American third party overdue

September 29, 2013

According to a recent Gallup poll, Congress has a pitiful 14 percent approval rating. It’s a direct reflection of the extreme frustration Americans are feeling with our frozen governance caused by the never-ending partisan political debate.

I believe most voters, whether Democrats, Republicans or independents, are equally disappointed by our broken governance. Supporters from both parties often say that while they don’t always agree with the actions taken by their party leaders, they truly hate the extremists on the other side. And so most stick with their chosen party, hoping the actions of their elected representatives will soon match theirs and their party’s espoused values.

Sadly, what supporters of both parties mostly receive in return is carefully constructed rhetoric designed to further fuel the fires of anger against the true enemy in the other party. In military terms, it’s called divide and conquer. And make no mistake about it, the conquered will end up being all American citizens!

Independent voters are perhaps the most upset. They chose to register as independents mainly because they know neither party is representing the best interests of most Americans. However, they remain mostly stuck with choosing from among the candidates of the two existing parties. As a result, their only choices are to either not participate in elections or vote for the least worst candidates.

I believe the majority of Americans, regardless of voter registration, are moderate centrists. A much smaller proportion, by actions or words, show themselves to be ultra-conservatives or ultra-liberals. I call them “ultra” because they find it to be nearly impossible to even slightly compromise their core beliefs. It’s why they are also called extremists.

Their inability to compromise is a perfect example of what Voltaire meant when he said, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” Clearly he meant holding desperately to one’s version of perfect solutions for problems completely prevents finding any good solutions. Both parties hold diametrically opposed visions of perfection. Their resulting actions have frozen our governance, and it appears both sides would rather see our nation die than compromise.

Both parties are engaged in a battle to the death of their opponent. Unfortunately, if left unchecked, it will lead to the death of America.

I have long advocated for firing all incumbents. I have abandoned this direct approach in favor of a more realistic idea, which accomplishes the same objective of forcing our elected to actually represent the best interests of the majority of our citizens. I’m now supporting the creation of a centrist-sponsored third party that would shrink the size of the two existing parties and severely reduce the power of the extremists leading them.

Think about it — what’s magic about having only two major political parties? Many other nations have multiple parties. Our two-party system worked fine as long as those we elected actually listened to the voices of the majority of Americans and compromised according to what they heard. However, both parties have been captured by the extremists. The parties’ collective actions prove majority voices are no longer heeded.

Perhaps the Canadian political system, with its three primary parties, offers a better model for governing. It has left- and right-dominated parties similar to ours. But it also has a third party, supported primarily by moderate centrists, that has for most of the past century served as a buffer between the extremists on either end of the political spectrum. It seems Canada has found a viable solution for perfect being the enemy of good.

The base for creating a third party already exists in America. It is populated by the 25 percent of all voters who are now registered as independents. In fact, the two existing parties have lost nearly 1.5 million registered voters since 2008.

Independent voters reject being classified as red or blue Americans. As this base of independent voters grows, it is inevitable that a third party will be created that will force our future elected to focus more on the best interests of we the people.

If you are an American who views yourself as a moderate centrist, and you are unhappy with the actions of the extremists in both parties, please change your voter registration to independent as soon as possible. Even if you have given up and aren’t registered, please register as an independent.

By taking this action, we can increasingly show both parties that the majority of Americans no longer support their extremist-led agendas.

We simply cannot stand idly by and hope perfect answers will be forthcoming. We don’t even need perfect — good would be a major improvement over the status quo!

If you agree, please change your voter registration, and pass this article on to your friends.  Please don’t sit on the sidelines and do nothing. If we fail to act, we deserve what we will receive — and it won’t be pretty!

Americans--A collective sigh of relief over Syria

September 15, 2013

The American attacks on Syria have been delayed, and most Americans are grateful. For President Barack Obama to have even remotely considered another Middle East war was utter madness. The only realistic American beneficiary for such a war is the armaments industry.

In trying to drum up support for an attack on Syria, Obama claimed it was to teach its leader that we will not stand by and allow innocent people to be killed with dreaded chemical weapons. Continuing use of conventional weapons, which has already killed 100,000, apparently is OK, but another 1,000 or so killed by unknown perpetrators with chemical weapons somehow crossed an imaginary red line. Are the other 100,000 or so killed less dead?

