The TDG Comic Book

I’ve been working at my TDG project for 24 years. When I try to explain this new democracy to people, they are more likely to give me some advice on how to promote the TDG rather than read it for themselves. Most of that advice has proven to be not very useful.

For example, I got at least 10 recommendations to create a TDG slogan, something to get attention and entice people to read more about this new democracy.

Well, I have tried various slogans over the years. Here they are:

Governing ourselves in the 21st century

People, not political parties

A kinder, wiser democracy

Be the 1% to change the world

Democracy built by the people and for the people

Let’s put the Ford Model T to rest. It’s time to buy a modern Lincoln.

So for those of you who require a catchy slogan, I suggest that you pick the slogan you like best from the above list. Then go read my TDG book.

Another piece of advice has been to shorten my book. So, I wrote the TDG essay. My 55,000-word book has been reduced to a 4,500-word essay. This essay has been my most popular article on Medium. But not because of anything Medium did for me; I did a lot of cross-posting on other political articles to get this traffic. Fifty-seven people have commented on this article, and I have responded to each one.

The reason I had to respond so much is that most of their questions could have been answered if they had read the TDG book. The problem is that the condensed TDG essay leaves out many good explanations of how all the pieces of the TDG work together. Even to me, this essay, by itself, sounds like a fairy tale.

Some people have told me that I should write even an even shorter essay that explains the TDG. Well, that will sound even more like a fairy tale. It just becomes so much easier to criticize the TDG as an unworkable solution. I can’t see how a five-minute essay will do better than a 15-minute essay. Maybe the 15-minute essay was a mistake.

“You need to have videos,” said some of my advisors, “It’s the 21st century. Videos are where the attention goes.” So I made some videos. I explained the TDG with two different video sets. The first set introduced each chapter of the TDG book. Each video was about one minute long, starting with a well- written hook to get people into the chapter. The video automatically played when the chapter opened. The second set was me giving a lecture of each chapter, kind of verbally giving the same points as the written text. Kind of dry, but maybe some people prefer that way of learning than reading my book. But neither set of videos convinced website visitors to take the TDG more seriously.

Dave's Video Explaining the Structure of the TDG

My former website had about 140 webpages for the TDG. One day, I thought, “Each page could use a nice visual effect to break the monotony of text on the computer screen.” So, I asked my artist to put together a roll of 27 graphics to tell the TDG story. This roll was cycled five times as the reader went through my online book. In this way, the reader got a nice visual break, and that break provided a brief message about the TDG. This comic book also helped show how the various pieces of the TDG work together. The roll was both good foreshadowing and reinforcement.

Unlike my other marketing attempts, I don’t think the TDG Comic Book has been fully tested. It was hard to get visitors through 27 webpages to see full run of the comic book.

For those of you who like simple explanations, what do you think of this comic book?