Additional information
by Grieg Pedersen (Author)
Award Finalist in the "Social Change" category of the 2017 Best Book Awards!What started as a guide to political mythology grew into a call for action as well. We're at a critical point in our history. If we keep on the way we are we may not survive it, but there is hope! Hope that our newest adult generation, the Millennials, can solve our problems by thinking about them so differently from their parents and grandparents that most of us can't even understand it. The author sees greatness in them.Politics is part mythology. Like the Emperor in the famous story, people and their cultures are vain. They like to keep an image of themselves that's better than they deserve, to cover their faults in glorious cloth. To do that, cultures tell stories. They tell them to their people, to each other, and to themselves. They lie to themselves about themselves, inventing the clothes they'd like to have and telling everyone they have them, hoping people won't see the blemishes underneath. Sometimes the stories become reality. Other times they're destructive or just deceptive. We'll strip some of those clothes from the Empire, one set at a time, and see how they're made. After all, who doesn't love a naked Emperor?We tell our kids not to give in to peer pressure, then do what we think our neighbors think we should do. Except it's not. What is it, really?American politics and culture have become so rancorous and uncivil that it's almost guaranteed that unpopular candidates will win and violence will follow. There's a way to fix that.Something you probably do every day is related to the biggest threat to long-term national security - and western civilization. A bunch of Quixotic idealists have the solution, but they won't tell it that way.Grieg presents a viewpoint forged by life in nine states, the edge of bankruptcy, homelessness, a six-figure income, a dot-com startup, and time served in the Marine Corps infantry. By deadly force situations and resigning the best job of his career in protest. A life that gave him a lot to think about: how things are, how things ought to be, and why people see things so strangely sometimes. Or maybe it's just him.
Author Biography
Grieg has lived in many places around the United States including Michigan, California, Illinois, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Washington, and traveled a little overseas. He's worked office, light industrial, construction, repair, management, and tech jobs. In the Marine Corps he graduated from Basic Training, Infantry Training School, and later, Officer Candidates' School. Along the way he learned a lot about himself and people in general. He's been an atheist, agnostic, pagan and born-again Christian, though not necessarily in that order. He calls himself fortunate to have had a direct part in saving four lives. He resigned in protest from the best job he ever had. It's been an exciting, if not lucrative life, but it's been lived with honor, integrity, and no small measure of fun. He's moved 13 times in years starting with "2" and says he has "more right to hate moving than anyone but refugees." He's lost more money on his "last" homes than he'd care to remember. His genuinely last move he hopes will be to a boat where he can stop wasting his life making a living and start doing things that really matter. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and daughter, and their black cat and overly friendly and excitable golden-shepherd-lab where he intends to create a foundation to promote peace through lead abatement, education, universal agency and other issues in this book.
