[Flint]

I had a long through process in the shower this morning, let me try to reiterate it here:

What is leadership? I've been studying leadership (business leadership) in depth, especially 'Servant Leadership' and related schools of thought. The main point here is that leadership is not management. Leadership is influence. Leaders don't mico-manage what is happening at the departmental level; rather they influence the culture of the organization, creating an atmosphere where decisions lead in a general direction. This is what is happening with the 'mission and vison statements' widely recognized as a part of corporate culture. These things aren't a joke--when Google tells itself "Don't be evil," this is the guiding principle that allows an entity with so much control over our personal data to continue to expand without being mistrusted and repudiated.

This is what business leaders do, and it is something that I'm not sure is very well understood (I myself didn't understand, until I engaged in extensive studies)--essentially, people ask, "What exactly does that high-paid executive who walks around the building in the expensive suit, what exactly does he do?" Leadership isn't building widgets, or being the boss of widget builders, it is something much more esoteric--getting people to want to do what you think they should do, without having to ask them to perform specific actions. Prescriptive mandates are what middle-management worries about. Leaders have that vague concept called a "vision" which is defined by their moral compass and informs the culture of the organization.

So why should we want the government to be run like a busuiness? Not because we want it to specifically adpot the values of finance capitalism, but because the concept of business leadership is what creates the only thing which can make or break a machine with millions of moving parts--the culture defined by the shared vision of that organization.

So what is our shared vision of America? I honestly don't think that we disagree on anything of consequence here, although great efforts are taken by both sides to villify the opposition. The state of politics in America is that of defining the opposition as a "bad" person, who actually wants bad things to happen. That is ridiculous, and both sides do it. Don't let yourself fall into that trap. Please don't sink to that level. We all love children and puppies and sunshine, for goodness sake.

We do disagree on some of the specific methods of obtaining the goals that we all desire. Nobody hates babies, we simply sometimes disagree on the best way to do things.

Here's the problem, we agree on more things than we disagree on.

Why do political parties get so polarized?

Because the numbers of people represented are far too great to form a true consensus, on everything, so the political system we have in place forms these coalitions of positions, and as a politician travels upward into greater scope of command, his obligations necessitate adoption of an accepted portfolio of positions--a fragile alliance of diverse interests, consolidated just enough to hold just about 50% of the people's allegiance. This is politics, this is how it works. It isn't one man or one party that acts this way, it's the system.

So you have a governor with a successful track record employing incredibly similar policies to a sitting president, with who he has to feign disagreement, but after all what do they really disagree on, when so much of their body of work looks basically parallel? Essentially this goes back to that 'leadership' thing. Again, leadership isn't management. Leaders are there to define a vision which informs the culture, and this is where the differentiation between candidates has to be clear. And basically we have had defined for us two opposed school of thought: 1) the "greedy businessman who only cares about himself and his rich buddies, who is oblivious to the experience of poor people, and doesn't recognize the social responsibilities of the government (also he is a patriarchal religious zealot and firearms enthusiast)," and 2) the "big government, tax and spend socialist who thrives on getting greater and greater numbers of people addicted to government handouts--he doesn't have any sense with money because he is spending your money while also planning to take your guns and bibles away, and force you to get a mandatory abortion."

These are cartoon villians. But, in reality, they do have to represent some kind of fundamental difference of that 'vision' thing.

And this is what frustrates me about how we get so bogged down in the specifics of policies--which after all, are just trying to accomplish the same things that we all want, only in different ways. There are different schools of thought on economics and everything else--there isn't one 'correct' answer. And the person who disagrees with you about the means to achieve a goal doesn't have to be a bad person. And the politician who is basically beholden to a coalition of disparate interests which define the 'vision' he must communicate in order to guide millions of people in a general direction, he isn't a boots-on-the-ground manager who tells people exactly how to do their job. In that respect it is almost absurdist to regard a presidential campaign as a battle of specifics.

The reality is, we have two very general groups, who even within themselves do not agree on most things. The amount of things that everybody agrees with is greater than the unity of either of these contived classifications of people.

I think that maybe the areas where we disagree are in the basic gut feeling we have about the best way to get things done. This is probably more informed by our personal experiences than anything else. I know it is for me. I think that it should be this way, rather than getting wrapped up in cliques. Rather than making amateurish errors in reasoning as we cobble together a makeshift argument for a pre-conceived notion.

None of the people involved in these dicussions are 'bad' people; and at the same time, none of the politicians discussed here are without the same set of characteristics that allows any man to rise to that level of national politics. It is what it is--can we not just accept that and move on?

We don't have to get so wrapped up in it that we forget our common sense and common decency.

But we obviously don't always agree on some pretty major items. Can we not at least pretend momentarilly that the other person might be aware of something that we are not, and try to imagine what the set of variables that would support that scenario would look like, and then try to reconcile that with our observations of reality in order to determine the basic feasbility of what they are proposing?

I mean, that's how you learn things.

I've learned, and grown, so much while participating in discussions on the internet, because it allows you the opportunity to observe that people who disagree with you are also intelligent and have well-founded ideas. But you have to be open to that. It isn't a passive thing that happens--you have to force yourself into this mindset, until over time it becomes habit.

It is good to question and examine things.

Belittling someone who disagrees with you is something which damages your own personal growth.



Okay, I'm just rambling now.

But I think I'll actually post this.