The Center Strikes Back

Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #205 Hateful Politics

Larry Bradley — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:06:17 GMT

1. New Book: Coming Apart by Charles Murray

2. Hateful Politics

1. New Book: Coming Apart by Charles Murray

A new book called Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010 by Charles Murray has come to my attention over the last week. I’ve seen two articles about it in the NY Times and it’s been featured in the (also relatively new) web site/Blog Rise of the Center (links below).

From what I’ve read about the book so far, what makes the book interesting is its discussion of how white America has become “increasingly polarized into two culturally and geographically isolated demographics,” to quote the article at link one.

In fact, David Brooks’ article (link #2) talks about the need, based on the book, for there to be a national service program that would cause the two demographics to have to live together. Sorry, David, we’ve been way ahead of you on that one for quite a while now. Bring on the Lottery Draft with selection for three levels of service: military, para-military and social service. The Greatest Generation who fought and won World War II and came home to establish great prosperity for this nation had that very experience. On a very large scale under highly stressful conditions, they lived among people who were not like them and came to appreciate other people and places as a result. We do not have this today and we need it back.

The third article talks about the divide and explores the question of whether the upper 20% are the upper 20% because of genetics or because of better opportunity. If those who occupy the upper 20% think it’s because of genetics, then doesn’t that present us with something of a “master race” complex contributing to a feeling of superiority and/or entitlement?

Overall, what I think this discussion points up is the old adage about the blind man and the elephant. How the blind man describes the elephant depends on what part of the elephant the man is touching. Further, if the blind man is never given the opportunity to touch the entire elephant, then the description is going to be very limited.

The value of this book and others like it (such as Our Patchwork Nation), therefore, is to show us how enormously diverse we are as a nation. In other words, politically, what this means to us is if we have policies being generated based on assumptions which do not reflect the reality of our societal diversity, then those policies have a very low chance of success. Voters who assume everyone else thinks and believes as they do (and those who do not are somehow evil) in choosing candidates and policies to support are actually hampering our ability to find solutions to our problems.

I intend to add Mr. Murray’s book to my reading list. You might want to do so, also.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/books/charles-murrays-coming-apart-the-state-of-white-america.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha28

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/opinion/brooks-the-great-divorce.html?scp=1&sq=David%20Brooks%20Charles%20Murray&st=cse

http://riseofthecenter.com/2012/02/08/main-reason-upper-middle-class-sending-more-kids-to-elite-colleges-theyre-producing-smarter-children/7999?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=main-reason-upper-middle-class-sending-more-kids-to-elite-colleges-theyre-producing-smarter-children

P.S. Rob Ritchie of FairVote.org is going to be on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this Sunday morning, Feb 12, 2012 at 9:15 a.m. EST (8:15 a.m. CST). Ritchie is an advocate of Instant Runoff Voting and similar modifications to voting to improve our Republic. I recommend watching.

2. Hateful Politics

Passion has always been part of politics and will always be. Anger has always been a prime motivator. But when voters allow anger to cross over into hatred, aren’t they violating the counsel to, “Don’t get mad. Get even.”?

Yet think of these recent events in the news. One is the finger wagging incident with Arizona Governor Jan Brewer towards President Obama. Another is the declaration by Florida Representative Allen West that President Obama, former Speaker Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could “go to Hell.”

What these incidents illustrate is crossing the line from anger over policy disagreement to hatred of the person because of their policy.

Those who manage people know a key management task is to separate the personality of an individual from their performance. The more difficult and creative the nature of the task the individual performs, the more difficult the task for the manager to make the distinction. For example, finding salespeople who can sell and will sell can be extremely difficult. When businesses find such an individual, the propensity is usually to overlook personality foibles in order to retain productivity.

One of the most famous public examples of this phenomenon came from the American Civil War with President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant. Figures jealous of Grant wanted to have him replaced with others they found more favorable. Those figures approached Lincoln with . . .

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Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #204 Preparing Children to Be Voters

Larry Bradley — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 22:18:52 GMT

1. What Would the Founders Do?

2. Preparing Children to Be Voters

1. What Would the Founders Do?

Since paragraph two today is about training young minds in the form of government our Founders conceived, one is reminded how often today we hear from voters (particularly Ron Paul supporters) that we need to get back to the basics of what the Founders envisioned.

I’m in the process of readying a new Preface to go with the coming re-release of my book as an eBook. Concerning the abuses of our political system, one of my reviewers asked the specific question, “What would our forefathers think?”

I replied as follows: Your comment about what our forefathers would think reminds me of a story about the Disney companies from many years ago. It was the 1970’s, Walt Disney himself had died and the kind of movie Disney made in the 50’s and 60’s wasn’t selling anymore. There was a meeting of the corporate executives and one of them asked, “If Walt were alive today, what would he say for us to do?” As a result of that meeting, the group decided to form Touchstone Pictures to make films with a more contemporary feel. The decision, as we know now, was a good one.

So, expanding on that answer a bit, what the Disney executives did was acknowledge the times and the tastes of the viewing public had changed. If they really considered the question about what Walt would say, then they had to know Walt was someone who not only wanted to be with the public’s times and tastes. Walt was someone who wanted to help determine what the times and tastes were. The executives therefore made a decision they needed to modify their product to satisfy those changing times and tastes. They implemented their decision in a very smart way. The general public was unaware Touchstone equaled Disney, so if something went awry the Disney Brand would not be tarnished.

So, yes, going back to the original thought, what would our forefathers tell us to do if they were alive today? Would they tell us to adapt to the current times using the knowledge and opportunities science and technology gives us today?

Or would the Founders tell us we need to bring back Slavery and rescind Women’s right to vote?

Probably some of the Founders would argue for both things. The question is who would we listen to?

2. Preparing Children to Be Voters

Retaining a healthy democracy means training its citizens in how their government works. Reading a recent newspaper article* about the knowledge displayed by American students regarding America’s history and government spoke to how poorly the task is being accomplished. The testing results quoted were jaw droppingly abysmal. Here are some of the statistics quoted.

Among 30,000 students tested in a prestigious national sample:

Fewer than one in four students scored proficient and student performance got worse with age.
Half of fourth-graders could not identify Abraham Lincoln from a photograph and give two reasons why he was important in history.
Only 22 percent of the nation’s 12^th-graders were able to identify China as North Korea’s ally during the Korean War.

The article went on to describe efforts to revise the curriculum for better results and the difficulty in the age of the Internet to sort out what to teach. Be sympathetic for the challenge to educators. Some time ago (at least ten years) a lecturer said the body of knowledge is now doubling every five years. Yet educators have children in their charge for the same fixed hours from ages 6 to 18 they have had children for the last century. If the time availability is fixed, but the potential knowledge for teaching is expanding exponentially, then something has to give. What is that something?

Apparently, one of the things “giving” is knowledge of history and government. Bellevue University, headquartered in Bellevue, Nebraska has commendably counter-acted the trend by establishing a Center for American Vision and Values. The University requires all its students to . . .

