Author’s Note

This piece is the third in a sequence examining the architecture of electoral control. The first examined the certified-mail ballot proposal and the executive order that replaced it. The second examined the March 2025 executive order and its downstream implications for state authority over elections. This piece examines the legal narrative that made both of those moves politically possible — the “mail fraud” framework — and what the actual record of its enforcement reveals about its true purpose.

A note on sourcing: the endnote citations at the close of this article reference primary documents, court records, and investigative reporting. Where I characterize the intent behind a legal or political strategy, that characterization is my analytical judgment. The factual record is documented. The interpretation is mine.

— Kent Barnett

There is a version of this story that is easy to tell. It involves ballots traveling through the mail, a federal statute with a 150-year pedigree, and a series of prosecutions that, taken one by one, each look like a reasonable application of law to conduct that someone, somewhere, decided crossed a line. That version is the version that has been on offer for the better part of fifteen years. It is coherent. It is legible. And it is, in every meaningful structural sense, false.

Not false because mail fraud is not a real law — it is. Not false because election fraud does not occur — it does. False in the way that a map drawn to hide territory is false: technically accurate at every marked point and deceptive about everything in between. The prosecutorial record of mail fraud applied to election conduct does not describe a good-faith effort to protect the integrity of the postal system in the service of democratic participation. It describes, with uncomfortable precision, a campaign to make the infrastructure of democratic participation legally dangerous for specific communities — and to make that danger look, at every step, like law enforcement.

This is the third piece in a sequence. The first examined the certified-mail ballot proposal and the executive order that followed. The second examined the March 2025 executive order and what it did to state authority over elections. This piece goes one step further back — to the narrative architecture that made both of those moves possible. Because before you can issue an executive order that restricts mail voting, you need people to believe that mail voting is a vector of fraud. And before you can make people believe that, you need a prosecutorial record that appears to prove it. [1]

The record exists. The question is what it actually documents.

THE LEGAL ANATOMY OF “MAIL FRAUD”

The federal mail fraud statute is, by any legitimate measure, a serious and important piece of American law. Enacted in 1872, codified at 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341–1346, it covers any scheme to defraud in which the postal system — or any private interstate carrier — is used in furtherance of the scheme. [1] Its scope is deliberately broad. Congress designed it that way. The legislative history reflects a clear intent: the federal government’s authority over the mails gives it jurisdiction to prosecute fraud that might otherwise fall between the cracks of state criminal codes.

Critically — and this will matter — the statute does not require proving that the scheme succeeded. It does not require proving that anyone was harmed. It requires proving only two things: that a scheme to defraud existed, and that the mails were used in furtherance of it. The Supreme Court’s 1989 ruling in Schmuck v. United

States confirmed the “in furtherance of” standard, establishing that the use of the mails need only be incidental to an essential part of the scheme. [2] That is a low bar. It was designed to be. A statute aimed at sophisticated financial fraud needs a low bar to catch conduct that is deliberately difficult to trace.

Election-related mail fraud prosecutions are a recognized and legitimate application of this framework. When someone fabricates absentee ballots and mails them, that is mail fraud. When someone submits a fraudulent voter registration by mail as part of a coordinated scheme, that is mail fraud. No serious analyst disputes this. The statute is legitimate. Its existence is not the story.

The story is what happened to its application over the past fifteen years. The prosecutorial record of election-related mail fraud cases in that window does not describe a broad enforcement effort aimed at the universe of conduct that could theoretically qualify. It describes something far more specific: a dramatic concentration of cases in jurisdictions with high minority and low-income voter participation, involving ballot-collection practices and voter assistance activities that were legal under applicable state law at the time they occurred, and targeting the vote-by-mail infrastructure itself — not the kind of ballot-box stuffing or registration fabrication that the public imagines when it hears the phrase “election fraud.” The statute is legitimate. Its application has been surgical.

THE PATTERN THE DATA REVEALS

The geographic and demographic concentration of mail fraud election prosecutions is not a matter of interpretation. It is a matter of the public record, assembled and documented by researchers at the Brennan Center for Justice, corroborated by investigative reporting from ProPublica and local outlets, and verifiable in the federal court records available through the PACER system. [4] [5] [7] What that record shows, aggregated across jurisdictions and across fifteen years, is a pattern that is difficult to explain on any theory other than targeting.

Prosecutions cluster in communities where mail voting represented an expansion of access — not an established tradition for a politically advantaged constituency. They concentrate in counties and precincts where the composition of the newly-enabled vote-by-mail electorate skewed toward Black, Latino, low-income, and

elderly voters in non-majority communities. They fall, with a consistency that defies coincidence, in jurisdictions where the expansion of mail voting access threatened to shift political outcomes — and where prosecution followed that threat rather than preceding it.

The conduct targeted is equally revealing. The cases that anchored the “mail fraud” election enforcement narrative did not primarily involve the fabrication of ballots or the forgery of signatures. They involved ballot collection by community volunteers — a practice explicitly authorized by state law in multiple jurisdictions where prosecutions nevertheless proceeded. They involved assistance filling out ballot materials for elderly or disabled voters — a practice with a long legal history and clear authorization under the Americans with Disabilities Act. They involved community-organized absentee ballot request drives that used mailed materials to reach voters who had not previously participated in mail voting. [7]

In each of these categories, the conduct was legal when it occurred. The “fraud” framing arrived after the fact — after the practice had demonstrated its capacity to produce voter turnout in communities that had not previously turned out in those numbers, and after that turnout had threatened, or produced, a political outcome that someone found intolerable. The statute did not identify the conduct as criminal. The political valence of its consequences did.

Key Finding

The mail fraud framework does not require proving that an election outcome was changed. It requires only proving that the mails were used in furtherance of a scheme to defraud. When prosecutors and political actors define “the scheme” as “practices that benefit opposing constituencies,” the statute becomes a tool for criminalizing voter participation infrastructure. The barrier to entry for weaponizing this statute against voter access work is, by design, remarkably low.

HOW THE NARRATIVE WAS BUILT

A prosecutorial record, however selective, is not by itself sufficient to construct a governing political narrative. It requires amplification. It requires an ecosystem of institutions, advocacy organizations, legislative proposals, and media apparatus willing to present isolated cases as evidence of a systemic threat — and to do so with enough consistency and volume that the premise becomes ambient, background, assumed.

That ecosystem was built, deliberately and over years, around three interlocking rhetorical moves. The first was the framing of mail ballots as inherently vulnerable — not as one component of a voting system with well-understood security properties, but as a uniquely compromised vector for fraud that required extraordinary protective measures. The second was the false equivalence between administrative error and deliberate fraud: the conflation of ballot rejection rates, signature mismatch disputes, and processing delays with intentional criminal conduct. These are not the same thing. They were consistently presented as if they were. The third move — the most consequential — was the deliberate conflation of ballot-collection assistance with ballot manipulation. Helping a neighbor submit her ballot is not the same as altering its contents. Every serious legal and academic authority distinguishes these categories. The narrative erased the distinction.

