Has the U.S. media lost sight of its role as a lamp of leadership?

High grade imbecility reigns at so many levels in the American political culture, including the megaphones controlled, manipulated and twisted away from
“all the news that’s fit to print” as the commitment of the New York Times has it.

What has replaced what some consider boring, dull, too detailed, and “weeds” of the nuances of policy and political theory is the most inflammatory, most incendiary, most exaggerated and most tabloid-like story, and the manner in which it is covered, specifically by focusing on the personalities, the pecadilloes, the sex-and-money stories that, like a blow-torch, ignite public attention, and drive advertisers to buy space and time. And when advertisers line up to buy time and space, you know that they already know that public will read/watch/gossip/and generate enhanced profits and dividends.

Tonight’s 9:00 p.m. announcement on all those networks trump calls “fake news” when they are reporting on his tweets, is a prototypical example. Like a reality television show, devoid of any interest in the need to balance the Supreme Court, and tone-deaf to the political “centre,” concentrating on one basic premise: “How will this announcement enhance my electoral prospects and thereby my access to bloated business and ego ‘revenue’ as well as an extended period in office for those purposes?”

Governance by “fiat” (executive order, tweet, press ‘scrum,’ towel-tosses, private dinners and chats with international thugs, appointments of extreme judges, tariffs and trade wars through executive orders, insults, late arrivals and early departures, not to mention the lies, fabrications, distortions and devious (and highly  secret) excising of environmental regulations. and access to affordable health care along with the injection of fiscal steroids into the pentagon…..these are hardly the workings of a civil government concerned about the public good.

The process by-passes the elected officials, unless and until they are needed to confirm another “federalist” judge, or to pass an unbalanced tax bill. And there is still a large “congregation” of Republican supporters (some 90% of the party) egging on this administration, in spite of the evidence staring them in the face. “Congregation” seems appropriate, given the religious fervor with which these people turn a blind eye to their own manipulation, in order to achieve an even more epic manipulation of the judicial system for the next half century.

Thousands of missing children, separated from their parent(s), long before their stories became public, millions ripped out of the Affordable  Care Act, a United Nations report on poverty in the U.S. that ranks that country as bad as that  the developing world, given the largest gap between rich and poor in the world in the  U.S., chaos, cruelty piled onto incompetence….and the “game” goes on as if there were only “good news” about making America  great again!

And the television media examines, parses, and obsesses over every last tweet, as if they are doing their job. Where are the editors, the assistant and deputy editors, some of them Pulitzer prize winners, permitting, or worse, encouraging this kind of micro-myopia. The news media has effectively created another swamp, in open support of the chief executive, whether or not the tweet is newsworthy or not. Some questions for the television media editors, and their supervisors:

·        Do you think, or believe that your news department is being played for a fool by this president?

·        Do you believe that each and every tweet leaping out of the Oval Office is as news worthy as every other tweet?

·        Do you coach your reporters not only to read each tweet, but also to make a serious judgement as to whether or not it merits repeating along with some discussion?

·        Are you under strict orders from your senior management to broadcast, and to interpret each and every tweet?

·        Would it not be feasible to assign a small number of Washington reporters to cover some international developments, with a view both to enhancing the world perspective of your audience and to demonstrate that good governance is developing in other capitals? And would such an approach inevitably result in lower ratings and advertising revenue?

·        Would it not be feasible to assign a larger number of reporters to the United Nations “beat” in order to demonstrate the dangers of the atrophy, added and abetted by the U.S. government of that agency?

·        Would it also not be a “forward” step to assign reporters to the EU, the World Bank, NATO, the World Health Organization, the International Labour Organization, the OECD, the Paris Climate Accord, not on as a “when news breaks” bases, but on a permanent basis?

·        Another “venue” and organization that needs more coverage is the Centre for Disease Control, and at least one reporter from each of the major networks would be able to shed light on the ravages of poverty/disease linked to falling out of the Affordable Care Act coverage!

·        How can your networks continue to “bash” the emasculated Republicans in Congress when you, too, have subscribed to the menu of trump koolaid? Spine, in the political sense of that piece of anatomy, has to be demonstrated by more than Mueller, Schiff and Warren and the media is poised to make a significant turn in the direction and the breadth of its coverage.

·        Leadership, especially so needed for the last two years, requires that this president not be permitted “star” status through your microphones, cameras, and time allotments. You might be surprised to learn just how thin and tattered is the American place in the world, through enhanced coverage of people like Macron, Merkel, May and even Trudeau. The American vacuum of consciousness about the rest of the world is begging to be eliminated. And your professional reporters, editors and management can remedy this shortfall.

