Tag Archives: Moon

Climate, Crime, Economics, Environment, Governance, Religion

Sus… Stain

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Old and new technologies stand in contrast as a farm windmill is surrounded by wind turbines.

“Sustainability” is the great leftist byword in the summer of 2023.  Democrats and other Communists are determined to force Americans to give up much of what we have invented and worked for, in order to transform our economy and society to states of “sustainability.”  This also means that the work, inventiveness, science and engineering of the most “successful” peoples (in terms of wealth and standards of living) may have to be thrown away due to the color of their skin or the dominant religion(s) in their traditions.

White-skinned people, especially Christians and Jews, must renounce their successes and civic structures because they were “stolen” over the course of history, whether 200, 500 or 1,000 years ago and even more.  Nothing those groups ever accomplished can remain in their possession.  To do so would be “unsustainable.”  As would be most of their “racist” and “supremacist” ideas… things like private property, Constitutional limits on government, and free speech, religious freedom and equal application of the laws.

Sustainability appears to require conformity.  That is, the jumbled non-regulation of independent liberty is “unsustainable” in the views of leftists; conformity is more permanent and “sustainable.”  First, everyone has to think the same thoughts, of course.  Religious thoughts don’t conform.

The whole world, now, must conform to “sustainability” as if some activities – and politics – are sustainable and some not.  America is not sustainable, we’re told, because we use too much clean water, too much electricity, too much oil and natural gas and way, way too much coal… as in, any.  China, on the other hand, is the model of conformity and therefore sustainability.  They use millions of tons of coal to bring modern electrification to their industries and to people who would otherwise be oppressed by white people.  Plans to begin figuring out how to reduce coal-fired electricity 20 or 30 years from now in China, are examples of excellence in sustainability; actually reducing coal-fired electricity, today and for the past 30 years or so, in the United States, are examples of failure to conform to the planet-saving zero-carbon-emissions model.  Whose “model” is that, actually?

Mostly, it seems to be a political model rather than a scientific one, and one that even ignorant children and older persons can become agitated about.  All that are needed are a few chemical terms and scientific-sounding phrases and a whole political movement can be created and, better, sustained.  The zero-carbon-emissions model of “sustainability” is, itself, sustainable!  How cool is that?  Despite the fact of lots of private-jet travel and ritzy accommodations, (high-carbon emissions activities, all) sustaining the zero-carbon political movement is vastly more important and sustainable than all other methods of improving living standards and sustainable economies across the developing world as both it and the developed world invent ways to operate and grow economies and social well-being.  Suddenly the only “sustainable” model for humans appears to be allowing for far, far FEWER humans, altogether.  Humans are not sustainable.

To maintain and sustain the numerous articles of faith that underlie the carbon-free climate-control model, many untruths must be sustained as well.  One of these is that CO2 is causing global warming which would be, needless to say, unsustainable if true.  That premise is not provable but it certainly has its adherents.  The earth, the oceans, weather and plant-life have efficient means of removing carbon-dioxide (one of those important chemical terms) from the atmosphere.  Over geologic time there have existed both higher concentrations of CO2 and lower than we have right now.  During cold periods, ice periods, warm periods and very warm periods, the atmosphere has held more and less CO2.  Sometimes the CO2 increases before a warming period; sometimes it increases afterwards.  It is definitely an indicator of global changes, but the case for its being a cause of those changes is merely sophisticated speculation and, sadly, some of even that is disingenuous.                                                                                                    [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/]

Given its 3 to 4 Billion-year age, the Earth-Moon binary system has proven highly sustainable.  Even giant collisions involving the formation of the moon couldn’t knock the system off track.  Additional materials, including comets with trillions of tons of water, added to the Earth while the Moon sort-of protected the new planet from other impacts and collisions, resulting in a remarkably stable binary planet system in a remarkably stable Solar System orbiting a remarkably stable star.  But, “stable” doesn’t mean “static.”  Our Sun is a nuclear engine, constantly accumulating Hydrogen and constantly fusing it into Helium, while, bit-by-bit, accumulating heavier elements including carbon and metals as the deep inner core of the Sun ages and “dies.”  Sometimes the Sun puts out more energy, sometimes less.  Eventually, some billions of years into the future, the Sun will become UNSUSTAINABLE and blow itself to bits like every star eventually will.  Not even the entire Democrat Party and its Antifa troopers will be able to prevent it.  OMG!

