Category Archives: Blog

Blog, Media + Politics, Politics

Getting Beyond The False Contentions That Keep People From Voting For Hillary

Originally Published October, 10, 2016 on The Huffington Post

I am astounded by the reasons (more accurately, “raw feelings!”) that people give for not being able to vote for Hillary Clinton. Basically, they boil down to four.

The first and most pernicious—a lie actually—is that not only is she untrustworthy, but even worse, she’s totally corrupt. For this reason alone, she is basically unfit to be President. As Trump’s supporters never tire of shouting, “Lock Her Up!”

The second follows almost automatically from the first. She is too guarded and therefore not authentic. In brief, she’s unlikeable. She’s unable to show her true feelings and thus connect with larger audiences. Once again, this makes her untrustworthy.

The third is that voting for her is merely a vote for the lesser of two evils.

A fourth is that a vote for a third party candidate is a vote for someone better who can live up to one’s ideals.

Let me respond very briefly to each with the clear recognition that if one is committed fervently, then there is little that I or anyone else can say that will cause them to abandon their beliefs.

If Hillary were as corrupt as she’s alleged, wouldn’t 30 years be enough time to convict her? Haven’t enough parties tried their damnedest to do exactly this to no avail?

Making mistakes and lapses of judgment do not make one evil. Lack of perfection is not equivalent to being evil.

Hillary is not the lesser of two evils. By virtue of her intelligence, long years of public service, depth of knowledge and experience, she is eminently qualified to be President. The same coolness and reserve for which she is so roundly criticized are the very attributes that, unlike her opponent, make her temperamentally fit to be President.

There is too much riding in this election to throw one’s vote away. And sadly, that’s exactly what a vote for a third-party candidate is, especially for someone who is supremely ignorant of world affairs.

I will never forgive Ralph Nader for allowing George W Bush to be elected under the false contention that there were, and are, no real differences between the two major parties. There certainly were and there are now between the two candidates.

Unfortunately, a quote—and I paraphrase— that is attributed to Jonathan Swift sums up the matter, “You cannot reason a man out of that he was not reasoned into in the first place.”

I hope fervently that there are enough people who can be reasoned beyond the falsehoods that are attributed to Hillary.

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Blog, Politics

Immediate Release from Donald J. Trump: I’m Resigning the Nomination

Originally published August 5, 2016 on The Huffington Post

Today I have decided not to run for President. Although I would have made the most marvelous President you wouldn’t believe, Ted Cruz, the Kahn family, and the liberal media have launched such vicious attacks and lies against me that I am forced to devote all my energy to fighting back. And, fight back I must and I will!

In not allowing the attacks to go unanswered, I am fighting for all of you that believe in me and America. Only I can still save America from my new TV network that I am starting immediately. It will be the biggest success you have never seen.

Besides, boring Mike, what’s his name, can do the most marvelous inadequate job better than I can, although I would be great at it.

To all my loyal, patriotic followers, we will Make America Great Again by your watching me watch TV.

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Blog, Politics, Psychology

The Unraveling Of The American Mind

Originally published August 2nd, 2016 in the Huffington Post

Donald Trump is the quintessential illustration of the phenomenon known as Splitting that the highly influential child psychoanalyst Melanie Klein identified early in the 20th century. Indeed, he is the poster child for Splitting!

Even though I have written about Klein before in The Huffington Post, her ideas bear repeating since they are indispensable in understanding our current predicament.

By means of play therapy, which she literally invented, Klein was able to get at the earliest, preverbal, unconscious fantasies of children during the first two to three years of their lives. Since young children couldn’t talk cogently about their innermost feelings and emotions, Klein was able to see what was going on by observing how children treated dolls that represented the prime characters in their lives. Thus, if the mommy and daddy dolls were constantly angry and fighting with one another and the child doll, then Klein was able to understand the emotional conflicts the child was struggling to deal with. For this reason, it is said that if Freud discovered the child in the adult, then Klein discovered the infant in the child. Klein thus pushed back even further our understanding of the roots of human behavior.

