Author: Barbara

Seems all Great Britain and large swaths of the Commonwealth are turning themselves inside out. All to honor, to celebrate over a four-day period, the Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth II, who has sat on the throne 70 years.   

But what exactly is she, this long-lived and long-reigning Queen? Is she a leader? Or a figurehead? Or a symbol of something, maybe a people, or a country, or a memory of times past when Britain was an empire, a great empire, that at its peak ruled 25 % of the earth’s surface and all the world’s waves.    

Thing is she might be a figurehead, and she might be a symbol. And for that matter she might be, merely, a celebrity. But she is not just any one of these. She is not just even all of them. She is also a leader. She is a leader who has great throngs of followers, many of whom are strongly tied to her emotionally, psychologically, arguably even spiritually.

For of all the different kinds of leaders, the Queen most closely resembles a religious one. She has remained remote, almost other worldly. She has been private and, especially given the length of her time in public life, said little. She has never issued an order or initiated an obviously new idea. She has never seemed to want to run anything or manage anyone. Moreover, she has never tried in any obvious way to exercise any power, or even in any perceptible way to exert any influence. Mostly she just was, still is.

Elizabeth II does occupy a position of authority. That’s evident in the pomp and circumstance; in the crowns that sit sometimes on her head; in the multiple castles she owns and in which she continues still to dwell. But compared with times past her authority is greatly diminished. Older generations might still be intimidated or impressed by the Queen’s position, but younger ones mostly are not. They are waving flags this weekend not because of Elizabeth’s position but because of her persona.

When she dies there will be genuine mourning. To many members of the British public her death will feel personal. But her loss will be more than that. For the Queen has been source of stability – in Great Britain, but not only in Great Britain – that in this day and age will be difficult, maybe even impossible ever to replace.      

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is now more than three months old. Seems to me the romance of it is over. War is never, of course, romantic. Like all wars the war in Ukraine has been deadly and cruel, destructive and disruptive. Still, the narrative associated with it, has had, as many wars do, an element that was romantic.

The romance in this case was on two levels. First, on a general level Americans especially saw the war as Ukrainians willing to fight to the death for the ideals Americans hold most dear. (At least in theory.) Ideals such as freedom and independence. Second, more specifically Americans have been in love with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky. We have embraced the short, cute, onetime comic actor as the greatest wartime leader since Winston Churchill.

To be fair, Zelensky has done a remarkably good job. He has played what certainly seemed a miserably weak hand brilliantly well. Moreover, he has been preternaturally effective not only within Ukraine but without, tailoring his message to his various audiences, convincing people from Israel to Italy that he is a leader for all seasons. And … persuading them that Ukraine, Ukraine alone, is what stands between them and the Russian bear.       

In the first couple of months of the war this narrative felt good. It felt especially good because it was buttressed by events on the ground, by Ukraine’s readiness, willingness, and effectiveness at pushing Russian troops away from the capital, Kyiv, back to the eastern front. But now, on the eastern front, things are different. The news out of Ukraine is far grimmer than it was earlier in the war. The Russians are now advancing, and the Ukrainians are now not only retreating but suffering the heavy costs and casualties that all along likely were inevitable. After all, whatever its weaknesses, Russia’s military is among the largest in the world.

Russia expert Stephen Sestanovich is a realist who this week took note of the obvious. “Russia occupies much of Ukraine,” he wrote. Look at a map, he tells us! “Yes, Russia’s armed forces have suffered some major setbacks…. But the territory Russia has [already] seized is roughly four times larger than the two separatist regions it controlled in eastern Ukraine when the war started.”  (Italics mine.) Put directly, Russia did badly early in the war and, as a result, it changed course. Now Russia is doing well, quite well, in fact, all the while laying waste to large swaths of eastern Ukraine.   

The war has crystallized into a contest between two leaders, Putin and Zelensky. For both it’s figuratively if not literally a fight to the death. Nothing romantic about that.