There should emerge a certain perspective on the likelihood that about 7/10ths of a billion tons of humans, including the few hundred thousand pounds of bureaucrats and committed Communists, can change the tax system enough to significantly modify the future of the Earth.  Oh, they might force people to breath less, procreate less and mow their lawns less… they might even get more of them to eat bugs instead of beef (the ones with “Love is Love” signs), but they won’t – and can’t – shift the processes of Earth-sustainability in any significant way.  They do, however, manage to change the meanings of perfectly good words… words like “freedom,” “rights” and “racism,” for examples… along with “climate,” “family” and “education.”  Oh, yes: “peaceful,” too.

It used to be that hydro-power was “green” and sustainable, but no longer.  Now it’s only “solar” and “wind” power that’s green enough.  Collateral damage to animals, birds and humans along the way, is easily ignored for the “greater good.”  That sounds wicked nice: “greater good.”   Who wouldn’t sacrifice a few dozen whales or 62 million pre-born babies for the “greater good?”  Put another way, “The end justifies the means.” 

The other day, speaking at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Vice-President of the United States of America, Kamala Harris, a brilliant economist and historian, she, stated, “When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water.” (Emphasis added)

The official White House transcript shows Harris misspoke. She had intended to say “reduce pollution,” not “reduce population.” The transcript provides this correction in brackets alongside the original wording, which is crossed out.  This is a process in which  the Biden White House is well-practiced: modifying official statements.  Back in 2020, while Joe Biden was “campaigning” from his basement, he stated that the Democrat Party had the most sophisticated voter-fraud operation ever.  Of course, we were told that what he meant to say was “voter-fraud prevention,” but he needed modification.  Recognizing how frequently Mr. Biden says the opposite of what he has been told to say, Prudence is not so sure that he hadn’t told the truth the first time he described the DNC’s voter-fraud operation.  This is bolstered by the evidence of a very sophisticated voter-fraud operation employed in the 2020 elections.

Ms. Harris may have heard about the sophisticated population-reduction efforts and intentions of forces like the World Economic Forum, Planned Parenthood, Bill Gates and his ilk, and others, and inadvertently let slip a truth bomb.  “Population / Pollution…” they are mildly alliterative, as is she, as is “Planned Parenthood.”  Maybe she hadn’t proof-read or practiced her talk.  The more one learns about mRNA shots pushed so diligently around the world, the words, “reduce population” may very well have been heard among the circles in which she unravels… err, travels… travels, I meant to say.  The World would be a great place to live in if it weren’t for all the relatively useless people over-populating it, now.  We are simply unsustainable.

The global Communist philosophy… ideology, is based on the end justifying the means, even if the means include the deaths of a hundred-Million people, or so.  They had to go for the greater good because they did not think or believe correctly.

Humans have done and still do many foolish, if not stupid things.  We dirty our own homes, neighborhoods, cities and lands, air and waters.  We could avoid these errors and clean up what we’ve done and Prudence believes we will, in fact.  Economics has distorted our values but, we can change our thinking about what is most important.  Current economics is not sustainable – $32 Trillion in debt, indeed!  Operating industry, living, transporting, modernizing can all be done cleanly; those who do so should be rewarded economically.  Only then will we actually do something good for the environment.  Only then will things become “sustainable.”

Education, Family, Responsibility

LETTER TO A GRADUATE

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Dear Jon,

Congratulations are truly in order.  This is a milestone.  You have a diploma, but what does it mean?