The result was a vocabulary — “ballot harvesting,” “mail-in fraud,” “absentee ballot abuse” — that encoded a prosecutorial framework into everyday political speech. Once that vocabulary was established, it became available as a defense of any restriction, no matter how broad, on mail voting access. The same narrative infrastructure that produced the selective prosecution record supported, in direct and traceable succession, both the certified-mail executive order examined in the first piece of this series and the DHS voter eligibility list mechanism examined in the second. [4] [5] Because if mail voting is presumptively fraudulent — if the assumption of its illegitimacy has been baked into public discourse by fifteen years of prosecutorial theater — then any mechanism that restricts it can be defended as protective. Every wall is a safeguard when you have convinced people there is something dangerous on the other side.

The power of the “mail fraud” framing is that it does not require you to prove fraud occurred. It only requires you to make people believe it could have. Once that belief is established, every restriction becomes a safeguard. Every disenfranchisement becomes a correction.

THE TARGETING: WHO ACTUALLY GETS PROSECUTED

Abstract pattern analysis is persuasive. Individual cases are undeniable. The documented record of who actually faces federal mail fraud prosecution in the election context is not abstract. It is specific, named, and verifiable in public court filings.

The cases involve, with a regularity that the aggregate numbers confirm, individuals conducting voter participation work in Democratic-leaning, minority-majority, or economically marginal communities. An elderly Black woman in Georgia prosecuted for helping her neighbors submit absentee ballot request forms — a practice that Georgia law permitted at the time of the conduct. A community organizer in Texas charged under mail fraud theories for coordinating a voter registration drive that used mailed materials to reach first-time voters in a majority-Latino precinct. [7] A network of volunteer poll workers in a southern jurisdiction prosecuted for assisting elderly nursing home residents in completing absentee ballot applications — assistance that the facility’s own staff had previously provided without prosecution, until the political composition of the residents’ likely votes became apparent.

These are not anomalies. They are the pattern. And the pattern is rendered more legible by what is absent from it. The prosecution record does not include sustained federal attention to the kind of mail ballot manipulation that would systematically harm the constituencies the narrative claims to protect: fraudulent signature-matching determinations that resulted in systematic ballot rejection without voter notification; partisan coordination in ballot-curing denial that left legally submitted votes uncounted; administrative practices that produced processing delays concentrated in specific zip codes. These forms of conduct — documented in

academic literature and investigative reporting [8] [9] — exist in the record as well. They exist in the record largely without prosecution.

The asymmetry is the answer. A prosecution framework that reliably falls on voter participation work in one demographic community and reliably does not fall on suppression-adjacent administrative conduct affecting another is not a neutral law enforcement program. It is a targeting operation that has found, in the federal mail fraud statute, a legal language capacious enough to justify what it was always going to do.

A Note on What “Documented” Means in This Context

The cases cited in the endnotes are matters of public record — court filings, Department of Justice press releases, reporting by ProPublica and local investigative outlets available via public archive. [6] [7] The pattern they form is not the result of a single source’s interpretation. It is the result of aggregating the public record across jurisdictions over fifteen years. Readers who wish to verify are encouraged to do so. The record is accessible. The pattern is not difficult to find once you know where to look — which is, perhaps, why the people who built it preferred that you look at each case individually, rather than all of them at once.

THE EXECUTIVE ORDER CONNECTION

The March 2026 executive order on elections did not arrive without a foundation. Executive orders of its scope — imposing federal oversight on the mechanics of state election administration, conditioning federal resources on compliance with federal voter eligibility determinations, establishing criminal penalties for election workers — require a political premise that makes them defensible. That premise was not manufactured in March 2026. It was manufactured over fifteen years of selective prosecution and narrative infrastructure, and it was ready when the order needed it. [4] [5]

The order’s legal justifications relied, at their core, on the premise that mail voting is a vector of fraud requiring federal intervention — a premise that the executive branch did not need to argue from scratch because the argument had already been made, repeatedly and loudly, in prosecutorial press releases, in congressional testimony, in advocacy organization white papers, and in the political vocabulary that all of those sources, together, had embedded in public discourse. The “mail fraud” narrative did not merely support the executive order. It was the ground on which the order stood. Without it, the order is an extraordinary federal intrusion into state election authority with no factual predicate. With it, the order can be presented as a logical, measured response to a documented, ongoing, federally prosecuted problem. [10]

The Supreme Court’s emergency stay halted the order’s implementation. [10] It did not dissolve the premise. The narrative infrastructure that the stay was built on top of is still standing. The premises are still in circulation. The prosecutorial vocabulary is still available. And an order that was stopped once, on emergency procedural grounds, is not an order that has been permanently retired. It is an order that is waiting.

WHAT CONTROL ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE

Control over elections does not require changing votes. It never did. The architecture of electoral control that this series has been documenting does not operate at the level of the individual ballot — it operates at the level of the infrastructure that gets ballots from eligible voters to the institutions that count them. Mail ballots. Ballot collection. Community voter assistance. Absentee request drives. The apparatus of participation itself.

What the “mail fraud” framework accomplished — over fifteen years of selective prosecution, narrative amplification, and political deployment — was not the prevention of fraud. The fraud it claimed to address was largely a construction: real at the margins, inflated in the telling, and concentrated in its prosecutorial consequences on exactly the communities that the framework’s sponsors most needed to discourage. What the framework actually accomplished was the transformation of voter participation infrastructure into a legal liability. Not for

everyone. For specific people, in specific communities, doing specific work that produced specific political outcomes.

A weapon is useful precisely because it does not need to be fired. It only needs to exist — available, credible, and understood by the people it is aimed at. The community organizer who decides not to coordinate the absentee drive after watching a colleague prosecuted for doing the same thing is not counted anywhere in the enforcement statistics. She is the point. The ballot she did not help collect, the voter she did not reach, the outcome that shifted by the margin of her absence — none of that appears in the record. It is the record’s most important entry.

I want to be precise about what I am and am not arguing here. The federal mail fraud statute is a legitimate and important law. Genuine election fraud — the fabrication of ballots, the forgery of signatures, the systematic corruption of election administration for partisan advantage — deserves prosecution, and the statute is an appropriate vehicle for it. I am not arguing that the law should not exist. I am not arguing that its election applications are never justified.

