Day: October 7, 2024

In a conflict with significant bad actors on both sides, there are no good options for bystanders

In a conflict with significant bad actors on both sides, there are no good options for bystanders.In such a conflict, you have three options:

  1. you can take a side
  2. you can try to rise above the conflict
  3. you can do nothing

If you take a side, you will be associated with the bad actors on that side. If you try to say “I take this side but I don’t associate with the bad actors on this side”, you will come across as a hypocrite, or naive, or ignorant. And when the bad actors on your side do something wrong, which they will, you will be associated with that wrong too.

You might say, I don’t care. Or the other side is still worse. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t make this option a good one. It’s just an option you are willing to take.

If you try and rise above the conflict, then you will be criticized by both sides for ignoring the bad actors on the other side. In addition, you will be seen as ineffective and weak and irrelevant. Again, it’s an option, it’s just not a good one.

Doing nothing is the flipside of trying to rise above the conflict. You won’t be stuck with having to side with bad actors, but you will be criticized for being indifferent and uncaring, cold and thoughtless.

In life there are often situations where there is no good options to choose from. A conflict with significant bad actors on both sides is one of those situations.

On Jimmy Carter, the 39th president and responder in chief of the USA

Last week former US President Jimmy Carter celebrated his 100th birthday. This piece sums up how many think of Carter as president:

In the popular imagination, his presidency was viewed as a fiasco. Besieged by inflation and a hostage crisis in Iran, it ended with a landslide loss to Mr. Reagan after just four years.  … But Mr. Carter’s presidency was more consequential than is commonly remembered, said Stuart E. Eizenstat, his chief domestic policy adviser in the White House. Eizenstat’s 2018 book argued that Mr. Carter notched significant but overlooked wins, including on energy, the environment and foreign policy.

All that’s true, but it leaves out an important detail. Whatever Jimmy Carter was, he was Not Nixon. Indeed he came across as the anti-Nixon. President Ford was Not Nixon either, but he was still attached to his disgraced predecessor. Carter allowed Americans to turn the page on Nixon in a way Ford never could.

The Vietnam War, the Pentagon Papers and then Watergate were a lot for Americans to handle. Carter gave Americans an opportunity to move on from all that and restore the presidency by being everything Nixon was not.

Sometimes presidents come along and act like first responders to a crisis. FDR did that. So did Obama and Biden. In between them was Carter. He restored the country in a way he doesn’t get credit for. Here’s hoping that becomes a bigger part of his legacy.

For more on the aftermath of Watergate, see here and here.