In just seven seconds, you can initiate change for just about anything. You can set in motion powerful influence that will touch hundreds, even thousands of people. At this societal hinge point in 2025, what’s a critical truth? Civility is contagious.iStock
But it’s a binary solution set. You can also demotivate. Annihilate productivity. Repel others. Whip up a toxic environment.
It’s your choice.
As the author of one of the standard works on influence once wrote, ““Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
A defiant, confident, and decidedly public display shocked diplomat and leader alike on September 3. “You don’t need a degree in international affairs to understand the message Xi Jinping sent Wednesday as he paraded tanks, hypersonic missiles and other weapons through Beijing, putatively to honor the end of World War II,” warned the Wall Street Journal.
The ominous point, according to the Journal? “Mr. Xi and his allies aspire to dethrone the U.S. as the world’s premier power. What will President Trump do about it?”
(Foreign Affairs)
As the vast technological array of bristling military power passed before the likes of Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin, China’s special friend, Kim Jong Un, the North Korean dictator, and 20-some other leaders, a singular message was clear – the world’s largest army is deliberately preparing to do battle with the world’s most powerful military. The highly symbolic military spectacle, China’s first in six years, was presaged by comments from Xi noting that humanity now faced a choice between peace and war, with China now “unstoppable.”
It was also no small irony that the massive, uber-precision military assemblage rolled through the infamous Tiananmen Square where young Chinese unsuccessfully struggled for 51 days to embrace democracy 36 years ago.
President Trump’s response? As the Economistmagazine reported, the President took to his Truth Social media, messaging Xi to “give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against the United States.”