LEADERSHIP VS. MANIPULATION, TEAMS VS. GANGS

We have become so jaded and cynical in the last 50 years that certain critical distinctions are very commonly dismissed or ignored, altogether.   I’d like to address two of the many.  One is the difference between leadership and manipulation, and the other is the difference between a team and a gang.

LEADERSHIP vs. MANIPULATION

This is not about skills or methods.  It’s a comparison of leadership to manipulation.

I don’t know how many times I’ve heard coworkers say leadership is a myth – a con game to sucker people into doing what’s good for the company.  I’ve sat with these people in some pretty decent workshops on leadership and team building and seen them tune the speaker out, pretend to read the written material, and blow the whole thing off as a bad joke.  This is partly because there are many more really sorry workshops on these subjects, and people have just had it up to there with over-intellectualized baloney.  I get that.

In reality, though, there is a huge difference between leadership and manipulation.  Some of the mechanisms are the same, and when a person studies leadership, there is a moment when they realize they have an incredibly powerful tool – one that can be used for good or evil with equal ease, like a gun or a claw hammer.

Quite simply, leadership is getting them to do, for their own benefit, things they would not otherwise do.  Manipulation is getting people to do, for your benefit, things they would not otherwise do.

The problem is that the question of who is benefitting has been made unnecessarily confusing.  An awful lot of people have been taught an exclusive model of benefit.  That is, they can’t grasp that something could be of benefit to them and to another person, especially if that person is their employer.  The exclusive model of benefit (and that’s a term I just made up.  I don’t know if there’s another, better term.)  is the result of generations of statist influence in schools, especially colleges.  The Left has done a great job of brainwashing the American people into thinking anything that benefits a business owner will automatically screw them.  It’s the “pie” model vs. the “farm” model.   A farm can produce more and more if it is worked right, but there’s only so much pie, and a piece you get is a piece I can’t get.

Let me pose a few questions. Is it to your benefit if your employer is successful?  How about if his profits increase?  How about if they decrease?  There are no guarantees in life, but will you have a better chance of getting a raise if the company is making more money?   Will you have a better chance of getting a raise if you are contributing more to the company.  Actually, there is one guarantee: if your boss goes broke, you definitely don’t get a raise!

The objective of any business is to make money.  Professors and management consultants will tell you different, but they lie.  Of course there may be any number of secondary objectives that contribute to it, but the greatest objective of any business is to make money.

TEAMS vs. GANGS

Let’s leave that lay right there for a minute and talk about objectives.  There is a specific term for an organization that has several members, each of whom plays a specific role in achieving the organization’s objectives.  That term is “a team.”   Let’s say the objective is to win football games.  Each of the 11 men on the field has a specific role to play.  Each must perform his assigned task, and stay within the rules of the game.  Because the objective is known, and each member autonomous, a leader can bring them together, motivate them, and help them channel their effort so the team wins games.  Winning is good for the individuals and for the organization.  In the case of football, that means the school or the franchise owner.

That’s a critical point:  leadership requires an objective toward which the group can strive.  Sometimes, a leader can help the group set an objective, but leadership and objective go together.  If there is no objective – that is, if there is no real point for the group’s existence, how can anyone lead them?  To where would you lead them?  To what purpose?

As silly as it sounds, there are a great many organizations that don’t have an objective.  They have processes, or rules, but no objective.  Their sole reason for existence is to follow those processes.  Nobody knows where they are going, and nobody cares.  The only thing they care about is following those processes.  

Imagine a football team with no field and no goal line.  What would they do?  How could they play?  There is actually a very good, real world example of a group that exists to follow processes with no regard to where they might end up.  Such a group is called “a gang.”

The gang requires members to wear certain garments, make certain hand signs, drive certain cars, have certain types of nicknames, scribble graffiti in specific fonts and colors, associate only with certain people, and a jillion other things. 

Notice that none of these things have an objective beyond themselves.  As long as you wear the right colors, you’re cool.  Break the process, and you have a problem.  The only one who could possibly benefit beyond that is the boss; he (or she) gets the glory, the fame, the adulation, and usually first pick of the loot.

Hence, the boss of a gang is not a leader, but a manipulator.

