 And welcome back to Figments On Reality. I'm Dan Leif. I go by Fig and I've been on vacation for over two weeks and it was great. I'm gonna have to do that again. Concept I wasn't that familiar with but in retrospect I've been missing a lot. Before I get to the primary topic of the show I wanna talk on reality about something that concerns me a great deal and that was the missteps made by President Biden and Secretary of Defense Austin in stating our China policy with President Biden saying we were absolutely committed to the defense of Taiwan if China attacked. Now I'm not against that as a matter of principle. We have an obligation covered in the Taiwan Relations Act but he didn't maintain the strategic ambiguity of it. And it reminded me of a conversation I had one on one with President George W. Bush when I was still on active duty. And President Bush asked me if conflict with China was inevitable. And I said, well, of course not. And gave him some reasons why. And I said, but it could still happen, Mr. President because it could happen like most wars happen through a series of miscalculations, misinterpretations and misunderstandings. And I think that's very much the case. That was part of our involvement in Korea and in Iraq where Kim Il Sung and Saddam Hussein both did not, each did not expect the United States to enter the conflict. And we did. This is kind of the opposite of that because President Biden said we would defend Taiwan. And in the current environment where China is aggressively asserting itself and its claim to the island of Taiwan that could drive it to conflict not deter it from conflict. So it's a big mistake. I'll be watching this. I may dedicate a future on reality to the China Taiwan situation because it could have far reaching impacts. I hope not, but it could. So let's get to the real topic of today's show. And that's this road trip that my family took and the reflections that it led me to on America. Now you know those annoying relatives who have you over and show you the pictures of their vacation. Yes, I'm absolutely going to do that. But when I started up my file sharing app I found that I had added 648 files. So be glad that I won't show you all 648 photos that we took in that. Frankly, that's the tip of the photographic iceberg because we took a lot of pictures. It was a great trip. Family, baseball fun, sites, memorials and museums. So let me quickly take you through what we did. We flew into Wisconsin and went to two Brewer's games. There I am with my family. And next to me is my twin sister and behind her her husband Leon. It was great to see them. We tailgated and did all the baseball things. The weather as you can see was beautiful. The whole trip, the weather was beautiful by the way. And we did that. By the way, if you saw my post-season warm-up figments The Power of Imagination with Ross Rowley you may have noticed that I got every single pick wrong, every one. How's that even possible? Pick the wrong winners of the wildcard games and each of the division series. So, oh well, next year. It's probably good the Brewer's were out. No, that's never good, but it allowed me to focus on the road trip. So from Milwaukee, we went down to Chicago, not my favorite city, but still a cool place to visit. And then on to Indianapolis, Indiana. And we saw the Speedway exhibit and our museum which doesn't sound like much, unless you like cars, but I do. But it was really pretty fascinating looking at the technological evolution of the race cars that race at Indian. I think the family enjoyed that maybe more than I expected, but they enjoyed another museum much more than I expected. They humored me with a stop in near Dayton at the National Museum of the US Air Force. My former service, it's like going home. Here you see a picture of the XB70 maybe the most beautiful airplane ever built. And my wife in particular found this museum fascinating because it does what the great museums do. It tells the story. It just doesn't display the stuff. And we wish we had more time. I basically had to drag her out of there. It's not technology alone. They do a fantastic job of telling the human story of the advancement of air and space power in the US. If you're ever in the Dayton area, don't mess it and do allow plenty of time. From there, we drove to the east headed towards Yorktown, Virginia to see my son, his wife and their two very cute dogs were getting a dog. And the scenery was fabulous. And this was Alejandra and Alejo's first road trip. Here you see the skyline drive. Dozens of photos of the tremendous drive along the skyline drive near DC in Virginia. Another must see. We stopped, did this road trip, American style, something that they had never experienced stopping along the way to eat and find a hotel. And I have to tell a story. My wife is a sophisticated woman traveled extensively, worked in government for 22 years and absolutely not a country bumpkin. But when we stopped for breakfast in Charleston, West Virginia, she was enthralled with the little restaurant we found because it had very quaint decor, lots of memorabilia, signs, photos, artifacts from the past. It was very cool and she liked it a lot. And as we left, she said, this is a unique restaurant and mentioned one of our favorites in Santiago of Chile that's similar but not on the same scale. And I said, yes, it is a very unique restaurant. And I took out my phone and checked and I said, and there are only 659 just like Cracker Barrel is a great place to get good food and see a lot of Americana. We drove on down to Yorktown, visited the Yorktown battlefield, another great museum and bit of our history. And later