Steven Howard Johnson - Getting America Unstuck: The Politics of Character and Craftsmanship

Dedicated to my children, Anna and Lucas,
and to their hopes for America

Getting America UnStuck

The Politics of Character&Craftsmanship

2017 - Steven Howard Johnson

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

1. Income Inequality - United States

2. Civics and Citizenship - United States

3. Environmentalism - United States

ISBN: 978-1-5323-2487-1 - softcover

ISBN: 978-0-6928-2094-0 (e book)

Contact

americaunstuck.com

Cover Illustration | Jan Black

Book Development Editor | Jan Black

Book Design | timmyroland.com

Table of Contents

Introduction

Getting America Unstuck

A journey of possibility.

IF AMERICA WERE TRULY A HEALTHY COUNTRY, what would be different? Thats not an easy question. These are disorienting times, and we have become a disoriented people. Our current frame of reference isnt adequate to the challenge.

As it happens, as I was in the midst of finishing this manuscript, I became ill with a very disorienting disease. It began as fatigue, mild at first, but then it steadily deepened. After a couple weeks I collapsed completely and was hospitalized. I am told I was semi-conscious during my first four days, but my brain had taken a break from forming memories and I recall none of it.

On the fifth day of my hospital stay, I came around. Looking back, that was the point at which my immune system had finally gained the upper hand. On the seventh day, our doctors provided a diagnosis. I had been infected with the West Nile virus. Apparently, it takes two or three weeks for ones immune system to muster an effective counter-attack.

Even though I am well on my way toward a full recovery, it continues to amaze me how disorienting the journey had been. To go through a four-day crisis and remember nothing? Thats never happened to me before. And it leaves me with this thought: West Nile is hardly the only disorienting force thats loose in our world. So much of our larger environment is the work of forces we dont fully understand.

So, if you like, you may think of Getting America Unstuck as a book addressed to the larger disorientation of our times. West Nile is a disorienting disease, for those who have it, but its hardly the only way to become disoriented.

Modern society imposes so many disorientations, its hard to keep track. Even the best among us are more disoriented than we realize. Our pundits? Our experts? Our political parties? Our news organizations? Our central bankers? Our candidates for office? We find ourselves on an uncertain journey amidst blizzards of conflicting advice. Is there a way to overcome our uncertainties? To bring our journey into better focus?

I think there is.

Its not the disorientation of a mosquito-borne fever that we want to overcome; its the disorientation of a civic culture that has gotten badly out of date.

So, think. If theres a civic counterpart to a working immune system, what would it be like? It would have to help us find fresh ways of seeing the world, wouldnt it?

So lets acknowledge our civic distress. Things are out of focus and theres no one whom we fully trust. Without better guidance than todays leaders can offer, it wont be easy to recover. Old methods stopped working quite some time ago. Its time for a fresh approach.

In these pages, I will invite you to reframe the challenge of American Stuckness; I will invite you to approach it from a fresh perspective.

But who am I? How do I see Americans as a people; how do I see America as a country?

In my minds eye, America is a country in which everyone counts. I havent written this book for a particular slice of people; I have written it with the thought that any American might pick it up and find something in it that makes sense.

All of us are members of this extraordinary nation, citizens of this extraordinary country. Each of us has something to contribute, none of us by ourselves have all the answers. And all of us have tendencies to err. We are stronger when all views are listened to and respected. We cant all of us be right, not all the time, but all of us have something to contribute; all of us have the right to feel respected.

As the Pledge of Allegiance reminds us, we are one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Many years ago, I was a taxi driver for Denver Yellow Cab, and, in time, an officer of our union, the Independent Drivers Association, a union of some eight hundred highly opinionated individualists. As cab drivers, we werent exactly a microcosm of the whole nation, but we werent that far off, either. As an officer of our union, and for two years its president, it was my job to listen to everyone. The phrase liberty and justice for all always plucks my heartstrings. It calls to mind our groups highly flavored blend of unity and diversity.

To be sure, rising to that standard will always be harder for a nation than it was for several hundred drivers at Denver Yellow Cab harder, but just as important.

And that insight gives us an important hint about what has gone missing in America today. We have lost touch with the higher meanings of our national adventure. America isnt a prize to be won by the strong and taken away from the weak. America is a blessing that thrives best when all of us contribute to our nations larger success.

OK, Steve, fine, but say just a bit more about who you are.

Fair enough. I have had an improvised career that offered me opportunities to learn about America from the top-down perspectives of the well-credentialed, and other opportunities to view America from the bottom-up perspectives of cab drivers and union officers, and also from the middle class perspectives of my Presbyterian Church and my local Rotary Club. I was raised on the advocacy side of American culture in the 1950s and 1960s but have also given volunteer time to the service side of American culture. My dad loved politics and earned a two-year term in Congress from Colorado as I was finishing high school. My wife has a deep respect for public service and for two years ran the General Services Administration for President Obama.