Though Beto O’Rourke, former Democratic Congressman from the state of Texas, currently has no formal power or authority, he does have influence. He caused quite a stir yesterday when in the wake of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, he interrupted a press conference held by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. (O’Rourke is Abbott’s challenger in this year’s gubernatorial election.)

While the militantly pro-gun governor was center stage along with a string of his allies, O’Rourke stood up in front of the auditorium and interrupted the proceedings. The killings of 19 children in Uvalde and 2 adults were the “totally predictable” results of lax or even non-existent gun laws, he shouted, obviously gearing up to shout some more.   

No question O’Rourke was being disruptive. But judging from the response he got, you’d have thought he was the one who pulled a gun. Within seconds one official told him to “shut up.” Another said he was an “embarrassment.” And yes, a third charged he was “a sick son of a bitch.” Without missing another beat security guards either pushed or pulled O’Rourke out of the room, though not before he could yell for everyone to hear, “Somebody needs to stand up for the children of this state, or they will be killed.”

By a very large margin the American people want more laws controlling more guns. It’s been this way for years – on this issue as on others a small minority controlling the large majority.

What is to be done? Given the systemic problems – problems such as two senators from every state, no matter the size of the population; and the electoral college; and lifetime tenure for supreme court justices; and a constitution we treat like holy scripture – that bedevil 21^st century America the answer seems more elusive than ever.  

But… history teaches that when a small minority oppresses a large majority, and when it continues to do so for years, despite polite resistance, time might be right for resistance that is less polite. For resistance that is disruptive. Truth is disruption is sometimes the only way to shake up a system so deeply entrenched it is otherwise impervious to change.   

Before Nelson Mandela was sent to prison for 27 years, he was given permission to speak in the courtroom. What he did, he said, was not impetuous. He did it only after “calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the Whites.”  

I do not suggest the United States in 2022 is South Africa in 1964. Or that Beto O’Rourke is Nelson Mandela. What I do suggest is that when the will of the minority continues indefinitely to defy the will of the majority the time for polite chit-chat might be over. For all its virtues, civil discourse has its limitations. There are times when what is called for is disruption of politics as usual.      

OK, I admit it. It seems I have a modest fixation on the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon. I’m not sure why really. Probably because he’s often in the news which, in turn, makes him an obvious symbol of leadership in corporate America – and, for me, an easy target.

I’m reluctant further to feed my “modest fixation.” But obviously I’m not so reluctant as to deny myself another opportunity to point out what’s so wrong about leaders in Big Business.  

• Since 1978 CEO pay increased 1,322%. This in contrast to the average American worker whose pay over the same period increased 18%.
• CEOs now get paid 254 times more than their workers.

People have been pointing to the problem – the obscene inequity in income and wealth between those at the top and those in the middle and at the bottom – for years. But nothing has been done about it.  Each year it only gets worse.

Last week though was slightly, very slightly different. JPMorgan’s CEO got slapped for being greedy by his shareholders. And JPMorgan’s board got slapped for being timorous by its shareholders. Alas, the shareholder vote was nonbinding. Still, a mere 31% of investors supported the board’s pay plan. Specifically, most shareholders voted against giving Jamie Dimon a “special award.” What was this “special award”? A bonus of $52.6 million – in addition obviously to his usual humungous pay package.

Ironically, the board supported Dimon’s “special award” in a miserably misguided effort to keep Dimon in place – Dimon who has already been in place since 2005! How nutty can you get? What is the board afraid of? Fresh blood? A new pair of eyes and ears? Change of any kind? Or is the bank so fragile the board is worried that without their man at the helm it will collapse?

The shareholder vote is an insult to the board and a humiliation to Dimon who, by the way, is already worth over a billion dollars. What’s with these guys? Leaders like Dimon have a lust for money and for power – which means they’ll never change on their own and they’ll hold on so long as they can. This means is that unless and until the system changes, it’s up to members of corporate boards – who presumably are not automatons – to rein in their executives. And to stop paying them increasingly obscene amounts of money year after year after year.

