Prognostications After a Week with President Trump

President Trump has so far been an irresponsible leader. As someone who is comfortable (and in fact enjoys!) arguing for the opposite point of view in order to spur on arguments with friends, I often find myself trying to think through the logic of a viewpoint with which I disagree. Some of my most firmly held beliefs that differ from social norms have arisen from this method. The best example is my stance on personal recycling (it's a form of tax, doesn't matter, and is morally licensing, so I'll stick to reducing and reusing thank you very much).


So though I harbored many differences with candidate Donald Trump, I am fully prepared, especially in the presence of so many smug Bernie supporters in my social circle, to try to react to his policies with analysis rather than anger. So far he has demonstrated his usual callous and un-Christian attitude towards others as well as several massive violations of wisdom abut leadership and American institutions which I hold dear, and which history has shown are worthy of respect and adherence. For a good list of these, check out this weekly record.

Russell Simmons wrote an interesting opinion piece on Huffington Post today that I think gives us part of the picture. I've seen a few pieces articulating that even if somehow Trump got impeached, Democrats are in for a long, hard four years. Even assuming something Trump does causes Republicans in power to somehow decide it's worth jumping ship and impeach him, it would take a long time. Even Liberals who are shouting and waving their fists like Robert Reich think it'll be a while before they dump him. And lest the passionate among Democrats forget, President Pence wouldn't be an alliterative leader that propels the country forward.

The timing here could be very interesting. Democrats seem to have little hope of winning back either the House or the Senate in 2018. If things stay this way, Republicans could very well hide behind a smoke screen of their normal obfuscation while letting Trump parade around for two years, and then announce after winning, potentially a filibuster-proof majority, that the voters had endorsed Trump's policies, even though reality says the map and seats up for election favor them. If Trump manages to learn which crazy things warrant backlash and protests, and which fly under the radar, he could manage to be propped up for the entire four years, helping usher in an even stronger majority for Republicans.

If, on the other hand, the protests and political activism that may be coming combine with one or more Trump decisions that break through the cognitively dissonant support of some of his voters, a few things might happen:

• President Trump, who we all know loves to gild things, might start believing polls that show him as un-liked. Protests and woke former Trump supporters might make these numbers sink further and break even more starkly. President Trump might turtle up and keep at things, or change, or just quit. He's a maverick after all, and has said many times he doesn't need this job.
• Slow-moving lawsuits (you actually can't sue the President for things he does as part of his official capacity, FYI) and petitions and eventually articles of impeachment might make it to the house floor. With only a simple majority needed, that's currently 26 Republicans siding with the Democrats, and would be less if it happened after midterms and Democrats picked up some seats. While it would take 2/3 of the Senate, which means a lot of Republicans switching sides and seems pretty near impossible, perhaps just the threat of getting it passed in the house would cause Trump to change course or jump ship given that Alec Baldwin consistently gets under his skin for doing an impression on air.
• The Democrats start offering more leadership and more young, Millennial voices the chance to become part of the party. If protests galvanize the Democrats in a similar way to the Tea Party, the Millennial generation can grab hold of political power. The Democratic leadership in the Senate has recently broadened, but even the Millennials willing to get arrested to change the party are advocating for a 75-year old to take control over a party he doesn't even identify as a member of. This would take Millennials rising up and denying the snowflake aspersions cast our way with little thought. I love this idea.
• Civil servants, judges, and large institutions combine to create a lasting resistance to the destruction of democratic and social norms in which President Trump is constantly engaging. From the "Resist" banner by Greenpeace to the rogue Tweets by NPS, EPA, and NASA employees, everyone everywhere makes sure that their one vote (that they probably were too busy or apathetic to cast, hence Trump winning in the first place) is followed with a few hours of dedication to the American Dream that unifies and uplifts, instead of President Trump's "American Carnage" inauguration address.

No matter what happens over the coming weeks, months, and years in our American political experiment, I know two things about myself for certain. First, I will continue to help out political campaigns for candidates I support by canvassing. I love the walking, the fulfillment I get from meeting so many good people, and the knowledge that while I only vote once, I can get many more votes cast by putting shoe leather to pavement. Second, I will keep reading and talking and being optimistic. If I stay informed, and keep reading, I will know more about why things are happening, and be able to help spread this information in my circles.