“Fascism,” in a strict definition, national socialism as the Third Reich incarnated it in the 1930’s and 40’s, is a word now beginning to be applied to the trump administration, by people much smarter and more articulate and more experienced in the history of world governance than this scribe. A complete break-down of the social, political, economic and judicial structures, along with the evisceration of the State Department, the dismantling of the education and environmental protection departments, the gutting of the social network, and the triumph of the propaganda arm of the White House in debasing the Public Inquiry of Russian infiltration in the 2016 election….and yet the Republicans in Congress remain deaf, dumb, blind and "eunuched". Even worse, some like Nunes actively work illicitly on behalf of the White House having sold out their honour, dignity and all vestiges of ethical and moral convictions.

And the band of silence, co-dependence, empty talking points, highly groomed hairstyles on both men and women in Congress, blankets those might, heroic and
“crying-in-the-wilderness” voices of Warren, Sanders, Holder, Kasich, Harris and a few others, who valiantly try to break through the fog of this political war.

The casualties, especially truth, continue to mount. The families continue to be destroyed. The investigations and “infestations” continue. And the band plays on!

A nation’s head-piece filled with straw, a nation’s heart frozen in a cryogenic encasement, a nation’s elite locked behind both the gates of their communities and the drugs of their brains and a nation’s honour and reputation in tatters….,and the band plays on!

Amorphous, multi-discipline and intuitive... leadership needs a graduate curriculum free of corporate ideology and funding

A headline earlier today in a national daily read, “When is Canada going to start producing quarterbacks?”

Seems like a reasonable question when one surveys the history of the Canadian Football League, and the rarity of Canadian quarterbacks who achieved memorable success. Russ Jackson, leader of the Ottawa Roughriders, linked to running back Stewart and wide receiver, Tucker, inflicted considerable damage on opponents,  while garnering a Grey Cup for their home city.

But that is eons ago. And Russ Jackson was a rare breed. He was a positive, motivated, highly charged and seemingly fearless LEADER. It was a recognizable mix of quality traits even to those of us who knew him only from television appearances on and off the field. And then he entered one of the more “political” and neurotic professions as a high school principal. Would have paid dollars to be a part of his teaching staff, if only to watch the impact a leader can and likely did have on those who worked with him. Of course, I expect he would have had trouble with those “hanging on” until retirement, or clinging to the Long Term Disability clause, or letting their students sleep through classes. Likely he would have found the most expeditious path to “reform or remove”.

The Royal Military College, in Kingston (as noted in another piece in this space) does not hire teachers in “LEADERSHIP”. They have assigned that responsibility to “Psychology” faculty. Undoubtedly, the business schools consider leadership under the rubric of “management” as another example of failed perceptions of both responsibility and opportunity. The schools graduating “administrators” have perhaps a single course in leadership, buried along with statistics, foundations and comparative education. And the instructors in those courses, while perhaps intelligent and adequate lecturers, value their academic discipline ahead of the more prosaic requirements of leadership.

On the other end of the vocational continuum, most cultures celebrate their poets, artists and musicians, for the expressions of their “art” without considering them as cultural leaders, except in “expanding and enhancing the ‘vision’ of their audience.

To be sure there are now a plethora of “executive” leadership seminars, workshops and retreats. Even athletic coaching is now a respected curriculum in some colleges and universities, and athletic coaching is endemic to leadership.

Underlying all of these splashes of colour on the canvas of leadership is the fundamental question, “Can leadership be taught?” (Or is it more likely to be “caught” like the kind of intuition displayed by people like Wayne Gretzky, in anticipating and “knowing” where the puck is “going to be” and not merely being mesmerized by where “it is”.

Clearly, creativity in whatever sphere of human endeavour, is displayed both by the highly formally educated, and also by those without so much as an hour of formal instruction and discipline. Ingenuity, like its sister creativity, too is highly resistant to the experimental regimes of formal science, with their null hypotheses, and their disproval of such premises. Replicable, measureable, document-‘able’ and reducible to empirical evidence, as in gravity, the speed of light, the actions and reactions of atoms, neurons, neutrons and ions, creativity is not. At least so far.

History books, including military histories are replete with both strategies and tactic that exhibit and exemplify ingenuous moves by highly “intuitive” generals, in their determination to “outwit” their opponents. And the “education” of those men and women has obviously included “adaptability” and flexibility, and ‘thinking outside the box,” the tattered epithet that seems to define the stereotype of  the entrepreneur, the idol of the current capitalist-profit-driven enmeshment of the cultural mind-set.

Everyone seems to hire or develop, train or incentivize that kind of thinking, on behalf of the corporate monsters who have the bankrolls that sustain the employment picture. In government bureaucracies, such corporate motivation seems frightening, if not reason for dishonourable discharge.

