Robert Greene – Rudy Owens' Blog

The Detroit Adoptee Manifesto

November 29, 2017March 20, 2023Rudy Owens2 Comments

This is part of my original record of birth, showing my arrival in the world in Detroit, Michigan. It was then hidden from me for decades because I was born a bastard, who became an adoptee and thus denied equal treatment under the law by Michigan, its courts, and my adoption agency.

As the year 2017 comes to a close, millions of American adoptees are no closer to receiving equal treatment under U.S. laws than they were decades earlier. In 1975, the United Kingdom long moved on from this issue, giving all adoptees full access to their records once they turned 18. In fact, the issue of adoptee equal rights is not even a concern in many developed nations. Not so in the United States, the country with the greatest number of adoptees than any developed country in the world.

From a strategic perspective, most U.S. adoptees have not organized cohesively or embraced successful strategies that have altered this battlefield. This includes the all-critical inner battle of the mind that must occur first before any change and tactical advance occurs on the messy, fluid field of combat in the real world. I will focus mostly on this critical aspect of adoptee rights work in this essay, while also addressing the national scene.

Most of us know from our own experiences we can’t change the outer world without changing our inner world. I believe it is time to reset the chessboard and start anew, starting first with each individual adoptee. It is way past due for adoptees to show more backbone and grit, beginning in their own house.

The Dying Gaul, a celebrated sculpture of the defeated soul.

Project Strength, Not Vulnerability: Today, far too many adoptees celebrate a losing attitude, portraying themselves as “trauma victims.” They confess to being desperate, needy, unhappy adults who are incapable of mastering their emotions and managing inner conflict. While there is clear and strong public health evidence on long-term health impacts of early childhood and prenatal experiences, adoptee-led trauma branding ultimately undermines adoptee rights as a larger political cause. (I write this as an adoptee born as a near-low-birth-weight infant, who needed emergency hospital care during my first two weeks of life.) So long as adoptees identify themselves as defeated souls and do not project a public image as standard bearers of centuries-old struggles for basic human rights, they will never win anything and remain captives of their own cages. Unfortunately, those who embrace a weak public image will define adoptees’ public perception and the larger national story defining adoptees and their collective national experience. As long as this losing mentality prevails, all adoptees will be held back.

Frederick Douglas, from the Library of Congress collection.

Learn from the Masters and Apply that Wisdom: Many adoptees in the United States can sharpen their focus by reading any book of their choosing that motivates them to understand conflict and struggles. Take abolitionist Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and anti-slavery crusader and author of several books on his slavery experience. Douglass learned as a young man in captivity that his freedom came first through mental defiance and firm resolve, not in his circumstance, which he later overcame. Douglass wrote: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Any biography of any accomplished person will show they all had conflict and controlled their fate by first winning their internal battles. They mastered their thinking and then launched their external crusades—many more brutal and unfair than the minefield of adoptee discrimination and adoption law. For adoptees needing inspiration, I recommend the author Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, Mastery, The 33 Strategies of War, and more. His treatise on war offers a cool, hard look at human conflict and offers wisdom demonstrated by historic greats from Sun Tzu to Napoleon Bonaparte to Muhammad Ali. He provides a set of ideas how to grab victory from whatever conflict and foes you face.

Here are a few of the concepts from Greene that I think adoptees should consider as they choose how they want to live their lives and then change the world around them.

Have a Grand Strategic Vision: Today, no grand vision unifies the adoptee rights movement—a situation that must be remedied. It is also a movement without a clearly defined national leader, unlike historic predecessors like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, ACT UP, or the Human Rights Campaign. The closest concept unifying adoptee rights is the call by many for human rights and equal rights, recognized in statute, as those laws apply to persons who were placed for adoption. This includes giving all adoptees unfettered and full access to original birth records, without any exception. Many adoptees lack a personal vision too, preventing them from achieving individual success in their fight for their rights and records. This too must be changed, but by each individual adoptee, and in their own way. Only the individual has the power to make that change.

In the United States, adoption law is controlled at the state level. Here proponents of adoption and laws ensuring adoption secrecy, such as pro-adoption, anti-adoptee rights groups like the National Council for Adoption, have maximized a divide-and-conquer strategy that prevents adoptees from mounting a national campaign. Advocacy today focuses mostly on battles in state legislatures over bills to change adoptees’ access to birth records. These fights may bring in up to three or nearly four dozen local and national groups, including longtime groups like Bastard Nation, newer upstarts like the Adoptee Rights Law Center, and state-level groups like California Open. Most adoptees are not involved in these battles as they try to find their own records or families. However, all adoptees are connected to this national debate and need the same overarching strategic approach that is needed nationally.

Ultimately not having a clear end game and objectives will prevent many adoptees from engaging fully in what will be a protracted, long campaign. That can translate to lifelong failure. Greene’s synopsis of the critical role of grand strategy should be a wake up call to all adoptee rights advocates, including those who have to advocate for themselves: “What have distinguished all history’s grand strategists and can distinguish you, too, are specific, detailed, focused goals. Contemplate them day in and day out and imagine how it will feel to reach them and what reaching them will look like. By a psychological law peculiar to humans, clearly visualizing them this way will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Abraham Lincoln suffered many defeats prior to becoming our nation’s greatest president, including the 1858 race for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois against his more well-known rival Stephen Douglas. All great leaders have faced defeat and grown from those losses.

