Strong-arming and its consequences

You know what's really interesting?

My original reaction to being strong-armed by administrators when I was so completely in good faith on everything they've tried to strong-arm me around was to have my feelings hurt. I was in good faith, there was no reason to strong-arm me, and they strong-armed me anyway because of this foolish, popular notion that change can or must be forced (which it can't, of course; some people just have to learn that lesson the hard way, I'm learning).

But now, I'm getting over my hurt feelings. And at this point I'm just losing respect for people who continue to argue that line because they so often do so at the expense of other options, they've gotten so obsessed with it. My administrators do seem to be completely losing track of what strong teaching and leadership looks like in their obsession with looking tough. And folks like Carl Levin, arguing for the most mindless and arrogant option for handling the Iraq war being passed around these days -- to pressure the Iraqis to take care of the mess we created -- just looks like a fool to me, these days. I used to respect Carl more. Now I just think, "What would lead someone to so mindlessly pursue one option that has such a terrible track record and ignore all others?" The answer: because Democrats are convinced that this is what brought them to power. The truth is that Americans voted against Republicans, not for Democrats. And they can vote against Democrats, similarly, if and when Democrats fail to resolve the situation in Iraq because they decided to get stuck on an option that is not likely to yield results.

Some people are kind of hard-headed, I'm learning. But plenty of failure will either lead to them changing their mind, or people changing their leadership.

Either way, once this obsession fails and pitters out, we will have to move on.

Because we can't just keep failing forever.

Love,
Ben