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Anything that makes the news should be a litmus test for leadership. The bigger the story, the better the situation should be handled. If an extraordinary incident or challenge arises, extraordinarily clever and benevolent actions should abound. Anything else is a tragedy and it becomes an emergency measure for someone to probe and rectify the mess, fairly and decisively. How have we become used to less, even tolerating precisely the opposite effect? When an event of world importance occurs, it is obvious to all that leadership is taken by surprise and can’t seem to rise to the occasion. Then, the polarized affiliations we are all accustomed to kick in and we go to war with each other. Come on, it’s time to break this pattern of destruction and end the syndrome.

VotePlusPlus in an “emergency measure” before the fact, anticipating the impact of major events and helping ensure we are prepared. The best possible preparation depends on the level of productivity, means and strength of a civilization that has been built-up by the artful and effective application of governmental leadership, who by definition have their fingers on the pushbuttons of power. They take an oath to uphold legal precedence and abide by the mandates of equal representation and justice for all. Yet today, all but gross violations go unnoticed because everyone is so inured against the reasonable expectation that constitutional and institutional ideals should be adhered to.

When you see the headlines in print, compare them against your leaders’ responses and subsequent actions. If you and your neighbors become dissatisfied, let’s work together to offer the world a better system that can naturally elect people (who you probably already know) who can actually handle the demands of their office. When you put it like that, you as an individual deserve far better. Citizens have been compromised and ignored long enough, and qualified leaders should be able to step into the breach and “do their stuff”.

That didn’t slow down Hitler. He was convinced all the way through and highly productive along the way. His in-box was empty at the end of every day. Wait, is that a good thing?

Nagging doubt is a gift. If you have a feeling something just ain’t right, you tend to pause. When you do, others will criticize you for stalling or lagging behind – but maybe you’re the right one in the group.

Let’s unwind things, starting from now back to whenever – a “how did we get here?” moment. Once we have arrived at the end of our traditional peaceable transitions of power in the U.S. Electoral process, we’ve all gotten off at the wrong stop. You’re telling me that when we flip a coin high into the air, which amounts to exactly what the current system has to offer us, that either way it lands our cities are going to burn? Hold on a moment.

When you walk into a crowded room full of strangers you tend to become intimidated, fearful, or overly self-critical. I claim that’s a result of having been given lots of bad advice. “You’ll have to duke it out with someone in there. There are enemies lurking everywhere, arguing over everything. Either offer up your cheek to be slapped or lock ‘n load and go in blazing.” That’s all hooey. A room full of strangers is a cornucopia of opportunity, a gourmet meal – course by course. Firstly, you need to ask and not simply start out saying. You want to know exactly what kind of unique perspective you are about to learn from. If the other party is also interested, then give your views heartily without reservation. You’ll be surprised to find two things: they see something you never did, in a way you never considered before, and they have an entirely different interpretation of precisely the same events. Anywhere you have found an agreement you’ve found an ally. Anywhere you don’t, you’ve found an instructor.

If you can believe any of that, then why are we at war with what is supposed to be the massive social occasion called civilization? That’s nothing more than a mindless brawl. And when it gets to the point where you need the national guard to prevent loss of life after an election, when all that happened was that everyone was supposed to exercise their personal privilege of choosing how to be represented by their government, something has gone so very wrong as to have become ridiculous – and dangerous, too.

VotePlusPlus not-so-humbly demands recognition and the chance to prove our case. Sure, we can’t guarantee the solution will work as well as we hope but show me a competing proposal. I searched for any prior art whatsoever before filing our patent and was met with unearthly silence from any source. That right there is a nagging glimpse of something gone eerily wrong in history.

Let’s get it right this time.

Here’s a metaphysical speculation – you be the judge. Ever wonder whether folks are behaving in-character or reacting under some form of irresistible pressure? Famous artists enrich our lives and yet may have committed egregious crimes in their personal lives, in secret. Notorious leaders throughout history have perpetrated genocide but were nice to animals and orphans. What the heck is going on?

It’s important not to make assumptions and never automatically condemn anyone. The ultimate fact is: we never really know. There is substantial evidence that when someone loses their way they may regret how far they have drifted from their core essence and intrinsic personality, so they will recant and make amends. On the opposite side of the spectrum, some people pretend to conform in order to gain advantage and deflect blame, while continuing to perpetuate relentless harm. A judge sometimes resorts to looking a defendant in the eye and asking: “Did you mean it?” By the way, that never works. See Malcolm Gladwell’s investigative reporting in “Talking to Strangers”.

Therefore, this underscores the importance of having an “official” global or regional narrative that is aligned with logical, moral, inclusive and “win-win” thinking. Anyone can become susceptible to major media, power broker or monarchist jargon, which inevitably comprises the “correct” truth of the day. That is fundamental and deliberate mass manipulation. Why do they do it? Because it works. It will always work. Condemning the masses for not being free-thinkers is entirely futile. It is not the mandate of representative leadership, who take an oath of office to do otherwise, to exploit this vulnerability. That behavior is illegal and predatory.