That is, what does it mean to those who do not know you?   The LACK of a High School diploma would mean a lot to people who knew only that much about you, but the fact that you have a diploma simply places you in a group of hundreds of thousands of young people who got one.  Now what?

Some kids are lucky.  They have a strong direction and interest by the time they finish highschool and they go right off to college to learn more about what interests them and some of them even wind up working at what interested them when they began college.

Many don’t.  They go to college, spend tons of money to get a degree and eventually wind up doing something entirely different.  However, the fact that they have that COLLEGE diploma, means a great deal to potential employers and colleagues.  That’s because there is no law that says a person has to attend college.

Gaining a college diploma means that an individual had enough drive and self-management to complete a course of study, and almost regardless of what the course of study was, that diploma marks the person as a good do-er – someone who could get his or her homework done even when parents weren’t there to nag and remind.  So, maybe that person can be trusted to do valuable work in exchange for money.

Some kids are even luckier.  They have a drive to learn and excel in a particular field and then go on to master that field and strive to “make a difference” in the “world.”

For many, the easiest way, or, at least, most certain way to make that difference is by becoming a teacher, and there is some truth to that.  As a teacher one is able to affect the minds and beliefs of dozens and hundreds of children – affects that will be part of them for the rest of their lives.  So teaching is pretty significant… but it’s not the path for everyone.

Sometimes the best difference that a person may make in the world derives from what he or she teaches just one or two other people – maybe children or grandchildren.  You never know.

The world, however, is still there, ready for all those “differences” to be made in it.  All those differences are not made only by high-minded diploma-holders:  the greatest ideas will evaporate if some do-er doesn’t make them real.  Often, the thinker and the do-er is the same person, and we celebrate those people.  Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, Eli Whitney, Edwin Land, Thomas Edison, Clara Barton, Marie Curie, and a host of other industrial, military and political leaders are among that group.

Then there are those who are famous for having done what others dreamed up: people like Neil Armstrong.  He didn’t conceive of the machinery that took him to the moon,

but he had an ability of courage and good thinking, combined, to execute the great ideas and engineering of others.

Most of us are not like that.  Most of us are pretty-well occupied dealing with “life” as it comes along, earning a living and meeting our responsibilities.  Eventually, in the course of doing what’s best for ourselves and our families, many of us also give to others in time or money or otherwise, and make our own little, un-heralded “differences” in the “world.”  This applies to most, and is the greatest, cumulative force for good in the “world.”  Some turn criminal for whatever reasons, but most are good and civilization and society move haltingly, unevenly, even stumblingly toward an average better life for all people.  You can see there is a long way to go.

Which means there is plenty of room for you to make your own difference as you make your own way, your own life, your own living.  Eventually you will do your own good.  But, how?  Ay!  There’s the rub.

I know you didn’t have the most happy, care-free experience through school.  Neither did I.  But that’s done, now.  Now – right this instant – you are alive, healthy and strong, smart and good-looking and existing at the time of greatest opportunity ever!  Right now is when you can’t shuck your responsibility to yourself because you “deserve” a vacation or a little “rest” after your twelve grueling years slaving over textbooks.

Right now is when you have to make a map, of sorts.  It’s not a map that shows roads, trails, paths and correct turns at every intersection.  It’s a map of decision, though – definitely of decision.  You are very fortunate – lucky, even – that you are where you are with the people in your life who are here.  You have a smart brain.  And, it’s time to make a decision about making decisions.  Life on this planet is based on assumptions, beliefs and decisions.  And love.  It’s also based on love.

First, let’s examine what love has to do with it.  You are a product of love, for example.  Your mom and dad loved enough to go to the trouble of creating you, but not simply as a gift to YOU, but as a gift to each other, and with some expectation – an assumption, if you will, that whoever you were would give love back in return.  That is the real circle of life.

Love is not infinite.  It’s huge, but it has limits.  People who never return love that you send their way, can literally suck all the love out of you, leaving emptiness.  By returning love, you can multiply it, and the person to whom you returned that love not only has as much love as he or she originally had for you, but more than that.  Multiplication.  It’s a really cool phenomenon.  We don’t always call it love. 

