A memory is only as good as our ability to turn it into action. We remember what we want to keep alive.
It has never been more important than it is on July 4, 2009, that we remember the founding of the United States of America as a Revolution, an overthrow of a distant ruling elite that had lost touch with the people.
Because today we need another Revolution.
We need a revolution against the kinds of businesses the U.S. has invested in way too heavily for the past 125 years, the businesses that sustained the oil-and-war economy built by people like George W. Bush’s granddad, businesses that President Eisenhower in the 1950s labeled the military-industrial complex. Today the news media is complicit in the complex. After all, what is more likely to keep you glued to the feeding tube than something scary happening right outside your front door?
We need a new kind of independence, from the feeding tubes of fear and oil and war and baseless celebrity. Freedom from businesses built on killing, sensationalizing, alarming, manipulating, dividing, litigating, politicking, vilifying, dominating, acquiring, misdirecting, clouding, hiding, looting, destroying, drugging, bribing, hoarding, imprisoning, poisoning, torturing, hedging, lip-servicing and ass-licking.
These bad businesses are designed to extract wealth without replacing it. Designed to accumulate money without earning it. Designed to exploit labor without honoring it. Designed to get better than they give.
In fact, businesses that generate wealth and well-being over the long haul are those that give better than they get. Focusing on short term gains (we now measure our windows of transactional opportunity in milliseconds) cripples our potential for long-term growth.
We need another Revolution.
A revolution to free ourselves once and for all from the fear-based agendas of the distant and disconnected Bush Leaguer elites. The Bush presidency was a validation of everything gone wrong with America. Of myopia and mediocrity. Of arrogance and bullying. Of the toxic confluence of Church and State.
Here’s something that offers a strand of hope: fools like George W. Bush yield their own brand of wisdom. He and his administration became like a compass needle that pointed in the exact opposite direction of the one we need to be going in. This July 4th, we are in a race to heal the planet before the planet decides it’s going to heal itself. Of us. Which is why the Revolution needs to be Green.
The divisive ideologies and nonstop claptrap of talk show hosts, pundits, our so-called political leaders and even futurists only preserve the status quo. Obama is not getting the kind of energy and leadership he needs from Capitol Hill—from timid funeral director types like Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid, whose only apparent talent is soft-talking to the aggrieved, or from status-obsessed players like John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, who always look like they’re counting the minutes to cocktails at the club. These people stand in the way of progress. We need legislators who can support a narrative other than their own. Today, there’s only one narrative that matters when it comes to the federal government, and that’s. the story of America. It’s time for an uplifting twist to our story. A ray of hope shooting through the economic gloom. Not only do we need the sun to shine, we need it to generate electricity.
Which is why we need another Revolution.
Due in large part to the Bush Leaguers’ misadventures in the Middle East, we have racked up debts—monetary, environmental and political—that we’re going to be paying off for generations. We have lost our touch for the extraordinary invention, the breathtaking breakthrough. We have lost our appetite for industry. Today, the touch that matters most to our economy, and, sad to say, defines us to a lot of the world, is the touch of bullets from an M2 50-caliber machine gun, the touch of a Wall Street banker to a politician’s wallet, or the touch of a camera lens on a dead celebrity. Something is way, way off about that. 180 degrees off, to be exact.
Just as the Bush compass points due South, you can define the kinds of businesses we should be in as the polar opposites of the games we’ve been playing. We need businesses made resilient by renewable energy and by peacemaking. Business guided by themes like healing, educating, building, seeding, coaching, communicating, inspiring, bridging, liberating, converting, restoring, preserving, designing, connecting, transporting, sharing, growing, clarifying, creating. And let’s not forget remembering. These new kinds of businesses are our only hope for growing our way out of a malaise brought on by eight years of the reign of Prince George that didn’t add anything of value to the economic equation. In fact it subtracted value.
It’s time for another Revolution.
The people who revolted against an out-of-touch elite to create the United States, and the people who have come here from around the world in the 233 years since then have literally put their lives on the line because they had an appetite for change and faith in their dreams The U.S. political and banking systems exist to enable dreams of Americans, not leverage them to their own advantage by playing the kinds of insider games that turn those dreams into a mirage. Mediocrity and myopia, arrogance and bullying, mixing religion and politics, these are supposed to be the enemies of the American brand, not its trademarks.
This weekend, we remember the Revolution that became America. Next week, let’s keep the spirit of that Revolution alive. It’s the most American thing we can do.
Happy Independence Day!
Tags: 2009, Business, Change, Environment, George W. Bush, Green, Growth, Harry Reid, Indpendence Day, Innovation, John Boehner, July 4, legislation, Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Obama, Revolution, Sustainability, Themes