03-19-2019, 07:43 AM
(03-18-2019, 10:54 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(03-16-2019, 01:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Former US Senator Birch Bayh, D-IN (1928-2019).
The Great Society Democrats are dying off.
Dying off, and yet they are still ahead of their time, compared to today's regime.
Selfishness, cruelty, recklessness, folly, and inequity get very stale very fast.
The Silent are dying off, and the last ones with power -- which I can imagine including Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders as president, considering how badly Boomers have fcuked up with Dubya and Trump, let alone some of the worst business executives and non-profit administrators of all time -- will be the last. They would set a short-lived, unique style for probably a short moment in time.
But much good can happen in a short time in the long span of history. The Silent have never defined the Presidency as an Adaptive phenomenon. Maybe we would be far better off had we had someone like McCain, Lugar, or Voinovich as President instead of Dubya... d@mn Karl Rove for that "black baby" smear of McCain in 2000!
I have known people to be emotionally healthy and intellectually active into their 90s, if necessary. But we all know the risks. Someone like Donald Trump who demands more power than the Constitution allows and can ill use what he has may go mad if he was not so to begin with.
If we are to get a President like Biden or Sanders who will cross age 80 even in his first term, then he must recognize the perils of aging (Trump is worse than Reagan in having people to take his reactionary ideals on more extreme courses rather than to have people capable of backtracking when necessary), have competent understudies, and contemplate retirement if the signs of mental degradation set in severely. If we elect Biden or Sanders, the choice of VP had better have the possibility of the 47th President needing to step in instead of "it would be great to pick up (name state)".
We will need to undo the Trump-era damage to our institutions. Maybe just having the decency and caution that Trump lacks will be key.
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.