Stuarts Thoughts, 1/17/2021

Healing Our Nation

 The following document represents a personal opinion of what I consider to be some important aspects of the current unrest in our nation and several suggestions for a possible course correction going forward.  My ultimate objective would be to improve the future of our nation, its citizens and its institutions.  There will always be differences in opinion regarding policy decisions but we could, hopefully, accomplish policy discussions without the kind of mean spirited personal attacks and hatred that have become all too common.  Can we implement a pattern of respectful discussions of differences of opinion?  Can we adopt a more positive approach to dealing with difficult people?  Finally, what steps can we now take to heal the nation?  I suggest on calling upon our five living past Presidents to lead us forward in a truly bipartisan summit.  By capitalizing on their incredible experience and wisdom they could lead us forward to a brighter future. Hopefully, they would be willing to, once again, head the call of the nation they have all served and loved.  I can imagine how this might have an excellent chance of helping us escape the current toxic atmosphere of negativity and lead our country into a bright and fresh atmosphere of positivity.

Having experienced significant recent trauma, our country is in need of extensive healing.  In a similar way traumatized individuals need to undergo the healing process, also; so does the nation.  The severe trauma caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has come on the heels of the political trauma of the past four years.  This trauma has had a disastrous effect on both the integrity of the U.S. and its individual citizens.

Because of the intensity of current political dialog , I feel it important to describe my thoughts regarding Donald Trump, the 45th President of The United States.  By putting this within the context of my past experience, perhaps these thoughts can best be communicated in a more meaningful and comprehensible fashion.  Every effort will be made to accomplish this as concisely as possible while still providing the depth of insight necessary.

Dealing With Difficult People; Donald, Amel, Merle, Julio and Claude

The first names heading this section, other than Donald are names of managers who I worked under during my 35 year career with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.  There were several others but these four names, Amel, Merle, Julio and Claude, are most appropriate and sufficient to develop my story.  I’ll try to keep it short, concise and relevant.

My initial impressions of Donald Trump were most disconcerting.  The little I knew of him before he became a candidate reminded me of Claude - an M.D. with a huge ego, a bully, mean, and willing to crush subordinates.  Donald’s tendency to engrandize himself reminded me of Julio.  Julio wanted to be treated almost as royalty.  He placed particular emphasis on appearance - “Mike, I like your Gucci slippers”.  Claude was merciless in berating his subordinates, especially his secretaries. More than one of them left work crying after being told she was a worthless so and so.  With respect Amel and Merle, equivalents in the corporate hierarchy to Julio and Claude, they couldn’t have been more pleasant.  They took special care to show appreciation and their concern for their subordinates.  Both would go out of their way to have special kind words for even the lowest level workers.  Amel was the epitome of a gentleman.  While leading the company during its period of greatest growth and accomplishment, he did so while always showing the deepest respect for all his employees.  As a result, everyone felt a sincere sense of loyalty and respect for Amel.  He was a great leader and produced great results for both the company and his subordinates.  Amel was two levels above me in the corporate structure but always treated me with the utmost respect.  Merle was my immediate supervisor when I first joined the company and eventually moved up a level but always remained deeply interested and supportive of my work.  He eventually left Bristol-Myers Squib to form his own company PanLabs.  We remained in touch during the ensuing years and as he was preparing to retire, he offered me the opportunity to take his place as a Panlabs partner.  My decision to decline his offer was very difficult to reach and to relay on to him.  Accepting the PanLabs offer would have required me to spend a great deal oftime away from home, much of it overseas, and, for my stage in life at the time with two teenagers, that kind of life simply wasn’t for me. 

 
My reason for describing Amel, Merle, Julio and Claude is to explain the broad range of personalities that I dealt with during my 35 years working for Bristol-Myers Squibb.  While there were many others with various variations on the above, the point I want to make is that in order to survive and enjoy 35 years with the company, I had to learn how to adapt to this broad range of personalities.  First and foremost, it was important to identify the needs of each, and if I was to get along with them, much less flourish in their midst, they needed to believe that I could fulfill an important role in helping them to meet their needs.

What would have happened if I gave either Julio or Claude the impression that I didn’t like them or might somehow interfere with them being able to achieve their needs?  Either of them would have viewed this as me declaring war on them.  In the case of Donald Trump, none of us are direct participants, merely observers.  I saw another Claude in Trump, a huge ego, a bully, mean, and a willingness to crush anyone not fully engaged in meeting his needs.  When Chuck Shumer proclaimed that the Democrat strategy following Trump’s election would be to prevent or block everything the new President want’s to achieve, I recognized this as a clear declaration of war.  Democrats, with the likely cheering of many Republicans, were going to do everything possible to remove this interloper.

