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| Children's Khorovod fountain¹ in Stalingrad after the battle. Photograph by Sergey Strunnikov |
I thought what his old boss said was pretty profound.
As to the picture? It's a rather famous fountain in the city of Volgograd (ex-Stalingrad) and had something to do with a kid's poem. But the way I'm using it here is that sometime's there isn't much you can do about a situation except pitch in and dance around the crocodile. Hoping it doesn't get you...
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| (Source) |
“It’s no use saying ‘we’re doing our best.’ You have to succeed in doing what’s necessary.” This is from Churchill’s speech on 7 March 1916 in the House of Commons, cf. Gilbert, Official Biography, Winston S. Churchill, Vol. 3, The Challenge of War (London and Boston: 1971, page 719). (Source)Which is somewhat ironic given the comments from yesterday's post. You can't just do your best, you can't just do something for the sake of doing something, you have to do what is necessary. Hopefully you'll succeed.
But like Gerry Rafferty said, if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time.
Next time.
Get It Right Next Time
Written by Gerry Rafferty
Out on the street, I was talking to a man
He said, there's so much of this life of mine that I don't understand
You shouldn't worry, I said, that ain't no crime
'Cause if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time
You need direction, yeah, you need a name
When you're standing in the crossroads every highway looks the same
After a while, you can recognize the signs
So if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time, next time
Life is a liar, yeah, life is a cheat
It'll lead you on and pull the ground from underneath your feet
No use complaining, don't you worry, don't you whine
'Cause if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time
You got to grow, you got to learn by your mistakes
You got to die a little every day just to try to stay awake
When you believe there's no mountain you can climb
And if you get it wrong, you'll get it right next time, next time
Next time, hmm
Yes, I rather like that song.
Stay healthy.
¹ The original fountain is no longer there. It was replaced by two replicas. (Source) IMHO the replicas aren't as good as the original.
Thanks for that, I feel...humble. The said boss also used to say 'always panic slowly' and when briefing for an event that had the potential to get a bit naughty would say 'Ladies and Gentlemen. This is eminently doable'. You knew then that you would do it and more importantly that he had your back.
ReplyDeleteA good boss and one who knew his trade inside out.
Retired
A slow panic is a good thing. Why? Because rarely is 'the problem' what we initially see it is. We see just the surface, and/or the effects, and assume the surface and/or the effects IS the whole of the problem.
DeleteShould we react to a problem? Yes. But unless it's a problem already completely known about, fighting a holding action while evaluating, or even stepping back a tad, is a much more sensible thing to do.
Like this whole Corona-Wuhan thingy. Quarantine international flights, some shutdowns, maybe even a brief national shutdown, while everyone works together (hah, not likely with the politicized CDCs, NIH, and the controlling party of the House) and evaluate and get information and then step up or step down the reaction to the Covidity.
Instead, we had an initial reaction from the President in banning some international flights, which the politicized leftist organs of the State fought against, and then we had people openly lying when they were giving information, both to the people of the USA and to the President, and this is how we tanked our economy.
He was saying avoid over reacting and therefore making a bad situation worse. I was always taught to try to gain control of a situation and deal with it in your time and therefore gain control of the situation. Politicians/media want something done NOW!! whereas it might be better to slow things down and take more considered action. As it happens the whole Pandemic thing had been wargamed over here a few years ago and a Pandemic was deemed the No 1 threat to national security, our government, in its wisdom ignored that. It also happens that no government has experience of dealing with a pandemic so mistakes will be made.
DeleteMy oldest son is a Doctor and when he was at medical school the epidemiologists all said that that a species jumping disease would happen, well it has.
BTW I have equal contempt for the extremes of the Left and the Right. Both are incompetent in their own ways and I would say that the current government we have in the UK is fairly useless. Few of them have actually done anything useful and they seem to have been selected for their ideological purity. As it stands I consider myself a 'disinterested' observer of UK politics as in both sides have some really bad people but there are some on both sides who, I believe, have the best interests of the country at heart.
Strange times. People are getting stressed as their world collapses around but I genuinely believe that cooler heads will prevail and in about 30-40 years time people will say 'What were they thinking?'
Retired
I seem to recall a British film where a senior officer admonished one of the subalterns not to run about. Made the men nervous and served no purpose.
DeletePanic slowly, I like that. A lot.
I agree on the 30 to 40 years from now thing. This too shall pass.
And is Kim Jong Un really dead? Like Franco?
I think "Zulu" has that, maybe?
