“There was a brashness about him that I always associated with the Wall Street ethos,” the Rev. John Paul Wauck, an Opus Dei priest who knew McCloskey, wrote in an email. “You could say that, as a priest, he maintained an entrepreneurial attitude. For some, this was off-putting; for others, it was, I’d say, invigorating and even entertaining.”
McCloskey harnessed that entrepreneurial spirit to persuade people, mostly men, to become Catholics. In New York in 1997, he converted Kudlow, who was recovering from addiction. Mark Belnick, a former general counsel of Tyco International, who described McCloskey as a “great friend” in a New York magazine article, soon followed. They would be among the first in a long line of high-profile conversions that McCloskey facilitated.
“It’s just like the brokerage business or any business of sales,” McCloskey told the National Catholic Reporter in 2003. “You get a reputation, you deal with one person and they mention you to another person . . . and all of a sudden you have a string of people.”
The conversions came naturally to McCloskey because “he just had an absolute certainty about what he was proposing, and he had no hesitation at all about unapologetically offering Catholicism as an option,” said Shaw, his co-author.
.. Although he left Washington at perhaps the height of his fame, McCloskey’s legacy is the ongoing influence of the Catholic Information Center. The center’s board includes Leonard Leo, executive vice president of the Federalist Society, which helped shepherd the Supreme Court nominations of Brett M. Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch. White House counsel Pat Cipollone is a former board member, as is William P. Barr, who served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush and is now President Trump’s nominee for the same position.
.. The small center — its members and its leaders — continue to have an outsize impact on policy and politics. It is the conservative spiritual and intellectual center that McCloskey had imagined and its influence is felt in all of Washington’s corridors of power.
When Honest Women Replace ‘Self-Made’ Men
Female politicians show that rising to power is a group effort.
At the end of this month, Nancy Pelosi will retake her position on the podium behind the president as he gives his State of the Union address. As speaker of a House that is more female and more racially diverse than at any time in American history, Ms. Pelosi on the dais will represent more than just Democratic gains: She will be a visual symbol of a profound shift in how those with power might wield it.
For too long, female power has been calculated using the arbitrary measuring stick of how men exercised authority; women, as a result, largely shaped themselves to these male-determined standards and norms. But the women of the 116th Congress are redefining what it means to be powerful and reshaping some of the most dearly held American fables in the process.
Power, for all of American history, has been white and male, and maintaining that monopoly has required a series of agreed-upon conventions and plotlines. A handful of women and people of color have, in recent years, managed to get a foot in the door, but the definition of what power means, and the male-centered story of how one gets it, remains in place.
According to this script, power is meritocratic; those who earn it do so individually through their own hard work. Power has a particular look and a particular sound: tall and deep-voiced. Power is all-encompassing: a partner and children are the backdrop for a life centered on the pursuit of greatness; family indicates that the powerful person is grounded enough to be trusted, but the family is fundamentally a body that benefits from the powerful person, not a body that benefits him and fundamentally enables his success.
Within this story of meritocracy is the promise that anyone can achieve political power and success if they are good enough and if they work hard enough; that elected offices have for so long so wholly rested in male hands suggests simply that men have long been more worthy of them.
As a result, and by necessity, barrier breakers have largely followed this same script, from the practical to the descriptive to the aesthetic. When women and people of color did gain political power, their ascension was often used to prop up the existing meritocratic narrative: They had achieved, and so anyone can. The subtext: Perhaps the dearth of women and people of color in office meant they hadn’t worked hard enough for it.
This narrative of American political power is pervasive enough to be largely invisible. The women who folded themselves into the existing story were perhaps not so much doing it intentionally as acting according to the script on offer, without much space to imagine something different.
But as more women have entered the political realm, they have created more space for authenticity over self-aggrandizement. This is especially true as politicians come from a wider diversity of communities and backgrounds, each with different norms around authority.
