Richard Galant
‘‘Troy fell … the walls of Hadrian succumbed … the Great Wall of China was futile; and … the mighty seas which are alleged to defend us can also be circumvented by a resolute and ingenious opponent,” wrote US Army General George S. Patton. “In war, the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.”
“Warlike soul” is an apt description of Patton himself. A vain and ambitious cigar-smoking bully who wore riding breeches, a polished helmet and boots and carried ivory-handled revolvers, he led troops on successful lightning strikes through German-held territory near the end of World War II. Patton’s military feats could be chalked up to daring, a grasp of strategy and an ability to inspire the troops. He believed in setting an example by being a presence on the front line. Patton’s approach to warfighting was “often ridiculed by his seniors” but under Patton’s command, according to Stephen D. Sklenka, a Marine Corps major, “the Third Army delivered ten times as many enemy casualties as was inflicted upon themselves.” But there was a dark side to Patton’s forceful approach, one that kept him from rising to the very top ranks of the military. It was made manifest by his racist and antisemitic remarks and when he slapped two soldiers he unfairly accused of faking illness in 1943. In the midst of the war, the army tried to keep the assaults secret but word eventually leaked.
Patton’s example comes to mind as the world focused last week on war and peace, along with challenges to the way we live, work and vote. The performance of leaders, from Washington to New Mexico to Detroit to the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia’s far east, matters more than ever and raises a host of questions: When is “warlike” ferocity effective in the pursuit of valid goals and when does it cross over into becoming harmful or even toxic? Should a leader ever put his own views aside to bow to the dictates of his followers? And when does injustice make it essential to obey your conscience above all else? In the business world, Elon Musk’s achievements have been epic, particularly in spaceflight and the manufacture and marketing of electric cars, but they’ve often been eclipsed by erratic and impulsive episodes, according to Nicole Hemmer’s review of the new book “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson. After buying Twitter last year, Musk “emerged as a force of destruction, stripping the social media site of its value, its reputation and then, ultimately, its name. In recent weeks, he has been using the rebranded ‘X’ platform to attack the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that fights antisemitism and extremism. Musk has repeatedly been criticized for enabling and boosting antisemitic content on the platform.”
“Isaacson tries to square these two Musks. He rummages through Musk’s violent and chaotic childhood in South Africa … He dissects Musk’s many combative, combustible romantic relationships and the many children they produced, often in secret. He charts the ruptured business partnerships and dismissed employees and impossible deadlines that seemed tailor-made to increase human suffering. And Isaacson decides that this is the cost of innovation. … Musk’s apparent cruelty is at least in part an offshoot of the fact that his companies seem to be more real, more alive, to him than human beings.” Hemmer contends that Isaacson presents an “impoverished view of genius, one that perpetuates the ‘great man’ theory of history, in which the course of the world is shaped by a few brilliant men who thrive under the systems of their time. It overshadows genius generated through collaboration, which, though present throughout Musk’s career, takes a backseat to the force of his singular personality throughout Isaacson’s book. And it leaves little room for the transformative power of people such as racial justice and LGBTQ movement leaders who divined a new way of being in the world, which requires a sort of emotional and moral understanding absent from Musk’s career.” In the past week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy modeled a different kind of leadership – one that was drastically weakened in part by the 15 rounds of voting it took for him to win over enough of his party’s hard-right faction to lead the House in January. In what was widely seen as an attempt to placate members of the House Freedom Caucus and to mollify former President Donald Trump, McCarthy launched an inquiry into the grounds for impeaching President Joe Biden. But by week’s end, it was clear that the gambit had done little to appease the extreme House Republicans who still seemed in no mood to compromise on a deal that would avert a government shutdown on October 1.
“Trump clearly seems to view impeaching Biden as payback for both his prior impeachments and his current criminal prosecutions,” wrote Norman Eisen. “In a sense, Trump is right – revenge is all it is because there is no constitutional basis for proceeding here.” Eisen, a Democrat who served as counsel to House Democrats in the first Trump impeachment, said McCarthy appeared to cave to House members who threatened to oust him from the speakership. “He recently said that he would not proceed without a formal vote on the inquiry, but there was no mention of that at all in his announcement of the inquiry Tuesday.” “Years of searching have yet to yield any support at all for the allegation that Biden personally profited off his son’s foreign business dealings,” Eisen observed. A conservative writer, W. James Antle III, argued that “the Biden family deserves congressional scrutiny. President Joe Biden reportedly engaged in phone calls with his son’s foreign business partners that could jeopardize the integrity of the White House and our democracy. Especially because they seem to have gone beyond the president and his aides’ claims of strict noninvolvement in Hunter Biden’s affairs.”
“There are questions about these matters that need to be asked. But an impeachment inquiry is not the place to ask them,” wrote Antle, noting that McCarthy “becomes the latest political figure to debase and erode what was once the ultimate safeguard against presidential misconduct. … Without any realistic prospect of a Senate conviction and removal from office, impeachment becomes the equivalent of a nonbinding resolution opposing the president. Soon it has little more impact than a mean tweet.” Impeachment will backfire, predicted John Avlon. “This baseless impeachment inquiry is part of an elaborate revenge fantasy designed to blur the differences between Trump, who has been indicted four times, and Biden ahead of the 2024 presidential election. Rather than helping Republicans politically, it will provide just the latest example of overreach leading to backlash. A tit-for-tat impeachment vote is not going to appeal to swing voters in swing districts. It will look like the hyper-partisan pantomime that it is – an exercise in putting party over country.”
CNN