Elon Musk.

The Hungarian-born American investor and financier George Soros was one of the main characters in a book I recently wrote with Todd Pittinsky, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy.

We defined lust as a “psychological drive that produces intense wanting, even desperately needing to obtain an object or to secure a circumstance. When the object has been obtained, or the circumstance secured, there is relief, but only briefly, temporarily.” Lust is, in other words, like an addiction, it is never ending. Leaders who lust for legacy specifically “long, effectively lifelong, to leave an imprint that is permanent.”

Which has been the case with George Soros. For whatever combination of subjective (personal/psychological) and objective (contextual/situational) reasons, all his adult life he has wanted, more than anything else, to leave his mark on history. First, European history and politics, second American history and politics. To this end he has funneled vast amounts of his vast fortune to various liberal causes, abroad and more recently, at home.

Soros is a Jew who as a boy barely escaped the Nazis. So it was especially sad to see right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban target Soros less even for his liberal ideas than for his being a Jew. In his 2018 campaign for reelection Orban campaigned as if Soros was his opponent. Orban promoted the “anti-Semitic imagery of powerful Jewish financiers scheming to control the world,” and had “thousands of posters” plastered all over Budapest picturing a ”grinning Soros with the slogan, ‘Let’s not allow Soros to have the last laugh.’” *  

For an American though it is one thing to see Soros targeted in Hungary for being a Jew. It is quite another to see him targeted in the United States for being a Jew! The first is bad, the second is worse. Has my beloved country come to this? Well, yes. It has.

In the last two days:

• We learned that the 18-year-old arrested for the mass shooting in Buffalo posted a long manifesto in which, among other things, he attacked “elitists and globalists,” spewed virulent anti-Semitism, and singled out Soros for his “funding of the radical left.”
• We learned that the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Minnesota graphically depicted (in a video) the Jewish Democratic incumbent, along with a Jewish elections lawyer, as puppets on strings manipulated by, you guessed it, again a grinning George Soros.  

At age 91 Soros is toward the end of his long life, a life generally very well lived. He has been endlessly passionate about making the world a better place, and endlessly generous in his willingness to put his money where his mouth is. In the main, Soros has been a good leader, not a bad one. He does not deserve to be stigmatized, victimized, by that old trope, the terminally greedy, endlessly money-hungry Jew.  But, then, no one does.

My beloved country? Cry, My Beloved Country.

————————————————————

*Leaders Who Lust, p. 202.

“Chutzpah,” originally a Yiddish word and now part of the English language, usually suggests singular audacity, unmitigated gall. In this case no other word will do, for the leader to whom I refer recently displayed nothing so much as unmitigated, unadulterated chutzpah. He is the German-born Austrian businessman who leads Volkswagen.

Herbert Diess is Volkswagen’s chief executive officer and chairman of its management board. What did he do that was so outrageous? What did he do while President Vladimir Putin was promoting Ukrainian landgrabs and President Volodymyr Zelensky was railing against Russian atrocities? Diess had the temerity to say that in the interest of commerce the war should quickly be ended. “I think we should do the utmost to really stop this war and get back… to trying to open up the world again. I think we should not give up on open markets and free trade and I think we should not give up on negotiating and trying to settle,” opined Diess.

No surprise that his remarks drew this sharp retort from Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba: “The best strategy for major German business would be to fully sever business ties with Russia and then call on Russia to stop the war and return to diplomacy.” And no surprise that Diess’s remarks elicited this sardonic reply from Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany: “In Kyiv people would prefer the VW CEO to address President Putin personally, a man he knows well, and the man who has unleashed this war of destruction against Ukraine.”

On the face of it, what Diess said is not objectionable. All he did was to advocate a return to the negotiating table. But here five reasons why what he said and why him saying it were beyond the pale. First, his argument prioritized money and business over politics and principle. Second, his words were in direct opposition to the stand publicly taken both by NATO and the European Union. Third, the West has made clear that whatever the path to peace, it must be decided by Ukrainians, not by Germans or by anyone else. Fourth, Diess displayed a tin ear for timing. He spoke just as Putin reasserted on May 9, Russia’s Victory Day, that its troops were “fighting on their own land.” And, finally, most importantly, what Diess said was wildly inappropriate because all Russian rhetoric surrounding the war in Ukraine has been laced with the word “Nazis.”