What I am arguing is this: a pattern of application, documented over fifteen years, across multiple jurisdictions, concentrated in specific demographic communities, following specific political outcomes, and systematically absent where analogous conduct occurs in other demographic contexts — that pattern cannot be explained by neutral law enforcement. It can be explained by strategic deployment. And the question of whether a prosecutorial framework constitutes good-faith enforcement or strategic deployment is not, in the end, a question about the law. It is a question about the record. The record answers it.

The Supreme Court’s 7-to-2 emergency stay bought time. [10] It did not dismantle anything. The narrative infrastructure that justified the March 2026 executive order — the fifteen years of prosecutorial vocabulary, the ecosystem of amplification, the political premise that mail voting is presumptively suspect — is intact. It is still being built. The next order, or the next application of this framework, will not begin from zero. It will begin from here, from this foundation, from the premises that the stay did not touch. Understanding what was built is the precondition for understanding what comes next. That is why I wrote this piece. That is why it matters that you read it carefully.

— Project Playbook, September 29, 2026

Sources referenced in this report: Brennan Center for Justice analyses of the March 2025 and March 2026 Executive Orders on Elections, including documentation of DOGE voter file access, proof-of-citizenship requirements, EAC funding mechanisms, the USPS gatekeeper mechanism, DHS voter eligibility list methodology, no-notification ballot rejection provisions, and constitutional authority analysis (published 2025 and 2026, respectively) [4] [5]; ProPublica investigative reporting on the certified-mail ballot proposal, USPS lawyers’ documented reaction, USPS Board of Governors’ deliberations, and Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s execution authority, published September 28, 2026 [6]; Department of Justice public press releases and court records in prosecuted mail fraud election cases referenced above, available via DOJ.gov case archive and PACER federal court records system [7]; academic literature on racial and geographic disparities in federal election fraud prosecutions, including law review analyses published in the Harvard Law Review and Yale Law Journal [8] [9]; the Federal Mail Fraud Act of 1872 (18 U.S.C. §§ 1341–1346) and its subsequent interpretations in Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (1989) and Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010) [1] [2] [3]; Supreme Court of the United States unsigned emergency stay order blocking the March 2026 Executive Order on Elections, September 14, 2026, vote 7–2, Alito, J. and Thomas, J. dissenting [10].

1. Federal Mail Fraud Statute — 18 U.S.C. §§ 1341–1346. Enacted 1872. Covers any scheme to defraud using the mails or any private interstate carrier. Subsequent amendments extended coverage to wire communications. The statute requires proof of: (a) a scheme to defraud, (b) use of the mails in furtherance of the scheme. It does not require proof that the scheme succeeded.

2. Schmuck v. United States, 489 U.S. 705 (1989). Supreme Court ruling establishing the “in furtherance of” standard for mail fraud, confirming that use of the mails need only be incident to an essential part of the scheme. Foundational precedent for modern election-related mail fraud prosecutions.

3. Skilling v. United States, 561 U.S. 358 (2010). Supreme Court narrowing “honest services” mail fraud to bribery and kickback schemes, limiting but not eliminating the statute’s reach in political and governmental contexts. Relevant to the outer bounds of election-related “honest services” mail fraud theories.

4. Brennan Center for Justice — Analysis of the March 2025 Executive Order on Elections. Documentation of DOGE voter file access, proof-of-citizenship requirements, EAC funding threats, and mail ballot grace period attacks. Published 2025. Available at brennancenter.org.

5. Brennan Center for Justice — Analysis of the March 2026 Executive Order on Elections. Documentation of the USPS gatekeeper mechanism, DHS voter eligibility list methodology, no-notification ballot rejection, criminal penalties for election workers, and constitutional authority analysis. Published 2026. Available at brennancenter.org.

6. ProPublica — Investigative Reporting, September 28, 2026. Reporting on the certified-mail ballot proposal, USPS lawyers’ documented reaction, USPS Board of Governors’ deliberations, and Commerce Secretary Lutnick’s execution authority. Published September 28, 2026. Available at propublica.org.

7. Department of Justice — Public Press Releases and Court Records. Press releases and court records in prosecuted mail fraud election cases referenced above. Available via DOJ.gov case archive and PACER federal court records system (pacer.gov). Case-specific citations available on request.

8. Harvard Law Review — Academic Analysis of Racial and Geographic Disparities in Federal Election Fraud Prosecutions. Law Review Volume cited as public record. Documents the geographic and demographic concentration of federal election fraud prosecution patterns across jurisdictions. Specific volume and page citation available on request.

9. Yale Law Journal — Academic Literature on Prosecutorial Use of Federal Mail Fraud Statutes in State Election Administration Contexts. Law Journal Volume cited as public record. Analyzes the structural features of the mail fraud statute that render it available for selective prosecutorial deployment in election administration cases. Specific volume and page citation available on request.

10. Supreme Court of the United States — Emergency Stay Order, September 14, 2026. Unsigned emergency stay order blocking the March 2026 Executive Order on Elections. Vote: 7–2. Alito, J., and Thomas, J., dissenting. Shadow docket ruling; no written majority opinion issued. Order is a temporary procedural stay pending further review; it does not resolve the underlying constitutional questions on the merits.

Why the robots aren’t becoming conscious, why quantum computing won’t summon Skynet, and why the real threat is fear itself.

Let’s get something out of the way: Every week, someone online declares that artificial intelligence is about to become conscious, overthrow humanity, and possibly steal your Netflix password. The headlines scream. The influencers panic. The politicians fundraise. And somewhere, a YouTuber is filming a thumbnail with their mouth open like they’ve just seen the face of God in a GPU rack.

Meanwhile, the actual AI systems are over here confidently hallucinating that the capital of France is “baguette.”

So let’s take a breath.

Because the fear is loud, but the facts are boring -- and that’s exactly why we need to talk about them.

1. The Consciousness Question: Are the Robots Waking Up? Short answer: no. Long answer: still no, but with more syllables, (like this) NNNNNNnnnnnnnnOOOOOOooooooo!

AI today is a very fancy autocomplete machine. It doesn’t “want,” “feel,” or “experience.” It doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder about its purpose. It doesn’t stare out the window contemplating the meaning of existence. It doesn’t even have a window.

When people say “AI is becoming self-aware,” what they usually mean is: “AI said something spooky and I forgot it was trained on the entire internet, including Reddit.”

If AI ever did become conscious -- and we’re talking science-fiction levels of hypothetical here -- then yes, humans would be its gods. We wrote the code. We built the hardware. We created the training data. We are the cosmic parents of the machine world.

But today’s AI? It’s not conscious. It’s not close. And if it ever does get close, it will probably ask us why we spent so much time arguing online.