A fixation on process to the exclusion of objective is one of the defining traits of a gang.  It makes leadership not only superfluous, but impossible.

EDIT – Following is the last paragraph of the original version of this blog as I wrote it on 27 Jan., 2014.  Today, there are signs that the GOP may have reformed, but I’m not holding my breath.  The Democrat party is most emphatically a gang, vying for the best seats on the Titanic. The only question about the Democrats is whether they are too stupid to know where they are taking us, or so evil they are actively looking for an iceberg.

The current version of the Republican Party is a gang.  They are fixed on following processes – wearing the right mantle, using the right phrases, sucking up to the right people – to the utter exclusion of any kind of objective.  They don’t care what happens to the country as long as they have good seats in the bus that is going over the cliff.  They are obsessed with straightening the deck chairs on the Titanic.  There may be real leaders in the party, but until the party finds an objective to pursue, we’ll never know.  And I can’t tell that they are even looking.

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

ELMIRA: MONUMENT TO THE SAVAGERY OF YANKEEDOM

Well, some ignorant sod started yapping about Anersonville, so here you go:

It has been proven and accepted conclusively that prisoners at Andersonville were given the same rations as Confederate soliders in the field. The starvation was caused by the depredations of a bunch of Irish immigrant street thugs who had been captured together. They beat the other prisoners and stole their food. The commandant of Anersonville, Henry Wirtz, wasn’ t given enough staff to keep order.

Wirtz actually allowed prisoners to go out and work for farmers in the area to supplement their rations. Jefferson Davis made three attempts to get Lincoln to resuce the men from Andersonvile. First, he begged Lincoln to exchange them. Lincoln refused to even accept Davis letter because to have done so would be tantamount to recognizing Davis as a head of state.

Next, Davis told Lincoln about conditions in the camp and promised free passage to any doctors who could come down and treat the prisoners.
Davis promised that any medicine or food the doctors brought would be issued ONLY to Federal prisoners. Lincoln refused to see the messenger.

Then Davis appealed through the French and begged Lincoln to just come and get the prisoners – no exchange or any such bargain. Just come and get them. Lincoln refused to speak the emmissary.

So yes, Andersonville was an ungodly horror, and the suffering and death rest squarely on the shoulders of Abraham Lincoln. Here’s one you’ll never read in any Yankee histories: Elmira, NY, was in operation almost exactly same length of time as Andersonville – about 6 months. Almost exactly same number of men died there as died in Andersonville. The US quartermaster sent to Elmira a train load of blankets and unniforms that had been rejected for issue to US troops, but would have been an immense boon to the boys freezing at Elmira. The commandant of the camp ordered them burned.

A group of Christian citizens near Elmira were deeply moved by the horrid state of the prisoners. They sent wagon loads of food and blankets to the camp. The commandant ordered the starving men to unload the wagons, then forced them, at gunpoint, to watch as his guards burned the food. The surgeon at Elmira publically bragged that he had killed more Rebels than any general.

After the war, Wirtz was tried – in English, which the Swiss-born Wirtz scarcely spoke – without being allowed an attorney, and was hanged.

The commandant of Elmira was given a commendation and a promotion.

Do you know how we know the names and home states of the men who died at Elmira? An escaped slave was so grief-stricken the literal murder of those boys that he kept a written record of every death and burial. I have walked the rows of the Confederate cemetery in Elmira, and I can assure you no dog-robbing carpetbagger or damnyankee sonofabitch can survive an argument with me about Andersonvoille.

DEO VINDIC!

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque

REBUTTAL TO NMHR-50 – MAGAZINE BAN

This is a letter to my state representative, Ms. Joy Garratt (D)

Believe it or not, this is pretty short and sweet for me.  One more thing:  I would LOVE to escort you to the firing range and demonstrate to you and any of your colleagues, a direct dose of the reality of human conflict.

On the subject of the magazine ban.  I have a significant volume of personal writing on this subject, and because I’ve been involved in this discussion for 60+ years, it’s tough for me to keep it short.  I’ll do my best.

POINT 1 – I believe the only reason to ban anything is if the item were essential to misbehavior, that is, if big magazines were the only thing making crimes possible.   Obviously, this is not the case.  Very little of the state’s violent crime involves large expenditures of ammunition, hence, limiting the capacity of magazines would be entirely irrelevant, and would have zero effect on revolver shooters.

