In the military, you can never be too dependent on any one individual. It's too easy for them to go missing at a critical moment in time, and so you need an entire system designed to work regardless of who is or isn't there.
That isn't necessarily true in real life. You can act as though people are interchangeable, and yet they really aren't. It's a bit of a paradox, actually. There are many different types of leaders, and what works for one won't work for another. And yet sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't. Certain stylistic differences (such as one leader who is loud and talkative versus another that is quiet and reserved) may not matter at all. "Quiet and reserved" can come across as dignified, and heighten respect. Or aloof, and become a negative. Too much depends on context, and the relationship between the leader and the led.
That said, there are times when the person filling the role makes a tremendous difference. Going back to my earlier discussion on counterinsurgency and grievances, it makes a great deal of difference if the leaders addressing those grievances argue for non-violence (i.e. Martin Luther King, Jr or Mahatma Gandhi) versus one that opens the doors to violence.
Which kind of reminds me of the Great Man theory. Rather than take sides on this, I will say that the truth is probably more complicated than either side wants to admit. That there are times when large social or political forces are at play (like nationalism and the fight against imperialism), and takes on a life of it's own. And there are other times where a 'Great Man' (or 'Great Woman') living in a certain context, can somehow rise above that context and make a history-changing difference.
You can run this analysis on all sorts of situations - in war, for example, some people like to focus on the economics behind the war. That is, during the American Civil War the north had more economic power than the South, particularly after following a strategy that minimized Southern economic strength (i.e. the Anaconda Plan and the South's failure at cotton diplomacy)...and perhaps the underlying economics did favor the North. Yet if the North had repeatedly lost battles wouldn't the economic tides have eventually shifted? And didn't the personalities matter? General McClellan, President Lincoln, General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant, wouldn't history have been different if any one of these had been a different sort of person?
You can go deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole, too. That is, could Ulysses S. Grant have been able to make a difference if the structure of the army (and society) at the time had been different? What if he had never had a chance to lead a charge, and remained a quartermaster all his life? What if he was unable to gain a militia commission? What if his drinking problem prevented him from gaining a formal promotion?
I'm not really trying to say the system at the time was better or worse than what we have today, just pointing out that there are different contexts that can make it easier (or harder) to have the right person in the right place at the right time. And that's assuming that Ulysses S. Grant was the right person at the right time, and that no other could have filled that role quite as well.
So I got to thinking about this, because of the current presidential election and Hillary Clinton. It's like - if our system is healthy and robust, then to a certain extent it shouldn't matter too much who fills the role of President. Or rather, it matters in a certain sense (Democrats and Republicans have very different points of view, and even though Congress has more influence on what becomes law than the president, the power of the President is not negligible.) Yet, in another sense, what does it matter whether it's Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders? Or, on the Republican side, whether it's Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.
I bring that up, because it gets yet again at what has bothered me about the Democratic primary. In 2008 we had a very wide field of Democratic candidates. In addition to Obama and Hillary, there was John Edwards. Joe Biden. Dennis Kucinich. and plenty more.
In 2016 it was Bernie Sanders. And some minor characters that hardly had any air time, to be honest. (The names I listed in 2008 were ones I recall seeing and hearing about significantly during the race.) Even though I was vaguely aware that Lincoln Chafee, Lawrence Lessig and Jim Webb were running they never really gained any credibility as a candidate. And I don't even really recognize Martin O'Malley.
I've heard mutterings about the Clinton 'coronation' almost this entire primary, and it kind of looks like someone (or a group of someones) tried to do exactly that. Bernie Sanders was the ONLY real competition, and the Democratic Party resented him for that the entire time.
It's...un-American. And, frankly, disturbing. Why Hillary? Why should so many people be so determined to make her the next President?
Not "why do we need a Democratic president". No. Why must that candidate be Hillary? Why was this settled so early in the race?