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Comment about Weekly Ezine #203 from JR Cassady

Larry Bradley — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 20:51:17 GMT

Here's a comment I received by email from JR Cassady.

Good comments. Don’t forget the “fear factor” in protracted wars. I remember patrolling into a friendly yard village in II corps where the villagers were keen on helping us with info about the NVA. We followed the info up and had a couple of short fire fights then circled the wagons and headed back to the SF camp. Later when going back through the same village they were very cool to us. We had no way or force to secure them. After we left the AO the NVA came back, tortured the chief in front of the people and abducted some young people as porters. We did try to rescue their kidnapped, but never could track them down. So, as you indicated, if you can’t secure the population from the cancer of the insurgents (radical Islamists) you are probably pissing in the wind.

I say we need a draft system. and the National will to fight a war to WIN it.

Keep up the good work.

Cass

Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #203 Which Business Are We Talking About?

Larry Bradley — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 23:17:25 GMT

1. Discussing Some Military Matters

2. Which Business Are We Talking About?

1. Discussing Some Military Matters

Here are some thoughts for you about recent military topics in the news.

First there is the sad business of the Marines urinating on the bodies of dead Taliban fighters. Some have defended the Marines on the premise of “Look what they do to us that’s even worse!” That argument misses the point.

When nations engage in what as known as symmetric or conventional warfare, the means to victory is destroying the other nation state’s ability to wage war. This means destroying both their military and their ability to produce and provide equipment and supplies to wage war. In conventional war, once one nation state is no longer able to conduct military operations, the war is basically over.

In unconventional (also known as asymmetric or guerilla) warfare the means to victory is to secure the population from an insurgent force and to do things which will keep the general population from joining the insurgent movement. If these things can be achieved, then the insurgency can be defeated. As I’ve written here before, defeating an insurgency takes a lot of troops and America and its allies have not ever come close to providing the required number of boots on the ground.

That said, when the other side commits atrocities we are galvanized to pursue victory. The same thing is true for the other side when we commit atrocities. The general population becomes sympathetic to the insurgency and the time required for victory is lengthened. The actions of the Marines, therefore is inexcusable not only because it is an atrocity beneath them, but also because those actions are a detriment to achieving victory.

Second topic: the reduction in the size of the military due to personnel costs was announced as part of the budget this week. The reduction is deemed necessary because personnel costs are up. Personnel costs are especially up in medical care. Medical care costs are up because we recruit married people, often with children, and the military supports them, as well as the service member. Were we to go back to the lottery draft I have advocated for some time, then we would be better afford to maintain the size force we really need. 18 and 19 year olds are much less likely to have families and we could afford to be much more selective about which ones that do we take in the military. There was once a saying in the Army that, “If the Army wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one.” Perhaps we need to return to that philosophy.

Third: Kudos once again to the Navy Seals who rescued the hostages in Somalia. Two thoughts about this event are worthy of your consideration. The event illustrates again the fact Special Operations success depends on good intelligence. The results we’re getting now against Al Qaeda and other ne’er do wells like Somali Pirates indicates we’ve broken the code on getting the intelligence we need. That’s good news. The other thought is how once again Somalia illustrates how a nation free of organized, effective government is scarcely the utopia some in this country think it would be and want to convert this country to. Those of you who think these thoughts are welcome to go to Somalia and try it out for yourself. Hope you’ve got lots of cash for ransoms. We know you wouldn’t want any government money being spent on rescuing you.

2. Which Business Are We Talking About?

So many arguments about national issues seem to lack clarity because of a lack of general factual data and appreciation for proportions. This certainly applies to discussions about how to get the American economy moving again. The argument now over the worth of Venture Capitalism vs. Vulture Capitalism is a case in point. As a man in the street commentator said recently in a newscast, “I’m not as concerned about Capitalism vs. Socialism or Fascism as I am about a return to Feudalism.”

Consider what you find when you Google, “How many businesses are there in the US?” A Census Bureau report from 2008* gives these numbers.

There were 27, 756,676 firms, or to use a shorthand there are over 27.7 M (for million) firms.

Of those firms, there are over 21.7M firms without a payroll, leaving a little over 6M with a payroll.

Of those firms with a payroll, 3.6M had 1-4 employees.

Of the entire payroll paying firms only 18, 469 (That’s eighteen thousand) had over 500 employees. Of those 18,469, only 981 (Nine Hundred Eighty One) had over 10,000 employees.

This is what these numbers mean to you. The . . .

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Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #202 Republicans Reveal a New Internal Conflict

Larry Bradley — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 22:54:57 GMT

1. Matt Taibbi: Everything You Need to Know about Wall Street in One Brief Tale

2. Republicans Reveal a New Internal Conflict

1. Matt Taibbi: Everything You Need to Know about Wall Street in One Brief Tale

Today’s paragraph two is about the conflict between Main Street and Wall Street. Serendipity struck as I finished it when I found this Rolling Stone article by Matt Taibbi. Matt’s article is a perfect complement to paragraph two today. I recommend the commentary, too.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/everything-you-need-to-know-about-wall-street-in-one-brief-tale-20120113

2. Republicans Reveal a New Internal Conflict

When the history of the 2012 Presidential Election is written, two potential themes are already presenting themselves for inclusion. One is the impact of Super-PAC advertisements on voters. The second is how damaging the revelations of the discord within the Republican Party were to voters in the general election. While that history is now being developed, there is a new development in the discordant themes.

The new development is the challenge by Republicans Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry of the business record of Mitt Romney. The pair says Romney indulged not in “Venture Capitalism”, but rather in “Vulture Capitalism”.* Further they say Romney’s record is not one of job creation, but of job destruction.

Amazingly, this means there is now a debate about what kind of capitalism the Republican Party supports. Romney’s response is the criticism of his record is the “politics of envy”. Is that the case? Do we have the politics of envy or the politics of voters realizing they have allowed Main Street to be screwed by Wall Street?

So, for the first time we have on display an internal conflict among Republicans—one between Main Street Business Republicans and Wall Street Business Republicans. The conflict is illustrated by a favorite Zig Ziglar saying, “You can have anything you want from life if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” Those who acquire wealth with Zig’s approach are the ones people admire. They are the ones from Main Street who generate the goods and services making lives better and easier. For the first time, American voters may become truly aware of the difference between the Wall Street ways of making money contrasted with the Main Street ways.

The essential difference is this. Main Street makes money through the creation and selling of goods and services. Wall Street makes money . . .

Seth Godin: Learning Leadership from Congress

Larry Bradley — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:17:06 GMT

Another great bit of commentary from Seth Godin

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/01/learningleadership.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

Charles M. Blow: Bitter Politics of Envy?

