FACING HARD TRUTHS

A California businessman looks at the current state of life and the law in the United States.

Former Diamond Resorts International CEO Cloobeck delivers several stark messages in his new book, perhaps none blunter than when he warns his readers about the very real potential for fundamental changes in the American world. “We shouldn’t presume we’re immune to tyranny,” he writes. “The United States may not be Russia, but in our country, too, people and institutions feel increasingly free to bend, break, or ignore the law when it serves their interests.” Surveying the current state of American society, Cloobeck sees ingrained patterns of deterioration in the fabric of social trust. “As a nation, we’ve lost sight of how to come together and solve problems for our collective benefit,” he warns. “Politics has become entertainment.” Cloobeck, who’s worked for many years in many levels of management, argues for reversing this creeping public cynicism, advocating a sense of “genuine service” in all levels of bureaucracy. Cloobeck’s toughened, real-world optimism, his essential humanism, is obvious and cheering throughout the text. He repeatedly reminds his readers that both research and anecdote attest to the fact that, apart from any reciprocation, helping others feels good. This kind of pragmatic altruism is central to his vision of civic renewal: “We must change how we see one another, learning to set aside the various categories of race, class, gender, ethnicity…so we can connect more simply and directly as people and fellow citizens,” he writes. “We must learn to trust again.” Readers will appreciate this ringing call to civil renewal, but since this book appears in a year when a convicted felon takes power after winning the popular vote while promising to rule as a dictator, those same readers may view books like this to be sadly anachronistic.

A provocative, stirring call for greater civility in the shadow of rising barbarism.