What impressed me most was not that we achieved revenge, or that we put a dent in terrorism, but that we executed the plan.<\/p>\n
America used to be a can-do nation.\u00c2\u00a0 We rolled up our sleeves and got to work.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s been our history forever. Until recently.<\/p>\n
Now people feel entitled to success.\u00c2\u00a0 They certainly don’t want to pay their dues, they’d rather watch the big screen and contemplate winning the lottery or starring in a reality TV show, which in their minds is equivalent.\u00c2\u00a0 The concept of working hard for not only personal fulfillment but the general good is history.<\/p>\n
And in the political arena elected officials and pundits shrug and say we just can’t have what we want.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t afford health care, we can’t afford to take care of the indigent, because we’re a poor nation under stress and someone’s got to sacrifice and it sure as hell ain’t me.<\/p>\n
So we’ve got gridlock.\u00c2\u00a0 The big questions are not even pondered.\u00c2\u00a0 What about Wall Street?\u00c2\u00a0 What about jobs?\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like America’s been compartmentalized into four distinct subdivisions.\u00c2\u00a0 The rich.\u00c2\u00a0 The political.\u00c2\u00a0 The media.\u00c2\u00a0 And the poor.<\/p>\n
And it’s a circle jerk amongst the top three.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t really care about the poor.\u00c2\u00a0 The poor don’t vote.\u00c2\u00a0 So the rich pay the politicians to play to a media that’s ever more out of touch, because what’s really going on is online, but no one over forty is willing to embrace the future, certainly not if it costs them their job.<\/p>\n
After Ted Turner merged his company with Time Warner his son famously asked about his job, working at a Turner division.\u00c2\u00a0 Ted said "You’re toast!"<\/p>\n
But no one’s willing to be toast anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody wants insurance that their life won’t change.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, you can screw kids out of Medicare, but not me!\u00c2\u00a0 People must buy CDs and physical books and while we’re at it, why don’t we look at the Amish, they seem to have it down right!<\/p>\n
So it’s easy to be disillusioned.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so much that you can’t get ahead, but that the system is broken.<\/p>\n
And then we get Osama.<\/p>\n
It wasn’t Justin Bieber.\u00c2\u00a0 It wasn’t kids on video games.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a seasoned group of elite warriors with an average age of 38.\u00c2\u00a0 The media tells us to worship youth, is this true?<\/p>\n
And then there’s the patience involved.\u00c2\u00a0 Not only to track the lead but to find out if Osama is really in the house. And to balance acting in due time without acting too late, without tipping off the wrong person and risking Osama’s evaporation into the ether.<\/p>\n
And then there’s the planning.\u00c2\u00a0 And the execution.<\/p>\n
It all comes down to the execution.\u00c2\u00a0 Anybody can have an idea, but can you bring it to fruition?<\/p>\n
But what exactly is the plan?\u00c2\u00a0 Do you blow the compound to high hell or do you execute with surgical precision, which is much riskier.<\/p>\n
And what if you accomplish your mission, then what?\u00c2\u00a0 We blew this in Iraq and blow it in the music business all the time.\u00c2\u00a0 Wow, the record’s a hit, NOW WHAT!<\/p>\n
So they fly in under cover of night and they get Bin Laden and all the data and get the hell out of there before anybody knows what’s up, ultimately burying the body at sea within 24 hours.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, we see the President laughing at Seth Myers’s jokes and playing golf.\u00c2\u00a0 Talk about being a poker player.<\/p>\n
Makes you believe in America again.\u00c2\u00a0 That we can accomplish our goals.\u00c2\u00a0 That we’re smart, not just beholden to money, that we get the right things done.<\/p>\n
Where do we go from here?<\/p>\n
Well, you can criticize Obama.<\/p>\n
But that’s just like pooping on the Beatles or the Eagles or Kurt Cobain.\u00c2\u00a0 All are imperfect, but can you follow their path, can you have a dream and execute it too?<\/p>\n
The Beatles put in their 10,000 hours and then tested limits the rest of us didn’t even know existed.<\/p>\n
The Eagles wanted perfection, unlike Crosby, Stills & Nash, they wanted to be able to reproduce their records live.<\/p>\n
Not only did Kurt Cobain have an amazing sense of melody, he believed in the punk ethos.\u00c2\u00a0 He never sold out. The music was too meaningful, too powerful, too precious to be handed to corporations.<\/p>\n
But it really comes down to JFK.\u00c2\u00a0 Who so famously said:<\/p>\n
\n"As not what your country can do for you —
\u00c2\u00a0ask what you can do for your country."<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nI’m not saying the government can’t help you out, but I’m wondering why you can’t see you’re part of a society.\u00c2\u00a0 If you’re rich, you’re not unreachable, there can’t be a cop on the front lawn of every person with a seven figure income.\u00c2\u00a0 If you don’t take care of your brethren, you’re gonna find yourself like Bin Laden, shot down for your egregious activity.<\/p>\n
Class warfare?\u00c2\u00a0 I can understand fighting if you’re hungry and broke and so many are.<\/p>\n
But this is not about division, this is about unification.\u00c2\u00a0 The stain of Jimmy Carter’s failed rescue mission has finally been eradicated.<\/p>\n
It’s like we’re back in the sixties once again.\u00c2\u00a0 Only this time, the possibilities come from technology, not music.<\/p>\n
We’re building a better society.\u00c2\u00a0 We lost our way, but we can get back on track.<\/p>\n
If we can finally get Osama, what else can we accomplish?<\/p>\n
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What impressed me most was not that we achieved revenge, or that we put a dent in terrorism, but that we executed the plan. America used to be a can-do nation.\u00c2\u00a0 We rolled up our sleeves and got to work.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s been our history forever. Until recently. Now people feel entitled to success.\u00c2\u00a0 They certainly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-14A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4128"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4130,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4128\/revisions\/4130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}