War

War; threats of war; reminders of war...  Personally, the word “war” is bandied about a bit more than I’m comfortable with.  Ergo these thoughts.

I can’t help but wonder how historians will look back and describe our time.  Joseph A. Tainter shared in The Collapse of Complex Societies ®:

Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.

Unknown Sage

Ulysses S. Grant was one of our nation’s most famous and controversial military, war generals.   It was a controversial time:

…a President who had a good deal of trouble finding a successful commander for the armies of the United States.  And one of them turned up one day and he was very successful.   And some very good citizens went to the President. 'You can't keep this man. He drinks.'  'It must be a good brand of liquor', the President replied.

Jean Edward Smith

Grant knew the sobering realities of war.  James McPherson wrote:

Like Lincoln, he believed in a hard war and a soft peace.  “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it.”

Ulysses S. Grant

One of the things that made Grant successful was his focus.  That created controversy and even jealousy “among the ranks”:

I am a great deal smarter than Grant; I see things more quickly than he does.  I know more about law, and history, and war, and nearly everything else than he does; but I'll tell you where he beats me and beats the world.  He don't care a damn for what he can't see the enemy doing and it scares me like hell.

William T. Sherman 

Grant (among many others) was tasked to save our Union.  If it was to be war, then he would conduct a vicious one.  But he wasn’t a vicious man:

A war hero, drawn in by his sense of duty, Grant was unanimously nominated by the Republican Party and then elected president in 1868.

As president, Grant stabilized the post-war national economy, supported congressional Reconstruction and the Fifteenth Amendment, and prosecuted the Ku Klux Klan. Under Grant, the Union was completely restored. An effective civil rights executive, Grant signed a bill to create the United States Department of Justice and worked with Radical Republicans to protect African Americans during Reconstruction. In 1871, he created the first Civil Service Commission, advancing the civil service more than any prior president.

He failed in his second term.  Back to Wikipedia:

… executive scandals during his second term. His response to the Panic of 1873 was ineffective in halting the Long Depression…

Parallels to today?  Is history repeating itself?  Are we at war?  I hope not.  Challenges?  Yes.  Disagreements?  For sure.  But war?  No. 

We’ve seen the good - and the cruelty - focused leaders can inflict.  I prefer to remember Ulysses S. Grant’s preference for attaining, “a soft peace”.

GAP

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.