The Weight of Cultural Norms

Traditions and rituals are really cool. As any athlete (or serious fan) will tell you, it is of the utmost importance that pregame rituals are followed exactly. As any serious camper will tell you, it is of the utmost importance that we sing a song before each assembly, that we cross our left hands over our rights during Friendship Circle, and that each cabin have an introductory gimmick for each campfire.

Rituals are part of what connects us with our pasts, and help us convince ourselves that how we lead our lives is valuable and will mean something to those who come after us. It doesn't actually matter if a pro ties their shoes the 'right' way before the game any more than it matters if a NHL player's beard has been grown out all playoffs long. If we sang songs at the end of assemblies at camp, it would be fine. We changed the location of the Assembly Area, which necessitated changing all of the meeting trees, and none of the activities suffered, nor did the Wee Little Tree suddenly wilt and die.

Rituals and traditions should have a purpose, or should be used for a purpose. And you should make sure to look over your big and little traditions in your workplace and see if they have value, or where they can be tweaked to add value. If we let traditions without value stay, we risk becoming culturally moss-covered as we join Kodak in the museum.

One of the things that gives traditions at camp so much weight is that the property and culture feel stuck in time. It is impossible to be at camp and not feel as though the barefoot fun is exactly the same today as it was in 1928 when camp was founded. Because of this, traditions and rituals cut both ways. We can tell people that "This is how we do things/treat people" and have them believe it is important because that's how it's always been. But we are also limited in what we can try out and do if it doesn't fit existing cultural expectations.

I was reminded of this cultural limitation today when I saw a post on Facebook from an alumni from the 50s and 60s showing a Brown versus Green canoe challenge sheet. In my 20 years at camp, we have strongly opposed the idea of having a "Color War" under the premise that fixed-pie competition has little place at camp. While we've added a few things like a new version of Crew Olympics with individual champions, and the new running game Into The Deep with a single champion of camp, we still chaff against any hint of labeling anyone a winner at the cost of labeling someone else a loser.

In the end, cultural norms are delicate and finely crafted, which few people realize. It may seem like the Mean Girls' cafeteria has always been stratified that way, but remember how much work Regina had to do to keep control. All it took to unravel her was a few calteen bars and a rule about sweatpants. Take a long look at the big picture values you want for your culture, and then think of ways that you already do things that can embody those values, and ways you can tweak your norms to further those values. Ask others for their input in this process, toss up ideas, give away credit. Take culture seriously and it will reward you and your business.

Helping Chidren Learn Self-Awareness and Self-Reliance

Kids don't get very many chances to find out about themselves or choose for themselves at school. They wake up and get put on a bus at the ass-crack of dawn, often spending more than an hour commuting to school. When they arrive, they sit in assigned seats in carefully arraigned rows to prevent them from interacting overmuch with their friends. They are shuttled silently and in a line from a class on one subject to another, with a mental costume change expected promptly, and no idle chitchat in transit.

If they're lucky, they get to choose their own seats at lunch. For some kids today, even their recess has become a dirge of walking on a track like a donkey in a smithy. At the end of the day, they ride in assigned seats on the bus home. Rich kids then get paraded about to all sorts of classes, lessons, or clubs, finally arriving home to waffle down some dinner and do an hour or two of homework that may or may not be useful in academic, social, or developmental ways.

No matter what we teach in schools, and whether or not it directly relates to the life our children go on to live and the adults they become, this system is bad, wrong, and broken.

I had the opportunity to go to an alternative style elementary school in Philadelphia called Project Learn (PL). While PL had many flaws, and I would not suggest it as a viable model for large-scale use, there were several aspects of it that gave me an opportunity that every child deserves. We should do our best as a society to create the kind of environment that PL did so that every child can have these opportunities:

At PL, while everyone "knew" what grade people were in, classes were referred to based on the teacher's name rather than the grade level. Instead of an impersonal fact like date of birth determining  grade, a combination of age, maturity, and acumen were used. Because most of the homerooms had children from more than one year, and quite a few students stayed in the same homeroom for two years before moving on, it was impossible for the bullies to tell if a student was matched with a homeroom teacher because of symbiotic temperament or academic proficiency.

Likewise with academic classes. Math classes happened at the same time school-wide, and students were placed in a class based on their abilities. This was an incredible choice that allowed PL to teach all classes at much higher levels than in a typical school. They did this with language arts as well.