Faculties of education, a potential source of leadership research and the literature that would undergird its developing body of work, seem more interested in the pragmatics of learning theory, theories of discipline and eco-influences on schools and on curriculum, as well as the multiple potentials for technology in “teaching and learning. Comparative studies of men and women, too, often fall under the “psychology” department.

So where does leadership belong? Under which traditional academic discipline, or perhaps does it finally merit its own department?

Doctors “running hospitals” for example, is an oxymoron. They have no previous training except the occasional coffee-break conversation with their predecessor

s in the department to which they have just been appointed to “lead”. Lawyers, too, as leaders, are empty of a kind of training and rigour in leadership, based as their profession is on case law, precedent and creative end-runs around the procedures of the system.

 Accountants, too, have a high alacrity and precision with the patterns of figures, accounts, balances and the “story” that data can and might tell. Examining evidence, agreeably is one of the basic requirements of all leadership roles. In all of the quasi-military institutions spawned, unfortunately, by our dedication to our historical obsession with those processes we have designed and implemented, the hierarchical model of leadership, (and the exercise of power) rests on the shoulders of a single person, surrounded by a circle of acolytes, and occasionally rotating teams.

Occasionally, an orchestra or music ensemble, will choose to abandon the “conductor” role, and rotate those duties among the members of the group, as an exercise in both cracking the precedent, and likely also in saving the budget.

Not focusing on the importance of leadership, (as we do with parenting, a financial intelligence in families, and in “public health” and relationships between men and women, except in feminism studies) we avoid the requirement and necessity of having to debate the significant questions. We did this for decades around the emergence of psychology, as opposed to psychiatry) until the research and the journals that documented the evidence gleaned from “scientific research”.

The study of literature, possibly, has some of the benchmarks that might apply to the formal discipline of leadership, given the basic foundational requirements of a language structure, a world-view, an application of all of the creative human faculties and skills of generating something able to be perceived by those seeking to explore its intricacies. And, the cries of “Not on your life!” can be heard shooting up through the chimneys emerging from the English Departments in all of the universities around the world, at the thought of that “burden” added to an already overloaded faculty and faculty chair.

And yet, dear reader, please stay with me!

The arguments for such a proposal are numerous and significant.

Let’s start with training and disciplined discernment of the respective differences between appearances and reality, something seemingly undervalued in a culture that worships (literally and symbolically) empirical data. The whole truth and reality in any situation is hardly captured by the empirical data. And any culture, institution, family or person who operates exclusively (or overtly) on “what others see”(or hear, or touch, or smell) is relinquishing a large degree of both responsibility and the sharing of the power that comes from a consciousness of the invisible, the motivating and contextual factors, including the relational factors that impede, impact, influence and too often implode a situation.

Reading as an exercise in discernment, not in working out specific answers to specific questions, is a highly demanding as well as developing trait for all who aspire to leadership. And then discussing, and researching both the biographies and the literary criticisms of the piece of literature, only deepens the desire and the capacity to “interpret” both the available physical evidence, as well as the less visual or auditory clues. The exercise also increasingly relies on the experience of searching for and finding patterns, both as archetypes and as literary structure. Such a exercise, shared through seminars, papers, debates and lectures only enlightens the complexity of human life, through the various models that have spilled from the most creative imaginations in recorded history.

These skills and this experience, while conducive to a full consciousness of the depth, the resilience, the idiosyncrasies, the complex relations (both personal and institutional) from various locations and period of both history and meta-history.  And as one corporate leader has already expressed, “Give me a graduate in Literature who knows how to search and to find patterns in the writing, and I will teach him/her all he needs to know about other matters important to the corporation.”*

Conflict resolution, endemic to any family or organization, and certainly evident on every football field and basketball court, (not between teams, but within teams) is a core requirement for all leaders, and while psychology offers some clues, literature includes the whole human being, as the starting point, not parsed into specific behaviours, actions, or convictions. All of these comprise the starting point of any effective perspective for a conflict mediator, arbitrator, and counsellor.

A similar observation could be applied also to many of the other “leadership” positions, including the quarterback on a professional football team. Yet, that would happen only in a culture that regarded leadership as a sine qua non of the successful operation of each and all of its many organizations and institutions.

And, in Canada specifically, we have the same attitude to “leadership” as we do to the study of the “future”…..not worthy of our time, commitment, money and human resources. So, it is no surprise that we are not producing quarterbacks, nor parliamentary leaders, nor ecclesial leaders, nor bank nor engineering nor hospital, nor educational leaders….who have the courage, the conviction, the creativity and the vision to develop to the full both the personnel in their circle nor the institution’s full capacity to grow.