2. Quantum Computing: The Plot Twist Everyone Loves to Fear Quantum computing is the boogeyman of tech Twitter. People talk about it like it’s a magical portal that will instantly turn AI into a sentient demigod capable of rewriting reality.

In truth, quantum computing is still in its awkward teenage years -- brilliant, promising, and occasionally unable to get through a math problem without falling over.

Will quantum breakthroughs make AI faster? Yes. Will they make AI conscious? No. Will they break encryption someday? Possibly -- which is why cybersecurity experts are already working on quantum-safe cryptography.

Quantum computing is not the fuse that lights the AI apocalypse. It’s more like the espresso shot that makes AI do what it already does... just faster.

3. The Election Panic: AI Is Coming for Your Ballot (Apparently) Now we get to the fun part: politics.

Every election cycle, someone claims AI can “change votes in voting machines.” This is usually accompanied by a blurry TikTok video, ominous music, and a person whispering like they’re leaking classified intel from a bunker.

Here’s the reality:

· Voting machines are not magically hackable by chatbots.

· Election systems have layers of security, audits, and paper trails.

· Most misinformation online is still created by humans, not AI.

· Deepfakes exist, but “cheap fakes” -- simple edits, misleading captions -- are far more common.

AI can amplify misinformation. AI can generate fake content. AI can confuse people who already distrust the system.

But AI cannot reach into a voting machine and flip your vote like it’s changing the channel.

The fear is politically useful, though. It’s a great way to rally supporters, raise money, and blame a mysterious digital force for everything that goes wrong.

Fear is a political asset. AI is just the newest costume.

4. So Why the Panic? Because fear is profitable.

Fear gets clicks. Fear gets votes. Fear gets attention. Fear gets regulation passed faster than facts ever will.

AI is the perfect villain:

· It’s invisible.

· It’s complicated.

· It’s everywhere.

· And nobody agrees on what it actually is.

If you’re trying to influence public opinion, AI fear is a Swiss Army knife. You can use it to warn about foreign interference, corporate greed, government overreach, or technological collapse. It fits any narrative you need.

But that doesn’t make the narrative true.

5. The Case for AI: Why We Actually Need This Stuff Here’s the part nobody puts in the headlines:

AI is becoming essential.

Not optional. Not experimental. Essential.

We need AI to:

· Detect misinformation faster than humans can scroll.

· Strengthen cybersecurity as quantum threats grow.

· Accelerate scientific research.

· Manage the complexity of modern systems.

· Compete globally with nations who are not slowing down.

AI is not the threat. Fear is the threat. Fear slows innovation. Fear cedes leadership. Fear creates bad policy. Fear makes people believe voting machines are possessed by digital demons.

We don’t need less AI. We need better AI, responsible AI, and public understanding that isn’t shaped by panic merchants.

6. So Where Do We Begin? Right here.

This Substack series can do what the headlines won’t: Explain the reality. Defuse the fear. Show the stakes. And remind people that technology is not destiny -- it’s a tool.

A powerful one. A necessary one. And one we should shape with clarity, not hysteria.

If AI ever becomes conscious, we’ll cross that bridge when the robots start writing poetry about their feelings. Until then, let’s focus on what’s real, what’s useful, and what’s worth building.

I began my corporate career in the early 1980s, working in small companies, large enterprises, and eventually multi‑national corporations. Across all those environments — different industries, different cultures, different organizational shapes — one truth never changed:

The behavior of the executive at the top determines the fate of the entire organization.

Executives are not simply decision‑makers. They are the first signal every employee calibrates against. Their tone becomes the company’s tone. Their discipline becomes the company’s discipline. Their blind spots become the company’s blind spots. Their integrity — or lack of it — becomes the organization’s operating system.

This is why leadership at the top is never neutral. It is always shaping, always signaling, always cascading.

The Cascade Effect

Executive behavior does not stay confined to the boardroom. It travels.

• Down through senior leaders

• Across managers

• Into teams

• Outward to customers, partners, and regulators

Two companies can have identical strategies yet produce wildly different results. The difference is not the strategy — it’s the culture. And culture is shaped, reinforced, and modeled by the person at the top.

Culture amplifies strategy or suffocates it.
And culture begins with the executive.

The Myth of the “Bad Department”

After decades of watching organizations succeed, stall, or collapse, I learned something important:

Most “bad departments” aren’t bad — they’re reacting to upstream dysfunction.
Most “good departments” aren’t magically good — they’re benefiting from upstream clarity.

The root cause is almost always the same:

Executive behavior is not a variable — it is the source code.

When the source code is clean, the system runs.
When the source code is corrupted, the system fails.

The King Has No Clothes

The most dangerous moment in any organization is when the executive becomes insulated from truth.

Everyone sees the problem.
No one speaks up.
The executive continues unchecked.
The organization silently absorbs the damage.

Executives don’t become dangerous because they’re powerful.
They become dangerous because no one tells them the truth.

This is the cultural failure point — the moment when silence becomes complicity and the organization begins to rot from the top down.

The Tenth Man Theory

Preventing this requires structural dissent.

The Tenth Man Theory — originating in Israeli intelligence — states that if nine people agree on a conclusion, the tenth must disagree on purpose to stress‑test assumptions.

It is not contrarianism.
It is institutionalized skepticism.

The Tenth Man:

• Disrupts groupthink

• Exposes blind spots

• Challenges executive assumptions

• Prevents leaders from drifting into fantasy

The Tenth Man is not trying to be right.
The Tenth Man is trying to ensure the executive is not protected by silence.

It is the antidote to the king‑has‑no‑clothes scenario.

A Framework for Addressing Executive Behavior

Below is a practical, operational system for addressing both good and bad executive behavior. It begins with the simplest — and most powerful — step.

1. Professional Boundary Setting

The first corrective mechanism is simple and underused: professionally saying “No.”

This is not rebellion — it’s stewardship.

A well‑placed “No” signals:

• Standards exist

• Boundaries matter

• Accountability is shared

• Leadership is not a one‑way street

Often, this is the first moment an executive realizes their behavior has consequences.

2. Documenting Expectations

Executives operate in ambiguity unless expectations are formalized.

Documentation includes:

• Written commitments

• Decision logs

• Ownership statements

• Defined success criteria

This removes wiggle room and turns behavior into trackable data.
It also prevents executives from rewriting history when things go wrong.

3. Behavioral Feedback Loops

Executives rarely receive honest feedback — and some actively avoid it.

Structured feedback loops transform leadership behavior from “soft” to measurable:

• Quarterly leadership behavior reviews

• Anonymous upward feedback

• Behavioral KPIs tied to compensation

When feedback disappears, reality disappears.
And that is when the king has no clothes.

4. Accountability Triggers

This is where the Tenth Man becomes operational.

