Of Bullies, Demagogues and Dictators

I've been trying to put my finger on what it is that creeps me out about Donald Trump (other than his support for what will surely be called Trumpcare, abortion and a xenophobic immigration program). The fact that Trump bankrupted four companies, conned little old ladies out of their savings, and skinned his partners on deal after deal is part, but not all of it.

The fact that he's a silver-spoon trust baby who portrays himself as a "self-made" billionaire isn't it either. I could have made a billion if I'd started out with 300 million dollars for crying out loud. He's a bragger. So, what politician isn't? Then in one of those worthless debates with a gang of Trump acolytes that I keep getting myself into arguments with, I saw something familiar. It's Trumps followers, then, that clued me in to the psychological dynamic that I believe is going on between Trumps and the sycophantic minions that surround him. I remember that same dynamic well from junior high school.

Junior high, as most of you will remember, is an extremely tribal place usually dominated by the strongest members of the group. Bullies in other words. Bullies achieve power by picking out small skinny, nerdy kids to knock around in front of the others to establish their dominance. Then, once properly impressed with the bully's dominance, other weaker members of the group, desiring personal safety, a sense of belonging, and power, are drawn to the bully as a protector and for his or her approval. The bully appeals to his toadies' fear, paranoia and distrust of anyone different from themselves, as well as to their desire to share in his power, if only at second hand.

Voila'. You have outlined the same technique as used by every tin pot dictator and megalomaniac in human history. And it works like a charm. Those who use this technique are dangerous. Our current president has used this technique throughout what one television reporter accidentally called Obama's "reign". But Obama uses the technique ineffectively. Instead of attacking the weakest members of the culture, he has gone after some of the strongest: rock-ribbed conservatives. He has drawn acolytes, but these acolytes are the most malleable. They were already prepared to follow him when he appeared. They were looking for a liberal messiah and they shared his ideology. He's had less success at charming the demographic in the middle that form the swing vote. As his policies fail, he has not been able to bully the undecideds into submission.

Now let's look at "The Donald".  He starts out with rhetoric attacking the weakest members of society - people that his target audience do not like; namely illegal immigrants. Trump claims he will run them all out of the country and punish Mexico for send them and make them build a wall to keep all those nasty Mexicans in. Then he goes after members they are frightened of. He tells us he will stop ANY Syrian refugees from coming into the country, appealing to the xenophobia of his potential pool of followers. Notice he doesn't "plan" to address immigration, he WILL stop it. Period. Very authoritative.

Next he makes all kinds of other vague promises without any real concrete plans for fulfilling them. He brags about himself proclaiming himself the deal-maker, military genius and financial wizard (no matter how many people have suffered financial ruin as he accumulated his own wealth). He says he can be trusted because he is rich without explaining exactly how his being responsible to no one but himself should be in any way reassuring. He also never mentions that, although he's never taken bribes, not being a politician and all, he certainly has handed out enough "donations" to them (mostly the Democrat ones). Someone explain to me how putting the briber in charge of things improves the situation.

Like the Wizard of Oz's fiery avatar, Trump says, "Pay no attention to that stuff behind the curtain. I am Trump, the great and powerful."  And like the playground bully's band of toadies, the Trump acolytes defend him blindly against the terrible fearful menace of Hillary Clinton (who attended his wedding and whose previous presidential campaign and whose foundation he supported with huge donations).

Politically, Trump is simply a more successful political playground bully. Watch his response to anyone who challenges him. When Ben Carson surpassed him in numbers, he joined Democrats in assassinating Ben's character. No matter that it was entirely bullshit, it hurt him and restored Trump to the top. He's gone after every opponent of his systematically with accusations, innuendo and character assassination. His toadies approved of it all.

I don't mean to demean people who like Trump. I really don't. It's easy to fall in with the group. Everybody wants to belong to the herd. It's very human. We feel safe being like everyone else. America was originally settled by rugged individualists, but over time, the old latent gene pool began to assert itself and people who wish less for freedom and independence and more for a sense of belonging, safety and power became more numerous.  These kinds of people are now a very substantial portion of the American population - a voting block of some consequence.

