People often confuse loudness and bluster with strength of character and mildness of manner with weakness. But it is a mistake. Look, for example, at Trump whose loud, brash proclamations merited him accusations of authoritarianism. In reality, he’s weak and extremely malleable, which is what caused every real problem of his presidency.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, we have somebody like my husband who’s gentle, sensitive, and quiet but who possesses an extraordinary relentlessness of purpose and strength of character. Once he’s chosen a course of action, there’s absolutely nobody who can make him veer off course.
The wrapper doesn’t necessarily truly reflect what’s inside.
Clarissa's Blog 
I see some people in the MAGA branch of the Republican party (which I would consider to be where I fall, to be clear) who seem to care more whether candidates are “brash” in a Trumpian way than what their policies are or whether they actually fight. Plenty of soft spoken politicians are anything but soft (Daniel Cameron of Kentucky comes to mind.)
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Exactly. I don’t mind bluster but it has to be accompanied with action. Tweeting “Law and order!” 50 times in a row does nothing for me if you allow lawlessness and disorder as you tweet.
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Haven’t read myself yet, but sounds interesting:
Владимир Путин и ренацификация Германии_Часть первая
Как на излете Холодной войны офицер КГБ и немецкая охранка создавали в стране неонацистское подполье
https://storm100.livejournal.com/11137918.html
The second part is in his next post.
In other news, Бывший министр обороны ДНР Игорь Стрелков (Гиркин) был задержан в Крыму, при попытке попасть на фронт добровольцем.
Sounds very weird. Wouldn’t Putin want Girkin to go and be killed there, instead of being publicly arrested by Russians?
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Here is the English original:
Follow the Leader
IN THE WANING DAYS OF THE COLD WAR, RAINER SONNTAG HELPED FUEL A NEO-NAZI MOVEMENT THAT STILL PLAGUES GERMANY TODAY. HE WAS ALSO A COMMUNIST SPY—AND WORKED FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN.
https://magazine.atavist.com/follow-the-leader-nazi-putin-sonntag-cold-war/
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This is really a difference in negotiating style.
It’s also a difference between deals and moves.
You see, Trump was into deals, Obama was into moves.
Trump’s negotiating tactics didn’t reveal strategy, which may or may not have been present at the beginning, because the goal was to develop some kind of deal that then could be executed as a strategy in and of itself.
So you don’t like the negotiating style?
Fine, but for the purposes for which Trump was negotiating, did he actually meet his own targets?
I hear lots of disaffected people who have no real stakes in anything I’m doing try to crap all over it, and I give them the low levels of attention that they deserve as Trump did with many of his detractors.
What I see is that on net, Trump met most of his own targets.
The thing that failed Trump was that the delegation he needed to do he did on the basis of personal connections without fully vetting whether the people he trusted were easily compromised or were already heavily compromised.
Which is essentially a nutshell description of Trump’s failure with Pence, of course.
People who are threatened by a particular type of negotiating style aren’t negotiating.
They’re bargaining, and they’re usually on the losing side of a bargain already.
People who think that Trump will be destroyed by accusations need to stop projecting their own fears onto him as if he’s some sort of National Emotional Tampon.
It would not be a surprise at all to find out that there’s yet another deal in the works, and once again, that deal wouldn’t necessarily reveal any strategy at the beginning.
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