BLAME,” to find fault with, to hold responsible, to place responsibility for.”
The Biden/Harris Administration blamed the Afghanistan debacle on, “the generals”, blamed tangled supply chains on “inflation”, blamed the over-all economic nose-dive on “COVID and Putin” blamed surging lawlessness on “COVID and guns”, blamed out-of-control fuel prices on “Putin and the Ukraine invasion”, blamed gas prices on “fuel company CEOs”, Blamed increasing inflated prices for everyday essentials on “CEOs” and on and on and on.
Truth just doesn’t seem to matter to Biden/Harris; they will say whatever it takes to get past the moment. “The border is not open.” The truth: Every statistic associated with illegal immigration tells us just the opposite. Biden/Harris June, 2022: “We have the fastest growing economy in the world.” The truth: More than 50 countries were growing faster. Biden/Harris, “People have record savings.” The truth, wealth losses in the U.S. exceeded $10 trillion in 2022, the most significant catastrophic vaporizations of wealth and savings in U.S. history. Biden/Harris, “The economy is in a better place than it has been historically.” The truth: During the Trump presidency, before COVID, median household income rose by $6,446, the largest three-year gains in income for middle-class families in history. Under Biden/Harris, wage increases lagged behind increases in inflation. Biden/Harris, “America is in a position to tackle a worldwide problem (inflation) that’s worse everywhere but here.” The truth: U.S. inflation was higher than in Japan, France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Canada. Repeatedly, Biden/Harris, “we have created more jobs than any administration in history”. Truth, tens of millions were temporarily without a job when covid shut down America. When businesses reopened, those millions returned to work, their jobs were not “created”.
The political left picks up on blame, it spreads, it is deemed an acceptable course of action by our liberal media and liberal institutions of higher learning. We are creating a next-generation of leaders who believe blame and untruth are acceptable leadership tools.
President Biden is now almost irrelevant in his final days in office, but the Biden/Harris blame game lives on in Kamala’s campaign speeches. They have consistently used blame as a leadership tool and it is a disaster.
This is not to say that the Republican politicians are not players in the Blame and Hate game, but everything former President Trump says is immediately fact checked by the main-stream media and widely reported while Biden/Harris can count on the media to eagerly report their erroneous findings and conclusions.
THESIS: Culture is a powerful and pervasive force in any organization. An “organization” could be a small team of two or three individuals or it could be the whole country. We know that every individual has a definable personality; bubbly, solemn, self-serving, introverted, optimistic, mean, the list is long. “Culture” is the personality of an organization; caring, harsh, entrepreneurial, selfless, hateful, bureaucratic; again, a long list.
In the 1990s this new culture began to emerge. It started with a new meaning for the word “spin”. When a potentially negative issue emerged, the Clinton White House would “spin” the issue to make it look as though someone else was responsible. The blame game took root, grew, migrated to the U.S. Congress and transformed it into today’s blame-everything, dysfunctional, grid locked organization. And then it spread across the country. Today we have a deeply engrained culture of blame everywhere.
Additionally, in the past few years the country has been trending towards a culture of hate and it is moving like a wild fire.
Hate: “to dislike intensely or passionately; feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; detest.”
And here is the worst part, babies are not born with hatred in their little hearts. But they will learn hatred, bullying, the use of vindictive language, disregard for civil discourse, at home, in school and from the media. A culture of hate is already on track to become a generational problem.
Hatemonger: “one who incites others to hatred or prejudice”. We saw that recently on compasses across the nation with hatemongers preaching to and leading uninformed rioting student bodies about antisemitism. We hear it every day from those with deeply ingrained hatred towards former President Trump, notwithstanding the success of many of his policies that lifted America’s standing, economy and security.
Chuck Shumer, Senate minority leader, after the Supreme Court decision to make abortion a states’ rights issue vs federal law, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price, you won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Hatemongering on a national scale by a senior leader of the Democrat party.
Representative Maxine Waters outside the Federal Building in her California district. Railing against President Trump and his Cabinet, ““Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them. You tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” Hatemongering.
Civil discourse, agreeing to disagree and the golden rule are in danger of becoming a thing of the past We are waking up to an America we don’t know or like, an America that has lost its goodness.
HOW CAN WE COUNTER THE CULTURE OF BLAME AND HATE?
First, we have to define an alternative. There are four steps to changing the culture of any organization.
One, define the existing culture. Not always easy but doable.
Two, answer the question, is it what we want the culture to be? In this case absolutely no.
Three, define what we do want the culture to be.
