excerpt from Chapter 2 - STAND UP AMERICA election campaign

excerpt from Chapter 2 - page 33

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The circumstance that I chose to be positive throughout my communications with the American public touched a lot of positive nerves as well.  As mentioned previously, by 2012 many people had been hurt by the recession and were extremely disillusioned and lacking a bit of faith in the American system.  My goal was to restore faith and confidence not only in America but in themselves.  Hence my election platform became STAND UP AMERICA.

STAND UP AMERICA became a rallying cry through the latter part of 2012 as a spirit of renewal took hold.   We as individuals have all been down at one time or another and the measure of any person’s strength is the ability to get going again.  This is the same for a nation, especially one as great as the USA.  The spirit of “standing up” for one’s own situation and then being responsible for improving ones personal state of affairs fuelled a culture of success and hard work that lead to a much more positive attitude within our borders and lead to an almost immediate recovery.

One of the difficulties we have as Americans is the ability to admit that maybe we make mistakes or that we can occasionally let ourselves down.  I’ve mentioned numerous times that we were embracing a culture of blaming others for what has happened in our individual lives but for most Americans to admit that they were wrong is just ludicrous.  Well, what I recognized and shared was that we had created our own mess through a very out-dated governmental model that was no longer relevant in the twenty-first century, a business culture that celebrated profit as the only reason for being and a citizen base that had lost its collective American spirit.  

Excerpt from Chapter 4

Chapter 4 -- page 56

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One of the most horrific and misguided thoughts of the time that got embedded in the American psyche was that compassion was equal to socialism or communism.

By 2009, just the comment of a compassionate governmental policy made the speaker into, at a minimum a socialist, and in the worse case, a Hitleresque demagogue who was striving to undermine the entirety of the USA.  That may sound melodramatic, but phrases like that were actually used at the time by American citizens.  I can still remember with disgust back in 2010 when President Obama was trying to implement some type of universal health insurance program so that every American citizen would have access to health care.  The shocking thing to me is that a system, which cared about the general health of all citizens, was considered akin to Nazism by some people.  Even to this day that still strikes me as the most absurd type of rhetoric.  To me and many others, it was an unconscionable misuse of our American right to freedom of speech, and I argued at the time that it should be considered hate speech.  To utilize NAZI imagery in an American political debate is simply immoral on any level.

The Republican Party and the Tea Party Movement were mostly to blame for this rhetoric, and as early as 1980, there had come a point where political expediency was the paramount goal.  Rhetoric could be founded upon any truth or mistruth and could even be what many folks would consider slanderous.  The shocking thing about this situation is that so many American citizens actually accepted this rhetoric and supported it.  I can understand that there was disillusion in the US at the time due to the 2008 economic collapse but to sink to such lows should have been offensive to so many more people.  This is why I argued so strongly that a new definition of freedom needed to be established, as we as a nation, had sunk just too far in our willingness to allow anyone to do or say whatever they chose in the political arena.

ff21st -- Chapter 1 opening

Thinking back thirty years to January 20, 2013, I have to admit that I was a little disturbed and perhaps even terribly unhappy with my situation.  There I was, a self-appointed poster-child for disillusionment with almost all institutional aspects of America.  I had grown up at the end of the twentieth century and was pretty much willing to impugn any formal organization, public institution and quite likely most existing modern mindsets and “isms.”  I was hardly an anarchist though in any way, shape or form and I of course was a huge supporter of individual freedom, but there is no way I could have seen myself as part of the process at the time.  I had prided my personal success on being able to work-around process rather than immersing myself in it.

I also was an extremely successful businessman who had accumulated wealth well into the billions.  I can’t say I was disillusioned at all about that part of America as it had been simply a matter of hard-work, open-mindedness, a big chunk of fairness, a strong vision and of course a little bit of good luck and timing along the way.

I can honestly say that I was anti-government in most of its forms at the start of the twenty-first century.  In fact, one of the hallmarks of my business success had been the ability to manage governmental process and obstacles.  I had earned a reputation as someone who did not really listen to governmental authority and regulation if a greater good was being impeded.  I pretty much held government equally inept everywhere in the world.  The USA though at the time was the worst.