One of Klein’s earliest discoveries was that the fantasies of very young children revealed that there is an extremely powerful and destructive side to humans during the first years of their lives. The fantasies were basically due to the fact that very young children experienced extreme anger and frustration over the fact that they didn’t have complete control over the primary caretaker who was responsible for feeding them both physically and emotionally. When Klein wrote early in the 20th century, this was primarily the mother.

Klein established that under the age of three, children split the image of the mother into a “good mother” who cared and administered to the child’s every need exactly when the child wanted it and a “ bad mother” who had to discipline the child and couldn’t be there exactly on the child’s schedule. Because the child’s mind was not yet mature enough, it couldn’t comprehend, let alone reconcile, that the “good” and the “bad mother” were one and the same. In other words, to the young child, there were two separate mothers.

This helps to explain why fairytales are so appealing to young children. The “good witch” and “bad witch” help young children cope psychologically with the issues they are struggling to comprehend. Namely, how can young children reconcile that the good and the bad mother are one and the same? Thus, fairytales allow children to “act out” safely the emotional conflicts they are experiencing. That’s why the “bad witch” is always killed—indeed, has to die—and the “good witch” eventually triumphs.

(Notice carefully that when Splitting is not understood for what it is, then the fairytales of young children easily morph into destructive national myths, stories, and fantasies about “dangerous foreigners” who are out to “rape and murder us.”)

One of the critical functions of the parents is to provide a “healthy container” to help the young child literally “contain” the raging emotions that pulse through them uncontrollably. If the parents do not either over or under react to the child’s emotions, verbal outbursts, and fantasies, then the child eventually learns to contain his or her emotions and hence heal the split images between the “good” and the “bad” parents. The child eventually comes to accept emotionally that the “good” and the “bad” aspects of the parents are located in the same person. He or she also eventually comes to accept that there are good and bad sides to everyone, especially themselves. Nonetheless, even under the best of circumstances, Splitting lasts for a lifetime.

Klein termed the earliest stage of human development “the paranoid-schizoid position.” It was “paranoid” because the young child feared that the parent would either hurt or abandon him or her; “schizoid” because of the phenomenon of Splitting.

Most children naturally develop out of this earlier stage, but some form of Splitting stays with us our entire lives. Indeed, in times of extreme stress or threat, we shouldn’t be surprised at all to find people regressing or reverting back to the paranoid-schizoid position.

With Trump’s constant denigration of blacks, Hispanics, women, Muslims, etc., Splitting is constantly on display. In short, it’s a major component of Trump’s character and persona.

One of the worst consequences of Splitting is that those who are under its grip promote and engage in actions that actually further their dangerous views of the world. They become self-fulfilling.

They actually believe that there are “good” versus “bad guys” and that the differences between them are real and clear-cut. Further, since the bad guys are extremely dangerous, if not evil through and through, they must be controlled by any means, if not eliminated altogether. The supreme irony is that through their beliefs and actions, they are responsible for the creation of “bad guys.” But then, one’s inner fears are often projected outwards. For how can the “bad guys” be part of oneself?

In casting Trump as a premier example of Splitting, I am of course engaging in the very phenomenon as well. He is The Supreme Bad Guy!

No one is ever entirely free of Splitting. The only difference is between those who are aware of it and those who are not, but then there I go again!

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Blog, Gun Control, Politics

Standing Up To Radical Gun Fundamentalists

Originally published June 20, 2016 on the Huffington Post

We are told by Donald Trump and others that we should not shy away from calling “them” for what they truly are: “Radical Islamist Terrorists.” To refrain from using the correct term is not only akin to siding with the terrorists, but unless we recognize and call it for what it is, we cannot combat terrorism effectively. Accordingly, we should not shy away from calling another radical group by what they are: “Radical Gun Fundamentalists.”

In 2009, Dennis A. Henigan, then vice president for law and policy at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, published Lethal Logic: Exploding The Myths That Paralyze American Gun Policy. It’s a must read for everyone who desires to curb the scourge of guns in American society.