Any civil war is tragic. However, in Syria, we can't even identify the good or bad players. We don't know how many various factions sponsored by outside organizations are fighting to depose or support Bashar Assad. We can be sure that no matter who wins, the winners and losers will remain united in their hatred of America.

Let's take a journey back in time to remember some of the other notable military engagements our elected leaders from both parties have led our nation into, and the horrible devastation that was caused by their bad decisions.

In Vietnam, our politicians, from the safety of their offices, led our troops in the killing of hundreds of thousands of opposing military and innocent civilians. These battles ended up costing American families more than 58,000 of their children's lives and three times that number of wounded, many of those disabled for life.

Ground-based killing was massively supplemented by dropping millions of pounds of bombs and napalm on areas that purposefully included civilians because our leaders were certain these outgunned people would surrender once they realized they had no chance against our technical superiority.

Next, we dumped millions of gallons of a chemical warfare product called Agent Orange aimed at deforestation and destroying food crops. It worked so well that it resulted in the reported deaths of an estimated 400,000 civilians — and another 500,000 birth defects during the decades that have followed. If that wasn't chemical warfare, what is?

We should abhor the deaths and suffering of innocent Vietnamese civilians caused by our politicians. However, as Americans, we should feel even worse for our armed services personnel, who either paid the ultimate price or returned home, often wounded and disabled, only to be treated horribly by fellow citizens simply because they had done their duty by honorably serving their nation.

The returning troops should never have been blamed. It was the damned politicians who should have felt the American anger!

Following 9/11, and with full congressional support, Bush invaded Afghanistan. I doubt many Americans did not support this initial engagement in the war on terror. Unfortunately, as they had done in Vietnam and would later repeat in Iraq, our leaders gave little thought to a future exit strategy.

Before this war was even finished, Bush decided to invade Iraq. We can speculate about the real reasons for this war, but it clearly was not because of weapons of mass destruction. We attacked with an incredible array of sophisticated weaponry but did little to prevent civilian casualties. Total Iraqi deaths have been estimated to be between 175,000 and a million. The number of American military killed was relatively small, but many thousands more were wounded and many have been left with lifelong disabilities.

The decision to remove Saddam Hussein turned out to be a gift that never stops giving — bloodshed, that is! Many Middle East experts warned, correctly it turns out, that Iraq would inevitably end up a virtual killing field as the Sunni and Shiite Muslim religious sects would fight for control if he were removed.

Vietnam is a distant memory except for the brave surviving veterans who fought so valiantly and sacrificed so much. Iraq has been abandoned to civil war, and no matter who wins, the winners and losers will hate America forever. Afghanistan is also soon to be abandoned. Al-Qaida and the Taliban can hardly wait for the spoils left behind. The real losers in these three countries invaded by America are the innocent civilians, our brave troops, and taxpayers.

When Obama was elected, most Americans expected him to remove our troops from Afghanistan as soon as possible. Instead he made two bad decisions. He sent in even more troops and then told the enemy exactly when we would be pulling out. The enemy may not be sophisticated, but it is smart enough to know all it had to do was hunker down and wait for the withdrawal. Can you imagine how Afghan civilians who had agreed to help our troops must feel knowing they will soon be abandoned to our enemies, who are well known to practice swift and brutal retribution?

We all had better hope the international community can find ways to ensure that Assad turns over his chemical weapons stockpiles. If not, our president may have backed America into a corner.

I'm sure the armament industry lobbyists are working day and night to develop convincing reasons for him to order an attack. They are clearly becoming short of the customers that are created by wars, and their institutional shareholders must be worried.

America's racial divide - Part 2

September 8, 2013

On Aug. 28, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, my column had a story about my personal experiences in learning about diversity. If you did not read that column, this one probably won't make a lot of sense. You can find the earlier column on this blog.

In that earlier column, I discussed the beginning of my personal journey in 1989 toward better understanding the racial divide. In fact, I began to realize how little I had previously considered what it might feel like to function in a society in which you were a minority group member.

I specifically discussed attending a diversity training seminar sponsored by my employer, Eli Lilly and Co., involving 20 white employees and 20 blacks. The workshop leader opened the session by posing a question to me: "Mike, when was the last time you woke up in the morning thinking, because I have white skin, certain bad things are going to happen to me today over which I have no control?" Of course, I answered never.

Then he posed the same question to a black female, who happened to be a highly regarded Harvard MBA working for our company. I described the long silence before everyone turned toward her to see tears streaming silently down her cheek ... as she whispered, "Every day of my life."