Oftentimes the energy or effect that we might call love, is called and expressed as trust.  When you are trustworthy, when you keep your word, when you keep a secret, when you deliver on a promise, when you meet right expectations… you are expressing the force we call love.  People who learn to trust you develop an assumption about you that is called trust, but is a form of love.  Like love, trust given in return tends to

multiply trust between people.  There are very few “good” accomplishments that do not include a lot of trust between people.  It is the unwritten contract of honesty that enables most of the commerce of life, both monetary and personal.  Honesty, trust, love.  Obviously it’s important and you know you have already learned to trust quite a few people in your first eighteen years on Earth.  Have they all learned to trust you back?  That’s the first decision on your decision map: am I willing to do what it takes to be a person of trust?  Am I willing to sacrifice, sometimes, to maintain that trust?  Am I willing to do what it takes to deliver on promises I have made?  Will people who know me always know that I may be trusted to keep my word?  That’s the first decision, Jon.

People who live in accordance with that decision generally GIVE as much as they RECEIVE.  Like emotional love, people who accept the trust of others and don’t return it by action and discipline, will soon suck all the trust out of a relationship, leaving emptiness.  I hope you decide to be a trust generator.

You are bound to encounter people who are not worthy of your trust and you must be wise and careful of where you place YOUR trust.  You know someone like Frank Allen, for example, can always be trusted, but there are those who will lie to you, take advantage of your trust, even steal from you, and you must recognize when trust is the wrong thing to do with that person.  Trust is big but not infinite, and it’s extremely fragile.   A solid trust relationship is worth more than gold, and you are obligated to protect and nurture it.  It’s everything from doing what you said to saving the life of the soldier next you in battle – or him saving you.

We all live on a path built out of assumptions… assumptions that are part of our personal belief structure.  For example, we assume that the sun is coming up on time each morning; we assume that when we put our foot down on the floor that it will be firm and able to support us – same thing with the ground.  We expect – or assume – that tap water is safe to drink.  There are thousands and hundreds of thousands of assumptions that we have learned to depend upon.  Most accidents, surprises, shocks, injuries… the list is long, that happen, are when something we assumed to be true or real, is not.  Or it’s when something that we are in the habit of assuming, but which can actually vary, has varied and we fail to observe it – we fail to adjust our assumptions.

For example, a driver may assume that the person in the intersection who appears to be signaling for a turn is actually going to make that turn.  We have experienced enough instances when a turn is signaled and then actually made, that we “let down our defenses” and assume that the turn will be made this fine morning, too.  Unfortunately, sometimes the signaler is not aware he or she is signaling and instead drives right into you, or, worse, you drive right into him or her.

Assumptions can let you down.  Assumptions are created out of one-way trust.  Since the ground has always been solid, you can assume it will be today, also, but you can’t “trust” that the ground will be solid, can you?  The ground has no heart.  It can’t love you, it can’t “return” your trust.  You must recognize that making assumptions is strictly

a one-sided activity.  Make a decision, please, to never assume too much.  Maintain conscious awareness… and a sense of skepticism.  It is an old saying, but totally true: “Things are not always what they appear to be.”

The greatest pain and emotional injuries occur where someone has assumed a certain relationship exists – perhaps one of trust, or even love – when it does not, or that it is of a particular nature when it is something quite different.  The assuming party then acts or trusts in a certain way and is thunderstruck when what he or she expected would happen is completely different from what actually does happen – like assuming the other driver were going to turn – and great pain is the result.

From that might spring great anger or hatred, two things you want to avoid with as much power as you can muster, for they are corrosive, like a strong acid, eating away at your abilities to love and trust.  Don’t assume too much.

