Winners & Losers | Graft vs. Grit

On November 11, 1918, at the 11th minute of the 11th hour, the guns of World War I went silent. Last week, we celebrated Veterans Day, which was originally known as Armistice Day, a day to commemorate the end of the worst mass casualty event the world had ever known up to that moment.

The war, like all wars, was the result of a series of choices made by human beings. By us. The men who were able to walk away once the guns went silent experienced a deeply conflicting set of emotions. There was elation, of course, and so much wild celebration. But there was also an existential sort of sadness.

Think about it. For some, at least, there must have been a realization that if a choice could be made to enact a sudden and profound peace, then a choice — even a series of convoluted and complicated choices — had been made to begin the violence in the first place. In fact, we made a decision to kill millions upon millions of other people.

We didn’t have to make that decision. But we did.

I know this is a pretty massive setup to talk about the week’s Loser and Winner, and maybe one that I won’t pull off in the end. But we have to remember that everything that happens in our world is not inevitable. Actions taken are the product of decisions.

We elect people we trust to make big decisions on our behalf. Those we elect appoint other people who can also make decisions. And all that collective decision-making shapes the world we live in.

The decision to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand in 1914 led to a wild series of further decisions that fundamentally changed the course of human history. That’s an oversimplification, for sure. But it’s true.

The Trump administration is making decisions every single day that are altering our path into the future. It boggles my mind that someone can just decide to deploy troops into American cities and — snap — it happens. It’s incredible that Trump can just decide to deploy an inscrutable system of tariffs and we … just let him. I know, I know. It’s not as simple as just telling him to stop.

But Trump has built his entire life on making bad or destructive decisions and not being stopped. When he stiffed his contractors, nobody stopped him. When he decided to nose his way into a dressing room full of Teen Universe contestants, nobody stopped him.

This week, my Loser is someone with an incredible amount of power to make decisions in service to our safety, but who is, instead, making decisions in service to his own interests. And my Winner is someone with a limited amount of power who is choosing to wield it on behalf of those who are otherwise powerless. ...