The Most Amazing President Ever

The president sat in the Oval Office, his back to the windows, his elbows on the desk, his hands the only thing keeping his head from smashing down on the papers in between.

The papers on top showed the latest poll numbers, his lowest ever. Others underneath showed the rising trend of unemployment, of debt on the country’s balance sheet, and of various attacks against him.

Disgusted with the papers below, the president lifted his head, turned to an advisor, and asked if there was any way to make things better. The advisor didn’t respond.

Days went by—then weeks. Everything stayed the same.

Finally, the president realized what to do. Above all, he had a plan. But he wasn’t going to share it with anyone just yet, least of all his good-for-nothing advisors. Besides, he blamed them for creating the mess—or rather for making it worse.

This time, he thought, it was going to be all on him. If things go wrong, he’d pay for it; if right, well then to him would be the glory and his place in history would be secure.

At that thought, the president smiled.

Not long after, he got to work. From friends outside of his administration, the president learned of a solar energy company that had nowhere to go but up.

By acting fast and using those connections, he was able to extract over half a billion dollars from the company’s rise. The administration worked feverishly from that point on, using the money to improve the nation’s balance sheet by the same amount.

It was a small win given the size of the country’s overall debt, but the president knew that pennies make dollars just as streams make rivers. He then set out for another and before long discovered a way not only to achieve a small win but to make the nation safer as well.

The scheme would have to be implemented furiously and fast. It held some danger to boot. But the president thought it worthwhile. Thus, agents of the U.S. government went into Mexico and in a daring operation took back with them an arsenal of weapons from the hands of drug lords and gangsters.

Ultimately, thousands of guns came back, including 34 .50 caliber sniper rifles, approximately the same number that an infantry regiment uses in battle.
While the cash value of those guns did not come close to the 500 plus million dollars returned from the president’s investment in solar energy, it was another small win financially and a big win relative to the government’s function of protecting its citizens.

With that amount of guns taken back, who could tell how many lives were allowed to continue as before, rather than be stopped short by violence. That kind of value couldn’t be measured in dollars, but it was priceless just the same.

Perhaps the president observed this. And perhaps it gave him his next idea, arguably one of his best. Nobody knows. But two facts are incontestable: one, the country was involved in wars unrelated to its own self-interest; and two, the president changed that.

With little debate in Congress, he forthrightly brought the nation’s troops out of one of those wars, a small country in Africa that many Americans probably never even heard of before our troops entered it. Then he did the same thing again, taking our troops out of a small country in the Middle East, where they had been for no stated reason whatsoever.

These were small wins, but they were all starting to add up. Together, they saved hundreds of millions of dollars more, and in addition kept those troops out of harm’s way.

The president, in short, was doing his job, he was doing it masterfully, and with each step he took toward decreasing the nation’s debt and ensuring their safety, people liked him more.

Indeed, as everyone gained more control over their own health care, their own dollars, and thereby their own lives, the president became something of a star. He won the Nobel Peace Prize, appeared on numerous magazine covers, and brought down the house every time he spoke.

Even the media adored him. He was “the smartest president ever.” And the nation, once steeped in cynicism, now dared to hope. The president spoke of change, change that the people could believe in, and oh how everyone believed! There was no reason to doubt, was there?

He was the greatest, the most amazing president of all time. His name, of course, was Barack Obama. And his presidency is truly the most successful in history. You just have to watch it in reverse.

A Chapter-Ending Idea

A man, upon hearing that he hasn't enough money in his bank account to pay for a life-saving surgery, appears to die. His last words before passing out are, "I wish I had spent more time at the office."

This Painting Has a Very Important Message to Share

Few people think of Edouard Bisson anymore. But after reading that consumers in America went "shopping like there's no tomorrow," I recalled this painting of his.

Why?

I recently answered that very question on Facebook and, not wanting to see those thoughts disappear forever below random clicks of things I "like," I'll reproduce my answer below:

Luc Travers would probably be able to answer this better than I can but here's my quick "reading" of the painting:

The subject is a girl with a mandolin--some type of instrument that she seems to have been playing.

She is in the snow but, aha, is hardly dressed for it. In fact, she's wearing a sleeveless dress and trying to keep herself warm. Experience suggests that this is not going to work and isn't at that moment.

But on her face there is no suggestion of persistence--"I'm going to stay warm or figure out how!" Her eyes are cast downward and if I put myself in that position, what do I feel? Regret.

So this woman is regretting something. What? We can imagine she regrets playing so much rather than preparing for this moment. In fact, the message I take from this painting is "prepare for the winter before it comes."

As to connections with shopping, the American consumer has little savings if not a lot of debt. Meanwhile it's not hard to imagine a snowstorm--i.e., economic crisis--as the "snow" is already in the sky. Winter, in my view, is here and it's about to get even colder.

So news that Americans went "shopping like there's no tomorrow" reminded me of this mandolin player--who herself is representative of the Grasshopper (in Aesop's Fables). She hasn't prepared for the future [and] is now dependent on anyone who has.