And so, we “settle” for slipping downward to the bottom, comfortable in the maxim that change is too threatening to contemplate, or too costly to envision, or too complicated to institute. And we permit leaders to pad both the resumes and their investment accounts for moves like mergers, (with others’ money) and for slogans that burp out of their advertising agencies, and for cost-cutting measures that would make the Anderson Consulting Company (famous for cutting thousands of jobs in the 1990’s) blush….and we “think” or act as if we are witnessing leadership, when we are witnessing a parade of self-serving narcissistic ambitious, hard-working and earth-gazing drones, dressed in Saville Row suits, driving BMW’s and amassing fortunes that permit them then to “give back” through massive tax deductions to a society starved, raped and devastated by their “honourable” and highly valued “goal-setting.”

*The study of literature, as the single best path to leadership is not exclusive. Anthropology, for example, offers many similar experiences, based on physical “digs” of former cultures, with a panoramic perspective on that culture. While many math grads make less than exemplary leaders, Russ Jackson, legitimately honoured as the best football quarterback in Canadian football history, graduated in 1958 from McMaster University in Mathematics. Too bad he could not inaugurate a leadership training institution, and bring both his person and his history to serve the glaring needs of our nation and especially its young men and women.

July 3, 2018 squeezed between July 1 (Canada Day) and July 4 (U.S. Independence Day)

July 3, 2018, appears to this scribe as a Canadian married to a dual-citizen, (American-Canadian) sitting between July 1 and July 4, the two ‘national holidays’ that open the summer vacation so different from all the previous July 3's in this lifetime.

To be sure, there have been trade spats between the U.S. and Canada before; this one, however, seems., like everything else about this U.S. presidential term, to be driven by a personal animus. Most time in our shared history, policy differences have not been rooted in personality politics. Kennedy and Diefenbaker, back in the 1960’s had little regard for each other, the former considering the latter a trifle pedantic, aloof and rigid. (Doubtless, the latter considered the American president somewhat daunting, in his youth, Cicero-like rhetoric, and public adulation.) However, the public “justification” being deployed by the American administration, national security, is more than a little offensive, insulting and downright unjustifiable.

And then there is the latest report of some twelve letters from the Oval Office to Canada and her NATO partners, publicly scorning each for not paying their fair share towards the defence of NATO partners. While it is true that we have been laggard in reaching the 2.9% of GDP target advocated as long ago as Lester Pearson’s term as Prime Minister, public wrist-slapping, (as would characterize an obsessively controlling parent disciplining a six-year-old) does not past muster as reasonable “diplomacy”.

And as with most files, this president either conflates diplomacy and critical parenting, does not know the difference, or simply considers himself above such nuanced distinctions. Just as in his argument about tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum, (Canada is NOT a national security threat to the U.S.) so too, critical parenting is NOT diplomacy; and it will not generate a positive response from any of the targeted countries whose NATO ante trump wants enlarged.

Blurring the lines between the fact of North Korea’s continuing and perhaps expanded enrichment of her nuclear arsenal (as reported by U.S. intelligence officials) and trump’s trumpeting North Korea’s commitment to de-nuclearization, while on the surface, may be seen to be merely a different “perspective” on the same evidence, is, conversely, quite the opposite. The facts as uncovered by American officials simply defy the “make-up” the trump pastes over the truth.

Another distortion from the White House is the exaggerated yelling over a mere 2% of the trade with Canada, (supply management), an issue the Canadian government had already agreed to modify in the middle of the NAFTA negotiations. Tariffs of 25% on steel imports and 10% on aluminum imports seems hardly like a “proportional” response.

It is, indeed, the completely disproportionate, disillusioned, distorted and extra-reality response the trump brings to every table where he sits  (and all of it for the express purpose of gilding HIS lily) that so shatters the trust of all others at whatever table. So, on this July 3, 2018, Canadians read stories from legitimate news sources that our cell phones might actually be scrutinized by American border agents, in the unlikely case that we might have read something of the world’s criticism of the trump administration. (How would we possibly have access to world opinion without reading harsh, devastating and truthful criticism of this American administration?)

Conflating and generalizing about the quality of immigrants, asylum-seekers, refugees, colouring them all as potential “threats” to “law and order” is just another of the scripts being trumpeted by this occupant of the Oval Office, arrogantly, and unethically, and immorally and insecurely joining the fear-mongering of other right-wing wall-proponents. And this comes at a time when military conflict, global trade, global warming and exacerbated economic distress threaten poor and voiceless people on every continent. Rather than build walls, and thumb our nose and our compassion at these frightened individuals and families, we could be building creative coalitions to being to address what is surely going to be a wave of tsunamis of people “seeking higher ground” in both the literal and the metaphoric sense of that phrase.