Larry Bradley — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 16:06:41 GMT

Do we have the politics of envy or the politics of realizing we have allowed ourselves to be screwed? Charles Blow examines the question.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/opinion/blow-bitter-politics-of-envy.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Joe Nocera: More NCAA 'Justice'

Larry Bradley — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 15:52:26 GMT

A sports article about a situation sure to offend your sense of fairness. The comments are worth your time.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/opinion/nocera-more-ncaa-justice.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #201

Larry Bradley — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 03:20:29 GMT

1. Registration Advice for Primary Voters

2. Early Primaries Results’ Meaning for Independent Voters

1. Registration Advice for Primary Voters

A conversation I was having with a lady earlier this week offered some insights worth sharing. I discovered she thought since she was registered with one of the two major parties, she was required to always be registered with that party. This is not true.

If you are registered as an independent voter, there is nothing to stop you from registering as a member of another Party. Further, if you are registered as a member of one party, there is still nothing to stop you from registering as a member of another party.

Some of you might tell me things are done differently in your state, but as far as I know there are no blood oaths to be taken or penalties for perjury associated with voter registration. You can register for whatever party you want, but you can only have one affiliation. The reason for the requirement is so during elections where the parties are trying to settle some internal matter (such as selection of candidates for the general election) voters are only able to have a ballot with one party’s candidates on it. Either that, or some sort of mechanism with the ballot is used (especially where independent voters are allowed to vote in primaries) to ensure only one party is voted for.

In other words, if you are registered with Party X and during a primary election you want to vote for a candidate from Party Y, then you can change your registration to Party Y. By the same token, once that election is over, there is nothing to stop you from switching back to your original status or register another way still.

Of course, that won’t make the dyed in the wool party members happy, but that’s too bad. It’s an election year and the circus of choosing candidates is coming to your state. Be ready when it does. Register and vote.

2. Early Primaries Results’ Meaning for Independent Voters

The two major manufacturers of Presidential political candidates had the first meetings of their shareholders in Iowa and New Hampshire to determine what model candidate voters will be offered in November 2012. The Democrats’ model is, of course, set. As a practical matter, your voting choice in November will be between incumbent President Barack Obama and whoever the Republican Party nominates.

You already don’t like either choice? Too bad. This is the reality of the choice the American electoral system gives independent voters. Until independent voters decide to rally together to demand change to the system, this either-or choice will continue to be the choice they have.

Iowa’s results confirm once again the baffling behavior of voters who claim to be dissatisfied with their choices, but are too lazy to make their choices better.

In a state with an overall population of just over 3 million, some 640,000 adults are registered Republican voters. Of those voters, just over 122,000 (less than 20%) showed up to vote.* Primary elections are where the candidates are chosen for the general election. Voters who fail to participate in primaries should not complain when the choices in the general election seem unsatisfactory. Why independent voters do not at least temporarily register with one party or the other to affect the outcome is a mystery.

Still, the Republican turnout in Iowa was a new record high. Why the turnout wasn’t higher still was yet more puzzling given the relatively mild winter weather during the Caucus. Perhaps the blame could be placed . . .

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Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #200 Never Again

Larry Bradley — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 03:15:23 GMT

1. Radio and Ebook Announcements

2. Never Again

1. Radio and Ebook Announcements

I’ll be on PressPause in Atlanta again on Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 6:15 p.m. EST (5:15 p.m. CST). We’ll be talking about the Iowa Caucus results and the upcoming primaries. The link to enable you to listen to the show follows.

http://www.presspauseonline.com/listen.asp

For those of you with those brand new Nooks or Kindles you got for Christmas, allow me to announce I’m going to release an Ebook version of Neither Liberal Nor Conservative Be in February. I’m writing a revised introduction to go with the book and there will be new offers for you on my web site for both the print and electronic versions. I also have plans to move the web site from www.KindredMindsEnt.com to www.TheCenterStrikesBack.org. The CenterStrikesBack.org will also be a Facebook page shortly. Obviously, just like the candidates and political parties, we’re gearing up to offer you our very best for the 2012 election.

2. Never Again

Wishing someone well during the holiday season is a common, yet sincere act. Each person can have a different vision for what being well means. Hopefully, your vision came true over the last week or so.

The reality is, of course, not everyone’s dream for how the holidays should go (or other events) happens the way they would like. Even what might be considered an amazing holiday for some might seem disappointing for others if expectations are too high.

If you are human, then circumstances change. People die, children grow up and career opportunities cause relatives and friends to live apart. Thank goodness for the ease of telephone communications. In fact, today we even have Skype so we can see the person we’re talking with.

Nevertheless, sooner or later some planned event is a disappointment. Maybe there was a high school reunion you wanted to go to, but you didn’t. You didn’t because you thought your car wasn’t good enough or you disliked the way you looked or some other reason. Maybe you just found yourself caught in some circumstance causing you to be in some undesirable situation and you vowed never again to be caught like that.

Here is one of my own experiences, offered as a lesson others might learn from, followed by a lesson for you as a voter.

Before my first wife and I had children I was in the Army . . .

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NY Times: Whose Tea Party Is It?

Larry Bradley — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 02:10:18 GMT

This article by the authors of a new book about who and what makes up the Tea Party and its issues speaks to many of the myths I've been telling you drive conservatism as practiced today.

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/whose-tea-party-is-it/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=thab1

Seth Godin: The Chance of a Lifetime

Larry Bradley — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:33:05 GMT

Seth Godin has a great message for the new year for the woe is me and my circumstances crowd.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/12/the-chance-of-a-lifetime.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2Fsethsmainblog+%28Seth%27s+Blog%29

Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #199 Part Two: Hiring and Firing Applied to Politics

Larry Bradley — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:21:20 GMT

1. Senator Ben Nelson’s Decision Not to Seek Reelection

2. Part Two: Hiring and Firing Applied to Politics

1. Senator Ben Nelson’s Decision Not to Seek Reelection

Commenting on US Senator Ben Nelson’s decision this week not to seek re-election, I told a friend on a scale of 1 to ten, with ten being most surprised by the decision, I am about an 8.

On the one hand, Nelson had to know there were few people of his stature in Nebraska capable of stepping up on short notice to compete for a job having the magnitude of his own. I had mused he might run with the thought of winning and then resigning in a couple of years when a more capable replacement emerged. Still, Nelson is the type of man who sees through a job to completion. One of Nelson’s criticisms for Mike Johanns, Nebraska’s other US Senator, was Johanns had quit one elected office in order to seek another mid-term. Accordingly, if Nelson considered that option he probably concluded he couldn’t allow himself to do something he openly criticized others for.

On the other hand, Nelson is 70 years old. If he had won reelection, he would have been 71 and facing a 6 year term taking him to age 77. When someone is 18 waiting to be 21, those three years can seem like an eternity. Similarly, when someone has worked as long and hard in demanding positions as Ben Nelson has, the lure of retirement, even semi-retirement, out from under the constant stress and abuse of an elected position can be appealing, indeed. Think of yourself at age 70 plus and ask yourself what you want your life to be like then.

Couple those factors with the ever more brutal nature of politics today and the probable motivations driving Nelson’s decision become further apparent.

