Dan Erwin

No-Asshole Policy at the White House

Bob Sutton must be enjoying this. I certainly am.

At the virtual swearing in of his political appointees, Biden essentially told his appointees that if he catches “anyone of them treating someone else poorly, he’ll drop-kick them off the roof of the White House.”

Here’s his statement. “I am not joking when I say this, if you are ever working with me and I hear you treat another colleague with disrespect, talk down to someone, I promise you I will fire you on the spot,” No ifs, ands, or buts. Everybody, everybody is entitled to be treated with decency and dignity. That’s been missing in a big way the last four years…. I’m confident you have the capacity to do it. We’re gonna be judged. We are gonna be judged whether or not we restore the integrity and competency in this government…. I need your help badly. We have to restore the soul of this country, and we’re counting on all of you to be part of that. It’s not hyperbole. The only thing I expect with absolute certitude is honesty and decency—the way you treat one another, the way you treat the people you deal with. And I mean that sincerely,” he said.

He clarified that even further with a letter to his staff, telling them, “I would like to take a moment to make something clear to everyone. I do not expect nor do I want any of you to miss or sacrifice important family obligations for work. Family obligations include but are not limited to family birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, any religious ceremonies such as first communions and bar mitzvahs, graduations, and times of need such as illness or a loss in the family.” Trump, on the other hand, expected aides to skip important family functions to sit in the residence with him while he binge-watched Fox News...

Russian Trolls and the Information Wars

Surprisingly, the most powerful source of false information is neither Trump nor the Russian trolls. It’s a unique American business model that drives the false information.

With all the hullaballoo about false information, the Russian trolls and Trump's ritualized falsehoods on Twitter, I’ve been at a loss to understand the reality and the actual facts behind all that’s going on. So I was delighted to see the data and insights in an article by Vera Tolz in the December 3 issue (“Shortcuts”) of the London Review of Books. Tolz holds an endowed professorship in Russian Studies at the University of Manchester (UK). My review is indicative of a slight bias toward Brit scholarship on issues like this.

The data presented and the resulting conclusions offer a far better background for our understanding of fake information and Russia’s supposed role in it. In addition, given the Washington riots of January 6, which happened after the article was written, we now have a far richer understanding of the role of the internet.

As Tolz argues, Trump’s November 5 press conference in which he claimed he won the election and there had been massive voter fraud are indicative of the fact that we had learned nothing from the election of 2016. The left claimed the press and broadcasters were indulging the right. In contrast, the right claimed that the media hadn’t indulged them enough.

Russian trolls?
By that time, there was a strong liberal consensus that much of the internet misinformation had come from Russia. Pro-Trump Russia wants to disrupt elections, create chaos and interfere with balloting. Tolz points out that both the States and the UK have fallen into the trap of believing in this “information war” paradigm. The paradigm assumes that the main threats to both countries come from the outside. A fact the data does not support.

It’s true that a history of Russian trolls attempting to

“If humans don’t keep on exercising their lips. . .their brains start working?”

Seeking solitude can be a serious mistake.

Ford Prefect, that alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse never quite understood earthlings’ peculiar “habit of continually stating and repeating the very, very obvious, as in ‘It’s a nice day,’ or ‘You’re very tall’.” He considers, then rejects the theory that human mouths seize up if not continually utilized.  He finally concludes that if human beings “don’t keep on exercising their lips…their brains start working.”

That was how the late Douglas Adams expressed a common high-flown opinion about “empty chatter”: it is trivial, or perhaps worse, a substitute for real speech and thought. “Should we talk about the weather?” sings Michael Stipe of REM in “Pop Song 89.”

As a business consultant, I learned that plenty of managers—and execs held that view in spades, that is--until I educated them. Evidently my education worked rather well, because probably twenty-percent of my several hundred clients over the last 15 years of my business consulting wanted help in small talk. One CFO at a multi-billion-dollar firm hired me for only that purpose. His wife had told him on several occasions after cocktail parties that he needed to learn how to do small talk. She was right on. It took eight to ten sessions to learn how. I never quite got over laughing all the way to the bank over teaching a business person how to do small talk.

