Captain Obvious

There have been very few times in my eleven years writing Captain Obvious blogs that my post has been redeemed so quickly and decisively.  As you know, I broke with my usual weekly cadence because I felt compelled to write a recap of how I saw the Presidential address to Congress. I was appalled at what I saw and frankly how few were willing to call out the bad behavior on the part of the Democrats.  The only thing I thought was that it was mostly because they were trying to toss “fresh meat” to their supporters to bait them into believing they still were ready to fight for their causes.

I still remember how unified the Democratic Party was when Hillary ran and the party stayed united right through Biden’s presidency.  Now, they seem like wounded cornered animals all snarling at each other with fractious perspectives. I fully understand that losing the recent election so soundly sent them searching for those within their ranks to blame, but I thought the recent spate of sour grapes would naturally coalesce once again.  But, without a leader around which to do that, the up and comers are all trying to grab the spotlight, perhaps so they can be crowned the new leadership, but they have utterly fractured the party. Then, a day later, I read the article I copied here below from the NY Times and felt I had to write a follow-up blog.

We need checks and balances in our political system, and our founders knew that.  Yes, the acrimony and name-calling are an important part of the process. We have all grown up watching debate and argument and can still feel the confusion this can create when truly controversial decisions are made, such as bombing innocent civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.  Perhaps it is best when both sides of an issue can see the complexity and perplexity of these questions.

As so many of my blogs have indicated, we seem unwilling to truly listen to all sides of a situation and humbly admit it is complex.  We have the right to our opinions and the freedom to express them, but we also have the responsibility to do the right things in life as we learn from our past and consider the higher narrow road.  Democracy favors the easy roads with broad consensus driving our direction.  For all its strengths, that is also its essential weakness, and while attempting to educate the unwilling can seem a fool’s errand, we all must accept our responsibility to keep trying.

We are in a precarious position on the world stage and are not privy to the full backstory to many issues on the table.  There is the distinct possibility that we have been fed a crock about what we think we know. Time will certainly tell but remember that the victors always write the history of any situation. We like phrases like “trust but verify” but now realize how futile it is to know virtually anything for sure about what is really going on.

It sure seems like insanity to me.  Perhaps it is an addiction to power, and like alcohol and drugs is very hard to break. If Alcoholics Anonymous is right, we must at some point recognize that our success depends upon recognizing a “higher authority” who some will also call God.  We can’t break from true addictions without this recognition and daily admission and support by others on the similar journeys.  Plus, it takes positive counsel and support from others to achieve this in most cases.  We must work together as a community … not finding fault … but not enabling through listening and attesting to what works in our own lives.

Perhaps this is the right time for a new awakening not only here but around the world?

Article on The New Resistance by Lisa Lerer

Yesterday, several Democrats disavowed one of their own.

Representative Al Green of Texas had jumped up during President Trump’s address to Congress on Tuesday. The lawmaker yelled that Trump had no mandate to cut Medicaid, shook his cane at the dais and refused to sit down. Eventually, the House speaker ejected him. It was a showy protest on national TV. And two days later, 10 of his fellow Democrats joined a Republican censure of him, renouncing his call for “righteous indignation and righteous incivility.”

How should Democrats resist Trump this time around? The answer isn’t clear. Eight years ago, liberal voters flooded the streets, week after week, to protest Trump’s actions on immigration, climate change and women’s rights. This time, they’re much quieter and far less unified. They lack a galvanizing leader. They’re divided over ideology, strategy and tactics. Elected Democrats aren’t sure how to battle a president whom more voters wanted than didn’t. And many of their supporters are demoralized and resigned, choosing to tune out the news altogether.

Their party is still grasping for a coherent response, and the speech on Tuesday captured their disorganization. Some Democratic lawmakers boycotted; some didn’t. Some walked out of the chamber during the speech. Others held up signs, heckled Trump and wore hot pink suits in protest. Afterward came a sober-minded official Democratic response from Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a rising star who won in a swing state.

