat mental illness there will always be a person using violent means to destroy lives and communities.

TECHNOLOGY VERSUS HUMANS
The irony of our age is that all the amazing advances in communications are creating as many problems as opportunities. We are all part of a technological Tower of Babel. Our common frame of reference ended years ago, to the detriment of our civic culture.

Diversity is a good thing, unless no one can effectively reach out to others. We have to keep track of friends, family, and colleagues who use different communication platforms and environments, and when they change without telling anyone. It is Apple versus Windows; iPhone versus Android; LinkedIn versus Facebook, versus countless other social networks. It is having to remember which of our friends and colleagues prefer emails to telephone calls; texting to Skype, and texts on Skype. It is about not only which people follow which television show, but whether to spend money to subscribe to cable, premium cable, Netflix, and Amazon in order to follow the latest award winning series.

Reaching key people for business or pleasure is bewildering. Platform convergence (who uses a separate camera any more?) is complicated by user divergence. The challenge for 2014 and beyond is having technology enable more than hinder our cultural advance.

FIFTY SHADES OF REPUBLICAN

The Republican Party is coming apart at the seams.

The fratricidal chaos that reigned during the government shut down is the culmination of years of factional strife, internal contradictions, and huge egos.

The Republicans' elephant symbol should be replaced with a more accurate rendering of its current woes: Sybil.

“Sybil” was the main character in a 1973 best selling book about multiple personality disorder. Sybil manifested sixteen personalities, each dissociated from her central personality. That is today’s Republican Party and conservative movement in a nut shell.

Each Republican manifestation is based upon a separate reality. Within each reality there are leaders, acolytes, and rabid supporters. Those residing within each reality dwell in an echo chamber of self-affirmation that constantly asserts they are the only ones capable of saving America and their movement from the forces of darkness. Each reality opposes the others assuming any alternative reality to their own at best diminishes their ability to prevail, and at worst, poses a clear and present danger to their existence and that of our nation.

Political parties are coalitions of like minded interests, coalesced around a core of fundamental beliefs, clustered together in order to benefit from an overarching organization focused on electoral success. The Republican Party of 2013 is none of these.

The Republican ship no longer has a rudder – a credible universally acceptable leader. Worse, this Republican ship no longer has a keel – a philosophical grounding that prevents it from being capsized by even the smallest ripple on the political seas.

Today’s Republican Party is being torn asunder by contradictory forces at war with each other and with the broader populace. Libertarians who want virtually no government are at war with Fundamentalist TheoCons who want a huge government to patrol neighborhoods enforcing biblical imperatives relating to sex and belief. Isolationists who want to pull back from the world and construct a literal as well as figurative wall around America are at war with NeoCons who are in denial about America’s failures in Afghanistan and Iraq while seeking other places to intervene. Fiscal hawks who have spent decades seeking ways to rein-in Washington’s spending binge are at war with the Tea Party who want to shut the government down no matter what the results. Wall Street and Main Street Republicans, who hate regulation but work within the system to lessen its effects, are fighting Tea Party activists, who echo “Occupy Wall Street” conspiracies about crony capitalism.

What happens next? Is the GOP of 2013 becoming the Whig Party of the 1850s? Will the Tea Party fizzle out or prevail over a crumbling Republican establishment? While doctrinaire liberals are dancing a Conga Line hoping for an end of Reaganism that will usher in a new era of rampant government growth and spending, other Americans are legitimately worried about not having a viable opposition voice.

More rational voices within the conservative and Republican movements need to unite around core principles that are relevant and compelling for the 21st Century. Start with the rule of law, holding government accountable at all levels, demanding transparency in all public processes, and consistent adherence to ethics and integrity by all officials and public sector functions. Upon this foundation, add that government should be the solution of last resort, after personal actions and collective efforts of the private sector and local community fail to address challenges and societal ills. When a government role is warranted, it must be designed and implemented to successfully meet tangible and measurable objectives using public resources in the most cost effective ways possible.

