Today I can see the future.
I find this country incredibly healthy. I can remember 1969 like it was yesterday and the feeling that the US had peaked and there was no where we could go but down.
And now I feel like we are surging.
Catch the drift: I see something fascinating going on. The rise of an influential and booming middle class coupled with a substantial immigrant base, both of them informed and educated (among myriad other things).
I own my own small business (an art gallery) with 3 employees. We deal with the financial elite - you know - the people who can put a $50,000. purchase on a credit card, and the common folks - those who deliver and retrieve crates, etc. etc. We see the broad spectrum.
I have a 6 year old son, Brice. I thought G.W. Bush's favorite Latin phrase Ubi ubi sub ubi was a stitch and picked it up. A couple of day's ago Brice was in my office when the UPS driver, Marion, (Marion is white and smells like he is from another planet) came to pick up a package and get a check, and Brice looks up at him and says Ubi ubi sub ubi. Without pausing Marion responds in Latin. I'm shocked. I ask him what he said and how could he just do that. He said he said I always wear underwear and that he had studied Latin for 4 years.
Three days ago I am doing a press check for an announcement we will mail to the people with the big credit card limits and Omar (the pressman, who is proud that he has learned English in 3 years) and I are chatting and he can't wait to tell me that he just bought a new house in the western suburbs and the commute is only 25 minutes by train.
I am seeing a trend developing - I am resisting the term "trickle-down."
I have another son, Lucas. He's 22. This is the one that is fluent in Mandarin and he is leaving next week for a job in Beijing. On the way he will rendez-vous with a friend in Tokyo for an evening of .. hmm - probably something computer oriented:) For him Beijing (& now I am starting to hear it referred to as "BJ") is only fractionally further than the corner 7-11.
Lucas is selling his car because he won't be needing it for a while - it is an 88 Toyota with 107,000 miles on it. (He will gleefully accept $1800, for it.) He tried to place an ad in the newspaper's web site but what he posted showed up on the cars.com web site instead and not in the paper at all - so it is only listed on line.
There have been a dozen calls for the car and it has not sold yet. But - fathom this. Every single person who has phoned has had a major accent and foreign language structure to their diction. I assume they are all immigrants. And they all have computers.
Six or seven people have looked at the car and the rust over the rear wheels seems to be the prevailing deterring factor.
Rust - now - there's a metaphor.
This morning Al Gore announces his selection of Joseph Lieberman as his running mate. A brave forward looking move. Calculated. An appeal to the center and an appeal to the majority of those who have suffered racial and religious bigotry and to those of us who are tired of race being an issue (even as it makes it one).
Intelligently Gore wraps the appointment of Lieberman in the blanket of progress and cites it as an example of their "new guard, forward-looking" vision.
Old-guard / new-guard. Likely to be the defining issue in the presidential election (at least from Gore's point-of-view). Other than that - these two candidates will make themselves mirror images of one another. They have each migrated to the center. They are transparent.
Technology is the prevailing factor: who embraces it, to what extent, AND to what extent does the voting public admit embracing the move to technology (fact vs perception).
Technology is is booming.
Technology is an equalizer.
Technology is enabling.
It used to be that I thought we had already transitioned over to being new economy and then we had a major backlash this spring.
I know the move is inexorable and I feel like we have crossed the threshold by a lot, but I am not clear about where America is on this (and for that matter I wonder how many of those computer toting immigrants are registered to vote). (and the extension of my confusion is the current stagnation of the stock marker.)
(I wonder what the ratio of boomers to immigrants is.)
The presidency will be determined by the voters take on our stride into the 21st century and whether we have the weight on our back foot or our front foot.
And it really doesn't matter who is President. Technology is King. The President is technology's minion.
And technology has brought America wealth and wealth has sired opportunity and the three have spawned a global melding.
And the best news is that there is a long and wonderful ways to go. |