I was saddened to hear back from a few readers who thought I was pointing the finger of blame only at the white race when they believe both sides shared blame. I guess they missed the sentence in my article in which I said both sides shared the blame.

However, most feedback was positive and supportive. I was a bit surprised not to receive a single email from anyone identifying himself as being black. I also received a few responses wondering exactly what the black young lady in my story feared was going to be done to her by whites because of her skin color. This question is what prompted me to write, as radio commentator Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

I actually had the opportunity to ask this young lady what bad things she expected whites to do to her each day. I was expecting to hear about acts of disrespect or rudeness. However, to my surprise, she said it wasn't any overt acts by whites she was troubled by, but mainly the personal doubts that had been societally imbedded in her psyche.

She said she wondered every day whether she had actually earned everything she had achieved. Did she really earn her excellent grades, or did they reflect the efforts of teachers trying to provide a helping hand? Did she get into Harvard strictly on merit, or was it because of race and gender? Was she hired by our employer because of her talent, or in order to meet an affirmative action quota?

She also said it was quite clear that many of her white colleagues wondered about her in the same way.

It occurred to me then and remains in my mind today: Did the many well-intended steps taken by our elected leaders to level the playing field in an attempt to make up for the horrors of slavery, segregation and prejudice have unintended consequences?

Another part of the story I'd like to share is that the leader of the workshop also had us participate in another very powerful exercise. Remember, we had 40 total employees in the seminar that day. They included 10 each of black males, black females, white males and white females. He divided us into two all-white and all-black groups. Each group was instructed to brainstorm and then write down on a white board every word we had ever heard a member of our own race say about the opposite race.

Carefully think about the genius of the question: What words have you ever heard someone of your race say about the opposite race? It made the assignment very safe. We weren't writing down what we had ever thought or said — it was what others had said.

The program leader did a masterful job of making fun of and debunking the horrible labels used by both races against each other. I don't have space to go into all of the details, but I will say it ended up helping us all understand how stupid, demeaning and ridiculous it is to have so many in both races using or allowing others to apply blanket labels and stereotypes to everyone in the opposite race.

The other interesting thing I noticed was that the blacks were very aware of the labels whites used for them, but the whites were less aware of many of those used by blacks to describe whites. Suffice to say, they were equally cruel and hateful. I walked away from that meeting no longer wondering if many in each race are racists.

I surely hope future generations will find it in their hearts to judge every person they encounter based on their actions, and remember that we are all members of the very same human race.

So, as Paul Harvey would have said, now you know the rest of the story.

America's labor day means?

September 1, 2013

Monday is officially recognized as a federal national holiday. It caused me to think about all of the holidays that our lawmakers have determined Americans should collectively recognize each year. The current list: New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Washington's Birthday, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

As I thought about this weekend's celebration of Labor Day, it dawned on me that it's our only national holiday that I can't easily explain to foreigners. I mean, I could tell them it was about labor, but exactly what facet of labor, I had no idea.

I could easily explain how each of the others became national holidays and what they are supposed to represent. I would have to be an idiot not to be able to do so — lots of clear hints in the holiday names and the many public events that are held to celebrate each of them.

But Labor Day? Hmmm. When was it actually made a holiday? Why are Americans supposed to celebrate this special day? How have we celebrated it historically?

Here's the background story according to Wikipedia:

Labor Day was officially signed into law by President Grover Cleveland in 1894, a mere six days after approximately 30 workers were killed by federal troops and U.S. marshals during the railways' so-called Pullman strike. Apparently the law creating this new national holiday was rushed through Congress and signed by Cleveland in order to placate angry mobs of union members back when they made up more than a third of all workers. It's been a nationally recognized American holiday ever since.

From what I've observed, most Americans now recognize and celebrate this holiday primarily for other reasons, such as the beginning of the college football season, another big NASCAR race, the second golf tournament in the new PGA FedEx Cup series, an excuse for a family picnic, and, until recently when many schools' fall starting dates were changed, a signal that school was about to resume for millions of American children.

However, perhaps the biggest reason for Labor Day is that it provides a Monday national holiday during which millions of Americans go shopping in order to buy more stuff they don't need with money they can't afford to spend, stimulating the economy in the process. It has become one of the biggest shopping days and largest revenue generators of the year for the retail sector. In other words, Labor Day has become the day that allows retailers to transfer the fruits of others' labor into their own pockets.