Refusing to face the basic facts, and then distorting those facts into a thalidomide-distortion of those facts, in order to justify an unjustifiable personal agenda is not in the interest of the country he has been charged with leading, nor in the interest of the wider global community, whose support and collaboration all nations need now and into the foreseeable future to cope with the “monsters” already in the headlights.

American isolation, based on a distorted perception of the reality on the ground, will give way, inevitably, to the creeping incursion of both Russia and China into the cracks trump is generating with his sledge-hammer rhetoric, radioactive proposals and egomaniacal cult-building. Failing to respect and honour the institutions of democracy at home is a sure step to enhancing the replacement of fundamentally democratic governance abroad. Championing tyrants, dictators, military parades, life-long presidencies, one-sided and unbalanced foreign policy, the exaggerated emboldening of the U.S. military (at the draining expense of social programs like education, health care and poverty reduction) puts the president on his own gated island, and puts the rest of the world on edge.

Canadians too, on this July 3, are wondering what meaning and import our “friendly neighbour”, undefended border, open trade and reciprocal and respectful relationship with the behemoth to the south of the last century will become. And we are wondering in a spirit of anxiety, despair, and less hope and optimism than at any time since the second war.

We are sad; we are worried; and we are appalled. Yet, we are also more proud and confident than at any time in our history. The “old” Canada, in the stereotypical version held by millions of Americans, decent, quiet, meek, malleable, and somewhat immature and “pinko” (as Nixon described Trudeau, “that pinko Commie bastard”) is no longer appropriate. And trump is locked into his version of that stereotype…at his own and our peril.

Canada is mature, intelligent, clear-headed and somewhat better at debate and discussion than at making big decisions, preferring an evolutionary and moderate pace to change (with a few notable exceptions, like the FLQ, back in the 1970’s and 80’s).

We have a history of multiple protracted national investigative commissions whose recommendations mostly gather dust in the National Archives. And yet, somehow we manage to confront issues when the need is deemed significant, urgent and immediate. We are diffident in our public debate, honourable in our treatment of our political foes, while in private, we hold often contemptuous views of various leaders and policies.

As a middle-sized nation, (now boasting a population of some 37 million), locked between the Arctic and American elephants, we no longer get a cold when the U.S. sneezes, as was once the case. Nor do we consider hard power, the military and the penal system to be our primary adjudication processes, at home or around the world. And while we have a legacy of indecent treatment of our indigenous peoples, we have finally awakened to our responsibility and have begun to atone. Hockey, our national sport, (not lacrosse) demonstrates many of our national attributes, attitudes and values: discipline, persistence, a little “chippy” and highly energetic…

So, please do not take your northern neighbour for granted, as many of your more affluent citizens have done for decades. Smaller is not less than equal…and you are going to learn the full meaning of that soon if you have not already!

Is the deck stacked in favour of the bullies?

Bombast, braggadocio, revenge, pay-backs…these are arrows in the quiver of the most desperate. They are like the cheap thrill that comes from a roller-coaster ride, or the thrill of a military recruit shooting his first human victim….titillating, scintillating, perhaps even orgasmic. And the machines that produce thrills for profit have grown, as has the market for these candy-floss gulps of entertainment candy.

Serious thought, mediation, reconciliation, even arbitration, debate and argument….those are the arrows of the so-called ‘effete’ and the ‘intellectuals’ and the prima donna’s and the arrogant and the privileged…at least so the argument goes among the trumpcult.

Inverse snobbery, deeply embedded in the psyche of the self-appointed victims in any situation, will generate violence that exceeds by at least half, the original injustice, even if there were one. And joining the gang of self-declared victims only exacerbates the imbalance of revenge over injustice.

The current Oval Office occupant is the high priest of the victim-cult, personalized and magnetized into a self-serving and dangerous killing machine that appears on the surface to be unarmed. Although he has not fired a specific weapon, (missiles in Syria, and war games off Korea excepted) his verbal arsenal is stocked with vituperative language, and an even more venomous attitude that finds enemies over and under every rock and every perceived rock….for the thrill of the attack.

Pay-back, revenge, vituperation, decimation and destruction, all of is justified in the mind of the alleged victim (like education, everyone has at some time been a victim and momentarily wanted revenge, calling it justice). And the capacity to round up victims through social media, and through a deliberately designed campaign to elicit their wrath, (recall the epithet, there is nothing more dangerous that a woman wronged!) is not merely immoral, unjust and lethal. It is also, like a sudden epidemic, out of control, because the forces that normally hold this “beast” in check, simply do not choose to engage in a mud-bath that will destroy everyone and everything, like a scorched earth policy in war.

