Opportunity versus fear

The national narrative has been focused on fear for almost a decade, and making progress against fear is difficult. In fact when you think of it, opportunity or optomism is the replacement for fear.

We have been talking about rougue nations, WMD, terrorists, color coded fear levels, and meanwhile real progress on oportunity has lagged.

Where are the alternative energy sources, the Hyperion mini nuclear plants, the solar investments, the wind investments, the new Volt car?

While it is important to focus on cleaning up the issues around Gitmo we as a nation need to remember that the referendum on change was also a vote for hope. A hope that there was a reason to be optomistic.

The narrative of fear is the GOP talking point but part of the psyche of a minority of this nation, given an opportunity of optomism these people can come on board. I read an interesting approach of the Kingdom to terrorists, they supplant fear with a programme of integrating fearful and alienated people back into the mainstream.

Manchurian Candidates, Saudi Style

I will return to a set of issues that are the "commanding heights" of an American society. But any organization that spends the majority of it's resources on fear will miss the opportunities while it is distracted. We are a nation that is in a sprint race with the rest of the globe. We need to be on guard against nefarious threats and assymetric attacks, but we cannot allow that threat to turn into a public narrative that precludes opportunity in global trade and economics.

If the next POTUS adopts and endorses the same narrative that the GOP has for the last 8 years, then the next 8 years will further erode our socity similar to the zenophobic policies of say North Korea.

We are either a democracy with human rights as a core principal, the home of the free and brave, or we are the home of the fearful and zenophobe, and tossed aside some freedoms as well.

But if the next POTUS focuses on these fears and not the opportunities, we as a society will further erode. We have nothing to fear but fear itself.