(03-14-2022, 12:00 PM)David Horn Wrote:(03-14-2022, 09:01 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:(03-14-2022, 08:42 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Many people find in Donald Trump the rarity if a pol who not only tolerates their vulgarity, but also actively endorses it. Of course, many also despise the vulgarity that Trump is.
As an entertainer and businessmen, I find his vulgarity amusing and funny. As a politician, I find it concerning. I am not a Catholic school nun when it comes to foul language, but we need too much vulgarity gets in the way of projecting an image which is authoritative and gets people to want to follow you. I will say this though...it is infinitely better to be too blunt and vulgar than to exhibit the fake, stale, flaccid presentation style which dominate both sides of politics since the 90s. You'll notice that, after 4 years of Trump, the nation has grown tired of the fake, obsequious communication style that Biden returned to when taking office.
Side note: one reason I think we haven't had many Xer presidents (just one cusper in Obama) is that their generation-of-rebels, school-of-hard-knocks personal style doesn't lend itself well to top bureaucratic positions (Trump is not Gen X, but his bad boy image tends to sit well with them). Gen X are more comfortable projecting the authority of an entrepreneur, a field commander or tough love sports coach, not a head of state. In terms of conservatives as a whole, I think we need to be steering in a direction that restores a sense calm, steady-hand authority coming from a place of strength. Something FDR was amazing at in spite of being downright evil on a policy level.
I agree, we don't even listen to the obsequious anymore ... nor should we. It's an obvious form of political speech intended to offend no one and not make enemies. Unfortunately, it fails at the latter by being too good at the former. People want to be offended by things they find offensive. Duh! Smearing on a thick veneer of inoffensive rubbish is insulting to almost everyone. Will anyone in a power position see that for what it is? Apparently, Trump and his doppelgangers (Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis come immediately to mind) seem to have in mastered at a crude level. Maybe, it IS crude, and they are spot on.
It is possible to use vulgar language with wit. Just think of the late George Carlin with his Seven Words That You Can't Say on Radio. Out of context the words are silly, and that is the essence of the joke. OK, the word shit refers to anything worthless and either offensive or harmful. Children at one point in their lives admire their ability to produce something for the first time, and it is literally shit. They are also taught to use the toilet to dispose of it and to not be proud of it. They are taught only a little later, in most cultures, to be proud of something more useful, like recognizing letters and numbers, or for a really-brilliant kid, how to read words and to manipulate numbers (Learning to read at age three is brilliant; learning to read at five is normal; not learning to read until seven indicates that one is a dullard; only verifiable idiots never learn how to read). The word feces is a prissy euphemism, as are other words as slang or clinical substitutes for it. Of course many of us have more delicate words for abstract expressions of worthless ideas (nonsense for worthless and absurd ideas or statements) or objects (garbage, rubbish, schlock) that might be both expressive and precise. Heroin users who know that the drug that they can't shake often call it shit, a fair assessment of something that does no good.
OK, it is necessary that certain ideas such as racism, militarism, exploitation, and religious bigotry are not only offensive but destructive. Such are ideological equivalents of raw sewage. To find what Vladimir Putin is doing in Ukraine is inexcusably vile requires, if one is not directly affected, that one have some minimum of intellect and maturity. Doing bad things to innocent people must offend a decent person. I do not yet understand how people can do certain things to others yet consider themselves human, whether doing an armed robbery, abusing a child for sexual gratification, or mowing people down or directing them to gas chambers, or marching them into slave ships.
I have known people who could never turn off their offensive behavior before I ever heard the words "Tourette Syndrome". Hearing such people talk was unpleasant, but that is nothing in contrast to an air force blasting civilian targets.
When a vile person who uses offensive language or images turns such into public policy, we then have big trouble. People of intellectual sophistication (a college degree is now a good proxy for such even if it isn't reliable at the personal level) rejected Trump at the polls in 2020. Even white males as a demographic, if that was only marginally so. It's not that degree-holders are especially sympathetic to the disadvantaged or downtrodden; college-educated people were one of few demographics to vote for Goldwater in 1964.
...As for Obama, I have noticed that his electoral victories in 2008 and 2012 looked more like those of Eisenhower than of anyone else. Take away the farm-and-ranch and the Mormon vote from Ike, and you have Obama elections. Biden won with a map somewhat similar (if not as impressive) as Obama in 2020, which may suggest that electoral victories of Democrats for the next couple decades will look much the same. Democrats are adopting a conservative foreign policy by default (I see Trump as almost the sort of disaster that Republicans made of McGovern in 1972, except that McGovern lost in a landslide and probably was not quite as bad as he was said to be. Trump is simply that bad for praising tyrants and dictators. By nominating Trump the GOP has sold out sensibilities once associated with conservatives. It is too early to determine whether the GOP will pay dearly for aligning with Trump, although we are now late enough into the Crisis of 2020 that we could find out soon. It will be up to Republicans to oust the hucksters, demagogues, poseurs, ignoramuses, and unsavory types among them. Democrats can at most defeat such people in elections.
But back to Obama and Biden. Obama is unique as President, but someone has to be closest to him as an analogue for behavior and temperament. As a Reactive he might have wished to be another FDR, but he became a stereotypical "mature Reactive". Those are our first two Presidents, the Civil War vet Presidents other than McKinley, Truman, and Eisenhower. Cautious because of his experiences? Check. Not using the power of government to settle personal scores or enrich oneself? That's maturity itself. Free of alienation? Check! (if you want to know what an 'immature reactive' is by contrast, then look at the bulk of fascist dictators and Stalinist stooges, Mao Zedong and his early inner circle, and Ho Chi Minh. Yuck!) Scandal-free? Ideally so, and the Obama administration has been one of the cleanest. Chilly rationalism? That is desirable in political figures in all times.
Ultimately it was the whack job that Obama used on Osama bin Laden, and later al-Zarqawi, that suggests someone who could learn from Chicago gangsters. I can easily see Obama, had he been allowed to take that route, as the sort of prosecutor or judge that gangsters and crooked politicians dread. The Chicago political machine wanted him out of that role, and US Senators or Presidents don't prosecute grafters or drug kingpins. Obama is one of the "do the crime and do the time, and don't fault me for giving you the Max" types. We will see more of those. That said, the killing of Osama bin Laden was much in character, if not justification, of an underworld hit. Obama may have had no admiration for Al Capone (underworld figures of Capone's generation were another category of "immature reactive")... but Capone would have admired what Obama did to the worst terrorist who ever lived.
Obama's role in history is awkward due to his timing as President. He's the sort of leader that one expects after, and not at the peak, of a Crisis. The best that his type can do in a Crisis is to mitigate it; he can't decide it as a political leader. His type is more likely to decide a Crisis on a field of battle, more like.... Ike. Nimitz. Patton. Grant. Washington. Sheridan. Montgomery. DeGaulle. Zhukov. I look at Obama and I can imagine a certain sort of general or admiral, a spit-and-polish officer whom subordinates dislike in peacetime but relax the spit-and-polish character in war. If I am facing someone like him as The Enemy then I am in dread if I am not a fool. His kind gets casualties for which he feels shame but still inflicts a high casualty rate upon the Other Side. One wins wars by compelling the Other side to run out of troops and supplies.
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.