Forming a Quiet Subclass

One of my goals in this book is to encourage and enlarge a quiet, intelligent subclass of Producers. That already exists to some extent. Think back to the 2004 election where the media were going crazy predicting a Kerry win. The exit polls were killing Bush and by 5p.m. on election night some networks were calling the entire shebang for Kerry. It seemed that the shrill whining of Michael Moore and George Soros and innumerable protesting liberal groups had won the day.

But then what happened? Quietly, without any media attention or press releases, about sixty million grownups went to the polls and voted Bush. No propaganda films were involved. No commercials aimed at latte sippers. Regardless your political orientation, you have to respect the focused, studied, confident power of all those level headed citizens. That was no fluke and no freak of nature.

That’s what we need to be as Producers: People who let the Paraducer sales ploys blow by with no more consideration than a burger wrapper in a windy Mall parking lot.

Producers need to have that thoughtful look in their eye that says they have considered the facts and made a decision. No matter the decision (who am I to tell a Producer what to think?), that expression of settled confidence is to a Paraducer like salt to a snail.

We Producers in this quiet subclass will not all make the same decisions in lock step. That’s okay because we cannot all be right always, and it’s possible that one direction for society is not the best for all of us at the same time. You can say tomaaato, and I can say tomahhhto, and our society is big enough to benefit from both our strengths.

So the point is that we Producers need not all think the same, but we Producers need all think. That’s 99% of the battle. Think, debate, vote, work, teach.