This is why I don’t like voting for people younger than me for higher office and haven’t for quite some time and I’m only 50. Arrogant senses of entitlement and youthful zealotry do not a good candidate make.
Nice to see the McCain camp grow a set. If they don’t think the MSM (his former “base” as one of his aids put it in 2000)aren’t going to go to any length to destroy him, then they’re a bunch of fools and aren’t even worthy of a part time gig at the DMV.
Do I ever agree with you! About the same age here…
Conflict resolution techniques may work well enough in interpersonal relationships within a safe, protected Western society where good faith is expected and the golden rule is generally applied…conciliatory gestures may work in this context, as individuals negotiate more or less freely.
The boomer-left has long simplistically asserted that the same golden-rulism can be applied successfully to geo-strategic relationships between nation states, as if policy were not made by thousands of individuals on each side who have free will. “All you need is love -- dat de de de dah”. Down the blind alley charging we go!
In the real world, policy is worked out within and among separate coalitions (often tribal) that typically cannot trust each other as they vie for power over that nation’s foreign policy stance.
Solipsism in the form of “everyone thinks like we do” blinds the boomer-leftist mindset to an inconvenient truth –not everyone thinks the same. The willingness to negotiate in and of itself is perceived by some as contemptible weakness. Look how Carter screwed it up after leftists in Iran siezed the hostages!
Naive Carter wrote a letter to Khomenei apologizing for our past misdeeds and asking for forgiveness, probably thinking that would allow Khomenei to also concede without losing face. It backfired badly. Not everyone thinks the same.
It really is a matter of maturity of judgment. Obama is a malignant leftwinger, which automatically screws his judgment, but even so he doesn't have the sense to wash his hands after wiping his a&&.