One reason to control an electoral process is to produce a moral and sustainable convention through the rhetoric and personal examples of qualified leadership. In that ideal circumstance, which we should all come to expect, sound bytes become words to live by, not “groaners” that discourage, marginalize and condemn others or slogans to be uttered by murderers who put down insurrections. VotePlusPlus recommends that you listen to what is being repeated in the cacophony of global chatter and see if you can trace down where the words originated. If not from responsible and benevolent leadership, then it is urgent to institute reform.

If there is no keeper of the chronicles no one can remember anything. If a tree falls in the forest, there might be a squirrel under there.

The best qualified scribe is your opponent. An opponent can be your most valuable ally. They will be motivated to write your biography, called “Don’t let this happen to you”. They will painstakingly record all of your foibles, gaffs, embarrassing moments and everlasting shameful mistakes. We are so used to having our opponents also be bloodthirsty predators that we immediately rise up with a can of mace ready to spray. Why?

Representation means listening to your opponents. Let me ask you this: “Where else are you going to obtain exhaustive and precise information from someone watching your every move?”

When you vanquish your opponent and raise your fist to the sky you just killed history. It became vapor and blew away. You cannot reassemble it. It’s lost. Your political spin machine can simply interject praises into the gaps, but is that accurate? Is history supposed to be accurate? You bet. We cannot learn from lies.

VotePlusPlus recommends a plurality, where opposing views are regarded as good information, not threats to an overinflated competitive ego. A leader’s self-worth should remain intact based on their ability to know that they know they are doing a great job. By the way, you as a citizen can tell if they ever happen to fall into that desirable state. They won’t look nearly so awkward on stage.

Fear might be warranted. When that occurs, you pull out all the stops on the mighty pipe organ and wail. There is no opportunity to do otherwise. During LSD experiments in the 1950’s, mental patients were guided through therapy. Some of them had to confront their intense fear of breathing! “What if that stops?”

Behavior under those circumstances is unpredictable and inherently unbounded by moral guidelines. The drive to survive is built into the fabric of our personality, one and all. If you wish to be moral and consistent according to your own personal standards you need to stay out of trouble. You can’t think clearly during a thunderstorm.

This presents a lovely opportunity for predators, high on the hunt while pursuing the thrill of the kill. They noticed that if you roar, you can scare your prey. This is low-hanging fruit for crowd manipulation and is easily picked, hurled and left on the ground to rot. Therefore, it’s probable that most of the news you receive from standard sources is self-serving and meant to accomplish some other agenda than to inform the public. Finding an unbiased source for current events and knowledge is therefore intrinsically difficult and rarely successful. In a general way, if the so-called headlines are shocking and fearsome then they’re probably wrong.

Some who have survived decades of news media and government propaganda learned this lesson the hard way, by being bludgeoned with contradictions over a long period of time when nothing they ever warned you about actually came to pass. If you had acted on the Y2K scare by building a concrete bunker, you looked pretty silly sitting in there the day after. The film “Blast from the Past” poked fun at a similar scenario.

Let’s get our personal well-being and balance radar up and running. VotePlusPlus suggests that the best source of news is hearing from as many of your peers in a diverse neighborhood as will talk to you. Let’s pay attention to our local situation and use that to put our national and world-wide conditions into perspective. Then, let’s support a system of plurality where representation and the accuracy of collective reporting and analysis can be vastly improved.

Whatever you may think about what happened and how it was handled, VotePlusPlus will ask you an important question about your leadership and you can compare the answers your candidates will give.  Our recommendations will find you a match, and recommend better candidates within a better representative structure for “next time”, because you know that world events of dramatic significance do occur throughout history.

“How do you feel about following established protocols in case of a national emergency?” and

“How do you feel about the deviating from precedence when dealing with a new national emergency?”

Depending on where you are and what you have experienced, there is no wrong answer. When Covid hit, 7 states opted-out of lockdown completely. California still ain’t open.  So, maybe knowing what your leadership was inclined to do would have been helpful to you and your area.

When it comes to representation, there is nothing like an emergency to cause the importance of this principle to shine.  Your lives were no doubt directly affected and, for some of you, the aftermath of the lockdown policies in your area might be yet another disaster for you to have to deal with going forward.

Do you feel represented?

Agreements are more powerful than anything when it comes to the advancement of civilization. The consent of the governed works best for leaders too, each side having their own distinct roles and responsibilities. Diversity works best for forming agreements and keeping them, as long as you can discover what each participant is seeing and how they are feeling about it. Successful agreements are supported by good information. So why do we still see more conflict than resolution in the Information Age?

The answer is that flipping a coin doesn’t say much about the game or its players. Someone is either in or out, wining or losing, and nothing further can be said or gained from that experience. This type of bindless infects the very root. When you have more to know, read or say when it comes to finding the best coffee in town, then you and your leaders certainly deserve to improve their daily advantages, especially when the betterment of real lives is at stake.

