If you lead, someone will doubt your motive.
If you stand a head taller, someone will seek to bring you to your knees.
If you define the moment, someone will point to your flaws.
If you seek to express perfection, someone will question your judgment.
And while you question the objections, someone will poison your reasoning seizing advantage in momentary stupor.
The Campaign of the Counterpunch becomes the strategic offense,
Upon the merit of weakness,
When opportunity welcomes the courageous,
The void is breached with an empty assault,
By a lesser opportunist.
So goes the Army of the once willing,
Now Leaderless.
So goes the Ideal,
Enter the Aimless and the Observer.
Watching, waiting and listening for the standout campaign move or moment has become a media-sport for an audience of committed observers awaiting someone to emerge capable, committed and fit. What we have, at the moment, is a deeply flawed President, Rick “In-Search-Of” Santorum, Newt “I Am” Gingrich, Ron “End the Fed” Paul and of course the master of the Counterpunch, Mitt “All-in-One” Romney; each taking their turn in The Political Campaign of the Counterpunch.
“The goal is not to deprive you of life; it is to keep you from being truly alive!”
It appears that our Nation has become committed observers; the arm-chair sporting experts, the blood-sport of feudal-media, the dynamics of the spectrum that is the political-schism of perpetual divisiveness or the ever-evolving voyeur to the reality-show of illusions simulating life; after all, why be a standout when it is far more survivable to watch and observe another fail; even to the point of encouraging the process.
“In the lunacy of the ring all seems quite in order and I no longer question the bell or the crowd’s provocations. Have I simply lost my need for endorsement or have I simply lost my mind? I no longer discern; where there is not purpose from which I might draw my breath, I tarry with poverty of ambivalence; I tarry with and become a party to the ambivalent.”
Campaigning is, of a sort, a rite of passage and a course of travel that every candidate should traverse, a process that each voter should insist occur. However in our age, largely due to the emergence of mass-media, it has become a process of dumbing-down to the lowest possible common denominator; it has become a process whereby the menial-mind refines the counterpunch. Pay closer and closer attention to the campaign strategies playing out before you;
Candidates, not able to point to their leadership success, prefer instead to question an opponent’s leadership capacity.
Candidates, daring not stand distinctly, opt for highlighting the opposition’s successful indiscretions and thereby defeat and demean both the opposition and the process.
On the occasion that a Candidate attempts to define the moment, a respondent voids the opportunity to offer an enlightened alternative choosing instead to summarily dismiss the potential of a defining moment occurring.
In cases where the Perfecting Ideal of our Constitution should be a guiding principal, nearly every Candidate’s command of Our Common Cause is conspicuously defective.
And lastly we have the most recent evolution: The Concealed Counterpunch, the Super-Pac. The ultimate tool of divisiveness; the don’t take it personally because I have nothing to do with it blow-torch which, strangely enough, accommodates the Counterpunch by allowing an assailant to strike a blow without having to lift a glove.
Yes indeed we are amazing! We’ve built ourselves a maze uniquely designed allowing us to observe the process without having to claim responsibility for its outcome; we can appear to be visual without having to be conspicuous; we can claim to be conscious without having to be conscientious and best of all, we can be our own best victim and then blame the System we’ve licensed for our personal failures.
Leadership is a risky proposition; it requires one to consider the risks and yet be adverse to each of them; it requires one to be willing to stand above the unwilling and simultaneously define the moment; to be emphatic as to a message and the why its perfecting cause is compelling and inseparable from the interests of those you would seek to lead; that yours is, in fact, a Common Cause built upon a Common Ideal. The pursuit of an Ideal is never about the how; it is always about the why! This defines a Leader and the essential components of Leadership.
The Political Campaign of the Counterpunch is for the One who lacks the capacity to attract an audience primarily as they lack the essentials of Leadership; they prefer instead to contaminate and disorientate and attempt to pirate command.
We as Individuals and as a Nation must remember that we are first and foremost bound, simultaneously, to a Common Cause and by a Common Ideal; we are, in fact, inseparable from their outcome and we’d better get clear about it and quickly!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