went to Nauticus in Norfolk and to the Jamestown Settlement. I put certainly Yorktown and Jamestown as things you've got to see to appreciate our history and I'll share more on that in our reflections and spend a wonderful time with my son and his wife and the dogs, as I said, it couldn't have been a better visit. And then we headed up to the DC area where my daughter lives. There's Alejandra with the Washington Monument. Again, a beautiful day. We're so blessed with the weather and the statue near the wall, the Vietnam Memorial. And she, we walked the entire mall, Washington Mall on this gorgeous day, stopped by the Lincoln Memorial. I commented to her that I had never visited the Lincoln Memorial and she said, half jokingly, what kind of a citizen are you? And I said, well, I was kind of busy defending our country, which is true but I wish I'd gone there earlier and had more time to reflect on Lincoln the man and that memorial captures him so well. We also went to the National Museum of Natural History. I had a couple of meetings and they went to other museums and we had a great visit with my daughter who's gonna be my next guest on Figments, the Power of Imagination. And it was just a wonderful time in our nation's capital to reflect upon it. Then we took a brief, not so, drive back to Chicago. Here's a screenshot of the 10 hour and 16 minute, 700 mile drive back to Chicago. This was a straight through shot to catch our flight on time. And it was yet another experience sharing the driving with the Leo and figuring out toll roads and doing all that with a little bit of rain. But again, we're very fortunate on the weather. And finally, we made it back to Honolulu and the United Airlines there. We are properly masked, more on that later. And in short, it was a great chance to see the entire Eastern United States. Well, it's maybe a quarter of the Eastern United States if that, but to see a lot about our country, its development, its innovation, its history, and the struggles to make it what it is today. And I'll share my reflections on that right after a brief, brief break to tell you about the show next week. Now, the folks at Think Tech Y who I think do a fabulous job on this give the hosts some guidance. And one of them is you should almost never have an immediate family member on. I'm going to break that, clearly, by having my daughter on to talk about imagining effective leadership. Why am I going to do that? Well, leadership has been her job for a long time. She's an expert at it and has thought a lot about it. And she's a much better leader than her dad. She's led it in the Air Force as a commander in industry, as a leadership consultant and now as a manager at Google. And I know her views will not represent Google policy because I'll make that disclaimer. But she'll offer you some thoughts on leadership that I think you'll find useful because she's good at it and has thought about it, studied it and now applies that in the corporate world. Act of the road trip observations. So I've got a list here and I'm going to talk about each of these. And there they are. Let me start with what a beautiful country the United States of America is. And I'm getting new sponsors. We say in Hawaii, chicken skin right now thinking about it. It is a beautiful country. Fall colors in particular, but it's beautiful. And it's in pretty good shape. We hear a lot about the crumbling infrastructure and certainly there was construction the entire way. But it's a beautiful country in good shape. And Chicago is surprisingly beautiful. I have to say that even though it's a pack of pen, I have to throw in that the bears still suck. But Chicago is a great city. We ran through the marathon. We didn't run in the Chicago marathon. We sprinted across the street to get to the biggest Starbucks in the world. The entire drive was fabulous, especially Skyline Drive. And then of course along the Chesapeake there's so much to see. It's a beautiful country. And if you haven't seen parts of it for a while, it helps to get refreshed and be reminded of how blessed Americans are. And I've been to 71 other countries, I think, and we're very fortunate. Each has their own beauty. The next observation is that baseball is better in person. Even though my predictions were wrong and even though the Milwaukee Brewers aren't playing in the World Series, it was great to see a couple of games in person at American Family Field there in Milwaukee. And I may have called it Miller Park earlier because it just became American Family Field. Alejandro is not much of a baseball fan, much more Green Bay Packers, much more. But having seen it in person in three dimensions with the crowd, with all that is baseball, she gets it now and that's good for me since I watched at least 162 games a year in one way or another. It's a great experience and it's really worth seeing in person. I had a question from a viewer that just popped up in the chat window. Weren't you worried about COVID when you attended the baseball games with 40 plus thousand of my closest fans for each game? No, for a couple of reasons. One, we're very careful as a family. Two, we're all vaccinated. I'm thrice vaccinated and Alejandro and Alejo have both gotten their full Pfizer regime. And three, those sporting events, contrary to predictions have not become super spreader events, which is interesting. So whether we were in the crowd or out tailgating with high school friends, which was another uniquely American experience for the Chilean members of my family, no, I wasn't worried. We were careful, but not extremely, not wildly careful. And we enjoyed the games and we all feel fine except for