In attempting to navigate the difficult waters that separate my employer and the clients on whose property we labor, I’ve at times been called “The Diplomat.” I very often disagree with his decisions and, even more often, his methods, but there’s a job to be done, and it requires that responsibility be properly allocated and that everybody’s opinions contribute to final decisions without having differences break communication down to static. Everybody’s got their own intentions and purposes, and the combination thereof sometimes reaches the brink of utter incompatibility. If I want to get a particular job done and move on with my life, that’s not a functional place to remain.
I bring this up in response to the dispute between Travis Rowley and Ken Block, the latter of whose comment appeared earlier today on Anchor Rising.
Right now Rhode Island desperately needs to be shaken — and hard. Movement in any way toward the political and economic right is movement in the correct direction, and we who are doing the pushing will only trip each other up if some of us don’t remain explicit about the extent of our cooperation and the limits of our commonalities.
Overstating will be a very easy thing to do, and emotions are going to be running high throughout the involved class of Rhode Island. We need circumspection and, yes, occasional internal diplomacy.