But I eventually realized my judgment was unfair. Until I got started in the pastorate in the 1960s, I didn’t know how to do it either. But I quickly realized in the very first year out of seminary that I’d be in deep-doo-doo without small talk. So, I eventually became an expert in the subject. In the 1960s no one had ever written about small talk.  But today there are plenty of books on the supposedly inane subject of small talk, many of them quite inadequate. Inadequate because they are tone deaf to the subtexts of small talk.

What You Can Learn from a Political Disaster

Sensemaking and the rhetoric of pornography.

Donald Trump is a declaration of indifference and the rejection of the values making our democracy possible—a human, political disaster with anti-democratic instincts. After working through endless newspaper, magazine and journal articles by some of our best writers, my frustration with the various lines of thinking left a number of issues very much unanswered. One thing was clear: Trump is leaving a reality structure behind, the so-called “Trumpism,” that can still impact our lives destructively. So, this “political disaster” offered a fine case for the sensemaking process—a rhetorical strategy that can clarify situations, offer highly useful explanations for both individuals and organizations, and create new, constructive ways for thinking and behaving.  

Sensemaking is an unusually helpful tool because it creates the potential for change, adaptation, differing iterations, strategic decisioning and reality structuring. Nagged by Trump’s rhetoric and unsatisfied with most of the journalism, I decided to look more seriously at his rhetoric after the first debate with Biden. The September debate was a central, inherent learning opportunity that ought not go to waste.

From the start, the most obvious conclusion was that the interaction was not a debate. Trump interrupted with the obvious intent of keeping Biden from responding or making any contribution to a “debate.” So, no interaction, no conversation and no debate.

Notice, here, that I began my analysis with a conclusion. A crucial property of sensemaking is that human situations are progressively clarified, but this clarification often works in reverse. I can’t say it strongly enough that working backwards usually provides more insights and a richer sense of options. The conflict between ideas, sometimes weak and other times strong, always surfaces better insights than starting from scratch.

For example, though I had read tons of stuff about Trump, including analyses of his narcissism and constant lying, one of the more intriguing insights was Jay Tolson’s comment. In the Hedgehog Review, he wrote that what we got from Trump was a lesson in the authoritarian style. Tolson’s overall perspective is built upon the notion that we have an unhinged president who shamelessly lied and interrupted his way around a decent opponent while ignoring a moderator who tried vainly to uphold rules that both he and Biden had agreed upon. By definition, the debate was an attempt to concentrate power in his own hands, an analogy of his political attempts, too.

A Gorgeous Black Voice

Expecting silence, I got the glories of Saint-Saens from Samson and Delilah. I was on my phone, holding for a technician to help me resolve a computer problem. The song went on with the rich, emotionally dark sounds of “my heart at the sound of your voice,” with even the harp and a wailing clarinet or oboe in the distance. And then the half-falsetto of the tenor’s response.  Entranced I hoped the technician wouldn’t come on too soon. I wanted to hear the end of the aria.

So it finished. Then the technician came on, “how may I help you sir?” I was stopped in my tracks by her voice.

We interacted for probably thirty seconds, then I interrupted. “You have an absolutely gorgeous Black voice,” I said. I could hear her smiling over the phone as she said, “Why, thank you sir.” Without waiting, I asked that she send kudos to the choice of music. “I’d never heard Saint-Saens while waiting for a technician.” 

Then she went on with her questions and directions. In the middle of it, she stopped and without any context, she asked, “how did you know?” “I used to be a singer,” I said. “And I first heard Leontyne Price in the early 1960’s. I’d never heard such gorgeous sounds. I learned that only Blacks can make that sound. And that it is present in their linguistic placement of sound.” To my surprise and delight, she confessed, “I wanted to do opera, but I wasn’t good enough.” She was oozing with warmth and intelligence. You could recognize it in the vocabulary she chose, the arrangement of her words, the way she framed her questions and answered with unusual clarity, quite capably moving the conversation along to achieve both our objectives. And so, she fixed my computer problems, then taught me how to do it for myself—and wished me happy holidays. 

Why It Had to Be Biden

The cover of this week’s Economist, that British bastion of business, intelligence, culture and policy, has a ragged, torn US flag flying over a government building. Above the flag is this lead: “Why it has to be Joe Biden.” In three articles, the magazine makes a strong case for Biden for the American voter. The subtitle of the first article summarizes their case: Donald Trump has desecrated America’s values. Joe Biden offers the prospect of repair and renewal.