I say that, because it almost seems like the Democratic Party is stuck with a 'sunk cost fallacy'. Let's go back to before the e-mail scandal grew legs, before we got deep into campaigning, and look at what we knew about Hillary. She has always had high unfavorables. Always. This is something the entire party apparently thought they could work around. (You can argue about whether it's fair or not, sexist or not, justified or not...but you can't argue that it's not there.)
Yet that apparently didn't matter. Next - we know the Republicans go after the Clintons like a dog chasing a squirrel. Funny how, in the last eight years at least, they didn't seem to go after the Obamas to quite the same degree. That implies that (again - fair or not, sexist or not, justified or not) you will see the Republicans make life difficult for Hillary Clinton to a degree they probably wouldn't for any other candidate.
On top of all of that, we have Hillary Clinton's noted preferences for privacy. Again, her supporters say it's all justified, having survived those aforementioned attacks. (Isn't it great when you can use a word like 'aforementioned'?) She's found a tactic that she seems to think works, and she sticks with it. Unfortunately, her preferred tactic ends up making issues that might have been minor otherwise turn into something bigger. See, Democrats and Republicans focus so much on each other that they forget most people don't really pay attention and hardly care. It's kind of like in a counterinsurgency, where you're so focused on getting 'the bad guys' that you forget about the neutral farmers and workers who are just trying to make a living.
At the end of the day, half of what the news reports about politics is just white noise. It only matters to politicos (and I'll include myself here) who follow that sort of thing. So while Hillary may think she's got a great strategy for dealing with Republican harassment, the thing outsiders tend to pick up on is that her strategy involves privacy and secrecy. And that she will go to ridiculous lengths to keep it that way, to the point where it seems like she really must have something to hide.
Even worse, is that I suspect she thinks it's okay to do whatever it takes to defend against Republican attacks, and doesn't seem to care that her defenses make her sound like a liar or an idiot. See my previous post about her testimony on the (C) in her e-mails. Okay, I can see why you'd think it's okay to lie to Republicans. But to the FBI? And to the general public? They're more forgiving than the Republicans, and they probably wouldn't care too much if you had just told the truth from the beginning. It'd probably be more like the wikileaks of state department cables, where anyone actually paying attention just shrugs and says "whatever". (I added 'from the beginning' because if you don't do it right away, everything that gets dragged out into the light is suspect. And if you apologize after denying you did anything wrong it sounds more like you're just doing what it takes to get people to forget and move on, not because you sincerely believe you actually did something wrong. Especially if you undermine your own apology with later statements.)
This is tied in with something else I said earlier - why did nobody in the Democratic Party pull Hillary aside and tell her that being the subject of an FBI investigation was bad news, and that maybe she should withdraw? Why, instead, did the entire establishment somehow act as though it was no big deal? (yeah, yeah...those of you who still think it's not a big deal will disagree with me on this, entirely. The funny thing is, though, that the people arguing that are almost inevitably people who have never worked with classified material before.)
So anyways. The more that the Democratic Party insisted that Hillary was their gal, the more they put resources into supporting her, the more difficult it becomes to change course when her weaknesses come to light. And the timing gets worse and worse. If she had withdrawn at any point in the last year, the Democratic Party probably could have found another candidate. At this point, however, they'd be in a lot of trouble if that happened.
Same thing with the possible 'October surprise' Assange claims he has. If he released it now, the Democratic Party would have time to deal with it. The fact that Assange is holding on to it indicates he cares less about sharing information and more about deliberately releasing it in order to shape the course of the 2016 presidential election.
If I were the Democratic Party, I would want to know what he thinks he has. If it truly is enough to shape the race I would either try getting it out pre-emptively (if it's not as big a deal as he thinks) or get Hillary to resign right away (if it really is). Why wait until October?
Anyways. To tie this in to my beginning musings - why is the Democratic Party (and the media, and all the various other organizations who have overlooked her weaknesses as a candidate) so determined to make sure she's the next President?
