Our Friday News Analysis | In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 10)

Is There an American Soul?

Oh yes. Absolutely! I use my 'Ketchup Barometer.' I don't think anyone else does. What is a Ketchup Barometer? I use it everywhere, including China, Hungary, Israel, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and hundreds of other countries. How does my Ketchup Barometer work? When you're at one of the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises in Indonesia or a former McDonald's in Russia, just ask, "may I have some more ketchup." That's the start of my subjective but reflective Ketchup Barometer.

Results:

1. In Hungary, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Russia (before the war), Indonesia, and China, in fact, all over the world, the response is: "50 cents per packet, please."
2. Now ask that same question almost anywhere in the United States of America, and you'll get one response: a handful of packets AT NO COST. And if you'd want more, you'll get another handful.
3. New York City might be the exception: you get half a handful, also AT NO COST. And if you'd want more, you'll get another half a handful of packets, also AT NO COST.

I've shared this profound observation with many Americans. A handful of them chocks it off as typical American wasteful behavior. It’s an opinion that warrants further research. I’d like to believe that I’m uncovering one sliver of the nation’s soul: ‘American generosity.’

Ironically, as I write this news analysis, many Americans portend gloom and doom, even a civil war. This morning I heard someone tell me: “We are more violent than most people, and there are more guns and ammunition than people in the United States.” Those who voted Republican fear that the Democrats will usurp American democracy. Many Democrats feel the same about the Republicans.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive?

By Abraham A. van Kempen, featuring: Henry Kissinger's latest ‘Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.’

Cape Canaveral, 11 November 2022 | If you know of any story that is decisive, tell the world. We're still searching.

Red Waves Versus Blue Waves

Why is a ‘red wave’ or a ‘blue wave’ so vital, if not indispensable, in America’s democracy? Think it through! Why should one party dominate the other? If you talk to any Republican or Democrat, most will opt for a one-party control of the House, the Senate, the Judiciary, and the White House. Earlier today, a Democrat told me: “Had the Republicans taken over the House and the Senate, it would have spelled doom to America’s democracy.” Even former President Obama said so two days ago in Philadelphia, PA. Republicans say the same thing about the Democrats. In short, most Americans prefer a one-party rule as long as it is their party that rules. From one side of their mouths, Americans proclaim their democracy as sacred. Yet when push comes to shove, most prefer a one-party autocracy, with might as right.

Perhaps, there is more convergence than divergence among the powerful nations – the US, Russia, and China. In subsequent editions, we’ll examine the different ‘souls’ of China, Russia, and the United States. But now, I’d like to return to ‘the Clowns in Brussels, the Bozos in Strasbourg, and their Stooges in Washington, DC.’

They parade themselves as world leaders. They’re making fools of themselves. People are beginning to notice: ‘The kings wear no clothes.’ Everyone knows, except supposedly these ‘naked kings.’ All humankind is experiencing their ineptitude. I am profoundly disappointed and disturbed by how they manage to behave like chickens with their heads cut off, playing Russian Roulette with our lives. How can the collective EU-US/NATO Axis risk World War III when war is not an option?

I’d like to give Henry Kissinger the floor with: ‘Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy.’ It’s a must-read for everyone who demands reciprocity in international relations. Leaders who cannot produce peaceful coexistence are not worth their salt. They should be replaced. If they can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.

If voters do not hold the strings in a democracy, there is no democracy.
The United States trails gravely behind in voter turnout, says the Pew Research Center.
One-third of Americans of age let their democracy go to waste.
They don’t vote.

Leadership:
Six Studies in World Strategy
By Henry Kissinger

We live in a troubled world that is facing a significant leadership deficit. We lack leaders who bring to bear clarity, instinct, and often courage in assessing challenging circumstances. In Kissinger’s nineteenth book, the 99-year-old statesman views the leadership challenge through the lens of six heads of state he knew best: Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, Richard Nixon, Anwar Sadat, Lee Kuan Yew, and Margaret Thatcher. While they were all very different, Kissinger emphasizes that they shared a few key features: directness, vision, the ability to act boldly, understanding the importance of solitude, and, surprisingly, divisiveness.

The shift from aristocracy to meritocracy in governance allowed these six leaders, with their considerable skills, to help shape post-World War II history. Kissinger concludes his book with provocative questions about a “faltering meritocracy,” which is being eroded by new technologies such as social networks and artificial intelligence. This trend makes it particularly difficult to find candidates to fill the problematic leadership void at a time when this troubled world made it the most.

Introduction

The Axes of Leadership

Any society, whatever its political system, is perpetually in transit between a past that forms its memory and a vision of the future that inspires its evolution. Along this route, leadership is indispensable: decisions must be made, trust earned, promises kept, and a way forward proposed. Within human institutions – states, religions, armies, companies, schools – leadership is needed to help people reach from where they are to where they have never been and, sometimes, can scarcely imagine going.

Without supervision, institutions drift, nations' courts grow irrelevance and, ultimately, disaster. Leaders think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second, between the enduring values and aspirations of those they lead. Their first challenge is analysis, which begins with a realistic assessment of their society based on its history, mores, and capacities. Then they must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently speculative and uncertain.

This intuitive grasp of direction enables leaders to set objectives and develop strategies. For strategies to inspire society, leaders must serve as educators – communicating goals, assuaging doubts, and rallying support. While the state possesses, by definition, the monopoly of force, reliance on coercion is a symptom of inadequate leadership; good leaders elicit in their people a wish to walk alongside them. They must also inspire an immediate entourage to translate their thinking so that it bears upon the practical issues of the day.

Such a dynamic surrounding team is the visible complement of the leader’s inner vitality; it supports the leader’s journey and ameliorates the dilemmas of decision. Leaders can be magnified – or diminished – by the qualities of those around them. The vital attributes of a leader in these tasks, and the bridge between the past and the future, are courage and character – courage to choose a direction among complex and challenging options, which requires the willingness to transcend the routine. Strength of character to sustain a course of action whose benefits and dangers can be only incompletely glimpsed at the moment of choice. Courage summons virtue in the moment of decision; character reinforces fidelity to values over an extended period.

Leadership is most essential during periods of transition when values and institutions are losing relevance, and the outlines of a worthy future are controversial. In such times, leaders are called upon to think creatively and diagnostically: what are the sources of the society’s well-being? Of its decay? Which inheritances from the past should be preserved, and which adapted or discarded? Which objectives deserve commitment, and which prospects must be rejected no matter how tempting? And, at the extreme, is one’s society sufficiently vital and confident to tolerate sacrifice as a waystation to a more fulfilling future?

Meaningful political choices rarely involve a single variable; wise decisions require a composite of political, economic, geographical, technological, and psychological insights, all informed by an instinct for history. Writing at the end of the twentieth century, Isaiah Berlin described the impossibility of applying scientific thinking beyond its remit and, consequently, the enduring challenge of the strategist’s craft. He held that the leader, like the novelist or landscape painter, must absorb life in all its dazzling complexity:

               “what makes men foolish or wise, understanding or blind, as opposed to knowledgeable or learned or well informed, is the perception of [the] unique flavors of each situation as it is, in its specific differences – of that in it wherein it differs from all other cases, that is, those aspects of it which make it insusceptible to scientific treatment. [6]”

Kissinger, Henry (2022-07-04T23:58:59.000). Leadership. Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

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The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation, The Hague.