Though, happily, Joe Biden has won the election, I think it’s important to think through all the Trump damage from over the past four years so we can make sense out of the coming years—and especially the interim between the election and the inauguration. And also, understand how much work the Biden administration has to do, a lot of which will be completely new and different for this century.

The Economist (10/30/2020) ticks off Trump’s failures, including regressive tax cuts, damaging deregulations, especially environmental policy, the debacle of health-care reform, and the cruel immigration separation of children from their parents. But they also allude to welcome changes between Israel and Muslim states, demands on NATO support for defense, and China’s recognition of us as a formidable adversary.

But, the Economist’s bigger dispute with Trump is over something far more fundamental: the desecration of the “values, principles and practices that made America a haven for its own people and a beacon to the world. Those who accuse Mr. Biden of the same or worse should stop and think. Those who breezily dismiss Mr. Trump’s bullying and lies as so much tweeting are ignoring the harm he has wrought.”

Barrett, Scalia and the Tone Deafness of Legal and Biblical Originalism

I paid little attention to Clarence Thomas’ appointment in 1991 other than to recognize, given my background in nonverbal communication, that he was probably lying about harassment. The research reveals that telling whether a person is lying is not nearly as easy as some would like you to believe. So, my conclusion was “probable.” But in watching Anita Hill all the nonverbals indicated a high probability she was telling the truth. That was all very frustrating. My focus was completely upon the harassment issues and what that meant for the future of the court. But what I ignored at the time was Thomas’ hermeneutic (interpretive) approach of Originalism to his interpretation of the Constitution. A serious mistake on my part.

In contrast, I paid a lot of attention to Scalia’s appointment and his hermeneutic. I was especially perturbed and rejecting of his later interpretation of the Second Amendment. My response was “Oh god, no. I’ve been here before. This is just crazy.” And then there is his protégé, Amy Coney Barrett.

I have yet to find a legal writer who understands—or cares--that we’ve been dealing with Biblical parallels to Originalism that date back to the 1920s and the Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy. Thomas, Scalia and Barrett would be considered “Fundamentalists.” Legal Fundamentalists. The comparison has been enlightening. What drives my interest in both the Controversy and the Scalia-Barrett commitments are my seminary education in systematic theology and my graduate studies in modern rhetoric and intellectual American history--and the legalized mass murder made possible by Scalia’s Originalist (mis)interpretation of the Second Amendment (D.C. vs. Heller) and the NRA.

Why I Still Write Blogs

Periodically, I get asked why, at age 86, I’m still writing blogs. Usually the person asking is in their sixties or seventies. It’s a question that just keeps coming up again and again in spite of the fact that 62% of my blog viewers are under age 34, and 55% are using mobile devices—all of which says a lot and is very satisfying for me. But the older age of my questioners makes my answer easy. I just say something along the line of wanting to keep my gray matter working, lest it slow down. Older adults understand that response and seem to be happy with it. There’s truth in that answer. But actually, it’s a brushoff.

To understand why I still write, you’ll first need to understand my life as a child and adolescent. I was the elder of two sons, three years apart, in a profoundly dysfunctional family. My mother was a flaming narcissist and, as my brother said over her grave, “a mean lady.” My father had divorced her two years into my life—a rare act in the 1930s--and then remarried her when he realized my younger brother was on the way. I cannot remember a single week in my entire life before leaving for college when there were not emotional fights and tears. My father actually attempted suicide once. When angry, he broke plates and cups on the floor, then went off hunting with his dogs and a Black buddy, in season and out. Of course, there were significant consequences of all that to my life. To protect myself, I learned to become deceptive, a tool which I have mostly unlearned. My language skills were always the best tools for self-protection. Whenever possible, I retreated to books—books of all kinds—in my search for new language and new ideas. My brother lacked my language competencies. He wasn’t even a good liar—the primary tool for avoiding our mother. Instead, he was the family scapegoat. The two of us had little relationship. Always in trouble, he was sent off to three private schools in his junior high and high school years. Two, out-of-state, before my dad finally shipped him off to the army at age eighteen. The differences between my brother and myself were also instructive. It was one more driver of my language and relational learning. With my background in psychology, I now understand that he was an attachment avoidant and I was a low-level anxious avoidant—a dysfunction that, calculatingly, I worked on changing throughout the first 10 years of my adult life.

