If you’ve ever been a member of a smoothly flowing organization, from a business, to a neighborhood alliance, even to a church or a well-run family, you know, whether you recognize it or not, a simple, but breath-takingly powerful principle at work; leadership starts at the top.
Leadership does many things at once, but first and foremost, it sets the tone and leads by example.
The best, most effective, and most enduring leadership draws people together, leads them in a common direction, draws on their strengths and empowers them to face a common — and many times daunting — challenge.
We in America have faced a paucity of leadership at every level for many years.
This lack of leadership has saturated every aspect of life in America; every school, every business, even every home is uncertain about what to do.
Many of our political, corporate, even church leaders have proven themselves to be self-appointed hucksters, grifters and master manipulators of those they should be serving and caring for.
Too many of them see their customers, constituents and members as the audience to be swayed and scammed.
Which, as we all know too well, has brought us to the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Trump, as well all have known for decades now, is, and always has been, the epitome of a master manipulator
Never subtle, but consistently in command, Trump’s finesse was on display to a degree rarely seen in the world, and certainly not in America, as he accepted the nomination for president on the final evening of the 2020 GOP Convention.
Ever the master showman, every aspect of his performance was intended to dazzle — and of course, to deceive.
From its setting, the White House lawn (described in the media as “the Trump White House” to allay any doubt who “owned” the White House) and, under any other circumstance, and certainly any other president, a blatant and manifest violation of The Hatch Act (using government property for one’s own benefit or personal purposes especially “using federal property for political activities or for engaging in anything that is a partisan political act”) to the message, and certainly the tone of the message, the speech was a master invitation to what could only be called “Trump’s world”.
This acceptance speech will be studied and analyzed for years if not decades as a master example of disassociation if not cognitive dissonance like no other speech perhaps in history.
It was an elegant, almost persuasive, exploration of vain-glory and obliviousness.
You would never know, looking at the setting and the audience, that a pandemic was raging across the country, claiming over a thousand lives a day (more would die over the four days of the GOP convention than had been claimed by America’s worst act of domestic terrorism on 9/11) that over a million people had filed unemployment claims each week for over twenty weeks, that almost 30 million Americans would miss their mortgage or house payments in August, that thousands of acres (and hundreds of homes) in California and Colorado were on fire, virtually every major city in America was filled with violence and racial tension, and just a few hundred miles away Hurricane Laura was laying waste American cities, homes and lives at a scale not seen in decades.
In fact Trump’s acceptance speech was filled with dire warnings of the chaos, violence and destruction that would be unleashed if his opponent, Joe Biden would be elected.
The death, destruction, economic collapse and violence of the Trump administration was not to be mentioned.
You could call Trump’s acceptance speech America’s “Let them eat cake” moment.
After all, as long as the wealthy, powerful and comfortable in America stayed that way, why would anyone want anything to change?
The irony, though not intended (presumably) could not have been greater.
But the contradiction (and blatant violations of laws, rules and standard protocol) was part of the program.
We all knew (and have known for decades) that Donald Trump never played by the rules. His supporters love him for that very reason.
From his marriages to his business dealings, Mr. Trump has always played by his own rule book.
The GOP, in an act that will go down in history, chose in 2020, in contrast to every other GOP convention to not have a policy platform. The GOP, instead of issues or policies will follow the whims, impulses and obsessions of their (unanimously) chosen leader.
To quote their leader, in another context — “What have they got to lose?”
For better or worse, we will all see what they, and we, have to lose.
Many years ago, I was living and working in Beijing, China. I had a brief conversation with a woman who was from Romania. She was a teacher in Beijing, as I was.
She had lived her entire life under enforced and austere communism.
The Chinese news media was proclaiming the end of poverty in China — especially the end of public begging.
As we were walking, we passed several women prostrate on a sidewalk begging.
As we passed, I asked her how she made sense of the government pronouncement when she could see public begging right in front of us.
Her answer was very simple; “You just learn to privilege what you hear over what you see”.
In other words, you learn in an autocratic state that what the government tells you is more real and “true” than what you see and encounter directly.
Government pronouncement are more “true” than your own lived experience.
This psychological dislocation (often called “gas-lighting”) is the primary tool of abusers and manipulators on every level. It is never healthy.
In any relationship, any encounter, when someone says “only I know the truth” or “don’t believe or trust your own experience, only trust me” is the one-way ticket to destruction.
Did you notice all the talk of God at the GOP convention?
It was part of the program, of course.
That reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous quote of a questionable village parson — “The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.”
And so many speakers insisting that, not only was Trump far more “kind and compassionate” than portrayed by the media, he was certainly not racist.
Each speaker, each story insisting that Mr. Trump was not racist, with ever-increasing passion was as convincing as someone insisting “I’m not drunk!”.
The louder and more insistent, the less any of us should believe them.
But the best hucksters, like any masters of their crafts, learn what works.
And Mr. Trump, like any master craftsman, has mastered his trade and it has served him well.
How well it serves the rest of us is still an open question.