You know something about the “scientific method,” I’m sure.  An observer takes note of a phenomenon – maybe as simple as a pin dropping to the floor.  He or she measures how long it takes for the pin to reach the floor and creates an experiment where the same pin can be measured falling to the floor, again.  After two or three repetitions, the observer, armed with the recorded observations, may make a statement that gravity has a “rate” of attraction.  In other words, a weight equal to the weight of the pin will fall the observed distance in so many thousandths of a second, every time.  Others won’t even try the same experiment – they begin to assume the truth of the observer’s statement about falling pins.  Can you already see how many mistakes the others are making?  Let’s list a few:

  1. Does a square chip of metal the weight of that pin fall at the same rate?
  2. Does the pin dropped head down fall differently than point down?
  3. What if the pin is dropped sideways instead of head or point down?
  4. Is it different in a vacuum than in the air?
  5. What about if it were dropped in humid air, or bone-dry air?
  6. What if it were dropped in a freezer at 32 degrees below zero?
  7. If you climbed a mountain and dropped the pin the same height at an altitude of 10,000 feet above sea level, would it fall at exactly the same rate?
  8. What about if you went to the shores of the Dead Sea and dropped it there?
  9. What if you went to another place on Earth at exactly the same conditions, would it fall at exactly the same rate?

Wow.  Such a simple experiment with so many variables!   Who knew?  The point is, just like relationships in life, work, families and friendships, a single observation can’t be the basis of trust or love.  You must decide that you will test for some variables before you start assuming that something is true, real or honest – ie. trustworthy – between yourself and new acquaintances.  This also means that you can’t assume that you have the trust of other people, or that you have the right to be combative or quick to anger with others.  You have to find a pattern of truth from multiple observations.  When you have a basis for trust, your relationship with others will be the best it can be.  If you assume a level of trust and it proves to not be real, you will be hurt and so will the other person, and so will some around you.  Please, make a decision that you will be a wise observer: ready to trust, but only when it’s proper and good.

Of course, a lot of these decisions and observations and even skepticism, apply to you, yourself, as well.  Do you keep promises to yourself?  Do you trust yourself?  What if you said to yourself that you were going to become an expert at… gaming software, for example.  Are you willing to do what it takes to become that expert, to gain that expertise?  Will you keep your word to yourself?

Or, if you find that it is hard work to keep that promise, will you talk yourself out of caring about that promise?

Or, are you willing to find out what the steps will be to gain that expertise, so that you can then plan to achieve it?  In other words, are you going to become a great    do-er or simply dream about becoming one?

Maybe simpler terms are easier.  If you lived in an apartment and there was no food in the cupboards or the refrigerator, would you be willing to do what it takes to buy some food?  Or would you go to a soup-kitchen and beg for a meal?

Those are promises you make to yourself.  Everyone has relationships with others where he or she keeps a high trust level, protecting confidences, keeping promises, stuff like that, yet fails to keep a promise to him- or herself.  You are the only person who can make that trust decision; you are the only person who has the ability to observe whether you have proven to be trustworthy to yourself.

It is that tiny, tiny sliver of distance between trusting yourself or not, that determines how we live our lives.  “This above all, to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.”

So, you must decide, and now is when you must.  How will I live?  And you can’t leap, in one step, one experiment, one observation, from where you are to some ultimate dream or goal.  You need a number of observations.  You can try college or junior college and find it a perfect fit for your “map.”   You might observe that it is not.

You could “apprentice” yourself in a field you are interested in, and work for a while before going to college.  You’ll have a lot of observations on which to base your self-trust.

You could take a minimum-wage job and master it.  You will be amazed to see how many doors open up as a result.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  It is YOUR decision to be a drudge or a dynamo.  You took that job with Frank at the Elks and became a dynamo, gaining an excellent reputation, there, while helping a lot of people you don’t even know.  You TOOK the $25.00 but you GAVE much more.  It’s a formula for a good life.  You also gained many observations about cause and effect, work and rest, starting and finishing, cooperation and independence, expertise and apprenticeship.

