Harry Reid’s Chickens

ByJohn Brown

Are we all wearing Coke bottle glasses with this government shut down?

First, it seems silly to me when reporters ask Americans who is causing the shut down. It’s like, duh, if either party just gave into the other party’s demands, we wouldn’t have the issue. Which means that BOTH parties are causing the shut down.

Second, it seems a lot of folks have forgotten that this is precisely what should happen.

What?

Yes, our government is designed to allow these types of things.

But, John, isn’t that just asinine?

No. It’s not an oversight. I think it’s smart. Even if it causes some pain.

Let me explain what it seems some in the media and elsewhere are forgetting.

This is not a nation that belongs to a government. It’s not a nation owned by some lord or entity. This is a nation of individuals who decided to band together because we thought that banding together would allow us to protect our lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness better than if we stood alone individually.

This is a nation of individuals who said, you know, we think we can figure things out better together ourselves than having someone dictating to us what we’re going to do. We’ll get together and talk. We’ll argue. We’ll persuade. We’ll try to convince each other of our individual ways of thinking. And when enough of us are convinced that we should do something, we’ll act.

We’ll set up a process for talking and making decisions that ensures everyone can be heard. It would be great if we could get 100% agreement on everything, but we know that’s not realistic. At the same time, we don’t like the idea of forcing our will on others. So we’ll make a compromise; we’ll set up the rules for making decisions so it requires that a good majority of us are in agreement before we can take action, especially on matters that are important to a lot of us.

Finally, we’ll make sure no individual or group can take control and deprive us of this way of living. We did the monarch thing, and we’re done with that. We will not bow to any king ever again. We’re going to be very careful about this one item because a lot of bad things begin to happen when any one person or group gets too much power.

So we set up the rules and started working together this way. And the basic premise under all of this is that we would respect each other’s free will. We’re a land of liberty. We’re a land where we get together and agree on a course of action. Not one where we impose our will on others.

One of the main methods we used to ensure that no individual or group could take control of the rest of us and that a good majority of us must agree before taking a course of governmental action was to distribute the power to make and enforce rules. We did this in a wide variety of ways. We did this because power’s a slippery thing and easily abused. Furthermore, because we knew no system is perfect, we also set up a system of checks and balances so that if one person or group abused their power, we could stop them and force them to remember to respect the freewill that the rest of us have.

So what has caused this shutdown?

It’s very simple.

A lot of Americans do not agree with Obamacare. By most polls, it’s a majority of Americans. They were not listened to when it was being developed. They were not listened to when it was made law. They feel it was passed, not with open discussion, but a lot of chicanery. They feel it’s not some minor regulation, but a very big thing that will infringe on their rights to live how they want to live.

Now, it might be that all their fears are unfounded. It might be that Obamacare is going to usher in utopia. Many signs suggest it’s not going to do anything of the sort. But let’s just say it is the finest piece of legislation ever. Let’s say is a celestial piece of governing.

That isn’t enough.

It’s not nearly enough.

Because this is not a nation that belongs to any group. We are a nation of individuals who have banded together, agreeing that we will talk things out amongst ourselves and only act when a good majority of us agree on a course of action. This is a nation that tries to tread lightly on each other’s liberty.

But many of the folks in Washington back in 2009-2010 forgot this and forced this thing called Obamacare upon the rest of us; in doing so, they violated one of the basic agreements of our compact. If they had followed the underlying intent of our union, they would not have done what they did. They would have crafted legislation that a good majority of us could get behind.

In 2010, those of us who protested this use of power voted in new folks into the House of Representatives to deal with the matter. In fact, when given the chance, Americans (both Republican and Democrat) in the heavily Democratic state of Massachusetts voted Republican Scott Brown into office, hoping to stop this legislation in the Senate before it became law. But Harry Reid didn’t listen. He didn’t care. He and Pelosi and Obama weren’t interested in allowing a full national discussion. He and the others were more concerned with getting their way. And so he used a parliamentary trick to force it through.

This shut down is about one group of people forcing their will on the rest of us. It’s about using the checks and balances designed into the system to correct such errors. It’s about the chickens of some poor decisions coming home to roost.

I know the shut down has caused issues. It’s a partial shutdown; 13% of the government. I think 87% is still funded and running. Still, I know it’s causing some pain.

