This is the time for organizational pundits to stop praising the opportunities of chaos and disorder just to liven up another leadership training session.  The idea of opportunity in chaos is solid, but the opportunities are far more often devastating and destructive than helpful. Chaos is a force without a partner.  Chaos doesn’t need you, has no values, and, more often than not, will consume an organization rather than better it.  This is because good order is harder to create by a factor of 10,000 than chaos.  Chaos invites the vultures down from the sky to pick over the remains. Our current leadership is trying to partner with chaos but it isn’t and won’t work.  This President has had to create  “American faithlessness” to set up a situation sufficiently chaotic in the international order to allow his partners in the private sector to swoop down and pick over the profits from the substantial losses.

The sudden loss of American leadership has hurt the free world far far more than helped the United States.  This sudden departure of a key ally is inviting chaos in an order of an economy and interdependence that did more to prevent war than all the fine words one can utter.  While I am pretty sure our president doesn’t fully comprehend the damage he is doing, this is not the time to reduce our Defense Department to chaos.  Our military leadership has survived all kinds of Presidents and views, but none of those Presidents assumed the military didn’t need its traditions to operate effectively. The gradual stripping of the military of its tested leadership shortens the time line for America to demand a new approach in government.  Chaos in a human body is called cancer. Chaos in the Defense Department is called war.

Urgent Proposal for Good

I think we need to grow up, do our homework and vote smart.  Right or left in your political views, the time to bring out the verbal machetes to carve out your little piece of political leverage is either over or we are over. The danger signals are moving from a cautious yellow to a dangerous red. Peace and prosperity both demand steady attention, intelligent investments of time and in energy, blended with a committed majority.  Our Congressional representatives must stop mistaking passive prestige for active performance. We must create a new playbook, but need both the true history of this world blended with the new wisdom of addressing the moment we are in.  In short Americans need once again to become Americans that support freedom, justice, tolerance and peace. Fifty years should be enough faithful penance to heal today’s wounds to our integrity.  That would be good.