THE PROPOSAL FOR THE HARDENING OF AMERICA
(This is the second in a series on reform of US politics and government. The Overview provides a summary. Specific Actions is more detailed and granular while highlighting categories and changes. Hardening and a New Political Ethos makes the case for significant change and new direction. The author proposes a strategy to meet both the immediate crisis and those anticipated to impact in the near term while continuing to escalate)
An Overview
Optimizing the American future requires “hardening.” Drawn from the parlance of military, law enforcement and national security, “target hardening” makes safer, secure, prepared, and harder to damage.
American life and government are like those frogs in a slowly heating cauldron. The pattern is ignoring warning, normalizing the aberrant, accommodating progressive weakness, loss of efficiency and excellence, unable to deter or counter destructive forces that are coming at us with escalating power and lethality.
Political culture, health, safety, and economic well-being in America require hardening so the nation is, in fact, beneficial to citizens, assuring them a life and one of liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Global reality, trends and expectations require “surviving civilizations” to adjust in profound ways, putting emphasis and resources on preparation, response to a matrix of crises, and building facile organizational structure capable to scale response.
Changing alliances, shifting power, value conflicts i.e. authoritarian vs democratic, climate, wealth disparity, gray zone war fare, radicalization, terrorism and political violence have degrading influence on government capability, individual lives and well-being while also destabilizing geo politics.
Adopting the principle of hardening as a point of advocacy and a method of government operation has benefit. A bipartisan movement can develop and frame a message, speaking to voter's perceived needs, then put it in the context of the larger imperatives and goal of hardening.
This is a threshold moment. As things are intertwined, disruptive factors are integrating into tangles that have become super malevolent forces that political parties and structures of governance have not anticipated and are not prepared for. If there is to be another 250 years of the US, the foundation needs strengthening, aspirational principles must be fitted to meet realities the founders could not conceive and therefore did not anticipate. It is more challenging to stay in power than to arrive. Life, power, stability and freedom remain noble objectives, but maintaining them will be more like battle and different than anything our government has faced in the past.
Episodes of devastating nature, states of war fare, resource depletion and shortage, economic disruption, human dislocation, loss of confidence in once guiding and stabilizing institutions, cultural division, technological addiction and vulnerability, political failure and the outsized influence of financial power in a collapsing system of self-government are the clarion call to make changes. The present US political system shows almost no awareness of or ability to manage these towering challenges.
Target hardening is about survival. The hardening this nation requires is root to branch.
There is a bravado that we live in times of disruption. The driving force of the current apex of America business and enterprise is “break things.” Well, we have a voice. We have choices aside from willful compliance and shoulder shrugging. We have the capacity to consider implications and to respond. We need to.
If in our national history there are times to be smart, now is such a moment. The tools exist; data, analytics, projections, solutions. Existential problems are present and coming at us on the horizon. Survival, and survival with strength and viability demand that we do hard fact analysis, make hard choices, and act to “harden America.”
The challenges to America are internal as well as in the machinations of external forces. As it has always been, public attention and political culture are the entry points to change and repair. We are in a kind of war, to survive the future.
THE CASE AGAINST THE STATUS QUO
It is time “level up” in political reality. “Culture war,” ideological zealotry and affectation, “virtue signaling,” get along to go along, follow the money, zero sum game, owning the opposition and such are weak and expended modalities, out of date, ineffective and inadequate. They are tired tactics and more problem than solution.
The reality coming at us requires a better us, a better system. It is my sense that to break the cycle of diminished capacity that has left us a nation threatened by incompetence, corruption, an impotent congress, and weaking power we need to shift to an ethical, analytic based pragmatism. Hardening.
The summary list below is not inclusive but introduces the principle of hardening and itemizes areas of action.
--Citizen needs
Security
Domestic
Asymmetric war / defense economics
Infrastructure
Transportation
Communication
Resources (water) (power) (food)
Safety
Adequacy
Stability
Economic capacity
Affordability
Housing
Availability
Medical Care
Costs
Availability
Staffing
Safety
Communities
Police
Fire
Specified building codes-geo specific
Food
Communities
Emergency Readiness and Repair
--Governance
Hardening previous “custom” and “tradition” with law
Codify independence of DOJ
Supreme Court
Accountability and Ethics reform
Number of Justices
National Deficit/Budget Process
National Commissions to Investigate:
-Extra judicial killings
-DOGE impact and Legacy/Restitution
-Monetizing of Presidency
Crypto currency and White House
White House public statements and investment
SPECIFIC ACTIONS- A SAMPLER
In paragraphs below we look at a few examples, as a preview of the manner of decisive hardening that time and reality demand of us.
