(04-21-2018, 06:19 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote:(04-21-2018, 08:54 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:(04-21-2018, 03:44 AM)Another Xer Wrote: To be repulsed, not followed.
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Quote:Quote:. Maybe the Idealist with a grand vision isn't so necessary as is leadership that out of its own pragmatism concocts principles no more profound than kindness, caution, and conscience. That's the best that a Reactive like Barack Obama can do. After Donald Trump, we may have to settle for that -- but we will do fine.So you think that the USA may muddle through this 4T with Xer leadership?
Much is possible, and nothing is certain. Who knows? Maybe we end up with another Barack Obama who has no pretension to great moral leadership but generally chooses the way of rectitude. The real danger with reactive leadership comes with angry, callous figures whose idea of leadership is to settle scores. Almost all Reactive figures have some stinging experience. The best ones decide not to let such get in the way of winning the Great Struggle.
Obama is about as good as a country can get out of a Reactive leader in a Crisis, and I am tempted to believe that he will not be the last Reactive leader with practically the same virtues. I can think of far worse -- the extreme being none other than Adolf Hitler. I think we can all see what was wrong with him as a leader. He was not stupid, crazy, or lazy. He was simply evil.
I remember seeing some historian recognize that Hitler well knew the realities of logistics. He knew economics well enough to know what inputs needed to go where. He knew the German transportation system well. He could give a stirring speech -- the problem was that that speech was often full of rage, and if not rage, maudlin sentiment. If he needed to learn something, he learned it. He chose well between military options until those options became little more than choosing how to lose. He was a borderline genius. The problem was that he was such a Nazi. Had it not been for his atrocities, his enslavement of subjected peoples, and above all the mistreatment of the Jews, he would have fared better. The problem with Hitler was that his cruelty, bigotry, and anger were his character. Just because Hitler occupied one's country one had even more cause to resist him -- to recover God-given rights, including "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".
Another bad type is the stooge for a foreign tyrant. I think of Bierut in Poland, Ulbricht in East Germany, Gottwald in Czechoslovakia, Rakosi or Gero in Hungary, and Gheorgiu-Dej in Romania -- or Quisling in Norway, Tiso in Slovakia, Mussert in Holland, Pavelic in Croatia, Laval in France, and in the end, Mussolini in Italy. They do the local dirty work as puppets (killing opponents, aiding in the looting of a country, and destroying civil liberties). Those are the 'little Hitler' or 'little Stalin' types. America is too big for anyone like that.
Maybe we muddle through. Maybe this Crisis will prove more a cultural and political transformation with major reforms of our political system.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.