Am I guilty of the proverbial seeing every problem as a nail because my only tool is a hammer?
I don't think so but thinking along this line has occurred to me for the first time in any of my campaigns.
By training was in leadership in graduate school back in the mid seventies. My avocation and vocation have been leadership ever since. I learned fairly quickly in industry that my only interest was in urgent situations that required a dramatic turnaround to avoid disaster, and that by my only skill was in such urgent situations, rather, the skill that aligned with my greatest strengths, and with my interests, passions. I learned that I have no interest in, and no apparent talents, in normal situations.
More specifically what occured to me is that relative to Palestine,, saving the last remnants of democracy in America, stopping ecocide, it is not a leadership problem but a follower problem that we have. That is, the denial among the American people is so catatonic, so sick, so deep, so all powerful that leadership may not be the problem,
But I think leadership is the only solution. Leadership,, being among the first to do what a healthy, loving, sane, not catatonically delustional personl person does in the face of a 68 year torture and torment of another people, the Palestinians, by one's own government.
It is so much lonelier than what I ever had to do in industry. The motivators for the groups involved were so much clearer, losing their job, going out of business, losing their income.... So the followers were, if not always, often, ready to do their part. There is no evidence of that in any of the three problems that I've mentioned. Quite the opposite. It appears that the followers will avoid taking personal responsibility no matter what.
So I think I was mistaken to have this doubt. I'll continue to consider it, but maybe more than ever it is a leadership problem. Being among the first to act as a human being should act in the face of such horror.
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