Learn from Defeat: Every person in life suffers setbacks. Adoptees who seek their records and identity, unlike nonadoptees, are beset by obstacles imposed by hostile public health bureaucracies, harmful propaganda from the massive pro-adoption and Christian pro-family industry, media stereotypes that frame adoptees as damaged goods or ungrateful bastards, family members, friends, and especially discriminatory laws rooted in historic prejudice against illegitimately born people. Every single defeat represents a learning opportunity if you have an open, flexible mind that can take these setbacks and inform your future efforts. As Greene notes, “Victory and defeat are what you make of them; it is how you deal with them that matters.”

Define your Opponents and Expose Them and Their Weaknesses: Greene’s 33 Strategies of War highlights countless historic examples how combatants overcome their enemies by attacking the weakest link in any chain. He calls this “hit them where it hurts.” Frequently this means exposing individuals who make decisions and holding them accountable to the public. Famous social activist Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals,” called this “picking the target.” “Don’t try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies,” he wrote. “Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame.” For adoptee rights activists, this means putting a face on those who say “no,” rather than succumbing like sheep to the nameless bureaucrats who operate in secret and hide behind the façade of laws and “process.”

Glenn Copeland, state registrar of Michigan and the senior official who exceeded his legal authority denying me my birth certificate, in likely violation of state law. Adoptees need to identify the people who support outdated views of adoptees and closed records and who work to deny adoptees their legal and original birth documents.

In my case, I identified every Michigan official in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services involved in trying to withhold my birth certificate illegally, such as State Registrar Glenn Copeland. I published their emails about my birth record petition on my websites, revealing how public officials discussed adoptees seeking records that should have been released decades earlier.

Some groups, like Bastard Nation, do call out by name all of the foes and friends of adoptee rights, which others should learn from. My question to the larger adoptee community is this: Why aren’t all adoptee rights activists embracing one of the best tools of a free press, shining light on wrongdoing, to expose the harmful workings of public officials in their treatment of adoptees? This is a proven strategy and one rooted in the American free press tradition. It’s yours to use.

Become a Fighter, Not a Victim: Anyone who perceives himself or herself as crushed by circumstance will never muster the courage or vision to become an advocate or warrior for change, particularly against an old, large, and entrenched system like U.S. adoption. As Greene notes, “Control is an issue in all relationships. It is human nature to abhor feelings of helplessness and to strive for power. … Your task as a strategist is twofold: First, recognize the struggle for control in all aspects of life, and never be taken in by those who claim they are not interested in control.” Make no mistake, adoption secrecy is firmly rooted in states and their bureaucracies exerting power over a mostly unorganized group. Saying you are weak and projecting that image gives those in control greater power over you and all other adoptees. Remember Frederick Douglass’ admonishment that the “limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”

Joan of Arc, hero and savior of France, and one of the most inspirational leaders of history.

Therefore adoptees should see themselves as members of a powerful group, who have been forged through adversity and opposition, who are connected to historic heroes who fought for rights on behalf of those denied their rights. Nearly every great civilization has a story of those who have been wronged, but who changed the course of events by becoming the strong. In Scotland, the hero was Robert the Bruce, who defeated the English. In ancient Rome it was Spartacus and the revolting slaves, whose legacy survived millennia after their defeat. In the American South, it was the Civil Rights activists and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference led by Dr. Martin Luther King, who challenged the power of the Southern states and Jim Crow laws and won major legislative change nationwide with the passage of two landmark civil rights measures. Find the hero and movements that resonate with you and embrace their power.

Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” from 1851. As a general, George Washington understood the importance of controlling the battlefield and grand strategy.

Define The Battlefield: In his summary of war strategies, Greene writes, “To have the power that only strategy can bring, you must be able to elevate yourself above the battlefield, to focus on your long-term objectives, to craft an entire campaign, to get out of the reactive mode that so many battles in life lock you into. Keeping your overall goals in mind, it becomes much easier to decide when to fight and when to walk away.” Today, much of U.S. adoptee rights advocacy is stuck in complicated, state-level legislative battles over often regressive state legislation. Most recently, state lawmakers in New York and Florida have introduced legislation that has consumed adoptee rights advocates. In Hawaii in 2016, adoptee rights champions did define the battlefield and reclaimed their rights by passing a law granting all adoptees who are adults over 18 access to their records. In other cases, like New Jersey, a law was signed in 2014 and implemented in 2016 that created a class of adoptees denied forever their human right to know their ancestry because of a so-called “veto.”

Missing in this tactical coverage is how the adoptee rights struggle should be told nationally, outside of the typical media obsession over adoption reunion stories (what some adoptees call “reunion porn”). That space has been seized in the post-World War II decades by the pro-life, Christian, and fundamentalist community who have forged a national story about adoption as a selfless act promoting god’s will and a system that shows the benevolence of loving adoptive families. Adoptee strategists will need to counter the adoption industry’s national story by focusing on adoptee rights as human rights and as something as American as the First Amendment. Some advocates are doing this. More needs to be done. Frontline adoptee activists need to fight off any pretender group that claims that space. As Green states, “War demands the utmost in realism, seeing things as they are.”

Know Your Enemies: Greene correctly states that no one in history ever won anything without first identifying those who opposed them. “Life is endless battle and conflict, and you cannot fight effectively unless you identify your enemies,” writes Greene. This maxim applies to the struggle for adoptees. Bastard Nation did that well already, publishing a list of many dogged and well-financed foes of adoptee rights (“Know Thine Enemies”). In knowing who they face, adoptees are better able to find allies, collaborators, and even possible swing groups who may pivot if the messages of equality, human rights, and justice override the powerful and slippery propaganda of the well-funded, Christian-leaning, anti-abortion, and pro-adoption advocates like the National Council for Adoption.

