We’ve all had them.
The coworker you know better than to trust.
Oh, they may appear nice to the rest of the
company.
Or they may not.
Either way, you know that no matter what you
do, it will provoke them and the end result is you will be in trouble.
Maybe they will tattle on you to your
boss.
Maybe they will passive
aggressively react in such a way that you look like a heel.
Maybe you’ll be lucky and it will be both.
Here’s the thing – you know better than to provoke
them. You know the only way to deal with
them is to smile to their face, keep your head down, do your job, and then go
home and complain to your friends/roommate/significant other about them and
their behavior. If things are bad
enough, you look for a new job.
These thoughts have been going through my mind since I
watched and read the transcript of the press conference yesterday after the
meeting between President Trump and Putin.
Yes, I can see what people are upset about. But I think there is much more to the story.
Before I go further, I realize that I am really wasting my
time with the following words. Those who
disagree with me right this second are going to think I’m an idiot. Those who agree with me right this second are
going to click away nodding their heads in agreement. All I ask is that you read the following with
an open mind and think about it.
First of all, we need to have a good relationship, at least
on the surface, with Russia. They are a
major power in the world. Unless we want
to go to war, then we can’t embarrass them on the world stage. And I for one don’t want to go to war. We also need their cooperation with other
situations in the world. Given that,
what would have been gained if Trump had stood next to Putin and said what
everyone is claiming he should have said.
Putin would have gone home and done everything he could to make the
world unstable. Granted, he will
probably do that anyway, but it would have been worse if Trump had attacked him
at the press conference. It would have
ruined our relationship with them for a generation or more, and the entire
world would have paid the price.
These press conferences are nothing but theater. Everyone knows not to believe a word that
comes from them. Again, now back to the
situation with the toxic coworker. You
are tasked with presenting something to your company’s board with said
coworker. When the time comes for you to
stand up and make the presentation, do you act like you get along, or do you
start complaining about everything this person has done in the past? You act like a grown up and pretend that you
get along. The truth may be very different,
but you smile and act like you are a team working for the good of everyone.
That is what we saw yesterday. Trump, a businessman, knows this. What he directs our country to do in the
weeks and months to come will be much more telling than an hour in front of the
media. That is what he truly believes.
I get it. I read
mysteries. I love the moment when the
main character confronts the villain and says “Here is the smoking gun. You are guilty.” Unfortunately, that doesn’t work well in real
life, especially with so much at stake.
We still have plot holes and/or red herrings in this investigation, and
Trump brought some of those up in the press conference. One thing we learned yesterday that got
drowned out in the cries of treason was that Putin has agreed to allow us to
interview the Russians who have been indicted.
That is HUGE! Yes, it will be on
Russian soil and he isn’t turning them over to us for trial. But it is much more than I ever expected us
to get. I doubt we will learn anything
useful from it, but it is something. And
it is something that Putin would have backtracked on in a heartbeat if Trump
had acted differently during the press conference.
In some ways, Trump’s statements during the press conference
remind me of Mark Anthony’s speech in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. Caesar has
just been murdered, and Mark Anthony gives a huge speech in which he turns the
mob from believing Brutus that Caesar deserved to be killed to riling them up
to kill the assassins. And how does he
do it? “I speak not to disprove what
Brutus spoke.” “Brutus is an honorable
man.” The truth was, he was speaking to
disprove Brutus because he felt that Brutus had acted dishonorably, but he knew
he couldn’t do it outright. He had to be
subtle and work behind the scenes.
That’s the situation that Trump is in.
Yes, that means he attacked the FBI, but there are still holes and flaws
in the investigation. How is it bad to
acknowledge them? He said one
thing. Only time will tell if he truly
believes it or not.
There are other reasons I am having a problem taking this
all seriously. First is the fact that
many of the people who are upset about this and calling for major action
against Trump are the same people who have been calling for this for almost two
years now. On a scale of one to ten, the
fact that Trump woke up this morning is a twenty-five, and any time he opens
his mouth on anything we should be impeaching him. In that climate, it is hard to take them
seriously when they get upset by the latest thing he does.
These are the same people who were acting like Chicken
Little just last summer when Trump got in the Twitter war with Kim Jong Un in
North Korea. Yet somehow, we didn’t get
into a real war with them. In fact,
there was that infamous summit in the spring.
No, we haven’t gotten much out of it, but it makes me roll my eyes when
the exact same people are now acting like Chicken Little over what happened
yesterday.
Another reason is the history.
For the last 20 years, we’ve had Presidents
who I’ve felt have treated Putin better than he deserved.
Please follow
this link and read it carefully
and thoughtfully.
I’m not going to
retread all this well documented history.
But look at how Presidents Bush and Obama treated Putin and then read
the comments quoted from Trump at the press conference yesterday again in the
context of that history and the questions that were asked.
Again, those quotes in context are at the
same link.
It provides a different
context, one we aren’t getting on the news right now.
As long as I'm providing links,
this essay says what I'm thinking better than I'm saying it.
Do I think that Russia, under Putin’s direction, attempted
to meddle in the last election?
Yes. Is this something we should
take seriously? Yes. Is this something that could have been
stopped by one press conference yesterday?
No. As the cliché goes, you
attract more flies with honey than vinegar.
If Trump is going to deal successfully with his toxic coworker Putin, he
can’t attack him on a public stage. It’s
what he does behind the scenes that tells the real story.
Do I like what he said yesterday? No.
But then again, I haven’t liked what Presidents have said in Putin’s presence
for the last 20 years. Trump is no
different than them.