Recall on 20 January 2021 newly sworn in President Biden provided us with an impassioned plea for national unity. But he did not define “unity” or a specific path forward. Then a few hours later he signed a pile of Executive Orders that torpedoed many of President Trumps policies that enhanced the lives of most Americans including the 73.6 million who had voted for him. For example, Biden insured that energy independence for the first time in over 50 years would be gone. He reopened the border and sacrificed the safety and security of all Americans. Etc.
Kamala is now campaigning on, “a new way forward” without defining WHAT it is or HOW to achieve “it”. She recently defended her flip-flop on major policies and issues by emphasizing that, “My values have not changed. The Wall Street Journal rightfully acknowledged that her statement on values, “can be read any way you want. We take it as a studied wink to her left flank that she’s on their side but can’t say so clearly until she’s elected.”
Four, having clearly defined WHAT you want the culture to be, then have a plan to implement and institutionalize it.
Sometimes it is instructive to look at issues by putting them on a spectrum of behavior; that is, look at the polar opposites. Good/evil. Selfless/self-serving. Accountability/blame. Then there is today’s issue with hate on one end of the spectrum and on the other end is trust, respect and love. We simply have to get on the correct side of the Blame and Hate spectrums.
From that it is easy to suggest an easily identifiable alternative to the hate and blame culture; it could be a culture of Accountability, Respect and Trust.
ACCOUNTABILITY: “the obligation to bear the consequences for failure to perform as expected.”
Accountability is a foundational element of leadership. A person who attempts to dodge accountability for their policies, beliefs and actions turns to lying about results. The conclusion from we-the-people is that if he/she consistently lies about the little things, they will also likely lie to us about the big stuff. And it is the big stuff that can and does negatively impact the lives of Americans every day.
The seriousness of the absence of accountability goes further. Very high up on the line-up of desirable leader character traits are trust and respect. Without accountability, neither trust nor respect will become part of the leadership equation. We cannot trust someone who lacks the moral courage to tell us the truth about the most important issues facing we-the-people. Without trust and accountability how are we going to respect that person as our leader?
If you are looking for a single word that sums up the attributes of accountability, trust and respect it would be integrity. A person of integrity will consistently display moral commitment, selflessness and confidence to speak out and act out with honesty and honor. A mid-1900s radio personality, Edward R. Murrow summed it up accurately with this, “To be persuasive you must be believable; to be believable you must be credible; to be credible you must be truthful.” Amen.
CULTURE: Having discussed the Biden/Harris character, or lack thereof, we also must consider the larger issue; it is about the organization, i.e., the collective U.S.A.
As pointed out, culture is a powerful and pervasive force in every organization and every organization, no matter how large or small, has a culture. Too many times senior leaders in industry, the military, education, government and politics pay little or no attention to the culture of their organization until they wake up one day and figure out that it is a disaster and is dragging the entire organization down. The point being, culture needs attention all the time.
A leader does not build or change an organizational culture by sending out an email or memo or making a speech on “unity” (Biden) or talking about “a new way forward” without defining it (Kamala). The leader defines what the culture currently is, decides what he/she wants it to be and then sets in motion all the initiatives necessary to institutionalize it. It’s a lot of work; a leader must get the majority on board, make them actively participate and sell it, talk about it openly and frequently. Everyone in the organization should be able to define the culture and its impact on the environment in which they live and work.
Why are great leaders great? Some people will refer to a successful leader as a, “born leader.” No such thing. First is desire. If a leader does not want to lead or is uncomfortable in the seat, they will likely fail. Secondly, is preparation. Great leaders have years of experience at the first-line leader level, the operational level and finally at the strategic level. They are good at what they do as a result of a combination of formal leader development training, self-initiated study, having been properly mentored and by having experienced many successes and failures along the way.
I believe we can all agree that being president of the United States may be the most difficult, the most demanding leadership position in the world. A best-case scenario would be for the president to have experienced at least years if not hopefully decades of leader development at tactical through strategic levels, experienced near-term and long-range planning successes and failures, learned how and when to deal with direct-report subordinates as well as dozens, then hundreds or perhaps thousands of worker-bees at the lower levels, experienced how to deemphasize self-interests by always seeking the greater good for the organization as a whole and keeping that thought in the forefront of every action and reaction.
President Biden has none of this training and has, therefore, failed the American people on so many fronts. His natural reaction is to turn to what 50 years of politics taught him; play loose with the truth and resort to blame, blame and more blame.
The scarcity of information on Kamala Harris’ leader development is at least alarming if not down-right dangerous. What we have seen over the past three years gives us pause.
