Nobody ever accused President Jed Bartlet of being too candid as President over his seven years of presiding over The West Wing. On the contrary, the hits he took in public were about being too distant, too intellectual, too removed from ordinary life. That is not an entirely unfair characterization of him, but it passes over the other part—the passionate, angry, vengeful president.
But for that, he had a staff. [1] I am going to come, shortly, to President Trump’s 
belligerency about North Korea, including both “fire and fury like the world has never seen” and “not tough enough.” And now, since I wrote those, to “locked and loaded.” But let’s start with President Bartlet and work back.
In Season 1, Episode 3, “A Proportional Response,” the Syrians shot down an American aircraft. Bartlet was furious about the attack and even more furious about the routines that his military had developed for dealing with such things. These routines did not express the depth of his anger, nor did they assuage his desire for revenge. Here is Round 1 with his military and diplomatic staff in the situation room. Admiral Fitzwallace is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
BARTLET: Then I ask again, what is the virtue of a proportional response?
FITZWALLACE: It isn’t virtuous Mr. President. It’s all there is sir.
BARTLET: It is not all there is.
FITZWALLACE : …pardon me Mr. President, just what else is there?
BARTLET; A dis-proportional response. Let the word ring forth from this time and this place, gentlemen; you kill an American, any American, we don’t come back with a proportional response, we come back [bangs fist on table] with total disaster!
GENERAL: Are you suggesting we carpet-bomb Damascus?
BARTLET; General, I am suggesting that you and Admiral Fitzwallace and Secretary Hutchinson and the rest of the national security team take the next sixty minutes and put together a U.S. response scenario that doesn’t make me think we are just docking somebody’s damn allowance!
You couldn’t ask for more fury than that. He is angry and he has the power to punish and he wants to use it. But then an amazing thing happens. In Scene 3, President Bartlet returns to the Situation Room to hear about the new plan. He gets the new plan—and also an assessment of what this plan will look like to others.
Bartlet: You called me?
FITZWALLACE: Yes, sir. Mr. President we put together a scenario by which we attack Hassan airport…. I think Mr. Cashman and Secretary Hutchinson would each tell you what I’m sure you already know sir. That this strike would be seen at home and abroad as a staggering overreaction by a first time Commander in Chief. That without the support of our allies, without a Western Coalition, without Great Britain and Japan and without Congress, you’ll have doled out a five thousand dollar punishment for a fifty buck crime, sir.
Bartlet’s Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff just responded to the Commander in Chief’s anger as “a staggering overreaction by a first time Commander in Chief.” It is, concisely, “a rookie mistake.”
And there are reasons why it is a mistake. There would need to be a “Western Coalition” 
to support the kind of response the President is talking about. Bartlet just wants to hit back. There has been no engagement with Congress, not even the famous “Gang of Eight.” [1]. Nothing with Great Britain or Japan. There has been no foreign policy preparation at all and only a rookie President would act militarily in such circumstances and this rookie President if very fortunate t have someone who will tell him that. The caption is from a Fitzwallace fan. He didn’t have a nameplate that said that.
Bartlet is stopped by his staff. He is still angry and more will have to be done before he addresses the American people that eventing. That additional work is done by Leo McGarry in the Oval Office and when he is done, Bartlet is able to give a public voice that sounds like this.
BARTLET: My fellow Americans, good evening. A short while ago I ordered our Armed Forces to attack and destroy four military targets in Northern Syria, this in response to the unwarranted, unprovoked, and cold-blooded downing three days ago of an unarmed Air Force jet carrying 58 passengers and the flag of the United States.
It took some doing, but he got there.
The Trump Presidency
It is widely thought that no one in the Trump administration would be able to stand up to President Trump the way Admiral Fitzwallace stood up to President Bartlet. This places the contrast between these two residents of the Oval Office in an odd relationship to each other.
For example, it is not a difference of public and private person. Bartlet was as angry in this narrative as Trump is today about the threat of North Korea. It is not that Bartlet successfully muffles his anger, determined to act like a president, rather than like an avenger. Taking this scene as a fair instance of his early presidency, he “muffles his anger” no better than President Trump is reported to.