I have always found Senator Nelson and his staff to be very open, professional and willing to listen. His tenure shows the difficulty of trying to perform in elected office as a pragmatist among partisans. I wish him well in whatever endeavor he decides to undertake, as well as his final year in office.

In fact, his final year might yield a number of singular moments. While he is highly likely to be cognizant of the impact of his actions on the electability of whoever tries to replace him from his party, the freedom from being concerned about the impact of a vote or statement on his own electability could very well lead to a number of astonishing “What the hell” votes, statements and other actions on his part.

Oh, and by the way, Happy New Year to Everyone.

2. Part Two: Hiring and Firing Applied to Politics

Today continues the offering of some alternative perspectives voters should consider in evaluating candidates for the coming 2012 election.

Last week comparisons were made between the issues involved in firing of a football coach and the issues voters are going to confront in 2012. Voters are going to be confronted by very similar issues with the 2012 election.

Voters must evaluate the performance of the society they live in and its economy (the players). They are the CEOs who are going to have to determine if that performance is sufficient to warrant the rehiring of the head coach (President Obama) and/or the General Manager (the Congress).

Was the starting point 4 years ago too low to expect much more than they’ve gotten so far? Did the replacement GMs brought in from the 2010 election help or hinder the process? Do those replacements themselves need to be replaced?

Finding the true answers to those questions will likely require more effort than voters planned, but make them more likely to vote the way they should for the best value.

Did the GMs voters hired in 2010 help the process or sabotage it? Further, was this a willful decision on voters’ part to make this 2010 hire? Or was the decision brought about because many didn’t vote in 2010, not realizing what would happen?

Whatever the reason, voters now have a clear demonstration of the impact of hiring GMs opposed to working with the current coach so they can hire their own coach.

The Republican Congressional GMs and those they represent are opposed to President Obama for several reasons. This discussion is about two of them. First, . . .

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Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #198 Hiring and Firing Applied to Politics

Larry Bradley — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:05:42 GMT

1. An Early Christmas Present

2. Hiring and Firing Applied to Politics

1. An Early Christmas Present

Today’s paragraph two focuses on drawing some parallels between the hiring and firing of pro football head coaches (specifically the firing of Kansas City Chiefs head coach Todd Haley) and the hiring and firing of elected officials.

Obviously, in the time between I wrote paragraph 2 and today new information is available. Haley’s firing worked out for the Chiefs—at least in the first game after the firing. The Chiefs spoiled the aspirations of the defending Super Bowl Champion Green Bay Packers for an undefeated season. The Chiefs led almost throughout the game and won 19-14.

I was at the game in Kansas City and I have to say it was an early Christmas present. I had toyed with the idea of selling my tickets. I’m glad I didn’t, although judging by the number of Packers fans in the stands many others were unable to resist the temptation. When my wife and I got to our hotel Saturday night there were already three tour bus loads of Packers fans in the hotel. Hotel personnel told us they had made repeated shuttle trips to the airport to pick up groups of Packers fans wearing team colors.

As a result, one of the delights of the Chiefs fans as the game went on was to see the angst of the Packers fans in person. Chiefs’ fans ached for a touchdown, not only to build the lead but to have the opportunity to do their irreverently defiant touchdown cheer. The moment finally came with about 4 minutes left in the fourth quarter and the cheer was done with gusto.

My wife said it was one of the most exciting games she had ever been to. The crowd stood the entire game. It was certainly a delightful reminder of why I continue to pay the money to attend in person.

By the way, the outcome of the game was not only notable for the change in a head coach. The game was also notable for the full game debut of Kyle Orton as Chiefs quarterback. What a showdown the final regular season game will be when Orton and the Chiefs take on Tebow and the Broncos, especially since the Broncos released Orton in favor of Tebow. Can you say payback?

Hope you and yours have delightful holidays, whatever and whichever holiday you celebrate.

2. Hiring and Firing Applied to Politics

If in some way you are someone who works for a manufacturer of a certain brand of automobile, then you are expected to buy and drive your manufacturer’s products. Clearly, the same expectation exists for just about any other product or service out there. That’s why a Pepsi Super Bowl commercial showing a Coke delivery driver drinking a Pepsi product was funny.

For everyone else not affiliated with actually manufacturing a product making a choice is a personal matter. Making a choice is driven by the desire to get the best value possible. Or at least such should be the desire; given the knowledge lowest price does not always equal the best value. One of Zig Ziglar’s best known sayings is, “I’ve always found its better to spend a little more than I planned instead of not enough as I should.”

Similarly, those affiliated with political parties know who they’re going to vote for. The unaffiliated voters, therefore, are the ones who are going to decide an election. These comments are intended for the unaffiliated in making the best value voting choices.

Voting decisions are hiring and firing decisions. If an incumbent is running for re-election, then do you re-hire the incumbent for a new term or replace them? What are the proper criteria for making the decision?

The most common criterion is performance. In the worlds of sport or business, performance is relatively easy to measure and blame, one would think, easy to assign. There are, after all, measurements like . . .

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Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #197 Examples of Political Prejudices Applied to Campaigning

Larry Bradley — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 03:45:35 GMT

1. Sioux City Debate and Matt Miller’s Critique of Obama

2. Examples of Political Prejudices Applied to Campaigning

1. Sioux City Debate and Matt Miller’s Critique of Obama

Two quick points before today’s paragraph 2.

First, hearkening back to what we’ve been writing about (how campaigning is like auditioning) I was struck watching the December 15, 2011 Republican debate with the following thoughts. If this were a singing competition like American idol, then one might be able to make the following analogy.

A strong component of the Iowa Republican Party is made up by evangelical social conservatives. They form a type of politics just like soul music is a type of popular music. Three of those candidates (Bachmann, Perry and Santorum) base their appeal on a type of argument of, “Not only do I like the kind of music you like, but I am a singer of the music you like.” The others take more the approach of, “I may not be able to sing the song you like exactly as you like it, but I support your kind of music.”

I was also impressed with both Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman (Paul, especially) for a real politik view of foreign relations. Paul made a point I like to make. Turn things around and look at circumstances from the viewpoint of the other country first. This is in keeping with Covey’s dictum of “Seek first to understand, before seeking to be understood.”

Matt Miller had an excellent critique of President Obama’s speech in Osawatomie, KS. The perspective is unique and worth your time.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-obamas-roosevelt-speech/2011/12/07/gIQAUkCccO_story.html?hpid=z3

2. Examples of Political Prejudices Applied to Campaigning

Current political news offers two clear examples of the underlying political prejudices motivating our two main political parties. These examples illustrate the underlying beliefs, myths or prejudices (choose the term you prefer) the two parties present to the public and their true believers in an attempt to get support.

The two examples are Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich’s remarks regarding how children are raised in the homes of poor families and President Obama’s recent speech in Osawatomie, KS.

