Several years ago, at a workshop I encountered a retired teacher with an interesting “take” on self-interest. “Why pay taxes to educate somebody else’s kid?” she asked. I was speechless, almost. Now, her question frames a huge part of why Democrats prevailed in suburban midterm elections. It’s about the common good. It’s about making brighter […]
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The ink is still drying on pundit assessments about the 2018 midterms. College-educated suburban women especially, are abandoning the Republican Party. To illustrate, Democrats now control all four House seats in California’s previously conservative Orange County. So one wonders. With monumental Republican losses in the suburbs, what comes next for the Party of Lincoln? Will […]
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I’m no fan of deceased opinion writer Charles Krauthammer. Imagine my surprise then, at a Washington Post column written by his son. According to Danial, the father was enlightened on a crucial point. Charles Krauthammer championed “real” and distinguished it from what it is not. He drew a bright line between the known and the […]
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America is stuck. We’re tied down by partisan ideology. Our situation is not unlike Gulliver. We’ve become like the giant, fallen asleep and then awakened by mini-people dancing on our collective selves, making outrageous demands. The strings controlling Gulliver are not unlike the strings of tribal partisanship. While the pragmatic majority slumbers, America’s forward path […]
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I’m a moral philosopher, cut from similar cloth with First Economist Adam Smith, to use a maxim from long ago. Smith might have saluted French President Emmanuel Macron at the 100th commemoration of the armistice ending World War I. Nationalism is betrayal of patriotism, said Macron in stern rebuke to the tribalism of President Donald […]
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Donald Trump, gamer extraordinaire, uses fear, resentment, even hatred to stoke his political base. Exaggerations and lies are prolific. In the seven weeks before midterm elections, Trump made 30 false or misleading claims per day, observes the Washington Post. Although unique, President Trump is far from alone. Fraudulent political strategy mimics fraudulent business strategy, well […]
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Ever been gamed? How does it feel? Have you been in the complex muddle of an airline ticket purchase online? You’re about to press the “buy” button for the flight you need, then suddenly and without warning, the computer playing against you raises the price $100? Or how about waiting patiently in line for a […]
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Americans are being gamed. We are gaming one another. Hyper-partisanship will not stop, cannot be ended unless gaming ends. MBA’s are trained to game. There are win-win games in which participants collaborate to expand payouts available to all players. American politics has become something quite different from a game of win-win, however. Our entrenched tribalism […]
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America needs to get its MOJO back. It needs to get its plow horse, too-long sidelined as a hobby horse, back into the field. Quite simply, this is the only viable route to making American capitalism great again. Forget high finance, computerized stock trading, casinos, high profile luxury hotel deals, and the like. You know: The sorts […]
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Opinion columnist Thomas Friedman laments a recent comment from a friend. What’s going on in America today, observes the retired Marine colonel, is far more grave than any external threat, including the Soviet Union. And this, says the friend, is because the threat we face is here and now, right at home, and coming from […]
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