Today we are going to hear from a respected friend of mine, Jim Kuhn. Jim is an Air Force Academy graduate, a pilot and an instructor pilot. Mr. Kuhn has a long and distinguished career as a project management professional. He has a solid platform of success and personal growth for talking to us about focusing on doing the right thing.That is the subject of today’s hour long interview.

All the examples of character and the types of behavior we see in individuals, groups, political parties and governments during the corona crises, were baked in well before this crisis. Crises don’t build character, they reveal it. That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

If you are a monotheist, believing in one God, are there multiple paths that allow us to truly connect with that Supreme Being? Are those who claim that they have the only path to God wrong? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

Today’s Key Question: When unpleasant events and circumstances are dropped into our laps, whether we are fully, partially, or not at all at fault, what are our first thoughts? Where do we turn for remedies? We have all heard a parent, teacher or coach say, “Life is not fair.” A tough, vital lesson. Have we forgotten that piece of hard-to-take wisdom? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

Both Climate Change and COVID models loudly claim to be based in scientific thinking, more specifically environmental science and medical science. Today's Key Question: How do you think through tough issues like these? What are your suggestions on how to serve others with COVID, climate change and other areas in our lives? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

The question about when and how to open America back up is not about the Constitution vs autocratic politicians. And it is not about supposed medical sanity vs COVID deniers. There are only these two questions here. 1. Can there be crises, COVID-19 or else, that legitimately prompt governments at the various levels to move to limit personal freedoms? 2. Are the various governments permitted under the Constitution to restrict those freedoms? That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode.

Introduction

The National Football League has been around since 1936. Even after 84 years of in-depth college athlete drafting experience, players chosen with precious No. 1 picks can fail miserably, and others who were completely ignored in the selection process can wind up in the National Football League Hall of Fame.

What can we make of COVID predictions, predictions made with dramatically less confirmed data and shakier models than available prior to the annual NFL Draft?

Today’s Key point: What do we do with rapidly changing and often conflicting COVID prediction models? Because we must do something.

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

The National Football league is a multi-billion dollar business. The NFL draft is held each year, and is central to each team’s success--or failure. Scouts follow college players from their college Sophomore years (or earlier), have vast amounts of film on all the games played by each targeted player, and have copious amounts of detailed information from a group tryout called The Combine. Teams interview the players and their coaches. They get together for hours on many days to analyse the volumes of information at hand. Yet with these vast amounts of hard data, backed by decades of experience, the teams often get their predictions of who will succeed and who simply won’t make it quite wrong. Players chosen with precious No. 1 picks can fail miserably, and others completely ignored in the selection process are selected to join the NFL Hall of Fame.

Can we use COVID predictions models to make crucially important decisions about life and death for individuals, businesses and the economy? Unlike the vast amounts of confirmed information available in the NFL draft, there is currently very little reliable data, unproven prediction models, and models that can vary wildly in their predictions one from the other. Given the reality of the pandemic, we must do something--but what?

First and foremost, think about others; that should be our focus. No, this is not a “new normal”; focusing on others is the way things should always be--with or without a pandemic to prompt us. Let’s look at the various things we have been presented as helping to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus:

Face masks: The cloth ones. These masks should be worn by everyone who is in public and might come in contact with others. These masks do not protect us from the virus, but they are proven effective in stopping the possibly infected water droplets that come from us when we breathe, talk, cough or sneeze. Many people with the virus have no idea that they have it; being asymptomatic is no excuse for failing to wear a mask. And there is no constitutional right to infect others by not wearing a mask. And tell me about photos of protesters wanting to open the country back up--with not a single one wearing  a mask, and little in the way of social distancing.

Washing your hands well for 20 seconds at a time: This protects you and others you come in contact with.

Don’t hang around sick people. This obviously protects you; seems everyone agrees here.

Social distancing: Protects us and others. Even if we don’t care about ourselves, we have no right to endanger others.

Leadership in a pandemic: Competence matters more than celebrity. In today’s corona world, the last thing we need are political leaders who are playing to the crowd, treating COVID-19 as yet another opportunity to score points with their base, and to attack the opposition. The novel coronavirus is the opposition, and a deadly one at that. Leadership must focus there. And the imprecise and wobbly corona information we have in front of us further emphasizes the need for selfless leadership. And leadership includes the media. We need to hear the truth, see steady,

Introduction

Paraphrasing the overworked “Think outside the box.” cliche. 