Adoptee rights strategists must familiarize themselves with overt anti-adoptee rights groups and their methods to develop a winning strategy. Greene correctly summarizes what hundreds of other historic strategists who have made history have long noted: “Do not be naïve: with some enemies there can be no compromise, no middle ground.” For that reason, adoptee rights groups will face continued setbacks if they also fail to recognize false advocates (the “Benedict bastards”) and those who divide and conquer among adoptees themselves. Adoptees need to use this real politik litmus test for groups who lack a clear vision for full equality, including state-level charlatan groups who claim to support adoptee rights, but promote harmful laws that deny all equal rights.

Launch a Revolution of Thinking: As Greene notes, all people face battles, hourly and daily. “But the greatest battle of all is with yourself—your weakness, your emotions, your lack of resolution in seeing things through to the end,” writes Greene. “Instead of repressing your doubts and fears, you must face the down, do battle with them.” Above all, success comes after you remove distracting emotion from critical thinking. This is a tall task for any adoptee, who often and rightly feels outrage and injustice at being denied their original names, equal legal rights, medical history, and equality. What results is an explosive outrage. This feeling has frequently served as great motivator, and even a catalyst for historic change.

The greatest strategist of them all, Sun Tau, provides many strategies adoptees can embrace to first win the inner battle and then succeed against their adversaries.

To overcome your adversaries and the underlying legal injustice, you cannot afford the luxury of wallowing in your emotional state or turmoil when you map your long-term strategy for victory. You need to master your situation, turn your defeats into wisdom that inform your future actions, and embrace actions that achieve clear victories and not repeated losses. This can take years. You will get nowhere unless you define where your campaign will end and what you fight for. A campaign devoid of justice and focused on piecemeal objectives—the approach of some so-called adoptee rights advocates—is not a coherent, visionary strategy. It is a losing campaign before the battle begins.

Fighting a long game and knowing your actions are just and that laws are wrong can help carry you through the months and years of defeat. But ultimately winning the battle in one’s mind is your greatest key to victory. As the great Chinese strategist Sun-Tzu wrote nearly 2,500 years ago: “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first, and then seek to win.”

[Author note: On June 10, 2018, I updated this essay, removing references to the now closed Donaldson Adoption Institute, and the American Adoption Conference (AAC). Regarding the AAC, the group this spring announced a very clear policy position supporting the right of adoptees to be treated equally by law, which signalled to me the group is commited to genuine legal reform and thus the activities to achieve that in the years to come.]

You were surprised by Trump’s con job? Seriously?

November 18, 2016November 20, 2016Rudy Owens1 Comment

President Elect Donald J. Trump and his famous hat.

Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

Michael Moore’s Facebook Post, Nov. 9, 2016

A lie is an allurement, a fabrication, that can be embellished into a fantasy. … Truth is cold, sober fact, not so comfortable to absorb. A lie is more palatable. … I found it far more interesting and profitable to romance than to tell the truth.

Joseph Weil, aka “The Yellow Kid” (Professional Con Artist), Robert Greene, 48 Laws of Power

To those who expressed shock and awe the day after GOP presidential candidate Donald J. Trump won the Electoral College but not the popular vote on Nov. 8, 2016, I say, what freaking country have you been living in for the last 25 years?

If you were born any time before 1980, exactly what forms of dystopian thinking had overwhelmed your senses as you observed events unfold in your country and home town–year … after year … after year?

The outcome that brought smiles in the Kremlin and so wildly alarmed the much of the world, America’s progressive coalition, and the Democratic establishment was paved decades ago by the Republican Party and its supporters.

The GOP has unabashedly and shamelessly advanced a far-right agenda that makes the United States an extreme outlier in nearly every category compared to “advanced democracies.” And now the Democratic and progressive establishment say they are shocked by the election? Are you kidding me?

So, am I outraged that Trump lost the popular vote and was still elected? Absolutely. Shocked? Hell no, and not even remotely.

The GOP Establishment Primed the Nation for Trump

Adolph Hitler, one of history's most infamous demagogues — Adolph Hitler is one of history’s most infamous demagogues and the dictator who seduced Germany as he turned it into a totalitarian state that organized mass murder and global war.

Rather than an aberration, Trump was a pre-ordained messiah who walked through the giant blast hole the GOP created in our democracy over the last three decades. He also proved to be an adept and capable con artist, clever enough to employ all of the proven stratagems used by dictators throughout history, in nearly every civilization.

Anyone who has read anything about history or who has read writer Robert Greene’s 48 Laws of Power, could recognize how Trump mastered the trade craft of power in the purest Machiavellian sense. But the real-estate mogul and reality TV star also exploited an exceedingly well-fertilized landscape, plowed for a generation by his GOP predecessors and moistened by the flood of unregulated money in American politics.

Trump’s performance as a titillating, transcendent messenger was similar to demagogues of the last century. He offered racial and economic salvation, while restoring “law and order,” deporting millions of non-citizens, building a wall with Mexico, and giving hate speech wide latitude to an increasingly agitated and well-armed white and right political base.

Even the right-wing publication The Weekly Standard—a foe of Trump—predicted Trump’s meteoric success perfectly in an August 2015 article, by Jim Swift. Swift described prophetically how Trump was using all the 48 tactics of past strong men of history: “Law 27 — Play on People’s Need to Believe to Create a Cultlike Following: As Greene writes: ‘People have an overwhelming desire to believe in something. Become the focal point of such desire by offering them a cause, a new faith to follow.’ How about ‘Make America Great Again?’”