What clearly seems to have been lost along the way is much if any connection to honoring workers in our nation. While union leaders originally thought it was a great idea, it was never widely supported by most Americans.

Today only about 11 percent of American workers are union members, 23 million Americans are either out of work or markedly underemployed, nearly 50 million are on food stamps, a fourth of our children are living below the poverty level, millions of jobs having been shipped off to nations with lower labor costs, and our elected leaders have been doing very little to effectively support the labor side of America's wealth-creating equation.

The question we really ought to be asking is: Why isn't this a day of national mourning instead of a celebration? After all, what do most workers, or those who want to work, really have to celebrate?

Since the majority of Americans can no longer honestly celebrate labor during this holiday, perhaps we ought to more properly rename it Shopper's Day, Crony Capitalism Day or the One Percent Labor Beneficiary Day. Almost anything make more sense than Labor Day.

American racial divide far from closed

September 8, 2013

Dissecting the complexities of race

On Aug. 28, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King's Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech, my column had a story about my personal experiences in learning about diversity. If you did not read that column, this one probably won't make a lot of sense. You can find the earlier column at www.blueridgenow.com/miketower.

In that earlier column, I discussed the beginning of my personal journey in 1989 toward better understanding the racial divide. In fact, I began to realize how little I had previously considered what it might feel like to function in a society in which you were a minority group member.

I specifically discussed attending a diversity training seminar sponsored by my employer, Eli Lilly and Co., involving 20 white employees and 20 blacks. The workshop leader opened the session by posing a question to me: "Mike, when was the last time you woke up in the morning thinking, because I have white skin, certain bad things are going to happen to me today over which I have no control?" Of course, I answered never.

Then he posed the same question to a black female, who happened to be a highly regarded Harvard MBA working for our company. I described the long silence before everyone turned toward her to see tears streaming silently down her cheek ... as she whispered, "Every day of my life."

I was saddened to hear back from a few readers who thought I was pointing the finger of blame only at the white race when they believe both sides shared blame. I guess they missed the sentence in my article in which I said both sides shared the blame.

However, most feedback was positive and supportive. I was a bit surprised not to receive a single email from anyone identifying himself as being black. I also received a few responses wondering exactly what the black young lady in my story feared was going to be done to her by whites because of her skin color. This question is what prompted me to write, as radio commentator Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

I actually had the opportunity to ask this young lady what bad things she expected whites to do to her each day. I was expecting to hear about acts of disrespect or rudeness. However, to my surprise, she said it wasn't any overt acts by whites she was troubled by, but mainly the personal doubts that had been societally imbedded in her psyche.

She said she wondered every day whether she had actually earned everything she had achieved. Did she really earn her excellent grades, or did they reflect the efforts of teachers trying to provide a helping hand? Did she get into Harvard strictly on merit, or was it because of race and gender? Was she hired by our employer because of her talent, or in order to meet an affirmative action quota? She also said it was quite clear that many of her white colleagues wondered about her in the same way.

It occurred to me then and remains in my mind today: Did the many well-intended steps taken by our elected leaders to level the playing field in an attempt to make up for the horrors of slavery, segregation and prejudice have unintended consequences?

Another part of the story I'd like to share is that the leader of the workshop also had us participate in another very powerful exercise. Remember, we had 40 total employees in the seminar that day. They included 10 each of black males, black females, white males and white females. He divided us into two all-white and all-black groups. Each group was instructed to brainstorm and then write down on a white board every word we had ever heard a member of our own race say about the opposite race.Carefully think about the genius of the question: What words have you ever heard someone of your race say about the opposite race? It made the assignment very safe. We weren't writing down what we had ever thought or said — it was what others had said.

The program leader did a masterful job of making fun of and debunking the horrible labels used by both races against each other. I don't have space to go into all of the details, but I will say it ended up helping us all understand how stupid, demeaning and ridiculous it is to have so many in both races using or allowing others to apply blanket labels and stereotypes to everyone in the opposite race.

The other interesting thing I noticed was that the blacks were very aware of the labels whites used for them, but the whites were less aware of many of those used by blacks to describe whites. Suffice to say, they were equally cruel and hateful. I walked away from that meeting no longer wondering if many in each race are racists.

I surely hope future generations will find it in their hearts to judge every person they encounter based on their actions, and remember that we are all members of the very same human race.

So, as Paul Harvey would have said, now you know the rest of the story.

Mike Tower