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Being a Preppie isn’t getting it done                                                                                    

Posted at: Apr/20/2015 : Posted by: mel

Related Category: People, Perspectives, Politics & Gov,

Americans love their brands. When buying cars, the established brands always dominate in sales over new entrants regardless of the price differential. In the grocery store, the name brand ketchup will out sell the less expensive store brand with great consistency. In a similar manner Americans consider Harvard, Yale and Princeton as the go to place to find our “best and brightest.” Yet our shining stars from these prestigious institutions seem to be regularly out-maneuvered by charismatic individuals like Stalin, Hitler, Putin and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliph).

Of course, this elite circle of insiders can’t accept so abhorrent a prospect as their own fallibility. So when new blood does enter — through those same “elite” institutions — it’s directed into the same old calcium-clogged arteries. Generals and political advisors with Ivy League Ph.D.s writing military doctrine that adheres cringingly to outdated, politically correct truisms dominate Western leadership. Much of this dated doctrine leaves out the very factors, such as the power of religion or ethnic hatred, that has proved decisive or a critical constraint, whether in the Balkan’s or the Middle East. Even a media political commentator such as Bill O’Reiley or Gretchen Carlson who usually have astute insights on Eastern European affairs dismissed Vladimir Putin as a mere chinovnik, a petty bureaucrat, since Putin was only a lieutenant colonel in the KGB when the Soviet Union collapsed and didn’t go to a Swiss prep school like the US Secretary of State.

These same analysts failed to learn from history. Hitler had been a mere lance corporal, but leveraged the power of nationalism to rise quickly to power. Stalin was a failed seminarian. Lenin was a destitute syphilitic. Ho Chi Minh washed dishes in the basement of a Paris Hotel. And when the French Revolution erupted, Napoleon was a junior artillery officer.

Elite German families of historical power assumed they could use Hitler and then dismiss him, while other Europeans mocked him. Chamberlain felt he could appease him and he would fade to a historical footnote. Stalin’s fellow Bolsheviks underestimated him, until it was too late and their fates were sealed. The French didn’t notice Ho Chi Minh. Napoleon shocked even his own lethargic family, yet conquered most of Europe. The “man on horseback” is often the man from nowhere, and the members of the club ignore the torches in the streets until the private club with the dark paneled walls burns down around them.

Put another way: We are led by men and women educated to believe in the irresistible authority of their own words. When they encounter others who use words solely to deflect and defraud, or worse, when their opposite numbers ignore words completely and revel in ferocious violence, our best and brightest go into an intellectual stall and keep repeating the same empty phrases (in increasingly tortured tones):
“Violence never solves anything.” “There’s no military solution.” “War is never the answer.” “Only a negotiated solution can resolve this crisis.” “It isn’t about religion.”

The reasons for this seem pretty clear. Most western countries are led by individuals suffering from three maladies. Social insularity is the first. Our leaders know fellow insiders around the world, but our enemies know everyone else. The mandarin’s distaste for physicality: In other words, with few exceptions we are led through blood-smeared times and conflicts by those who’ve never suffered a bloody nose or participated in the risks and struggles of war and battle. And last but not least, marginal education from what is viewed as our very best schools. Our leadership and their circle of advisors and strategists have been educated in chaste political theory, while our enemies know firsthand, the struggles and challenges of life.

That educational and resulting social insularity is corrosive and potentially catastrophic. Our “best” universities clearly prepare students to sustain the current system, instilling the belief that everyone does or should think about challenges and reforms in the same way they do. Beyond managing vague petty reforms, this mindset clearly does not work on the world stage. Dramatic, revolutionary change in geopolitics virtually never comes from insiders. It’s the outsiders who change the world. In the 21st century, our government suffers from the sclerosis of dated and naïve insider thinking that constantly reinforces itself and rejects conflicting evidence. The result is that Western leadership is consistently reacting to situations that were considered inconceivable from the perspective of their college debates.