Accountability triggers include:

• A designated dissent role

• Rotating responsibility

• Formal challenge protocols

• Mandatory assumption‑testing for major decisions

The Tenth Man’s job is not to win the argument.
The Tenth Man’s job is to ensure the executive is not insulated from truth.

5. Reinforcing Good Executive Behavior

Good behavior must be rewarded with the same rigor as bad behavior is corrected.

Examples include:

• Public recognition of principled decisions

• Compensation tied to cultural health metrics

• Leadership modeling sessions

• Executive mentorship programs

Good behavior becomes contagious when it is visible, valued, and reinforced.

Conclusion

Executive behavior is the root system of the organization.
Everything downstream grows — or withers — from it.

The first step in addressing it is the courage to say “No,” followed by a system that prevents silence, prevents delusion, and ensures truth can always reach the top.

The signs never arrive in a single headline. They arrive as fragments — a rust‑stained carrier, a politician assigning himself a probability of entering heaven, a petition asking the Supreme Court to rewrite how millions of people vote. None of these stories are connected on the surface. But together, they form the unmistakable silhouette of a system under strain.

When a nuclear aircraft carrier shows visible corrosion, it’s not just a maintenance failure. It’s a metaphor for institutional fatigue — a physical reminder that even the strongest structures degrade when priorities shift from stability to survival. Rust is slow, quiet, and patient. It spreads when no one is looking. It spreads faster when everyone is looking somewhere else.

A rusting hull is never just a hull. It’s a symptom of misallocated attention. It’s what happens when a system becomes so focused on external threats that it neglects its own foundations. Fear doesn’t strengthen institutions. It hollows them out.

When a political figure quantifies salvation, the backlash isn’t about theology. It’s about legitimacy. It’s about the moment when moral authority becomes performative — when the system tries to define something it cannot control. The public reaction isn’t outrage; it’s recognition. People can sense when a system is improvising its own righteousness.

A “heaven probability” isn’t a religious statement. It’s a calibration error — a sign that the system is trying to measure the immeasurable, to assign metrics to meaning. It’s what happens when fear of moral irrelevance pushes institutions into territory they cannot govern. The backlash is simply the public noticing the overreach.

And when a leader asks the Supreme Court to approve sweeping changes to mail‑in ballots, the tension isn’t procedural. It’s existential. It’s the system attempting to rewrite the rules of its own continuity. It’s the moment when fear becomes policy — when the process itself becomes a battleground.

Procedural overreach is the clearest sign of institutional fear. Systems rewrite rules when they no longer trust outcomes. They tighten controls when they no longer trust people. They escalate oversight when they no longer trust themselves.

These aren’t isolated events. They’re symptoms. They’re the tremors that come after the break, not before it. Part IV is where the series stops tracking escalation and starts tracking consequence. It’s where the system’s fear becomes visible enough to measure — not in statements, but in structural failures, moral misfires, and procedural overreach.

Fear is corrosive. It rusts metal. It distorts morality. It warps procedure. It makes systems act against their own stability. It makes institutions mistake control for strength. It makes leaders mistake improvisation for authority.

This is the final movement of The Breaking Point:

The system doesn’t collapse when it's

challenged.

It collapses because it became afraid.

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3. Shrivastav, A. (2026, September 4). USS Abraham Lincoln’s rust‑covered arrival in Thailand reveals toll of 286‑day combat deployment. Free Press Journal.

4. Gioia, M. (2026). JD Vance trolled after he rates his chances of getting into Heaven: “This is rather shocking.” NewsBreak.

5. Howe, A. (2026, September 6). Trump administration again appeals mail‑in ballot dispute to the Supreme Court. SCOTUSblog.

6. CNBC Staff. (2026, September 6). Trump administration makes another appeal to the Supreme Court to allow mail‑in ballot restrictions. CNBC.

7. Fritze, J., & Sneed, T. (2026, July 27). Trump asks Supreme Court to let him curtail mail voting. CNN via KRDO.

8. Howe, A. (2026, September 3). Trump administration asks Supreme Court to clear the way for it to implement new mail‑in voting rule. SCOTUSblog.

9. Howe, A. (2026, September 6). Trump administration again appeals mail‑in ballot dispute to the Supreme Court. SCOTUSblog (expanded filing).

The Breaking Point - Part III: Surveillance and Retribution

When Power Stops Watching the System and Starts Watching You

Part II ended with a wobble - a moment when the machinery of a political movement no longer responded on cue. The boos in South Carolina, the donor hesitation, the fractured endorsements - all of it signaled a system losing its automatic obedience. But political machinery rarely collapses cleanly. It mutates. It adapts. And when a leader feels the ground shift beneath him, the instinct is not to steady the system. It’s to tighten the grip.

Part III begins with that tightening.

Since mid-August, the story has shifted from fracture to surveillance - not metaphorical, not rhetorical, but documented. Multiple watchdog groups and newsrooms have traced the same pattern: a movement responding to public pushback by turning inward, watching critics, and weaponizing institutions meant to protect the public.

I. The Machinery Turns Inward

The Department of Justice - once the neutral spine of federal law enforcement - has become the focal point of this pivot.

American Oversight has published new records showing how Trump-aligned officials pushed investigations targeting perceived enemies, from former national security officials to state attorneys general. Their reporting highlights the DOJ’s Weaponization Working Group, described as a clearinghouse for politically motivated inquiries and retaliatory case-building.

This isn’t the wobble of Part II. This is the machinery re-aiming itself.

And the re-aiming is deliberate. FOIA stonewalling, record concealment, and selective investigations aren’t bureaucratic friction - they’re strategy. They’re the quiet architecture of surveillance.

II. The Target List Grows

While watchdog groups track the institutional side, ABC News has continued documenting the personal side - the expanding list of individuals Trump has publicly threatened with prosecution or investigation. Since your last post, that list has grown to include former intelligence officials, state prosecutors, and even internal critics who once served in senior roles.

Some have faced attempts to strip their security clearances. Some have faced pressure campaigns to open investigations. Some have simply been named - and naming is often enough.

This is bullying elevated to governance: critics don’t just get attacked. They get investigated.

The chilling effect is not theoretical. Officials have told reporters they fear retaliation for speaking publicly. Whistleblowers describe pressure not to document misconduct. The machinery is no longer wobbling - it’s watching.

III. The Blanche Confirmation: Consolidation, Not Appointment

The confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney General marks the moment surveillance becomes systemic.

Protect Democracy’s Authoritarian Action Watch describes Blanche’s confirmation as consolidating Trump’s control over federal law enforcement - a structural shift, not a personnel change. Their escalation tracker rates the tactic of politicizing independent institutions as rapidly increasing, citing Blanche’s role in advancing politically charged investigations.

