What the heck is a Goth? That’s a question that I’m sure was frequently asked in Rome in 476 AD — the year the Western Roman Empire fell after more than half a millenium of being the most powerful empire on the planet. The Goths, one of several Germanic tribes considered to be marauding barbarians, had been invading the Western Roman Empire on and off since the middle of the 3rd Century.
The year before their downfall, most Romans, probably didn’t believe that the Western Roman Empire could fall to barbarians. I doubt most seventeenth century Spanish or Portuguese citizens ever thought the Dutch city of Amsterdam would become more important than Madrid or Lisbon. In the early part of the twentieth century, most Britons were unlikely to have thought that New York and Washington, DC, would one day replace London as the financial and political epicenters of the world.
The fates of empires and superpowers throughout history illustrate the disastrous consequences of a population and its leaders taking for granted their position in the world.
The fates of empires and superpowers throughout history illustrate the disastrous consequences of a population and its leaders taking for granted their position in the world. It’s natural to think that it’s impossible for America to suffer a similar fate as these other superpowers, because throughout our lifetimes and those of our parents, America has been the dominant superpower.
- However, the Culture Wars in America will prevent us from winning a New Cold War that will define the rest of this century.
- This New Cold War with the Chinese Government over global leadership in advanced technology will determine whether the 21st Century Stays the American Century.
To keep our place in the world (one that we have enjoyed since the end of World War II), we need an American Reboot. When I started my career in technology, working in a college computer lab, I learned a simple lesson — if you are troubleshooting a computer problem and can’t figure out why the computer is acting up, the best thing you can do is hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete.
I’m not talking about starting from the beginning. An American Reboot doesn’t mean re-forming our more perfect Union in a radically different way.
And it doesn’t involve tearing up our Constitution and starting over. Instead, it’s an opportunity to refresh our operating system so that it’s operating on our core values that have sustained us as a nation for close to 250 years.
…it’s getting harder to get big things done in our country because the gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense.
Just like a computer slows down when its memory is filled up with garbage from running bad programs, it’s getting harder to get big things done in our country because the gears of our democracy have been mucked up by political nonsense. If we are going to meet the generational-defining challenges of the twenty-first century, our country needs to be at peak performance.
When you change your attitude, you change your behavior. When your behavior changes, so do your results. In two weeks, we’ll talk about changing our attitude when it comes to technology. One part of conducting an American Reboot is realizing we can take advantage of technology before it takes advantage of us.
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