As a school teacher (and this was at the current 6th ranked school in the country mind you) I found that in each 22-child sections of science I would have huge disparities in ability. A teacher is forced to either let the smart kids get bored, or let the dumb kids not learn. What ends up happening is a lame reduction to the mean where teachers hope most kids get it, stress about the ones who don't, and try to give extra challenges to the smart ones without turning them into pariahs.

A final choice that PL made, and one that I believe would make the most difference if adopted by more elementary, middle, and high schools, was an elective course structure. Starting in 3rd grade, students got to choose several elective classes based on their interest (and the teacher's offerings). The whole school did electives at the same time, and many (but not all) of the elective classes involved students of different ages. There is so much going on here that is beneficial, but here are a few highlights:

Children getting to choose a class increases their buy-in and agency, giving them invaluable practice making decisions and sticking to them for a semester. Working in a class with students of other ages lets younger ones model their behavior based on peers who have matured, and lets older students pretend to be adults and practice leadership.

Teachers love electives. Electives give teachers a chance to share their passions with students, explore new ideas and topics, and design new curriculum. This keeps their lessons in their other areas fresher, and constantly broadens their knowledge base; allowing teachers to model the process of learning for their students. Job satisfaction is also increased because teachers often get stuck in a rut. Many elementary schools are feudal. Career teachers slowly accumulate gravitas and authority as they build political factions around them and compete in a zero-sum game with other tenured teachers. Electives uproot this by encouraging change, adaptation, and giving teachers a constantly random set of students to teach.

Electives also give more legitimacy and accountability to pursuits that would often be placed in "clubs" at the middle school and high school level. I personally participated in and loved the school newspaper elective.

A school administrator could also develop an electives slate that catered to a regional or local need. I can imagine an incredibly effective course offering in a blue-collar town that helped prepare middle and high school students for vocational jobs by giving them a chance to learn what options they were most passionate about. Likewise, in a school district with high teen pregnancy there could be electives focused on things like childcare or parenting.

In order to become more self-aware and self-reliant (both values that I ascribe to and believe to be an integral part of the American Dream), we need to do a better job helping our children learn and practice those skills. If a student never gets to make a choice, and is often held back/left behind in regimented classes, they won't learn to dream.

Run to the Middle. Every. Time.

Winning in wrestling is about discipline. I learned that lesson over and over again through my time as a high school wrestler and as a coach. For my junior and senior years, our coaching staff was graced by the panther-like presence of a man we called Coach Shoops. We usually had three coaches, our head coach was the middle weight, and then the assistant coaches would be split one for the little guys and one for the big boys. Shoops was big and quick. He weighed around 200lbs and was constantly carrying around a med school textbook as he studied for whatever exam was next.

Shoops had a variety of little techniques he added to my repertoire. Because he was technically sound where I was quirky, and much quicker than I, I don't remember picking up too many larger moves from him. What I did learn was a style of thinking and gamesmanship that helped me win matches.

Like I said, winning in wrestling is about discipline. The head coach, Quilty, made sure we worked hard enough to have physical discipline, and were sufficiently drilled in techniques to have technical discipline. Shoops made sure we were ready to get inside our opponents' heads and grind them into the mat. He made sure we had competitive discipline.

Some of his ideas were a little quixotic, but worked with practice. It took me a while, but eventually I managed to get good at pointing towards an opponent's shoe to make them think it had come untied, so I could strike while their attention was away from defense. One of my favorites of his was The Handshake Maneuver. If you act scared while warming up and then give a dead fish handshake, your opponent will underestimate your confidence and technique. If you are reading a book at the side of the mat and give him the double-handed nerdshake, chances are he will underestimate your strength. If you make exceptional eye contact while shaking hands, he might still be looking when the ref blows the whistle and you can strike first. The Handshake Maneuver was straight up fun for me.

The most effective and hardest of his recommendations was that whenever the whistle blew, no matter the score, run back to the middle of the mat. Some matches this wouldn't have much affect because it would only be at the end of the first and second periods. Other matches you'd be going out of bounds every ten seconds and having to restart over and over.

In those cases, you could win a match simply by running back to the middle. The first time you do it, your opponent might just think it's weird as he staggers/crawls back the 10ft to line up. The second, he might be a little irked by your unnecessary expenditure of energy. By the fifth or sixth, all he's thinking about is what it's going to take to make you break. If your whole team is doing this, you can track the morale of the other team as it sinks further and further. I know from personal experience that it's not easy to run back to the middle. It's even harder if you're losing. But if you can be disciplined enough to do it, you will win the mental battle and eventually, the physical one as well.