You can do hard jobs.  You may not always like what has to be done, but you can do hard work.  That’s pretty important.  The greatest successes in America are based on starting at the “bottom” and working your way up.  Every famous general started at the “bottom.”

Finally, you must never stop learning, reading or teaching.  Learn things so that you can teach others about them.  I hope you make this decision / promise to yourself.  None of us knows enough.  The mind is always at a new level, having accumulated the education of yesterday.  Now, it’s today.  You can’t stay here, for tomorrow is coming.  You can try, but you’ll fail in everything if you think today is your forever.

Today is the only day in which you can prepare for tomorrow.  Whether you intend to (which I hope) or not, you ARE preparing for tomorrow.  It’s almost like magic.  No matter WHAT you do today, it is preparation for tomorrow.

The magic is in your soul.   It’s you.

Culture

Here We Are

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It is just a few days until Christmas and I’m driving with great Prudence, yet still able to observe the full moon in its apparently circular beauty, yellow-orange and huge.  Flying across its face are dark gray clouds.  There still being some waning daylight, the clouds seem darker than they really are, making the moon’s reflected light seem friendlier than ever, and it made us think about it all.

Some astronomers are faithful to some view of God or an Intelligence behind the design of the “Universe” of which we are aware.  Some are faithful only to mathematics and physical laws… of which we are aware.  All, however, are evidently in agreement about matters of life on earth, and our so-far unique circumstances that allow for the benign environment life has enjoyed for millions of years.  And, it has a lot to do with the Moon.

Along with earth’s distance from the right sort of star, it is blessed with a “satellite” moon that is large enough (about ¼ of earth’s diameter) and massive enough (about 2% of earth’s, gigantic among known “moons”) to not only generate significant tides but to form, in effect, a binary planet system.  By some manner, the formation of the Moon caused a tilt to earth’s axis resulting in seasons as we whirl about the Sun each year.  Our friendly moon also has protected us from objects too numerous to count that hit her instead of earth.

Earth also was formed from the right kind of rocky, metal-laden bits and pieces – the remains of stars that died billions of years ago – such that our core is a molten mix of iron and several radioactive elements that both maintain heat and convection and which happily generate a strong magnetic field that, fortunately, protects us from the worst of our right-sort-of-star’s radiation, allowing mutation to occur not so frequently that already living things could not take advantage of them over generations of evolution.  All in all, cool.

Amidst all of this rare good fortune – so rare in conjunction that its calculation of probability needs more zeroes to the right of its decimal point than this page could hold – somehow evolution produced humans who became abruptly smarter a couple hundred thousand years ago, including the ability to worship, the only truly exclusive ability amongst all the higher orders of fauna.

True agnostics, among whom all honest scientists should reside, are able to consider the possibility  that there is Intelligent Design given the quantity of evidence for it; atheists, on the other hand, are committed to denial in the face of evidence, mainly out of fear that there might be a “God,” so-called, and they seriously don’t want that to be true.  Skeptics, though, want to argue every tiny point about “Intelligent Design” or any other name for God, since they can’t see it, touch it, taste it or hear it, and lacking tangible proof prefer to remain on the sidelines, watching the game.  Besides, if there were such an all-powerful Being, wouldn’t He make Himself known?

The answer to that question is, of course, yes, He would… and here we are.

Humans tend to assume that if there is something to be learned that we can learn it – something to be known, we can know it.  On Earth we know a great deal but very little beyond.  Without experience to fill out our observations, we remain quite ignorant and reduced to speculation, which we are very good at.  Currently the hot speculation is about “life” on other planets in other solar systems in “our” galaxy and, naturally, in others.  Telescopes of various kinds reveal that most stars have planets and we can observe basic parameters of some of them.  Automatically we can speculate, estimate by orders of magnitude, that there are billions and billions of planets… surely some are enough like Earth to have sentient life, both more advanced and less advanced than we are.

