It is not clear to me what a resident of Talbot County should expect. But it is clear to me what we should not anticipate.

Talbot County, to quote its website has “the most shoreline of any county in the United States.” Six hundred miles, it is said. The shoreline, our boundary with water-borne grandeur, is the reason most of us are here dating all the way back to the beginning.

We see the Bay through our own interests. Watermen hope the Bay and its tributaries are a plentiful estuary for fishing. International tradesmen recognize it as transportation corridor. But most of us think of it as a recreational mecca. Generations have lived plentiful lives alongside this bounty. 

Most of us, no all of us, are aware of the pressure we are putting on our waterways. The pressure shows up in the price of crabs as it skyrockets because of limited supply. Nature’s filters, the oysters, are mostly not around to do the job nature provided because of pollution. We plan a swim and picnic and get warned off due to poor water quality.

And then headlines capture our attention. The Preserve at Wye Mills (Preserve) is illustrative. Turning theory into practice is often perilous and especially so when citizen government deals with complicated issues, dueling experts and a lot of capital. 

At the Preserve the developer wanted to get a permit to build 67 homes on 480 acres. The waste from the homes was to be treated, stored in a holding pond and then sprayed on the fields when there had been an absence of rain. It didn’t work.

The time-line of failure is especially disappointing and instructive. The first homes were built beginning in 2003 and the initial noncompliance began three years later. Essentially the treatment facility and I quote from public documents: “has been unable to comply with ….[the] discharge permit issued by the Maryland department of the Environment (MDE) since 2006 or 2007.” In short, nitrogen and phosphorus levels that were discharged into Mill Creek flowing into the Wye River were not in compliance for years. 

Recently Talbot County had to take over the Preserve’s Shared Sanitary Facility from its owners. The takeover agreement signed by the owners and county officials noted 15 years of non-compliance!

“Tip of the iceberg” has been a useful metaphor and the slow-motion unraveling of environmental stewardship at the Preserve is instructive. What about the rest of the iceberg?

We are now face-to-face with a gigantic project, Lakeside at Trappe. It has been controversial. Litigation to stop it is underway.

The initial discharges from the first 120 homes will not have to comply with exacting standards. Perhaps there is an arguable case for some standard’s delay, but looking at the history of the Preserve at Wye one might say, “Why?”

Environmental rules without compliance oversight are superficial. To recall a famous line from President Ronald Reagan, “trust but verify”.  The public might well ask is this another development that the County at considerable cost will have to take over down the road?

In two weeks, we will begin voting to select persons to serve on the Talbot County Council beginning in January 2023. The general election will be this November. The members of the Council have an expansive authority over our County. When it comes to environmental leadership they must begin to lead.

If I were a Councilman I would want, as part of my orientation, to know why the Preserve became a case study of poor decisions followed by woeful oversight. I would ask the fulltime professionals what we must do to make sure environmental standards are set, compliance monitored and timely actions taken.

I would look at staffing past, present and future. Do the Departments of Public Works and Environmental Health have the resources to do the job? 

Finally, I would look at the relationship between the County and Rauch Engineering. Rauch represents both developers and local agencies that have environmental responsibilities. This fact makes it doubly important that Town Councils have adequate staff to assure independence and avoid conflicts of interest that compromise decision making. I repeat, when citizen government deals with complicated issues, dueling experts and a lot of capital it must have the resources to find the public interest. 

In short, we have an iconic natural asset and must make sure that our representative government is up to the task of protecting it. We should not anticipate less.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

Modern weaponry and political rhetoric have a lot in common.

Several years ago, I was shooting sporting clays with a much younger man, an Afghan war veteran. He had been trained on automatic or semi-automatic military weapons. My training (mostly by experience) was shooting one shotgun shell at a time. My aim had to be more exact; he could spray the zone of the target.

Now don’t get me wrong. First, this is not a column about ballistics. Yet, most of us are familiar with stories about rapid fire technology and adrenalin—unfortunately that is where many of us are in politics. 

The Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade had nationalized abortion policy and its reversal triggered expected reactions. Indeed, the leak of a draft some weeks before resulted in demonstrations at the homes of Justices of the United States Supreme Court and apparently, a botched attempt to assassinate Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

Much of the news after the decision could have been written after a hard fought and won legislative battle. It had a certain “sharks and skins” dynamic. It was about outcomes; constitutional arguments be damned. Justices that voted to overturn Roe were vilified. Justice Clarence Thomas came in for especially harsh treatment. 

Interestingly, Justice Sonia Sotomayor who voted in the minority had recently spoke of her relationship with Justice Thomas. She noted that the two share a “common understanding about people and kindness.” She continued: “That’s why I can be friends with him and still continue our daily battle over our differences of opinions in cases, You really can’t begin to understand an adversary unless you step away from looking at their views as motivated in bad faith.” 

Perhaps it is easier for someone with a law background to be more detached. I get that. But, for all those who want to shape abortion policies, state capitals are the new venues. Unless there is a dramatic shift in national politics it is unlikely that abortion policy will be nationalized any time soon.

Few public policy issues are more consequential than abortion policy. Yet the least adaptable institution of government took the policy over fifty years ago. In the intervening years a number of state legislatures yelled at the Supreme Court in the form of restrictive legislation. Much of this legislation was more about politics than dealing with life and death issues.

But now challenging the Supreme Court on abortion policy is past. State legislatures are the authority and must inform themselves on the scientific and societal complexities deeply embedded in the right to choose life or death. This is not a light responsibility; it is one that forces human beings to be at their best.

There are fifty states and there will be fifty answers. Many of the answers will be disconcerting to those with insistence principles. Yet we should never forget America’s history and heterogeneity. While many things unite us, we know that our many layered demography assures sharp differences on some issues. We should never forget that we are at our best when we find it possible to disagree agreeably. 

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

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Five years out of law school I went to work for the newly elected Missouri Attorney General. He was distinctive. He had two graduate degrees from Yale; one in law and the other in divinity. He baptized and married our youngest daughter, Marcia. His name: John C. Danforth or Jack to friends or St. Jack to his critics.

My appreciation for that beginning has been underscored by today’s political mess and I am talking about more than former President Donald Trump’s actions preceding and following the January 6th attack on Democracy. 

Words and phrases about the politics of kingdoms and tribes were first written on tablets; later printing technology and democracy widened the field. Now, writing a book about humble beginnings and self-catapulting success accompanies all national ambitions. 

My life, as told by the political aspirant, introduces the ambitious to careful editing and ultimately to a pattern of robotic answers when questioned. Spinmeisters abound. Never in a democracy has candor been in such short supply. Let’s see, “should I support a candidate who won’t really tell me what he is thinking?”

____________

Senator John McCain had been raised by an Admiral, told what to do by the Naval hierarchy at Annapolis and later by his captors in North Vietnam and still later by his political handlers. In part Senator McCain who was the Republican nominee for President in 2008 remained interesting because he didn’t take instruction. John McCain unplugged was a moral man because he meant what he said and was prepared to be judged by both his words and actions. He refused to hide.

And while I am on “unplugged” it is easy to imagine hundreds of intensely argued moments in the political life of Donald J. Trump. I am sure he must bristle at instruction, convinced he knows best. Yet, his originality in politics served him well, until it didn’t. 

One of my later in life political lessons occurred in the aftermath of Trump calling McCain a loser. I was certain his characterization was a fatal error. What I failed to understand was the lure of Trump Unplugged. 

Politicians and their enablers have lowered the standards; they are mostly scripted, although Hollywood doesn’t come calling. Years ago, I was on the set of the TV comedy Cheers. During a break in the filming Ted Danson quipped: “you people in Washington are just like us, we are all actors.” Well maybe, but the Washington version of acting is a façade to cover evasion and avoidance. Actors are a stories characters while most politicians are the real-life characters in what is often a bad script. 

