Let’s play a game — name that GWB success!

So far I haven’t found anything that was truly a success that could be actually attributed to this administration.   Can you?  If so, let us know what it is!

The surge worked because the Sunni insurgents independently and voluntarily turned against Al Quaeda and the U.S. government merely armed and funded them. The initial “idea” or conversion originated from the Sunnis.  The sheik who helped us was eventually assassinated after we got out troops up to full surge strength.  So much for the surge.

The latest floods in the midwest and the fires in CA indicate the administration has not yet learned from Katrina. So much for FEMA.

Homeland Security has not made our homeland more secure.  Can anyone tell me a corresponding reaction to a change in the color-coded alert system?  What do I do differently if it is yellow?  Or orange?  Or red, God forbid?

Osama bin Laden has not yet been captured. Afghanistan is falling into chaos and the NATO commanders say they need about 10,000 more troops just to keep the situation where it is, not to succeed. So much for Afghanistan.

Iraq has already gone through ethnic cleansing, so the violence between Sunni and Shia is down, but Iran is playing a larger and larger role in this conflict. So much for Iraq.

Oil prices are skyrocketing because of the chaos in the Middle East caused by the Iraq War, the administration abandoning the Israeli-Palestinian peace process until just recently, and now the administration is beating the drum for war with Iran and letting the speculators artificially drive up the price of oil for profit’s sake. So much for Iraqi oil paying for the invasion and bringing down the price of oil for Americans.

Because of the mortgage and credit crisis, many homeowners are now homesless, many contruction workers and companies are out of business (lost jobs) and many municipalities are burdened with mowing down perfectly good housing in order to prevent squatters and criminals from taking over neighborhoods — all at the taxpayers’ expense. The mortgage crisis happened because most regulatory authority had been removed, so mortgage brokers and predatory lenders reaped havoc upon the housing industry. So much for regulatory management of lenders.

The stock market has lost significant volume in the last two years, particularly this year because all economic indicators are bad. So much for the economy.Inflation is at its worst since the Carter administration (post-VietNam War).  So much for currency management.

Because the economy is bad, companies are laying off workers and closing plants. We have lost jobs in the hundreds of thousands since the beginning of this year, and unemployment is at its highest rate since the Reagan administration. So much for good jobs with good wages.

The unfunded mandate of No Child Left Behind has left all children behind and the states holding the bag for all the costs of the mandatory, but unfunded requirements.  Teachers are teaching tests, not how to think creatively and scientifically, not teaching subjects.  They spend more hours filling out reports, which allots less time for actual teaching.  So much for improving our public education system.

Crime is up.  Teen pregnancy is up.  Drug use is up.  STDs are up.  Health care costs are up.  And no programs administered by or created by this administration have improved these situations.  So much for the health, safety and welfare of American citizens.

The Constitution of the United States has been compromised by corruption hidden with classifying all documents as secret, therefore not available for public examination, by the abuse of executive privilege to undermine Congrss’ oversight obligations, by politization of the Justice Department and use of the JD to prosecute political rivals, by illegal warrantless domestic surveillance of American citizens, by creating another court system for non-comtatant detainees that provides no human rights, due process or habeas corpus restrictions, by violating our own laws and the Geneva Accords with torture of prisoners either directly or through rendition, by presidential signing statements that declare the president and his administration are above the law, just to name a few.  So much for constitutionally protected rights and freedoms.  So much for the Constitution and accountability in government.

I guess I’d better stop here before I go postal! Can you add to the list or refute the ones I have already mentioned?

The atrocity of Gitmo — further horrors revealed.

The writ of habeas corpus (requiring a warrant to search or take someone into custody) and due process (fair trial) are two of the most basic of democratic (small ”d”) principles.  No government, no society can expect to last long that does not have as a fundamental principle of its existence to be justice.  Injustice breeds revolution and chaos.  With the exception of an orderly transfer of power, there is not much else that is as important to ensuring liberty as are these two principles. 