POINT 2 – With even a little bit of practice, a person so inclined can replace an empty magazine with a loaded one in a matter of 1-2 seconds.  This renders the ban utterly ineffective as related to crime.

POINT 3 – With hundreds of millions of these magazines in circulation, a ban on new ones wouldn’t amount to a spit in the ocean, and any attempt at confiscation would cost a lot of blood.  (Not all of the “Cold dead hands” crowd are all talk.  I do NOT mean this as a threat, but simply as a statement of fact: some people would resist confiscation with deadly force.)

POINT 4 – Statistically, we are seeing more crimes committed by multiple criminals.  The multiplicity of gangs makes this inevitable.  Inescapably, the odds are increasing that a citizen might be attacked by a group, meaning more rounds instantly available would be priceless as related to personal defense.  (Unlike as related to crime, viz POINT 2, above.)

POINT 5a – The average citizen spends less than 1 hour per year in focused, coached practice with a defensive firearm.  I have been shooting combat handguns since I was 18  (I’m 74) and can consistently put 5 rounds in a 5” circle at 5 yards in 5 seconds – ON  THE FIRING RANGE!  Statistically, almost no one is even 1/3 as good in a fight as in practice.  Hence, the average citizen, not having devoted years to training, would be hard pressed to get one of 8 rounds into the torso of an attacker

POINT 5b – More home-invaders, car-jackers, and even street thugs are wearing some form of body armor.  Actual soft armor is readily available, but even the protective gear worn by motorcycle racers can be effective against the light, low-powered arms many civilians prefer.

POINT 5c – I’m not sure of the number, but I know a huge amount of NM”s violence is drug-related, either among warring dealers, gangs, or users cranked out of the minds.   The impact of drugs in the magazine issue is this:  a person on PCP, crack, meth, etc., might not even know he’d been shot, necessitating shooting him again, often as many as 8 or 9 times.  Viz POINT 5a, an effective defense would require 8-10 rounds PER ATTACKER, and that’s assuming a 100% hit rate, which ain’t bloody likely!

POINT 5 summary – The idea that 9 rounds in a defensive pistol is adequate in New Mexico in 2023 is absurd to the point of being insane.  But to continue….

POINT 5d – I mentioned before how quickly a practiced gun handler could change magazines, but there are two significant caveats to that.  First, the shooter must be “practiced,” which few are.  Second, the shooter MUST HAVE BOTH HANDS AVAIILABLE!    If a person has an injured or missing hand, the reload must be done one-handed.  If the non-shooting hand is controlling a panic-stricken child, the jostling and distraction make the task immeasurably more difficult.  Add to that the possibility that the defender had time to grab his pistol or his glasses or a spare magazine, but only one of the three.  Throw in a stoned attacker who may be shooting back, but is, at the least, screaming to the attack with a knife, and the odds shift dramatically against the defender who, unlike his attacker, WAS OBEYING THE BLANKETY-BLANK LAW!

POINT 6 – Like any gun control measure, this obscenity actually makes a single point:  If a citizen is attacked by more people than he can shoot without reloading, or under circumstances that prevent a “tactical” reload, the State considers that citizen’s life forfeit, and his right to defend himself, his home, and his family totally and irrevocably nullified.  It is absolutely and almost literally a matter of, “The state recognizes your right to defend yourself, except in these circumstances, in which the state will uphold the rights of your attacker, and screw you.”

Some  alternatives:

          1 – get after the drug trade with a vengeance

          2 – get after gangs with a vengeance

          3 – close the border to drugs, gangs, slavers, and gun runners.

          4 – get rid of that unutterably obscene pre-trial release statue

6 – quit harassing and demonizing the only people in the world who can stop a crime before it can be consummated –  the

law-abiding, decent, armed citizens of our state.

5 – put a fraction of the money control schemes into meaningful mental health programs, including addiction recovery

I really tried to keep this short.  Thank you for the opportunity to communicate.  As I mentioned earlier, I’ve pretty much given up on even trying to put my ideas forward.

Regards,

Wess Rodgers – rebsarge.wordpress.com – Albuquerque