Someone in Quora asked something to the effect:  How can I be a positive force in the world? I don’t want any hatred in me. These emotions are depleting my energy.

One person had a good partial answer- do what you can do to be a positive force in the world.

I’ve been practicing this. Working on PeopleCount the last four years has been hard. I’ve been failing for 4 years. People have assured me that success is impossible. My wife has pointed out that I should be earning money full time. People with contests for ideas to improve politics have declined my entries. Philanthropists who’d like to see changes in politics have declined to speak with me. Investors who’re interested have said that other startups have made them leery of “the space” and we’ll have to show traction first. The congregation I belong to declined to give me an audience. I’ve even had some depression.

I remember Die Hard. The whole world may be unsupportive, but the right thing to do is clear, even if it’s difficult, even if it’s uncomfortable. Someone’s got to be the hero.

So I imagine someone else were building PeopleCount and were faced with these challenges. What would I want them to do? Or, I imagine this were a movie in which it’s ultimately successful. What should my actions be to be consistent with that ending? And when it’s really bad, I call someone who takes me at my word, who’s willing to hold me accountable for my promises. They remind me who I am, who I create myself to be. So I press on.

Sometimes I hate. The billionaires too busy to listen. The wife too insecure to be supportive. The leaders at the congregation too narrow-minded to see the big picture. I may be enlightened, but I’m still human. Sometimes I just want to quit. At times, depression materialized around me like a fog. The world turned gray. Images of the Middle East arise, littered with dead Syrians and Iraqis. Negativity engulfs me.

Plus, I now keep informed about politics. I’ve seen the bluster of the debates. The Republicans criticizing each other and fighting our president no matter what he does or doesn’t do. Plus all the bluster. And Hillary’s afraid to strive for better solutions and Bernie’s too focused on his message to give a better explanation. Disgust and frustration bubble up.

But as I said, I’m enlightened. I simply recognize the hatred, the sadness, disgust and frustration as simple thoughts and emotions. If I get caught up in their apparent reality, if I buy into them, it fuels and strengthens them. So I let them be like a TV show, a bit of drama and simply notice that they’re there. I accept them as thoughts and emotions, not as indicative of some external reality. I’m a human, I have emotions.

I notice them. I empathize with myself for having them. I allow them to exist as they are, negative emotions in a huge and complex world. I’m a human, not God. The world is beyond my ability to characterize it. While it might be useful for the candidates to judge everything and everyone, it’s not moral, it’s not right, it’s not humble. The world isn’t good or bad, positive or negative. These are just views I make up.

So I let them go, and get real. What future do I want to create? A future where we’re all in constructive communication about what we want for our world. A future where we’re peacefully and prosperously building it. So I return to work on PeopleCount.

Please join me in creating this future. Add your name to our announcement list. Coming this Spring, 2016.

No one “in the know” is surprised that the Benghazi investigation was derailed by Republicans to attack Hillary Clinton. We take political divisiveness for granted.

First we had Kevin McCarthy, who was about to be elected as speaker of the house, suggesting that the he should be congratulated for getting the Benghazi investigation to go after Hillary for the email violation.

All this is despite the fact that her use of a private email server was very normal. Colin Powell used one. Howard Dean said a “tremendous number” of officials used them. And while Clinton has released thousands of emails as evidence, during the Bush administration, Powell and Rice did not, which looks to be a completely partisan double-standard.

Then the Republicans’s stopped backing him to be Speaker of the House. Comments by him and others suggest it was because he had spilled the truth in admitting the committee was a witch-hunt aimed at Hillary, not about finding the truth.

The whole email “scandal” has been shown to be business as usual.

In general, everyone inside Washington knows this, and non-Republicans suspect it. My guess is that other Republicans either 1) hold their nose and shake their heads, 2) figure the ends (defeating Clinton) justify the means (shirking their duty to seek the truth, using their government positions for party purposes), or 3) believe it, and have their glee at Hillary’s bad news keep them from seeing, or minding, the corruption.

But it gave an ex-staffer, Major Bradley Podliska, reason to believe he could help the truth be told, so he admitted it as well, even though it has now focused the Republican machine on discrediting him.  See also this article in Politico.

While many shrug this off as the essence of American politics, we could also look at it as a sign of the deep dysfunction in our political system.

George Washington knew the parties “had previously, and would again, grow seeking more power than other groups to the detriment of the whole…. Washington was aware that other governments viewed political parties as destructive because of the temptation to manifest and retain power, but also because they would often seek to extract revenge on political opponents.”

This seems rampant in the parties. The Democrats love finding fault with the Republicans, and the Republican Party seems wedded to a strategy of demonizing Democrat leaders, especially the President. Meanwhile, neither party is embracing true reforms to make Congress less partisan.  And, there are a lot of  them.

In the previous post, I said there was no real purpose to complaining. But the uproar was so loud, the company capitulated and said they’d lower the price.

The price started at a dollar or two and the previous company raised it to $13.50.  Recently after Turing Pharmaceuticals bought the company, Martin Shkreli raised the price to $750!  After the uproar, he said he’d lower it, though probably to something like $20.

Did he purposely raise it to $750 so he could fall back to a price that’s still 50% higher?  Probably not.

Did all the fuss and complaining fix the problem, contrary to my claim that complaining is bad?  No.

If you listen to Shkreli being interviewed, you’ll hear him allude to many other drugs that have had steeply inflated prices. By complaining, it put all the attention on his pill. Lowering the price then appears to alleviate the problem, ignoring all the other companies that did much worse.

This is the problem with these emotional attacks. As soon as something happens to alleviate the emotions, the problem is over, even though no solution to the broader problems has been sought.

Is Shkreli a psychopath?  Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that the public was ill-served by the emotional outbursts, and simlar problems persist.

Join with me in my solution for the real problem, that politics is dominated by emotional manipulation, grandstanding, and sensationalism.  Go onto PeopleCount.org today, register and vote on issues on the sample site. When we’re ready to launch, we’ll send you an announcement and you can be part of the first wave of Americans to make Congress truly accountable to the people.

Please also donate a few dollars to the site.  What’s it worth to you to ensure that America becomes a democracy of, by and for The People?