What’s obvious, and also profoundly frustrating, is that my mother was my teacher--and an exceptionally capable tutor. Attendance in her school was compulsory and I spent 24 hours a day figuring out how to win the top grades. My best friend recently described that learning as highly reflective. Continually ruminating, I spent all those years attempting to outsmart her. It was language, I kept confirming. It was always the best tool. I worked hard at becoming linguistically effective, eventually escaping, marrying a wonderful woman and moving to another world. It turns out that having someone believe in my failure enabled my success. My friend, also said, laughing, that I would have been a superb Courtier in the Court of Elizabeth the First. I’d be able to manage all the politics and come away rich. My brother, in significant contrast, decided that the best way to manage our mother was to escape. And he spent his years at home attempting to escape her clutches—usually failing. Elizabeth’s henchmen would have tracked him down and murdered him. Essentially that’s what happened. It just took my mother 70 years...

Turning Points and Milestones of Growth-Fostering Relationships

Every person who intends to exert leadership in his personal life, in business or any other vocation—and even in the family--will intentionally focus on personal growth. Research has shown us that effective business leadership growth inevitably requires mentors. Though true, that notion is plainly inadequate. The fact is that all living and all development takes place only with relationships. To put it still more directly, we experience growth because of our connections to other people. I can go through my years since grade school and well into my sixties, and still point to people that changed my life, impacts that would have to be considered as turning points and often milestones. Change that would never have happened without those connections.

 

The underpinnings of growth are inevitably acts of creativity built on relationships. Virginia Woolf puts it this way: Masterpieces (turning points and milestones) are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of thinking in common, of thinking by a body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.  

I still have a lot of memory about my first real growth experience, a phenomenally unique milestone while only in the 7^th grade. I’ll explain later why the experience was so important, why I remember so many details, and what it did for me. To begin, the experience was initiated by a civics teacher, Mr. Fickes, a teacher whom I thought was pretty dumb. I opened my mouth too often and after one episode he chewed me out, telling me I’d be in the “insane asylum by the time I finished high school.” Shortly after that experience, the chair of the social science department, Dr. Arthur, a very impressive intellect, and a delightful woman with sparkling eyes and a Michigan PhD, took seven top students out of the class and created a seminar group on civics for us. Fickes did not return the following year. 

Kevin Costner's "Yellowstone": "Cruel and Uncaring"

Toward the end of episode eight in the third season of Yellowstone, John Dutton (Kevin Costner) says this to his son, Kayce: “In case you haven’t noticed, it (the world) is cruel and uncaring.” And he adds, “you have to be meaner than evil--and still love your family and still enjoy a sunrise.” I could feel my skin crawling, tingling after his words. I understood my rejection immediately, but it took several days to figure out why my emotions were so strong. And why Dutton’s commitment bothered me so much.

It’s not that the words were out of sync with the storyline of the episode or the series. The entire series has been filled with gripping conflicts between good and evil, between protection of the family and property and the attempts to steal the property from the family. Often dripping with brutality. The stories in all three seasons have shown a high degree of consistency and suspense, interlaced with underlying questions about human reality. (Does this actually happen in our world today?) That’s part of the reason the show has kept my interest at very high levels. Obviously, I’m not the only committed viewer. That final episode set a ratings-record with 5.2 million viewers, claiming cable’s #1 spot, in live, same day. If you include the simulcast and encores, the closer drew 7.5M viewers on premiere night.  And it also set up the viewer for season four, next year.

More than a good show?
What bugged me so much about that narrative is that it’s reflective of the distrust of the world and the people in it, the background, for example, for our current conspiracy spasm. Both consciously and unconsciously, my person and my vocations have often circled around our trust and distrust of the community and the world—and how profoundly repetitious stories with similar distrusting values impact our relationships, vocations and communities. I don’t think of Dutton’s two sentences as merely a means for sharing information. It’s an arousing story in which we viewers have been conditioned to participate. And it appeals to our feelings rather than to our thinking. That’s what makes it so powerful and seductive, creating my intense emotional response.  

Dig into any conspiracy theory and you’ll find believers with shattered views of trust in the world, what Richard Hofstadter famously called "an arena for angry minds."