But guns have long signaled something different in rural places than in urban ones. Just as significant, guns now signify something radically different than they did a few decades ago. In short, guns have become highly politicized, both a cause and a symbol of our nation’s accelerating polarization
You get what you measure. That’s another well-known truth in business organizations. When you want a particular kind of outcome (say, increased customer base for a lagging product), you require your workers to measure that outcome and report the results. The effect is that workers focus on improving their measurements – sometimes to the detriment…
“The West Wing”, Season 3, Episode 12: “100,000 Airplanes” (January 16, 2002) SCENE: The team is gathered in the Oval Office. President Bartlett has told them that he wants to include something in his State of the Union speech to say that we will cure cancer. His advisers explain, one by one, why he can’t…
As if on cue, a defender of the White House rushed to respond…. Yes, Benghazi. Still. Clearly, and unsurprisingly, this passionate defender missed my point (and, by doing so, reinforced my point).
Nothing that is going on now is about President Obama or Secretary Clinton. What is going on now, and in the future, is about Trump – no one else is making the decision about what we do next.
Yet he could not resist. He cannot speak unless he is attacking someone – he must always attack, always denigrate, always demean, and always cast himself as a victim of that other person’s failings.
He’s a liar – a known liar, a fraud, a grifter, a thief. What is the point of asking him a question?
If he’s talking, he’s lying.
He’s a liar.
Let’s find a way to pay for it, whatever it costs. Because, if it’s a good thing to do, if it solves an intolerable problem, then we should do it. Not because we can afford it, but because we need it.
Because we can’t afford to not do it.
The speech is a lesson in the tactics, large and small, that hold a message together and burn your ideas into your audience’s consciousness. Repetition. Litanies. Framing. Promoting your Values, naming the Villain, holding out a Vision.
If you consider that an election is just marketing, then you would do what a marketer would do — look at who is gaining market share and copy what they are doing. Why? Because you are going after the same market, the same population of consumers. So, if McDonald’s introduces Filet-o-Fish with huge success, Burger…
He has had a chance to demonstrate his ability to lead, his ability to negotiate, his ability to command, his ability to help. And he has demonstrated weakness, ignorance, and arrogance instead.
It is not about giving him a chance. It’s about honestly assessing what he has said and done, how he has behaved, over these past 2 years. He has been weighed, he has been measured, and he has been found wanting.
What do we resist? We resist job losses. We resist wage stagnation. We resist corporate welfare. We resist corruption. We resist cruelty. We resist dictators.
We resist Republicans.
