Thursday, November 24, 2016
Nonsensical saying
ZH features a dispute, or fake dispute, about Trump's intentions to appoint Vulture Romney as SecState.
Some of the unskeptical Trump fans are praising this move, quoting the tired old "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer."
Nonsense. When your enemies are close they can shiv you, or pull internal strings to ruin your plans.
If you are important enough to have serious enemies, the only correct rule is "Keep your friends close and your enemies in the graveyard."
Clintons have been following this rule for 40 years and it has worked well. Successful leaders always keep their enemies under tight control if not dead.
HIGHLY RELEVANT example: Obama made the mistake of keeping Hillary close, appointing her as SecState. (Sounds familiar.) Hillary ruined Obama's intentions of slowing down Permawar. She continued Bush's wars and added four new wars. Finally in 2012, perhaps using Hillary's stroke as a justification, Obama was able to get rid of Hillary and appoint the more compliant Kerry. After that, decreased tension with Persia and Cuba, and no new wars.
A more sophisticated solution: Identify possible enemies. Make them useful and secure, not cornered and desperate. FDR was the ultimate expert in this approach. He saw revolutionaries growing strong on Left and Right, so he solved the problems that the revolutionaries were pointing out. (This process is also called Sanity or Responding To Negative Feedback or Life.)
¶ 9:44 AM 