A quote from an unidentified leader of the NRA says it all: “You would get a far better understanding if you approached us as if you were approaching one of the great religions of the world.” In short, the 2nd Amendment is a fundamental article of faith that’s self-evident and undeniably “true.” So is the “fact” that the government cannot be trusted to keep us safe. Indeed, the government is to be feared. The only sane alternative is for each individual to be fully armed to protect him or herself from tyranny. There cannot and should not be any restrictions of the right to bear any and all types of arms.

There you have it: “Radical Gun Fundamentalism.”

If Orlando, Paris, San Bernardino, etc. show that we have much to fear from lone wolf terrorists acting in the name of Radical Islam, i.e., ISIS, then Orlando also shows that we have as much to fear from “Radical Gun Fundamentalists” who willingly allow those who have been on FBI terrorist watch lists to purchase legally weapons designed for war.

Standing up to Radical Gun Fundamentalists has never been more clear or important. One type of fundamentalism is as bad as the other.

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Blog, Business, Crisis Management

Facing Up to Reality: It’s a Mess!

Originally posted June 15th, 2016 on the Huffington Post

In 1979, in a highly critical speech—“The Future of Operational Research Is Past”—that he gave to the Operations Research Society of America, of which he was one of the early founders and past presidents, the late social systems’ theorist Russell L. Ackoff appropriated the word “mess” to stand for a whole system of problems that were so intertwined that one couldn’t take any problem out of the mess and study it independently of all the other problems to which it was connected. In short, to treat problems as if they were independent was not only to distort their “true nature,” and thereby to make their solution impossible, but also to make the mess as a whole unmanageable:

“…Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are abstractions extracted from messes by analysis; they are to messes as atoms are to tables and chairs. We experience messes, tables, and chairs; not problems and atoms.

“Because messes are systems of problems, the sum of the optimal solutions to each component problem taken separately is not an optimal solution to the mess. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the solutions to its parts interact than on how they act independently of each other.”

The following chain not only shows what we are up against, but it illustrates the “nature of the New Reality.” Each of the components is not only a mess in itself, but all of them are linked together. As such, they constitute A General Mess. One cannot solve anyone of them without solving all of them in concert. More accurately, one cannot cope with any of them without coping with all of them in concert.

The Sustainability Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Global Warming/Climate Change Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Renewable Energy Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Middle East Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Terrorism and Weapons of Mass Destruction Messes, which cannot be

tackled without tackling

The Fundamentalism and Corruption Messes, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Poverty Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Crime Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Racism Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Education Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Income Distribution Gap Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Unemployment Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Global Financial Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The European Union Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Aging Population Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Social Security Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Health Care Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Washington Political Mess, which cannot tackled without tackling the

The Media (failure of the fourth estate) Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Capitalism Mess, which cannot be tackled without tackling

The Sustainability Mess.

Thus, the whole cycle of messes repeats itself again and again.

Name one public figure if you can who acknowledges that all of our problems are parts of a mess.

Before one can attack a problem, it’s absolutely necessary to understand its true nature.

(I wish to credit Murat Alpaslan for first formulating the General Mess.)

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Blog, Crisis Management

The Cincinnati Zoo: Part II, Repeating the Same Pattern of Crises Over and Over Again!

Originally published June 9th, 2016 on The Huffington Post

I wish fervently that what happened recently at the Cincinnati Zoo was the rare exception. Unfortunately, in my over 30 years of experience as a crisis consultant and university researcher, it’s not.

As we know, a three-year old child somehow slipped behind a barrier and fell into a gorilla enclosure. In order to save the child from harm, the gorilla was shot. Howls of protest over whether the animal had to be killed and calls for the parents to be charged with child endangerment were immediate.

What rankled me most of all was that in defending their actions, the spokesman for the zoo said that they’ve never had such an incident in over 38 years. Somehow, we were supposed to be comforted by this statistic. This completely overlooks the fact that a crisis is the worst time to spout statistics. Despite one’s good intentions and preparations, nothing prevented the unthinkable from occurring. Indeed, it just happened so it wasn’t impossible!

Sadly, what happened fits an all-too-general pattern that pertains to virtually all crises. First of all, somehow someone—in this case a young child—slips behind, breaks through, etc. a protective barrier. The longer that the barrier’s worked, the greater the belief that it will work indefinitely and therefore that it doesn’t need to be reviewed periodically and redesigned. This is especially the case since the barrier met “accepted standards.”