Is it reasonable that “God” or the “Intelligent Designer” of the universe has devoted some care and attention to them, also?  Do they have souls?  Can they go to “Heaven” when they die?  In the 1950’s Prudence’ close, close friend read a science-fiction story about humans – probably Americans – who had abandoned their original starship mission in an attempt to arrive at an inhabited planet while “Jesus” was still there, just missing him more than once.  The title and author escape us but it may have been Heinlein, Poul Anderson or some other science fiction artist of the period.  The concept is a natural extension of our speculations, though, is it not?

The facts and phenomenal good fortune of our existence on Earth have granted us the ability – perhaps the right – to believe and to worship, to discover mathematics and to learn to speculate outside of our individual spheres of subsistence and procreation.  At the center of the “Are we alone?” question, lies “Are you there God, it’s us, humans?”

Still, it is interesting that humans are wired to worship, and that “religious” traditions around the world share many concepts and traditional accounts of the origins of everything and of the sources of knowledge of all sorts: from outside of Earth, always “up.”

Unfortunately, learned humans tend to create comfortable pathways along which to speculate – form theories.  Many of these same consider religious beliefs – religious explanations for the origin and operation of “things” – to be mythical and therefore unreal.  After all, those ancient peoples had no science, no rational means of discovery, so the speculation goes, and therefore everything they believed was baseless.  Maybe.

Now and then something is dug up that belies a lot of speculations and the learned humans file it away in the basement of a university school of misunderstandings so as to not threaten their speculations.  Speculators like to be in control.  Consequently, they prefer the most complicated explanations they can conceive of – explanations that require incalculably tiny probabilities of sequences of “natural” events – to explain everything.

One could speculate that these rationalist humans are simply worshiping the wrong truth.

Culture

More than a game

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What can be said that hasn’t been beaten into the ground already, about football? Well, some things can be said about the meaning of it. Your response may be that there must be something more important to expound upon, but there is a point, here, worth making.

Football is a metaphor for America. Not because of the “sport” aspect, but because of its declaration of excellence being rewarded and celebrated, vicarious inclusion of couch potatoes, and attraction of profits – even the creation of millionaires.

“Aww, c’mon,” you say, “it’s just a game.” No, no it isn’t.

Football is a great business, and Americans react well to this because we are, like every other human, innately capitalist. We recognize and appreciate smart business, smart marketing, and that wonderful effect of smart business: secondary benefits to multiple other businesses and tremendous flows of profit dollars into charities.
Even better, football succeeds, itself, because it grandly recognizes and rewards individual excellence and discipline.

No matter how loosey-goosey our morals appear to be, we each value excellence and we honor those among us who strive, daily and hourly toward perfection. We are awed and thrilled by organizations whose profit motivations imbue their individual members toward constant improvement… and success.

“Do Your Job.” Americans respect and reward responsibility. No matter the qualities of leaders – and successful organizations, particularly business organizations are led, obviously, more than simply managed – every individual following a leader is ultimately responsible to that leader, to his associates who depend upon him or her, and to him- or her-self, for the task each has trained and learned to accomplish at the moment of execution. Ya’ gotta’ love it.

There are a handful of truly great and greatly led moments in our history, when large fractions of the nation followed, even sacrificed, for the proper purpose a recognized leader had placed before us. The Revolutionary War – in a sense our first Civil War, as we “seceded” from England – is a perfect example. Clearly Washington was a superb leader who was able, in the face of extraordinary odds and opposition, to maintain the shining goal and keep his under-fed, under-supplied and under-appreciated troops striving toward an “impossible” goal: Independence.

The Americans weren’t fighting for treasure or even for comfort or out of fear, but for a set of ideas and ideals. To maintain leadership for such an effort is rare and justification for our reverence of General Washington.

Lincoln showed similar, not identical traits. But his sense of “mission” was no less complete than Washington’s. And there was a purity of purpose that never faltered and was apparent to enough people in the “Union” to re-elect Honest Abe in the midst of our bloodiest, most-hate-filled war ever.