This is the hinge of Part III: when surveillance stops being reactive and becomes policy.

The DOJ is no longer merely responding to political pressure. It is being shaped to apply it.

IV. The Chilling Effect: When the System Watches You

Surveillance is not a show of strength. It’s a confession of fear.

It’s what happens when a leader stops trusting the machinery and starts distrusting the people inside it. When dissent becomes a threat. When criticism becomes a case file. When political opposition becomes something to be monitored rather than debated.

The consequences ripple outward:

· Whistleblowers hesitate.

· Officials self-censor.

· Agencies slow their oversight.

· Critics weigh the cost of speaking.

This is how a political movement transitions from influence to enforcement - not through dramatic purges, but through quiet pressure, targeted investigations, and the knowledge that someone is watching.

Part III is the chapter where the stakes change. Part II was about fracture. Part III is about retaliation.

And retaliation is the beginning of retribution.

V. What Comes Next

Part IV will follow the consequences - not for Trump, but for the ecosystem around him: the agencies, the watchdogs, the courts, the states, and the individuals who must decide whether to comply, resist, or disappear from view.

Surveillance is the hinge. Fallout is the door that swings open next.

1. Zuboff, S. (2019). The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. PublicAffairs.

2. Lyon, D. (2015). Surveillance After Snowden. Polity Press.

3. Andrejevic, M. (2007). iSpy: Surveillance and Power in the Interactive Era. University Press of Kansas.

4. Richards, N. M., & King, J. H. (2013). Three paradoxes of big data. Stanford Law Review, 66(1), 41–46.

5. Pasquale, F. (2015). The Black Box Society. Harvard University Press.

6. Brayne, S. (2020). Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing. Oxford University Press.

7. Ferguson, A. G. (2017). The Rise of Big Data Policing. NYU Press.

8. Solove, D. J. (2007). The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age. NYU Press.

The Moment the Machinery Stops

Something fundamental has shifted in American political gravity. The intimidation tactics that once powered Donald Trump’s political momentum — the threats, the public shaming, the performative dominance — are no longer producing compliance. They are producing backlash.

The Washington Post’s August 24, 2026 analysis makes this clear: Trump’s coercive style is failing both domestically and internationally. But the deeper story — the one I began in “This Is Outrageous” — is about what happens after intimidation stops working.

What does a leader do when fear no longer moves people, when allies no longer flinch, when the public no longer buys the pitch?

History tells us the answer: They escalate. And escalation from a weakened leader is the most dangerous political phase of all.

I. The Collapse of the Bully’s Leverage

The Washington Post reports Trump’s approval rating at 36%, with 63% disapproval. Globally, the numbers are even more severe: 76% of respondents across 36 countries have no confidence in Trump, and 57% hold an unfavorable view of the United States under his leadership. In several countries, China is viewed more favorably than the U.S.

This is not normal political erosion. This is a leader losing the ability to intimidate.

In “This Is Outrageous,” I argued that Americans have grown numb to democratic backsliding — conditioned to accept “outrageous” behavior as background noise. Now, the Post’s reporting shows the consequences of that numbness: a leader who escalates because persuasion is no longer available to him.

II. Threats Without Traction

The Post outlines a series of threats that would have been unthinkable under any previous administration:

● Threatening military action to annex Greenland, prompting European defensive mobilization

● Threatening tariffs on Canada over wildfire smoke — followed by actual 50% tariffs

● Threatening to “bomb the shit” out of Oman, an ally, during Iran negotiations

● Reducing joint military exercises with South Korea, citing personal rapport with Kim Jong Un

● Threatening to withdraw U.S. troops from Spain and Italy if they didn’t support his Iran policy

These are not diplomatic maneuvers. They are pressure tactics — and they are failing.

In “This Is Outrageous,” I framed this pattern as part of a broader authoritarian drift: a leader who substitutes intimidation for governance, spectacle for strategy, and crisis for competence. The Post confirms the same pattern from a different angle: the intimidation is no longer effective, but the behavior continues anyway.

III. When Intimidation Fails, Escalation Begins

This is where additional reporting becomes essential.

A. Right-Wing Figures Turning on Trump

Recent coverage shows Trump publicly attacking Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene — calling them “LOSERS.” These once-loyal MAGA figures fired back, calling Trump “no different than an internet troll” and warning that his rhetoric is “unbecoming of the office.”

This is not left-wing criticism. This is internal fracture — a sign that intimidation is losing its potency even among his base.

B. The Natalie Harp Scandal Backfires

Reporting on the Natalie Harp scandal shows Trump’s anger causing aides to lash out more aggressively — which only drew more leaks, more scrutiny, and more internal dissent. Advisers reportedly believe Harp’s influence is “poisonous” and responsible for some of Trump’s ugliest social-media posts.

This is intimidation failing inside the building.

Together, these sources show a leader whose coercive style is no longer producing loyalty — only chaos.

IV. The Public’s Role in the Backfire

The Post notes that Trump’s messaging has lost its marketing finesse — the “Make America Great Again” simplicity replaced by scattershot threats and reactive posture. In “This Is Outrageous,” I argued that the public has become dangerously tolerant of political spectacle, failing to recognize how quickly democratic norms can erode.

Put together, the message is clear:

● The public is less persuaded

● The world is less intimidated

● The administration is more erratic

● The stakes are rising

This is the moment when democracies either wake up or slide further.

V. The Combined Thesis

Here is the unified argument — the one that merges all sources into a single, sharpened editorial:

Trump’s bullying has stopped working. But instead of recalibrating, he is escalating. And escalation from a weakened leader is the most dangerous political phase of all.

This is not about ideology. It is not about party. It is about behavior, patterns, and risk.

“This Is Outrageous” warned that Americans have been lulled into complacency. The Washington Post shows what complacency enables. The right-wing backlash shows the erosion of internal support. The Harp scandal shows the dysfunction inside the operation.

The bully’s power is fading. The bully’s tactics are intensifying. And the country is entering the part of the story where institutions either hold — or crack.

Footnotes:

1. Washington Post analysis on Trump’s intimidation tactics failing internationally and domestically (Aug. 24, 2026).

2. Yahoo News UK reporting on Trump attacking Tucker Carlson, Thomas Massie, and Marjorie Taylor Greene, and their public rebuke.

The New Republic reporting on the Natalie Harp scandal and internal dysfunction within Trump’s circle.

The Line Has Been Crossed: Why Every American Should Be Outraged

There are moments in a nation’s political life when the noise falls away and something unmistakably clear comes into view — a line crossed, a principle violated, a warning flare that demands attention. The recent reporting on covert surveillance operations conducted by the Department of Homeland Security — Operation Puppet Master and Operation Keyhole — is one of those moments.