Today’s newsletter looks at the fractured Democratic opposition to Trump 2.0. It falls roughly into four categories.

The compromisers

Lawmakers, party leaders and strategists in this group point out that Trump won the election, so clearly voters wanted some of what he was selling. Governors — such as Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Jared Polis of Colorado — have given some political ground on issues where surveys indicate popular support for Trump’s position. Think of immigration, tariffs and transgender athletes on girl’s sports teams, which California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, recently described as “deeply unfair.”

Some of this approach is driven by the need of governors to work with the federal government. Before Trump took office, Newsom positioned himself as a leader of the opposition, calling a special session of the state legislature to craft lawsuits and “safeguard California values.” After the fires ravaged Los Angeles in January, he adopted a less confrontational style. For instance, he suspended provisions of some state environmental laws while he appeals to the federal government for aid.

The resisters

These Democrats — a younger and more liberal group — argue that the party must stridently oppose nearly every action taken by the administration. They want to update the 2017 strategy of outrage and protest for a new era.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut embodies this approach. As my colleague Annie Karni detailed last month, he assails the administration in videos on social media, posts on X, floor speeches, interviews and essays. “The case I’m making to Democrats is that we have to fight every single day,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union” this week. “We have to be on the offensive 24/7.”

Green, the censured Texas congressman who heckled Trump, is an adherent of this view. Many others in the House agree.

The lawyers

Another set of Democratic officials believes the best place to fight Trump is in court. With Democrats locked out of federal power, the party’s 23 attorneys general have become the front line of the opposition.

They’ve already filed seven lawsuits against the administration, challenging executive actions to end birthright citizenship, freeze federal funding and other moves. The attorneys general of Arizona, Minnesota, New Mexico and Oregon even held their own town hall meeting this week in Phoenix, responding to voters in an unusual joint event.

The pragmatists

This group of Democrats argues that the party needs to find a message that works and not just reflexively oppose everything Trump does. The most extreme version was articulated by the strategist James Carville, who says Democrats should let Republicans and Trump sink under the unpopularity of their initiatives. “Roll over and play dead,” he told Democrats.

But in Congress, Democrats have largely chosen an economic focus, stressing issues like the cost of eggs, the potential of higher prices from tariffs and the threats to popular programs like Medicaid and Social Security.

Many of those championing this approach are more experienced members of Congress, like Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader. But not all: Slotkin, who won in a state where Trump prevailed, stuck to bread-and-butter issues during her response to Trump on Tuesday.

Wrapped within her message was a far more basic plea: “Don’t tune out. It’s easy to be exhausted, but America needs you now more than ever,” she said. “If previous generations had not fought for democracy, where would we be today?”

To her and other Democrats, there are two dire problems. Trump is one. The other is the apathy of their own voters.

 

Insubordination no longer seems like a politically correct label for interpersonal behavior.  Let’s go back to the definition: willfully disobeying a lawful order of one’s superior. It is generally a punishable offense in hierarchical organizations which depend on people lower in the chain of command obeying orders.

We have a democracy that elects our leaders, and the assumption is that they have our best interests at heart.  When we no longer believe that we have legal methods of examining and proving their mistakes and removing them from the office.  But, until and unless that is true, we are expected to support them, especially when we report directly to them in our jobs.

The recent presidential address to Congress illustrates how far we have moved into political insubordination. It seems on the brink of mutiny, which in the military is still punishable by death.  The reasons should be clear: the insubordinate act of one person can threaten the well-being of many.

I am seeing an unprecedented level of outrage over the recent presidential address.  Yes, just like the leader General Patton, the interpersonal antics can seem over the top, but this moves way past decorum on the part of the troops.  The behavior exhibited in the chamber and afterward by the media’s coverage are unacceptable and must be called out. The mission is always at risk, and the actions of even one can matter … a lot.

