Boys on the Playground

I watched this week as the world’s most powerful men proved themselves to be nothing more than little boys on the playground.  Putin and Obama danced around the Russian invasion of the Crimea.  President Obama realized the position he found himself in and tried to react as best he could, given the circumstances.  Putin, likewise, sought to make his latest move look rational to the international community.  It occurred to me that these were not gods or geniuses but simple men with simple motives.  They are not governments, per se, but individuals, making decisions as they go, the same as any schoolboy on the playground.

Setting aside for the moment some important questions of self-determinism and national integrity, let’s examine the simple reality of leaders and motivations and realities.

Much has been written about Putin, the bear wrestling, bare chested bully of Moscow.  The president has described Putin and his swagger, his lean-back-in-your-chair insolence.  He said this week that Putin was a regional bully, acting out of weakness.  We have decided that we will not have boots on the ground and that the Crimea has been taken and there is nothing we can do.

In the 70’s there were an endless stream of sitcoms that addressed this issue.  Our protagonist, the elementary school student, would confront a bully at school.  Mom would counsel pacifism and telling the teacher.  Dad would teach Junior how to box and inevitably Junior would come home with a broken nose and a bully still to be dealt with.  Mom would be mad at Dad for promoting violence and Dad would grunt something about being a man, and mumble something when Mom objected.  The audience, in the form of canned laughter, agreed with Mom.

There are no teachers to tell.  We are the world’s lone super power, and the world sees us growing weaker with each passing day.  Our kids can’t do math or science and the world sees our deterioration on a daily basis.  The bad guys are waiting for us to pull our military out and they see that we are weary of battle and they know that their time has come.

We are not going to do anything about Russia’s Ukraine activity except impose sanctions.  I am not telling any state secrets here.  Everyone from John Kerry to Barack Obama and every Sun day pundit has made that abundantly clear.  Putin understands completely.  Syria still has chemical weapons.  We lifted sanctions against Iran.  We seem powerless against the insanity of Kim Jung Un in North Korea, because he is, well, crazy and has nuclear weapons.

Did I mention there are no teachers or Principals or anyone on the playground?  We are the lone “superpower” and Putin is challenging us and there is nobody to tell.  There are no authorities, only peers.  We can complain to our fellow students on the playground who will then look back at us as if to say, “You are the biggest kid here.  If you don’t stop him he will do what he wants.”

But our “community organizer” leader does not see violence as the answer.  And perhaps violence is not the answer.  But bullies do not bend to community organizing.  Putin is motivated by things we are not considering, like Russian nationalism.  Like any good fans, the Russian people love a winner.  Stoked by their Olympics, the Russians have patriotic feelings that their leader is only too happy to accommodate.

I am amazed at how much influence a small group of humans have on our world.  There are Putin and Obama.  There is Chris Christie and Janet Yellen and John Roberts.  There are Pope Francis and Bashir Assad and Eric Holder and Angela Merkel and Anthony Kennedy.  These are the schoolyard kids that make a difference.  And between them they will determine crucial parts of all of our lives. 

I would argue that these are not necessarily our most brilliant folks.  They are not necessarily the ones with the highest moral codes (with an exception for the Pope).  These are no more than school kids on a playground, jockeying for position on the global stage.  It is a very important stage and an important game but the motivations are not as complex as we might imagine.

John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and John McCain and Rand Paul cannot all be right.  Some of them, by definition, are wrong-headed.

As an aside, I am bothered by the idea that we are not reacting to the Russian invasion of Crimea partly because we are “war-weary”.  I understand the fatigue we all feel after Iraq and Afghanistan, and I question the wisdom of our involvement there, but being “weary” does not excuse a people from doing the right thing, whatever that may be.

Sex, and Other Addictions

It starts with food.  Everyone must eat, and food tastes good.  You cannot watch a season of The Biggest Loser without understanding the great allure of food and how some people use it to deal with personal issues in their lives.

Alcohol is the original gateway drug.  If you have ever fought against a love of alcohol you understand what I mean, it is the original addiction and as old as man.

Sex and gambling, and money and marijuana and cocaine, we become addicted to various things as humans.  It is in our nature and being in the public eye does not make one immune.  Every one of us is human, and nobody is perfect, including our leaders.  They have weakness like everyone.

Sex alone is a powerful driving force in the history of mankind.  It is a part of our history as humans, and part of why nations have attacked each other, and also why they have not.

Our leaders are only human beings, subject to all of the same temptations we are.  They have no special powers, and they are not necessarily wiser or more intelligent than we are.

Take the Supreme Court for example.  If there were a consensus amongst wise people as to the truth, we would not have a Supreme Court stuck tied on issue after issue at 5-4, with Mr. Kennedy breaking ties time after time.  These are partisans that we have given positions of power that have ideas about society that break along expected lines time and time again.

There is No Magic

Governments are not magic.  They are made up of fallible humans like us that we elect to office to represent us.  But we know we are not necessarily electing the best and brightest among us.  Rather we are electing those fools who were crazy enough to volunteer to be micro-examined by the media and then slimed and dissected in order to win an election or two.

Don’t get me wrong, I applaud those with enough courage to step forward and volunteer for abuse in order to serve their fellow man, but they are generally no better judges of what needs to be done than we are.  Putin and Obama, Roberts and Yellen and Christie, are all out there trying to do what is right, and often coming up short. 

The primary, first, function of our federal government is to manage our foreign affairs and keep us safe from foreign attacks and invaders.  George W. Bush started his first term with a robust domestic agenda and soon got sidetracked by 9-11.  Things do not always go according to plan.  President Obama ran on a domestic agenda of Hope and Change but he did not plan on the Arab Spring or Putin or Benghazi, or the difficulty of winding down two wars orderly.  One does not get to pick and choose what one gets to deal with while in office.

And so I will come to the point here.  2014 is an election year.  When evaluating a candidate, it is important to understand how they feel about the issues you know they are likely to confront.  But it is equally important to evaluate how they will react to issues as yet unseen.  What kind of person are they?  Character matters.

We cannot eliminate bullies and tyrants on the world stage.  No amount of positive thinking will keep opportunists from trying to take advantage of their situation in Ukraine or Chicago.  Human nature will not go on hiatus as a result of flowery speeches or convincing rhetoric.  We will need to deal with thieves and murderers and tyrants from now until the end of time.

The more a candidate chooses to leave decisions in the hand of their constituents and out of government, the better.  We do not need to empower leaders any more than they already are.  Decisions are best made by individuals in the course of their daily lives, not by bureaucrats or senators who are no smarter than we are.

As much as possible we need to be governed by ourselves.  Decisions need to be made as close to the local level as possible.  People need to be empowered to live their own lives as they see fit with as little government “mandating” as possible.  There is no magic power of government that, in the right hands, can produce prosperity and justice by the utterance of a few words.  There are still the small matters of reality and human nature standing in the way.

But of course we need someone to oversee the defense of our nation, and to negotiate with foreign governments on our behalf.  This is not something that can be done on a “local level”, and so we need to choose good leaders to handle these things.

Just a bit of advice here; take a look at character and not so much what a politician says they can do for you but what they say they will not do on your behalf.  What lines will they not cross?  How do they view international relations in general?  And then picture the proposed leader on the playground, standing off against Putin.  We have all been there; we understand people.   We have seen the sit-coms and Mom and Dad and the bloody nose.  Pick someone who can handle the bully.