LAS VEGAS - Feb. 22, 2020 - On January 2018, Jose Franco feared self-complacency was no longer an option and started collecting signatures to run for US President in 2020. Regardless of ethnicity, how you see yourself is a choice. Jose opted to be proactive (even when scared) and never complained. "Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear" proclaimed Jose Franco during our phone interview. Mr Franco has a degree in business and usually can be found teaching himself economics, history, philosophy, baseball, openness and transparency. Openness begins with the ability to self-critique and reflect upon things central to one's own beliefs, thoughts, actions, behavior, and results.
Mr Franco wants readers to ask themselves - how can we avoid strategies of divide and conquer, ignore distracting social media messages and instead create a way for us to work with all citizens and government in a format that eliminates these ingrained fears by understanding supply, demand and economic paradoxes? Science and many of the human sciences are beautifully based on evidence based, fact-yielding work. The problem is that in many of the most important aspects of existence, there simply are no 'facts' available. The big questions that bedevil us, individually and collectively, have no facts to appeal to. – How should we live? – What is the right economic system to institute? – What sort of relationships should we have? – What choices should we make? – Who are we and what do we want and need? In the face of such dilemmas, we may well long for facts – by which we really mean, answers we can be assured will be indisputably correct. But we invariably face ambiguity and, whatever answers we formulate, a degree of loss, and the risk of blindness and error. It is these elements which those of us who avoid addressing these questions rationally, deep down, especially intolerant towards and upset about. Their hatred of bias reflects a longing for a world without a need for hard choices and the sacrifice these necessarily entail. We may well long to 'stick to facts,' but we eventually have to try to lead our lives according to values, which are inherently much more contentious and complicated structures. The most unfortunate thing regarding nihilism is not the loss of the ability to believe, but the inability to see the beauty, opportunities and possibilities of things and events occurring around us daily. As a result, the surest way we corrupt a people and encourage splitting, discourage unity through community building and self reliance is to instruct citizens to only hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently. (shame on CNN and Fox News) An elite is needed not to govern, but to enable people to govern themselves since no problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MclwJUuqL30
Frederick Hegel is someone all Latinos voting for US President in 2020 should know. Hegel wrote some very long and very famous books, among them the Phenomenology Of The Human Spirit, The Science Of Logic and Elements Of The Philosophy Of Right. Unfortunately, Hegel's work like Donald Trump's rhetoric is confusing and complicated instead of clear and direct. Hegel fell in love with and overly used incomprehensible prose. This has made philosophy much weaker to readers than it should be and much harder to identify the top three lessons we can learn from Fredrick Hegel. Firstly, important parts of ourselves could be found in history. During Hegel's time, a standard European way at looking at the past was to consider it as primitive and to feel proud how much progress has been made to get to the modern age. Hegel argued every era could be looked at as a depository of certain kinds of wisdom. This means we need to go back in time to rescue things which have gone missing. For example, we might need to mine the history of ancient Greece to fully grasp the idea what community can be - today, we can learn from the successful application of Epicurean philosophy which enable and promote happiness in democratic societies despite communism being a corrupt unsuccessful attempt at Epicureanism. The middle ages can teach us about the role of honor, despite this period appalling attitudes towards children or the rights of women. We have to rescue from the past ideas to compensate for the blind spots of the present since progress is never linear. Secondly, learn from ideas you dislike. We should listen carefully to our intellectual enemies since bits of the truth are always getting scattered to unappealing and peculiar places and we must put in the work to make sense of them. For example, nationalism has had many terrible manifestations (white supremacy, the forgotten generation, racist scapegoating). Why do you think that is? Could it be the need for people to feel proud from where they come from and anchor their identity beyond the ego? Thirdly, Progress is messy. We make progress by going from one extreme to another as we seek to compensate for previous mistakes. Hegel believed it takes three moves before the right balance of the issue could be found, a process Hegel named "The Dialectic".
Lastly, despite our fears we have to advocate for ourselves, do more - talk less, since talk is cheap. We have to stop searching for new masters and instead master ourselves by telling ourselves proactive stories as we face reality head on. Don't expect perfection in government with regards to politics. Don't presume rationality will triumph. The wise does everything to assume that error and folly will try to have their way and create structures to contain them. The wise never expects that one person can be everything to them or fix their problems with an eloquent speech. Indeed, as long as there is language it will confuse us, we will face the temptation to misunderstand. And there is no vantage point outside it. There is no escape from language-games then, but we can forge a kind of freedom from within them. We might first need to 'be stupid' or embrace our insignificance if we are to see this. By we, I'm referring to all Americans regardless of race. As the demographic composition of our American melting pot churns out it's next iteration, Latinos will also be self reflecting in order for each of us to make our own way in the world. We should rejoice as we visualize the rebirth of the American people. Unfortunately, not all Americans will ever see things the same way, these well intended souls for reasons they can only explain, discourage this harmonious view and here is where the danger lies.
As a Latino and person of color, Jose respectfully disagreed with comments in a recent NY Times article, "Michael Bloomberg Actively Prepares to Enter the 2020 Presidential Race." @Bill's (African American) argument is noble, yet naively altruistic and ignores Mike Bloomberg's apology. Mr Franco would like nothing more than to see all people be racially empathetic. Unfortunately, we are far away from adopting a process that creates an inner peace for all. Noble sentiments at times create the biggest pitfalls and challenges to a more peaceful existence. If things are to continually improve, we must take a multi-disciplinary approach to how we think. Sharing abstract beliefs is only possible if we believe in the rule of law promoting individual liberty. The greatest danger is having good laws administered badly. Our goal shouldn't be perfection, we should strive to do the greatest good through the most pardonable inconveniences.
On November 24, 2019, Jose Franco stopped collecting signatures to run for President and now support Mike Bloomberg for President in 2020. On the whole, outside his free e-book's success (How To Get Better At Things You Don't Think You're Bad At By 2020), Jose Franco's political activism work was largely ignored, but offers us a warning about the failures of political integrity without adequate funding. Jose believes Bloomberg's self funded campaign will be viewed favorably and virtuous by future Latino generations.
On February 21, 2020 Jose Franco appeared on a Fox News panel (Blacks & Latinos) supporting Mike Bloomberg
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6134800463001#sp=show-clips
Contact
Jose Franco
