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Rebuilding after Trump, continued
I started writing this in a reply to this post, then decided it had gone afield and belonged as its own post.
Living together in a family, a neighborhood, a nation/state, or a world isn't about everybody agreeing; it's about how we resolve disagreements. To oversimplify, there are two broad approaches, which I'll call rulership and leadership.
The ruler depends on force, fear, and domination: I'm stronger than you, so we'll do what I want and ignore what you want. Obviously, that's not much fun for the losers/subjects. But it's not great for the winner/ruler either because everybody else fears, hates, and resents the ruler, who as a result can't trust anyone and spends its life in fear of violent overthrow. To discourage such overthrow, the ruler is obligated to regularly hurt people, just to remind them of its ability to do so. Which naturally inspires even more fear, resentment, and hatred of the ruler, in a vicious cycle. People obey a ruler because they know they'll be punished if they don't.
Many courtiers aren't trying to overthrow the ruler, but just to hang onto their positions; these may be called "advisors", but they can never tell the ruler anything unpleasant or unflattering without losing their jobs, so the ruler seldom hears the truth, much less the advice of people with more expertise in a particular subject. Since truth and expertise are not in their job descriptions, "advisors" can be hired purely for personal loyalty -- indeed, competence is frowned on in advisors because it might lead them to think they can survive without the ruler, and to throw their support behind a coup. Trump's zero-sum thinking, his disregard for other people's knowledge and judgment, his intentional unpredictability, his paranoia, his court of unqualified sycophants and yes-men, and his gratuitous cruelty aren't coincidental, they're all inextricably linked parts of the same rulership model.
The leader, on the other hand emphasizes competence, inclusion, and fairness: I'm pretty good at making decisions, so you and I will both be better off if I make those decisions after getting as much input as possible from smart advisors and the public. When we have to choose one course of action or another, we won't all be happy with the result, but at least we've followed a fair, transparent, and predictable process that heard the concerns of all the stakeholders. There will always be decisions that hurt one faction or another, and decisions that must be made in a hurry or in secret, but people are more likely to support those decisions if the leader has already developed a reputation for making good, fair decisions. People are less likely to try to overthrow a leader if they trust that they'll be treated fairly without being the leader themselves. Which means the leader, in turn, can trust others to not attempt coups, to take care of their own delegated tasks, and to provide their own honest counsel. Which means the leader can make better-informed and better decisions, more likely to be carried out successfully. Which means people develop more trust in the leader's judgment, and we're in a virtuous cycle. People voluntarily follow a leader because things tend to turn out well that way.
Do we want our President to lead a country that leads the world, or to rule a country that rules the world?
Rebuilding after Trumpism means switching from "ruler" mode back to "leader" mode. It requires rebuilding not only a functioning Federal government, but more fundamentally a sense that we're not in a zero-sum, oppress-or-be-oppressed world, but actually have some values in common, some facts in common, some interests in common, and a destiny in common. And the word "we" in the previous sentence applies at all scales: not only the nation/state, but the family, the neighborhood, and the world.
Living together in a family, a neighborhood, a nation/state, or a world isn't about everybody agreeing; it's about how we resolve disagreements. To oversimplify, there are two broad approaches, which I'll call rulership and leadership.
The ruler depends on force, fear, and domination: I'm stronger than you, so we'll do what I want and ignore what you want. Obviously, that's not much fun for the losers/subjects. But it's not great for the winner/ruler either because everybody else fears, hates, and resents the ruler, who as a result can't trust anyone and spends its life in fear of violent overthrow. To discourage such overthrow, the ruler is obligated to regularly hurt people, just to remind them of its ability to do so. Which naturally inspires even more fear, resentment, and hatred of the ruler, in a vicious cycle. People obey a ruler because they know they'll be punished if they don't.
Many courtiers aren't trying to overthrow the ruler, but just to hang onto their positions; these may be called "advisors", but they can never tell the ruler anything unpleasant or unflattering without losing their jobs, so the ruler seldom hears the truth, much less the advice of people with more expertise in a particular subject. Since truth and expertise are not in their job descriptions, "advisors" can be hired purely for personal loyalty -- indeed, competence is frowned on in advisors because it might lead them to think they can survive without the ruler, and to throw their support behind a coup. Trump's zero-sum thinking, his disregard for other people's knowledge and judgment, his intentional unpredictability, his paranoia, his court of unqualified sycophants and yes-men, and his gratuitous cruelty aren't coincidental, they're all inextricably linked parts of the same rulership model.
The leader, on the other hand emphasizes competence, inclusion, and fairness: I'm pretty good at making decisions, so you and I will both be better off if I make those decisions after getting as much input as possible from smart advisors and the public. When we have to choose one course of action or another, we won't all be happy with the result, but at least we've followed a fair, transparent, and predictable process that heard the concerns of all the stakeholders. There will always be decisions that hurt one faction or another, and decisions that must be made in a hurry or in secret, but people are more likely to support those decisions if the leader has already developed a reputation for making good, fair decisions. People are less likely to try to overthrow a leader if they trust that they'll be treated fairly without being the leader themselves. Which means the leader, in turn, can trust others to not attempt coups, to take care of their own delegated tasks, and to provide their own honest counsel. Which means the leader can make better-informed and better decisions, more likely to be carried out successfully. Which means people develop more trust in the leader's judgment, and we're in a virtuous cycle. People voluntarily follow a leader because things tend to turn out well that way.
Do we want our President to lead a country that leads the world, or to rule a country that rules the world?
Rebuilding after Trumpism means switching from "ruler" mode back to "leader" mode. It requires rebuilding not only a functioning Federal government, but more fundamentally a sense that we're not in a zero-sum, oppress-or-be-oppressed world, but actually have some values in common, some facts in common, some interests in common, and a destiny in common. And the word "we" in the previous sentence applies at all scales: not only the nation/state, but the family, the neighborhood, and the world.