When you’re ten years old watching the Mickey Mouse Club, Superman, Zorro, Father Knows Best and the rest, the American Way seems perfectly clear. We were strong. We were proud. We had clear cut enemies. At school we were told to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance with pride, and when the air raid sirens went off we got under our desks — as if that would actually do any good. But it made us feel safe.
We had presidents who built America. Eisenhower chose highways over rail because he saw how disabling rail lines stopped troop movements. He should have prioritized both. JFK, with all his faults, still told us that our strength was to stand together and build a great nation. Not a monument.
Sometime after that I took a break. I married, I divorced, I had children — not necessarily in that order. I raised families. I now have grandchildren. I learned how to build businesses and was part of the great technological revolution — time spent at gin joints like Tektronix, Intel, my own consulting and more.
And when I stopped and took a breath, I looked around and saw an America that had become super wealthy and gone to hell at the same time.