Today’s key point: Everyone has a box, a box where our thinking, politics, beliefs, biases, etc., live. And fester. Unless we constantly work on getting outside of--and staying outside of--our boxes, we will stay in them, embracing others who are in the same or similar boxes, and dismissing or even hating those in other boxes. 

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

Using the word box as the metaphor is useful. A stunning number of us have our thinking and beliefs taped up in a box, a box that is impervious to anything new getting in. But all metaphors break down at some point, this one breaks down because our boxes are made of a magic, one-way material. Nothing new can get in, but all sorts of things can come flying out. And those of us infected with in-box thinking have no idea that we are indeed afflicted with this disease. Quite the opposite; we believe that we have it all together, and the other poor sod is the one who doesn’t get it. With COVID, some people can be asymptomatic, but still have the disease. With the in-box thinking infected, the symptoms are there to be seen, but the infected person will vigorously deny being infected--or even having any symptoms in the first place.

Our thinking boxes start with the boxes where we live, where we work, where we worship and the boxes we go to in the way of who we visit, what we watch and listen to our various electronic boxes. In the absence of differing opinions from a wide variety of disparate sources, people will rely on the opinions of family and friends, co-workers and their selected news sources and social media. Outside of family, all the sources will be selected more for comfort and absence of frustration than political reasoning and diversity of thought. Not surprisingly, all of these sources will pretty much share the same opinions. Similar opinions from apparently different sources reinforce each other and can easily be seen as a valid consensus. And with some exceptions, families tend to lean one way or the other on significant issues, adding to the sameness. And even in the tightest families, those with “wrong” opinions can be ostracized. Over politics. 

Remember the story about the blind men learning about their first elephant by feeling different parts of the animal? Those feeling the trunk thought it was a snake. Others feeling a leg thought it was a tree. Holding the ear, a fan; holding a leg, a tree trunk; groping the side, a wall; stroking the tail, a rope, and feeling the tusks, a spear. Each group based their opinions on a partial experience, believing their partial experiences to be the totality of what they were examining. That’s why each one of them got it wrong. The same thing is happening when we rely on people and sources who are focused on the same parts of our political, social and economic “elephant” to the exclusion of facts and opinions outside of our chosen experiences. Like the blind men analysing the elephant, we do not give any credence to the other beliefs, facts and experiences. 

The difference is that the blind men were completely satisfied that the part they had represented the whole, while the vast majority of political, financial and social commentators, professional or civilian, on TV or at the dinner table, are aware of the other parts, the other positions and arguments; they simply dismiss them as inferior or hateful. The blind men were not curious enough to feel for other parts to determine if another view of what they were feeling might be valid. People with political opinions are aware of other views, but are still blind to them--they simply dismiss them--often with nothing more than an insult, as wrong or hateful.

And this will snowball. The nucleus of same opinions will attract others with the...

Introduction

“It is a lot harder to create income and wealth than it is to spend it.” -Will Luden. We all know that from our daily lives, e.g., which is harder; earning and saving money for vacation, or spending it while on vacation? And this observation about earning and spending lines up nicely with common sense.

The Golden Goose is our American capitalist economy, an economy that is by far the largest and most successful in the history of history. Hundreds of millions of people over 300 years worked long and hard to have created this robust income and growing wealth. COVID-19 is causing two massive spending-related responses, one more worrisome than the other:

The approved and planned spending bills have either sanctioned or contemplated everything from free money, including direct cash payments and indirect money through rent and mortgage deferrals, and suspensions of loan repayments, to almost everyone in the US, with a couple trillion or so for businesses.

The House is working hard to hold up COVID response money to push its agenda of medicare for all, free tuition at public colleges, and additional financial help for those it deems needy as time goes by.

It took hundreds of millions of hard working Americans 300+ years to create this wealth; at the hands of certain politicians and political groups, all of this achievement could start to crumble in a few short years.  

Today’s Key Point: We cannot do all of the enacted and contemplated COVID-related spending, or even come close to that amount of spending, without killing the Golden Goose. 

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

Fighting COVID has been likened to fighting a war. Let’s look at life in the US during WWII. 

Service members did not sign up for a fixed time commitment; they signed up for the “duration of the war.”

Of those service members; 407K died, and 672K were wounded.

Civilians:

You needed a government-issued ration book for almost everything. And you had to register your tires with the authorities. 

