Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Toxic Coworkers (Or My Thoughts on the Trump Putin Press Conference Yesterday)

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.

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