In recent remarks, Mr. Gingrich stated children in poor families do not have examples of working adults. Specifically, Mr. Gingrich said, “Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So, literally they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of I do this and you give me cash—unless it’s illegal.”*

Mr. Gingrich’s remarks were undoubtedly intended to appeal to the core beliefs and/or assumptions of conservatives/Republicans. Many of those members believe a significant portion of our society does not work at all, but rather subsists totally on money provided by the government. In the mind of a conservative, the reason liberals/Democrats win elections is because those liberals/Democrats promise to take more money from those who work and give the money to the shiftless non-working.

This attitude is in keeping with the perspective of being conflict oriented and enemy centered. Those with this mindset have the orientation of, “If you are not my friend, then you must be my enemy.”

Turning to the second example, President Obama’s recent speech in Osawatomie** was an appeal for the continuation of a reduction of the rate paid by individuals in the so-called payroll tax. The belief, myth and/or prejudice in this case (again, take your pick) is . . .

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Comment on Weekly Ezine #196

Larry Bradley — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:51:02 GMT

You heard it first on my Blog, folks!

"Ad war likely if Nelson runs again"

http://www.omaha.com/article/20111212/NEWS01/712129943

Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #196 Another F-Word

Larry Bradley — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 16:05:10 GMT

1. ‘Tis the Season

2. Another F-Word

1. ‘Tis the Season

The last few years the first week in December has been marked by a snow fall and (where I live) we seem to keep snow on the ground until March. I am the kind of person who would much rather sweat than shiver, so this is not good news. Still, I can be philosophical about it. We will soon arrive at the winter solstice. Over the next 75 days, the days will get longer, the temperatures will begin to moderate and spring will present the promise of a new year.

Similarly, the next 75 days will be significant politically. With the electoral selection events in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada (among others) leading up to the Super Tuesday set of primaries in February, the Republican field will narrow. The extensive number of contenders you have today will shrink to the final two and the die will then soon be cast for November’s general election.

Should you expect a respite from March to September? Probably not, for two reasons:

First, we have had an intensive civics lesson over the last 3 years regarding the importance of the members of the Congress. Electing a President with the policies you endorse without electing the members of Congress who support similar policies is like conducting an attack as pure infantry without the support of armor and artillery. You might succeed, but your chances of success are much smaller.

Second, the Citizens United Supreme Court decision has opened the flood gates of money being used to generate ads by organizations other than the political parties. Expect a constant drumbeat of negative ads keeping you agitated about the candidates on both sides.

I am not an investment adviser, and this is not investment advice, but the thought does occur to me now might be the time to invest in radio and television networks. They’re going to make a boat load of money from all the ads they’re going to sell in 2012.

2. Another F-Word

Occasionally, the process of offering you something insightful and educational about American politics reminds me of what Lewis Grizzard once said. Lewis said of writing a daily column for The Atlanta Constitution that the obligation was, “like being married to a nymphomaniac. The first week is fun.”

Instead of fun, I have another f-word is mind this week—frustrating. Frustrating is a word used when you don’t see progress towards a goal. Instead what you see are false starts and continuation towards gridlock. Nor am I alone in this feeling.

David Brooks wrote recently about political parties and how in politics, just as in the solar system, the sun rises as the day begins and the moon rises during the night. Political parties are like the sun and moon. Usually one is in ascendency while the other is in decline. Now we seem to be stuck in a situation where neither of the two major parties are either ascending or descending and so we are stuck with two moons. Further, no impetus seems to exist to force the system to move. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opinion/brooks-the-two-moons.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

One of the keys to military success is to be able to make decisions faster than your adversary. This is called getting inside your opponents’ decision cycle. By making and implementing your decision first, you force your enemy to react to you. Meanwhile your enemy is still trying to decide what to do about the existing set of circumstances. Imagine what happens to your enemy when you confront them with a second decision, and then a third while the enemy is still trying to react to the first decision.

Like it or not, we are in a global economy. While we are in political gridlock, we are not making decisions, but our competitors can and will. How can this be good for our nation?

Adding to the frustration is . . .

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Gingrich Was for the Individual Mandate Before He Was Against It

Larry Bradley — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:53:30 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4NrECZ9a2U&feature=related

Larry Bradley's Weekly Ezine #195 Parallels between Auditioning, Interviewing and Campaigning

Larry Bradley — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 22:40:28 GMT

1. On the Radio in Atlanta, Plus More on Auditioning

2. Parallels between Auditioning, Interviewing and Campaigning

1. On the Radio in Atlanta, Plus More on Auditioning

I will be appearing on the Atlanta, GA radio show Press Pause on Saturday, Dec 3, 2011 at 6:15 p.m. EST (5:15 CST). The program is hosted by Patricia Wilson-Smith and is broadcast on WAEC 860 AM. The station web site has a button to let you listen live at http://love860.com/.

Paragraph Two today is about comparing auditioning and interviewing to campaigning. All are a form of sales. I wanted to share a couple of auditioning stories I hope you’ll find amusing. There are a lot of unemployed folks out there. Maybe someone you know in that situation might find something useful from these stories.

First, my good friend and high school buddy Tina Stillwell has a position at Missouri State University where she gets to interview notable alumni from our alma mater. One of those interviews was with the actress Kathleen Turner of Body Heat and Romancing the Stone fame. Turner told Tina about how she got the part in Body Heat. She was auditioning in the producer’s office, which had a beautiful white shag carpet and a glass coffee table with an ash tray filled to overflowing. Turner was asked how she saw her character. Turner replied she must be a drunk. How else could she do the things she was doing unless she was drunk? The producers said, OK, let’s see you play drunk. Turner did. As part of her improvisation, she deliberately overturned the ashtray onto the rug. The producers said, “We love it!” and, of course, she got the part.

Second, I read recently the comments of a very popular actor who counseled people not to be discouraged by temporary set backs. He told a story of auditioning for a part in a movie he was absolutely sure he was the best suited to play, but was not selected. He continued to believe no one else could do a better job until the movie was made and he went to see it. He saw then why he lost out to the other actor. The actor who lost was George Clooney, the actor who got the part was Brad Pitt, and the movie was Thelma and Louise. (One thought I had from reading Clooney’s story was how actors like him get to know about a film well before the general public does. Clooney went to see the movie already knowing the dialogue and how the movie would end.) Clooney, of course, went on to a very successful career in his own right.

By the way, I’m always amused by people who rail against “the Hollywood Elite” with the implication they do not share the values of everyday people or know what its like to work hard. When you think about it, there is scarcely an activity in the world more entrepreneurial than making a movie and having the personal skill to make people voluntarily spend their money to sit in a darkened room and watch you perform.