The president has been given the authority to have anyone in this country arrested without warrant and declared an enemy non-combatant.  Also, our military and the CIA can pretty much do the same in foreign countries.  Many of these enemy non-combatants are detainees at Gitmo (nickname for our detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba).  Most Americans don’t know that the Gitmo detainees are not allowed to even see or speak to an attorney until they sign a confession of guilt. The attorney is not allowed to know the charges until then, and he often is denied access to the information against his client under the guise of the excuse that it is classified information of a national security nature.

So, how do you defend a client that you can’t meet, that must sign a confession before they are even assigned an attorney, that the evidence against them is top secret and unavailable to you, that the administration does not even have to prove it had probable cause to arrest you in the first place?

This is what the detainees and their attorneys have been dealing with.

And before you make the assumption Bush’s administration wants you to make about these prisoners — that they’re all very bad characters, too dangerous to be released or tried through our normal court system — let me suggest a thought:

Anyone captured by our military (on or off American soil) and anyone on American soil can be arrested without a warrant or probable cause, declared an enemy non-combatant, tortured through rendition (secretly exporting them to a foreign intelligence agency that can legally torture in their country or to a CIA “warehouse” in a foreign country) or at Gitmo, stay in captivity indefinitely, never see a lawyer, never be told why they were detained — all without the administration even having to inform their families of where they are, what is happening to them, why they were detained or what their future holds. All under the cloak of secrecy. 

One of the reasons the administration chose to house these detainees at Gitmo is because they have total security and control over the facility.  No visitors, reporters or even attorneys or other court officials are allowed on the island without express written permission from the Gitmo commander.  And you can rest assured that whatever news reporters are shown is only what the administration wants them to see.

If you were an innocent man and this potentially happened to you, would you trust the Bush administration to give you a fair trial under these circumstances?

If it can happen to anyone else, it can happen to you. And there is no one holding the administration accountable for any of it. This is crimes against humanity, the likes of which we have supported the death penalty when it applied to Slobodan Milosevic, the former president (dictator) of Serbia and Yugoslavia, who was indicted for war crimes.

So, why isn’t Bush being indicted and arrested by the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity? He should be. As should Cheney and others who created, promoted and followed this policy.

The media protesteth too much.

An examplo of the media substituting OPINION for FACT.

Apparently, if ratings are an indication, it is more entertaining to see people shout each other down instead of have substantive discussions about issues.

I found it amusing during the campaign to hear the media complaing about every one else in the media discussing process instead of issues. While they themselves were discussing process instead of issues.

It takes no brains to report on the results of a poll. It takes hard work to research a story, interview experts and witnesses, vet those experts and witnesses, corroborate facts, etc. — all of which real ethnical journalism requires.

Much cheaper to conduct polls and argue opinions with factoids and propaganda.

Media creating news instead of reporting it.

Will someone tell me again why the rich rule the world we live in?

Because they can and because we let them.

The rich and powerful control all the information through the corporate-controlled media newsrooms that decide what it is that the American public needs to hear based on what benefits the parent corporation.

He who controls the information, controls destiny.

We saw how GWB and his administration manipulated the media to win elections, fraudulently invade a country, etc. It’s not an isolated event. GWB is not the only culprit.

Until we have campaign finance reform that can be enforced (no 527s), we will continue to have this problem.

Until we bust up the media monopolies (actually diversified conglomerates) so that news editors can publish the truth and stand behind their journalists without fear of losing their jobs, we will still continue to have this problem.

Until the American public demands from THEMSELVES a greater interest in hard news and not “news entertainment” and requires of THEMSELVES to become informed about what their government is doing and what the current issues are, we will continue to have this problem.

The sad fact is that we have the exact government that we have earned by not being informed, not demanding better from our media and our government and allowing ourselves to be apathetic or do nothing but sit around and complaing. We don’t even vote in respectable numbers.

 ——————–

An additional comment:

Why do we have so much trouble getting Congress to change this?

