Against all probability, late one November afternoon, I find myself interviewing the President of the United States. He is sitting directly across a small table from me. I’ve gotten him to agree to discuss the state of the world...
Against all probability, late one November afternoon, I find myself interviewing the President of the United States. He is sitting directly across a small table from me. I’ve gotten him to agree to discuss the state of the world and a future that seems hopeless to many people. I lay before him a tapestry of today’s harrowing realities: climate change, income and racial inequality, wars in Europe and the Middle East, environmental destruction, starvation – and the many other crises we face today that are symptoms of a degenerative Death Economy.
I look across the table at him. “Mr. President,” I say. “These are very discouraging times.”
“So, you think what’s happening now is discouraging, do you?” The president shakes his head sadly and then adds, “Try being the general of a rag tag army who’s charged with defeating the world’s biggest, best equipped, best trained military.”
[NOTE: I’m not talking with the 46th US President, or even the 45th. I’m talking to the first, George Washington. And to be completely candid, it’s actually his portrait that sits across the table from me. However, I’ve read so many books about him I feel like I sort of know the man – and can vividly imagine how he would look and sound during a conversation about the current state of affairs.]
“Sounds impossible,” I admit. “Like an impossible job.”
“Impossible!” He starts to laugh and abruptly catches himself in a way I know is his attempt to hide his infamous false teeth, rumored to have been made from hippopotamus ivory or – more troublingly – those of plantation slaves. He fixes me with a stern gaze. “What do you mean: Impossible?”
“Poor choice of words,” I confess. “Perhaps ‘against probability’ is a better way to put it.”
He pauses and massages his chin. “Have you not read history?”
I force a deferential smile. “I’m a history buff.”
“Then surely, as a student of history, you must know that it is made by those who defy probability.”
“I see your point,” I say, pausing for a moment to think. It doesn’t take long for me to recall an incident that established his reputation as a young officer serving the British army. “Back in 1773, when most Americans thought the British were invincible, you reflected on the Battle of the Monongahela, which had occurred 20 years earlier during the French and Indian War. You described how General Braddock’s British forces, considered the best in the Americas and perhaps the entire British empire – in other words, most of the world – was defeated by a much smaller band of French and Indians. The British suffered massive losses, with over a thousand officers and soldiers killed or wounded, while the French and Indians lost less than a hundred.”
“Indeed, the worst defeat in British history.”
“Exactly. And later, in 1773 as the idea of revolution was being debated, you said, ‘the British aren’t invincible. All we’ve got to do is hide behind trees.’”
“Did I say that?”
“Something like that.”
“Hmm. . .” He scratches his head thoughtfully. “I don’t recall – not exactly.”
“I read it somewhere.”
“Well then, good for me. And, of course I should’ve known, shouldn’t I, after all I’d experienced, being in the thick of that fray, right at Braddock’s side. Lucky as hell to have escaped with my life. And what I said—or what you say I said—was true, was it not?”
“I think so.”
“Indeed. It’s coming back to me as if it were yesterday. We were marching in formation down a road our engineers had just cut through the wilderness – strict British military style, completely out in the open. Bright red coats and all. The French and Indians fired at us from the woods. We couldn’t even see them.”
“I think Braddock referred to them as damn cowards.”
“Of course he would, wouldn’t he? Hiding behind trees, eschewing the Gentleman’s Code of open combat. You know.”
“Exactly. And it made an impression on you.”
“Well, yes. Hellishly effective, it was. They tore us apart, like you said. Such experiences shape a man. So, of course, when I assumed the mantle of Commander in Chief during the Revolution. . .” He pauses and seems lost in thought.
“You employed similar techniques.”
He stares at me. “Several of our units did – Morgan’s Rifles, Vermont’s Green Mountain Boys, General Stark’s militia from New Hampshire …”
“I’m from New Hampshire,” I say, with perhaps a bit too much bravado.
“I know,” he replies, covering his false teeth with a hand and giving a small guffaw. “That’s why I mentioned it.” He coughs softly into his hand and lowers it. “Our lads hid behind trees and stone walls—and we picked off those lobster-backs standing in long red-coated lines like a bunch of sitting ducks waiting to be shot.”
“Like at the Monongahela.”
“Precisely. One might’ve thought they’d have learned, wouldn’t one?”
“Well, you’d defied probability.” I glance down at my notes. “North Vietnam did something similar during the Vietnam War.”
He gives me a quizzical look.
“Vietnam. Long story. It’s a place in Asia, near China. The important point is the North Vietnamese, like you, defied probability, and stood up to the largest, best equipped military in the world.”
He shrugs. “You know, we might never have won the Revolutionary War if the French hadn’t joined up on our side. That was something else that defied probability. I remember Old Ben begging to go off to Paris. . .”
“Benjamin Franklin, Mr. President?”
