Leadership Quote by Major Owens

A “mean attitude” is a deliberately small phrase for something that can metastasize into policy, habit, and harm. Major Owens frames the “problem” not as a technical glitch in government but as a moral infection: it “festers,” it spreads, it gets comfortable. That verb does heavy work. It suggests neglect and complicity, the way institutions can normalize cruelty until it feels like common sense. By choosing the language of rot rather than debate, Owens refuses the polite fiction that all conflicts are just disagreements among reasonable people. Sometimes what you’re up against is spite with a budget line.

The second move is even more pointed: “has to be challenged.” Not discussed, not managed, not “understood,” but confronted. Owens’ intent is corrective, almost parental, aimed at a political culture that treats incivility as style and prejudice as “just how folks feel.” The subtext is a warning to moderates and proceduralists: neutrality is fertilizer. If something is festering, leaving it alone is an action, not an absence of one.

Context matters because Owens came out of a tradition of urban, civil-rights-oriented Democratic politics, where “attitude” often served as code for the racialized contempt that shapes everything from school funding to policing. Calling it “mean” isn’t naive; it’s strategic. It’s accessible, hard to defend against, and it re-centers the stakes on character and consequence rather than partisan talking points. Owens is naming cruelty as a civic problem - and insisting it’s beatable only when it’s treated as unacceptable, not inevitable.