Second, little if any thought and preplanning is given to the “blame game.” In virtually all major crises, stakeholders of all kinds—the author included—come out the woodwork to assess and blame all of the parties involved. Thus, the Zoo blamed the parents and the parents blamed the Zoo. Animal rights groups blamed everyone, etc.

Third, it’s painfully obvious that the spokespersons for the Zoo received little if any training in Crisis Communications. If they had, then they never would have said that “It’s never happened before in 38 years,” or “The current barriers were adequate.” They would have said something like, “Please give us the time to examine the situation more carefully before we get back to you.”

Fourth, on a regular basis, the Zoo should have been examining worst-case scenarios of all kinds. A fundamental part of worst-case scenarios is the total collapse of all of the assumptions that one has been making as to why there won’t be a crisis: “The barriers are sufficient.” “We don’t need training in Crisis Communications.” “The blame game won’t happen, etc.” Thinking the unthinkable should have been a normal part of the everyday culture.

Does this mean that the Zoo should have anticipated and therefore planned for everything perfectly? Of course not! Perfection is not the standard in Crisis Management. It should have been doing what the best crisis-prepared organizations do. It should have been constantly expanding its thinking and thus preparations for all kinds of crises.

For instance, in the few hospitals where I’ve worked as a crisis consultant, realistic-looking dolls have been placed in maternity wards. The test is to see how far someone can get out of the ward holding the fake child in his or her hands. In some cases, they’ve gotten completely out of the hospital with no one questioning and thereby stopping them. Needless to say, the test is repeated again and again until procedures are tightened up such that one can’t make it by the first nurse’s station.

All zoos ought to be doing something similar. Why weren’t dolls or dummies used to test how easily young children could slip through the barriers to animal enclosures? Why weren’t tests conducted frequently and such that they were increasingly more difficult to pass?

Constantly thinking and testing for the unthinkable is the only protection we have against calamities. What happened should not only be a wakeup call for all zoos, but for all organizations.

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Blog, Crisis Management

The Cincinnati Zoo: Part of a Dangerous Pattern

Originally published June 7th, 2016 on the Huffington Post

I wish that what happened recently at the Cincinnati Zoo was the rare exception. Unfortunately, in my over 30 years of experience as a crisis consultant and university researcher, it’s not.

As we know, a young child somehow slipped behind a barrier and fell into a gorilla enclosure. In order to save the child from harm, the gorilla was shot. Howls of protest over whether the animal had to be killed and calls for the parents to be charged with child endangerment were immediate.

What rankled me most of all was that in defending their actions, the spokesman for the zoo said that they’ve never had such an incident in over 38 years. Somehow, we were supposed to be comforted by this statistic. This completely overlooks the fact that a crisis is the worst time to spout statistics. Despite one’s good intentions and preparations, nothing prevented the unthinkable from occurring.

The sad fact (statistic!) is that most organizations merely react to major safety failures and crises. Immediately after they occur, organizations become more concerned about safety and reliability. As a result, they invest more time and money in safety, reliability, and crisis prevention and response. But vigilance is temporary. When things get back to normal, and as a result of increases in allocated resources and heightened attention, the safety and reliability of operations do improve. Organizations then begin to mistake the absence of failure for the presence of safety. They become complacent. Eventually, resources drift away from safety and reliability and towards productivity, efficiency, and profitability. The drift toward failure accelerates when there are time and cost-cutting pressures, and when organizations make tradeoffs between safety and efficiency/productivity/profitability. When the next crisis hits, the cycle begins again.

The challenge is to break the cycle and question the fundamental assumption on which it is based: That there are acceptable tradeoffs between safety, efficiency, and normal operations. There aren’t, period! But, this is easier said than done.

There is no doubt that after the Gulf oil spill, both BP, Transocean, and other companies in the deep-water drilling industry began to (or were forced to) review their safety procedures, test their equipment, renew their commitment to safety, etc. The corrupt branch of the government (Material Management Service) that was supposed to regulate the industry was also restructured. Unfortunately, the attention paid to safety wanes over time.