Morality in politics? We were given a vivid standard by a Republican Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, Rusty Bowers. He made a notation in his diary after Trump and Rudy Giuliani teamed up to declare there was fraud in the Arizona election that Trump lost and insisted that he should refuse to certify the results. Rusty Bowers wrote:

In a Democracy Bowers’ words and actions writ large are all the protection we have. We get the morality we deserve. Perhaps there was a time when standards of morality were set at the top. They certainly were when I worked for Attorney General Danforth. More often today they are set at the bottom—the foundation. Politicians are free to say what they want; we should pay attention to what they do. If we can’t get it right, corruption will be our legacy.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

Autocrats frequently serve up lies—after all lying can be a useful tactic. Once in the seat of power they can get away with it because they control the levers of government—most importantly the media, national police and military. And importantly they use those levers to either entice or threaten a large segment of the population. Fealty is what they want.

America doesn’t work that way and among other foreign enemies we do not like an assortment of autocrats starting with Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and certainly the Ayatollahs of Iran.

But the January 6th Committee’s initial report demonstrates a democratic soft spot. Primarily, that Presidential power fused with a hardcore base is a very effective weapon. The base allows itself to be used as a high value political chip in multi-candidate primaries.

The reality of politics today is at best disheartening. Peggy Noonan, writing in the Wall Street Journal, used city politics to describe the base on the Left: “Progressive politicians have been around long enough running cities that some distinguishing characteristics can be noted. One is they don’t listen to anybody. To stop them you have to fire them. They’re not like normal politicians who have some give, who tack this way and that. Progressive politicians have no doubt, no self-correcting mechanism.” My take: they tend to be all theory and no practice.

On the Right climate change is just unwelcome noise and gun deaths are secondary to an 18th Century constitutional provision about forming a militia to fight foreign enemies. And both sides pay little attention to balancing budgets.

But let me come back to the January 6th Committee report. I will agree with Republicans that the Committee should be more bi-partisan. But since the Minority Leader in the House is subservient to Trump, not the Constitution, it is hard to anticipate a truly investigative approach with Kevin McCarthy’s designees. And certainly, the runup to the January 6th assault on the Capitol demands investigation. This, to me, is not a partisan imperative, it is a truth imperative.

As I have noted before, I have friends across the political spectrum. On the Left there is a view that the Republican Party should be way off in a ditch given that many continue to support Trump. Voters in the Center of the political spectrum move back and forth between Parties based on outcomes, not ideology. Roaring inflation, well let’s vote for the other Party. As long as we have a two-Party system that is the way it will work. Plus, there are characteristics of President Biden’s leadership that a majority of the public does not like—note the polls.

The initial January 6 Committee report was chilling. I didn’t learn a lot, but the work of its investigative staff and interview excerpts of Trump’s family and Attorney General opened a wider lens. What I found particularly problematic was Trump’s assumptions. I found myself more than once wondering what world he had been occupying for four years and what he had learned.

America’s strength is in its Constitution. The Constitution is clear: concentrated power that could lead to autocracy must be avoided. Yet Trump took on the Founder’s distribution of powers with a rag-tag army of several hundred and supporters who got caught up in mob psychology. I guess, since on the 6th  he was the Commander-in-Chief, he assumed this outfit could defeat the Capitol police since he did not plan to activate either the National Guard or the active military. Then what?

And he must have assumed notwithstanding his Vice-President Mike Pence’s pledge to do his Constitutional duty that he could bully him into cancelling the election results. 

I could go on, but these two Grand Canyon leaps of faith reveal a President emotionally and operationally unhinged. Biden is criticized for showing cognitive decline; Trump showed cognitive collapse.

The next two years will continue to be hyper-partisan. Hopefully 2024 will produce a President who is a real leader and has majority support. But the one thing I am sure of, the 2024 election will move beyond Biden and Trump. 