Politicians and the wealthy elite have learned to game the system as it is.  If they make the system work for everyone, instead of consolidating their power, they distribute it.  This means less power for them individually.  It’s part of my fixed-pie economic theory and applies exactly the same way to power as it does to the economy.

Trashing the Constitution: We now live in a dictatorship. Don’t believe me? Read on!

The subject came up about FISA, the Patriot Act, et al., provisions, so I scanned the Patriot Act again and War and Emergency Powers Act of 1933.

“Since the War and Emergency Powers Act, every president has usurped lawmaking powers. Their ‘laws’ are called Executive Orders (EOs). These EOs, not our Constitution, are what is governing America today.  The War and Emergency Powers Act enables … the president to declare a national emergency, and thereby become a dictator.” (Wiki)

http://epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.htmlLink

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind ex.php?title=State_of_national _emergency
Link

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive (National Security Presidential Directive/NSPD 51 and Homeland Security Presidential Directive/HSPD-20)” also known as the “National Continuity Policy” was signed May 9, 2007, by President George W. Bush. This assigns all power to the executive branch in the case of a catastrophic emergency.

Once a state of emergency is declared by Congress, the Constitution is effectively thrown out the window. The bad part is, we have state of emergency declarations that are still in effect from 1971. The state of emergency of 1933 was not ended by Congress until ~1952. As long as there is a state of emergency in effect, no matter how old, the president can effectively bypass Congress whenever he wants.   At the point the Congress issues a state of emergency, we effectively live in a dictatorship.

The best part is that, once the president had asserted this power, the Congress and the Judiciary are defunct and can no longer impeach him or declare the acts upon which his dictatorial power based unconstitutional.  This is an issue that we must address now in Congress.  Along with presidential signing statements and executive privilege, we have given GWB all the tools he needs to seize control of our government.

Then there’s Blackwater, a mercenary army that has thousands of troops serving in Iraq at twice the pay of our military and with legal immunity to commit murder and mayhem, accountable to no one.  This firm has now purchased FIGHTER JETS.  Why would a security firm need FIGHTER JETS?  Begs the question, does it not?

So, in short, Congress must move to rescind these acts and end the states of emergency that are currently in effect.  At this point, if the Congress tries to impach Bush or Cheney, all Bush has to do is declare that he is asserting his executive power under the state of emergency, and Congress, for all practical purposes, no longer exists.  Please DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR THIS.  Read it for yourself at the links provided above!

Lovely thought, no?

Desensitized Americans and the new threahhold of tolerance re: corruption in government.

I was a young adult when the Nixon administration committed all its crimes, including the cover up, and was finally sent packing. Over time, I have seen our country’s threshhold of tolerance pushed further and further away and our citizens become more desensitized to the corruption.

First, it was Nixon, then Reagan and the Iran-Contra (arms for hostages and the illegal war in Central America ran out of VP GHWB’s office), the the S&L debacle, then the HUD scandal, then GHWB first Gulf War, the GWB used the U.S. Supreme Court to steal a presidential election with little protest or violence, then the Iraq war and all the corruption that has gone on in this administration (which I won’t bother to detail, because most of you here already know about that).

With each succeeding administration, the bar was pushed a little further down the road of corruption. If GWB had tried to pull any of the stunts he pulled in the last eight years during the early 1970s (Watergate time period), there would have been blood in the streets. Impeachment would have been a sure thing, and he, Cheney, Rummy, Armitage, Libby, Gonzales, Rice, Wolfowitz, et al., would be in jail.

We have become desensitized to corruption in government. We have come to accept the power for power’s sake of illegal executive privilege and how it is used to put the president and his administration above the law. We have become numb to the use of signing statements that blatantly and boldly assert that the president does not consider himself subject to laws he himself signs.

What is it going to take before we have finally had enough? Niemöller’s poem about the Nazis says it all, doesn’t it?   When we start holding some people accountable for breaking the law and others not accountable, where do we draw the line? Who is in the privileged class?  The Constitution of the United States explicitly prohibits any class structure. There is no nobility or ruling class or privileged class in the eyes of the law.