When Putin invaded Ukraine in late February he said Russia would “strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” This “denazification” has been Putin’s most persistent theme, despite no evidence whatsoever that Ukraine’s government is riddled with Nazis. And despite Zelensky himself being a Jew who lost close family during the Holocaust. Still Putin won’t let go. Last week he sent a congratulatory telegram to separatists in eastern Ukraine declaring they and the Russian military were “fighting shoulder to shoulder to liberate their homeland from Nazi filth.” And on May 9, in his ostensibly celebratory Victory Day speech, he reiterated there was “no place in the world for executioners, punishers, and Nazis.”

If Diess were an ordinary CEO astride an ordinary company his remarks would have been ill founded. But he is not. He himself has a checkered history – Diess was prosecuted for his role in Volkswagen’s manipulation of its diesel emissions – and the company he leads has an even much more checkered history.

Volkswagen was established in 1937 by the Nazis. Chancellor Adolf Hitler was deeply involved in Volkswagen from start, decreeing the company should create an inexpensive “people’s car,” capable of carrying two adults and three children. During the Second World War Volkswagen’s mission changed. The production of cars for civilians stopped, while the production of vehicles for the German military started. To increase output and meet its targets Volkswagen used some 15,000 slave laborers, all recruited from concentration camps.

No reason for Volkswagen in the present constantly to atone for its past. But – especially given Putin’s repeated use of Nazis imagery – good reason for Volkswagen in the present to mind its own business. As to Diess, perhaps he likes being a chutzpadik. But it does not become him.   

I wrote a book about enablers during the Trump administration in the year 2020, as Covid conquered America. Enablers are followers who allow or even encourage their leaders to engage in, and then to persist in behaviors that are destructive. The point might be obvious. But it’s nearly never made: that bad leaders depend absolutely on bad followers who enable bad leaders to do bad things.*

I could not know when the book was written – though I might have guessed – that once Donald Trump was out of office memoirs would appear, written by his enablers, justifying their enablement. Into this category falls one that just came out, Mark Esper’s, A Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Secretary of Defense During Extraordinary Times.

Esper was, obviously, a leader. As Secretary of Defense, he led the federal government’s largest agency and the nation’s largest single employer. During his time in office Esper oversaw some 1.3 million active-duty service members, 750,000 civilian personnel, and well over 800,000 National Guard and Reserve service members.      

At the same time, as is the case with many leaders, Esper was also a follower. He reported to President Trump and generally was subservient to him. Mostly he did what Trump told him to do, no matter how ill-advised, wrong-headed, or even downright dangerous.

But, as Esper is clearly eager to point out, he did not always do what Trump told him to do. Moreover, Esper believes that by staying in the administration as long he could – the president “terminated” him in late 2020 – he did the right thing. Esper thinks it was his patriotic duty to preclude the president (for as long as he could) from appointing a replacement who was more pliable. A replacement who would acquiesce to Trump’s every mood and obey his every order.

Esper describes the dilemma he faced – does someone like him, who believed Trump a national threat, remain in his post or resign in protest? – as the “existential question of the Trump administration.”  Why, Esper asked, “did good people [like him] stay even after the president suggested or pressed us to do things that were reckless, or foolish, or just plan wrong?” Esper claims that quitting would have made him feel “good in the moment” – but that it would have been wrong.

The former Secretary of Defense seems a well-intentioned man trapped of his own volition between a rock and a hard place. I in any case strongly disagree with the decision he made. Enablers like Esper imagine themselves lone wolves. He imagines himself the only member of the Trump administration to resign in protest.