DeleteCould be, but it doesn't sound right. Only two officers, both captains.
DeleteSome of us better hurry, huh?
ReplyDeleteAs for doing something, we don’t need any more laws.
DeleteLesser laws, and lesser regulations, and lesser politicizing everything. More common sense. More ability to attack an issue with SCIENCE and without feelings.
DeleteHey AFSarge;
ReplyDeleteThat image from the battle of Stalingrad is one of the most iconic pictures of the battles, even my Call of Duty games that featured Stalingrad in it had that fountain in it. The "Have to do something....its for the Children.." or as I call it the "Clutching at Pearls" act is a staple because a segment of the population is noisy and they get the attention of the politicians and it pushes the rest of us into it and that ain't always a good thing.
If it really was for THE CHILDREN it would not bother me so much. Like all the money we've thrown into the education system since the Department of Education was founded. Year by year, spending per children goes up and up and up, but all it does is fund white elephants (do we really need an Arts Magnet school or two in every school district? No.) while mostly funding for further levels of bureaucracy and unessential people and equipment.
DeleteI'd be much happier if the rule was 1 admin puke per 50 teachers. More shop and science classes in every school. Less touchy-feely.
Same with everything else. If you say it's for the children, it better be. Not like the March of Dimes or other 'charities' where most of the money goes... into the administration and into the management's personal pockets.
Otherwise, quit blowing smoke up my posterior.
This makes me ponder about what our Congress has been doing.
ReplyDeleteFor far too long they have been perpetually busy "doing something" where their solution is inevitably spending more money to "fix" something. Doing so with less and less attention to what they are actually voting for, and with almost no debate, discussion or amendments to whatever has been cooked up in some obscure office by a handful of conspirators.
This week we saw a bill approved spending nearly a half trillion dollars. No one read it, no committee reviewed it, not a word was visible to the taxpayers until after it was passed. It was passed in a single day, when there was clearly not a quorum of members of either chamber present. In the senate, it was passed with only SIX (yup- 6 out of 100) members present. This was done with one of their clever rules and procedures by "passing it without objection" and pretending that they had a quorum present. Since there was no roll call vote, it can never be proven that there was not.
This bill spent in a matter of hours nearly half of what was spent for all of FY 2020 via the regular (albeit highly irregular in reality) appropriations process for all 14 departments of the government. Of course, that was on top of the $2.5 Trillion spent less than a month ago in great haste and opaqueness, all in the name of "doing something." Of course, these 535 butt-clowns cannot even pass their 14 regular appropriations bills with a year to do so, but they magically conspire to spend truly unimaginable sums in hours. Their chronic shirking of duty and passin "continuing resolutions" should be a badge of dishonor and failure, not a cause to celebrate "keeping the government open."
Worse, in all of this overzealous spending, they have not even attempted to cut a single dollar of any regular spending. Not a single government program, study, office, grant, employee, building or giveaway can be curtailed. We simply MUST keep it all, they insist.
All of this has been despite the glaringly obvious fact that WHAT IS NECESSARY is to quit spending so damn much money, balance the budget, and pay off the $25 Trillion debt we have built up for our progeny.
With a majority of voters now addicted to handouts, and not paying income taxes, and comfortable on the government welfare plantation, no politician (a pejorative term, for sure) dare cut spending and expect to get reelected. Santa Claus has never lost an election.
Since "what is NECESSARY" will not even be contemplated, the fall-back position seems to be various government entities borrowing from each other leaving IOUs of dubious worth. Such as the IOUs left in the Social Security "lockbox" which Congress looted to spend on some shiny objects, promising to cough up the cash when called due. Or, we see the Federal Reserve printing cash to buy Treasury bonds to be repaid in the future. They got away with this in the past for a few billion dollars here and there, but now the numbers are trillions. At this rate, the high demand for toilet paper may be met by the use of cash. Even the Chinese are wary of buying our promises to pay.
No, our Congress is not willing to "do what is necessary", but only "do something" for the sake of being seen doing something, and buying votes for their own benefit.
Our country may well resemble the ruins of Stalingrad in a decade, or sooner, when the "free stuff" runs out, and the "makers" get tired of being enslaved to support the "takers."
Other than that, have a nice quarantine day!
John Blackshoe
Shack!
DeleteJohn, I understand your sentiment, but must disagree with this satement Doing so with less and less attention to what they are actually voting for. I think they know exactly what they’re voting for e.g. more money for them! While I believe it’s predominately dems that vote that way. I think the stupid party does also. Were an earthquake to wash Washington DC out to sea while the whole of the Federal Gov were in session, i believe it would be a net gain.