But President Trump has not yet appointed anyone to play either role. John Kelly’s role–that’s Kelly in the picture above– appears to be to keep everyone else in line. It appears to include General John Dunford, the current Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the role Admiral Fitzwallace played in the TV narrative. And there is no setting where this could occur. President Bartlet convened the members of “national security team” to give him a report in the Situation Room. No one is convened at the site of President Trump’s 3:00 a.m. tweets.
So it appears that the setting is not there. It may be, as they say, that no one wrote the “fire and fury” line for him, but he has been rehearsing it for awhile now in angry outbursts with his associates. None of the associates seem to have found a way to say what these experts, see below, are saying, according to CNN.
Trump’s comment, which came shortly before North Korean officials threatened the United States territory of Guam with missiles, was criticized as too bellicose and direct by national security and defense experts who argued any conflict involving nuclear weapons called for calm and reserve.
So the setting is not there and as nearly as we can tell, the people who can utilize their expertise to move toward “calm and reserve” are not there either. Every president I have seen so far, and that list begins with FDR, has found a way to adapt himself to the Presidency. “It sobers you,” said recent President Barack Obama.
But it may have inebriated President Trump. If he has developed, as many think, a habit of saying what people tell him he shouldn’t say, that means one thing in a radio interview. It means not much more in a TV show that features him firing people. It means somewhat more when it comes to ethnic slurs and predatory comments about women.
But if it really is a habit—as it seems—and if he really is unwilling to set it aside for the 
purpose of dealing with other heads of state, some friendly, some hostile, then he needs a strong staff in the very worst way. And he shows very little inclination—General Kelly is a possible exception—to appoint any. The recent televised cabinet meeting at which each secretary was given a chance to say what an honor it was to serve in the Trump administration, does not bode well for anyone giving the President good advice.
Let’s hope that Kim Jong Un is being better served by his staff.
[1] There is debate about the origin of the term “staff,” to refer to the people who serve you in some way. Everyone agrees the staff = “stick” in some sense, but one group believes it is a stick something like the baton that officers carry, while others think it is a stick more like a shepherd’s staff and that the joke is that the staff are the people you can lean on. I don’t know which is correct but, obviously, I prefer the one with the joke in it.
[2] Specifically, the Gang of Eight includes the leaders of each of the two parties from both the Senate and House of Representatives, and the chairs and ranking minority members of both the Senate Committee and House Committee for intelligence as set forth by 50 U.S.C. § 3093(c)(2).A
I ask you to imagine that sitting down at a table with friends to eat a meal is really just a palette; it is an occasion that you will use to paint a picture of yourself. In this scenario, the meal itself is just a color, just a tool. In such a setting, it makes no more sense to say “Enjoy your meal” than it would to say to an artist, “Enjoy your yellow.”
the meal at all, so very probably he is not enjoying it. Each kind of food is an occasion for recounting where else he has eaten this kind of food and how much better it was then than now. It is a self-aggrandizing performance and while it doesn’t, strictly speaking, preclude his enjoying the food, it is hard to think that he does.
Let’s take it for granted that people like President Trump do whatever they feel is in their best interest. [2] And I take it for granted that people listen to what they think is in their best interest and believe what they think it is in their best interest to believe. And I think it has always been like that. I think that characterizes the presidencies of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and Bill Clinton. [3]
remind me of the “pep rallies” of my high school days. Speaker after speaker praises the home team and vilifies the next team on the schedule. Coaches will say things like, “And we are going to win because we are winners” with complete impunity. It doesn’t imply anything about the actual prospects of the home team in the coming game. We may have lost every game so far and be confidently expected to lose this one as well. No one takes what appears to be a prediction as a statement with any factual content at all. It is just a way of praising ourselves and fortifying ourselves against whatever reality will bring.