The use of executive privilege by the Nixon administration to exempt his administration from being held accountable for their criminal activity has been pushed to new extremes by GWB.  Now, his administration simply ignores Congressional subpoenae — they don’t even bother to show up and say they are claiming executive privilege.  They simply ignore Congress as if it doesn’t exist.  Because, in their eyes, it might as well not exist.

The use of signing statements by GWB — over 750 times in less than 7 years — has overtly stated that Bush did not intend to obey or be held accountable for the law he just signed.

This is a dangerous precedent to set. It will only be pushed farter and farther. The next corrupt administration will aver that, since we have terrorism or some new national security crisis, they have a right to completely throw the Bill of Rights out for the sake of national security, which Continuity of Government essentially does, thanks to the War and Emergency Powers Act of 1933, the Patriot Act and other provisions that have made it possible for the President to assume complete dictatorial control in the even of a national emergency, which he himself can declare. Then they will enlist private companies toward this end who will expect to be exempt from prosecution– criminal or civil, , as Blackwater in Iraq  or just like the telecoms did in the instance of illegal warrantless wiretapping of American citizens.

The new FISA Amendment of 2008 granting retroactive telecom companies OR ANYONE ELSE from any criminal or civil punishment for disobeying the Fourth Amendment must be removed from FISA.  If they get away with it this time, next time will be even worse. 

 We cannot let this stand.

The Story about Gorillas

There were a half-dozen gorillas in a cage. The keeper put a ladder in the middle of the cage and hung a bunch of bananas from the ceiling right above the ladder.

The first gorilla approached the ladder, and when he touched it a strong stream of cold water hit all the gorillas. When he backed away from the ladder, the water stopped. This left the gorillas confused. What had they done wrong?

So, the next gorilla summoned up the courage to approach the ladder. The same result happened.

The next time a gorilla approached the ladder, the whole group attacked him.

One by one, the gorillas were replaced in the cage. As each new gorilla tried to get the bananas, the group attacked him.

Finally, all the original group of gorillas had been replaced. None of the gorillas remaining in the cage had any idea why the group attacked a new gorilla for approaching the ladder. None of them knew exactly why they participated in the attack.

The reason? It had always been that way.

As Rose Kennedy said, “God’s work must truly be our own.”

I have read many reports, articles and opinings about Katrina and Rita, and this has great personal meaning to me. I was born in New Orleans and most of my dad’s family still lives there. I live in Theodore, AL, in the delta south of Mobile, AL, near Bayou La Batre, which was also devastated by Katrina, and the year before that, Ivan.

The condemnation spewing out of conservative talking heads regarding the victims of Katrina and other natural disasters is an example of how ideology gets in the way of truth and compassion.  The idea that what happened in New Orleans, Mississippi and the affected areas of the Gulf Coast was somehow the fault of the people living there is ridiculous.

Many people who don’t live on a coastal area where hurricanes are common don’t realize the expense of fleeing from a hurricane. Not only do you have to spend the money and labor to board your house up and secure it (along with the rest of your extended family’s homes), unplugging computers and phones and appliance, and moving anything on the bottom floor that might flood up the stairs, including any furniture that you value.  You also have to stock up on food, water, ice and other supplies, including gasoline (which always raises about 50-100% in value right before and after a storm) to fuel both cars and electric generators (electricity and phone service were out for about six weeks after Hurricane Frederick and about four weeks for Ivan and Katrina). Businesses usually don’t open for a few days to several weeks or months (depends on the level of devastation), including gas stations — anything that requires power won’t work. So, no work, no gas, no take-out food, no grocery stores. Things like drinking water, ice, refrigeration and air conditioning are better than gold. Kitchens become little more than a coleman stove, fireplace or bonfire.  Most of the time the larger hurricanes occur during the hottest part of the summer when temperatures reach over 90 degrees.