Delete(Don McCollor)...I like "Panic Slowly". Have a plan (along with several contingency backup plans for what might happen and prepare as best you can), then do not stick to the Plan. As the Marines say "adapt, improvise, overcome"...
ReplyDeleteFlexibility is all.
DeleteI think Mr Blackshoe is an optimist if he thinks it could take a decade for it to become apparent that there is nothing but moths in Uncle Sam's pockets. Sooner is a much more likely event in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a nursing student back in the late 70's, one of the sayings a nursing prof told us when we were discussing heart attacks, and codes to revive patients was "The first thing to do in a code is to check your pulse. The check the patient's." Which was basically another way to say Panic Slowly.
And I blame the entire media group for the "Something HAS to be DONE!!" Simply because panic and bleeding have always been the best way to sell newspapers. Now that we all get our news from digital sources--it has to be all about "the feelings". Drama, Drama, Drama. Which totally obliviates the need for reasoned, logical, scientifically based thought.
Bah humbug!!
Amen!
DeleteYep, Suz. i remember when a CNA who'd been complaining of a bad headache and asked me to accompany her on rounds, put her hand to her head and simply collapsed in a patient's room. I was close enough to keep her head from bouncing off the floor, but not much else. Then, for the first time in my life, I heard 'death rattles' -- the body and its autonomic functions doing the damndest they can to sustain life. That's what came closest to freaking me out. I got her repositioned with her head back an she wasn't making those unbelievably awful snoring sounds at me, and I was just barely confident enough of her that I dared run to the nurse's station and called a Code Blue (I'd never heard one before). We were short that night so the nurse had to hustle upstairs, as well as my fiancee. I was sent to (1) get oxygen, but found the so-called 'go kart' was empty and had to improvise trying to find a full oxygen bottle, and (2) call 911 and stay on the line until they got there, and call directions over the PA for the other downstairs aide to open the door for the EMTs. I was worrying the whole time, having worked in nursing homes, including a head trauma unit, that even though my co-worker and friend was only 51 (younger than I am now), that I was doing her no favors. I'd seen more than one patient where family members agonized over whether they'd done the right thing calling 911 so quickly. I never saw a 'slow code', but it was something that had been discussed more than once. As it was, Judy survived her brain-stem bleed, if only barely, and learned to walk again with a cane. I was always a bit worried that she'd rather have died than survived as she was immediately afterwards. My wife and I were never quite sure I'd done the right thing, though Judy herself said we did. I think she was being honest, or at least we want to believe she was honest, but it's really hard not to wonder. At any rate, I later found out that the nurses and EMTs thought I was 'cool as a cucumber' (their words) and '100% professional', but I'll be damned if I know where that came from. I was gibbering in my mind, falling back on USAF training, and just deeply afraid that I would let Judy down. Apparently, none of that showed, unlike at restaurants where I'm almost immediately dismissed as the one that needn't be bothered with. Which is really weird to me. I've never understood that, and it's very rarely I've been able to get more respect than Rodney Dangerfield after a garden-shears gelding. The stupid thing, I take a bit of comfort in that knowing when it's all gone to hell unexpectedly, I can (somehow) function. Judy did get 100% SSI disability, and she was able to walk a cane with difficulty. She did thank me for what I did when she couldn't remember even waking up that evening for night shift, and I still sometimes shudder when I think I might not have accompanied her on rounds if we'd missed each other. She'd have died within 3-4 minutes after collapsing if I hadn't been there. My father-in-law had more than one Marine bleed out on him after or as he was assuring them they'd done a good job, that help was on the way, and that they'd make it. I don't know that I'd hold it together after ordering something that got people killed. I'd hope I could, though another part of me thinks that maybe I might be so callous that it wouldn't matter to me. 99% of the time, I think it would, though not necessarily on that day or week.
DeleteWow Larry, well done!
DeleteI do worry about our ability to service our debt. Our debt seems to be getting paid off by putting it on yet another credit card, at a higher rate. At some point in the next 10 years I'd expect, that no one will want our treasury bonds and our deficit spending will have to come to a screeching halt, turning us into Greece, forcing austerity measures, and the long inevitable decline of our country. Social security will be cut and delayed, and social safety nets will have to be curtailed. My Navy retirement and other federal payments? Who knows. DoD will be a sacrificial lamb, and our enemies will flourish.
DeleteThat is a problem, a major problem. Politicians may actually get stood up against a wall should that day come.
Delete