Finally, a shout out to the courageous Republican Representative Liz Cheney. She put her personal safety and career on the line. I close with her words about Republican colleagues in the Congress whose subservience is to Trump and not the Constitution: “Tonight, I say this to our Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: there will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

Many great political thinkers through the centuries in various cultures have recognized that if man is to really understand his personal relationship to others he must have an allegiance beyond ego. We are all born with ego; some of us control it and others don’t, depending on our priorities, values, and commitments. I do not believe that this nation or any other can sever its roots from what I call “things of the spirit” and remain strong.

          – Mark O. Hatfield, Former Republican Governor and U.S. Senator, Oregon.

Mark Hatfield’s prominence was two generations ago, but several days ago I reflected back as I read this exchange:

Kristen Soltis Anderson:

“Americans are less likely to have a lot of close friends these days. And their friend groups are likely to be made up of mostly those who agree with them on politics.”

David French: “This is one of the most fundamental and important challenges of our time. There are a lot of cultural wounds that deep friendship can heal.”

Anderson is a pollster and commentator and French, an Iraq war veteran, Senior editor of The Dispatch.

In 2022 we are a legalistic society. Polls are conducted to gauge our attitudes and intentions about people whose principal job is to make laws. So here we are once again debating about which gun laws are needed to reduce mass shootings. While I understand the necessity of what we are doing, I am pessimistic. We should be more alarmed by the culture and less expectant about the efficacy of laws and associated bureaucracies.

In my youth I now realize that I was brainwashed. “Under God” was a part of my almost daily recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. And there was a Boy Scout pledge. Plus, on most Sundays I started the day going to Sunday School until, if I recall, sometime in my teens. This was a national, not regional, pattern. The core message: strive to lead a virtuous life.

Virtues today are often defined by grievance—you do not respect me, we need to use the law to make sure you do. In a more spiritual culture grievances would be many fewer. The spiritual dimension would caution the ego. When the ego is unmoored watch out.

Today, society’s pulse is often measured by polls. Do you favor the President? Which political party are you most likely to support? Which candidate? Which position on this or that policy? And, on and on.

I wonder how the public would respond to a poll on spiritual attitudes. Would taking our spiritual pulse remind us of its importance? Could we sweep in houses of worship in such a way that persons of the cloth might sense a deeper calling?

So here are some questions. Do you encounter a force in your life that you would define as spiritual? If so, what effect, if any, does it have in your relationships? Actions?

Perhaps trying to identify cause and effect the pollster might probe further. Do you do anything to nurture your spiritual side? What has the most influence? Do you make use of what is called social media to connect spiritually? Is a house of worship important in your spiritual life?

Now this line of questioning is going to make the naysayers very uncomfortable. Those who only believe in the material, what you can feel and touch or prove scientifically, well they are not going to like the suggestion that there is an important dimension they can’t see under a microscope.

Most of us grew up when standing and singing The Star-Spangled Banner was not questioned. Most of us grew up when those responding to a spiritual calling and wearing a clerical collar were not suspect. Indeed, the breaking of vows has assaulted the spiritual. Preachers becoming politicians in the pulpit or sexual predators in their lives have done immeasurable harm to the spiritual. When those who should be examples turn out to be the opposite, faith is assaulted. Ego unmoored.

It is also crucial that we understand the many faces of spiritual influence. In the United States we are more likely to be in touch with the insistence in Judaism and Christianity, but “love thy neighbor” is universal. Take a look at Hinduism or Islam or Buddhism or others.

And we should also understand that “hate” and its animation is not a local but is a global problem. This is an excerpt from the Toronto Star on hate in Canada: “A growing list of convicted or accused killers have been steeped in an online ecosystem of hate that is transcending national borders, eluding law enforcement and inciting a brand of terrorism experts say is spreading and mutating.”

Regardless of the existence or not of the spiritual, we should not kid ourselves into thinking that there is some mix of laws that will rescue our society from violent death. We will try to find the mix; and should. But if we really want to make long-lasting progress, we should work on the foundation of humanity—a true counter-revolution.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

 

The best theater captures our imagination, taking us to a different place. I can imagine 1608 on the Chesapeake Bay, our stage, because Captain John Smith wrote about it: “Heaven and earth never agreed better to frame a place for man’s habitations.” So, let’s take a quick look at how we are doing on our stage. The Chesapeake Bay is water, so let’s start there.