Within this framework Republicans should rationally engage in a civil discourse on where the Party’s center of gravity should reside on strategic issues. Embedded in this discourse should be a new toleration of differences among reasonable people. No one agrees 100 percent with another person, not even spouses and siblings - so why demand purity and mindless adherence?

The strategic issues that will frame a new Republic Party and potentially form a winning coalition movement include, but may not be limited to:

[1] The role of government. There will always be a public sector in America. Republicans traditionally buy into the 300+ year old concept of a social contract whereby individuals freely give up some freedoms and delegate some decisions to live and prosper in an ordered world. This is as basic as stopping at a stop sign, paying for trash collection, agreeing to litigate disputes in courts of law, and electing representatives to address policy issues. How much government, where it should reside (local, state, federal), the role of public input and accountability, the appropriate structure for public action (regulation, tax policy, public program), and its costs are areas where reasonable disagreements will occur and where there is no one right answer to apply to every locale or issue.

[2] The role of America in the world. America is part of an increasingly complex and linked global community. Since World War II, America has been its leader – economically, politically, and militarily. Since the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the rise of the information age, the world has evolved into many centers of economic and civic vitality. Some countries, like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), are willing to challenge America’s hegemony. In some industries and some regions, America is no longer the leader or even competitive. Internally, these variables harm economic opportunity and job creation. Externally, it is about free and fair trade as well as about who becomes the first responder to tyranny or disaster should America reduce its global reach. These are reasonable areas for discussion. America needs a competitive strategy for the 21st Century and it needs realistic “rules of thumb” that guide split second decisions when terrorism or other unforeseen events suddenly disrupt our existence.

[3] Healthcare. It is truly unfortunate that the debate over healthcare started in the partisan sphere. Providing health services to a work force that is increasingly without employer provided benefits is important, but the discussion should have first centered on standards of care and caregiving. Americans are aging. This means that health issues are shifting from shock/trauma acute care to long term care of chronic conditions (like diabetes, congestive heart failure, and Alzheimer’s). How to support the role of families in care giving? How to allow for using successful treatments that are traditional in many parts of the world, but viewed as alternative or nontraditional in an American healthcare system dominated by pharmaceutical and insurance companies? How to promote technology-enabled remote care and wellness to supplement or supplant office and hospital visits? Baby boomers are confronting these issues every day as their parents live into their 80s and 90s. Facilitating a sincere nonpartisan dialogue on this multitude of heartfelt issues would be a most positive addition to public policy.

In addition to Republicans returning to sane and productive input on strategic policy issues, they must begin holding their leaders, and leader wannabes, to established standards of leadership. Everyone has an ego, especially leaders, but true leaders rise above and think beyond themselves. Can anyone imagine Ronald Reagan doing a reality television show? Can anyone imagine Barry Goldwater making every speech and media appearance about himself? Would William F. Buckley have ignored facts to win a rhetorical point? Republicans lack anyone even remotely approaching these giants of modern conservatism – and that is the problem. It is time for Republicans to shun cults of personality and demand leaders who think first about what is best for America, and promote the 300+ year philosophical foundations of conservatism, over their personal fundraising and campaigning.

The Republicans’ multiple personality disorder will not be cured overnight. These suggestions form a good course of treatment. The first step must be for the warring factions to realize what they are doing to themselves, their movement, and their country.

OF BRICS & DRAGONS

This article was published on the History News Network

http://hnn.us/articles/how-game-thrones-mirrors-modern-geopolitics

The Season Three finale of Game of Thrones coincided with my recent meetings in China. There is more in common than first meets the eye.

Game of Thrones is HBO’s outstanding fantasy drama about how royal families on the continent of Westeros intrigue against and slaughter each other. At the end of Season Three the key combatants remain oblivious to rising outside threats. The White Walkers, or basically “ice zombies”, are massing in the icy north looking to expand their feeding territory. Far to the south, across the Narrow Sea, Daenerys Targaryen is forming a massive army and building a cadre of capable advisors. She is waiting for the day her three dragons are large enough to lead her campaign to invade Westeros and reclaim the “Iron Throne”. A multi-year period of mild weather, the “long summer”, is about to give way to an equally long and devastating winter. Only a few whisper, “winter is coming”, and even less are preparing.