Third, and lastly, Glen Shepard had an article in his newsletter this week about job hunting entitled, If You’re Going to Strike Out, Go Down Swinging with some very audacious job hunting advice. I strongly recommend it. Read it here. http://www.glennshepardnewsletter.com/2011/339.htm

2. Parallels between Auditioning, Interviewing and Campaigning

Imagine a job interview process as follows. Instead of a private interview with you as the only candidate present, your competitors (at least six) are lined up next to you at podiums. Each of you is asked the most “gotcha” type questions imaginable. The time limit imposed on your answer leaves you vulnerable to failing to cover potential unintended consequences. Your opponents, as part of the follow up to the original questions, get to sharp shoot your answers. Those answers give the competitors the opportunity to use words like “naïve” or “short sighted” in their evaluation of you.

Further, despite extensive research you may have done regarding the preferences of the hiring authority, you may encounter real dilemmas regarding the best answer for a question. The reason for the dilemma is because one answer you have in mind is the one the hiring entity wants/expects and the other answer is the one you feel is right. More on that subject shortly.

Contrast that with the normal interview process where only you are present. You might be one on one with the person you would work for or with. You might be in front of a panel of interviewers, with each interviewer representing a component part of the organization you’re hoping to be employed by. In either case, the only feedback you get is from your questioners, not from your competitors. This is the usual way the business world works, especially for managerial and professional positions.

Last week, running for office was compared with auditioning for a part in a play or movie. The dynamics described above represent another aspect for voters to keep in mind as they make their voting selections. Only in entertainment or sport do you see . . .

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From Time Magazine--The Other 1%

Larry Bradley — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 03:42:19 GMT

One of the points this article from Time Magazine makes is one we have long been concerned with here and in my book. Our reliance on a "volunteer" military means our society as a whole is not involved with the trials and sacrifices of the military itself, nor committed to winning the war as a nation.

The thing our society objects to the most, the return to conscription, (and we advocate the lottery system we were using just before the conversion to "all volunteer") is the thing our society needs the most.

Thanks to our friend Jack Cassady for bringing the article to our attention.

Cover story for Time November 21, 2011 Pg. 34

Good info here.....Cass The Other 1%

By Mark Thompson

When Marine Sergeant Alex Lemons returned home in July 2008 after the last of his three combat tours, it was almost as if he had landed in a foreign country.

"I felt as alien here as I was in Iraq," the 32-year-old recalls of his return to his native Utah. At home, he says, it was impossible to tell we were a nation at war. He couldn't discuss it with pals "without sounding like a Martian," because they had no idea what the war in Iraq was like. The conversation would bog down, stall and then move on to other topics.

Lemons has moved on too, although his lingering PTSD and upcoming 14th operation on his feet, which were crushed during a fall in Najaf, are reminders of what separates him from most Americans. "The gap between the military and everybody else is getting worse because people don't know -- and don't want to know -- what you've been through," he says. "There are no bond drives. There are no tax hikes. There are no food drives or rubber drives ...It's hard not to think of my war as a bizarre camping trip that no one else went on."

As the nation prepares to welcome home some 45,000 troops from Iraq, most Americans have little or nothing in common with their experiences or the lives of the 1.4 million men and women in uniform. The past decade of war by volunteer soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines has acted like a centrifuge, separating the nation's military from its citizens. Most Americans have not served in uniform, no longer have a parent who did and are unlikely to encourage their children to enlist.

Never has the U.S. public been so separate, so removed, so isolated from the people it pays to protect it.

Every day, U.S. troops fight and work on all seven continents, but in most ways the nation has moved on to new challenges: the economy and a looming presidential campaign in which the wars bump along at the bottom of a list of public concerns topped by jobs, debt, taxes and health care. Over the past generation, the world's lone superpower has created -- and grown accustomed to -- a permanent military caste, increasingly disconnected from U.S. society, waging decade-long wars in its name, no longer representative of or drawn from the citizenry as a whole. Think of the U.S. military as the Other 1% -- some 2.4 million troops have fought in and around Afghanistan and Iraq since 9/11, exactly 1% of the 240 million Americans over 18. The U.S. Constitution calls on the people to provide for the common defense. But there is very little that is common about the way we defend ourselves in the 21st century.

The isolation will be plain to see as those U.S. troops in Iraq stream home before the year's end. Most will return not to 50 states but to two: North Carolina, home to the 82nd Airborne Division, and Texas, home to Killeen's Fort Hood and El Paso's Fort Bliss. There, many of them will live "on post," or in military-centric towns, where contact with the rest of us is rare. "As we continue to concentrate ourselves in fewer and fewer bases, as we become more secluded by way of a volunteer service, where fewer and fewer Americans have either served or know someone who's served," says Army Secretary John McHugh, "there is a sense of alienation that I don't think is positive."

Thanking our troops for their service has become almost reflexive in the U.S., in part because of memories of Vietnam. Uniformed soldiers striding through airports are offered outstretched hands and words of gratitude; their tabs for sandwiches or beers are often picked up by strangers before the GI s have asked for the bill. But the sentiment reflects the problem: the public has scant idea of just how much the military has given since 9/11 beyond a vague sense that some 6,300 have died.

"We love the troops, and you know why we love the troops?" asks Jack Jacobs, a retired Army colonel. "Because we don't have to be the troops." He recalls growing up in New York City in the years after World War II . "Everybody in my neighborhood had someone who was in uniform," says Jacobs, who won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. "But today, you'd have to knock on something like 150 doors in most neighborhoods before you find a household where someone is serving."

Rebecca Townsend, an Army National Guard spouse who counsels troubled military families outside Fort Campbell, Ky., sees "lots of evidence of this huge disconnect" between troops and everyone else. She was floored when professional acquaintances praised President Obama's recent decision to bring the troops home from Iraq. "They said it was awesome that there would be no more war," she recalls. "It was very disheartening to learn that they had no idea we are still fighting in Afghanistan."

How Did We Get Here?

Being an army apart isn't a problem for the Pentagon; it has become part of the sales pitch. The U.S. military boasts of the ways in which it is better than society as a whole. And by many measures, it is right. If you remove those who are unlikely to serve because they are too fat or too criminal or are in college, only 15% of Americans ages 17 to 24 are eligible to sign up. "Today's military is more educated and has a higher aptitude than the general population," a Pentagon recruiting report notes. "Its ranks are filled with extraordinarily well-qualified and committed professionals." Soldiers and sailors are more highly paid, more likely to be married and more conservative politically than the nation as a whole. "From the first day of training you're constantly reminded that you signed on the dotted line because you want to be better," Army vet Matt Gallagher, who served in Iraq, says. "A lot of guys feel they're part of a warrior caste, separate and distinct from society."

Consider the numbers: the Army, which accounts for 40% of the nation's active-duty force, has moved largely to the Sun Belt over the past generation. It is now concentrated in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Texas and Washington State. The degree of isolation doesn't lessen much when you add the Navy and Air Force: thanks mostly to consolidations arising from base closings, 10 states are home to 70% of all Americans in uniform. The U.S. military has abandoned New England and the Midwest; more active-duty troops -- some 13,000 -- are stationed in tiny Washington, D.C., than in Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. Recruiters have followed suit: Alabama has 10 Army Reserve Officer Training Corps programs serving a state with fewer than 5 million people. Greater Los Angeles, with 12 million people, has only four. The Chicago region -- population 9 million -- has three.