This particular cadre of individuals - people of the herd as I think of them - have long formed a dominant percentage of the population of the Old World. It's why the Old World is in the shape it's in and why dictators and demagogues do so well in the Old World and in former Old World colonies which grew for economic reasons rather than because colonists came to them seeking freedom.

At long last the herd has grown to a size and is doing what herds do best - following. All they need is the latest bull to step up and tell them which way to go. They are not interested in principled leaders who think things through, who exercise caution, wisdom and kindness. What they want is the biggest loudest bull they can get; someone who will promise them whatever it is they want. Trump appeals to the angry radical right and to so-called "moderates and independents" who are basically people who have no opinion of their own but stand around waiting to sway in whichever direction the latest and loudest bull says to go.

America is about to fall or at the very least to divide in a very violent and ugly way. It is sad to see.

Just one man's opinion,

Tom King
© 2016

A Merrier World Indeed.....

Is anyone else besides me a sickened by the wave of conspiracy nuts exploiting yesterday's tragedy; swarming on the Internet like so many locusts descending on the fields of Egypt.

In the wake of things like the Boston Marathon Bombing, after all the hysteria, name-calling, blaming and inflammatory rhetoric from both sides, it remains, int the end, when the dust settles, for men and women of good will and good sense to pick up the pieces and sort out the mess. How much better would it be for such people to take the reins in the beginning.  Listen to one another, work together and find what common ground there is and then search for workable solutions to real problems instead of building monuments to our own egos on top of every crisis and tragedy that scrolls across our TV screens.

Aren't we better than that - at least most of us.  As Tolkien observed in The Hobbit. “There is more in you of good than you know, child of the kindly West. Some courage and some wisdom, blended in measure. If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world indeed."

These are the kind of people we should pay attention to and elect as our leaders, not that bunch of prancing egotists who post rivers of bile on the World Wide Web and who put themselves up for public office.

Perhaps all political negotiations should be potluck dinners, after which there should be singing. It might help attract a better sort of candidate.

I'm just saying.

Tom King (c) 2013

Feminizing the Politburo - Obama Throws Like a Girl

This country's leadership has suffered an acute lack of testosterone in recent years. Congress has had it for far longer than the administration. The wimp factor is more understandable in Congress and probably a lot less harmful than it is in the presidency.   Leadership, no matter what gender the person in the main office is a masculine role.  There's a reason for that. Men tend to be goal directed problem solvers.Women tend to be conflict managers and nest builders.

A feminized approach to governance is necessarily a socialist approach.  Everything must be fair and by fair she means equal. No one must upset the social order.  There is a reason it was "Mother" Russia during the days of the Soviet Union.

The last high testosterone  president we had was Ronald Reagan and he scared the bejeebers out of the sissy pants diplomats in the Congress and even in his own administration.

Don't get me wrong - this is not some misogynist rant. Margaret Thatcher, who passed away today, had more leadership testosterone in her little finger than President Obama has in his whole cabinet. Women have a place in leadership.  Golda Meier was a tremendous leader.  There are plenty of other examples out there, but the point I want to make is that the style of leadership involved in mothering is different from that involved in fathering and not good will come of putting a mother of whichever sex in the big chair. There is a reason God set up families with male leadership.  The system works well. Dad's do well at driving the family agenda forward.  Mom does an amazing job of keeping the peace and soothing hurts and fixing boo-boo's. We need a government that leads like a father and governs like a mother.  Instead we have devolved into a nation that is led by Mom and governed by a cranky, paternalistic bureaucracy.

There is a reason God gave us fathers and mothers. The job of running a family, and - I maintain, a nation - requires both types of approaches.  They laughed at George Bush when he referred to himself as "The Decider", but he hit the nail on the head regarding what a president's job is. It is a matter of setting goals and achieving them. Such a task often requires upsetting people and even making them angry on occasion along the way to getting things accomplished that need accomplished. 

Lady Thatcher once said something to the effect that a nation that governs by consensus has no leadership.

The feminized diplomat worries about building consensus - making things fair and equal and preventing conflict.  When a hormonal North Korean Munchkin starts threatening to start a nuclear war, diplomats start waving their hands and running around squealing and in the process, may start pressing buttons in a panic.