I mention all of this because I think if you cultivate discipline in any area, it will give you almost superhuman abilities. This doesn't take skill or money. All it takes is dedication and a desire to perform (and perhaps peers and mentors to help you get back up again when you mess up). If you want your employees to aspire to excellence, you have to teach them the basics and the techniques like Quilty did. You also have to give them the hard-knuckled fight and gamesmanship that Shoops taught.

Putting American First

I usually try to make my New Year's Resolutions involve a shift in attitude or cognition. A few years ago I tried to do a better job of embodying Pope Francis' five powerful words "Who am I to Judge" and sought to ask questions more instead of telling people what I thought (don't scoff - I know I talk a lot, but I also work on improving how I talk).

Last year I tried to make use of Scott Arizala's wisdom about unloading buses.

This year I've got an idea for my resolution, and I hope to develop it more throughout the year. I read a great article that I can't seem to find about the microaggression implicit in our ethnic terminology for immigrants to the US. When we call people African American or Muslim American or Mexican American, we are placing an asterisk on how American someone can be. If we switched our language around to put American first, it would allow for greater unity and acceptance.

From talking with teachers I know, an ugly and despicable side of American children came out on November 9th. Students were suddenly able (or willing) to act out the disgusting racism that Donald Trump promoted throughout his campaign. Children of color, children of immigrants, and children who are simply prone to bullying were targeted by their peers. "This is Trump's America, you can't sit here anymore" is the kind of sentence I have been told is once again spat out of the mouths of empowered white boys and girls.

I don't remember the moment I decided Jon Stewart was a paragon of comedic political wit. I don't recall when I decided to tune in and listen to what he had to say every night. I do know I was upset when he left the Daily Show. I respect him enough to have believed him when he said Trevor Noah would be a valued voice in our discourse. I now know he was right. Check out this 43 minute sit down Trevor did with The Breakfast Club. I was particularly struck by his idea that when someone does something racist, we as a society want them fired/removed/gone. We don't ever ask what happens next.

My resolution this year is to put American first by working to include anyone I am lucky enough to be around. It is to find ways to reach out to and converse and connect with anyone I meet and to go beyond my Pope Francis' inspired goal of not judging and instead try to connect with people by putting a dream of unity first. I would like to do my small part to make us more worthy of our motto E Pluribus Unum.

A Retrospective Resolution - Carrying Around Luggage

Last year my New Years' Resolution was to make use of Scott Arizala's wisdom about unloading buses. As a camp director for years he had been frustrated by the lack of coherence and organization at his camp as kids arrived on buses and their stuff was carted to their cabins. While the kids were doing get-to-know-you activities and eating dinner, the bags would all be brought to cabins. One or two kids would "lose" their stuff for hours every week.

Scott hated how unwelcome it made the kids feel when they walked into their cabin and couldn't find their bag. For years he would remind staff on change day to be careful with the bags, but would spend his day all over camp while someone else coordinated the bag moving. It all changed when he got in the face of one young counselor who had made a mistake and the counselor cheekily replied: "If you care so much about the bags, why don't you do it."

So for the rest of the summer and all the years since, Scott has directed camp from the parking lot on change days. Personally welcoming every camper, and making sure no one's stuff gets lost. It may be a little trickier to deal with problems that arise with just a radio and a quick wit, but the kids feel welcome.

The lesson he taught (and I tried to internalize) was twofold: As a manager you have limited time, you can't be in charge of everything, and have to balance which things you do based on what needs to get done and what will give you satisfaction to complete. Secondly and more importantly, you will get better results from people if you realize that they may not care about the same things you do and calibrate your leadership accordingly.

Scott had many solutions available to him, and likely tried some or all of these:

• He could have added an object lesson to his staff training by having several of his staff's possessions get "lost" en route to a staff trip and then getting them to talk to the rest of staff about what that felt like (thus increasing staff motivation to do a good job with the bags). 
• He could have created or helped another staff member create a more organized method for bag moving - like drawing chalk lines in a grid on the pavement for each cabin (thus adding agency to a staff member). 
• He could have organized the registration communication with parents to include a request for color coded tape/ribbon on each bag depending on the child's cabin (thus showing parents his camp cared how their possessions were treated). 

In the end, he chose to take charge of the task himself. This past year, I tried hard to listen to myself when I got bitchy and either take charge of the project or task that was making me upset, try out an alternate method for fixing it like mentioned above, or let it go.