That doesn't make it a bad thing. The worst thing that a person or a nation could do is to not face the reality. I give you an every day example:
Suppose that I am late for an important meeting. If I miss it, I may have a lot of egg on my face or maybe even lose important career opportunities. But here I am stuck in a traffic jam on the highway. So long as I don't accept the reality that I will miss my meeting, I am prone to keep making bad decisions such as tailgating and zigzagging between cars, zipping through side streets at unsafe speed, cursing and switching lanes excessively...all of which will do little to get me to my meeting but highly increase the chances of getting in an accident, running over someone, getting a ticket, and otherwise making a bad day worse.
On the other hand, the sooner I accept the reality that I won't make it to my meeting, the sooner I can come up with the next best solution. I can call ahead and reschedule. Or I can offer to speak over the phone b/c I am stuck in the traffic. Or I may be able to get my boss or a colleague to fill in for me. Or at worst, I get a head start on looking for a new job. None are as good as making it to my meeting. But all are better than getting into an accident.
This is the situation here. It is very unrealistic for Biden to want to be everyone's president (as Obama tried) when a big chunk of the people hate his guts and don't want him to be their president in any shape or form. This would not be the case if the country was not so polarized and the losing side actually respected him and agreed to follow him as the leader of the country until they get their chance to retake the office. The reality is that the losing side is not accepting defeat but is seeing as a mandate to destroy him through different tactics. So not accepting that reality and working as if it is not true is foolish.
The US has spent an inordinate amount of blood and money to establish an empire that has brought it little. The resources are better spent on internal projects and on shaping a global framework in which the American way of thinking will have a good chance to succeed. The latter is not the same thing as the globalist and imperialist ambitions that both parties have engaged in the past. The key distinction, aside from a focus on the internal US issues, is in establishing global institutions in which the US is a partner rather than the soul or main engine. This is the best way to ensure that China and Russia will not get away with turning the world against the US (which is very different than wanting the world to go America's way).
Respecting the limits of one's power and the nature of reality is a must. |