Communities in relationship to climate issues;
Weather-drought, storms, and fires are larger and more devastating. Across the nation are scars, communities struggling to come back, years after floods, tornados, hurricanes and fire storms. Lives disrupted, businesses destroyed, rebuilding delayed or impossible. Regions of the nation resemble war zones and there are more each season.
Hardening as proactivity: These are difficult calls and will be unpopular, but they are necessary for survival. There are solutions.
-No build zones: Regions where insurance data reveal repeated flooding, wind and storm damage, repeated burn zones, earthquake and volcano zones. Uninsurable, or insurance is limited. If people wish to remain they live at their own peril and risk. No future building and development.
-Building Codes and Material adjusted and required by location and geo risk, resource reclamation, suriviability.
-Hardening means hard choices and being honest with US citizens.
Rationale by an example:
How will Governors, mayors, public works directors, city councils and local law enforcement respond when there is inadequate water? Consider just one of thousands of water resources that are on track to fail to supply -The Colorado River. Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the retention reservoirs are their lowest ever, with area’s that depend on the disappearing water:
Los Angeles, San Diego, the Inland Empire, Coachella Valley, Phoenix, Tucson, Mesa, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and upstream Denver, Boulder Grand Junction and Pueblo. Population is out of balance with available resources.
The calculation on eventual failure and shortage assures catastrophic impact. This is merely one region and one resource in a cascading crisis. Hardening is planning and acting now including control and limiting of building and development.
Planning and Development Codes and Regulations
Specific building materials that provide the greatest protection as well as coding required. A mix of federal and state efforts and assistance to upgrade and retrofit (In military hardening of sites, access, perimeter barriers and building materials are updated. In some cases adding concrete, blast proof glass, reinforced steel, all to survive.) New construction and building require a similar attention in regards to:
- use of most energy efficiency, fire resistant, quake proof, water saving/recycling systems requiring materials and codes;
--as examples-weather/temperature gradient roofs, solar material, geo thermal, water recycling, resource conservation and more.
This hardening will advance living and commercial design to accommodate continued change, threats and to be sustainable and survivable. (As a side note, warming Europe is particularly problematic because ancient buildings are less amenable to hardening to nature’s change, but the example demonstrates the endemic nature of the work ahead
Food and Water Safety and Security
The then Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee told me “one thing that kept him awake at night” was how easy it would be sideline a military or over take a population by an act as simple as food poisoning. Weaponizing food or water is a threat that is largely ignored.
Food and water supplies are especially in need of hardening. Often public utilities suffer deferred maintenance and are managed in variety of ways that make them susceptible to either natural or human sabotage. (Iran has already been in local water supplies in recent months.) Where power and water systems exist with digital or cyber operations, a national emphasis on hardening would include reducing access, in instances were there are analogue or physical ports, extra precautions need to be taken. Systems need updating and cyber hardening. The old exterior ports and links are susceptible and need retrofit hardening. Much of our infrastructure is decades old, not defensible, and no one is working to make it better.
National Security and Asymmetric war-A recent lesson
The Ukraine defense to the Russian invasion has changed the calculus of warfare. Drones have changed the battlefield.
The ability of the Iranian regime to remain intact and continue to defend and even gain advantage after the massive air campaign of the US and Israel has also changed the calculus. Over the last 4 decades Iranian Revolutionary Guard have planned how to survive and fight back. US policy makers failed to act wisely. Blunders in 21st Century conflict cannot be tolerated.
We used to refer to it as low intensity conflict, guerrilla warfare, or insurgency. Asymmetric changes the calculation.
Asymmetric is a poison word to a large portion of the American defense establishment-Pentagon procurement and defense contractors. This is where $ billions flow to massive contracts analysts consider “pork.” This is not an argument to stop maintaining a formidable defense posture, though modernization is long overdue. Ukraine, Russia, the Houthis, the IRGC and present tactics and response demonstrate a weapon the cost of a lawnmower can inflict severe damage and even take down a missile taking up to two years to build and costing between $2-4 million. How wise is that equation? Why has such a reality been unchallenged? Successive congresses and White Houses have failed to act.
Hardening in the US military would include evaluation of how significant resources flow to private industry to deliver systems that were designed for last centuries warfare. The last military strategist to occupy the White House warned of the military-industrial complex. That was 66 years ago. The sentries, elected lawmakers, have failed us.
Hardening requires a better and more agency integrated command structure. Survival demands a more intelligent national security apparatus than is presently “disserving” the nation.