ShoreRivers measures water quality and issues reports. The report, as of May 26, 2022, is encouraging. Outside the Choptank River there was only one failing grade and that was Worton Creek on the Sassafras River. Essentially the report says it is safe to swim at 31 locations and only unsafe at eight. Seven of the eight are on the Choptank including Trappe Landing and Sail Winds Park, a stone’s throw from Lakeside, the controversial Trappe land development.

Anybody who has been following the public hearings and procedural steps on Lakeside’s intended development of 2,500 homes, which includes a commercial center, is familiar with waste from La Trappe Creek polluting the Choptank. Swimmers, “stay out”. But what about fishing? I have talked to more than one Waterman who has cursed the decline in water quality and its attack on keystone species.

What is particularly cynical is the development of land in water adjacent habitat without proper environmental safeguards. This is not a development on the plains of Western Kansas. The message: “come and live on the Chesapeake Bay but don’t worry about what we do to it.”

Now, stepping back, let me be clear about my own perspective. Additional housing is a good thing for people who live and work in Talbot and surrounding Counties. Goodness knows housing prices are high, reflecting supply limitations.

But a housing development that assaults the character of our County and is misaligned with the highest standards of treated waste we ask the Bay to absorb is a bridge too far. And we should keep in mind that approximately $15 billion has been spent in cleaning up the Bay. Shouldn’t land development projects have to proceed without reversing what our tax dollars and contributions have accomplished?

I write hoping, more than expecting. A glimmer of hope follows a lawsuit filed several days ago by citizens of Talbot County. The lawsuit raises a simple question. Does the Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) have the authority to ignore the Talbot County Planning and Zoning Commission? In a sense, can it allow discharge permits for homes at Lakeside to an inferior treatment plant in Trappe?  The law, most simply interpreted, gives the Talbot County Planning and Zoning Commission the right to set the qualifications in its comprehensive plan for such permits.

The Commission on November 3, 2021 said the discharge permit should not be granted. Then on a 3 to 2 vote the Talbot County Council turned on its Commissioners, failing to affirm its decision as did the MDE. What is going on?

Now, to state the glaringly obvious, I am not the first person to write on this subject. Nor do I walk in the shoes of the Plaintiffs, many of whom live in Trappe or close by. But what I do know as a voter in Talbot County, there is not a chance I would vote for anybody who makes the health of the Bay and its tributaries secondary to land development. Harmony between land use and the Bay is essential.

I believe there is a way forward regardless of what the Courts do. But I am not optimistic. The Talbot County Council is led by President Chuck Callahan. He should have worked harder to find solutions that brought all the interested parties to a resolution that could be submitted for approval by the Planning Commission and the County Council. Resolution of difficult issues often take weeks or months and many meetings. Leadership can be a burden, but President Callahan you asked for the job.

Lakeside news will continue to happen; lawsuits are the offspring of disharmony which is the source of most news. It would be nice to get some hopeful reports—ones recognizing the importance of the essential element, water.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Thoughts of childhood took me back. I walked to school; about five blocks. It was called Bailey Elementary School. Mom and Dad said goodbye as I started out without fearing it would be the last time. My greatest fear: I wouldn’t measure up as we played soccer during recess.

Marty and I, as parents, had similar experiences as did our daughters, I think. While it is impossible to measure an absence of fear on a quantitative scale; well, it was blissful.

So, what has changed? Just about everything. Society is coarser. Measuring up, in a world of “social media” is, for some, terrorizing. And it just takes a few turning an interior terror into an exterior one to change everything.

Guns? I remember my Dad deputizing me, after a gift of a Red Ryder B-B gun. His charge; keep the squirrels out of our pecan tree. Talk about an existential challenge.

