Purpose and Direction

The challenges I'm running into in writing this come from a variety of things.

First, for 'purpose and direction', I think we already have some fine goals laid out throughout the course of American history. 

- We are all created equal

- We all have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

- Slavery is flat-out evil. Anyone trying to minimize that or claim it isn't that bad is frankly lying to you, or doesn't know their history well, or doesn't consider the people who were enslaved to be real people. Like, seriously... historians risk serious mental trauma when they study it! 

- Martin Luther King, JR's 'I have a dream' speech is inspiring, and a worthy goal too

Let's also add in the American Dream, the belief that every American should be able to reach their full potential if they're willing to put in the effort.

Honestly, we've got a plethora of worthy goals to work towards... and it's very frustrating, to me at least, that so many people today are actively working against these. Can you truly call yourself an American, even?

But even though I know there are people questioning what used to be the American consensus here, I think there are still more Americans who agree with it than don't, and so writing out the reasoning doesn't seem like the best use of time. For now. 

What's more challenging, I think, is 'how do we get from here to there?'

That question brings up a whole slew of issues, too. For example - in pursuing our goals, should we work at the state level? National level? Local level?

Private sector or public sector? 

I can quite easily agree with the goal of creating an America where everyone can succeed by their own effort, but putting it into practice means figuring out how you're going to make it happen, and deciding if you're going to push for federal legislation or try some sort of grass roots campaign at the local level, or perhaps create a non-profit and try to get funding from other members of society.

It's complicated. At least, it is if you want to take advantage of our republican structure and let the lowest level deal with the issues they can. (I can give a whole long speech about Hobbes' Leviathan and the challenges and failures involved with that, but I've written about it before. I might revisit it when I finish mulling over this current question. Oh, and those challenges are exactly why this Dark Enlightenment push for a more centralized and authoritarian system is so stupid.)

And of course any good plan needs to take into account the current political situation and navigate a path forwards. Which means you have to figure out how to deal with the people who benefit from the current system...

As much as I like the idea of ranked choice voting, for example, and believe it's a more systemic fix for the terrible incentives of our current political system, I know that it'll be difficult to convince the people who benefit from the current situation to support any changes.

So any good plan needs to a) accurately assess where we are now, b) figure out how to get from where we are now to where we want to be, and c) do a good job of executing that plan. Build support, maneuver around obstacles, do all the hard work of monitoring and adjusting as needed to make sure we get from our current situation to our desired situation.

And it has to be clear and concise enough to be actionable, but not so detailed that it's inflexible and unable to adapt to circumstances.

Yeah... I'm going to need to think on this one.