Sadly, I correctly predicted the outcome myself in the spring of 2016, when I bet a good friend a beer that Trump would defeat his likely rival, Democrat Hillary Clinton. (I have yet to drink that beer, and it will be the worst brew of my life.)

I knew he would win the “shocker” by the time he had won the South Carolina primary, where he repudiated the military legacy of the last GOP president, George W. Bush, and called the Iraq war a failure without any political consequences among evangelicals or traditional conservative voters. Here was a new creature who defied the rules–a characteristic of successful demagogues in history.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Youngstown) of Ohio’s industrial heartland, who is now challenging House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) for her job and pledging to reconnect with disaffected blue collar white voters, also predicted a dire outcome a month before the election. Ryan warned union members to not fall for Trump’s song and dance. “He will gut you, and he will walk over your cold dead body, and he won’t even flinch,” Ryan told a crowd of union members in Ohio in October 2016. “He’ll climb over your cold dead body and get on his helicopter.” And many of them did not listen.

Other wise people who saw this coming were filmmaker Michael Moore and commentator Van Jones—because it was so bloody obvious. They too were ignored.

In two key policy areas—guns, health care—Trump mostly used tested messages. Those soundbites and their political outcomes were already extreme before Trump became what Moore called a “human Molotov cocktail.” However, he was unexpected in several key ways.

Trump broke from the GOP orthodoxy on jobs and trade. He saw an opportunity to resonate with the disaffected working class in the industrial Midwest. He also proved to be a far better salesman than anyone in the GOP establishment. Lastly, he had a keener understanding of psychology than most of the highly respected, well-paid, and powerful individuals of the Democratic and Republican parties and the broadcast media, most of whom professed not to see the Trump tsunami coming.

Walmart is the largest commercial retailer of guns in the United States, including semi-automatic rifles commonly used now in mass shootings. — Wal-Mart is the largest commercial retailer of guns in the United States, including semi-automatic rifles commonly used now in mass shootings.

Trump and Guns, Nothing New

Consider the domestic militarization of the United States since the early 1990s. GOP members of Congress and in state legislatures have worked lock step with the National Rifle Association since the passage of the The Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act in 1993.

America now has a virtually unregulated market of guns and semi-automatic weapons that are now considered inalienable rights of the majority of Republican-voting and mostly white Americans. There are now more guns than people in these United States of America. This powerful segment of the American electorate had turned their fringe ideas into mainstream GOP policy long before they voted for Trump.

These armed citizens who form the rank and file of a well-armed citizenry for years have muzzled lawmakers who might otherwise approve gun measures that put modest restrictions on the sale of weapons that kill about 33,000 Americans a year. During the campaign candidate Trump implicitly threatened to call these Americans into action against his Democratic opponent: “By the way, and if she gets the pick—if she gets the pick of her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I dunno.”

Trump merely echoed the GOP lines that had become accepted public discourse since the Columbine mass shooting in 1999. He was able to say it publicly without much rebuke because it was already normal to threaten gun violence against elected officials, putting them in “cross-hairs.” Immediately after the election, the NRA unsurprisingly announced an even more radical agenda it has been pushing, to allow concealed handgun permits to be accepted in every state and to legalize silencers—yes, silencers.

Trump’s Health Care Vision Advances the Decades-Long Agenda of the Republican Establishment

The GOP has fought doggedly for more than six decades to prevent the United States from adopting a national health care system or even insurance plan. As a result, the country is the most expensive and least efficient health provider at the population level among most developed nations.

The Affordable Care Act that squeaked through under President Barack Obama’s slim majority in Congress in 2009 was not true health reform—it was mostly an expansion of health insurance to nearly 50 million uninsured Americans—50 million!—and a first step to change the broken health insurance market. It was never meant to be the start of a national health system, like Canada’s or France’s.

But this mattered little to the nearly half of the American electorate in November, many who were lower-income and who supported a billionaire who boasted of not paying U.S. income taxes. Trump knew that. He knew facts did not matter, the same way the GOP was able to defend the monopolistic and dysfunctional health system for years while health insurance middlemen were gobbling up the nation’s economic resources. Trump simply reflected all that was said repeatedly before, like a mirror.

Throughout the campaign, Trump pledged to dismantle the act and remove more than 20 million Americans from having even lousy coverage. However, the GOP in Congress voted to repeal it more than 60 times by February 2016 and tried to shut down the government in 2013 to protest legislation promoting health insurance for all Americans. Trump repeated common political discourse that never wandered into real facts.

Jobs and Manufacturing—Who Needs Facts?

What about Trump’s promise to “make America great again,” and bring back those shuttered factories in depressed Midwest towns and coal production in Appalachia. Here is where Trump broke ranks with the GOP, seeing his golden opportunity. Trump had been paying attention. He and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont were sharply aware of millions of lost manufacturing jobs and closed factories and mills since well before 1994. The establishment of both parties were not.

For the last 20 years, America has seen its manufacturing base shrink while factory jobs fled across the border to our NAFTA partners, Canada and Mexico, or overseas to China and Asia. FiveThirtyEight reports the United States “has lost more than 4.5 million manufacturing jobs since NAFTA took effect in 1994.”

Not many care what happened to Midwest cities over the last two decades in Washington, DC. — Who really cares about ailing Midwest industrial cities in the post-NAFTA era? Many there thought no one did and just swung an election to a billionaire who had nothing in common with those who live there.

