As with all new administration's there is going to be new cabinet picks to lead each of the departments the government manages. There is a list in this PBS article HERE.
Professor Anita McBride from American University offers her insights in this video.
Its important for people to be engaged in their communities and help in the best ways they can and where their skills lay. In this case, we are practicing the use of the Jaws of Life when it is needed to help travelers that been in a terrible accident. You may find places you can volunteer in your community and these are the small things we can do to make our country great.
China started with the low cost manufacturing option and over the decades have crept up the scale to compete with the U.S. Our nation has been struggling with some issues as of recent but many of these problems started when our companies began to move operations overseas and leak innovative capital. Accordingly an article China’s 2020 GDP means it will overtake U.S. as world’s No. 1 economy sooner than initially expected......
"On Monday, China reported a year-on-year increase of 6.5% for the fourth quarter of 2020 and a 2.3% increase for all of 2020, surpassing analysts' forecasts and making China the the only major economy to log positive growth in 2020."President Trump releases farewell address. The speech provides context of the President's goals and his hope for the nation's future. The speech discusses our shared sense of purpose.
It is helpful to keep up with the news on science direction and what we can expect form new presidents. It appears a pretty solid team of leading scientists have been assembled. I can agree that our nation will need to jump two feet forward into science to foster economic (innovation) and environmental (i.e. climate control) adaptation. New knowledge leads to new insight and new courses of action. If we can't see it then we cant hit the target.
While the video didn't necessarily discuss this idea we are loosing our competitive edge with China. China is near equal to the U.S. in patents and scientific publications. On the U.S. side we certainly can push scientific skills at schools, break down industry-academic barriers, professor-student research, encourage an easier patent process, and connect innovators and entrepreneurs together (innovator-entrepreneur and entrepreneur-entrepreneur) to foster cluster innovation.
1. COVID
2. Economic Recovery
3. Climate Crisis
4. Technologies/Innovation
5. Health and Trust in National Science
A little something on China patents I wrote a while ago on Chinese matching U.S. in Doctors, Patents and Scientific Discoveries.
When I look back how much our country has changed in 20 years and the willingness of people to take up arms I am saddened. We think this happened overnight but I suspect it was bubbling under the surface for a long time and the right spark at the right time lit the tinder. Our society is in the midst a major transformation and there will be some in our society that feel intimidation is a method of getting what they want and that behavior must stop (...and we must stop ignoring it)!
While this appears to be a novel situation we still can start to formulate short and long-term solutions.
Often these groups don't understand the needs of the wider society and are hyper-focused on themselves and their narrow ideology (cultic ideology). Radicalism is a type of tunnel vision that limits outside perspective and anchors. Normal process of dialogue and common ground are absent because of the entitlement that sometimes comes through victimhood (i.e. I can do this because I/my people are victims).
These are individuals who have experienced feelings of loss of power, shifting demographics, and live within a context of global pressure and radical market change (Major market upheaval and social unrest are likely associated in literature). Many militia members feel left behind by the new economic realities and are angry at their politicians (and others) for their plight. (I wonder if someone is going to create a profile based on those who were arrested at the capital and those who are "influences" in radical chatter. 🤔).
Solving these problems isn't going to happen overnight with the snap of the finger and a few choice words. We MUST detect and thwart these potentially violent partisans long before they become militarized. While this level of radicalism hasn't been experienced domestically in this country prior, we can say that there seems to be a toxic mix of factors (i.e. COVID and economic fall out) matched with the power of social media to influence more people (good and bad).
Short and long-term solutions are needed as our politicians struggle inadequately for an answer. Short-term preventions are likely to include detection, monitoring and intercession. Long-term preventions will be focused on prevention (diversity exposure and education), steering grievances to appropriate political behavior, new legislation, law enforcement training/reform and economic improvements that have an impact on workers struggling to make ends meet.
One helpful step is to review and create more flexibility within current hate crime laws in Michigan to detect, measure, and put on record early hate based behaviors before they grow into coordinated aggression. Michigan lawmakers have an opportunity to adjust current hate crime laws so they can be used at different levels of behavior to create an appropriate record (i.e. misdemeanor, mental health, and felony) for research, monitoring and policy creation purposes.
Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Speaker of the House Jason Wentworth stated, "....As we have said before, the riot at the U.S. Capitol last week was a terrible moment for our country. We must be better than this as a nation, and that begins this week with what will hopefully remain peaceful protests and demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Lansing and around the country."(Egan, January 16th 2021, para 4).