Unapproved and non-strategized criminal military actions and war fighting have permitted critical weapon supplies to dwindle. Under Trump and Hegseth, arms have been depleted to a dangerous level. We should hope China doesn’t presume that while the Trump criminal regime is tied up with losing a war in Iran, depleting our missile supply, over extending our force profile, festering over the decorating of Washington, they don’t chose to move on Taiwan.
Hardening is also a political notion. This congress fails to assert and use its constitutional power. It is here where the act of hardening motivates reform and perhaps help stimulate a new era of good government.
HARDENING AND A NEW POLTICIAL ETHOS
The status quo is the best argument to make the case for a profound reform in US politics.
It’s time to bring the curtain down on political grifters and the professional political class. As posted previously, the last 50 years in Washington have largely been a failure of advice and consent, while being a gradual selling of interest to corporate and wealthy donors who “buy” the laws via financial support of politicians. Wise legislation has been achieved sparingly, but it is no longer the raison d’etre of the legislative branch. Staying in office, enjoying the perks of the club, being in the aristocracy, appear to be priority 1 by the amount of time and effort given to raising money for campaign funds and PACs.
Hardening is putting citizens first. Congressional hardening is being about the needs of the people.
Americans should get medical care at a better price. Smaller nations provide quality care, better even in some cases, without the gouging, extraordinary inflationary costs and obstructive insurance hassles and scams that are baked into our for profit system and that send good Doctors to the sidelines and drive citizens crazy. Hardening works here too, but corrupted old ways, old scams, old payouts and payoffs need to be legislated out. Hardening makes the focus care and medicine, not profits.
CITIZEN NEED IS A TWO-WAY PROPOSITION
Are we ready for practicality and pragmatism instead of cronyism and cash flow? We have become ineffective, our government has become so ensnared in partisanship and feathering of the nest, citizen needs are rarely on the agenda. To paraphrase George Orwell “Power is not a means, it is an end. Today in Washington the object of power is power.”
And in the case of the current crime family in the Whitehouse, power is used to get rich and richer, citizens be damned. Are we better off than we were when this gang took over? They certainly are.
The hardening of America that is a reset of how power and money are used. Business as normal? That brought us the poster child of America in decline, King Tangerine.
Legislative and Administrative hardening.
By now a thinking citizen has concluded that our two and half centuries of tradition and custom need hardening. Legislative remedies are needed to tighten or lock down customs and procedures and prevent the kind of fraud, abuse, criminal intent and just plain rank amateurism that has played out before our eyes since 45 became 47.
THE HARDENING OF CITIZENSHIP
America needs to steady itself, to harden our ideals and aspirations.
We all have a role to play.
-Citizens must be informed, demanding delivery, demanding changes to keep us safe, to preserve our future, to battle against climate catastrophes, to make adjustment and accommodations that prepare us to survive.
-Citizens must harden their knowledge base. Citizens need to understand the complexity of international relations, the value of knowledge and facts and practiced at critical reasoning.
-Citizens must care. We’ve become entirely too frivolous, consumed with non-sense, unable to argue and debate with civility. We are addicted to phones, our attention spans are shrinking, we abuse our children by turning them over to big tech hoping for the best while we watch our nation decay, move in reverse and simply refuse to do the hard work.
Hardening will be hard work. It is a reappraisal of our American dreams and concluding that enough is enough. American workers deserve a fair wage. Schools should be good at education. Citizens should afford housing, medicine, food on the table and have dreams of a future.
Hardening means finally reforming political campaigns, exchanging the currency of money for the worth of ideas. Campaign finance reform is a must, or it will continue to be business as normal. We’ve come to see why our founders were worried about political parties.
Our next planned political drama will be the two-year circus of electing a President that inherits a sky rocketing deficit created by Trump’s criminal incompetence, misfeasance and malfeasance, the destabilized power alignments brought on by stupidity, a weakened force profile, a damaged level of respect, a nation divided by intent, unknown levels of threat from mortal enemies, chaos of nature seemingly in revolt, serial climate crisis episodes, devastation by wind, water and fire, the potential of technology on the attack, mass shootings, news deserts, a distracted and decidedly less informed citizenry and a senior dominated governing class without the capacity to look forward and wildly out of touch with common sense or the common man and woman.
We need not live in chaos. We need not let disruption and change overwhelm us. But we must make a stand, demand a change, steel up our will and get smart. Demand smart leadership. No empty rhetoric, we need specific solutions, problem solving, pragmatic power. And all of us must be willing to pay the price, accept the changes, so we can prepare for what may be a bewildering future on this planet. We need to harden.
See you down the trail.
