David McElroy

As I’ve been watching the leaves turn colors and then fall onto the ground and die this fall, I’ve been seeing them as a metaphor for empires from history that come and go. And I’ve been wondering whether the people who lived in those fallen empires ever had the sense that their empire was fading away.

My suspicion is that if there had been newspapers or bloggers in the dying days of the Roman Empire or the Mongol Empire or the Holy Roman Empire, one of them might have written something a bit like this: “Amid all the talk of gloom and doom in the Roman Empire today, it’s worth pausing to remember that our great empire remains the greatest and most powerful country on Earth. It is a nation with a promising future.”

Don’t you think they would have seen it that way? I say that because this country is clearly in decline as an empire. (Well, we’re usually too polite today to use the word “empire,” but it’s not really any different, is it?) Every great empire from the past has been seen as unique and long-lasting when it was powerful, but each has fallen over time. Even though the United States remains the strongest military force in the world and even though its economy is still very powerful, what is it that makes us believe we will be any different from those empires that have died and been replaced by something else?

The truth is that Americans really do believe — as the people of those empires believed — that we’re somehow different. We’re “the greatest country on Earth.” (Here’s a recent opinion column in the Los Angeles Times that sings yet another verse of that popular song.)

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In 1983, John Sculley was the president of Pepsi. He was the youngest president ever for the company when he got the job in 1977. As a marketing exec, he had been responsible for the Pepsi Challenge, a campaign so effective that Pepsi was catching up with long-term leader, Coke. He was very successful and very happy with his job. Then he met Steve Jobs.

In 1983, Jobs was looking for a new president for Apple. Even though he was a co-founder, he was considered too young and inexperienced for the job of running day-to-day operations, so he was recruiting someone successful who he thought he could work successfully with. He targeted Sculley. It was a crazy idea to try to get the head of one of the country’s most successful companies to come lead a small computer company, but Jobs went after what he wanted. Sculley later remembered how Jobs finished his pitch:

“And then he looked up at me and just stared at me with the stare that only Steve Jobs has and he said, ‘Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life or do you want to come with me and change the world?’ And I just gulped, because I knew I would wonder for the rest of my life what I would have missed.”

Sculley took the job and spent the next 10 years at Apple, being one of the drivers behind some of Apple’s greatest growth in its early period. (The two men had a falling out that led to Jobs leaving Apple in 1985, but that’s another story.)

In our society, we’re raised to believe we’re supposed to be selling some form of sugar water. We live in a wealthy consumer society, so there’s nothing wrong with selling sugar water, whether your “sugar water” is cars or clothes or shoes or software. Somebody needs to buy all of those things. If somebody’s willing to pay you to do it, there’s a market for it. But for some of us, there’s a burning desire to do something that matters — to do something that has a chance to change the world.

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On May 13, I opened the digital doors to this site for the first time. I’d never heard of most of you fine readers, and you’d never heard of me. So what have those six months brought?

Most importantly, I’ve met some pretty amazing people who just happened to start reading here. I’ve enjoyed your insightful comments and I’ve enjoyed private correspondence with a number of you. You know who you are. Especially you and you and you. If you think I’m talking to you, I probably am.

I’ve learned that a lot of people see the same tsunami of economic and social collapse that I do — and many of those people are scared and searching for answers. I’ve discovered that many people expect things to get bad, but they believe there’s nothing they can do about it. Over time, I hope we can start addressing more of that. (We’re still trying to attract more people to have a big enough group to pull that off.)

I’ve also learned that a lot of people just can’t see that the majoritarian system can’t bring about freedom. Four years ago, many people were certain that they’d somehow get Ron Paul elected, for instance. This year, I’m encountering many people who are the same way. They get angry when you explain that it’s not going to happen. If you still believe in the electoral system, good luck with that. The people I’m seeking are looking for alternatives.

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