Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

Life would be pretty dull if we all stood on common ground. And neither would we learn much from one another. One of my regular readers just departed because he felt we didn’t share enough common ground. That disturbs me a bit simply because we had a few good conversations, and I can only imagine that my admitting I have already decided to vote for Bush was the final straw.

I’m not putting any of these electrons to phosphor out there in an attempt to tell anyone how to vote. If you don’t like Bush, don’t vote for him. I can’t understand people hating him, nor do I really see why they would think he was a bad President or that “he lied” unless they only hear one side of everything. For that reason, I don’t simply read sites I agree with. Apparently, not everyone can do that.

There are some out there who feel that anyone with religious beliefs is unfit for public office. Yet those same religious beliefs, if sincere, keep someone from crossing the line into immoral or unethical conduct. I like that.

I also enjoy learning from others’ perspectives. I don’t enjoy debate. Debate is a competition without any desire to learn. It is simply a presentation of opinion in hopes of doing a better job of presenting your ideas than your opponent. Discussion is interaction. Bogey and I do this. We both get frustrated with the other on occasion, but there is no animosity, no winner and loser. I try to share my (too) many years of experience, and he tries to share his youthful perspective.

What I write here is an attempt to view things from a slightly different angle. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. That comes from my background. As a young helicopter mechanic, I had the good luck to be entrusted to an experienced man with a good sense of teaching. Being an aircraft mechanic means following strict procedures as laid out in a tech manual. No deviation allowed. Safety. But there are many things where imagination can solve a problem. Those of you who deal intimately with machinery, whether it be a race car or a tuned mountain bike, understand. The machine actually tells you what is wrong if you are aware enough to hear it. My trainer gave me enough loose leash to make mistakes where possible. Even if he knew what I was doing was wrong, he let me make that mistake. When it was obvious I’d been wrong, he’d simply say, “F**ked up, didn’t ya?” I learned. And I became the best troubleshooter in the unit.

Even so, when I began working with some Special Forces folks, I saw that my “thinking outside the box” didn’t expand the world as much as it could. I learned. We flew in support of SF and SEALS, and did what was necessary to get the job done. After a mission, we would review what we had done right and wrong, and where we have violated some flying regulation. If the reg was wrong, we initiated a change. We didn’t simply keep violating it. But thinking on the fly and reacting agressively to a situation was essential.

Another area where the military mentality is different from that of civilians is blame. This is the thing I had the most trouble dealing with in my transition to civilian life. I would point out a problem, and everyone got defensive. “Is he blaming me?” In the military, if someone is to blame, they are dealt with quickly, and everyone moves on to solve the problem. The first step in solving a problem is to adequately identify it. In my experience, civilians don’t do this very well. They spend more time looking for someone to blame than they do in defining the problem. That is amplified in the political process. Damn. Just fix the problem.

As I grew in my career, I tried to provide the same atmosphere for my subordinates. Some found it difficult to operate that way. I insisted that all decisions be made at the lowest level–don’t bring me a problem unless you just can’t solve it. I did the same at USAFA. On the first day I would have a student walk across the desks with his eyes closed. Invariably, they felt their way tentatively along. My rationale, as I explained to them, was that if you know a boundary exists, you tend to stay away from it. Nobody wants to fall. I didn’t want them to know where the boundaries were in my classroom, but I would tell them when they crossed one. I wanted them to grow, and not confine themselves by something artificial. Of course, someone would then prop his feet up on the desk, and I simply said, “That’s not allowed.” They understood, and we had some really great discussions throughout the year.

Really, that’s what I hope to accomplish here. Open minds and different approaches to a situation without fear of embarrassment. I embarrass myself often enough. I try not to sound like a shill for the Republicans, because I’m not. I sometimes get forced into that corner by my own ineptitude, but that’s not where I am. I also regret people’s desire to present the latest gossip as fact. I don’t like lists of facts or pseudo-facts, but prefer a novel analysis of things. That’s where SDB and Wretchard excel. They take you into a problem from a perspective you may never have considered.

You will probably disagree with me somewhere along the line. I hope so. But don’t expect to debate with me. I don’t debate. I’ll be happy to discuss a different perspective. But if you want debate, I give up. You win.