That isn't necessarily true in real life. You can act as though people are interchangeable, and yet they really aren't. It's a bit of a paradox, actually. There are many different types of leaders, and what works for one won't work for another. And yet sometimes it matters and sometimes it doesn't. Certain stylistic differences (such as one leader who is loud and talkative versus another that is quiet and reserved) may not matter at all. "Quiet and reserved" can come across as dignified, and heighten respect. Or aloof, and become a negative. Too much depends on context, and the relationship between the leader and the led.
That said, there are times when the person filling the role makes a tremendous difference. Going back to my earlier discussion on counterinsurgency and grievances, it makes a great deal of difference if the leaders addressing those grievances argue for non-violence (i.e. Martin Luther King, Jr or Mahatma Gandhi) versus one that opens the doors to violence.
Which kind of reminds me of the Great Man theory. Rather than take sides on this, I will say that the truth is probably more complicated than either side wants to admit. That there are times when large social or political forces are at play (like nationalism and the fight against imperialism), and takes on a life of it's own. And there are other times where a 'Great Man' (or 'Great Woman') living in a certain context, can somehow rise above that context and make a history-changing difference.
You can run this analysis on all sorts of situations - in war, for example, some people like to focus on the economics behind the war. That is, during the American Civil War the north had more economic power than the South, particularly after following a strategy that minimized Southern economic strength (i.e. the Anaconda Plan and the South's failure at cotton diplomacy)...and perhaps the underlying economics did favor the North. Yet if the North had repeatedly lost battles wouldn't the economic tides have eventually shifted? And didn't the personalities matter? General McClellan, President Lincoln, General (and later President) Ulysses S. Grant, wouldn't history have been different if any one of these had been a different sort of person?
You can go deeper and deeper down that rabbit hole, too. That is, could Ulysses S. Grant have been able to make a difference if the structure of the army (and society) at the time had been different? What if he had never had a chance to lead a charge, and remained a quartermaster all his life? What if he was unable to gain a militia commission? What if his drinking problem prevented him from gaining a formal promotion?
I'm not really trying to say the system at the time was better or worse than what we have today, just pointing out that there are different contexts that can make it easier (or harder) to have the right person in the right place at the right time. And that's assuming that Ulysses S. Grant was the right person at the right time, and that no other could have filled that role quite as well.
So I got to thinking about this, because of the current presidential election and Hillary Clinton. It's like - if our system is healthy and robust, then to a certain extent it shouldn't matter too much who fills the role of President. Or rather, it matters in a certain sense (Democrats and Republicans have very different points of view, and even though Congress has more influence on what becomes law than the president, the power of the President is not negligible.) Yet, in another sense, what does it matter whether it's Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders? Or, on the Republican side, whether it's Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio.
I bring that up, because it gets yet again at what has bothered me about the Democratic primary. In 2008 we had a very wide field of Democratic candidates. In addition to Obama and Hillary, there was John Edwards. Joe Biden. Dennis Kucinich. and plenty more.
In 2016 it was Bernie Sanders. And some minor characters that hardly had any air time, to be honest. (The names I listed in 2008 were ones I recall seeing and hearing about significantly during the race.) Even though I was vaguely aware that Lincoln Chafee, Lawrence Lessig and Jim Webb were running they never really gained any credibility as a candidate. And I don't even really recognize Martin O'Malley.
I've heard mutterings about the Clinton 'coronation' almost this entire primary, and it kind of looks like someone (or a group of someones) tried to do exactly that. Bernie Sanders was the ONLY real competition, and the Democratic Party resented him for that the entire time.
It's...un-American. And, frankly, disturbing. Why Hillary? Why should so many people be so determined to make her the next President?
Not "why do we need a Democratic president". No. Why must that candidate be Hillary? Why was this settled so early in the race?