He frowns “Of course. Who else?”
I bow my head slightly in acquiescence; then raise it to meet his eyes.
“Anyway—” he continues, “Old Ben was optimistic that he could gather French support. But here I was, still stuck in the French and Indian War mentality, thinking they were our enemies.”
“Ah hah.” I slide forward in my chair. That’s exactly where I want this conversation to go. “Against all probability, enemies often join forces. A classic example is that following the war I mentioned earlier, World War II, America’s worst enemies, Germany and Japan, joined us to fight a common enemy, the Soviet Union and Communism, in what we called the Cold War.”
“A war in the Arctic? Brr. Valley Forge was cold enough for me.”
“It’s a different kind of cold. ‘Cold’ as in non-combative, sort of like the Boston Tea Party.”
“I never considered that an act of war.”
“It doesn’t matter. Suffice it to say, as we have been saying, that history is made by those who challenge probability.”
“So. . .” He gives me a measured, tight-lipped smile, similar to the one portrayed on the dollar bill. “When you were telling me about your problems in the modern world—climate change, all the starvation, the various wars, the horrible pollution people have caused, and the importance of ending the animosity between the United States and China, you were ultimately saying. . .” He squints, questioning me.
“I was emphasizing the fact that these two countries, the United States and China, together create nearly half the world’s economy and half the world’s air pollution. If they can’t agree to work together to change that, to transform an economic system that is destroying itself. . .”
“Wait just a minute!” The president’s hand shoots forward, stopping me. “What do you mean, ‘an economic system that’s destroying itself?’ You made that claim before, but it still makes no sense. Economic systems create food, housing, clothes, all the things people need. How on earth can you make a statement like that?”
“That’s the way economies used to be in your time, Mr. President. Unfortunately, things changed less than a century ago when economists, particularly one named Milton Friedman, who was very influential and won the 1976 Nobel Prize in Economics. . .”
He shoots me another questioning look.
“Oh, yeah. I keep forgetting. The Nobel Prize is kind of like being promoted to Commander in Chief of Economists.”
He nods, solemnly.
“Friedman said that the only responsibility of business is to maximize short-term profits.”
“Is that so? Reminiscent, perhaps, of the East India Company that caused so much resentment among Americans and led my government to set rules taking power away from monopolies.”
“Indeed, those rules continued for nearly a hundred years. Anyway, let’s just say that Friedman and his cronies changed humanity’s ideas about success in business. The outcome? An economy that, in its pursuit of short-term gain, is consuming its own vital resources and destroying life on our planet.”
“My God! That’s sheer madness.”
I can’t help laughing.
“That’s funny?”
“Sorry, Mr. President. Not funny at all. Yes, it is sheer madness—and yet it’s what we’re doing.”
He lifts his hands heavenward. “God help you.” His eyes seem to grow distant. He visibly shakes himself, adding, “But you were speaking of China and the United States.”
“Yes. In order to transform this terribly destructive system into a regenerative, sustainable one – like the one you had in your time – the United States and China must work together to turn things around. And yet, they are locked in a competition that seems headed toward more destruction, possibly even war.”
“Sounds like the only sane thing is for them to join forces – if only to solve this problem that threatens them – you – both.”
“I agree, but many say that’ll never happen. Competition between our two governments is too strong and hostile.”
“Hogwash. Like you said earlier, adversaries have always come together to fight a common enemy. In my time, the French were my enemies, America’s enemies, during the French and Indian War. But they – the French – joined us less than two decades later to fight our common enemy, England.”
“So, would you agree that people who claim China and the US will never come together to solve these problems. . .” I trail off.
“Don’t understand history.” He claps his hands together.
“History is made by those who defy probability.”
“Undoubtedly,” he says, his brows burrowing in thought. “It’s all about transforming perceptions. Just as I, along with colleagues, like Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and John and Samuel Adams, had to persuade the colonists of British vulnerability, you and your friends must convince people – both in America and China – that their perception has to change.”
“Any ideas, Mr. President?”
“Your nations, America and China, are locked in fierce competition. And you are each destroying life on the planet. Correct?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Then you’ve got to convey the message that it’s a crazy competition. No one wins on a dead planet. You’ve got to change the perception of what it means to be successful. Bury the ideas of that man who was the Commander in Chief of Economists. It’s time that he and his failed philosophy were discarded.”
“Abandoning the goal of maximizing short-term profits and materialism.”
“For God’s sake, change that goal to a rational one. Make heroes of people who promote long term benefits for everyone – and the planet.”
“Brilliant.” I smile at him. “Of course, that’s against all probability.”
“Yes.” He returns my smile with his own tight-lipped one. “And history is made by those who defy probability.”
I give a playful salute to his portrait and turn to leave my study, feeling the timeless weight of his perspective—and my own renewed purpose.
