Rhoneisms

Current (and long ongoing) Thought Pattern: Generational wealth and inheritance thereof is not the money, property, etc. one receives. It is the values, morals, and stewardship principles built around these things and passed down through generations. As Seth Godin has written, it is the lesson of, “people like us do things like this.” This is not only the lesson that has the power to echo through the generations but the mindset that sustains whatever money, wealth, power, etc. that will be inherited.

I often think about the fact that if you really want to understand how this plays out in, say, the inhertance of someone like Donald Trump, one need look no further than his father, Fred Trump. All of what Donald inherited is right there in his father’s values, morals, beliefs, and stewardship principles. And, one could easily see the through line from there to Fred Trump’s parents as well. It is a perfect example of the generational wealth of “people like us do things like this.”

Thinking of generational wealth in this way, one can easily see that what has the most lasting inheritance value is the “people like us do things like this.” of how we live our lives and raise our children and this transcends money/property/power. We all have generational wealth to pass down no matter our station and such things can be as much (and sometimes more) a pre-determinant of future success as any money/property/power can on its own.

“I believe you can speak things into existence.”

— Jay-Z

Let me tell you when I knew George W. Bush had beaten Al Gore in the 2000 Presidential Election.

It wasn’t when The Supreme Court ruled in his favor demanding the recount in Florida to halt and the 61,000 or so votes that the vote tabulation machines had missed not be counted.

It was when, immediately following the election where the initial count gave Bush the win by 1,784 votes, Bush and his team started acting like winners. Bush and his team immediately formed a transition team, started floating the cabinet nominees, and – in general – despite the recounts and court challenges and uncertainty — acted with absolute certainty that they’d won.

Gore and his team did not do that. They wanted to take a wait-and-see approach — citing the sacred value of every citizen vote and the counting there of. They did not want to act in any way that would be perceived as presumptuous of the will of the people.

Bush and his team had no such grounding to stay them — like it or not, right or wrong. In the hardscrabble politics of the modern era, there is no time to wax and wane philosophically. They knew that. Gore did not. That’s when they won.

Today, there is one side that is acting as if their win is assured. They are speaking as if it’s already happened. They are figuring out who will fill the various vacant positions and how they will implement their plan.

The other side is having philosophical arguments over who their candidate should even be despite the primary voters having already decided that and delegates pledged to carry out their decision.

While we are still months away from election day, who do you think has won?