Let’s start by asking questions and listening to answers on both sides. Let’s reward ambitious, capable leaders and assure concerned citizens. Through technology, all members of society can find each other, communicate and settle into a system that’s just right for the situation. “Heads or tails” becomes the least important consideration and the platform provides a more rewarding and convenient experience for discovering insights, rather than trudging through the streets of your city to punch a possibly swinging chad or drop your ballot into a box that’s hauled away.

If we like the cermony of it all then we can keep it, but let’s not rely on ceremony alone to perpetuate our quality of life. Let’s do something smarter and be ourselves, proudly. Let’s start today.

Everything!

We at VotePlusPlus have some thoughts. Since we are focused on improvement for everyone’s benefit, we want all those who are vulnerable to infection as well as those who are concerned about impending financial hardship to be equally protected. The current outbreak is an prime example of how the strength of society may withstand a serious threat from nature. At the frontlines are the application of resources and reserves, coupled with the force of law.  That’s our government we are talking about and there is no other recourse but to rely on its excellence to provide for a common defense.

However, if you were complaining about usual suspects and shenanigans “before” Covid-19, about not having the best and brightest at the helm and not being presented with the best possible choices for electing leadership, then who do you think are manning the important posts and making the important decisions now? It has been our experience that waiting for sparkling personalities with squeaky-clean records is futile.  Most individuals we have met in positions of power began their careers with a sense of being called-up to serve their fellow person.  What happened “along the way” is their general complaint, and that’s blaming “the system” we know it today.

When your observe how conditions are now being handled in your area you should ask yourself several things: “Is this measure truly protecting my neighbors?”, “Is the level of enforcement appropriate for the community conditions and our civil rights?”, “Are the motives behind a particular action pure?” If so, then you can celebrate the fact that something powerful is working.  However, you must think for yourself before you can purport to offer any improvement by scrutinizing and taking lawful actions that widen the discourse and create better solutions.

Finally, we have a bit of opinionated advice. There can be lot of fraud associated with the nutrition industry and exactly how to keep oneself strong and healthy is a very individual matter. I will point out though that a regimen of conventional pharmaceutical treatment can take its toll on the natural human immune system, not boost it.  With fast food chains booming and even fewer choices for nourishment available in the urban centers, the ability to keep one’s personal defenses in peak condition could become challenging. For me, it’s a personal responsibility to be considerate of others through sanitary and respectful conduct, and to have an immune system functioning at its best before presuming to interact with others.  There is certainly no way that idea can hurt us at any time, and is required now more than ever.

Nature deals us a confusing deck. “Be like me”, and tear the heart out of your enemy seems to be the lesson. Most of us know we can’t live like that. It does not bring a tear to the eye when twins agree; they were born that way. When diverse individuals with vastly different perspectives stand shoulder-to-shoulder in order to build up and protect one another, now “that’s” entertainment!

I think the contradiction can be reconciled if we are born to a different destiny and achieving it actually makes nature happy, something like: “Learn to shelter in the biggest and nicest dwellings possible, thrive and get along”.

There is a study that shows that most people would rather make less money “if” they can brag to their friends about making a bit more than they do.  Wouldn’t you rather be the lowest paid member of an elite, highly compensated group? Whenever the capital gains tax is lowered the tax revenue spikes, because investors liquidate, spend and invest. Yet, “tax the rich” demands that both destructive and constructive individuals of means are lumped into the same punitive category. One thing we probably can’t have until reforms like VotePlusPlus succeed is a flat tax, because as it stands the notion that wealth breeds corruption is not handled on the basis of getting rid of the corruption, but by presuming that wealth alone indicates its occurrence. If you speed up while somebody is trying to pass you on the freeway – yes, you get to be in front but you’re now traveling at a speed that you clearly found uncomfortable in the first place.

Ultimately, nature is trying to teach us that this kind of predatory dominance is actually self-destructive. What does Godzilla eat after feasting on all the available humans?

Might want to retract those fangs and extend a hand.

However it came to pass, businesses participating in our world economy have now been declared to be either “essential” or “non-essential”. Landing in the second group is scary. There have been incidents throughout history that have also been so polarized, many with notoriously grave and immoral consequences. However we got here today, it’s important to recognize that strength is required in order to exercise mercy. Therefore, providing maximum recognition and empowerment for all economic participants best facilitates advancement. It is actually “essential” for a society to represent and accommodate their so-called “non-essentials”, however they decide to slice the pie and serve the pieces. There should be no intrinsic disadvantage for anyone associated with such shifting category lines. In fact, the more lines that are being drawn, the narrower the areas of confinement until every lone citizen would occupy a single box simply by virtue of being a unique individual. There is indeed safety in numbers, but not when everyone wearing the same uniform is pulling in the same direction – to move a mountain, maybe, but that’s a load of dirt. To build a city, everyone must bring their unique tool, whether it be a pen or a hammer. Therefore, VotePlusPlus will be making the case that reform itself is now “essential”, because all individuals – even the most disinterested in a constituency to the most venal in high office – are necessarily and irrevocably essential to improving the process.