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Reverend James Squire

Nine Words



“For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” These were nine words which ended President Biden’s twenty-seven minutes speech at the conclusion of his time in Europe. The news reporters got exactly what they wanted, a sound bite that would reflect positively on the world of journalism. However, it could possibly shake up the world order like nothing that has been said this candidly in a very long time. The political world of Washington scurried quickly to communicate what Biden was really saying, and it was not a regime change. It was a wonderful speech overall but all that people will remember are those nine words.


The political world’s judgement has been that President Biden has done a stellar job of walking a tightrope by supporting Ukraine but at the same time not directly involving the United States or NATO in a World War III. The Republicans are in hiding because some of them had called on the strongest response. When they got that from Biden, they really didn’t know what to do “except” it should have happened sooner or “he needs to stay on script and his words could escalate the Russian/Ukrainian War.


Biden has publicly indicated that he is a “gaffe machine” better known as “foot in mouth” disease. There were many missteps whether it was referring to Barack Obama during his campaign that “he was articulate, bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” He was caught on a hot mike by whispering an expletive to Obama at the bill signing for the landmark health care law. There were more.


There is a core teaching in ethics regarding decision making. If you are personally involved with someone, it is very difficult to make decisions about them than it is when you have maintained a distance from them. Perhaps that is a statement of the obvious. There have been numerous experiments to support this call to ethical action. One is the trolley car experiment which basically states that it is easier for a person to pull a lever to change tracks to save people who would be run over and killed than it is to physically push someone off a bridge to fall on the tracks to stop the trolley. Personal closeness affects our actions. It is the same reason that a surgeon shouldn’t act on a family member.


Life is a two-edged sword. The downside of Biden’s nine words is that they shook up the world order creating less stability. But there is an upside to it as well. What prompted Biden to forget looking at the teleprompter and stating some heart felt spontaneous words? My sense of things is that when he was in meetings here and abroad with political leaders, that it was a more theoretical experience. But when I saw President Biden with the people who were suffering and he picked up the child to hug that his decision making shifted from a theoretical political one to something that was now very personal to him.


Biden did something else with his nine words. He said what everyone was thinking. It communicated strength and touched the people who listened to his address to be less panicked about the future. Putin was going to pay for his monstrous actions. There is something special when you speak from the heart and not with a policy voice.


I too have a question that everyone seems to avoid asking but is certainly thinking. Former President Trump, we have heard a lot of about whether you will run or not in 2024. You have large campaign dollars behind you. Here is my question. How can you keep talking about running for President when you, I hope, will be in jail? I am sure others may have thought about that one too, but I haven’t seen it raised much in the public domain from the voices of political powerbrokers.


I have not seen Putin’s response to Biden’s comment. The best that he could do would be to say that he knew that was Biden’s plan from the beginning of this military mission. I have spent a bit of time in Russia. The people are wonderful and smart. I think that the Russian people must wonder why the President of the United States made that statement if it reaches their ears. The statement may not see the light of day on Russian State News.


I think that Biden’s words hit the hot button of Putin. A hot button is something that causes us to make a strong reaction in response to another’s words or actions without thinking. it is spontaneous. It drifts below our conscience, and can escape from time to time during the right circumstances. But I don’t think that Putin knows how to respond to his hot button. I believe his hot button is his perceived disrespect of him and his country by the West which stands in the way of him returning Russia to the days of glory.


I believe Biden’s hot-button is seeing injustice done to those around him. It was made more personal when he picked up the little girl and commented,” You could be one of my grand daughters!”


The exchange with the young girl quickly moved him to go beyond the politically correct words on the teleprompter to the nine choice words to Putin. He did this because the political became personal. As we saw in the ethics example of the trolley car, it is harder to act when we involve ourselves in the issue at hand, but this kind of personal decision making can force us to challenge us to get our hands dirty by intervention from a psychological perspective. Easier to pull a lever. Harder to enmesh ourselves in the personal at the moment, but it may be necessary.

My hot button is disrespect of me, my family, my students, or my friends. It’s personal. I know where it originated, and I have worked hard to keep it in check but disrespect results in a very strong reaction from me. I could see myself doing exactly what Biden did with his nine unscripted words. He was patient and political enough until that child that he hugged made it personal. Then some of us must act.

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