That pain is visible in nearly every crumbling Midwestern city, which have repeatedly been ignored and long deemed unworthy of saving. No one, not even the Democrats, really cares about the devastated community that is now Detroit, except Detroiters, even though candidates Trump and Clinton both used it as their prop to talk about their vision for the economy. For that matter, few in Washington and less in the GOP really have cared about Youngstown, St. Louis, Akron, Cleveland, Toledo, Flint, or other industrial cities that slid into oblivion since the passage of NAFTA. The GOP, until the Trump tornado, had promoted outsourcing and trade policies that sped up the loss of manufacturing.

While Both Clinton and Trump campaigned for votes in Detroit and Michigan, as well as Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Trump’s message about feeling the overwhelmingly visible dislocation seen everywhere in the Midwest resonated. The angry, white, dislocated Midwest blue-collar worker became a larger than life meta symbol of the Trump constituency and the key voting bloc that gave him victory.

Flint native and left-leaning independent filmmaker Michael Moore predicted the vote outcome in every single Midwestern state and national election perfectly three weeks before the election in his must-see film Michael Moore in Trumpland.

Always the savvy cultural observer, Moore described why those angry and almost all white voters would revolt and go for Trump on election day: “On November 8, you Joe Blow, Steve Blow, Bob Blow, Billy Blow, all the Blows get to go and blow up the whole goddamn system because it’s your right! Trump’s election is going to be the biggest ‘fuck you’ ever recorded in human history. And it will feel good. For a day. Eh, maybe a week, possibly a month.” Then, a few months later, they would realize they were conned, and, as he said, “It will be too late to do anything about it.” Because Moore is a Joe Blow himself, he and more importantly his insights were ignored or sidelined by the pundits and the Democratic National Committee, who had been missing the warning signs that had been festering all election, but really for the decades before.

Reality Sets in, and the Threats to American Democracy Are Real

Now that the election is over, we are all beginning to see the likely devastating outcomes. Hate crime activity is rising. White nationalists, the Klan, neo-Nazis, and others feel legitimized to speak openly of promoting fascist and extremist views.

hitler-and-hindenberg — Adolph Hitler with President Paul von Hindenburg of the Weimar Republic, after the 1932 election that saw the Nazis win more seats to the Reichstag than any other party, but not a majority of the posts. Two years after the election, Hindenburg would die in office, ushering in the dictatorship of Chancellor Hitler, who took power first through the ballot box.

Public officials who support Trump are even now actively talking of creating a national registry for Muslims and frankly discussing the policy of Japanese American internment camps from the 1940s. These are all echoes of Germany, after Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, or Nazi Party. It won less than a full majority of seats in the German Reichstag in 1932, and the party under Hitler and his circle managed to turn Germany into a totalitarian state that murdered at least 11 million in camps, on top of tens of other millions killed in war.

Between Nov. 9 and 14 alone, the Southern Poverty Law Center collected 437 reports of hateful intimidation and harassment. Many cases involved references to the Trump campaign or its slogans. Many had taken place at schools, where bullies and racists are feeling emboldened by the new openness in hate discourse.

I remain profoundly worried what will happen to my nation and its most vulnerable members. Many challenges lie ahead. But I completely agree with Moore’s top two action items he laid down the day after Americans woke up in a bed the GOP had been making for decades. For my part, I will, as Moore argues, support that take over of the Democratic Party and its return to the people. They have, as Moore wrote so clearly, “failed us miserably.”

It will be up to the party itself to see if it takes action on item No. 2 on Moore’s list—so far, they have not. If you have not read that list, here it that item: “Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must ‘heal the divide’ and ‘come together.’ They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.”

And what is next? Many from President Barack Obama down to the thousands of street protesters after the election see the next four years as a real fight for democracy that is now very, very much in peril. The GOP has never had more power in state capitals and Congress. A true charismatic demagogue just took power, without winning a popular vote, the way it happened in Germany in 1932. The fight has begun, and it will be bitter and costly. The stakes have never been higher since the country successfully came together and helped defeat the Axis Powers in World War II. But the fight will be for the soul and future of the country. History will judge how successful we are.

The wisdom of adversity and misfortune

August 22, 2014September 8, 2014Rudy Owens4 Comments

“But despite what you may think, good luck is more dangerous than bad luck. Bad luck teaches valuable lessons in patience, timing, and the need to be prepared for the worst; good luck deludes you into the opposite lesson, making you think your brilliance will carry you through. Your fortune will inevitably turn, and when it does you will be completely unprepared.” … Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

During a recent outing to one of Seattle’s many brewpubs, I swapped stories with my good friend about hospital visits. Most people I know have had them, and a rarefied few have not. In my case, I have been hospitalized at least a half-dozen times, mostly for stitches, but also worse.

I told my friend some of my greatest learning moments came with contemplation lying in a hospital bed. There is nothing like pain one feels in the ugliness of a hospital room to focus the mind and to allow one to make sense of all the things that preceded the unforgettable trigger moments.

South African born psychiatrist and author Norman E. Rosenthal

South African born psychiatrist Norman E. Rosenthal has written a book on this theme called the Gift of Adversity. Thinking back on his own Apartheid-era life, surviving a near fatal stabbing, and his professional experiences, Rosenthal argues that innovation, resilience, and understanding emerge from our own adverse experiences and by gaining wisdom from those hard times. Writ large, economists will even refer to collective behaviors among entire generations, such as young people who came into adulthood in the Depression era, and whose lifelong buying patterns and decisions to live more austerely can be quantitatively measured.