So here we are a century turn later enjoying medical miracles but fearing life. So, we ask after each mass shooting what are we (after all we live in a democracy) going to do. We then go through a nauseous week or so depending on the severity of the slaughter and fall back into our rhetorical stand offs. Pathetic.

I was at the birth of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). I worked in New York City and could see smoke rising from the World Trade Center towers. The attack occurred on September 11, 2001. The TSA was established by the Aviation and Transportation Security Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush on November 19, 2001. 

I suspect Bush and his Congressional collaborators don’t list TSA among their proudest moments. They should; after all our government absorbed the horror, vowed to never let it happen again and almost a generation later it hasn’t. Along the way plane hijackings went from 67 incidents in the 1970s to 9 incidents in the 2010s and none involved United States airlines. 

I can sense the bile gathering in our collective throats. None of us want to stand in line at airports or be electronically disrobed as we clear the security area. Or, spend billions of tax dollars just to make sure we don’t die flying to see our family hundreds or thousands of miles away. But then 9/11 demanded action and we intuitively knew that we could not effect a cultural change that would erase the threat.

We have once again been reminded of children who will not see tomorrow and parents who unknowingly said their final goodbye. And, if we have taken a few minutes to reflect we have been reminded of freedom of speech converted into stories that seize on anger, guns and revenge. It used to be we just watched these storylines unfold; now video games allow us to get in the middle of the action. And among us are troubled minds.

Okay, I am running out of words—columns have limits. And, our patience has limits. The shooting at the Uvalde school takes third place behind Virginia Tech and then Sandy Hook in lives lost and exists in a long line of school horrors (367 in the 2000s). We should be at an inflection point. And we know that the only constructive actions in our divided nation is for the two political parties to find acceptable common ground.

On one level, prediction is easy. We won’t ban guns. Maybe the age of acquisition will be extended. We should, but are unlikely to, restrict the sale of high-capacity magazines. And on and on. 

What about “tactical carrier” vests—I cannot imagine a successful law that does not severely restrict their ownership. The vests are what we think of as bullet proof and have pockets for other guns and ammunition. The Constitution does not protect them. When Salvador Ramos, the shooter, at age 18, bought such a vest, a screaming siren should have sounded.

Finally, nothing happens without leadership and President Biden is in the leadership chair. And, I should add citizen leadership will be important; not political, citizen. 

The immediate reactions from elected officials were not encouraging. They never are. They have their talking points; there was no need to rehearse them. But, ever the optimist, I know there are patriots in both parties. President Biden, you know who they are, call them up and lead us to a better tomorrow. Don’t seek perfection, seek something you can sign. We won’t return to the blissful moments I recalled, but we can make schools and public places safer.

Afterword: News now suggests that serious discussions have been started in the US Senate to craft legislation to reduce the threat of gun violence in schools. A seed crystal? We can hope.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

Vladimir Putin has two things on his side: sheer numbers and, potentially, isolationists in the West (America and its Allies).

As I write, Putin seems to be in “command and control” in Russia. Plus, Russia’s sheer numbers and armaments, along with a nuclear backdrop, are feared by politicians in some Western capitals. Of course, most Western leaders thought Russia would walk over Ukraine months ago. They should scrub their intelligence agencies while rebooting their mind.

Ukraine, the Nation, was transformed by Vladimir Putin. His “command and control” didn’t work out as he expected. Ukraine fought as a Nation; Russia showed up as an army and not a very good one. Three months later Ukraine has endured while Russia’s military assets have been exposed and depleted. Its victories achieved by long range artillery aimed at annihilation.  

Importantly, Ukraine courage and endurance has transformed the West. The leaders of the free world were initially outraged by Putin’s mendacity, while skeptically monitoring Ukraine’s capacity and resolve. So, transformation is not too big a word. We know, for example, how divided we are in the United States, yet in recent weeks the two most powerful Congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell have led delegations to Kyiv to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky and pledge their support.