But what if over the four years of Trump’s term would have been repeated resignations, resignations over and then over again, by people in high places? What if many or even several members of Trump’s team would have resigned and then stated why – loudly, clearly, and publicly so every American could hear?

To be an American patriot is never to follow an American president who is, simultaneously, unethical and incompetent. But so long as apparently good men like Mark Esper continue to make bad choices so long will bad leaders continue to do bad things.     

*The Enablers: How Team Trump Flunked the Pandemic and Failed America (Cambridge University Press, 2021)

For reasons I cannot explain, the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg retains her iconic status. Liberals generally, women especially, persist in putting her on a pedestal, as if she did no wrong. This need to enshrine her was in evidence before her death, and it continues still.  

RBG, as she was widely known, is justly celebrated for her many accomplishments. She was a pioneering feminist and champion of equality long before she was appointed to the Supreme Court, and she was chief architect of a legal campaign against sex-role stereotyping. For her many achievements as a litigator, she was considered the Thurgood Marshall of the women’s rights movement.

Ginsburg did, however, have a problem evidenced long before she died in 2000, age 87, while still on the Court. Her problem was she refused to resign. She refused to resign though she was effectively asked to resign, and she refused to resign though her health was poor not just toward the end of her life but for two decades before.  

In 1999 Ginsburg was diagnosed with colon cancer. In 2009 she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. In 2014 she had a stent put into her right coronary artery. In 2018 she had a cancerous lesion on her lung. In 2019 she fractured three ribs – and her pancreatic cancer recurred. Of course, by then it was too late. By then she had no choice but to hang in and hang on, in the desperate but futile hope that she would outlast the presidency of Donald J. Trump. Obviously the very last thing the staunchly liberal Justice wanted was for Trump to name her replacement – which is exactly what happened.

It was kept quiet at the time. But since then it’s been reported that in July 2013, then President Barack Obama invited RBG to have lunch at the White House, in his private dining room. The purpose of the lunch was politely to probe Ginsburg, to explore whether she might be amenable to retiring. (By then she was, at age 80, already the Court’s oldest member, and a two-time cancer patient.) RBG was not. RBG was not in the least amenable to retiring. Not only did she not take Obama’s hint, she gave him the distinct impression that her intention was to continue to sit on the court, indefinitely.      

Though it was not much discussed, it was clear even at the time that by clinging to her job Ginsburg was taking a risk. The risk that the Republicans would retake the Senate in 2014. (They did.) The risk that the Republicans would retake the White House in 2016. (They did.) And the risk that she would die while the Republicans controlled both the Senate and the White House. (She did.) Hence Trump’s appointment not long after she died of staunch conservative Amy Coney Barrett to fill Ginsburg’s seat.

Which brings us to one of the great ironies of recent American history: that one of the most important legacies of one of our most important feminists will be that Roe vs. Wade, which gave American women the right to have an abortion, is overturned.

But here’s the thing. In 2013 and 2014, around the time of Ginsburg’s lunch with Obama, it was not just the president but also friends, acquaintances, and former clerks who believed she should resign. They further thought that her refusal to do so was “terribly self-centered.” Trouble was that hardly anyone dared say so out loud, certainly not to her face. As former New York Times writer, Dorothy Samuels, put it, “I was struck that normally forceful advocates I spoke with would not express their dismay on the record while she was alive.”    

In the end, then, to worship Ruth Bader Ginsburg was to enable Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Sad. Sad when people cling to power long after they should have surrendered it. Sadder still when no one has the guts to tell them to get out when they can do so with their dignity, and their legacy, still in tact.

The New York Times recently published a very long – it’ll surely be a book – two-part article about Tucker Carlson. Carlson has been, of course, a fixture of the American media for years. He’s already rich and famous, known both for the extremity of his views and his outsized audience. In consequence, as the author of the Times piece, Nicholas Confessore, testifies, from the prominence of his prime-time perch at Fox News Carlson has amassed considerable power and even more influence.