If you evacuate (and living on the water, it is necessary), you have the expense of gasoline to get to and from wherever you’re going, hotel bills, restaurant and food, water, ice, Rx medicine, etc. One hurricane and evacuation can run up from $700 to $1000 dollars a pop per person. And in the last few years, our area has been hit with two or three major hurricanes a season (one season there was about one a week for a couple of months), so that’s about $3000 out of your regular income (if you get paid during the hurricane at all, some don’t). In fact, when Katrina came, I was tapped out of extra cash and stayed in our home on the water because I really didn’t have other options, including the fact that I couldn’t find a place to board my cats or to take them with me. Luckily, the flooding and water from the river only got to the bottom floor of our house.

While all this is going on, if you work, you have to prepare your office for the storm, including securing the computer equipment and files, not just boarding up the outside. The biggest problem with hurricanes is flooding, as most of the rest of America found out during Katrina. While all this is going on and until power has been restored to the office building, no one is able to work. That means those who work for an hourly wage often don’t get paid for several weeks, and when I say don’t get paid, I mean they can’t work to earn it and never get paid for the weeks their business is not operating. The bills, however, have no problem getting to your mailbox. Gasoline to run generators can cost over $1000 in a couple of weeks, and this just keeps the refrigerator and freezer going and maybe a fan or window-unit air conditioner.

Now, this is what it is like for someone of working age who has a decent job, at least some credit or savings, owns a car and has the ability to evacuate. What about those who are elderly, poor, unemployed, without transportation, who don’t have a credit card to use to make a hotel reservation or pay for an airline or bus ticket, and who can’t afford $1000 cash per person about three times a year? Keep in mind, if you don’t have a car, you have to arrange for transportation and have enough money for bus fare or plane fare, etc. And most transportation companies in the affected area are trying to get themselves and their families out, too. How do you do all of that on an unemployment check that pays $212/week at the most? Or on a welfare check? On a social security check? And what about your pets? These are all the problems that faced not just the poor, but working class and middle class Americans during Katrina and Rita. And, as we know now, the devastation was over a large area, so you had to evacuate a much further distance than is usual.

And that dpesn’t even begin to cover the expenses of cleaning up your yard and home, assuming you have a home to come home to.  In disasters like Katrina, people weren’t allowed to go to their homes for weeks.  Mold and mildew in carpet, furniture and drywall could have been avoided if they had been able to get back to their homes and begin taking all that stuff out immediately.  But the decision was made to lock the city down in order to prevent looting and crime, so the residents could not take care of their homes for almost a month.  By that time, mildew and mold had ruined everything inside the house.  Anything that might have been salvaged was beyond repair, increasing the cost of damages and repair.  Most homeowners had to gut the inside of their houses and treat the framing with mold and mildew killer before they could even begin to have their homes repaired.  My cousin waited six months for a FEMA trailer.  He applied the day after the storm.  The trailer was reclaimed by FEMA this past February, but he is still living with his Mom in her house because he couldn’t find construction companies to work on the house.  He waited six weeks to get an estimate for the repairs.  He finally got someone to fix the roof, and he is now doing most of the work himself rather than wait any longer.  But he still has to pay property taxes and mortgage payments on a house that is uninhabitable.  And he was an upper middle class homeowner with insurance, a decent income and good credit.

To hear conservatives talk about how it was the responsibility of the individuals to get themselves out is just nuts. How?  How were they supposed to do that?  Most bus lines weren’t running. Planes are grounded within a certain time before and after the storm. Taxis don’t keep operating up to the last minute, assuming you could afford one. Rental cars are depleted very quickly once a storm has been declared to be headed your way. And all of that requires money in advvance or a credit card with a decent credit limit. The poor people in the Ninth Ward did not have the resources to just pick up and drive away.  Nor did many middle class residents.  And many of them paid for their poverty and/or lack of options with their lives or the lives of family members, friends and neighbors.

There was an “enlightenment” experienced by many Americans after Katrina in that most realized their government was not capable of handling a large disaster. If we can’t handle a natural disaster that gives us days of warning, how in hell would we respond to coordinated multiple terrorist attacks affecting a large region or multiple metropolitan areas with no warning whatsoever? Katrina showed us just how unprepared and incomptent our government truly is.