We also know that the Western Alliance, following the Afghanistan withdrawal, looked weak. President Xi of China was certainly paying attention and is presumably collecting valuable pricing information from the Ukraine war. How much might he be ready to spend on Taiwan? 

But, on the eve of the fourth month of the Ukraine war a figurehead of a bent conservatism has become a symbol of fecklessness. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, is once again attaching himself to a parade of fools.

Hawley, last week, objected to the legislative package for Ukraine just approved by Congress. Hawley might want to recall the lyrics of a tune popularized by Kenny Rogers and that C&W fans and beyond know as “The Gambler.”

Rogers sang of “a train bound for nowhere” on a dark summer evening. Boredom overtook the gambler as he turned to his companion singing: “ Son I’ve made a life of reading faces, Knowing what the cards were by the way they held their eyes; So if you don’t mind my sayin I can see you are out of aces.” The Gambler willing to trade advice for whiskey and a cigarette continued: “If you’re gonna play the game, boy you gotta learn to play it right, You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, Know when to fold’em, Know when to walk away And know when to run.”

Are America and its allies on a “train to nowhere”? The Ukrainians have made their bet with their lives—the ultimate sacrifice. Their resolve has been inspiring and Russia is learning a crucial lesson—in war fight an army, not a nation and certainly not on their soil.

If anybody is on a train to nowhere, it is Putin and sadly Hawley and the isolationists. Putin’s story about going to Ukraine to fight Nazis is eroding, even in Russia, as the real story unfolds on electronic networks that can’t be controlled.

It is also hard to lead effectively if your mind is blurred by self-intoxication surrounded by a team soaked in paranoia. Paranoia is depleting as the circle of trust gets progressively smaller and talented people either exit or take matters into their own hands.

So, Senator Hawley how are you as a betting man? As you raised your fist to show solidarity with the January 6th insurrectionists you revealed opportunism, the mendacious variety. 

And this time, as former President Ronald Reagan said to his critics, “there you go again.” But this time the goal is worthy and the war is real. This time it is principled. Perhaps you should listen, really listen, to “the Gambler” and your leader, Senator McConnell. 

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements

Last week on the way to Vigeland Park in Oslo, Norway, I drove by the Nobel Peace Center. The Nobel Peace Prize came to mind. Later, as I reflected, peace in general came to mind.

Europe and America are at war against Russia in Ukraine fueled by the grievances and hatreds of Vladimir Putin. And peace at home is too often missing. Several days ago, an 18-year-old opened fire at a grocery store in Buffalo, NY killing 12 people; his motivation, racial hatred. Where did that come from? We know it was not an isolated instance.

As usual much of the talk among politicians was about gun restrictions. It always is. Nothing happens. As a practical matter, not much can happen unless the Courts re-interpret the 2nd Amendment freedom more narrowly or we amend the Constitution. Not anticipating the former I favor the latter.

A pinnacle of hope over reality in my life was when Barack Obama was selected to be honored with the Nobel Peace Prize a year into his presidency. Even many of his enthusiastic supporters wondered why.

Peace is not a political card. It should not be thrown around willy-nilly, although it is. Peace is a reality or its not and in America today too often it is not. But what we know for sure is that people who use the political playing deck without regard to the responsibility of living in a free society are toxic. Peace is essential in a free country.

American Presidents live in the shadow of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln understood the necessity of being a wartime President to achieve a national peace. He accepted the challenge of reestablishing the United States while ending slavery.

Hard times followed Lincoln’s assassination; there was plenty left to do to achieve Lincoln’s dream and we know that President after President came up short—some way short. 

Today do we live in a Democracy where problems can be peacefully resolved? The conditions we now face are not promising. Tribalism. Polarization. Hateful assertions spread instantly by electronic networks. And what about freedom’s facilitator and interpreter. What happens when news coverage is eclipsed by viewpoint news?

Our Constitution says hands off speech. We are left with a puzzle. Discernment is the only way to peaceful solutions, but the problematic elements turn back on themselves. Emotion begets emotion and so often trumps logic. And when it comes to leadership the logical are infrequently good at performance. 