I say that, because it almost seems like the Democratic Party is stuck with a 'sunk cost fallacy'. Let's go back to before the e-mail scandal grew legs, before we got deep into campaigning, and look at what we knew about Hillary. She has always had high unfavorables. Always. This is something the entire party apparently thought they could work around. (You can argue about whether it's fair or not, sexist or not, justified or not...but you can't argue that it's not there.)
Yet that apparently didn't matter. Next - we know the Republicans go after the Clintons like a dog chasing a squirrel. Funny how, in the last eight years at least, they didn't seem to go after the Obamas to quite the same degree. That implies that (again - fair or not, sexist or not, justified or not) you will see the Republicans make life difficult for Hillary Clinton to a degree they probably wouldn't for any other candidate.
On top of all of that, we have Hillary Clinton's noted preferences for privacy. Again, her supporters say it's all justified, having survived those aforementioned attacks. (Isn't it great when you can use a word like 'aforementioned'?) She's found a tactic that she seems to think works, and she sticks with it. Unfortunately, her preferred tactic ends up making issues that might have been minor otherwise turn into something bigger. See, Democrats and Republicans focus so much on each other that they forget most people don't really pay attention and hardly care. It's kind of like in a counterinsurgency, where you're so focused on getting 'the bad guys' that you forget about the neutral farmers and workers who are just trying to make a living.
At the end of the day, half of what the news reports about politics is just white noise. It only matters to politicos (and I'll include myself here) who follow that sort of thing. So while Hillary may think she's got a great strategy for dealing with Republican harassment, the thing outsiders tend to pick up on is that her strategy involves privacy and secrecy. And that she will go to ridiculous lengths to keep it that way, to the point where it seems like she really must have something to hide.
Even worse, is that I suspect she thinks it's okay to do whatever it takes to defend against Republican attacks, and doesn't seem to care that her defenses make her sound like a liar or an idiot. See my previous post about her testimony on the (C) in her e-mails. Okay, I can see why you'd think it's okay to lie to Republicans. But to the FBI? And to the general public? They're more forgiving than the Republicans, and they probably wouldn't care too much if you had just told the truth from the beginning. It'd probably be more like the wikileaks of state department cables, where anyone actually paying attention just shrugs and says "whatever". (I added 'from the beginning' because if you don't do it right away, everything that gets dragged out into the light is suspect. And if you apologize after denying you did anything wrong it sounds more like you're just doing what it takes to get people to forget and move on, not because you sincerely believe you actually did something wrong. Especially if you undermine your own apology with later statements.)
This is tied in with something else I said earlier - why did nobody in the Democratic Party pull Hillary aside and tell her that being the subject of an FBI investigation was bad news, and that maybe she should withdraw? Why, instead, did the entire establishment somehow act as though it was no big deal? (yeah, yeah...those of you who still think it's not a big deal will disagree with me on this, entirely. The funny thing is, though, that the people arguing that are almost inevitably people who have never worked with classified material before.)
So anyways. The more that the Democratic Party insisted that Hillary was their gal, the more they put resources into supporting her, the more difficult it becomes to change course when her weaknesses come to light. And the timing gets worse and worse. If she had withdrawn at any point in the last year, the Democratic Party probably could have found another candidate. At this point, however, they'd be in a lot of trouble if that happened.
Same thing with the possible 'October surprise' Assange claims he has. If he released it now, the Democratic Party would have time to deal with it. The fact that Assange is holding on to it indicates he cares less about sharing information and more about deliberately releasing it in order to shape the course of the 2016 presidential election.
If I were the Democratic Party, I would want to know what he thinks he has. If it truly is enough to shape the race I would either try getting it out pre-emptively (if it's not as big a deal as he thinks) or get Hillary to resign right away (if it really is). Why wait until October?
Anyways. To tie this in to my beginning musings - why is the Democratic Party (and the media, and all the various other organizations who have overlooked her weaknesses as a candidate) so determined to make sure she's the next President?
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