Those who value, even champion a post-secondary education that includes rubbing shoulders (and minds) with others who have proven themselves as scholars, as well as the challenge of reading, interpreting, debating and discerning nuances of meaning in multiple situations, irrespective of the academic discipline, simply are not reducible to pre-pubescent slanderous name-calling bullying that, like rotten festering garbage casts a pall over the public discourse initiated, enhanced, and emboldened by leaders like trump and the anti-human, anti-immigrant, anti-science, climate deniers, and corporate profiteers who refuse to put their energies into collaborative and creative solutions to what are the world’s shared and highly serious problems.

Rather than ameliorate conflict, they exacerbate it!

Rather than take steps to enhance encourage and empower the reduction of carbon emissions, they exacerbate them! (And the U.S. withdraws from the Paris Accord)

Rather than use formal institutions for resolving trade tensions, they berate their enemies, and thereby exacerbate the trade imbalances, and enhance the culture of conflict!

Rather than offer support and hope, work with dignity to those working two or three jobs, (if they have even one) they use them as pawns in their rhetorical war on fake enemies.

Rather than engage in a full discussion of the facts of any and all public issues, they manufacture their own version, leaving the truth as exhaust from their toxic tail-pipes, to model a modus operandi for all youth to emulate of bullying, revenge, vituperation and pay-back.

Rather than seeking to enhance and ennoble and enable international institutions, they berate, deride, dismiss and eventually withdraw from those very institutions. (Yesterday reports indicate the U.S. intends to withdraw from the World Trade Organization, in which forum, the U.S, has ‘won’ 85% of all disputes submitted to it.)

Rather than seeking to reduce the arms race, the U.S. proudly and unashamedly boasts of monstrous sales to various countries including Saudi Arabia.

Rather than seeking to ennoble and enhance the provision of human rights across the world, the U.S. formally withdraws from the United Nations Human Rights Commission.

Rather than extending a helping hand to desperate refugees and asylum-seekers, too many countries are erecting mental walls against “enemy aliens” whose lives they would never choose to share or even be able to withstand.

Rather than seeking common ground on gun control legislation, the American administration “sleeps” with the NRA, and the gun manufacturing lobby, as one of, if not the most important allies.

We are facing not only the horrendous, heinous and debilitating policies of right-wing administrations, but we also face the spectre that the professional, educated, reasonable, collaborative and creative responses to these policies, attitudes, beliefs and vindictive actions will fail to generate the kind of media attention, and thereby public support that can or will “quarantine” and actually remove such “leaders”…who mock everything we used to consider responsible, mature, measured and tolerant.

Does anyone really think or believe that marching in the streets will change the power imbalance? The “thugs” are laughing and chortling about all the protests, they actually claim to have engineered with their venom.

This is not merely a test of wills; it is an existential test of the survival of the institutions of governance that have been created over the last two or three hundred years, not to mention the survival of the planet’s ecosystem. And, the current and future prospects of the conflict between the vindictive bullies and their self-declared and defined effete enemies is analogous to a one-armed quadriplegic entering the boxing ring to fight Muhammad Ali. In the first place, the sense of outrage and passion among the ‘mob’ far outweighs the passion and commitment of the other side; the audience among the public is far more ready and receptive for the message of the ‘mob’ than the audience for the other side; the content of those seeking vengeance is far more inflammatory and incendiary, raising unleashed emotions of anger, contempt and mob-like crowds from history who have yelled various taunts like Crucify Him, Lock her up…and the like. The rhetorical devices, repetition, lies, personal attacks, distortions, and “poor-me” epithets and slogans simply will never be resorted to by the trump opponents. After all, what is civilization comprised of, if not moderation, professional respect, logic, facts, rhetorical devices like balanced and appropriate comparisons, analogies and rational and researched projections?

Imagine for a moment a movie scene in which a clergy confronts an armed mob boss. There will be no contest and we would likely never even find the body of the clergy, nor evidence to convict the mob boss. That’s the kind of imbalance the public institutions face in the United States and other countries “run” (certainly not governed) by thugs.

Add to the rhetorical devices and the range of argument and respect open to both sides, the overwhelming evidence that the media simply self-indulges in violent conflict, even of the verbal kind. They bank on increased ratings and inflated advertising sales when the media turns white hot.

Pinning public hope on Robert Mueller’s report, while one of the few remaining life-lines left to bring this gang to “heel” is clearly not a sure thing, especially with the over-arching threat, “I can pardon myself from anything!” (And the corollary, if I can pardon myself, then I can certainly pardon anyone else I deem appropriate!)