My inclination, based on past experience, would have been quite the opposite.  People with a huge ego like Claude and Donald want to succeed.  They crave approval and even affection from others.  They want total approval and abhor failure and disrespect.  In fact, they are very childlike in many ways.  They have an almost pathological need for love and respect.  Trump could never conceal his joy and his face beamed when his rally crowd shouted out their love for him.  In point of fact, there is a small chance of modifying the behavior of people like this but it requires patience and skill, qualities unlikely to be found in the political setting.  My initial thought was “give him a chance”.  Although a long shot, I would like to have seen an effort made to guide him in a direction that might have succeeded in both modifying his behavior and saving the country from much strife. I think there were some in his circle who wanted to attempt this approach but not enough.  Repeated attacks, impeachment efforts etc, encapsulated him in an iron-clad resolve of the “street fighter” he had become known as.  The ultimate fate of his presidency had been sealed.  

Yes, in summary, Trump himself was the primary problem.  His undesirable features have repeatedly been expressed and no-one can deny them.  But, in my opinion, his political enemies did nothing to try to spare the country from such a disastrous ending.  Trump, himself, bears all of the blame for this tragedy but perhaps we should ask of ourselves and our political system if maybe we should have tried something other than declaring outright war in 2016!

The more important question at this time is - where do we go from here?  The country needs much healing but achieving this won’t be easy in the current destructive atmosphere of hatred.  In my opinion, we need a concerted effort to clear the air of toxic hatred.  With the country evenly split, a difficult road ahead exists.  However,  I would suggest two actions that may help get us on the way.  It’s been suggested that a bipartisan commission be formed to fairly and convincingly review the 2020 election and to, if possible, finally put to bed doubts to the validity of its results and, more importantly, recommend appropriate reforms to hopefully prevent this kind of doubt and its repercussions in the future.  Equally important, I would like to see, in time, a conference led by all five living past U.S. Presidents - Trump, Obama, Bush, Clinton and Carter.  The purpose of this conference would be to develop a creative pathway for healing America.  The combined respect for our former leaders may be sufficient to impress enough of us to change our ways.

The Path Forward: In Summary

Without further rehashing the history of these tragic events, we can ask the general question.  Where do we go from here?  What is the nature of our path forward as we undertake the difficult process of national healing.  I believe our leaders should place high priority on developing both an overall strategy and specific steps to accomplish this.  It’s as serious an issue as any other foreign or domestic questions in need of being  addressed this next year as well as in the years to come.

Our country has been seriously divided by a choking fog of negativity brought about by the above mentioned trauma.  We need strong leadership in order to reestablish the health of the nation, both its physical and its psychological health.  In my personal opinion, the following steps are suggested.

The Surgeon General of the U.S. should present an annual report on the health of the nation, perhaps as an addendum to the President’s annual “State Of The Union” address.  This report should address both the physical and psychological health of the country.  Some of the subtopics of the report might be: status of our fight against various physical diseases - e.g., cancer, infectious disease, heart and cardiovascular disease as well as complex health issues such as drug addiction and environmental pollution and, especially, the highly important area of psychological maladies.

As mentioned above, I see the choking fog of negativity to be one of the most serious, if not the most serious, psychological problem that we face.  One major consequence of this that must be dealt with is an overwhelming distrust our citizens have in the political establishment and the news media,  Recent surveys indicate that less than 20% of the population has substantial trust in either institution.  This lack of trust must be reversed in order for the health of the nation to be improved.

Nearly half of the population has expressed mistrust in the recent election.  Trust in our our electoral system must be reestablished.  By assembling a bi-partisan commission, primarily composed of non-government citizens, to review alleged irregularities in our recent election, improvements for future elections might be identified that could aid in reestablishing trust.

I would love to see our living past Presidents come together to spearhead a conference on developing a roadmap that would lead us out of the “fog” to a bright new period of positivity.  Their combined respect and influence might be just what is needed to overcome our current atmosphere of serious division and extreme partisanship.  Roughly half of the population presently feels disenfranchised as a result of current political events. Hearing comments on a local radio talk show, it seems that the large number of Trump supporters fear more the direction our nation could take in the future more than the political demise of the person, Donald Trump.  These fears of this large segment of our population need to be eased in order for our nation to come together.