Consider the following: In February 2001, a colleague and I mailed a questionnaire on Crisis Management to the top executives of the 1000 largest companies (measured in revenues) in the United States. In one section of the questionnaire, the executives were given a generic list of various types of crises (fires, explosions, product tampering, environmental disasters, major lawsuits, etc.), and they were asked to indicate how many of each their organization had experienced in the last 3 years. They were also asked to indicate the capabilities of their organization in responding to or handling the various types of crises.

We intentionally included “terrorist attacks.” We listed this particular type because we wanted to see if U.S. companies were prepared for crises that are extremely infrequent if not improbable. Not surprisingly, the majority of the companies indicated that they had experienced no terrorist attacks and that they had very little capability to handle them. Then, 9/11 happened. In response, we mailed the same questionnaire to the same executives three more times: January 2002, August 2002, and August 2003.

Analyses of the data collected over more than 2 years showed strong support for the notion of the constant drift toward failure and unacceptable tradeoffs between safety and productivity. A significant number of executives who responded to the two questionnaires mailed out in 2002 reported significantly higher levels of capabilities in handling or responding to terrorist attacks. Executives who responded to the questionnaire mailed in 2003, however, reported lower levels. In fact, the average level of capabilities reported before 9/11, and the average level reported two years after 9/11 were about the same. In other words, companies reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attack, increased their preparation level for terrorist attacks, and when it didn’t occur again, their levels of preparation went down dramatically.

We also found that the best crisis prepared organizations—no more than 10-15%-were constantly expanding and testing their preparations. As a result, they were not only constantly improving their preparations for those crises that they had already considered, but they were preparing for new types of crises that they had not previously thought about. They also went about new ways of preparing for them.

For example, I’ve worked as a crisis consultant in a few hospitals. Based on my recommendations, realistic-looking dolls have been placed in maternity wards. The test is to see how far someone can get out of the ward holding the fake child in his or her hands. In some cases, they’ve gotten completely out of the hospital with no one questioning and thereby stopping them. Needless to say, the test is repeated again and again until procedures are tightened up such that one can’t make it by the first nurse’s station.

All zoos ought to be practicing something similar. Why weren’t dolls used to test how easily young children could slip through the barriers to animal enclosures? Why weren’t tests conducted frequently and such that they were increasingly more difficult to pass? Constantly thinking and testing for the unthinkable is the only protection we have against calamities.

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Blog, Politics

From One Cranky Old White Guy To Another Cranky Old White Guy: Why I’m Not Voting For You Bernie

Originally published June 6th, 2016 on Huffington Post

I admit it. I’m a cranky old white guy.

I’m used to getting my way. All the time! And when I don’t, I become visibly nasty.

I’m used to being the “smartest guy in the room.” Which of course, I always am! All rooms, any room!

I’m not voting for you Bernie principally because I don’t want another cranky old white guy pretending to be charge of things when he really isn’t and won’t be in charge of anything. You’ll just further the dysfunction.

It’s easy to make all kinds of pronouncements, many with which I happen to agree, but have no hope whatsoever of ever getting implemented, at least not in my remaining lifetime, or yours for that matter. This is especially true of someone who hasn’t accomplished much in Congress despite being there for an awfully long time. You just plain alienate too many people. We already have too much acrimony. We don’t need more.

I especially don’t like it that in your debates with Hillary, all the while she is speaking, you constantly wag your hands distractingly and even make faces when she says something that you don’t like. This really shows what a cranky old white guy that you really are.

In short, you get on my nerves!

Yes, I’m a Hillary supporter. I think she’s smart (actually smarter than Bill), extremely knowledgeable about national and international affairs, has well thought-out policy positions, was well liked as a Senator by both sides of the aisle, and performed well under very difficult conditions as Secretary of State. This is spite of the fact that the Republican hate machine has for years done everything they could to destroy her. By not taking their bait on the Benghazi hearings, she literally drove the Senate Republicans crazy. Unlike us, she can be cool under pressure.