To get classification and rationing stamps, you had to appear before a local War Price and Rationing Board which reported to the feds. Each person in a household received a ration book, including babies and small children who qualified for canned milk not available to others. To receive a gasoline ration card, often restricted to 3 gallons a week, a person had to certify a need for gasoline and ownership of no more than five tires. All tires in excess of five per driver were confiscated by the government due to rubber shortages.

Sugar was the first consumer commodity rationed, with all sales halted in April of 1942 and resumed in May, with a ration of 1/2 pound per person per week, half of normal consumption. Bakeries, ice cream makers, and other commercial users received rations of about 70% of normal usage. Coffee was rationed nationally in November 1942, cut to 1 pound every five weeks, about half of normal consumption, in part because of German U-boat attacks on shipping from Brazil.

As of March 1942, dog food could no longer be sold in tin cans, and manufacturers switched to dehydrated versions. Starting in April of 1942, anyone wishing to purchase a new toothpaste tube, then made from metal, had to turn in an empty one.

By June 1942 companies also stopped manufacturing metal office furniture, radios, television sets, phonographs, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and sewing machines for civilians.

Note that people still had to pay for what they wanted; having a valid coupon for, say, gas, in your ration book did not get you the gas. It simply allowed you to buy it. Today, in the COVID days, hoarders are the ones forcing rationing,

Introduction

Today we are talking about the World of Change. Note that I did not say “New Normal.” Life is always changing; change is the only constant. There is nothing new about change, so I am going to pass on the “new” term New Normal. Change is normal; there is nothing new about that. 

What is changing? Are you changing? 

Today’s Key Point: The corona crisis is giving us the opportunity to live better, and to live in a way that helps others. Are we doing that? Are we even willing to do that?

That is the subject of today’s 10-minute episode. 

Continuing

This is a perfect time to remind ourselves that the core, driving principles at Revolution 2.0, are:

Personal Responsibility; take it, teach it and,

Be Your Brother’s Keeper. The answer to the biblical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” is a ringing, unequivocal “Yes.” There is no other answer.

Let’s take some cues from the corona world and see how they apply to these basic principles:

Face Masks: Wearing a face mask is not for your protection; it protects the people around you. It cannot block incoming viruses, but it does a good job of stopping the possibly infected droplets that come out of our mouths when breathing, speaking, coughing or sneezing. In many societies, wearing a mask in public if at all sick is routine. Unlike the flu or a cold, no one knows for sure whether or not they have COVID-19; we must all assume that we might and act accordingly. If you want to help protect others, wear a mask when around them. If not, then don't. But don't shine me on with how the Constitution allows you not to wear one, and preach about you are not going to bow to big government liberals. Be your Brother's Keeper. Wear a mask.

Social distancing: This tactic keeps you and those around you safer. As does wearing gloves. Seems these tactics hit both points.

Trump. Yes, President Trump: Is any part of how we are reacting to the pandemic and the numbers, recommendations and restrictions colored by our opinion of the President? If so, shame on us. Does anyone think that a single rational person judged major strategies and tactics in WWII in any part by how they viewed Franklin Roosevelt? Were their thoughts about things like the Europe First strategy, the invasions of Africa, Italy and France skewed by their like or dislike of FDR? Did a single thinking person blame President Roosevelt for us being unprepared for the Battle of the Bulge, the battle that took more American lives than any other battle in the war? Forget who we like or hate, it is all about the data and making logical conclusions from those data. We do ourselves and others a great harm if we indulge our personal likes and dislikes as we assess policies. Especially policies as important as those tied to the coronavirus.

To many of us, it seems that we are living out the movie “Groundhog Day”. Being in one place with the same people is getting to us, and we can all relate. But remember that in the movie, the protagonist, played by Bill Murray, makes huge personal progress--becoming a different person at the end. Are we taking advantage of the same opportunity?

Families. Infuriating, wonderful, irreplaceable. Loving, testing, often more like us than not. And infuriating in ways that allow us to get deeper into prayer or meditation, and to practice loving patience. And to grow up.

Personal development. If we are surrounded in an unexpected way by family, then this one is likely to be less important. But for many, we have more time to ourselves than before. How are we using it? Practicing music or a language? Reading good stuff? Watching uplifting things? Are we growing or are we sliding?

Living small. Are we finding ways to be content with and enjoy what we have at hand? Good for the soul,