08-29-2018, 08:30 AM
We have a President with very bad behavior. It is possible to go from one President (let us say Eisenhower) to someone very different (JFK) without the successor vilifying the predecessor. Styles, priorities, and partisan identity will change. Even with a huge change of quality of leadership (like the younger Bush to Obama), a leader operating at the Adult level recognizes that the most effective repudiation if bad policies and practices is to change them quietly even if decisively.
Unless the previous President has done horrible things out of malice or corruption (in which case legal remedies are necessary even if unpalatable) it is best to not vilify the predecessor -- and Donald Trump did that frequently. He has shown the ability to find fault for any difference in position in the character of others. He has set his beliefs as the gold standard of goodness and relevance. That is what every despot and tyrant has done in the past, even to the extent of finding that anyone who falls short of fanatical obedience is to be ruined at best and obliterated at worst.
OK -- as a pragmatist I must accept that we are all flawed, and that we must choose others as friends, partners, subordinates, or bosses wisely. We cannot afford to be complete cynics who believe nobody, but we can't be starry -eyed idealists blind to human frailties and faults who then turn brutally upon those who fall short of our expectations.
Unless the previous President has done horrible things out of malice or corruption (in which case legal remedies are necessary even if unpalatable) it is best to not vilify the predecessor -- and Donald Trump did that frequently. He has shown the ability to find fault for any difference in position in the character of others. He has set his beliefs as the gold standard of goodness and relevance. That is what every despot and tyrant has done in the past, even to the extent of finding that anyone who falls short of fanatical obedience is to be ruined at best and obliterated at worst.
OK -- as a pragmatist I must accept that we are all flawed, and that we must choose others as friends, partners, subordinates, or bosses wisely. We cannot afford to be complete cynics who believe nobody, but we can't be starry -eyed idealists blind to human frailties and faults who then turn brutally upon those who fall short of our expectations.
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.