I give you enormous credit for promoting a Progressive agenda that this country needs desperately and for pushing Hillary to the Left. But I worry that if you and your supporters don’t get behind her as soon as possible—indeed, starting right now!—you will help elect Donald Trump, one of the worst nightmares imaginable.

I know that it’s hard for cranky old white guys to listen and to take advice from one another. Maybe we could learn to do it. It’s never too late to change. But then we wouldn’t be so cranky.

It’s really hard to give up something that has served us well for so long. But has it really?

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Blog, Politics

Winning The War, But Losing the Mess: Why Everything Is More Complex Than We’ve Dared Imagine

Originally published June 3rd, 2016 on the Huffington Post

“The days of clear-cut, satisfying victories overseas, like opening up China or tearing down the Berlin wall are over. U.S. foreign policy now is all about containing disorder and messes. It is the exact opposite of running a beauty pageant. There’s no winner, and each contestant is uglier than the last.” [Emphasis mine]
Thomas Friedman

While it’s nothing more than a truism to say that the world is more complex than ever, and that it’s growing more complex every day, it’s a far different matter to pinpoint what’s different about today’s complexities, and of course, what if anything can be done about it.

One of the most pressing problems facing humankind is coping with the complex messy systems we’ve created, both intentionally and unintentionally. Not only do they impact every aspect of our lives, but in many cases, they pose major threats to our existence. Global Warming and ISIS are just two of the many pertinent examples.

If we are to have any hope of coping better, then our understanding of complex messy systems not only needs to improve dramatically, but it needs to be a top priority. In a word, understanding complex messy systems is more challenging than we ever dared to imagine.

Wicked Problems
In 1973, in a classic essay, “Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning,” Horst Rittel and Mel Webber introduced the concept of wicked problems. Rittel and Webber argued that social problems were fundamentally different from the vast majority of problems in engineering and the physical sciences. In a word, problems in the social and policy sciences, public policy in general, were the complete opposite of “tame problems.”

By “tame,” Rittlel and Webber meant that a problem was both bounded and well structured. Bounded problems were not only distinct, but limited and confined. One could “rope ‘tame problems’ off” and consider them independently of one another. Thus, in modeling bounded problems, other problems didn’t have to be considered. In addition, they were bounded in another important way. They generally involved only a few variables.

For instance, in computing the distance that a 5-pound weight falls in 2 seconds, one doesn’t need to take into account the material out of which the weight is made, or whether other weights are in the immediate vicinity, or at least one didn’t have to do so in introductory physics classes where one learned the formula Distance = ½ G T2, where G is the acceleration due to gravity (approximately 32 feet per second squared) and T is the time in seconds that a weight falls. Thus, a 5-pound weight will fall approximately 64 feet in 2 seconds.

“Well structured” meant that the problem could be encapsulated in a relatively simple physical model that could be expressed mathematically; as a result, it often had a neat mathematical solution. The Distance = ½ G T2 that a weight falls in T seconds is a prime example.

In sharp contrast, tame problems are the complete opposite from wicked problems.

Wicked problems have none of the supposedly desirable properties of tame problems. First, they are unbounded. They can’t be isolated and separated from a host of other problems to which they are connected. Thus, the problems of crime, employment, and housing are neither separate nor distinct. So-called solutions, assuming that they exist, for one problem not only affect, but are dependent on solutions to all of the others. And, they involve many variables, many of which are unknown, and worse yet, unknowable.

Wicked problems are also “wickedly ill unstructured.” No single discipline or profession has a monopoly on how a wicked problem is to be represented and thus modeled, if they even can. For another, wicked problems don’t stay solved, assuming once again that there are solutions to them in the first place. Even if it exists, a solution for one time and place is not necessarily a solution for other times and places, and certainly not for all political and social actors.