There is no down side, in the current environment, to being shown to be a liar. In fact, now that I think of it, I don’t see that word used. We see stories that some percent of a politician’s statements (I saw a 70% ranking for Trump during the campaign) are lies, but not that the candidate was “a liar.” In the current environment, lies are honored equally with truths as “courageous,” or as “standing up for the downtrodden” (or the downtreaders) or “saying how he really feels.”
public officials by treating some things as acceptable and others as not acceptable. Politicians who thought their campaigns would be seriously damaged if they could be shown to be lying about public matters would stop lying about public matters. Mrs. Motter trained my friend Bruce to understand that he was not really being called for dinner when she called his name. Bruce responded exactly as you would expect, and as any politician would, who was doing something rewarding and illicit and was not punished for it.
2003 and I had the kinds of grieving difficulties men have when their wives die. One of the difficulties was confusion. A lot of the things that were being recommended to me didn’t seem to help. Some of them made everything seem worse. That’s why I was confused.
But there is the matter if whether that is the best question to pose. In posing this one, he bypassed the other two question we are keeping in mind. The first is whether “broad allowances for emotional expression” are good for people. In focusing on the possibility that these limits are bad for boys, Reiner bypassed the question of whether people in general are benefitted from rich and unconstrained emotional expression. If that were true, we would expect to find that cultures that presuppose free and unfettered emotional expression would be healthier than cultures that do not. I am not aware of any research that holds that to be true, but I will keep my eyes open.
Furthermore, some girls would benefit from a more limited emotional vocabulary and others would not. This is the most important kind of question for parents, but I agree with Reiner that it isn’t very good for outsiders. The research Reiner reports has to do with mothers and fathers with young infants. No one is asking what kind of treatment is going to benefit this particular infant. That is not a question that can be asked yet.
Looking at this from my standpoint, I see the precursors of the intuitive style of grieving and the instrumental style of grieving. The lesson I took from that setting is that there is a perfectly good style of grieving that doesn’t require an expanded emotional vocabulary (as well as one that does) and I am inclined to look at Reiner’s piece from that standpoint.
which we confess our sins together—have not been able to find a form for that confession. The old style (a very attractive example follows) was bold and without any amelioration at all. “We have sinned in thought, word and deed.” Not much wiggle room there. “We have done that which we ought not to have done and we have left undone those things that we ought to have done.” So again, nowhere to hide.
unity—as if I were watching the Rockettes in New York and marveling that they kick exactly the same kick at the same time—and being a part of the unity. If it’s visual, you have to do one or the other. The saying/hearing the Lord’s Prayer is aural. Not only can you say it and hear it—hear yourself as one of many—at the same time, but you can try to approximate the way you say it to match the way you are hearing it. [6]
About his execution, More is reported to have said, “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first.” It is More’s claim to the ultimate sovereignty of God and the valid, but subordinate, claim King Henry has on his loyalty. More took his stand and paid the price as many honorable men and women have done through the ages. But what he said to the king, cannot be said to a “a truth.” Nor can it be said to be a fact. It is a witness. [2]
temperatures have been increasing at rates unprecedented in the modern era. The elites have nothing but contempt for “people like us” and will say whatever they want with no concern at all for our welfare. One of those is not “truer,” as we like to say, than another. Each “truth” determines the subsequent actions of one community or another—the scientists by the first truth, the “climate deniers” by the second.
What we have here is a clash of narratives each supported by experimental data. The narrative supported by Brady’s findings is about the stress of decision making. The monkeys bore the burden of choosing and paid the price. The narrative supported by Weiss’s findings is about the stress brought on by powerlessness. The animals (rats in Weiss’s case) received shocks with no opportunity at all to avoid them and that is what produced the stress and the ulcers.
not a preacher of sermons, but Matthew is really struck by the insight that Jesus is the new Moses. In order to make the parallel clear, Jesus needs to be a lawgiver and that requires that he give sermons, not just that he drop memorable anecdotes. So Matthew collects the Jesus material he has [1] into longer bodies of text; into sermons. And because these sermons are composites built from the Jesus material, we can’t tell the setting of any one part of the sermon.
