NEW AMERICAN CONSENSUS - EJ DIONNE OUR DIVIDED POLITICAL HEART
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From: Bruce S.
Date: Tuesday, July 24, 2012, 2:47 PM
Subject: New American Consensus - EJ Dionne Our Divided Political Heart
ID: 273064

Greetings from Santa Barbara. Thanks for (still) being here.

The "2012 birth and shift and circle" processes continue to move -- and for me, a critically empowering new element is emerging.

These possibilities are inspired and informed by the brilliantly inclusive and perceptive new political book by Washington Post columnist and Brookings Institute Fellow/TV Pundit/College Professor E.J. Dionne, "Our Divided Political Heart".

I discovered this book a couple of months ago when it began to be announced on MSNBC, and I attended the recent EJ Dionne appearance at the Lobero (June 20), where we bought a copy of the book. Since that time, I have bought another copy, and scanned the entire text into a parsed database framework that offers a powerful way to read/study this book in a collaborative space -- and begun unfolding what seems to be emerging as a very exciting project.

I haven't had a chance to explore whether EJ Dionne himself sees the thesis of his book as a call to political organizing or action -- but he does state clearly and repeatedly that this "consensus" he is talking about must be reinforced and vitalized, and he specifically calls for "Millennials" to step up to this task and take it on.

His recent interviews on the Jon Stewart Daily Show get his thesis out there in high impact brevity, and Jon Stewart seems to totally get the core ideas.

http://tinyurl.com/6o6w2tu

And for me -- the project continues to grow. I feel a kind of amazing and satisfying excitement about it, and simply find myself getting out of bed every day with a ton of interesting new things to do with these possibilities.

One issue is getting this concept on EJ's desktop -- not necessarily so easy, since he is very busy. Another is defining the project with increasing clarity and focus -- and bringing an initial statement to the Capps Center in Santa Barbara, the sponsors of his appearance here (and some previous appearances). Also - I do need some "team mates" for aspects of this work, so I am rattling around a bit on that. One thing I do expect to do is to open up my capacity for "interfaith networking" -- since I do have 1000 interfaith organizations in this online system, and 20,000 or more interfaith people. The issue would be "the theology of community in a pluralistic culture" -- a subject I think we can handle.

For right now, as a little flash of "dawn's early light" -- here is a screenshot of page 1 of this draft proposal. I have not yet been able to discuss this with anybody who might really understand this theme -- and maybe this notion of "Peace Treaty for the American Electorate" is a little too cute -- but I think I like it, and it does seem to encapsulate the power in a way that works.

For now, we are starting to sketch this work on the SharedPurpose network, beginning here:

http://sharedpurpose.net/dionne.cfm

Thanks for your work to move our world forward into greater enlightenment.