"Actions speak louder than words and a smile says, ‘I like you. You make me happy. I am glad to see you’” Dale Carnegie, "How to Win Friends and Influence People”
March 25, 2015
By: Linda Case Gibbons
When your kid can’t make friends, of course you worry about him.
He doesn’t have the knack, he’s awkward, and he reads all the signals wrong. He thinks kids like him when they don’t. He tries to impress people he shouldn’t.
The subtleties of life escape him and it makes you shake your head. What’s going to become of him?
Take Barry, for instance. He’s doing all he can for what he thinks are his "best buddies” in Iran, YouTube videos, happy thoughts, giving ‘til it hurts. The poor kid is desperate to be liked!
He believes he can solve it all with his gift of gab, which could be endearing, but isn’t.
As soon as he was finished with his video-card to Iran, what happened? The guy in charge there says a hurtful thing, "Death to America!” Well, actually, he was agreeing with a crowd of thousands of his friends who were chanting, "Death to America!”
But no matter what, he had to have been embarrassed. I know I was.
I never had much faith in his being able to broker any deal, but it looks like he has a death wish when it comes to Iran.
For all of us.
"I’m your friend!” he tells them. And they say, "We don’t like you.”
"But I want to help your young people become ‘All that they can be,’ ‘Make a better world for you and me.’” And they say, "We want to kill you.”
He never gets it! He sends them a Happy Nowruz YouTube message…which could be called thoughtful, but isn’t, only to hear the head guy over there say, "You were insincere!”
That was cold! It seems this kid can’t win for losing.
And then there’s John. We’ve tried to support him, but it’s so hard!
Would you believe? While Iran was busting our chops, John thought the nuke talks with Iran were going just great!
When he was appointed, we thought, "Okay, now he’s safe. He’s secretary of state, all he has to do is fly around a lot like Hillary,” but no dice. He insisted on talking. He always does and it always goes wrong.
Take last week, for instance. I cringe to think about it.
He compared himself to Lincoln, Gandhi, Churchill, Mandela and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., all in the same speech! This guy figures he is exactly like them because he’s fighting the climate change battle!
He was talking about climate change, for Pete’s sake! I felt like climbing under my chair! And in case you forgot, this is the guy negotiating the nuke agreement with Iran. Nuclear negotiations.
Is there any wonder why Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini hates us? Why he resolutely says, "Death to America?” If I was him, and I heard this stuff, I’d hate us, too!
Against our better judgment, we let John windsurf and trundle around Switzerland on his bike, in his tights and helmet, and this was during negotiations with Iran! You guessed it. His bike broke and he had to be rescued.
Let’s just say, the picture he presented astride his bike wasn’t on a par with Putin wrestling a bear while astride a horse.
I think they’re calling it "optics” nowadays. Well, let’s just say the optics with our boys isn’t great. The word "weak” springs to mind. How about "funny looking”?
And that sends a bad message when you’re negotiating with bad boys.
You’ve watched The Sopranos.The bad boys know other bad boys when they see them. And they can spot one who isn’t one a mile away. In fact they spit on them!
Bad boys talk a certain way, walk a certain way. "Playing nice” doesn’t fly with them, and they know enough not to sit with their back to the door.
Most of us learned all this years ago just by living in the real world. Our boys didn’t. Our boys stand out and not in a good way.
It was with great reluctance that we let Barry keep his secrets even though we thought it was odd.
He wouldn’t tell us what was in Obamacare, and we let him. Ditto for the FCC Internet regs and the "Dreamers” deal he sprang on us. And if it wasn’t for Netanyahu, we wouldn’t have a clue on what the heck is in the proposed nuclear agreement with Iran.
Sure. We were annoyed, but we figured, "He’s a secretive kid. It’s not the way democracy works, but in the world of chickens, I guess he’s a free range one.”
Parents!
Then you see what happens when you don’t discipline a kid. You see the results and you want to throw in the towel! But we can’t give up on the "kids,” can we? Don’t we have a responsibility to make them just like real boys?
It’s not easy. They’re obnoxious and arrogant and those are some of their good qualities.
Usually the most obnoxious people are said to be insecure. Unfortunately understanding that doesn’t make it any easier to like them, but that’s the theory.
They’re just plain hard to take.
It’s the way they talk down to people, the tone of voice, the aggressive thrust of the jaw and the glint in the eye. It’s all that.
And using the word "folks.”
But the straw that breaks the camel’s back is they consistently choose our enemies over our friends. That’s bad for everyone.
Just like this deal with Iran.
Hold the line, America.