In a sense, Washington led his troops to become the prow of the ship facing war’s stormy waters; Lincoln was, himself, the prow of that same ship. Both were leaders for the right reasons… and respected. Those being led were able to sacrifice for the purposes each leader embodied. Americans respect and honor that stuff!

Another, more refreshing example was the Apollo Moon-landing mission. Jack Kennedy was a leader. It’s not because of any significant executive experience – far from it. It was because of vision. For those of us born during WW-II, the 1960 election was the first we could vote in. We grew up under Eisenhower, but he didn’t “speak” to us. His presidency marked the end of an era and of his career… he was our parents’ president.

Kennedy represented the vitality of America and the start of new adventures, new ideas… the New Frontier. He was our start, too, and anything was possible. Somehow, in spite of his practical naiveté Kennedy perceived that the competition with the Soviets was a competition between cultures, between beliefs, between dreams, and that American needed a new dream every so often, and that the times and the possibilities were coming together. The U.S./U.S.S.R. conflict was a challenge to the ideas of America, and there simply was no room to come in second.

Kennedy’s May, 1961 Moon-landing proposal to Congress met every aspect of what a leader should include in laying out a mission: it was bold, it was a challenge, it was timed and measurable, and it had a specific goal – a goal that rose and set every day. It was perfect, and what the nation needed at a time when popular, slanted news was extolling the amazing progress the Soviet system had made in everything from rocketry to housing to medicine and to education.

The other element of the Apollo challenge was technological, and a certain boost to our economy… something every President needed. What happened?

Military leaders, scientists, engineers, colleges, think-tanks, machinists and a thousand businesses with their own leaders, adopted the mission and devised a thousand missions of their own. Most of the knowledge needed to pull off the moon landing and a safe return to Earth, was unknown. Many of the skills were floating around among the disparate parts of the nationwide, about-to-be-team, but they’d never been marshaled to a single goal until Kennedy presented a new dream. Still others had to be invented.

Again, what happened? A new unity of purpose. Indeed, there was an irresistible force of purpose that caused levels of sacrifice, stress, service and a striving for perfection rarely experienced by any industrial society… and success. The success was so profound that it swept up the vast majority of Americans into a new belief in what we stood for and could accomplish. It has not been repeated.

But metaphorically, its impact is out-pictured in teams’ quests to reach the Super Bowl. And the fans of those quests, fans of every team, respect the sacrifice and discipline, study, practice, learning and leadership that’s needed to get there. Brady would be nowhere without good leadership at the head of and within the Patriots organization, and within himself in fact.

Americans get that, and respond, even to buying shirts and hats as if to absorb a little of it.

The same qualities exist in the military, although the sacrifices are so compellingly greater. And Americans grasp what it means. We honor and respect the training, discipline, leadership and near-perfection elite teams strive for in every service… and even more, the physical, sometimes mortal sacrifices made in furtherance of the greatest mission on Earth: defending America. We share the pain when we back out of conflict without victory; we try to honor the many victories it has taken to get even to there.

We felt and respected some of the magic under Ronald Reagan, perhaps never recognizing the nature of his and our victory over the Soviet communist system.

But the momentum of dis-education and the constant anti-American pressure that has marked American culture since Nixon was forced out of office, was bearing fruit… and nuts.

From the utter debauchery of the Clintons, through the distorted semi-conservatism of Bush-43, through the Obama dislike of America, of Whites and of Christians, and his greater respect for everything we are not, Americans have yearned to respect again; to respect, perhaps, themselves. We have yearned to respect our institutions, and people, and systems and teachers and churches and everything that has, no matter how hidden or suppressed, the innate sparks of leadership, training, practice and sacrifice, that we know has created greatness in this land and in us.

No ONE can do that, and certainly he or she cannot BE that – not even Donald Trump. But he, at least, knows what IT is and its importance to the ideas of America. Like JFK, he has succeeded because he sensed Americans’ need for a new dream, every now and then.

Now is good. Go Pats!