Month: February 2025

My wife and I recently attended a concert performed by a Kenny Rogers imitator.  He sang a lot of the old favorites. One brought back vivid memories because I used it when I taught negotiation to my electric utility clients.  It was “The Gambler.”  Here is the refrain:

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em
Know when to fold ’em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
You never count your money
When you’re sittin’ at the table
There’ll be time enough for countin’
When the dealin’s done

The wisdom of these lyrics along with their brevity and easy memory make them powerful. I could never play poker because my face would give away my hand. The three key ideas here are to know the strength of your hand, understand the risks of playing cards with others, and how to avoid bad reactions to your success if you have any.

We have leadership today that seems brazen in comparison to the last four years, and the international game-stakes have risen to potentially catastrophic levels.  You and I are watching this game play out in real time and wondering whether we are going to win or lose and the consequences.  It is like riding in the back seat of a car going 100+ mph down on an icy road and wondering whether we are safe.  We are all captive and a bit terrified.

So, it is not surprising that many are trying to sue the driver and take him off the road.  We don’t like the apparent risks.  But most of us know we have a strong hand and have been played for a fool for the past four years on the international stage with bad consequences.

However, we don’t really know what cards our adversaries are holding.  We used to think of Russia as a powerhouse, but how can they be if the small country of Ukraine can keep them away from what seemed an overnight takeover?  We have seen our continental neighbors threaten and then fold their hands when the new administration called their bluff.

My biggest concern is that we will count our money while still sittin’ at the table, in large part because the media needs to back off in their criticism and descriptions of how they see the hand being played.  This is where I was taught to keep my mouth shut and neither confirm nor deny anything I was asked about our nuclear submarine capabilities.

We are playing a big hand on the world stage.  We need to realize that the stakes are high and the chances for bad things to happen increases with the endless, cuttingly negative spin by our press.

We elected a world class gambler, and he wrote the book on negotiations long ago.  His gamble is to fix our country’s egregious errors which have been identified by previous presidents Clinton and Obama.  We must cut our massive 36 trillion-dollar deficit on which we pay 2.6 billion dollars each day, cutting wasteful government spending, and getting inflation under control.  Prior administrations have said they would do these things and did not, which is why we are where we are today.  Fixing it will take leadership, and the American people have voted for this change.  So, lead, follow, or get out of the way, and let’s reclaim our winning position in the world. 

This does also remind me of the old black and white movie, The Caine Mutiny, which explored the moral complexities of war and the fine line between loyalty and mutiny.  What we should learn from all of this is that it is too early to decide how to draw the line between loyalty and mutiny … and that by trying to make the decision early, we are diminishing the likely good outcomes.

Give it some time … we will all learn where the line is at the right time.

And, as a bonus, here is an article posted to me by a friend:

The Lion

 

By: Judd Garrett

Objectivity is the Objective

February 2, 2025

 

In the 2002 movie Poolhall Junkies, actor Christopher Walken gives one of the most famous and iconic speeches of his career. He tells a group of pool hustlers,

“You got this lion. He’s the king of the jungle, huge mane out to here. He’s lying under a tree, in the middle of Africa. He’s so big, it’s so hot. He doesn’t want to move. Now the little lions come, they start messing with him. Biting his tail, biting his ears. He doesn’t do anything. The lioness starts messing with him. Coming over, making trouble. Still nothing. Now, the other animals notice this. They start to move in. The jackals; hyenas. They’re barking at him, laughing at him. They nip his toes and eat the food that’s in his domain. They do this; then they get closer and closer, bolder and bolder. Till one day, that lion gets up and tears the shit out of everybody. He runs like the wind and eats everything in his path. Cause every once in a while, the lion has to show the jackals, who he is.”

The United States is the lion; China and Russia are the hyenas; Hamas and ISIS are the jackals; every once in a while, the lion has to show these jackals, who he is. Far too long, whether it was by design (Obama) or incompetence (Biden), the United States has allowed the hyenas and the jackals to run wild, to do whatever they wanted to us with impunity. We were too scared to offend them. Too worried about being viewed as the bad guy. Yesterday, President Donald Trump ordered precision air strikes on the Senior ISIS leaders and terrorists in Somalia who were hiding in caves, threatening the United States and our allies. The strikes killed many of the terrorists without harming civilians. On X, President Trump tweeted to ISIS and any other terrorist groups who are targeting Americans, “WE WILL FIND YOU, AND WE WILL KILL YOU!” Donald Trump is showing the world who America is.

 

It’s about time that the United States of America acted like the United States of America. We have to show the world that we are the strongest, the most powerful nation on the planet.  We won’t be messed with. We must demand their respect. We have allowed countries who are much smaller than us and weaker than us to push us around. The only way you can command respect is if you respect yourself. That’s the whole point of the Trump Presidency, about making America great again – to regain that respect internally and internationally. The importance of respect is the reason why the people on the left who want to destroy America continually trash America, continually hyper-focus on every single one of our sins and our misdeeds in the history of our country. Every other country has committed the sin of slavery. There are 20 million enslaved people in the world today throughout the Middle East, Asia, and Africa. But we are the only country in the world that must tear ourselves down over a sin we exorcised over 160 years ago. Most countries were forged through conquest, but they want America to feel we are an illegitimate country because of our origins. They do not want us to respect ourselves, because then no other country will respect us. And if they don’t respect us, they will be emboldened to do whatever they want to us. We will no longer be the lion.