For those among us who happen not to concur with his strongly held right-wing views Carlson is, then, a leader to be feared. From the evidence of his already astonishing success, and what could well be, despite the predicable denials, his vaulting ambition, it is easily imagined that someday not far into the future Carlson could have not only outsized power and influence but, additionally, outsized authority. The kind of authority that is bestowed by holding high office – say, for example, the American presidency.

Reasons for people like me to fear Carlson include:

• The level of his success.

Tucker Carlson is single most watched individual on America’s single most watched cable network. His impact on the American psyche is immense, incalculable.

• The level of his ambition.

Carlson goes to great pains to conceal his zeal to succeed. He lives in rural Maine, far from the madding crowd. And he denies aspiring to political office. However, his willingness to bend to the prevailing wind suggests a man who might yet have other fish to fry. This is a man who has strayed far from where he was not long ago, a conservative to be sure, but a mainstream conservative who seemed to take pleasure in mocking those to his right. Now no one is no more vocal and voluble a defender of those who stormed America’s Capitol on January 6, 2021, than Tucker Carlson.

• The level of his autonomy.

Carlson answers to no one. The owner of Fox, Rupert Murdoch, leaves him alone so long as their political views are synchronous – and Carlson brings home the bacon. For her part, Suzanne Scott, Fox’s chief executive officer, is clearly no dummy. She’s canny enough to keep hands off her most prized commodity.   

• The content of his rhetoric.    

Carlson’s extended and extensive commentaries are loathsome to many Americans. But Carlson’s extended and extensive commentaries are not loathsome to many other Americans. Quite the contrary. What Confessore describes as the “most racist show in the history of cable news,” is precisely what appeals to much if not most of Fox’s audience. The firehose of fear mongering issuing from Carlson’s mouth is all about America under siege. An America beset and beleaguered by protesters who are criminals and traitors, by immigrants who are dirty and diseased, and by unnamed, unmitigated elites who profit at the expense of the working class, especially white males.

• The implications of his rhetoric.

The specifics of what Carlson says add up to a general world view, a weltanschauung reminiscent of nothing so much as fascism. A fascism consisting of racism, nationalism, populism, and isolationism. A fascism implying autocracy not democracy.  A fascism that sometimes is fact, other times is fiction. Fascism that is Trumpism – whether Trump is or is not at the top.

• The style of his rhetoric.

Carlson is not mealy-mouthed. To the contrary, he is a loudmouth: fiery and fearsome, intent, and intense, as relentlessly persistent as he is apparently paranoid. He is the total opposite of news anchors of old who, the more moderate and temperate they were, the better. Who prided themselves on nothing so much as their objectivity and neutrality, who considered it their job to bring Americans together rather than to drive them apart. Not so long ago Carlson had guests on his show who disagreed with him. Now nearly never. Now his show is an echo chamber.      

• The nature of his followers.

Think of Carlson as a performer who wants nothing so much as to please his audience. Of itself, this is no indictment. Everyone who gets before a group wants to win it over. The question is what are we willing to do to have that happen? In Carlson’s case the answer has been to pander to members of his audience, to satisfy their appetites so before long they come back for more. Carlson has hit on his magic elixir – it is to wed his anger to his passion. So now it’s his stock in trade. He divides people into “us” and “them” – into “us” versus “them” – us being the innocent defenders, them the virulent attackers.

• The nature of his context.
• The times in which we live are fractured and fractious at home – and fractured and fractious abroad. There is no respite from conflict nationally, and conflagration internationally. All this is grist for Carlson’s mill. He thrives on that which divides us at the national level – high on the list are integration and immigration. And he thrives on what divides us the international level – high on the list are Russia and its president, Vladmir Putin, and Hungary and its Prime Minister. Viktor Orban. Finally, Carlson has brilliantly played the hand he was dealt, Donald Trump the man and Trumpism the movement. He has lashed himself to the latter but, cannily, cleverly, not so much to the former.  

It’s precisely this canniness and cleverness – his ability, as Confessore perfectly put it, to “alchemize media power into political influence” – that make me nervous.