Control control you must learn control

I just, hmm, well.

So let's talk about the president a bit, he has decided to spend his weekend attacking the media in general and a couple people specifically using both his private Twitter and the official White House one. It should go without saying that this is insanity, and it is quite unprecedented in modern American politics, sometimes I feel he would fit right in in the early twentieth century when you could still kind of get away with punching a reporter if you were a politician. I mean certainly as one of the eras that was the poster child for abusive corporations he would fit in. I am getting sidetracked.

His loyal followers, and by that I don't mean the politicians who are standing by him, I mean his idiot voters, don't seem to actually care of course. They say things like "He says what he feels", "He is genuine", and "He tells it like it is". As if that was something good to be proud of.

I am going to tell you a secret of communication: More often than not being "genuine" is the absolute wrong thing to do. I'll back up a bit, "genuine" in this case could be more accurately translated as "unfiltered", and let's be honest here, very few of us would survive long sharing our unfiltered thoughts with everyone we see. For example I would be insulting literally every customer I see during the day before they even get a chance to say anything, judging them based on anything from their appearance to the way they opened the door. I would then be quite rightly fired.

Take a real look at yourself, you probably think you are open minded and friendly, you also probably think you are an introvert and therefore special, you are wrong about both those things but today we will address the first one. Okay that isn't true, you probably are open minded, but don't even try to tell me that being... inappropriate doesn't cross your mind more often than it should, particularly when first meeting people you hold internal stereotypes about, don't lie, we all have them, we don't act on them though(usually) because of the filters we learn to use before spewing all the crap our brain generates constantly.

Social interaction is a mess of lies, omissions, and deceit, and that is when it is working properly, and that is also just at the level of "two people on the street" now imagine you are the president of the United States of America. Now the consequences of your unfiltered conversation are somewhat more meaningful than for us peasants, now if you offend someone it can have a direct impact on the lives and livelihoods of millions. The president above all other people cannot afford to be "genuine". His public communications must be thoroughly edited and vetted before they go out, he is the face and voice of the most powerful nation in the world.

Let's talk about Barack Obama, say what you will about his foreign policy and adventurism in warzones, the dude came off as very genuine and likeable when interacting with folks, this wasn't an accident, his job wasn't to be Barack Obama, dude you could have a beer with, his job was to be the President, and that meant he had to be everything to everyone he encountered, sometimes that did mean he was the dude you could have a beer with, other times he had to be a hardass politician, behind closed doors I am sure he could be the most terrifying man in the world, in black churches or neighborhoods he was black, in white areas he was white. He made everyone he interacted with believe he was either their people, or at least cared about them.

There is a story from the Sandy Hook shooting where he went and sat down and talked with the family of every single victim of that tragedy one at a time, one after the other, he said the right things, let people speak, gave hugs, and did his best to make them believe things might be, someday, okay. He didn't want to do this, I am sure that after a few of those conversations he wanted nothing more than to get a beer and go to sleep, but that wasn't what he needed to be at that time. It wasn't what the country needed to be, so he couldn't be that.

George W Bush had a number of similar situations during his presidency, and while I hate him and everything he stands for, he too managed to, in public, be the person that most of the country wanted him to be during those crises, you could argue that he and his cronies manipulated that desire and you wouldn't be wrong, but he still was able to do it.

The point is, the president must be a chameleon of sorts, he must convince everyone that they are important and worthy,  he can't be unfiltered, he can't tell everyone what he really thinks of them, he can't be "genuine" because he doesn't just represent the people who voted for him, he represents the entire population bar none.

This touches back to points I have made before, everything the president does is worthy of scrutiny and criticism, from the way he talk to the way he Tweets to the way he dresses, it is all important, there is an image to maintain that the rest of the country expects to see, and mostly we don't expect or want to see someone misspelling his communication and insulting media figures, it doesn't inspire confidence at home or abroad because it doesn't show that he is a man able to control himself, and control is probably the most important quality a president needs.