jet lag. So baseball is better in person. Another observation was about the American people and we haven't unpacked all our memories from this trip but I think that Alejandro and Alejo will share that American people are friendly and nice and kind. And we experienced that in every setting, just the warmth, the welcoming nature of all people regardless of color. And that was reassuring and made me proud of the American people such as they are. And that probably was the most reassuring thing to answer another viewer question. Thanks, viewers. And that was probably the most reassuring thing was our people and the interaction with them and the lack of vitriol, one of my least favorite things and just the niceness of them. That said, there are times that they're not that nice and I list I think three of them. And one of it is when they're driving and special shout out to that guy in the white SUV at O'Hare Airport as we were trying to get into the hotel. I'm spoiled by the Aloha spirit. We don't use our horns here in Hawaii except in emergency. And the only time you get negative feedback is if you don't thank somebody for letting you in to elane in traffic, which they always do. I didn't find that worked in the Chicago outskirts or on the Beltway in Washington, DC. Oh well, makes me enjoy Hawaii even more. They're not that nice when they talk politics. And I blame the politicians, frankly because they're fueling it. Our politicians are, I believe of both parties fueling the rancor amongst the people and they should do better. I don't think me saying that and my humble little webcast will change that but they should do better. It's not good for our country in any way. And the fact that we disagree on political issues should not result in the kind of anger that I saw about politics. Again, I blame those in politics whether they're elected or not for fueling that for their own purposes. Their purpose should be the country and not creating a divide so they can win an election or get something passed. Another area where folks aren't very nice and this was striking probably the most striking thing on the trip is they're not very nice about the all of the mandates related to COVID. The disconnect was startling. The guidance on masks varies widely from state to state municipality to municipality and the adherence to those mandates is spotty at best. It's worse than that. It's comical in a tragic sort of a way. And the thing I noticed most was the mask rebels who by the way, look ridiculous. So if you're a mask rebel, trust me, you look ridiculous. I don't know if they work or not. I don't know if the masks that people wear work or not. I don't care. They consider wear your mask, shut up, enjoy the day. And when you don't have to, don't. But those who aggressively either don't wear a mask or wear a mask incorrectly and kind of flaunt it, come on, man, you're not proving anything except that you're annoying. I found it annoying and troubling. But I understand why it is. It's because the guidance is so silly on our flights to and from Hawaii or to the mainland and back, I guess, to be more accurate. United gave the following guidance that masks will be worn at all times. And I think this is what the federal mandate says, including between sips and bites. As far as I can tell, 0.0% of the people were adhering to the sips and bites guidance. And who can blame them? It's ridiculous. It's just laughable guidance. And it's not helping. It's not helping motivate people to get vaccines or to take precautions that really work. And there's another mandate that doesn't help. And that's the plexiglass. Now, it's been shown, I did my research on the internet, it's been shown that the plexiglass actually stifles airflow and can increase the probability of virus spread. Yet, I think because they're afraid not to, and because it was guides, there is plexiglass everywhere, barriers everywhere between servers, cashiers, different clients. And we know that it doesn't work. So why haven't we had some guidance to take it down? When you have these kinds of sips and bites guidance and plexiglass that no longer is shown to work, people are not going to take anything seriously, including vaccines. Now, I believe vaccines work. And I'm pretty sure that the guidance shows that I don't know how I feel about the federal vaccine mandate for government, employees, military, and contractors. I've already gotten vaccinated, so I don't care very much about it. But that's the serious stuff. The rubber meets the road at vaccination. It doesn't at plexiglass or sips and bites. And the government has only the government's national, federal, state, and local have only themselves to blame for mudding the waters and creating a situation that fuels rather than ends the COVID spread. So again, if all of the science says that mass sporting events are super spreaders, why hasn't it been in the case? Because the Milwaukee Brewers have not contacted me about any outbreak rather related to the games that we went to. And that's not happening. We need to get our act together. Our governments need to get their act together and pare it down to just the things that really matter, vaccines, vaccines, and vaccines. And encourage people, not mandate it. Now, in the military mandate, I will make a non-reality comment on that. I think it came far too late. I think that's due to lawyers being involved in the process. And if I were king or whatever, I would have said at the outset when it was approved for emergency use, all right, soldier, sailor, sailor, marines, and space guardians, get your vaccines mandatory. I think the lawyers got involved said, well, it's just