“I hold a peace pipe in one hand and a tomahawk in the other.”
– President Touches Clouds, Wearing the Cape
By Marion G. Harmon

And there you have effective personal and international relationships in a nutshell. 😉

In the Wearing the Cape universe, super-powered people are pretty common. Following their advent, every nation descended into chaos, some worse than others. The damage in the USA was limited mostly by the work of superheroes, among them a Native American woman named Touches Clouds. She has since gone on to become the nation’s elected president and has maintained peace and security on the whole, which, in such a tumultuous world, is no small achievement.

This is how she did it.

She worked with everyone who was willing to work with her, reaching agreements which were of mutual benefit to all parties involved. But, of course, people don’t simply obey, follow, agree with, talk to, or even tolerate someone just because that is preferred. No, there are and always will be people who only respond to force, and must be met with force. One can be as nice and charismatic as heck, but there must be serious consequences in store for those who do truly harmful things.

An adorable dog might be easily loved, but only a fool forgets that it has teeth.

Someone very clever once asked the question, “Is it better to be feared or loved?”

The answer is: yes.

Yes, it is better to be either feared (preferably by one’s enemies) or loved (preferably by one’s friends), because if one is neither of those things, then one has no defense whatsoever against the predators of the world.