Using examples of individuals who endured suffering yet who came out stronger, Rosenthal sees opportunity in these struggles for all of us. “Well, when adversity comes, the last word that comes to mind is gift, because it just looks like an unmitigated disaster. But, how many times have you heard a friend or somebody say, ‘You know, at the time, it seemed terrible, but in retrospect, it was for the best.’ … The first step is really to accept that the adversity has happened. … We have to somehow come to terms that it really has happened. Then, we have to analyze the situation, every adversity is different, and respond accordingly.”

My own experiences mirrored these points, almost too perfectly. Both involved small misfortunes with lifelong rewards.

Lesson No. 1: When I was 14 and not fully mature, I did something that was likely one of the dumbest acts of my life. I will not say exactly what it was, but it substantially disrupted life at my often-violent and chaotic junior high school, in University City, Mo. I was soon on my way for an expulsion as the second-to-last-day of classes was ending in June 1979.

Coming back to campus I encountered four guys who I did not know. At least three were students. The other may have been a high school student. He was older, a guy with a cast. They were tough. I was not. They were experienced in the art of violence. I had few such fighting skills. They were skillful manipulators, and I fell for small talk that drew me close. It turns out one of them had been blamed for the incident. That is the story I heard second-hand, and the group was bent on physical vengeance.

I do not remember everything that happened, but I do remember feeling a floating feeling. I was cold-cocked in the face by one of the four wearing a cast. I was bleeding profusely from a cut on my eyelid and could not see out of my left eye. I was lying on the ground not sure what had happened. I felt warm blood on my hand.

I remember the four of them mocking me and telling me if I was happy now about having the heat fall on them. It was a perfect example of the violence I had witnessed many times before at this school, often with the tense black-white racial undertones, and I am sure that tension influenced this assault too. They walked away, never having been arrested, never having been questioned by anyone, ever.

Insult piled upon injury. I had to go back to school, get kicked out by a furious principal who did not express any concern about me having just been assaulted on school grounds, and then have teachers sign my expulsion papers. One thug laughed at me in the hall and yelled, “What happened to you.” I shot back, in my un-masculine voice, “What do you think happened.” He turned cold, came close, and threatened, “Yo, want another one, mother fucker.” Luckily I walked away from that one.

I stayed at this hospital for nearly a week after I was assaulted and nearly blinded in my left eye, which proved to be a great learning moment.

My mom, a new teacher that year in the same district, took me to the emergency room in Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, where I was put into a shared room and monitored. My eye pressure was dangerously high because vessels were ruptured from blunt trauma, and I was at high risk of blindness in my left eye. The doctors prescribed having both eyes covered for more than a week to keep them from moving, lying in a bed, and having no physical activity.

I remember the slow passage of time and mostly the sounds of the ward, the voice of my few visitors, and the stories of a young man next to me going into eye surgery, not sure what would happen.

The school principal came once, talked briefly, and somehow waived my punishment as a result of being a violent crime victim. He never told me or my mom what the school or school district had done to investigate the assault. My mom told me years later she was too afraid as a new teacher to make waves with her new employer. No police officer ever took my story. The whole thing was wiped under the rug.

Lying there, in a flimsy hospital gown, feeling like needles were piercing my eyeball, I came to the realization of how precious my sight really was, and how close I had flirted with genuine disaster.

Lesson Learned: This was the clearest teaching moment ever in my life. Never, ever, do stupid things. Such acts have unforeseen consequences, particularly things that put you in a weak position with uncaring bureaucracies and with men who use violence to settle a score. If you act badly and unwisely without thinking, the sword of blunt justice will be swift, and it will be lasting. Also, without any allies or friends, one can be quickly abandoned by any organization if you are perceived as lacking advocacy skills and are vulnerable. So, do not present yourself as weak or easily exploited. Finally, and most importantly, always know exactly who you are dealing with when you confront strangers in strange circumstances. Trust your instincts, and keep your wits about you, always. Your instincts will always know who is a friend and who is a foe. Worry about bruised feelings later, from a safe distance.

It took me a whole summer to recover, and I could not engage in full physical activities for three months. I wore an eye patch half the summer. Decades later, I still have damage to the back of my eye that my most recent visit to an optometrist confirmed. He could see the damaged areas after my pupil was dilated.

Lesson No. 2: In my last month of my journalism master’s program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in July 1993, I was playing pickup soccer at the UNC-CH campus. It was supposed to be friendly, but of course men are fiercely competitive. A guy who I was marking intentionally head-butted me with the back of his head into my face. He broke my nose instantly, and it began to bleed profusely. I walked myself to the UNC-CH hospital, as it was close by.

This is how I looked shortly after my nose was broken and then reset in July 1993.

I waited about three hours for a resident to attend to my situation. The plastic-surgeon-to-be had been up about 28 hours and was in a terrible mood. After shooting cocaine painkillers into my nasal cavity area, he stuck a metal rod up my nose and proceeded to move things back into place. I recall screaming like a wild animal so loudly that it clearly disrupted patients in the entire wing. The exhausted and overworked resident was furious with my uncooperativeness, as he called it. He stuck the rod back in and went back to work.

A nurse came in and saw the procedure. She simply held my hand. I stopped crying. I instantly calmed down. My level of pain subsided dramatically. The compassionate act of human touch proved more powerful than any medicine. After the resident stuffed both of my nasal passages with some sort of medical gauze, I thanked the nurse. She gave me a caring look that said, everything’s going to be OK.

