Don,
The book coming out about you this month is a book I, personally, can’t wait not to read.
The only review I needed to see about it was on a Peace Corps website; the excerpt and personal attack was so far beneath what I understand to be the standards and spirit of the Peace Corps that it does not merit further discussion.
The hypocrisy of the title is astonishing. To riff from the title, justice does have a price.
I think many people who have accused you, belittled, judged, misjudged, and mocked you, fail to remember that you are not the first person to use your money, your attorneys and your contacts to either find justice and participate in the political process, or protect yourself, your company or your interests. Your adversaries have done the same for their own positions.
I have wondered if some of those adversaries scapegoat you out of sheer envy of your success in some kind of attempt to make you the symbol of world pollution. In all of my life, I do not think I have known a person as grossly misunderstood as you are in the public imagination. This is not the person I know.
Because I got to know you on a personal level after the debate with Robert Kennedy Jr., in 2010, and you became a friend of the family, I have followed your writing and your ideas, and they have led to an evolution in my own. As an environmentalist who built flying squirrel boxes to protect an endangered species on one of my ski trails at Timberline Four Seasons Resort, and a financial contributor to environmental causes, I find myself both drawn to the practicality of your positions, and conflicted by them. Physics and logic, in which you are very conversant, is an area of great interest to me. I find you one of the few people I know able to engage in such high-level discussions and quickly distill the meanings and implications of ideas.
The views on your website Save the Country are compelling, as are your essays about mine safety. I, too, believe the country needs saving, not only the endangered species but the backbone of the country itself, morally and fiscally.
You are, I believe, doing a fine job of trying to explain what the problem is on a national level, and how it can be understood and addressed.
I believe that you did care passionately about the quality of the work you did and the environment in which you did it, inventing and innovating to improve safety. No one will convince me that greed motivates you; however, if any person in business is not interested in prevailing in competition, they won’t be in business for long.
It is amazing to me as an inventor myself that you never bothered to patent the safety clothing that is now an industry standard when you invented it. I guess you didn’t do it for the money.
For those less educated, less financially literate, and less well-traveled than yourself, it would behoove them to uncover explore and understand your views, as well as the advancing geopolitical realities in the world. I agree that we may not be able to predict the temperature of the world in 100 years, but most Americans can participate in learning about the world economy, achieve basic numerical literacy, and listened to well reasoned positions like your own. Otherwise, the future of America is unsettled, if not imperiled.
I thank you for encouraging me to provide my sons the opportunity to become fluent in Mandarin-they are getting there. Thank you also for introducing them to dirt racing.
I stand with you.
Regards,
Fred