Daily Inspiration Quote by Elizabeth A. Sherman

The line lands like a civics lesson with the gloves off: it’s not an indictment of one president so much as a critique of the ritualized hypocrisy that props up American power. Sherman frames “avoiding shaking hands” as the supposed moral baseline, then punctures it with the kicker: “except when it’s advantageous.” That last clause is doing the heavy lifting, exposing how “values” often function as branding until interests demand a rebrand.

The handshake is a small, almost banal gesture, which is why it’s such a sharp symbol. It’s public, photographic, and instantly legible; it’s also deniable. Leaders can sell it as “diplomacy,” “opening channels,” or “realism,” while critics read it as validation. Sherman’s point is that the debate is usually staged: the real decision isn’t whether a dictator is brutal (everyone knows), but whether the brutality is currently inconvenient to acknowledge.

There’s an educator’s clarity in the construction: “always” sets up an official myth of American restraint, and the exception reveals the curriculum’s missing chapter. The subtext is a familiar pattern in U.S. foreign policy: condemnation for adversaries, accommodation for strategic partners, and photo ops that launder relationships through the language of peace-making. It’s a sentence aimed at media cycles and history textbooks alike, asking who gets labeled untouchable, who gets rehabilitated, and what “advantageous” quietly includes: bases, oil, intelligence, trade, leverage.