I was watching CNN International, and there was a report about weapons sales to Sudan, and concern over their use in regional conflicts, etc. So they said the UN and the US had been trying to use carrots and sticks in an attempt to stop the weapons trafficking, but that it hasn’t seemed to work. Well, have they considered the possibility that perhaps the Sudanese do not like carrots? That might be the problem right there! And then if they don’t eat the carrots, they get hit with the sticks, right? Well then it’s no wonder this isn’t working. We’re trying to influence a group of people to do what we want, and the only message they’re getting is that if they don’t want to eat a carrot, they get beaten with a stick. No wonder they don’t like the United States!
You know the expression: “You get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar”? (I’m not saying they’re flies: the flies thing is metaphorical. It’s just the part about the honey and the vinegar that’s intended to be taken literally.) Well, I don’t see anything about carrots (or sticks, for that matter) in there, do you? So maybe we should try honey and vinegar. So if they won’t eat the honey, I guess we throw the vinegar on them, or something like that. Maybe we could use a super soaker squirt gun instead: I didn’t see anything about that in the rules. But about the carrots & sticks or honey & vinegar thing: I think you have to use one as a lure and the other one as a weapon or something. That’s just basic diplomacy. I don’t make the rules, so don’t get mad at me.
But you know, maybe if we mixed it up a bit, they’d come around. So I would suggest this, if you’re not so hot on the honey and vinegar thing: Why don’t we try hitting them with the carrots next time? That wouldn’t hurt so much, so maybe they would like us better. And I think we shouldn’t bother with the sticks at this point: they probably have sticks of their own in Sudan anyway, so we’re probably bringing them over there for nothing. And maybe we should actually consider simply using different types of foodstuffs until we find something they like, and just forget about the whole hitting them with stuff thing. The problem may simply be that we haven’t ever offered them any food that they like yet. And that’s not really their fault, so how about just trying something else?
But you know, how about trying something like Hostess Twinkies? Everybody loves Twinkies, right? Plus, Hostess is in bankruptcy right now, so buying lots of Twinkies for diplomacy purposes might help the company, and it might help with diplomacy, so everyone would win then. Well, except for the carrot farmers. But hey: if they can’t grow a product people would rather eat than get hit with a stick, then they shouldn’t get any more subsidies anyway!
Talk about a waste of money! That’s probably the whole reason we use carrots and sticks to begin with: because none of us want to eat them! And if we don’t want them, then how can we expect other countries to want them either? That’s just common sense.