In the “real” world, America’s leaders intrigue against and politically slaughter each other. Myopia reigns supreme inside the Capital’s Beltway. Daily micro-battles over tactical issues are echoed in Lilliputian debates among hyperpartisan pundits. Like their Westeros counterparts, America’s political, economic, and media elite are oblivious to rising outside threats. This is not about terrorists, it is about BRICS.

BRICS are five major emerging economies that formed a cooperation pact in 2011: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. With the exception of Russia, BRICS are all developing or recently industrialized countries. Their common attribute is they all have large, fast-growing economies. This is allowing them growing influence on regional and global affairs. As of 2013, the five BRICS countries represent almost 3 billion people, with a combined nominal GDP of $14.8 trillion, and an estimated $4 trillion in combined foreign reserves.

BRICS are not always in agreement. Notably, China and India have serious border and water rights disputes. However, they collectively represent a major economic and trade force in the world. In many ways they are like the mercantile powers of the 17th Century. At that time, England and the Netherlands established global trading outposts, developed their merchant infrastructure, and built economic capabilities that soon encompassed the world. While the Netherlands was content to dominant trade, England leveraged its mercantilism to become the dominant strategic power for over three hundred years.

BRICS are following in these historic footsteps. China is methodically locking up strategic minerals and port facilities throughout Africa. China already holds the rights to most of Afghanistan’s mineral resources. It is fully content to have American coin and blood provide the security for Chinese miners. President Xi Jinping’s recent tour of the Americas strengthened his country’s presence in America’s “backyard”. His tour was topped off by Nicaragua awarding a Chinese company a 100-year concession to build an alternative to the Panama Canal. This will have profound geopolitical ramifications. China is also preparing to assert its highly expansive version of rights to islands and territorial waters throughout the Pacific rim.

BRICS strategically flexing their collective new muscles starkly contrasts with America’s nonexistent global economic strategy. It did not have to be this way.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan had a detailed strategic plan. His plan was to eradicate the Soviet Empire, end the threat of global Communism, and free millions of people from bondage. He masterfully and methodically implemented his plan succeeding beyond even his inner circle’s expectations. It was a combination of overt and covert active measures, coordinated with Britain’s Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II. Together, they formed a “big three” that was far more globally effective and positive than World War II’s FDR, Churchill, and Stalin.

The problem was that so much planning and execution went into ending global Communism, little effort was spent on what happened next. For all the rhetoric about a “new world order” after the fall of the Berlin Wall, precious little actually occurred. After World War II the United Nations and countless strategic meetings, such as the Bretton Woods Conference, reshaped the world. America’s Marshall Plan in Europe and MacArthur’s counter part in Japan rebuilt ravaged parts of the globe, but also established viable markets for U.S. goods.

Presidents Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, and now Obama have been content to let America’s economy drift through the “peace dividend” and the information revolution without a strategic game plan. 9-11 opened a large rabbit hole where Bush 43 and his NeoCons squandered coin and blood on ill-advised, ill-conceived, and poorly realized foreign adventures. Today America is over extended politically, militarily, and financially. At home, our strategic drift since the fall of the Berlin Wall has led to hyperpartisan bickering over increasingly minute matters. The rise of the TheoCons within the Republican Party have reopened debates about science and reason that were resolved centuries ago, further diverting attention from strategic global issues.

Now in 2013, America is like Westeros, every day introduces new micro-conspiracies that diminish and divert attention from the real issues. America’s role in the world and its future as an economic power are drowned out by politicians and pundits fixated on whether Paula Dean should have a Food Network show. In the meantime, the BRICS’ “little dragons” and “ice zombies” are growing in strength. Washington politicians would learn more from following HBO fantasy dramas than Cable “news” talk shows.

[Scot Faulkner served as Chief Administrative Officer for the U.S. House of Representatives. Spent the month of June in China as advisor to the International Scholar Laureate Program. http://citizenoversight.blogspot.com/ ]