Right now we need a steely-eyed, iron-nerved Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher.  Captain Prissy-Pants is just not to be trusted in situations where he doesn't have a teleprompter to instruct him. If the Munchkin does set off a nuke, the current bunch of little girls that make up our nation's leadership is far more likely to do something incredibly stupid in a panic. 

Where's a "Decider" when we need one.

Tom King -  (c) 2013

Where are the Gideons when we need them.....

(c) 2013 by Tom King

 The Republicans have forgotten how to speak clearly and how to tell stories that clarify issues.  Check out this short piece by Ronald Reagan more than a half century ago.  And he was still a Democrat at the time!!!

"A doctor would be reluctant to say this. Well, like you, I am only a patient, so I can say it in his behalf. The doctor begins to lose freedoms; it's like telling a lie, and one leads to another. First you decide that the doctor can have so many patients. They are equally divided among the various doctors by the government. But then the doctors aren't equally divided geographically, so a doctor decides he wants to practice in one town and the government has to say to him you can't live in that town, they already have enough doctors. You have to go some place else. And from here it is only a short step to dictating where he will go.

This is a freedom that I wonder whether any of us have the right to take from any human being. All of us can see what happens once you establish the precedent that the government can determine a man's working place and his working methods, determine his employment. From here it is a short step to all the rest of socialism, to determining his pay and pretty soon your children won't decide when they're in school where they will go or what they will do for a living. They will wait for the government to tell them where they will go to work and what they will do.

What can we do about this? Well, you and I can do a great deal. We can write to our congressmen and our senators. We can say right now that we want no further encroachment on these individual liberties and freedoms. And at the moment, the key issue is, we do not want socialized medicine. " 

- Ronald Reagan

I have to wonder whether, in these troubled times, perhaps we have been denied a Gideon, a champion to stand in the breach and to defend our liberties and our the nation, because we've wasted so many of the ones we've already been sent. A little prayer from all of us about now would not go amiss I'm thinking.

Just one man's opinion...

Tom King

The Problem Is, Isolationists Don't Understand Bullies!

 I watched an interview with President Bush last night.  He was unapologetic for taking us into Afghanistan and Iraq.  God bless him.  He took the responsibility for the decision, a rare thing for a politician to do.  Lately he's been taking the responsibility for all President Obama's screwups too.  I admire him for his patience in not speaking out in his own defense.  GW is a class act. He understands the proper balance between the Golden Rule and a leader's charge to protect his people from thugs and bullies.

I was reminded of his policy of preemptive military action, when a reader of my last weblog took me to task for defending the principle on which Bush based his military action.  I've written extensively about how the "fortress defense" as proposed by both Liberals and Libertarians, is absolutely wrong and won't get us anything but overrun in the end.  I believe you have to go after your enemies when they go after you.  You don't respond to military style attacks (machine guns, bombs, missiles and projectile aircraft) by sending police to arrest people.  It's stupid and doesn't work.

My friend responded saying, "Probably would not be a good idea to try that tactic on the playground..... "striking your potential enemies". Good way to start a problem.... and would def. not solve the problem. I think the counsel given in the NT might be better."

That all sounds reasonable on the face of it, but I can tell you from hard experience, the playground analogy doesn't work.  In fact, it proves my very point.  

On every peaceful playground there is one superpower - the teacher. To keep peace on the playground the teacher intervenes right now or else bullies and thugs reign supreme and the little ones are persecuted unmercifully.  When I was a teacher, I had a peaceful playground because I practiced President Bush's doctrine of strategic response.  I watched the kids closely and I picked off the bullies before they could get started. Having been on the receiving end of bullying, I recognized it when I saw it happening and took immediate preemptive action.  At the first indication that one of my young hoodlums was going to torment a smaller kid, I caught 'em up by the scruff of the neck and set them down the playground wall.  They soon learned to play nice or they wouldn't be allowed to play at all.

