Quiet before the crash
How collective silence lets extremists steer the agenda—until the reckoning hits us all at once.
The 50 wives and the high cost of silence in politics
In one of his most memorable logic stories, mathematician John Allen Paulos tells of a village where 50 wives are told that at least one husband is unfaithful. Each wife knows which men are cheating—except when it’s her own husband. The rule is harsh: If a wife discovers her husband has been unfaithful, she must kill him that day.
At first, no one does anything. But on Day 50, all 50 wives acted.
Why the delay?
Because even though everyone had partial knowledge, no one spoke up. Only when—via a statement from the queen—everyone could be sure that others saw the problem, too, did they act.
That story explains what’s happening in politics—locally, statewide, and nationally.
Most people suspect something’s wrong. We see the dysfunction, the division, the erosion of trust. But because no one around us seems outraged—or engaged—we tell ourselves it must not be that bad. We assume someone else will fix it.
So we sit out elections. We avoid school board meetings. We shrug at corruption, cruelty, or incompetence.
Meanwhile, the most extreme and divisive voices fill the silence. They organize, they show up, and they win—not because they represent most of us, but because the rest of us have gone quiet. And we all live with the consequences: higher stakes, uglier politics, fewer solutions.
The lesson from Paulos’s story is simple: Truth only changes things when it’s shared—and acted on. Democracy isn’t broken because the wrong people have power; it’s broken because too many of the right people have stopped participating.
We can’t afford to wait until Day 50. By then, the damage is done.
Redux: city council tenure (nearly) complete
May 6, my last day on the dais, if only briefly, as a council member. A friend asked Friday if I would consider running again after taking the mandatory year off.
“Nope!” I said, emphatically and rather loudly. “Whatever I didn’t accomplish in six years won’t get accomplished—not by me, anyway. It is time.”
Quote of the week
“Today, each party pretends to be dramatically different from the other regarding philosophic fundamentals. Actually, they offer no clear choice to voters who are wary of any American Gleichschaltung [totalistic government]. Both parties seem equally oblivious of the deep disharmony that inevitably accompanies attempts to harmonize all important sectors of civil society by melding political and cultural power.” —George F. Will
Video that caught my eye last week
One of the quotes I live by is “Living well is the best revenge.” I saw this quote for the first time in a picture frame on the wall of a friend’s home. That was 30 years ago. The quote shared in the video below was sent to my daughters, in hopes that it serves as a reminder of something I say to them a lot:
“Do not let anyone or anything cheat you of your blessings.”
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What I’m reading
Clear Thinking: Turning Ordinary Moments into Extraordinary Results | Shane Parrish
The fast-paced book never bogs down, even as it digs deep into the mechanics of choice.
It takes on a perennial struggle—turning knee-jerk reactions into deliberate moves—with the calm precision of an engineer and the humanity of a coach, blending neuroscience, behavioral economics, and lived examples.
Readers walk away knowing exactly why “ordinary moments” (the email you dash off, the expense you approve, the comment you fire back) shape extraordinary outcomes—and with mental models, guardrails, and micro-habits to keep emotion, ego, and inertia from hijacking those moments.
In a nutshell
Parrish reframes clear thinking as a skill you practice, not a trait you’re born with. Instead of peddling hacks, he shows how small buffers—pausing, naming the stakes, checking second-order effects—create compounding advantages over a lifetime. It’s less a how-to manual than a mindset shift: an invitation to slow the game down, see the field, and make choices today that future you will thank you for. Full review forthcoming.