But it also showed how the American people themselves without any government coordination will rise up and help their neighbors. People from my church and other churches in Mobile and the surrounding Gulf Coast area were in Bayou La Batre, Mississippi and New Orleans the minute after the storm armed with chainsaws, food, water, tents, clothes, medical supplies, etc. The government couldn’t get to those people (or so they said), but our church did. For months, we provided these services free of charge and without government compensation, using volunteers to clean up, rebuild, cook meals, provide transportation to stores, doctors, etc. No one was worried about what race or economic class or religion the folks they were helping were. The only criteria was based on the fact that they needed help. This is what America is truly about.

The conservative talking heads who were chastising those devastated by these hurricanes were quick to judge and offer hostile criticism, but you didn’t see them out in those communities in the heat and humidity and mosquitoes and devastation doing anything to help, did you?

The original meaning of the term “roadblock” — a lesson in racism and homegrown terrorism

When I was about four y/o, I was riding in a car with my grandparents and great-grandmother headed to my great-grandfather’s cabin on Fowl River (where our permanent home now stands).  It was about 1957.  My grandfather’s father (Big Daddy) lived on a piece of property on a fresh-water river with no air conditioning, no indoor bathroom (an honest-to-God outhouse) and an old-fashioned ice box that was actually cooled with a block of ice each day.  He cooked on a kerosene stove.  There was no electricity in the cabin at the time.  But I loved to go there because I could swim and play in the river with my grandfather’s dog, Betty.

On this particular trip, we were in my grandfather’s un-air-conditioned Ford with the windows down and Mother Nature providing what little air conditioning was available in the 90-degree heat of summer.  As we approached an intersection where we turned off to go to the river, I saw some men in white robes with white hoods standing in front of each lane of cars in every direction. 

Well, I may have been only four, but I knew it wasn’t Halloween, so they weren’t pretending they were Casper the Friendly Ghost.  Before I opened my mouth to ask the flood of questions that my grandmother knew would come, she pulled me close to her and “shshed” me.  I could immediately tell she was scared, as was my grandfather and great-grandmother.  When we got up to tthe front of the intersection, two men in white robes with their faces covered by hoods stood in front of the car at “attention” with rifles in their arms.  Another of the men in one of the white robes came up to the car and pushed a bucket at my grandfather saying, “Good morning, Louis.”  My grandfather reached in his pocket and pulled out some money and put it in the bucket.  The men moved aside and let us through the intersection.

Well, as you can well imagine, the minute we got through the intersection, all the adults breathed a sigh of relief, and I started in with a barage of questions.  My grandmother tried to explain that these were bad men.  I wanted to know why Pappaw gave them money, then.  My grandmother explained that they had to or the bad men would beat Pappaw up and might even hurt us.  Well, it didn’t make any sense to me at all.  I was only four.

Later, when I was a teenager and long after my great-grandfather had passed on, my grandfather and I were talking about the event.  I asked him, “Why did you give them money?  Why didn’t you just report them to the sheriff?”  My Pappaw smiled sadly and looked me in the eye and said, “Honey, that WAS the sheriff with the bucket in his hand.”

He then went on to explain how the KKK used fear and intimidattion to operate under the cloak of secrecy.  He was worried about his elderly father at the time.  With no running water, no telephone and very few permanent residents on the river, if Pappaw has pissed the KKK off, they might have taken it out on Big Daddy.  He said that the way it worked was, if you pissed the Klan off, they would burn a cross in your yard in the middle of the night as a warning.  You would wake up to the racket and see the burning cross in your yard with a bunch of trucks lined up, their bright lights on, just to let you know you had better “straighten up.”  If you really pissed them off or didn’t take the first warning, the would set your house of fire, he called it “burning you out.”  Since Big Daddy had no running water, just a hand pump, and there was no fire department to save his house, if they had set the house on fire, it would have burned to the ground and Big Daddy would have been unable to do anything about it.  Then, he said, if that didn’t straighten you up, they would set your house on fire, surround it, and shoot at you when you tried to escape.  I looked at him in horror.  It was hard for me to belief a sheriff would do that, and, for that matter, COULD do that and get away with it.