 

After the October 7th attack on Israel, the Biden administration tried to convince Benjamin Netanyahu to not strike back and defend his country. He wanted Israel to just allow Islamic terrorists to kill 1,500 Israeli innocent women and children and capture hundreds more as hostages without doing anything back. He didn’t want to upset anyone. He didn’t want us to appear Islamophobic. That was the message we were sending out to the world. We won’t hit back. We want peace at all costs. Peace at any price always leads to war. The best way to ensure peace is for the United States to re-establish its power and respect worldwide. That is why Donald Trump is planning on annexing Greenland and taking control of the Panama Canal. The weakness of the Biden administration has emboldened China and Russia, causing them to exert more and more influence over those two geostrategic entities, which will further hurt our strength and respect around the world and make the world a more dangerous place.

 

Donald Trump just imposed a 25% tariff on goods coming from Mexico and Canada, and critics are outraged, complaining that we are hurting our closest allies. For far too long, these countries have allowed illegal immigrants from hostile nations to come across their border into the United States; they’ve turned a blind eye to the tons of fentanyl coming across their border, killing 100,000 of our citizens each year. They do not respect us. If they did, they wouldn’t allow that to happen to us. They are not our friends or allies. If they were, they would not have aided and abetted the invasion of our country of mass illegal aliens and massive amounts of deadly drugs. So, everyone who questions the tariffs because these countries claim to be our friends, remember, they are not our friends. They don’t have the right to claim to be our friends when they have never acted like our friends when they have systematically tried to destroy our country. That’s not friendship. That’s not even a geo-political ally. They are doing the work of our enemies.

 

Mexico and Canada are the little lions and the lioness, thinking they can mess with us because of a familial relationship. But when countries like China, Russia, and Iraq see how Mexico and Canada mess with us and take advantage of us, that emboldens them. They think they can do the same to us, just as the hyenas and the jackals do to the lion in Africa. For the last four years, we have been seen as weak, and now, because of Donald Trump, we are finally flexing our muscles. We are finally showing the world who the United States of America really is.

Versus telling me what to think!  Ask that question as you listen to the voices in your lives.  Are they pushing their agendas and talking points and trying to convince you they are right? Or are they offering thoughts to promote your thinking … letting you synthesize, sort, sift, and consider things holistically?  Do they want you to think, or to simply accept the thoughts of others?

So many of my recent blogs have been about the bombardment we are all under by those who want to convince us to follow their lead, rather than perhaps find our own paths.  Yes, we as a nation need to collectively decide what to do about our challenges today and into the future, but I am not convinced that our leadership is interested in a dialogue.  They have made up their minds and just want us to give them the permission and money to do what they want.

Admitting we don’t quite know the answers to our profound problems requires humility and curiosity … traits I find conspicuously absent today.  True dialogue depends upon critical thinking and most Americans have been lulled into the false hope that our political process will naturally synthesize the best answers to profound questions.  That presupposition assumes the questions we all face have been accurately asked, and that we are not just trying to address symptoms rather than underlying diseases. 

Let me repeat this last thought: we are way too prone to medicate away our symptoms rather than search for and face the underlying causes.

We have a lot of intellectual work to do … at a time when most Americans are exhausted just trying to make ends meet, get through their days, and enjoy some time unwinding as they get ready to go to bed.  Sorry … most Americans are not interested in thinking any longer. We don’t even play games like Monopoly and cards with each other or even work on puzzles together.  We sit in front of our electronic screens rather than in front of our fireplaces talking to each other.

I never liked most games a lot because the results of chance confounded my desire for predictable outcomes.  I entered engineering because the laws of physics and energy offered concrete answers to complex problems.  Monopoly reminded me that bad things happen to good people even when you do the right thing.  After all, how could anyone enjoy the fact that random events resulted in windfalls.  Engineers don’t like that.

Games made me think.  Life can make us think.  Most TV programs and especially the news do not encourage us to think.  They tell us what to think.  We can’t force each other to think, but we can create fertile environments for it by asking better questions … not to trap a person into thinking they are wrong, but perhaps to encourage each other to share insights that collectively might bring us to higher ground in life.

Leaders must lead, but when their talking points become indoctrination agendas they have moved beyond leadership to manipulation and attempts at brainwashing … aka gaslighting … they are not only assuming you aren’t thinking, but they are also attempting to lure you into giving up thinking. 

Please think!

I am not a football follower, but with nothing else to do or watch, I turned on the game between the Eagles and the Chiefs.  I had read this was going to be a nailbiter, so I was prepared for the game to go right to the end.  But I must admit that by the end of the second quarter I was ready to watch a movie or go to bed.