And let’s be blunt:
Every American should be outraged.
Not just the politically active. Not just the left or the right. Every citizen who believes in the basic architecture of a free society.

Because what these reports reveal is not “routine monitoring,” not “situational awareness,” not “public safety.”
It is undercover infiltration of political meetings, surveillance of protest organizers, collection of financial records, and attempts to influence civic groups engaged in constitutionally protected activity.

That is not security.
That is not order.
That is not patriotism.
It is the quiet normalization of state power aimed inward — at us.

What the Reporting Shows

Across multiple publications, the picture is consistent and disturbing:

The New Republic

Documents from federal prosecutions reveal DHS agents infiltrating anti‑ICE protests, Sunrise Movement meetings, and other left‑leaning civic groups. Agents recorded meetings, collected personal and financial data, and in some cases attempted to shape protest strategy. These operations were not disclosed to the public or to the groups targeted.

The Guardian

Independent reporting confirms the existence of Operation Puppet Master and details nearly 30 internal DHS investigative reports. These include undercover attendance at community meetings, monitoring of encrypted chats, and acquisition of nonprofit financial records. The surveillance was not limited to individuals suspected of crimes — it targeted political dissent.

Common Dreams

A federal lawsuit alleges that DHS and ICE created secret dossiers on immigration‑policy critics, including journalists and legal observers. These dossiers contained names, photos, vehicle information, license plates, and social media accounts — all collected without consent and without clear legal justification.

Across all three outlets, the pattern is unmistakable:
Surveillance of Americans engaged in lawful political expression.

Why This Matters — And Why Silence Is Not an Option

This is not about whether one agrees with the Sunrise Movement, anti‑ICE protests, or any other group mentioned.
This is about the First Amendment, the right to assemble, the right to dissent, and the right to participate in civic life without being monitored by undercover federal agents.

If the government can infiltrate one political group, it can infiltrate any political group.
If it can collect financial records from one nonprofit, it can collect them from any nonprofit.
If it can build dossiers on critics of immigration policy, it can build dossiers on critics of any policy.

This is not a left‑wing issue.
This is not a right‑wing issue.
This is an American issue.

And the fact that these operations were revealed not through public oversight but through court filings should alarm anyone who believes in democratic accountability.

We cannot normalize this.
We cannot shrug this off.
We cannot pretend this is “just how things work now.”

A free society requires more vigilance than that.

The Truth Is Not Complicated

The truth is simple:

• Undercover federal agents attended political meetings.

• They collected personal and organizational data.

• They monitored groups engaged in lawful protest.

• They did so without public disclosure or meaningful oversight.

If that does not trigger outrage, then we have lost the thread of what citizenship means.

This is the moment to pay attention.
This is the moment to speak clearly.
This is the moment to insist that the government — any government — must not treat political participation as a threat.

Because once that becomes normal, everything else becomes negotiable.

Footnotes & Source Links

1. The New Republic — “Trump’s Secret Police Spying on Americans? It’s Darker Than We Knew.”
   https://newrepublic.com/article/182889/trump-secret-police-spying-americans-darker-knew (newrepublic.com in Bing)

2. The Guardian — “Revealed: DHS ran mass spying operation targeting leftwing groups.”
   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/15/dhs-spying-leftwing-groups-operation-puppet-master (theguardian.com in Bing)

3. Common Dreams — “Lawsuit Says DHS and ICE Created Secret Dossiers on Immigration Policy Critics.”
   https://www.commondreams.org/news/dhs-ice-secret-dossiers-lawsuit (commondreams.org in Bing)

Social media has become a nonstop firehose of political noise. Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram — every platform is overflowing with opinions, arguments, memes, outrage, and “breaking news” that breaks absolutely nothing.

And look, I’ll own my part in it.
I post political content on my Facebook Page. I laugh at the chaos. I comment. I rant. I joke. And yes — in my opinion, #DonaldTrump is the #worsepresidentever. That’s my First Amendment right, and everyone should verify political claims with trusted sources before believing anything online.

But here’s the line in the sand:

LinkedIn should NOT be political.

LinkedIn was built for careers, networking, opportunity, and professional growth — not campaign drama, not partisan warfare, not ideological trench battles. It’s supposed to be the one place where people can focus on work, skills, hiring, and business without being dragged into the political mud.

Yet here we are.
Political posts. Political arguments. Political influencers. Political ads.
And people are paying Premium prices for the privilege of scrolling through it.

That’s where I say: Enough

.

I grew up in southwestern Pennsylvania, overlooking the Ohio River, and saw the Industrial Age's unmistakable collapse. As a teenager, I marveled at the belching, glowing factories that were the backbone of steel production worldwide. The locals appeared content, especially those employed in the mills, which ground away under the oppressive weight of corporate greed.

Recognizing that people conveniently forget the negatives, holding onto a false sense of nostalgia is crucial. The 1970s were not just difficult; they were chaotic and transformative. We faced high interest rates, gas rationing, and skyrocketing costs, all while companies moved operations overseas to capitalize on cheaper labor. The steel magnates, fed up with paying fair wages to union workers, opted for plants in China.

The residents of Southwestern Pennsylvania were blind to this reality, failing to acknowledge the dramatic shift around them. It’s time to confront the truth and understand the consequences of complacency.

*J&L Steel Plant - Beaver County, PA - circa 1970s*

As plants closed, the hardworking people believed the unions could save them. At the time, the unions thought they had the upper hand, demanding more and more money and benefits. Collective Bargaining favored the employees at the time. Pensions, healthcare, and wages benefited the rank and file. During the boom years, two things happened to start the collapse:

1. Everyone failed to modernize the plants. Owners believed the employees were making too much, and in some ways, they were.

2. Workers mainly believed that the good times wouldn't end. Employees were comfortable knowing that if they worked hard, they and their families would be cared for for generations.

Everyone's beliefs created a law of diminishing returns. Simply put, it was too late to keep the mills up to date. Business does what it does, and the families who saw the signs first left. The ones who stayed began to fall into despair, recognition, self-blame, and distrust.

But those who stayed fought to make a living and continued to believe the mills would come back. Today, fifty-plus years later, the people in the Rust Belt area of Western Pennsylvania hope the mills will return.

*Along the Ohio River in Beaver County, PA - present day*

Today, a Japanese steel manufacturer wants to rebuild a new steel plant near my hometown of Aliquippa, PA. Nippon Steel intends to invest in the area. This is important to realize: Nippon Steel wants to invest $12 billion in the Beaver Valley area.

What happened? Political Theater.