"Propensity to serve is most pronounced in the South and the Mountain West and in rural areas and small towns nationwide," observed former Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month. "The percentage of the force from the Northeast, the West Coast and major cities continues to decline." Partly as a result, the job of putting on the uniform has become an almost tribal one: a growing share of active-duty troops has a sibling or had a parent in uniform; close to 100,000 troops are married to another service member. The number of cadets at the U.S. Military Academy who have a parent who also attended West Point has grown by 50% in the past generation. "It's a family business, and it's a very tough time to be in the family business," says Dave Barno, a retired Army lieutenant general who commanded all allied troops in Afghanistan in 2003-04 and has two sons in the Army. "As my kids deploy around the world, they're running into their playmates from when they were growing up, at Fort Leavenworth and Fort Lewis, in Kandahar and Jalalabad," he says. "Their classmates as kids on military bases are the people they're fighting with."

The separation is enforced by a garrison culture that goes back generations but has deepened in recent years as a result of the nation's decision to close unneeded military posts and pay service members more. Many troops and their families live on such megabases and have no need to leave: they shop at on-base commissaries, have their babies at on-base hospitals and send their kids to on-base schools. They're younger and fitter than the nation's civilian population as a whole and are largely immune to the economic insecurities plaguing so many other Americans. Barno calls military life on-post a "golden cocoon" that insulates troops from the rest of us. "There's a different flavor when you're living outside the gates," he says. Out there, "when you go to church, everyone isn't 25 to 35 with short haircuts, with big biceps -- you see people who are infirm or aged, facing other challenges in their lives, and so you get a different sense of life."

Even the sensitive matter of pay and benefits separates the troops from the rest of the nation. Though many Americans may assume the military is underpaid, the numbers tell a different story. Since 9/11, compensation has increased dramatically for those in uniform, with Congress heaping pay raises atop even those requested by Pentagon leaders year after year. Military compensation per service member has jumped from $56,738 in 1998 to $85,581 last year. It's a raise -- on top of inflation -- of 20%. Other benefits have jumped even higher: housing allowances (up 188%), bonuses (up 56%), retirement funding (up 24%). "You don't want a military that feels alienated, separated and martyred," says military historian Richard Kohn of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. "That's one reason pay and benefits have been rising so dramatically."

A More Dangerous Divide

On close inspection, it is clear that we're not only outsourcing our security to a smaller group of citizens; we're outsourcing some of it to noncitizens. Since 9/11, 70,000 foreigners have won American citizenship by joining the U.S. military; right now, about 16,000 noncitizens are on active duty, hoping it will earn them citizenship. U.S. officials expect that 9,000 more -- roughly two Army brigades' worth -- will sign up each year. The outsourcing of our common defense is even more pronounced when you calculate that for every soldier in Afghanistan, there is roughly one private contractor, working at taxpayer expense, providing meals and doing other chores.

Gates raised the issue of a military-civilian divide in a speech at Duke University last year and returned to it last month at West Point. On his final Afghan tour as Defense Secretary in June, Gates said a sergeant reported that "he and others had signed up because the military -- in his case, the Marines -- had a set of standards and values that is better than that of the civilian sector." Gates then noted that an Army exhibit displayed along a Pentagon corridor declares that the service embraces values -- loyalty, respect and honor among them -- that "distinguish American Soldiers from American society." Gates told the West Point cadets that "it is rather peculiar to suggest that attributes such as integrity, respect and courage are not valued in the United States of America writ large... It is off-putting to hear, albeit anecdotally, comments that suggest that [the] military is to some degree separate and even superior from the society, the country, it is sworn to protect... There is a risk over time of developing a cadre of military leaders that politically, culturally and geographically have less and less in common with the majority of the people they have sworn to defend," Gates said. "Getting this relationship on a sound footing is so important because a civil-military divide can expose itself in an ugly way, especially during a protracted and frustrating war effort."

In his speeches, Gates did not mention a related fact of military life: the force is more conservative than the nation as a whole. A Pew survey of 712 post-9/11 veterans revealed last month that the political leanings of people in uniform are nearly the mirror opposite of the public they serve. The survey found that 36% of veterans describe themselves as Republicans, while 21% say they are Democrats. In the public at large, those numbers are nearly reversed: 34% of the public identifies as Democratic, while 23% identifies as Republican. The curve bends more to the right as rank increases: a 2009 survey by Heidi Urben, an active-duty officer and graduate student at Georgetown University, found that 60% of 4,000 Army officers self-identified as Republicans, whereas only 18% said they were Democrats.

On the one hand, this shift has been under way for years. From 1976 to 1996, the share of senior military officers identifying as Republican jumped from one-third to two-thirds, while the share claiming to be independent fell from 46% to 22%. Senior military officers who described themselves as liberal fell from 16% in 1976 to 3% in 1996. Urben's survey found that younger officers leaving the Army were far more than those opting to stay. All this takes the nation onto perilous ground, not because the military tilts Republican or Democrat but because it needs to be seen as straight shooting and nonpartisan. That perception has been fading. When Obama weighed sending reinforcements to Afghanistan in 2009, senior military officials painted him into a corner with leaks -- and premature public pronouncements -- arguing that significantly more troops than some in the White House favored were needed to get the job done. The maneuver worked: Obama wound up agreeing to send 30,000 troops -- but only if they began coming home 18 months later. In order to hold the military to this deal, his aides then leaked details of a behind-the-scenes conversation in which the generals could be heard agreeing to Obama's 18-month timetable. It was not the finest hour for civilian control of the military.

But the generals had the last word. When Obama announced the beginning of the Afghanistan pullout in June, White House aides told reporters that the announced pace of the withdrawal had been among the options presented to the President by his generals. But within the week, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan testified in public that Obama's pullout schedule "is a more aggressive option than that which was presented" by the military to the White House. When Senator Lindsey Graham asked Marine General John Allen if Obama's final decision was presented in any form by the Pentagon, the four-star general replied, "It was not."

The Afghanistan episode reveals how frayed trust between the civilian and military worlds has become. Instead of arguing its position quietly behind closed doors, the Pentagon executed a pincer movement on the White House to get its way on the size of the Afghan surge. And when the pullout announcement neared, the White House confected the illusion of a Pentagon blessing on the timetable where none existed. "There will be more cases like this because the relationship is getting rockier with the major domestic and international challenges we face," says Michael Desch, a political scientist and military scholar at Notre Dame. "That's troubling in a democracy."

And then there are the individual costs of an army apart. A pair of Air Force researchers suggests the divide may be behind the suicide epidemic now plaguing the U.S. military. The burdens placed on a tiny slice of Americans during long and increasingly unpopular wars "have consequences of a constellation of social, cultural, and political conditions which conspire to elevate the rate of suicide in the Army and Marine Corps," write George Mastroianni and Wilbur Scott, behavioral experts at the Air Force Academy. "The public seemingly has little patience for anyone wishing to disturb the comfortable arrangement that now exists between society and the military, an arrangement facilitated by the lack of honest, thoughtful, and open dialogue," they say in the latest issue of Parameters, the Army's professional journal.