That night I wrote a poem about the war in Bosnia, then raging at the time, and I put my small problem into a larger perspective of suffering felt more severely by others around the world.

Lesson Learned: Human compassion and human touch are among the most powerful healing agents in the world, often more powerful than medicine and actions of medical specialists. The mind, when it needs to, can calm down and can process a stressful situation. Set the calming effect in motion, and show mindfulness of yourself and others who may be less fortunate.

Comment: Author Rosenthal, who sees the importance of adversity, profiles the late Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist as well as a Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl. He was the only member of his family to survive the genocide, staying in four different camps, and went on to receive acclaim for his widely read treatise called Man’s Search for Meaning, original published in German in 1946 Trotzdem Ja Zum Leben Sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager.

Holocaust survivor, psychiatrist, and author Viktor Frankl

Frankl’s own horrific experience taught fellow psychiatrist Rosenthal critical lessons also, that one can find meaning even in the midst of terrible adversity and that no single group of people is pure good or evil. Both types of people can be found in all groups, everywhere.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us,” wrote Frankl. “Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.”

In no way did anything I experience come close to the challenges Frankl and other tough and lucky individuals have endured from such crimes.

I do know that in my case, my invaluable teachers came disguised as sterile wards and rooms of hospitals, giving me opportunities to contemplate larger truths. In one case, I created my own folly but could use my intellect to evaluate my mistakes. I also benefitted from being in hospitals, where I seldom felt kindness and felt great stress and also fear. This was clearly a place to avoid at all costs. I was doubly motivated to stay healthy—mind, body, and soul.

The wisdom I gained at those small junctures far exceeded anything I received in any university setting. As Robert Greene’s opening quote aptly notes, our bad luck prepares us for misfortune and gives us the strategies to overcome the roadblocks we build for ourselves or encounter from others. Those who are blessed mostly by good luck will eventually see their luck change, and when they do, they will be overtaken by those who have adapted and learned already.

So be thankful for those learning moments. They are your teachers, and you profit immensely by employing that knowledge wisely in the future.

Robert Greene’s insights into power and mastery

August 2, 2014August 15, 2014Rudy OwensLeave a comment

Robert Greene, popular author — Popular author Robert Greene

How is it that a classics major, a guy who reportedly held 80 jobs, and a not-so-successful screenwriter became the big man of big ideas in a span of 15 years, now doing lectures at places like Google? Today, writer Robert Greene is known by everyone from corporate CEOs, to rappers like 50 Cent and Jay Z, and even to retired dictators like Fidel Castro.

Many people are most familiar with Greene’s seminal 1998 work, The 48 Laws of Power. The book is a compendium of principles of success for the modern-day prince and even low-level office worker on how to succeed. Some of those frequently mentioned laws include “Court attention at all costs,” “Crush your enemy totally,” “Learn to keep people dependent on you,” and “Pose as a friend, work as a spy.”

He also wrote other popular books drawing on the same formula of turning to the past and historic examples to shine relevance on the present and also on achieving success.

Greene’s works also include The Art of Seduction (2004), The 33 Strategies of War (2007), The 50^th Law (2009) that involved collaboration with rapper 50 Cent, and more recently Mastery (2012). Greene is a man clearly on a mission. I recommend anyone who is interested in organizational behavior or simply how to get along better with a rival or coworker read one of his works.

Rebooting those ‘stale’ classics and lessons of history

The 48 Laws of Power, in essence, reboots the well-read and well-studied writings of Niccolò Machiavelli, historic Chinese military strategists like Sun Tzu, and tactics of leaders such as Prussian leader Otto von Bismarck. These are texts and persons that liberal arts majors by the hundreds of thousands have studied, yet few others have stitched together to have such contemporary modern relevance for everyone’s day-to-day life. As someone who has read many of these classic works and who studied history, nothing here is new to me, and thus not surprising.

Having sold well over a million copies of The 48 Laws of Power alone, Greene is today the subject of professional jealousy from those who have not achieved his notoriety and also praise from those who practice his stratagems that have appeared repeatedly in history. (This is just one of many summaries of those laws found online, and they are worth downloading and reviewing.)

Some professional groups, like the American Public Health Association, even published the laws of power, and quizzically asked public health leaders, “So, now that you’ve read the laws, how appropriate are they for you, as a health care administrator?” Having worked in the field, I can assure you many of these laws most certainly apply to public health bureaucracies and managerial aspirants in them who are more obsessed with power games and personal ambition than with promoting public health. But this is not news to anyone, in any profession.

As Greene told the LA Times in 2011, “These laws … people might say, ‘Oh they’re wicked.’ They’re practiced day in and day out by businesspeople. You’re always trying to get rid of your competition and it can be pretty bloodthirsty, and that’s just the reality.”

48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene — The 48 Laws of Power

The ‘dark side’ or the ‘real side’?

Consider Greene’s dark view in the opening to The 48 Laws of Power. “If the world is like a giant scheming court and we are trapped inside it, there is no use in trying to opt out of the game. That will only render you powerless, and powerlessness will make you miserable. Instead of struggling against the inevitable, instead of arguing and whining and feeling guilty, it is far better to excel at power. In fact, the better you are at dealing with power, the better friend, lover, husband, wife, and person you become.”

For Greene, The 48 Laws of Power was a personal journey that built upon his fascination with Greek and Roman history, and the lessons drawn from that era. In Greene’s case, his failures in Hollywood led him to attempt to duplicate Julius Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon River to launch a civil war against his rival Pompeii (dramatized brilliantly in the HBO miniseries Rome).