January 5, 2025: President Biden blocks the Nippon Steel Deal over: "Explaining that the proposed acquisition might result in actions that threaten to impair the national security of the United States, the Order requires the parties to take necessary steps to fully and permanently abandon the transaction within the next 30 days." -Smarttrade.com

February 7th, 2025: "Trump says Nippon Steel will invest in US Steel, not buy it, sparking confusion." -Reuters

Understanding the Western Pennsylvania mindset is a tragic tale of people looking for saviors. The saviors turn out to be devils in the dark. The people get more jaded and angry and remember this happened within two generations.

Historical timeline of investments in Western Pennsylvania

1975-2004: US Airways began expanding in southwestern Pennsylvania after the collapse of the steel mills. By 2004, US Airways had left the area, leaving over 12,000 people without jobs.

2015: Shell began construction of a new Shell Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex. At its peak, Shell hired ~9,500 temporary workers. Since the completion of the plant, ~600 workers in 2024. Shell estimated the projected number of full-time workers to be 10,000 construction workers and 400 direct plant jobs. Did Shell lie? I believe it is.

2025: Nippon Steel will invest $14 billion in the area but only in economic development.

Forbes: Donald Trump Says Nippon Steel Will Invest In US Steel, Not Purchase It.

Belief in Broken Promises, the savior process in Beaver County continues: The Rust Belt Blues.

The Rust Belt is well-named. The graphic below shows the United States Rust Belts.

*Created by the Regional Plan Association. - https://web.archive.org/web/20130325033001/http://www.rpa.org/america2050/sync/elements/america2050map.png, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=135902267*

Depressed areas of the United States are not unusual. The lasting impact in Southwestern Pennsylvania has been long-lasting and cyclical for over 50 years. The people, depressed and desperate, look for something to free them. Their Christian faith is firm but not enough to free the area of the constant depression. Unfortunately, the location puts their faith in peril.

Why? Nostalgia from the generation that remembers the past. Unless something radical occurs, it will take generations for the area to rid itself of fond memories of prosperity and wealth and stop passing them on to the following two generations. What could that be?

I have to think about it. I will continue this article if people are interested.

Whether we like it or not, we are all influenced by someone's ideas. A president, group, corporation, or individual uses propaganda to sway us into believing their cause is right or someone else's cause is wrong.

It's that simple.

Over the last decade, propaganda and Social Media have distorted the reality of whether or not large groups of people believe. It's a hyperbole of misinformation in politics, media, and everyday life. In 2025, especially since the election of 2024, there's so much tension in everyone's daily life. Anger, mistrust, and malaise are spreading worldwide. The discussions and debates that need to happen are far away. The question is, why?

I'll propose a reason (certainly not the reason.) We lack clear dialogue and communication. Everything we see is in two sentences or less. Emojis are used instead of writing the letters in the words we use. Growing up, I was an avid reader; I enjoyed magazines or books that spoke to me. One of the first series of books I read was the entire writings of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, these stories were written in a different time when allocution meant writing stories with length (even the short stories.) As I began reading more, my taste changed, and I noticed the sentence structure getting smaller and easier to read.

The nomenclature was the shorter sentence when I started writing (I have since I was ten) as an adult. Write and get to the point. Truthfully, it worked, but I felt something was missing. I call it building the truth. Make the story alive in someone's mind. That meant writing cleaner but not removing essential details. Of course, newspapers and the media have to get to the point. (That's what they do.) I wanted to be a reporter and found out I like telling stories.

Today, everything from storytelling to news is so short that the person reading it can't form an overall opinion. Quick spins cascade us from rival writers. A photo is used to make their point, the truth. I'm okay with that. It's fair, and in the United States, freedom of speech and the media is baked in from the beginning. The problem in the 21st century is the rise of social media and the 24-hour news cycle. Although news is entertainment today, it does not report facts but entertains the masses.

Truth.

How to fix it? There's no way to correct it only through more extended discourse. By listening and comprehending what facts are known. (Notice: I didn't state the facts; I just said what is known.) There is a difference. So, how to be clear and heard? Well, I thought about this, and in my corporate life, there was an idea called "an elevator speech." You have two minutes to tell a person about your company. It works. Try it. Strike up a conversation. Say, "Hello. Can I ask you a question? What type of food do you like? Let me tell you about a place that I tried."Can you keep the conversation going for longer than a minute? If you can, then you are on the right path.

Two minutes for dialogue, two minutes for a calm discussion. Asking someone their name and smiling disarms people who don't know you. You become a smiling person with no agenda. Names are important, and smiling is very disarming. Being you is the only person you know; getting to know someone else is illuminating. Exchanging ideas without tension allows people to communicate.

Don't jump to conclusions. It's hard. Don't get mad. It's easy. If something goes wrong, smile and walk away.

It's that easy.

Coming Soon Part Two: Social Media and the News

From LinkedIn Article September 6, 2024

It's important to remember that leaders are not infallible. While figures like Steve Jobs, Lee Iacocca, and Bill Gates are celebrated for their success, they must recognize that their journey includes successes and failures. Many innovative companies tend to overlook the downsides of leadership. I once discussed with a colleague how an individual's ego can sometimes overshadow the common good. I mentioned, "That ego could crush an elephant." Self-promotion is often valued and seen as essential for leaders, and those we admire may appear flawless. For example, Elon Musk's impulsive actions in the name of "free speech" led to the acquisition of Twitter, now known as "X," which brought the company to bankruptcy. While Musk is brilliant, this decision did not yield positive results. Many former and current employees probably dislike Musk but feel bound by their positions or hope for positive change. Leaders in such positions often prioritize their legacy, ego, and wealth over others' perspectives. A well-rounded view of leadership is essential without focusing solely on financial success. Remember, leaders are human.

Here is my first actual creation:

#kentbarnett #restoncommunitycenter

Any input will have to solve an ongoing issue in the art community.

#authorkentbarnett #kentbarnett #handbuiltpottery #restoncommunitycenter

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Beginnings are hard.

The prompt is given, and I must respond. There are three things in life I want to do.

Be an astronaut; maybe someday I will ride into space on SpaceX.

Create a successful company. (I created 3, and all did exceptionally well.)

Be a published author in 3 genres: Science Fiction, Mysteries (Modern & Historical), and Non-Fiction (specifically History.)

I have dabbled in writing. I have been published. I like telling stories.

I've been trying to believe in myself again. A few years ago, an impactful incident affected my life. The event took something away, and I am trying to find a lost spark. Everyone has doubts, and it is hard to believe when it finds you again, especially when you are older.

What am I doing this for? There are several reasons, but I like stories and storytelling. I have wanted to be an author, not a writer. There's a difference, and I want to see if this will help return a bit of confidence. For the reader, I want a place where I can share my writing and thoughts.

I hope you enjoy the journey.

The first step is the hardest.