I grew up in a school with an unsupervised playground. The teachers often stayed inside to grade papers for the first 15 to 20 minutes of recess.  It made for a miserable time of it for the smaller kids.  I didn't bother anybody (according to my friend's and the New Testament's suggestions).  I was skinny and small and made good grades.  I might as well have worn a target on my chest.  The local bully boys tormented me until I finally either got tired or (in one case) bloodied a nose.  I finally decided I didn't mind getting beat up for standing up to them  If I stood up to them, my beating usually was spectacular enough to draw the attention of a teacher and they'd get in trouble and have to miss a few recesses which made for a few days of precious peace.  Since it discouraged them from messing with me, I figured being on the receiving end of a little pain was worth it.  I went home bruised and bloodied many a day, but the local thugs finally got tired of getting a few bruises of their own and winding up in detention for their trouble.  The teachers knew I was a peaceful kid and was being bullied, so I never got in trouble for defending myself.  The bullying kept up till eighth grade, after which, they finally left me alone for the most part.  That was partially because I grew big enough that they thought I might have become a threat to their own noses.  

Ironically, the reader who made the playground analogy, actually went to my elementary and high school and knew the bullies I was talking about. Somehow, though, he missed the lesson I learned all too well.  Bullies do not forgo bullying just because you leave them alone or try to be nice to them. They are predators and only understand a rapid and forceful response - usually by whoever is the local superpower.

There was one guy in particular that one afternoon took a basketball away from a bunch of the smaller guys that were playing at the other end of the basketball court.  Without the ball, we couldn't play any more.  He did it for no other reason than to spoil our fun. Mr. Pauly, our PE coach and principal hadn't come out onto the court for PE yet, so we were unsupervised and at the mercy of the school bullies.

I had got tired of their thuggery and went after the ball. My nemesis snatched it back.  I got nose to nose with the guy and explained rather heatedly that he had no right to take our basketball from us. I told him exactly what I thought of him.

He hit me square in the face with a hard right.  I put my hand to my face. It came away with a considerable amount of fresh blood.  I glared at him eye to eye, then turned and walked away just as Mr. Pauly came out of the building.  He saw my face and asked why I was bleeding.  I mumbled something about a basketball and went inside to clean up.

For some reason this particular guy didn't bother me much any more after I stood up to him and took a punch in the face.  I think he was ashamed of himself for attacking me.  He was also scared of the consequences if I told the principal who had hit me.

Like Pres. Obama suggested the U.S. ought to do, I "absorbed the attack".  It probably protected the younger and smaller kids from bullying at least for that day.  After he hit me, he threw the ball back to the others and Mr. Pauly watched them like a hawk.  The principal knew what had happened even without proof and all the playground thugs knew what would happened if they gave him any excuse to punish one of them.

You see I had this guy's fate in my hands.  If I'd told Mr. Pauly, he'd have been in far more trouble than he wanted to be.  He was already in trouble most of the time anyway.

Mr. Pauly, as principal of the school, was the superpower you see.  This young man knew the principal would take action if there was any more nonsense - severe and stern action that would make this boy very uncomfortable indeed.  They still used paddles in those days and Mr. P had a powerful arm.

Roosevelt had it right.  "Speak softly and carry a big stick!"  If the local bully boys know you'll use that stick, it makes for a much more peaceful world for you and everyone about you.

People who don't understand that may simply have had such really good teachers that the bullies were kept in line.  They might have been too young to understand why their world's were so peaceful and sheltered when they were children, so they take it for granted that being peaceful insures others will be peaceful to you.

Either that OR they were running with the bullies themselves and still, as grown adults, don't recognize the harm and misery they inflicted on their classmates with their thuggery.

I am a devout practitioner of the Golden Rule.  I have often "absorbed attacks" rather than retaliating because it was the right thing to do.  I get that whole New Testament advice and apply it on a personal level.

However, the role of a government, a teacher or other type of leadership is to protect its charges from those who would, without just cause, attack them.  God, Himself, called upon kings and rulers to defend his people.  That's what soldiers do and it is an honorable profession if you take up the sword reluctantly and only to defend those weaker than yourself. It's not a bad job for those who are strong and tempted to be bullies themselves - a way to exorcise those demons by protecting rather than attacking.

Or as King Arthur said, "Not 'Might is right,'  but 'Might FOR right!".

That's my opinion whether you like it or not.