If this weren’t bad enough, the so-called solutions to wicked problems are more likely than not to give rise to other even worse problems. For instance, while necessary in many situations, aggressive policing has resulted in an epidemic of the shooting and resultant loss of lives of unarmed black teenagers. This has in turn resulted in huge, and sometimes violent, protests against police departments, and the severe loss of trust in the communities that police serve, and without which they cannot do their job

Messes
In 1979, in a highly critical speech—“The Future of Operational Research Is Past”—that he gave to the Operations Research Society of America, of which he was one of the early founders and past presidents, Russell L. Ackoff appropriated the word “mess” to stand for a whole system of problems that were so intertwined that one couldn’t take any problem out of the mess and study independently of all the other problems to which it was connected:

“…Managers are not confronted with problems that are independent of each other, but with dynamic situations that consist of complex systems of changing problems that interact with each other. I call such situations messes. Problems are abstractions extracted from messes by analysis; they are to messes as atoms are to tables and chairs. We experience messes, tables, and chairs; not problems and atoms.

“Because messes are systems of problems, the sum of the optimal solutions to each component problem taken separately is not an optimal solution to the mess. The behavior of a mess depends more on how the solutions to its parts interact than on how they act independently of each other.”

To put it succinctly, we don’t live in the nice neat world of mathematically precise, well-formulated technical problems. We live in a world of ever growing and more complicated messes. Increasingly, we live in a world of wicked messes.

The ISIS Mess is one of the most wicked messes of all. Worse still, it’s not only pathological, but it’s a cancerous mess.

The ISIS Mess

“The US war against ISIS, President Obama’s iteration of George Bush’s much-heralded and long-failed ‘global war of terror,’ presents [a…] complex set of paradoxes and contradictions: The US is fighting against ISIS alongside Iran and the Iranian-backed Baghdad government in Iraq, and fighting in Syria against ISIS alongside (sort of) the Iranian-backed and US opposed government in Damascus. And all the while, the US and its Arab Gulf allies are arming and paying a host of largely unaccountable, predominantly Sunni militias that are fighting against the Syrian government and fighting—sort of—against ISIS. Meanwhile, in Iraq, the Iranian government is arming and training a host of largely unaccountable, predominantly Shi’a militias that are fighting against ISIS and -sort of—alongside the US backed Iraqi government.
“It’s a mess.”
Phyllis Bennis

A recent article in The Atlantic Monthly, “The Hell After ISIS,” provides powerful insights into The ISIS Mess. Indeed, it cuts straight to its heart. The author, Anand Gopal, has “been meeting with Sunnis from western Iraq in order to understand how the war against ISIS looked to members of the largest group still living in ISIS’s self-declared caliphate…They have found themselves caught between the Islamic State on one side and U.S.-allied forces—the Iraqi government, its army, and Shiite militias—on the other. In this telling, the anti-ISIS forces are just as violent as the entity they are fighting.”

“Many Sunnis in Anbar resented that the U.S. intervention not only benefitted certain tribes over others, but also produced a Shia-dominated government. After the Americans withdrew in December 2011, the Islamic State of Iraq and other insurgent groups sought to deepen these divides through a campaign of violence targeting Shiite civilian progovernment [sic] tribal sheikhs. In 2012, nearly 400 car bombs went off nationwide.”

The result is that the term “wicked” hardily begins to describe The ISIS Mess. It’s more akin to a “pathological, if not a cancerous disease.” One of the basic characteristics or properties of such messes is that every action that is undertaken to improve them is virtually guaranteed to do more harm than good. Alternately, every seemingly positive part of the mess has the high potential of mutating into something dangerously harmful. As the quotes from Phyllis Bennis and Anand Gopal illustrate, enemies become friends, and friends are enemies. It’s a complete topsy-turvy world.

The situation is directly akin to cancer where the body’s bad cells attack the good ones. Thus, under the guise of helping those who are besieged by ISIS, those who are the recipients of U.S. aid become worse off. The result is that what’s a “good cell” and what’s a “bad cell” are in doubt, if they can even be clearly distinguished or separated from one another.

As a result, one of the author’s previous heuristics for coping with messes—“examine a mess for the most improbable interactions between the parts, for if they hook up, they have the potential for producing a major crisis”—takes on a whole new meaning. (One only has heuristics or rules of thumb for coping with messes because once again they are not well-structured exercises with nice, neat bounded solutions.) It now becomes: “the most unlikely parts of a mess will not only hook up, but definitively cause major crises.” Indeed, every part of mess will hook in unexpected ways to cause a myriad of crises that can only be described as “cancerous.” In this sense, the term “wicked” is too mild for such messes.