The result is that we are being whipped by those who some would call savages or incapable.

One of the latest and potentially lamest notions to be proselytized: “We need to have strategic patience,” and “Terrorists need jobs.” The last decade has shown that these statements are demonstrably nonsense more times than not. But recurring thinking by Western leaders along this vein persists. The end result, such as in Syria is a very expensive education resulting in a bumbling, and almost naïve behavior that kicks in whenever the core foundations of the established regime are questioned. Ultimately, the United States and other countries are burdened by leaders who seem more focused on defending platitudes than the realities of the actual threats facing their countries.

Despite this recurring trend, Western countries repeatedly elect their Prime Ministers and Presidents from prestigious prep-schools and elite Ivy League Institutions. Not surprisingly, these same elected officials then surround themselves with advisors and confidants who have a similar background and education. There is a naïve and insular arrogance playing out here based upon privilege. For revolving-door leaders in the U.S. and Europe, if you didn’t go to the right prep school and elite university, you couldn’t possibly be capable of comprehending, let alone changing the world. It’s the old social “Not our kind, dahhhling…” attitude transferred to government.

Once-great universities have turned into political indoctrination centers worthy of the high Stalinist Era or the age of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. Their aims may be more benign, but their unwillingness to consider alternative worldviews is every bit as rigid. Students in the social sciences at Harvard, Yale, Cambridge and Oxford today are the cadets being groomed to serve a soft-Socialist form of government. These graduates are brilliantly prepared to debate each other, but not to deal with the realities that come from the mean streets of the rest of the world. It is not unrealistic to refer to this cycle as a “self-licking ice-cream cone.”

This is not an argument against a college education. Rather, it is an argument for enhancing or revamping higher education. Many of our college professors move directly from undergraduate, to graduate student, to teaching professor without ever leaving the protected confines of the university and their manicured lawns. Often, the success of their PHD application and thesis approval is dependent on reiterating the teachings and ideals of currently seated professors and department chairs. Unfortunately, this process of pleasing the professor in an isolated culture stymies alternative views and raw creativity. Much like a Buddhist temple, there is a significant disconnect from the world inside, and the world outside the institutions walls.

The modern renegades know no cultural isolation and often play their game to a set of rules and strategies not documented in any text book.

Putin, that “petty bureaucrat,” has won every significant confrontation with the West, conquering foreign territory and humiliating presidents. Iran’s negotiators have outmaneuvered their Western negotiators so spectacularly that they really don’t need Obama’s deal, having gotten most of what they needed: time and partial sanctions relief. And the Islamic State has confounded not only our elite’s prejudices about how the world should work, but demolished their platitudes and repeated nonsense that “All men want peace.” In fact, some men delight in inflicting grotesque forms of violence on others.

We face a new age of barbarism. And we’re led by those whose notion of violence is a badminton game at Princeton, who won’t let their children play unattended but deny the murderous impulses haunting humanity. Perhaps it’s time to recognize that the lack of a prep-school background and a Brooks Brothers charge account doesn’t mean that a thug with slovenly manners can’t change the world.

There is much to be done here and the challenges are as daunting internally as they are externally. Internally the elitist mindset of our ivy covered universities needs to expand to the arena of the unconventional and irrational thinking. Contemporary ideas that are around long enough to find their way into the pages of a college text are likely already out of date. Attempts at creativity and irrational thinking need to be part of the educational challenge. When seeking political leadership, new brands and new ways of thinking matter.

History old and new is dominated by personalities who chose to lead with unconventional thinking and radical or innovative strategies. These are the same notions that helped America rapidly rise to be an industrial and political center of power and success. These same notions of new thinking and innovative leadership now seem lost to our contemporary politicians.

Doing thing the way the book says is no longer good enough. Recent events have shown that our enemies have already read our books and moved beyond. It is time for us to learn from our adversaries.

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