Tom King - Tyler, TX

Is Sarah Palin a "Mere" Cheerleader

One of my Facebook sparring partners recently dissed Sarah Palin as a mere cheerleader and unfit to be president. I immediately jumped back to the early 80's in my mind, remembering the incessant criticism of our president by both the left and the "intellectual" right.  Ronald Reagan was also criticized as a "mere" cheerleader if you'll remember.  They said he was an "empty suit", unfit for the intellectual challenges of being president.  My buddy, Dennis had the same criticism of Palin. He wants somebody "smart" to be president.

Well, you know what, I think we could use a cheerleader in the oval office.  How long has it been since we had someone in there who believes in the basis goodness of the American people AND believes in getting the government out of their way is the road to prosperity. I am sick to death of all the so-called "smart" people up in Washington, diddling with the economy, the health care system and our liberties in a futile attempt to plan all our lives out for us.

Even, notorious smart person, Albert Einstein, whom I respect as a scientist, fell victim to the misguided belief that many "smart" people do-- that somehow, smart people should be able to figure out how to run all our lives for us so as to eliminate poverty, want and disease.  He like other smart people over-estimated the capacity of human intelligence to manage something so blindingly complex as an economy, a culture or a vast collection of humans, each with free will and their own self-interest.  No small group of people have the collective brains to manage it.  That's why I believe that the government which governs best, is that which governs least.  

It doesn't take a towering intellect to lead. It takes courage, determination, humility and the willingness to lead from the front by example. We've had too many "smart" people try to micro-manage government. Carter did it. Johnson thought he could do it. Obama is doing it. Clinton, thank goodness, was too busy skirt-chasing to micro-manage and let the Republican congress open up the economy so that individual Americans could get it charged up and going again.

God deliver us from "smart" people. They think entirely too much of their own ability to do all the decision making. I say this as one of the so-called "smart" people (if you go by IQ testing I'm a flippin' genius). I understand as well as anyone that Intellect (with a capital "I") is not everything.  There's a lot more to leadership than book smarts. It took years of study, personal errors in leadership and a careful observance of outstanding leaders like Ronald Reagan, Patton, Eisenhower, Lincoln and Grant for me to learn how best to lead. I learned that great leaders first point the way and then get out of the way so the people can get on with the job. Great leaders delegate. Great leaders don't second guess. They don't micro-manage. They give the broad overview of the plan, then trust their generals, captains, lieutenants and especially their sergeants and privates to carry out those plans.

Obama's great sin is an entirely too great an admiration for his own intellect and a distrust for the collective intelligence of the American people. He trusts himself first, his advisors second and the American people dead last. That's a recipe for poor leadership and a discouraged, disorganized country. Under his "leadership" the American business community is reduced to sitting around on its collective butt, waiting to see what's the next "brilliant" idea that's going to come out of Washington and screw things up further.  Instead of getting up and going forward and making things happen, the very folks who could kick start the economy are keeping low, watching the economic weather. Passivity on the part of the business community will not save our economy, but that is exactly the behavior this administration is encouraging with its incessant micro-managing.

So Palin's lack of intellectual credentials bothers me not at all. Sometimes all we need is a cheerleader. Remember Reagan's "City on a Hill" speech. What was that, if not, cheerleading, but it was an effective technique for rallying the troops and dragging us away from the depression that Jimmy Carter and the Democrats were brewing. As a cheerleader Reagan was brilliant and oh, how the intellectuals whined that he delegated too much authority, that he didn't know "what was really going on". Remember the blistering criticism he took and how the American people paid no attention to it.

When he walked out of the summit in Iceland, the smart people railed that Reagan's "stupid" rejection of cool diplomacy had doomed the world to nuclear annihilation. The next year the Russians came back and the result was the first treaty that actually got missiles pointed at somebody else.

Reagan was called stupid for deploying Pershing missiles in Europe. Next thing you know both the Russians and us were scrapping ICBMs right and left.

The smart people excoriated Reagan for saying "Mr. Gorbachev tear down this wall!" out loud and in front of Germans no less. They said it would destabilize Russia and set back relations with the Soviet Union for years. Within just a few years the wall was torn down and the Soviet Union was no more.

Please, I implore the voters of America. If some pundit tells you such and such a candidate is the "smartest" man or woman in America......RUN!

Go straight to the voting booth and vote for his or her opponent!

Just one man's opinion.

Tom King
(c) 2010