This preceding represents more than the commonly understood notion of “unintended consequences,” which of course it is. The notion of “unintended consequences” is taken to a whole new level. There is no part of a cancerous mess that is not subject to “unintended consequences.” This above all makes such messes unmanageable at the present time. That is, every action that is undertaken in the hope of making them more manageable has a high probability of making them less manageable.

As is so often the case, one is left with military interventions as the last, if not only, hope of subduing as best one can an organized group with whom one can’t engage in rational negotiations. The supreme question is who should lead such military forces. The debate is between those who believe fervently that as a world leader, the U.S. has to be in command in assembling and leading a coalition to wage war against ISIS. Others believe just as fervently that ISIS wants nothing more than to see the U.S. get bogged down in another war in the middle-east that it can’t possible win. Acrimonious ethical and moral debates are fundamental parts of wicked messes.

Here’s precisely where another interaction rears its head. Wanting to ban all Muslins from entering the U.S. as Donald Trump and others have proposed does not help the U.S. in enlisting the aid of Muslims in identifying radical elements or in building coalitions with Arab states.

Finally, there are strong indications that the U.S. coalition is winning the military war against ISIS. However, as Anand Gopal has reported, given that considerable backlash is brewing against the U.S. with regard to how it’s treated some of the Sunni tribes,

The ISIS Mess may be a classic case of winning the war, but losing the mess!
It’s a mess!

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Blog, Media + Politics, Politics

The Donald: An Incredible WWE Star

Originally published May 24th, 2016 on the Huffington Post

Everything about Donald Trump is straight out of the World Wresting Entertainment (WWE). To use his own language, he fits the bill “tremendously.”

First of all, he struts around the “ring” (uh “stage”) continually pumped up on steroids. He constantly flexes his muscles by saying how “great” and “fantastic” he is. His proclamations to make “America great again” and to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico is just part of his “manliness,” along with the “size of his you-know-what!”

Second, he whips the crowd up into a constant frenzy. They and he are and must be excited all the time. They embody the energy that is a sure sign of American greatness.

Third, his ridiculous hair, general appearance, facial contortions, the endless waving of his hands, etc. are all part of his costume and act, which of course he flouts constantly.

Fourth, there are no doubts whatsoever who the real heroes versus the villains are. The differences are clear-cut for all “good, God fearing, true Americans to see.” Under no circumstances must the villains be let in, and those who are already here by nefarious means must be thrown out of the ring by any means. The villains have nobody to blame but themselves. They must be thrown to the mat and pummeled mercilessly. No wonder he leads the chants to “throw them all out!”

Fifth, racism and sexism play are major players. Thus, whites against blacks, whites against latinos, and latinos against blacks are mainstays. But so are the divas, over sexualized women in skimpy costumes who trot around endlessly displaying their big t**s and shaking their a$$*s.

Sixth, the crowd knows that it’s all an act. None of it is “true,” because “truth doesn’t matter.” It’s completely beside the point. Performance is the main draw. Indeed, everybody is “in on the secret!”

The crowd doesn’t mind any of this because the spectacle itself is immensely comforting. Predictability is the key. Trump’s unpredictability has become predictable. He’ll say anything to get and hold attention. Most important, he says the very things that others have been punished their whole lives for even thinking, let alone actually saying. PC is for Wimps and Pussies!!
He’s the biggest, baddest, meanest dude around. He can’t be bought and thereby forced to shut up. His powers are unlimited.

It’s tailor made for those who have been made powerless and useless by a world that doesn’t need or want them anymore.

It’s a match made in heaven!

What happens though if Trump actually gets elected President but cannot possibly deliver on his and the crowd’s shared fantasies? What happens when people finally see he’s a clown and not a “real phony WWE star?” What do they do after the show is closed down for failing to deliver? Who and what’s the follow-up act? Will real violence then erupt?

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