There are a lot more connections here, however, and Luc would undoubtedly stress the more personal ones. For example, this painting is a nice concretization of not preparing for an important meeting, or test, or challenge.

Although beautiful, I love this painting for the above things (much of which I probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't read Luc's book on the subject, Touching The Art).

The Pause that Pleases

Here's praise for the pause that...

pleases

And a toast for the stop that...

teases

While it gets us worked up,

It's so fun when time's up

And the tension at long last...

releases.

Objective Communication for Sale

A year ago, I bought a lecture course called "Objective Communication" by Leonard Peikoff. Since then, I have listened to the course twice. It has proven extremely valuable, helped me to get published numerous times, and I treasure it.

However, my wife also gave me something valuable last year--a baby boy. And I treasure him too. So in order to help buy him all the Montessori toys that a parent can buy, I'm selling the course that I originally bought for $280 for $150 plus shipping.

You can learn more about the course--usually sold for $350--here. Below is an excerpt from the first lecture, where Peikoff establishes why the subject matters:

We are none of us, very few of us, taught to think or communicate. We didn’t learn the skills [or] techniques involved. And yet these techniques, both with regard to thought and communication, are not innate, they’re not automatic. It’s a difficult, complex ability to present complex ideas, to deal with them, to make them clear. It’s an ability which rests on principles that have to be defined, applied, practiced. It’s an art that has to be learned. And it can be—and I mean here both thought and communication.

Now in the ancient world this art was essentially taught, they called it rhetoric. It was the art of how to present ideas persuasively to others and the major philosophers all had a definite theory on that. (Aristotle wrote a whole treatise on it.) Today, it is not effectively taught.

The future of the world depends on the spread of the right ideas. And that requires that the advocates of those ideas understand them clearly in their own mind and then can communicate them effectively in whatever form is appropriate—whether in a drawing-room discussion where it’s appropriate or to your child if he asks you whether there’s a god, or to his teacher if he celebrates UN Day in grade 3, or on a paper if you’re a student in school, or to your lady’s club when it meets, or in a letter to your editor, or to Congress, or whatever.

All of these are the practical daily means by which the world is changed, and saved—saved if what you present is correct. But all of this requires inner clarity on the part of the people with the right ideas and the ability to communicate them effectively.

Anybody interested in the course is free to contact me on Facebook, Twitter, or by email. For an extra $25, I'd also throw in an absolutely delightful course called "Gems of Drama" by Lisa VanDamme.

The Potentially Alive, 6

This is the sixth post (out of six) in a short story about how the world ends, or begins. Click on the appropriate link for the first, second, third, fourth, or fifth post in the series.

***

The golden rays of a rising sun warmly embraced another morning. They skipped and danced across a lake. The lake, surrounded by lush, green grass, seemed to be composed of a million winks. It flashed continuously like a million cameras eager to record another splendid day. And a splendid day it was.

A tune could be heard now. It was a playfully happy tune, with notes that rose and fell, only to rise higher and higher yet again. It belonged to a girl named Phoenix—a girl who had had earned the right to listen to it—a girl it seems who was just waking up.

Her hands stretched to the sky as if they were being pulled up by the clouds, she looked down at the lake below, let it take a million pictures of a woman at peace with herself, and spoke aloud the first words that came to her mind. “The world began when I was born,” she said, “and the world is mine to win.”

She picked up the small device that was playing her tune. It had given her back her life she thought, and at the expense of no one. It was her latest invention, much better than the first model which had been taken from her, and it no doubt would come in handy now—at least for some.

Walking down the hill, the invention clutched in her hand, she had a big day ahead of her. She waved once more to the lake, took a left, and made her way to what was left of civilization.

The Potentially Alive, 5

This is the fifth post (out of six) in a short story about how the world ends, or begins. Click on the appropriate link for the first, second, third, or fourth post in the series.

***

The back of women’s heads surrounded the room, their shoulders sagged as their fingers pounded away slowly at the keyboards in front of them, and nobody at all said a word.

This was the place where history would change—where, according to their boss, metaphysical justice would be enacted. “Were not all men equal?” he had asked. “They would exist as such before long."

A phone rang. Shoulders straightened. Was this what they were waiting for? All they had been told was that “super life-savers” had been created by the world’s leaders and set up at strategic points in every city of every nation across the globe.

A woman stood up and turned military-style toward where the red phone sat on a cold aluminum desk in the middle of the room. As she walked toward the ringing phone her pace was measured—halting, even. But the clicks of her red high heels kept her moving forward, and in time with the last ring she picked it up.

“Hello?”

“It’s a go,” said her boss.

“What should I do?”

“Flip the switch.”

“You got it,” she replied.

The woman flipped the switch. Her hands let go of the phone. Her head sagged. And then, in time with the others, dropped. The room, like the world outside, was quiet.

Had men wanted peace—and referred to it as stillness? They had it now. Did they wish for all to be equally alive? The world’s leaders had granted that wish for those who wished it, and enforced it for those who did not. Everyone was now equally alive—and all were dead.