It is damnably hard to push beyond pre-dispositions and emotions. For politicians and voters alike. We are barraged with claims and their opposite and virtually every candidate has had a bad day telescoped as simply a bad human being.

Returning to the warnings from Eric Hoffer (President Eisenhower’s favorite philosopher) who watched the masses assemble behind Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin: “Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”

Donald Trump chose to cast first Barack Obama and then Hillary Clinton as devils. And then his list grew to include any person of some prominence that was critical of his words or actions. And, over time the “devils” extended to Republicans who didn’t kneel—RINOs (Republicans in name only) he called them. They too were enemies. Ronald Reagan charmed his adversaries; Donald Trump damned them with vicious language.

America’s strength is in its optimism about the future and the way we understand accomplishment. Rarely have I heard somebody who is honored not expand the recipients to “our team”. But that is not Trump’s world. Trump’s world resembles boxing—there is one person in the ring and the enablers are largely invisible. Trump as Rocky.

Peace in American political culture, Left and Right, can at any point be elusive and when it is lacking the reasons can be damnably complex. But I know this, politics and public affairs in general are the worse for Donald Trump, his tactics and acolytes. The sooner he and his legacy of bitter politics leave the scene the better. 

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books. 

 

 

 

Believe me; Elon Musk should not want to own Twitter. But then hubris can be blinding. I write as a former censor.

While Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) complaints were filed against the broadcast company that syndicated Howard Stern’s morning radio show. I found two of the complaint transcripts actionable under a law to protect children from obscene content. Suddenly I became one of Stern’s morning show targets including his wishing me dead when I went into the hospital for cancer surgery. While there my wife answered hostile calls from some in his fan base.

Since I wasn’t selling anything, there was no reason to worry about spillover. Maybe I should have been, because I received more notoriety from those complaints than anything else the Commission did. If software to help parents screen out Stern’s vulgar shtick had existed, I would have eagerly sold it.  A large part of his audience was pre-pubescent males—now in their 30s and earlier 40s. 

At the time new communications technologies were coming out of the laboratories and re-shaping the FCC’s role. Liberation from the world of channel scarcity was soon to emerge and Twitter is one of the offspring. Twitter allows most everybody to post on a public network what they want to say.

Predictably, but unfortunately, some people have rabid typing disease. At times it is impulsive and hyper-emotional. At times the posts are drawn from a vocabulary that seems to start and stop with the F word. And of course, there are the predators: pornographers, criminal fraudsters, raw racists and the like—the clutter of bent minds. 

Now, I can’t go further without introducing you to the Communications Decency Act and the pivotal Section 230 which goes to the nub of censorship. Drawing from Wikipedia: 

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.”

Section 230(c)(2) further provides “Good Samaritan” protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the good faith removal or moderation of third-party material they deem “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.”

And that is why Musk doesn’t want to own Twitter. The so-called Good Samaritan provision means that the burden is on the provider (Twitter) and not the government to be the censor. Musk, of course, would be too busy to decide when words, phrases, visual images are “obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent”. And, maybe he wouldn’t care.

Musk, and he would be the name on the marquee, could decide not to worry about virulently anti-social speech. Either way he would have a minute-by-minute problem because a large majority of Americans care about what is published. I learned that and to the extent it was necessary to remind me the Congress held hearings with me in the hot seat.

Elon Musk, of course, sells things on most continents. As CNBC reports, under recently passed laws: “Tech companies will be required to implement new procedures designed to take down illegal material such as hate speech, incitement to terrorism and child sexual abuse.” Welcome Mr. Musk to global restrictions.

So, as the various scenarios play out along financial lines and stockholder maneuvering, the real cost to Elon Musk who sells Tesla’s, solar panels, internet connections and much else has nothing to do with Board of Director shaped poison pills. If he owns Twitter he will become, by law, one of the world’s foremost censors. 

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al writes on themes from his book, Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.