But none of that pain needs to occur. Everyone wants to fund cancer research. Everyone wants to help poor single mothers. Those things aren’t the issue. The issue is that not everyone agrees with Obamacare.

If you’re a supporter of Obamacare, let me ask you this: if the tables were turned, what would you do?

Would you not stare at the folks trying to force their will on you and say, hey, come on. We’re adults here. We all agreed that we wouldn’t do anything unless a good majority of us were convinced it was the right course of action. Let’s get together and come up with something a good majority of us can get behind.

If you’re an opponent of Obamacare, you too should recognize that a good portion of your fellow citizens are clamoring to change the way things are. They’ve been clamoring for some time. Should you force your will on them? Or should you sit down and listen and try to come up with something that addresses the points we can agree on?

I don’t know if the folks many of us voted to go to Washington will stick to their guns and correct this. I hope they do. And I hope that those on both sides who have forgotten one of the basic tenets of our social compact will wake up and remember we are banded together, not to game the system to get what we want, but to act on only what a good majority of us want.

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  • The First Step to Being an Entertaining Storyteller

    ByJohn Brown

    What’s the first step to becoming an entertaining storyteller?

    In a recent ZOE Nutrition podcast, James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, suggests the key to starting a new behavior, like telling entertaining stories, is doing four things:

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    • Make the behavior EASY.
    • Make the behavior SATISFYING.

    But what’s the FIRST step?

    It’s mastering the art of showing up.

    That’s it.

    What does that look like?

    He shared an interesting story in the section where they were talking about making the behavior easy.

    START

    Let me give you two examples that’ll probably help clarify. So the first one this is just a really simple tactic, a very actionable thing, that you can use for building better habits. I call it the two-minute rule, and it just says take whatever habit you’re trying to build and you scale it down to something that takes 2 minutes or less to do.

    So read 30 books a year becomes read one page. Do yoga four days a week becomes take out my yoga mat.

    Now sometimes people resist that a little bit because they’re like, okay buddy, you know I know the real goal is not to just take my yoga mat out. I know I’m actually trying to do the workout, so this is some kind of trick, and if I know it’s a trick, then why would I fall for it?

    I have this reader his name is Mitch. I mentioned him in Atomic Habits. He lost over 100 pounds. So what is that? 40 or 50 kilos? And he kept it off for more than a decade. And he had this strange little rule for himself where he first started going to the gym, and for the first like 6 weeks he wasn’t allowed to stay for longer than 5 minutes.

    So he would get in the car, drive to the gym, get out, do half an exercise, get back in the car, and drive home, and it sounds ridiculous. You know? It sounds silly. It’s obviously not going to get the guy the results that he wants, but what you realize is that he was mastering the art of showing up.

    He was becoming the type of person that went to the gym four days a week even if it was only for 5 minutes, and this is a pretty deep truth about habits. Which is that a habit must be established before it can be improved. It has to become the standard in your life before you can scale it up and turn it into something more. You need to standardize before you optimize.

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    END

    That’s the answer!

    If we want to be entertaining storytellers, the first, most powerful identity we can adopt is being the creative who shows up every day to work on his or her entertainment. Or maybe it’s five days a week. Or six days, four days, whatever your number is.

    The first identity is that I’m the kind of creative that shows up to work. This awesome work of entertainment.

    So what’s a two-minute behavior that might go along with that?

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    That’s it. Nothing more.

    That’s showing up.

    If I show up and do that, I’ve shown up.

    If, for some reason, I miss showing up. I identify the next slot in that day to get it done.

    I can master all the other parts of writing entertainment later. But I must master the art of SHOWING UP first.

    So tell yourself you’re the kind of creative who shows up to write entertainment every day.

    Make that your identity. You can expand that identity later. But let’s start here.

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    Then be like Mitch. Show up and celebrate showing up.

    And if, like Mitch, it takes you six weeks to master the art of showing up, then it takes six weeks. Big whoop.

    Writing fiction is a long-haul game. That means the name of this game is playing the game until you win the game. And to do that you first have to master the art of showing up.

    This is the key. When you master this, everything else is possible.

    “I am the kind of creative who shows up every day to create.”

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    If you have a two-minute action for showing up, share it.

    If you don’t have one yet, identify one and share it. And if your action doesn’t work? No biggie. Act like a scientist and tweak it until it does.

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  • Good Stuff! Two fun family and party games

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  • Gun Runner submitted!

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