Later, my father, who was an educator and administrator, was involved in a disagreement with the School Board (his employer) about the Bertie Mae Davis case.  Ms. Davis had sued the public school system regarding segregation.  My father recommended to the board that they could either elect to meet the demands of the judge and have some control over how they integrated the school system, or they could waste money by fighting the court case, which they would eventually lose, then be forced into busing or other measures to achieve integration.  The board stubbornly refused to listen to my dad, who was absolutely right.  History proved him so.  At that time my family lived in a nice middle-class suburb in Mobile.  That night, we were awakened by a gun shot that went through our living room window.  When we woke up and my dad looked outside, there was a burning cross in our front yard.

Sure, we called the police, but, of course, the culprits were never found or arrested.

That is my experience with the KKK.  The moral of this story is that our homegrown terrorists operated in secrecy and were able to get away with it because they instilled fear in everyone — not just the black community.

——————–

I will leave you with a repost of one final thought: 

This is probably the most quoted statement attributed to Edmund Burke, but bears a striking resemblance to the narrated theme of Sergei Bondarchuk’s Soviet film version of Tolstoy’s book “War and Peace”, in which the narrator declares:

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

And in the words of MLK:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. “

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. “

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. “

Leading by example

Do not let what others say or do dictate how you respond. 

As my wise father said, it’s not what happens to you that counts, it’s what you DO ABOUT IT that counts.  If you find yourself reacting to someone else, you are not even in control of yourself, much less the conversation or the agenda.  And I will suggest — and this is coming from someone that is not a patient person and chaffes at looking before I leap (LOL) — somethime not doing anything is the best course. 

Or, as the Hippocratic oath states, “First, do no harm.”

Let’s lead by example. Focus on what we need to be doing, not on what others are doing. If you are focused on your own job, you get it done. If you let others divert your focus from what you are supposed to be doing yourself to start playing hall monitor and focusing on what the nebulous “they” are doing or want you to do in response, you are reacting to them, and they are controlling the (that means your and their) agenda.

The best way to handle this is to REMAIN FOCUSED on the job at hand and ignore those who want to distract you from getting your job done. If you do that, they will either fall in line or go away over time. So, the first criteria in determining what should we do is to ask ourselves, “How is what we’re doing now working for us?” And, if it is not working, then we know that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result, so doing the same thing again won’t change the result.  That means we have to do something different to get a different result.

Politics is the art of compromise.  That’s why politicians do not have the words “should” and “ought” in their vocabulary. Why? Because those words are judging words. They separate, they do not unify. They do not influence people, they invalidate people. When you use those words, you are talking AT someone, not talking TO them and certainly not talking WITH them, which is actually even better. Those words are not words of respect.

So, I am suggesting that we have to change our own attitudes and behavior and reactions to get a different result.  I’m not claiming that this will be any more successful, but at least IT WILL DO NO HARM.

Let’s choose to LEAD instead of REACT. You lead by example. Or, at least, good, successful leaders do.

If you want your life, your group or your actions to reflect a certain agenda, focus on what you’re doing, not on someone else. You cannot control the actions or others, the only thing any of us can control is ourselves — our own attitude and behavior. When we do that — it seems miraculous, but it happens often — we find that others will begin to respond differently.

Remember, positivity and negativity move in spirals.  You can be positive and set things in motion to spiral up in a positive direction, or you can be negative and watch things spiral down and out of control in a negative direction.  It becomes something of the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It is a question of personal choice — YOU DECIDE whether you want to LEAD by your own conscious choices and action or FOLLOW someone else’s lead by your own unthinking negative reactions. 

We are always responsible, even when we are not in control.  Because our being in control or not is a conscious choice.