As a result, I saw what is always billed as a signature moment: the halftime show.  There were repeated advertisements for it all during the first two quarters, but I had no idea who the artist was.  Given Taylor Swift was there, I wondered whether she would make an appearance.

So, the half-time show started, and I thought the trick of having all the other performers coming out of the car was clever, but why out of a car?  And I could not understand what the performer was saying.  It was obvious he was angry, but I was not sure what he was angry about.  By the end of the show, I was puzzled … what was the point?  What am I missing?  I called my daughter, and she was puzzled as well.

When I got up this morning, I checked online to see what the media was saying, and I was further shocked at all their gushing over the show.  Nowhere could I find others commenting that the tone and content seemed inconsistent with the event and the spirit of good competition and excellence.  The Superbowl is supposedly a good will event.

Then, as I read more and more, I could see what this was all about.  While some in the media defend the show as a statement in the ongoing battle between hip-hop artists, I fail to see why an artist would use a venue like this to continue that argument.  Other news commentators thought the halftime show was a protest about the country’s decision to back away from DEI.  Still others thought it was also a response to Trump’s comments about Philadelphia during his run for the presidency and a public display of opposition to Trump’s actions.

I do understand, respect, and encourage people to express their opinions, but let me say to anyone who thinks this halftime show helped these agendas: get a grip … you just demonstrated why this focus on one perspective is so egregious by making all of us even more aware of the low brow, angry, and frankly interpersonally dangerous perspectives of these people.

You don’t want me to be fearful of a hoody in the neighborhood?  Or a gang in hoodys piling out of a car? Try something more alluring than an angry rant that you’re not getting your fair share.  Try a little more sugar because the acid of your tone does not make me want to listen, hire you, or fight for your views.

While we are on the subject, please remember the election indicated that most Americans reject the DEI and CRT focus and perspective.  The movement toward the right was evident EVERYWHERE in the country, even within the hard-core democratic big city areas.  Evidently the reactions to the halftime show were a reflection that most media still have not come to grips with the results.

This show will be remembered, but not in the way this protestor intended.  Those hoping they made progress on the DEI issue continue to show complete ignorance of how they are being perceived.  This was not good for the country.  The halftime show did not help their cause or case.

I am less prone after this to even want to listen to this perspective … sad … very sad.  And, no … I am NOT a racist … I am an American and this was not helpful to bring the country together, nor did it lower the temperature of conversations.

It is fascinating to watch how people today react to change.  I guess it is natural to resist it because, after all, there are things that often get worse along with those that get better.

I remember arguing with people that staking trees to get them to grow straight had parallels in life … if you can start with a very young plant, it doesn’t take a lot of strain to get keep the plant growing straight.  However, the failure to correct a young tree makes correction later much more expensive.

In fact, if the tree is mature, it is going to take a whopping amount of strain to straighten it out, and at some point, you might even have to admit the tree has to go.  Take it down, convert it to lumber, etc., and then plant a new one.  It is simply easier.

Similarly, people working with elephants have learned that if you chain them to a stake when they are small and can’t pull away from that stake, they learn not to try.  So as mature elephants who could easily pull the stake, they remain chained because they have not tried to pull away since their youth.

One of my favorite people was Joe Collier, the Chief Marketing Officer at Florida Power and Light who left there to become CEO of Central Maine Power.  He always reminded me that “it was easier to change people than to change people.  I love that … but you must have known Joe to know what he meant by it.  It was all about the difficulty of correcting an adult in life … a low percentage task to say the least.

People in real life who make decisions like this generally get a bad name as they are doing what they believe needs to be done.  The phrases in the title of this blog are descriptions often attributed to them.  Their methods at times seem crude: wrecking balls.  Their tactics cause lots of things to appear broken: Bulls in a China Shop.  Their diplomacy and grace seem conspicuously absent: Blunt Instruments.

Yet, they get the job done and do it more quickly and at lower costs than the “kind and gentle” business models so many today believe are appropriate.  Leadership today is being told to use consensus … which results in the gravitation to the mean … which means that nothing truly revolutionary can ever come out of that. Worse yet, it discourages truly ingenious solutions to situations.

Just like sausage, it isn’t pretty to watch things like this made in real life.  We must relinquish our desire to think we are in control and give leaders time to lead.  Our news cycle and cynical tendencies to ask an endless stream of “why” questions that can’t be answered with adequate assurances should have taught us to trust more … not less.

I grew up under the leadership of Admiral Rickover who singlehandedly built our nuclear navy from the ground up.  He was not a nice person.  He was arrogant beyond measure.  He was ruthless during his interviews and legendary in the stories told about him.  He got the job done.  We now have a nuclear navy.

He surrounded himself with the smartest people on the planet and I must say working for them was daunting.  We are talking scary smart.  But nobody complained.  They knew what the goal was, and they fell in line pushing for that goal.  And they did it.

Leadership is a lonely place because it must be for it to be effective.  Consensus is comforting, but delusional.  Give leaders time before thinking you are so smart.