Restoring the Common Defense

Of course, some of the gap between the military and its patrons would evaporate if different kinds of people joined up. "The all-volunteer force," says retired Army major general Dennis Laich, "is a mercenary military made up of poor kids and patriots from the third and fourth socioeconomic quintiles of our country. The first socioeconomic quintile is AWOL, but that's where the real decision makers and policymakers of the country come from." Military scholars like Eliot Cohen of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies agree with Laich that it would be good for the nation if more graduates of elite colleges signed up for military service. But Cohen adds that it might not be good for the military. "They're not necessarily the kind of people who fit very easily into the cultures of the services," Cohen says. "They're outliers, more headstrong, and they may be more likely to be skeptical."

The problem is even more noticeable on Capitol Hill, where the share of veterans among lawmakers has fallen from 77% in the late 1970s to 22% now. The dramatic lack of knowledge and experience among the Pentagon's overseers means the military gets more and more of what it wants. Representative Howard "Buck" McKeon, the California Republican who heads the House Armed Services Committee, never served in uniform -- an unthinkable arrangement just a few decades ago. McKeon was stumped in September when asked in public if the military's "tooth-to-tail" ratio -- the share of trigger pullers as part of the entire force -- had budged from its historic 10% level. "What is tooth to tail?" the chairman responded. "Congress cuts the military slack because of their lack of experience," UNC's Kohn says. "They don't have a sense of the institutions and the culture, so they're less likely to exercise insightful or determined oversight."

And in the press? Experience there is virtually unheard of, even after a decade of war. That ticks off military families -- and serves to deepen their isolation from the culture. Ann Burger, whose Army-officer husband Joseph is on his second Afghan tour, relies on his e-mails for news of what's happening in Kabul. The Taliban "blew up a bus last week and killed 17 people, and I didn't know anything about it because it wasn't on the news," she says from her home outside Fort Lewis, Wash. She blames the media for moving on and notes that military families still hunger for battlefield coverage. "It makes me think that nobody cares," she says. "They're putting on things like the Kardashians getting divorced -- it's on the news constantly -- but we have soldiers over there dying, and you don't hear about it."

All these examples get to the heart of the matter: the real danger is that a military's strength ebbs the further away it gets from the society that sponsors and nurtures it. As fewer of its leaders have military experience, the U.S. is taking a very real risk that the people ordering the military around have less and less idea about how to use it wisely. Navy Captain Don Inbody was at 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain in January 2002, when he says the staff there got a look at the plans to invade Iraq. "There was a whole bunch of senior officers in the room, and we kind of looked at it, and my distinct recollection is a uniform sucking in of air." Inbody, now a political science professor at Texas State University, says there was no postwar planning evident. "We were thinking, If you want us to beat the Iraqi army, we can do that with one hand tied behind our back. But there was nothing after that," he remembers. "It signaled to me that U.S. political elites didn't view the military so much as part of the greater American society as their own private army."

Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war. But the U.S. has put troops in harm's way hundreds of times since 1941, the last time Congress approved such a resolution. And the rest of us -- so long as our kin aren't imperiled -- have gone along. "There is a sense that popular influence over how the military gets used has waned significantly," says Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel now teaching history at Boston University (and who lost his only son, Andrew Bacevich Jr., in 2007 in Iraq). "In a sense, the military has become Washington's military and not the nation's military... If Americans felt a greater sense of ownership for the military," he adds, "then maybe Washington wouldn't get away with starting unnecessary wars and then waging them incompetently."

Would a return to the draft help? It certainly would bind the American public more closely to its troops and would perhaps induce a deeper sense of service in more of its citizens. It would surely reduce the number of military conflicts and shorten those the nation elected to fight. But it would also create a less capable, less well trained, less professional force; the nation would be less confident in its ability to project power overseas and protect its interests once forces arrived. In any case, the public and military hate the idea. In last month's Pew poll, 68% of veterans and 74% of the public opposed its return. "The nation is better served by an all-volunteer force," Army General Martin Dempsey (whose three children have served in the Army) said at his July confirmation hearing to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He wants "to find ways to preserve it in an era of fiscal constraint rather than move at this point to a draft." But he added that "we need other options for the nation when we enter into conflict that can escalate and that can take longer than we thought."

Can the nation reconnect to its military? Alex Lemons, who will soon be attending graduate school at Reed College in Portland, Ore., hopes so. The onetime scout sniper believes the gap between the guardians and the guarded is itself a threat to our national security. "The military is ultimately a reflection of our culture -- or what we would like to believe about our culture," he says. "But when the burden of fighting wars involves only 1% of our citizens and their families, it's not good for them -- or the country."

The Few, the Proud

The military community has been drifting away from mainstream American society

A smaller slice

Proportion of total U.S. population in the armed forces

WWI: 2.8% (1918)

WWII: 8.7% (1945)

Korean War: 2.3% (1952)

Vietnam War: 1.8% (1968)

Gulf War: 0.8% (1990)

Post-9/11 Wars: 0.5% (2010)

Unequal representation

More than a third of last year's 156,000 enlistees came from five states

California: 11%, Texas: 10%, Florida: 8%, New York: 4%, Georgia: 4%

Half of the 1.2 million active-duty personnel in the U.S. are stationed in five states: California, Virginia, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia

All in the family

6.7% -- Percentage of service members married to another service member

Unfit youth

Most potential recruits are unavailable because of college, health, criminal record or other reasons

17- to 24-year-olds: 15% are eligible

The military-civilian divide

Salary and benefits

Total military compensation today is higher than that earned by 80% of civilian U.S. workers of comparable age and education

1998: $57,000; 2010: $86,000 (Base pay, housing allowance, incentives, station change, retirement, retiree health care, disability)

Politics

Percentage calling themselves...

Democrat -- General Public: 34%; Post-9/11 Vets: 21%; Pre-9/11 Vets: 26%

Republican -- General Public: 23%; Post-9/11 Vets: 36%; Pre-9/11 Vets: 30%

Gender -- Women as a share of the workforce

U.S.: 50%, Military: 14%, 1974 Military: 4%

Education

Percentage of population age 18 and over who have a...

High school diploma or higher -- U.S.: 86%, Military: 99%

Bachelor's degree or higher -- U.S.: 27%, Military: 18%

Advanced degree -- U.S.: 9%, Military: 7%

Race

U.S. -- 72% White; 16% Hispanic (may be of any race); 13% Black; 5% Asian; 10% other

Military -- 70% White; 11% Hispanic; 17% Black; 4% Asian; 9% other

Sources: Department of Defense; Pew Research Center; Bureau of Labor Statistics; Congressional Research Service; The Tenth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation