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By Scott Tibbs, September 11, 2018
It has been well established by now that President Donald Trump's advisors are trying to reign him in and control his impulsive behavior. You do not have to believe specific wild accusations to know this is generally true. All you have to do is look at the President's Twitter history to know that this is true. Which leads to predictable caterwauling: Oh no, he's out of control. Whatever shall we do?
So here is a dirty little secret about politics. EVERYONE has advisors that try to reign them in, down to the lowest-level activist in a small college town. This is the way people work. Someone has a hare-brained idea or gets too emotional about something and someone else talks him down. We all seek wise counsel. We all get wise counsel we do not want, and once we cool down we realize the counsel is right and we are glad we did not do whatever foolish thing we wanted to do.
Duh.
I cannot tell you how many times I have been advised to not do something I wanted to do, or talked down after starting down a path that was foolish. I cannot tell you how many times that the people providing wise counsel were completely right. (Sometimes the counsel is wrong, or even immoral, and must be rejected.) I have also been on the opposite end of that exchange many times, talking people out of doing something foolish or counterproductive. This includes other activists, elected officials, and candidates for elective office. This does not just apply to politics, of course. This applies to employment, interpersonal relationships and many other things.
Yes, Donald Trump is mercurial and quick-tempered, and he holds grudges. But let's not pretend that everything we hear about the President is unique in American history. We are doing ourselves no good when we spin ourselves into a tizzy over everything he does and over every revelation about how this administration operates - especially when it is something that is boringly normal in how human beings have interacted throughout all of history.
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