Failure is an often misused description that softens or weakens the accusation, characterization or indictment. More often, powerful people intentionally betray, violate or continue. When you use the word fail, fails, failed or failure to describe the decisions, actions or inactions of a powerful leader, there is a strong risk that you are actually cutting the leader slack.

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It is very common for people to observe that a powerful person failed to do something or stop something. I have a problem with suggesting that powerful people failed. I think it's a way to blunt or soften the truth that they intentionally and willfully made something happen or allowed it to continue.

I think it is rare that powerful people fail. They succeed. They may have failed us, but that's very different than saying that they failed, without qualifying that they failed us or they failed their constituents or the nation or democracy. Powerful people make choices that betray their promises, their commitments and their constituents. These are not failures.

For example, here's an article on Daily Kos, 21 reasons why I feel Obama has failed Progressives. I'll list the first five

Didn't offer a public option

1. Appointed countless Wall Streeters to his top economic team, failing to appoint labor voices like Robert Reich.
2. He has bailed out Wall Street instead of Main Street:
3. He failed to attack the mortgage crisis,
4. He failed to veto the National Defense Authorization Act, doing away with habeas corpus, allowing the government to arrest and detain indefinitely without a trial or hearing.
5. He agreed to an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the rich, and on top of that, he agreed to an egregious reduction of the estate taxes on the rich,

None of those were failures. They were all conscious choices. The title would have been more accurate if it read Obama BETRAYED Progressives.

More recently, there is a lot of talk about Trump failing to do the job dealing with Covid 19. But again, his actions were intentional. He tried, for many months, to deny that Covid-19 was a serious problem and blocked the development and production of testing resources. He chose to not be a leader and take responsibility by saying that states should decide how to do things.

Now I'm all for allowing for local input, but when it comes to an urgent, crisis problem as big as a pandemic, it's important to have top-down leadership. This has become particularly clear when it comes to the management and administration of the vaccines-- actually getting them into the arms of people.

Trump didn't fail. He avoided making decisions. If he failed at any thing it was failure to hire competent people. And I can get on board with that accusation. He failed because he is a back-stabber who throws almost every hire under the bus eventually. He created a situation where no smart, honest people with integrity would work for him.

My message for this article is that failure is an often misused description that softens or weakens the accusation, characterization or indictment. More often, powerful people intentionally betray, violate or continue. When you use the word fail, fails, failed or failure to describe the decisions, actions or inactions of a powerful leader, there is a strong risk that you are actually cutting the leader slack. Don't do it. Use stronger language.

Writing coaches advise writers to use less passive and more active language. Can you see that describe someone as having failed to do something is passive. The active way to characterize it is to talk about what the person actively does--

So, not "Obama failed to provide single payer" Instead, "Obama blocked single payer."

Or "Obama served the big insurers but keeping single payer off the table."

Not, "Trump failed to respond to Corona Virus." Instead, Trump exacerbated the Corona Virus by trying to look better and improve his election odds."

Actually, Failure is a word that you should always think twice about using.

And be assured, there will be many times that Op-Ed writers accuse Joe Biden of failing this or that. Be assured that in most cases it is not failure. It is intention.

Authors Bio:

Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.

Check out his platform at RobKall.com

He is the author of The Bottom-up Revolution; Mastering the Emerging World of Connectivity

He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com

more detailed bio:

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.

Rob Kall Wikipedia Page

Rob Kall's Bottom Up Radio Show: Over 400 podcasts are archived for downloading here, or can be accessed from iTunes. Or check out my Youtube Channel

Rob Kall/OpEdNews Bottom Up YouTube video channel

Rob was published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com for several years.

Rob is, with Opednews.com the first media winner of the Pillar Award for supporting Whistleblowers and the first amendment.

To learn more about Rob and OpEdNews.com, check out A Voice For Truth - ROB KALL | OM Times Magazine and this article.

For Rob's work in non-political realms mostly before 2000, see his C.V.. and here's an article on the Storycon Summit Meeting he founded and organized for eight years.

Press coverage in the Wall Street Journal: Party's Left Pushes for a Seat at the Table

Talk Nation Radio interview by David Swanson: Rob Kall on Bottom-Up Governance June, 2017

Here is a one hour radio interview where Rob was a guest- on Envision This, and here is the transcript..

To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.

Follow Rob on Twitter & Facebook.

His quotes are here

Rob's articles express his personal opinion, not the opinion of this website.

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