emergency approval. And I've got 12 anthrax vaccinations from my military experience, and it hasn't affected me much. But if they had said from the outset, get the vaccines, I don't think we'd see the challenge that the military is facing in gaining compliance now. We gave too much time for the barracks lawyers to make up reasons not to get vaccines. Now, there are legitimate medical and perhaps religious reasons not to. But I don't think the legitimate reasons are the problem at all. So enough on COVID. Let's get it done. Get vaccinated if you haven't, please. The next observation is that you can never know enough of our history. And I was not a good student in anything, including history. And that's not going to change now. But this trip to all the museums and memorials, pardon me, reinforce that in the beautiful museums, memorials and historical sites remind me that we have to make sure the beauty and durs of our nation and that the history isn't changed because the accurate history matters. And remember that the names will never change, whether they're Lincoln's name on his memorial or others, Jefferson, an issue of concern in New York City right now. The names don't change. And that's certainly true on the Vietnam Memorial, where I found the name of Major Robert Kosar. He wore his bracelet for many years in the 70s until finally wore out. And those who have sacrificed for our freedom, for the life that we enjoy, ought to be remembered regardless of the circumstances. The museums and memorials are particularly important in storytelling. As I said, the Air Force Museum does a really tremendous job of telling the story of innovation, speedway to and natural history, of course, but it's not the stuff that matters. You can't put today into context if you don't have an appreciation for how we got here. Whatever your views are, you have to have the context. And what's so troubling about some of the public discourse these days is that items influenced heavily by our past are taken out of or taken or absent from context of how we got here. It's not perfect. No country is, but we can't forget it. And we can't cancel history because it makes us uncomfortable. And some elements of our history do make us uncomfortable. I've seen one place in the world that does a better job than any other of putting that history into context. And that's Taiwan. I went to two museums or, I guess, their museums, parks in Taiwan, one addressing the indigenous people of Taiwan who even into the late or early 20th century were cannibals, headhunters, and they have a very thoughtful presentation. They're an Ulai, near Taipei, of the kind of people they were and it put it into context of the times. They also have a museum or a location on Green Island where political prisoners were held during the Chiang Kai Shek period in Taiwan. And again, it's uncomfortable stuff, but put in context and not blaming, shaming, but describing that history and helping us not repeat it, helping the people Taiwan not repeat it. We can do that with the monuments and memorials that are currently simply being removed. That's not the answer. Those who forget history or ignore it are doomed to repeat it. So the museums we want to, we're reassuring and inspiring. And I want to know more and we'll make another road trip sometime soon. The last observation is that America is hiring. It was incredible. I don't think we stopped at a single restaurant, hotel, anywhere, or anything else, any other kind of shop that didn't have a, were hiring, help wanted to sign out. In fact, as we walked to my granddaughters to their daycare school, there was a huge sign in Spanish saying we're hiring and I encouraged Alejo to apply, but he wanted to come back and go to school. They're at the University of Hawaii, I understand that. Everywhere they are hiring, which makes you wonder why we're so short of the help we need. And I don't have the solution for that, but I suspect it has something to do with incentives. And that brings me to my last thought about taxes. And of course, there's a huge bill in Congress right now. This isn't a political show, so all I'll say is those are tax dollars, folks. I'd like to see a public law that says that politicians must refer to federal money as our money and acknowledge that it came from the taxpayers because we're not incentivized to pay taxes. I've paid taxes for 40 or 50 years. Shouldn't I at least get a little help in that says that? Shouldn't there be something that makes our contribution to the governance of the United States, recognizable and worth talking about? It isn't. So listen up, Washington, if you're gonna pass a law, I heard a congressman on a radio show talking about the Washington football team and its troubles with the Dan Snyder ownership era, okay? That's not the biggest problem people in America might be a problem. That is absolutely not the biggest problem. Take care of your taxpayers, whatever party you're in and acknowledge that everything you're able to do is thanks to the largesse of law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. So I don't expect that to change. I won't be looking for my lapel pin in the mail, but I will be back for figments the power of imagination with my daughter Yating, the leadership guru in a week. Two o'clock on Monday, November 9th, I think it is. That's what November 1st, rather. And I look forward to sharing that with her. And finally, let me give a shout out to the folks at ThinkTech who make this possible and they can only make it possible through your donations. So please support this wonderful nonprofit and join me next week for figments, the power of imagination. Aloha.