Joined at the proverbial hip, to this political behemoth is a sycophant and servile Republican majority in both houses of Congress and a an underpinning  determination, shared by both Congress and the White House, to appoint right-wing justices to all open courts, including now especially another Supreme Court Justice, using the publicly and proudly  disclosed litmus-test of a guarantee from any nominee to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Like the unarmed, innocent, professional and respectful* (even of enemies) staff at the Annapolis Gazette yesterday, the public faces a similar, angry, incensed, and both armed and ready to shoot opponent in the current administration. And after all the dust has settled, where will the arbiters of stability, moderation, reason, science, respect for all, come from, given a complete and final take-over by the current mob?

*The paper refused to press formal charges in 2013, against yesterday’s shooter, according to reports today, when threatening messages appeared on social media targeting the paper and its personnel.

"Turtling" is a choice...and it is NOT a responsible one!

It was an ironic, sardonic joke back in the 70’s when a co-ed, co-editor of a high school year book, shouted in the room designated for that purpose, “I am surrounded by incompetence!” Liz pasted an ear-to-ear grin on her face, as the others joined in her humour.

A half-century later, it seems, no matter whom you listen to, or where you go, employers are having a very difficult time finding “competence” and commitment and dependability, at least with new hires.

A significant segment of a generation of young people, between 25 and 40 have erupted into the workforce, on a “me first” graduation diploma. Whether that stems from sycophantic parenting, or even more cheer-leading schooling, or a culture so obsessed with new purchases or some combination of these and other factors, there is a sense of “entitlement” or perhaps a sense of desperation….Have we looked carefully at the kind of world we have painted, and built, for this next generation or two?

Defining epithets include:

·        everyone for himself,

·        everyone in competition with friends and neighbours, crass materialism as the new brass ring for which everyone is clambering and

·        entrepreneurialism as the halo that crowns every “successful” career.

The business model, the corporate, the private sector model, in which profits and investment dividends rule, has razed the perceived value of the public good in what is effectively a scorched-earth approach, virtually decimating a shared and balanced economy in which both public and private sectors collaborate. Removing the notion of “public good” from the consciousness of the culture has also removed it from the mind-set of each student, parent, teacher and certainly all employers.

That is until we see an ambulance go past, carrying another potentially dying person; or until we visit something called a library, or a hockey arena (paid for with public funds) or a public hospital or a civic park along a waterfront….when suddenly, what happens to public dollars and public consciousness takes on a very different meaning. Then it suddenly becomes an integral and highly welcome component in all of our lives. Yet, it is primarily old folks who pay attention to such public aardvarks. And, more and more private money is being solicited and more and creative measures to “honour” benefactors to universities and hospitals…as governments fail to collect those revenues to which they are entitled and also fail to monitor the mountains of laundered money that is sloshing around in the underground economy.

(Just this week, CBC reported that Canada Revenue faces a shortfall of $44 BILLION in unpaid taxes, taxes which both individuals and corporations have already agreed they owe. Unfortunately, under the Harper government, staffing was cut, leaving the CRA understaffed, and these taxes uncollected. Imagine what $44 billion would do to the national deficit and debt. Also this week, CBC reported that the B.C. government has known since 2011 of the millions of dollars of laundered money that flows in and through the casinos in that province, contributing significantly to the opioid crisis in that province.)

Call all of this mere “water-cooler” talk, without any chance of change in the near or medium-term future. And wonder, just how do these public omissions of responsibility contribute to the “me-first” attitude of many?

Negligence, insouciance, detachment, “living in a bubble”….these are all attitudes that prevail in the culture….Failures to bring “truth to power,” for example, has resulted in such a massive and tragic debacle in the payment of federal publicly servants, under the Phoenix pay system. The Auditor General has laid much of the responsibility for this failure, seriously impacting the private lives of thousands, through no pay, inaccurate pay and over-pay for more than two years, at the feet of civil servants who knew the system would not work, but refused to bring that “truth” to their superiors. The cost to human lives and families is exorbitant; and the cost to the public purse is also unconscionable given the conscious awareness that could and should have prevented the debacle.

So, there is not only a “me-first” rush to the front of the line, but also a “turtling” from speaking up and risking exposure as a whistle-blower if the public/private power structure needs correction, or even prevention of its own self-sabotage. “None of my business” has become another mantra of this culture, in which if and when there happens to be an incipient conflict in the workplace, everyone near runs from whichever “person” seems to be the most worthy target of the venom of avoidance.

 You see, bullying is and must not be restricted to “overt” negative actions like threatening, exposure on social media or actual physical or verbal confrontation; alienation, ostracizing and dismissal also qualifies as bullying, only in these cases, it has complete impunity for its perpetrator. “That’s their business,” is the escape valve excuse most people hide behind, and so management, especially middle management, effectively eunuchs itself into the servitude of silence, withdrawal and escapism. By that “turtling” middle managers avoid the risk of making a bad judgement, a judgement that might be questioned. And of course, that fosters and enables the heinous and totally ineffectual “zero tolerance” policy so preferred by perfectionist leaders, seeking to burnish their public image, in the short term, without taking full account of the long-term implications of the policy. It cannot, must not work, and it eviscerates the need for human judgement on the part of those in leadership positions of responsibility and accountability.