Please consider the recent events where leadership is being second-guessed.  We have the Ukraine-Russia negotiations, the Palestinian-Israel negotiations, and a country that must be set on a path out of extreme indebtedness.  Oh, and there is that pesky problem of people who are not here legally who are doing nefarious things like killing people.  Clinton, Obama, and Biden all said they needed to go, but did little to block or remove them, and it is a fact that many countries emptied their prisons and asylums at the same time to come to the United States.

The country elected Trump because most people believe he will deal with the issues other leaders have turned a blind eye to.  Doesn’t that seem like a lot on anyone’s plate? Add to that trying to regain world peace and get the Biden Administration’s rampant inflation under control.   Do you really think you could or would do better?

I don’t!  Plus, I really don’t want to work that hard or receive the crap so evident when you try.  I think it was President Lincoln who said, “you can only please half the people half the time.”  Seems like a pretty good summary of where we are as a country.  I am reminded of one of our key generals in World War II … Patton.  He was not a nice guy, but our troops and our country needed that kind of leadership … it was an ugly war.

Do you remember how close we were to destroying our country from within over slavery?  Does anyone now want to run on reinstating that?  Well, if not, why were we at war with ourselves over who the country elected as its leader?  You do, of course, remember that our President who tried to right this wrong was assassinated. Yet, there are still a few who resent him for freeing slaves. Seems silly in comparison, doesn’t it?

OK, so if you agree with me, tell me why our news media is on an all-out tear to demean, discredit, and dishonor the office of the POTUS?  I thought they were just supposed to report the news, not decide what we should think about it.  The press briefing after the next day was telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD-25ENOie4

You can’t please all the people all the time, but what the mainstream media is feeding viewers is propaganda and it is pouring fuel on the flames dividing and weakening our country.  The world is watching and if what they see is an internal war against the president we elected, Lincoln again said it best regarding the threat of slavery, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Your call.  Stop the insanity by turning off your media that tries to second guess the POTUS.

And, if you still can’t get over the fact that Trump is the POTUS watch this therapeutic answer: https://newzy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Dont-Cry-Cryo.mp4?_=1

 Watch it all the way to the end!

I am no athlete, but I did run track in high school, so I do have some curiosity about the running elite.  These are genetic winners of course, coupled with training, careful attention to diet, and a level of internal focus certainly deserving of praise.

However, when the sport changes the game through technology to let these elites break previous records, I find we have gone too far.  My best events were distance running so cross country was my favorite.  Part of the reason I did better at this was my sense of pace … not going out too fast, taking hills at the right pace, and reserving enough but not too much energy for the final few hundred yards. 

Now technology makes all that unnecessary … track lights tell you precisely what your pace should be!  Look for yourself and read very carefully:

 https://www.wsj.com/sports/olympics/indoor-mile-world-record-yared-nuguse-jakob-ingebrigtsen-7a67dfce?st=RZvBQR&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

The track of course favors all athletes equally if it is improved, but how fair is that to the athletes whose previous records are now smashed?  Why are bathing suits for swimmers being optimized?  Sure, you wouldn’t want to have one swimmer with faster suits.

No, there is something more subtle going on here: we are being teased with technology that makes it appear that the latest athletes can break historical records more frequently.  The pure and simple reason for this is commercial interest … not sportsmanship.

I am a very serious fisherman and of course have always had a great fish finder for my boat.  Over the years, they have improved to now include side-scanning and forward-looking.  It is therefore easier to spot fish and even detect bigger ones over smaller ones.  When I was a young, the bass tournaments relied more on intuition and insight if you were to consistently catch large bass. 

I do understand the trend to make some sports more interesting by picking up the pace, but I wonder where this all leads for running in particular.  High tech sneakers that recapture the energy of the ground strike to propel you forward seems to be something that should not be allowed … yet it has crept into the sport.

We used to worry about doping … athletes taking performance enhancing substances. We all heard of the international incidents of this.  I guess this is all human nature at its worst.  Perhaps it is more about commercial interests at their worst.

My basic question is why this form of cheating has not triggered outrage from the athletes, past and current, and the spectators … except for me .

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!