America Together in 2024: A Petition for an Independent President

By Kevin M Thelen

Are you tired of anger, fear, and blame dividing American politics? In America Together 2024, Kevin Thelen approaches the subjects of self-worth, culture, and politics from a place of experience and passion. Your perspectives will be challenged as visions for a post-2024 America expose the overlooked vulnerabilities that are eroding sec

• Language: English
• Publisher: America Together Media
• Release date: Jan 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9798218027155

Book preview

PREFACE

A Platform that Can Unite America

I’m Kevin Thelen, small business owner and financial advisor for the typical American family. You might be wondering why I’m trying to solve the most important political problems of our day. In many ways, I’m an average, unqualified dude. But over the last 15 years, I’ve been on a relentless search to solve a particular puzzle: Why do so many people struggle with money, regardless of how much they earn?

It is a well-researched and known issue in the personal finance industry, but one that’s hard to discuss. The premise goes something like this: The pressure to fit into a consumerist society has blinded us from our inner values, leaving many of us empty inside.

I like to fit in as well as anyone else, and not too many people want to hear about how they struggle in life, but that’s the hard truth of why we aren’t good with our money: We don’t know what we really want, so we just spend. Or, worse, we feel internal conflict about money eating away at our happiness.

American culture provides social rewards for consuming more. Many of us want to be cool, so we go after the big house, fancy cars, new clothes, and travel — but when or if we get them, we’re still unsatisfied. When does it become cool to have enough? When does it become cool to take control of our life, figure out what we want, and get it? When does it become cool to feel good inside?

I kept the ball rolling on these concepts until money became only a small part of the issue. Maybe it’s absurd, but changing the course of American history is the only answer I found reasonable.

Discussing politics with my financial clients is my therapy for relief from the anger and fear dividing our political culture. Clients teach me how similar we all are and how desperate we are to work together. No matter their political perspective, my clients are reasonable. Even if we are working from vastly different sources of information, there seems to be this ability to bridge the gap and maintain a productive conversation. Never once have I felt the need to argue about politics with a client.

All this got me thinking about why I struggle to find peace and unity with my own family and friends about politics. And I know I am not alone with this issue. Family after family shares stories with me about once-strong relationships divided by political perspective.

Then it clicked. In professional relationships, we have nothing to prove and everything to gain. We accept our smallness and place in the universe. We are there to learn from one another. It’s an opportunity to put our fragile egos to the side and experience growth. Rather than spend our time defending our view and sense of worth, we listen, ask, and understand. We keep ourselves busy seeking unity — which is precisely what we want from our politicians.

However, despite our strong desires for political unity, I believe passions rise even higher when we think of culture. The way other people act affects the thoughts and actions of future generations, and many of us have diverging visions for America and its future. But there is still so much we can agree on.

There is an ideal for our culture we can all look up to. Like any ideal, it may not be fully attainable, but it still provides principles for considering how to solve certain social problems.

I’m a bit shy talking about myself, but I want to provide you with a small window into my personal life that highlights the traumas and triumphs that brought me to write this book.

I was born on May 24, 1983, from an addicted biological mother who chose to give me up for adoption. Luckily, my adopted family is about as ideal as they come. I’m the middle of three boys. My parents are dedicated to all of us, and appreciation for them and my brothers is ever-present in my heart. However, the experience of adoption left me feeling unwanted and emotionally fragile.

What broadened my insecurity was my perceived intelligence. I spent most of my childhood feeling insufficient in school, largely because sitting at a chair and desk and listening to a talking head is not a good learning environment for me. To this day, sit me down at a chair and desk, and have a talking head try to teach me (which they do at business conferences), and I am a failed student. My mind is too creative, and my body needs an outlet for its energy. My energy and creative spirit need stimulation and nurturing, but I spent my childhood essentially feeling punished into a chair and expected to learn.

Feeling unwanted and behind as a child, I had to develop a strategy to feel wanted and ahead as an adult. A sense of unworthiness has been a part of my life since I can remember, and it was a feeling I wanted to take control of. In my mid-twenties, I found myself beginning to accumulate things, like a nice car and status in my business world, and it felt good because our culture rewards outside success. While I did not have the words for my feelings, I intuitively understood that things and my career were creating a busy distraction from what mattered most in my life. By my early thirties, I knew it was time to take a risk at living a better life.

After working in a