“We” are telling our young people things that, if we were fully confronted with ourselves, we would be ashamed, embarrassed and depressed to listen to. It used to be that forbidden topics were “religion and party politics.” Now, forbidden topics are anything that smacks of “whistle-blowing” or addressing authentic issues in ways that bring people to a local table to talk frankly, openly and courageously to resolve them. 

Now, too often it seems we turn those functions over to an “outside” consulting company, under the hypocritical banner of “objectivity” and distance and detachment. Whatever decision is rendered by such a “referee” does not cling to his or her neck, for the simple reason that they do not “live and work” in the workplace. Complaints about the decision, usually without an appeal process or if there is one it is hardly worth the time and effort to mount, rumble around that proverbial water cooler, and then die. Meanwhile, the “management class” has pre-emptively eliminated any stain on their resume and reputation…when it may well have been their failure to mediate that in part caused the issue in the first place.

So this “CYA” and “don’t get me involved” and “that’s none of my business” and “that’s YOUR business” and “I’m not having anything to do with this raging bullying conflict that has been going on for decades”….kind of attitude prevails. And young people are neither stupid nor uninformed. They know that gutlessness prevails among people with management titles; so too do the very people in those offices!

And that model, the self-eunuched leader (how is that for an oxymoron?), less visible on the public radar screen, “instructs” young people. Young people do see athletic and television “stars” as role models in some cases; however, they also see what passes as “acceptable” and normative at the grass roots wherever they live. And what they are witnessing is a deplorable and avoidable vacuum of leadership.

Former Vermont Governor, Dr. Howard Dean, used to complain that the Democratic Party has “lost its spine” in failing to mount effective opposition to Republican chicanery and obstructionism in Congress. The “disease” is not only evident among his party; it is also fully evident in most bureaucracies, sycophancies really, in servitude to their current “head” on the surface and in the short term, and long-term, their own careers and reputations.

And, in that scenario, competence is hardly high on the list of “values” preferred in public leaders: so long as aspirants for public office serve a menu of “fast-food” policies that serve the immediate narcissistic needs of the voter, they are likely to be successful: witness the last presidential election in the United States. If I were a young university graduate entering the workforce soon, I would be appalled at the “games people play” to seek and secure favour in order to get that first job and later to move up the ladder. It is not that any of the “players” (leaders or hires) are unconscious about how they are operating; in fact they know full well that they are primarily, if not exclusively, tendering to their own career, professional, resume padding needs, and the needs of the organization, (their most direct public) matter not a wit…leaving those matters to the “imbeciles” in the corner offices.

Top and bottom, it seems we have a public culture that is imploding in short-term vision, self-serving, and insouciant and quite literally irresponsible about the long-term implications of our attitudes, perceptions and that oxymoron, “values”.

We are debasing our planet, including our rivers, our land, and our “public air. And we are also demonstrating a degree of contempt for all things living, as we are in a headlong, headstrong race to the “black-Friday WalMart Sale” to the bottom, every day in every way.

Sad! And unlikely to change any time soon.

man at a bar

looking down the bar

                                                 at the slumped man….

                         at the hollow sockets clinging

                                               to the eyes

         you can feel the fatigue

                                                that lingers over each breath,

                           word,

                                       glance,

                                                     smile

if you listen carefully you can hear it

                                           gently pleading for calm …for

     a little more energy …and a little more

                                                                               hope

it is not depression that slouches on the face of

                                                             this relic

                       just a deep consciousness

                                                                 that after three-quarters

of a century

                   spring has morphed from

                                             new lily-of-the-valley and iris and peonies

                            to endless sunsets,  protracted autumn

                                           and the inevitable anticipation of

  the winter of everafter

                            there is something perplexingly proud

                                                      in the miles of wrinkles

mapping his face

                                                  for having trekked those

                 mountains, valleys, rivers, trails and bridges

                                         alone

and with the occasional companion

                                                   who really “got”

                       who he is ….what he values….

                                                          what he dreams

               and what he fears….

                                             the piano-man

still plays long after the crowd has

                                     departed

                                                             clinging to one last riff

       knowing the silence

                                         will fill the room and both of their hearts

           and all of the why’s

                                     and the when’s and the how’s

                        will settle in the

sawdust on the floor
                              waiting for tomorrow’s dancers

              eagerly anticipating

                                                his next latest melody….

 and a new tune rises

                                from the keyboard