A statue of Julius Caesar in Rome (taken in 2006). Like Caesar, Greene also had to cross his Rubicon to achieve mastery and success.

Greene notes how he arrived at his own Rubicon to reboot the tired, old classics into a modern bible for aspiring climbers and those trying to cope with amoral people and broken organizations: “My situation is much less intense, but I will follow Caesar and not only write the proposal, but take three months to do it right. I would have to borrow the money and cut my ties with the film world. As Caesar revealed to me, the more I had to lose, the harder I would work. The treatment turned into the best-selling The 48 Laws of Power and represents the turning point in my life.”

For those who are not familiar with history or its lessons, they may be missing Greene’s larger and longer long view of human history and behaviors that transcend time and culture. He told Forbes that his secret goal is to make “reading, studying the classics and philosophy something hip, so that young people were inspired to step away from the TV and the Internet and challenge their minds, rethink the world and return to our origins.”

We already knew a lot about the laws of power

When I posted a section of Greene’s writing on my Facebook page, describing people who are psychopathic and display passive aggression to the point of becoming warriors at this art, one of my colleagues responded, “OMG. If this does not describe one of my co-workers, I don’t know what does. Thank you for this.”

For me, many things Greene discusses have been well trodden by writers from William Shakespeare to Mark Twain, and anyone who has worked as a news reporter knows the realities that always lie beneath the surface veneer, particularly among those who exploit others and use power.

This is not to say students of history are cynics. Great students of history also are great leaders, notably Abraham Lincoln, who used his deep knowledge of America’s founding fathers and the actual intent of the U.S. Constitution’s authors to persuade voters that they did not intend slavery to remain a permanent and immoral institution in the country. Lincoln’s passion for history and his knowledge of power and human ambitions in fact made him one of the greatest leaders ever.

Mastery takes a more optimistic tone

I was deeply impressed with Greene’s delightful 2012 book, Mastery. The book uses profiles of contemporary masters and historic “geniuses,” such as Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, John Coltrane, Leonardo di Vinci, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and others. (Many examples, but not all, are white men.) Why did they break down barriers, have astounding creativity, and achieve brilliance that crossed boundaries of thought.

Greene’s answer lies in the deep, thoughtful, apprenticeship type work one does before one becomes a master. He shows that through this applied study, the most innovative work happens in sports, science, research, art, military endeavors, and more. For Greene, through an applied apprenticeship that normally lasts five to 10 years, learning real skills and innovative thinking occur at the neural level, where great insight comes from.

“The goal of an apprenticeship is not money, a good position, a title, or a diploma, but rather the transformation of your mind and character—the first transformation on the way to mastery,” he writes. These involve three modes:

Step One: Deep Observation—the passive mode
Step Two: Skills Acquisition—the practice mode
Step Three: Experimentation—the active mode

During the acquisition mode, an apprentice will log at least 10,000 hours of practice, before charting his or her own course as a master. “This number has an almost magical or mystical resonance to it,” Greene writes. “It means qualitative change in the human brain. The mind has learned to organize and structure large amounts of information. With all of this tacit knowledge, it can now become creative and playful with it.”

For Greene, mastery is more than becoming simply proficient. This is about deep creativity and achieving one’s life purpose, which he suggests is a challenge that will confront most of us. “No good can ever come from deviating from the path that you were destined to follow. You will be assailed by varieties of hidden pain. Most often you deviated because of the lure of money, or more immediate prospects of prosperity. … Not seeing clearly ahead of you, you will end up in a dead-end career. … There is no compromise there, no way of escaping the dynamic. You will recognize how far you have deviated by the depth of your pain and frustration.”

The answer, according to Greene, lies in pursuing the path used by masters time and again, which he acknowledges is full of challenges and pleasures. “Make your return to the path a resolution you set for yourself, and then tell others about it,” writes Greene. “It becomes a matter of shame and embarrassment to deviate from this path. In the end, the money and success that truly last come not to those who focus on such things as goals, but rather to those who focus on mastery and fulfilling their life’s task.”

Franklin’s lesson in power and mastery

According to Robert Greene, Benjamin Franklin was a master who had great social intelligence.

One the masters cited by Greene is Benjamin Franklin, because he was an innovative inventor, writer, and businessman who possessed great social intelligence. Greene shows that this latter skill is absolutely key to becoming successful and a master. Franklin is also one of my many role models. He excelled at nearly everything he did and had amazing people skills that always left a positive impression, like influential people I have known in my life.

Clearly, Franklin was one who learned about power well, in the most classic sense. Greene notes that as a young man, Franklin was terribly duped by Pennsylvania’s governor when he went to England and found himself practically penniless, without promised letters of introduction.

A copy of the daily schedule of Benjamin Franklin.

Franklin thought deeply and then grew. He resolved never to make an error of character judgment again and think about a man’s intentions carefully before making a response. And he always resolved to work at building his networks and turning enemies into allies, if possible. It worked time and again as he kept having success after success, but after great work and careful deep thought. Greene also shows that Franklin, as a master, also always stayed curious, and some say youthful until his 80s. The rest is, as they say, history.

Franklin perhaps is a Machiavellian case study in early American power, by becoming a revolutionary, co-author of the Declaration of Independence, and “founding father.” But by achieving excellence through the path of apprentice to master, he became much more.

On my wall, I have hanging a clip from Franklin’s daily planning calendar. On one side, he wrote the question for the morning: “What good shall I do this day?” For the evening hours, his calendar ended with the evening question, “What good have I done today.”