All of these are “don’t get discouraged” (DGD) stories. DGD, sometimes the soil is bad. It’s not your fault. Just keep sowing. DGD, some of the fish are unusable. Just throw the bad ones away and keep on fishing. DGD, it takes only a little yeast to raise a big lump of dough and only a little seed to make a tree so big birds can nest in it. DGD, no matter what this is costing you, the value of the reward is so great that it will be worth it. DGD.
Matthew understands the message, is concerned about conflict among the preachers of the Way. If we think of the “weeds” as other interpretations of Jesus’s teachings, it may be that Matthew was counting on the continuing context of the Torah to keep the church together. It is only Matthew (13:52) who imagines both the old treasures and the new being brought out of the storehouse.
I recently heard a sermon in which the preacher identified the “weeds” with “the shadow side” of the self, as Carl Jung calls it. Jung’s use of “the vast part of the self that the ego does not know about or will not accept” is broadly attractive in a lot of ways. It is hard to get a handle on, as you might expect, just as the Freudian unconscious is hard to get a handle on. But it would be deeply unorthodox (heretical) to identify the shadow in psychoanalytic theory with the weeds in Matthew’s story. The shadow side is an inevitable part of us and although it is “dark,” it is not evil.
I’ve been a fan of Federer’s for a long time now. It’s not just that he is a superb tennis player. I like the way he sees the game. I like the way he sees his life, with the game as part of it, rather than all of it. I like the way he admires and supports the other players, even while he is doing his best to defeat them.
e front desk at the time and I was checking out Holladay Park Plaza to see if maybe Bette and I wanted to move there. I remember thinking that the lobby looked like the lobby of a really good hotel and I remember thinking that the woman behind the desk looked like she belonged in a really good hotel. I had been touring senior centers at the time and I had never visited one that caused that thought to come to mind. I liked it.
personally, but educationally as well,” she is talking about the experience she has had. She is talking about the “journey” part of the competition, about the friendships with the other contestants, about all she learned about presenting herself, about, about taking a leadership role in making the contest what it was. These are things that she gets to keep no matter who wins. And when she won the Miss Portland crown, she crowned the journey with the destination.
All this is coming to a head now because Ms. DeVos (shown here) is bringing this balance up for reconsideration. The New York Times writers refer to the ongoing conflict as “a maelstrom.” [3] She wants to meet with groups who will be willing to represent the men, the disproportionately accused parties. Predictably, the women are not happy with the men who are being included, some of whom they call misogynists. I think it would be reasonable to assume that the men’s groups are going to call the women’s groups misandrists. English makes that pairing available and given the level of intensity this conflict has reached, it would seem almost odd if both were not used.
been accused have gone through an absolutely horrendous experience, They have had their entire world turned upside down.” He doesn’t say that he is promoting a Twitter campaign called #DearBarack, but if the Civil Rights Division is flooded with letters from women and men who have had their lives ruined by sexual encounters in college, that will be what I mean by an Astroturf campaign.
On the other hand, if you were the tongue in this picture, you could just as accurately say that you “were” depressed, but you would be referring to the effect that the little popsicle stick is having on you. “It is depressing me,” the tongue would say, “therefore. I am being depressed” Notice that “depressed” is clearly a verb now. The parallel sentence would be, “I am being strangled,” in which “”depressed” and “strangled” each describe an ongoing action being aimed at you.
This is the way my inner organizer arranges my experiences for me. It is very much as if I had asked for a book called Captain Klutz and was referred to a list of books with that theme. Except these “books” are all about things I have done. These may be things I have never before considered to be related to each other, but somebody—whoever is organizing and presenting these other experiences to me—thinks they are related.
Some one in the Gorithm family (Al, probably) is monitoring my use of the computer and notices that I was searching for images of attractive older women and concluded that I was in the market not just for the pictures, but for the women. I search for images every time I put an essay up on my blog site. I’d hate to think that each of these searches is taken as an indication of an “interest” that can be commercially exploited. But that is what I do think.
I were not being held down. On the other hand, I know what to do about it. It isn’t instantaneous, which would be nice, but it is reliably effective. There are things I can do that are kind of like “pushing back” or at least “getting out from under the thumb.”
