There is a word you see often in news coverage of politics today. The word is “performative.”

It describes elected officials of the extreme right or left and the strange way they do politics. Instead of running for office to accomplish something, they seem to see public service as a call to express things – specifically, things that make the news. They introduce divisive laws that have no chance of passing. They ignore real crises in favor of creating imaginary ones. They label their opponents as criminals because they are too liberal or conservative, and members of their own party as traitors because they are not liberal or conservative enough. Sometimes, if these antics alarm enough other elected officials, they succeed in getting divisive laws passed. But their real goal is triggering the praise and outrage that follows.

“You can’t just say let’s have all this macroeconomic growth and not focus on every district . . . Make sure that you understand that it is a bad thing for America that my district has $10 trillion of company value and other districts are totally in despair.”

– US Congressman Ro Khanna, Democrat representing Silicon Valley district.

Ahh, the digital economy. Supercharged with opportunities your city, county or region can't afford to miss. Software companies. Gaming companies. Silicon chip foundries. Silicon chip designers. Software-as-a-service companies. Makers of computers, tablets, phone and smart watches. Social media companies. Ecommerce companies. Video streaming companies. It’s a vast digital wave washing across the world.

Social, economic and political division have a cost. I suspect we can all agree on that, despite our divisions. But how much is it?

In 2023, two ratings agencies downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States. Their reason? Division, specifically the repeated down-to-the-wire debt ceiling battles that threatened the government’s ability to pay its bills. The agencies admitted the downgrades would have no immediate impact on America’s ability to borrow. That word “immediate” reminded me a Hemingway character who, when asked how he went bankrupt, said, “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

The price is hard to measure because, most of the time, it is about lost opportunity. Take local government. When voters are divided, they alternately elect leaders of wildly different beliefs about the right way to govern, often with the speed of Dr. Jekyll turning into Mr. Hyde and back again. Each set of leaders condemns the work of their predecessors and starts building something new, only to see it torn down again with the next change of office. Forward motion freezes and, with it, the ability to seize the opportunities streaming by.

The 1982 Disney movie, Tron, contains a valuable lesson on the power of the digital systems user today.

In the movie, released 40 years before ChatGPT, the hero is transferred bodily into a computer system under the control of an evil AI. Because he’s the good guy, he tries to lead a revolt, mostly in vain. But just when things look bleakest, he discovers that he has “user power.” Simply by willing it, he can make magical things happen in this alternate universe. Because, under the digital skin, he’s a human being who uses computer systems, not the other way around.

I wrote my last post, “Why Are We Falling Apart?” in response to a heartfelt editorial by David Brooks of The New York Times. Confronting today’s epidemic of inhumane behavior in America – reckless driving, unrest in schools, fights on airliners, hate crimes and murders – he asked, “What the hell is going on?” His plaintive and honest answer was “I don’t know.”

In my post, I explained why I thought we have been falling apart – not just recently but gradually for the past 40 years, and not just in the United States but in fellow industrialized nations around the world.

But understanding reasons is only gets us so far. What matters is what we can do about it.

When I first saw the Grand Canyon many years ago, I asked myself the question that every visitor asks. How did this great big, amazingly beautiful hole in the ground get here?

The answer is a story that defies intuition. The Colorado River snakes through the region and lies now at the bottom of the immense canyon. Like all rivers, it carries small bits of stone that chip away at the riversides and river bottom, one tiny spec at a time. Keep that up for a few centuries, and the river slowly deepens its channel.

The advancements in artificial intelligence of the past few years have been mind-blowing. They have given rise to much research and analysis about the future of work. They have also given rise to a lot of nonsense. The trick is to figure out which is which.

On one side of the argument are respected academics and global consulting organizations. In their tremendous book, Race Against the Machine, Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson offered dire predictions of the increasing power of AI and the erosion of jobs it will bring. Their advice? Don’t fight it – instead, figure out how to work with technology change to get the greatest benefit as individuals and as a society. There have been dire predictions about how big job losses will be, but the best-informed numbers come from the McKinsey Global Institute. They predict that automation will eliminate only 5% of today’s jobs. But it will also have an impact on 60% of total jobs. On average, workers in those fields spend one-third of their time doing routine work, and routine labor is the easiest to automate. So, no matter what you do for a living, it would be wise to buckle your seat belt.

Virtual reality (VR) is the future. The biggest tech businesses in the world say so. Facebook is building the metaverse where you will spend your days with a headset strapped over your eyes and sensors in your clothing, interacting with people and things who aren’t really there. Apple is reported to be planning introduction of a “face computer” in the next year or so – but of course, they were also rumored to have a plan to manufacture cars at one point, so we’ll see.

To these thrilling tech developments, I have just one thing to say. Virtual reality is dumb. Not bad, not destructive – just dumb.

US President Biden has proposed a $109 billion, 10-year American Families Plan that seeks to build an economy that does more for working people and less for people who live on the returns from their investments. One part of the plan would fund free 2-year community college tuition for all students. In response, a recent article in The New York Times sets out to answer the question, “Does Free College Work?”

It’s a very American question, by the way, because our friends in Europe and other regions have been receiving largely free higher education for decades. Setting that aside, the article is worth reading for two reasons.

In this special episode of The Intelligent Community, ICF Co-Founder Robert Bell speaks with Hamilton Mayor Fred Eisenberger about leadership throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.