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In this episode of the Strong Towns Podcast, Chuck addresses the craziness of the current political climate. Using recent policy changes and public responses as examples, he explores how we’ve created a political climate of either-or: Either you decide to take a chainsaw to bankrupt and failing systems or you refuse to acknowledge that they’re bankrupt and failing.

Chuck shows how the Strong Towns approach provides a third path, where problems are recognized and addressed in a healthy way. He also gives a sneak peek at how Strong Towns is planning to help advocates and cities embrace this path.

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  Chuck Marohn 0:00

  Hey, everybody this Chuck Marohn, welcome back to the strong towns podcast. It's gonna be a weird i don't know where this one is gonna go. I've got a couple notes I've written down, but I'm really just going to try to speak from the heart here for a little bit. One of the great gifts that has been bestowed on me, or, or I've, I've been given, or I've, I've, you know, maybe you could say earned a little bit, or set myself up for, is I get to travel a lot. I get to meet a lot of people. I get to be in a lot of places. I have a real sense, I think that is unique of the country. I've presented strong towns ideas in every US state. I spend a good deal of my time traveling around and meeting people, meeting people who are doing local work, local policy work. But also, you know, local advocates is amazing. I had a conversation with someone yesterday who had gone to our national gathering last year, and this person was comparing it to other conferences that they've that this person has attended. And you know, the remark given to me was, your thing is weird, CNU has got a lot of professionals at it. Yours had some professionals, but it just had a lot of people who I couldn't put in a box. And I'm like, yeah, that that's strong towns. And I get to meet a lot of those people all the time. That that's what I get to do. I also have been invited to do some some other things. My graduate degree was from the Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota, now the Humphrey School of Public Affairs or public policy. I can't remember. I apologize anyway, I've been asked to be on their their advisory board, the dean's advisory board at the Humphrey School, which is really an honor. It's fantastic. I had my first meeting there a couple weeks ago, and it was delightful to meet everybody and to be back in that academic setting. But I really am kind of a fish out of water in that place. The overarching vibe of the meeting was one of I'm just going to use the word terror, abject terror. And this is a feeling that I've gotten as I've traveled around the country. There's a certain amount of terror over the chaos today going on in our nation's capital. I think you know me by now, I'm not like a partisan political person, so I hope if you're listening to this and you're super, super partisan, you try to be as generous as you can throughout this podcast, because I want to start by having some empathy for the people who are feeling terrorized today, who are feeling disjointed and out of whack, because I understand this is chaotic, this is crazy. And you know, the tumult and the chaos that is raining is creating a lot of fear, a lot of terror in a lot of places. At the Humphrey School, they're very concerned about grants. A lot of their students are funded through grants, and a lot of people who otherwise couldn't attend the school are having their essentially, their tuition, potentially rescinded or put on hold, or, you know, in an unknown status, in a way that is dramatic for everyone you know this, this is very upsetting. I have a very good friend whose wife works for the VA, and she's, you know, been given offers of buyouts, offers of, you know, whatever, early retirement or whatever. She's not old. She's young. I mean, she has been at the VA for like, seven, eight years now, said she would like to retire there. She likes it. She likes a job, you know, as redeeming value to her. And she feels, and I think the family in general feels very terrorized right now. You know, four weeks ago, showing up from work every day, doing your job. You know, doing your job the best that you can, and all of a sudden today, now, you know, am I going to have a job tomorrow? Are we going to be able to pay the mortgage? Is the savings we have the kids for college, going to be able to survive this like, what? What is our future? And it's very scary for a lot of people. I want to start by acknowledging that and recognizing that and saying that I feel that like when I travel around and I talk to people, I get that, I hear it, I feel it. It's ubiquitous. It's all over the place. And you know, it's true in last week, I was in Kansas, it's true in a red state like Kansas as. As it is in other places. Maybe the the expression of it is different, but the unsettledness is similar. I want to say a special thing to our Canadian friends. It's astounding to me how many members. We're over 6000 members now at strong towns. Thank you to all of you who are members. A lot of those, a significant number of those are Canadians. And, you know, Norm, a good friend on our on our team, is Canadian. I tease him all the time about being Canadian, but, but I have a great deal of affection for our neighbors to the north, and I know that there's a lot of shade being thrown right now. There's a lot of back and forth. There's a lot of ugliness to our interactions, and I'm sorry for that. I feel bad about that, and I realized that, you know, for two countries, that should be not just the best of friends, but even more intimate, like, just like we should be sitting on each other's porch having a drink and chatting. I mean metaphorically. I mean that we should be the best of best friends to have any tension crop up, you know, needlessly. So is very concerning, and I understand that. And I'm going to extend this to people around the world, I'm continually amazed how you know this, this podcast coming out of a small town in central Minnesota