The office of the Vice President has a staff off 47 individuals, hand selected. The staff has recently been described as, “a revolving door, a staff exodus of key aides heading for the exits.” Resulting in a 91.5% turnover. One former VP Harris staffer says aides have to, “endure, a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism.” How do you believe VP Harris’ accountability, respect and trust is doing?
BOTTOM LINE:
Almost nothing damages the reputation of a leader faster than attempting to dodge an issue rather than deal with it. Blame is a dodge. Nothing positive will ever come of it.
Our lives are defined by how we deal with adversity. When failure manifests its ugly head, the last course of action should be to abandon accountability because doing so ensures there also will be no trust or respect going forward.
A thought from an unknown author, “The only thing that happens when you throw dirt is that you lose ground.” Blame does not inspire, it breeds malcontent, discord, disarray, frustration and ultimately, in this case, failure for the entire nation.
WHAT TO DO?
We should begin to answer that question by defining where we are today on the issue of who will lead the country next year. Having looked at the dismal Biden/Harris administration’s three-year track record, at their lack of basic leadership capabilities, at their “unfavorable” polling results that are over 50% for both and over-all what they have done towe the people vs done for America and considering Trump’s many highly successful policies and presidential experience why are Harris and Trump in a dead heat?
One would consider that while Trump has been campaigning for about two years and Kamala for just a few weeks having never received a single vote for the presidency, maybe it is worth looking a something new for the last two months of the campaign.
MR. TRUMP, TAKE ON THE ISSUE OF THE CULTURE OF BLAME AND HATE IN AMERICA TODAY.
BACKGROUND:
About 200 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, diplomat, sociologist, political scientist, political philosopher, and historian came to America to study this seemingly wonderful and successful up-start nation called the United States of America. He traveled throughout the 21 states and departed with some worldly and brilliant conclusions.
In 1835 he published Democracy in America and the most famous conclusion from his writings is the thought that America is great because it is good; and when it ceases to be good it will likewise cease to be great.
That is where America is today. We have lost our goodness via a deeply seated culture of Blame and Hate. While Trump continues to campaign relentlessly on the objective of Making America Great Again one can (should?) conclude that his entire campaign missed a step. That is, in order, first tackle the Goodness and then go for the Greatness.
My contention is that we cannot succeed in being “great again” without restoring some level of goodness to America. I do not believe it is too late. What does Mr. Trump have to lose, he is just treading water right now and getting nowhere as the clock runs down.
NOTE TO SPEECH WRITERS: using some of the above information put together a highly advertised, dynamic speech in which you do not mention the existing MAGA. Introduce a new MAGA, Make America Good Again. MAGA-2.
Explain the thesis that we cannot achieve greatness until we regain some acceptable level of goodness. This can possibly be a dynamic shift in campaign dialog on both sides. Everything the Democrats have done TO America in the last few years, broke the middle class financially, degraded trust and respect for law and order, destroyed most major cities, vastly degraded safety and security for the American people, degraded military capability and with that lost our deterrent force, led us into the greatest vulnerability since WW II by support to Iran that made them financially able to support their forward deployed forces such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis. All of that and more has accelerated the Democrat dialog of Blame and Hate. Goodness is gone.
Explain that on day one of a new Trump presidency you will sign Executive Orders on the subject of a new Culture of Accountability, Respect and Trust. It’s easy to remember, ART. One of the Executive Orders will direct the new Secretary of Education to mount an immediate and vigorous campaign to make Accountably, Respect and Trust the operational culture in all of the 140,000 schools where it will be explained, talked about daily and be a part of every classroom activity. The intent is to begin now to build a new, changed, better generation of Americans.
An Executive Order will direct immediate action in every element of the Federal Government to use the new culture every day in every way.
Trump will tell Americans that on one day one he will meet with the entirety of the leadership in Congress to include Committee Chairs to sell the new culture.
One of the president’s most senior advisors will be the Culture Czar.
President Trump will not have difficulty instilling the ART culture in the military because that was the culture when the military was the most capable, most feared in the world before nonsense like Biden/Harris Diversity, Equality and Inclusion killed the basis of any great military; that is, 100% equal opportunity to be all you can be followed by measures of meritocracy.
Etc.
Etc.
Etc.
Conclude every campaign speech with the thought that Make America Great Again is obviously necessary because of the Biden/Harris mass destruction of society, education, the military, world standing, energy independence, family financial security, increased vulnerability from the newly formed China/Russia/Iran/North Korea cabal, and lack of internal safety and security for all Americans.
Finally tell America, “But we cannot successfully Make America Great Again unless we also successfully Make America Good Again.”