Government in the early twenty-first century, especially in the United States of America involved itself mostly in the pursuit of self-interest and party politics.  The Republican and Democratic parties basically just postured and opposed each other in order to undermine, disgrace and usurp the authority of whichever party, at the time, happened to have won the previous election.  To me, it was an absolute waste of time and energy that delivered virtually no benefit to the average American.  It was an elitist system that protected the interests of the party, business interests and the wealthy.  I had no interest in politics at the time and contributed no personal energy or corporate finances to it in the years leading up to 2013.

If you had, in fact, told me a year earlier, on my forty-second birthday in 2012, that I was going to be the next president, and that thirty years later my name would be synonymous with George Washington, Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson, I would certainly have thought you to be one of the dumbest people I had ever met.  There was no way in the world, that on March 31^st, 2012, that I could have imagined myself as president less than one year later.

This is why I was genuinely angry in January 2013 as I was being sworn in as the forty-fifth President of the United States of America.  I can honestly say that in the moment I really did not want the role and was wondering how I had just ruined my life.

The Party System Has To Go

The Democrats and Republicans have to go. The party system has fundamentally crippled government and stymied any type of effective debate in the nation.

The fundamental flaw in party ideology is that it assumes a predetermined response to any issue that might arise. These responses sadly just fall into the black or white, right or left typical responses and as a result no enlightened dialogue is generated. The result is that the government becomes just an organization that recycles the same old policies and innovation becomes stagnant.

Secondly, the party system dissuades most talented people who have their own opinions from participating in the political process. Very few individuals who are self-determined and hold their own views are willing to subjugate those views for the acceptance of a party. Therefore, the party tends to attract only individuals who are concerned with power, wealth or recognition rather than those who can generate solutions in a complex modern world.

Thirdly, party politics dismisses the democratic process. Though the process of becoming a member of a party or its leader might appear democratic the result is not so. The individual whom ultimately makes it to power becomes a party representative first and foremost and that loyalty is the priority.  Toeing the party line is fundamentally more important than representing your constituents and infinitely more important than putting your own opinion into the debate.  America suffers greatly as a result.

Finally, the party system has simply fallen into a mindset of opposition whereby any and all actions initiated by the other party is inherently wrong.  This in and of itself is not necessarily bad as opposition can be effective, but it has gone so far that opposition has become synonymous with skewering the opposition as evil or un-American.  This is unacceptable practice in a democratic environment adn really serves no purpose other than alienating Americans against each other.

The party system needs to be 100% replaced so that those elected to office are able to perform their role in a free manner unencumbered by party pressure.

Representative Democracy is not Democratic

America is free, but is no longer a democratic country.

Representative democracy is fundamentally defined as representation of individual citizens segmented into constituencies. The party system however, has become so prevalent and powerful that elected officials are now representative of the party platform rather than constituent concerns. This obvious situation is clearly not democracy.

The all-pervasiveness of party politics also means that the original intent of the House of Representatives which was to serve as a governing and legislative body is more often that not merely a conduit for confrontation and negativity. The goal of many party members is simply to besmirch the governing body and the President's office such that their party position appears more favorable and increases the power base and the chance of winning elections in the future.

Finally, representative democracy was a concept invented hundreds of years ago and has ultimately lost the ability to deal in an efficient and timely manner in regard to most of the issues of the modern world that have become much more complex. Even under freer circumstances for choice and direction and with the right-minded members, no single individual representative can propose intelligent and appropriate direction on every issue thus further making the case that representative democracy is non-existent. Even with ideal members, they still only have a limited range of knowledge and cannot therefore represent the entirety of the their constituency on every issue.

Good governance and fiduciary duty to constituents has to come back to the forefront as the primary role of any elected representative. Increased access points for the general population and specific expertise must be increased such that intelligence is brought to the table, common and differing opinions are debated openly and fairly and most importantly that non-agenda driven conclusions are arrived at.

Hence a "new way" is required to replace representative democracy.