Today’s rising female politicians tell a very different story than “I worked hard, and so I got here by myself.” One by one, they credit those who inspired their success, supported their ascent and cleared the trail so they could walk further still.
Why obvious lies make great propaganda
For leaders like Trump and Putin, telling big lies isn’t about persuasion — it’s about power.
“Firehosing” — drowning people with lies
Brené Brown
Listening to shame | Brené Brown (2012)
Vulnerability:
- Vulnerability is not weakness. It is our most accurate measure of courage.
- Vulnerability is the birthplace of
- innovation,
- creativity, and
- change.
Shame: has focus on self. Guilt is focus on behavior.
- Shame has two scripts:
- You are never good enough.
- Who do you think you are?
- Shame is correlated with:
- addiction,
- depression,
- violence,
- aggression,
- bullying,
- suicide,
- eating disorders.
- Shame is organized by gender:
- For women is not being able to do it all perfectly while never letting them see you sweat.
- Shame for men is appearing weak.
- Shame is fed by
- secrecy,
- silence, and
- judgement.
The antidote to Shame is Empathy.
The power of vulnerability: TEDx Houston (2011)
(Jan 2011) Brené Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share.
Brené Brown: Create True Belonging and Heal the World with Lewis Howes (2017)
Whenever there is not love and belonging there is suffering.
Belonging:
- Belonging is being part of something bigger than yourself, but belonging is also the courage to stand alone.
- Belonging never asks us to change who we are.
- Fitting in can mean betraying yourself if it asks us to change who we are to belong.
Teams and Groups can deliver the illusion of belonging.
If you become so adaptable that the goal of adapting is to make you like me, you betray yourself.
There are two kinds of kids:
- Kids who ask for help
- Kids who don’t
Lewis: my way was of asking was getting angry, mad, and lashing out, turning fear into rage and ploughing over others
- In 3rd or 4th grade, Lewis was shamed by getting picked last in a dodgeball game
- He turned his loss into fuel for athletics, eventually playing football in the NFL.
- He felt like every loss was an attack on his life because he feared he couldn’t be accepted.
Vulnerability
- Involves: uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure
- You can’t be a courageous leader if you aren’t willing to be uncomfortable
The ability to opt-out of talking about Charlottesville and having it “not affect her” is the definition of privilege.
- Charlottesville is about powerlessness
I can’t imagine a way though the next decade that doesn’t involve dealing with pain. (34 min)
James Baldwin: people hold on to their hate so stubbornly because once they let it go their is nothing but pain.
After a difficult breakup while at college, Lewis took out his rage on the football field.
Every social crisis, almost without exception, is about our inability to deal with our pain:
- Opioids: physicians
- Medicated, addicted, in debt, obese.
Our inability to deal with pain and vulnerability is what leads to many problems.
The football team that acknowledges its vulnerabilities will be more successful.
Charlottesville comes down to identity, belonging, and power.
- This is the concept of “power-over”‘s last stand
- last stands are violent, desperate
- nostalgic: “It was so much better when people knew their place”
We can’t solve the next issues with national solutions
Vulnerability is not weakness. It is about the willingness to be seen when you can’t control the outcome.
When you experience shame:
- Talk to yourself like you talk to someone you love.
- Talk to someone else: shame can not respond to being spoken
You either own your story or it owns you.
What is Greatness?
- Greatness is owning your story and loving yourself though that.
Brené Brown Shows You How To “Brave the Wilderness” (2017)
(Warning: There is swearing in this video)
Dehumanization is not a social justice tool (15 min)
Police-Protester Dichotomy: shaming us for not hating the right people.
I’m not going to let my imperfection move me away from the conversation because its too important
I contributed more than I criticized.
There is a difference between holding people accountable and shame.
Shame is not a strategy. It will hurt them and you. Shame begets shame.
Holding people accountable is not as much fun as raging against them.
There should be more tools in your tool bag than shame and coddling. (25 min)