11-12-2022, 05:44 AM
(11-11-2022, 06:35 AM)JasonBlack Wrote: With support for government at an all time low among both Republicans and Democrats, and two presidents in a row with exceedingly low approval ratings, who is eventually going to fill the leadership vacuum? At present, we have the party that is supposed to be the steady hand of authority trying to play rebel, and the party which is supposed to be the rebel trying to play the hand of authority.
I suspect that approval of President Biden is higher than the polls show, and in my opinion Donald Trump fails to merit whatever polling support he had in the latter stages of his Neronian Presidency. Trump violated too many fundamental rules of basic human dignity, including those that kids usually learn by the middle of elementary school. His diplomacy was an unmitigated disaster for seeking ratification of his personality by rulers ordinarily hostile to the USA. he bungled the response to COVID-19. Then came the Capitol Putsch.
I checked Wikipedia for ratings of the Presidents, and Siena College had a poll in 2022 of ratings of the President. This one is the first to contain Joe Biden, who rates 19th. That is slightly above average for all Presidents, but our Presidents are mostly good people and competent administrators.
OK, Trump is a mismatch (43 of 45 -- Grover Cleveland not being counted twice). Aside from Trump the others ranked from 41 to 45 are Pierce (41), Harding (42), Buchanan (44), Andrew Johnson (45). At the top are "Mount Rushmore and FDR" -- FDR 1, Lincoln 2, Washington 3, TR 4. and Jefferson 5, which has been stable for decades. Saving Western Christian Civilization seems to be more important than keeping the Union together or defining the Presidency.
Recent Presidents (Truman on) rank as such:
Truman 7
Eisenhower 6
Kennedy 9
LBJ 8
Nixon 28
Ford 30
Carter 24
Reagan 18
GHWB 20
Clinton 14
GW Bush 35
Obama 11
as I have already mentioned FDR, Trump, and Biden. Nixon seems to be rising some and Reagan seems to be dropping a little. Others of the last century (I mentioned Harding and FDR) Coolidge is at 32 and Hoover is at 37. The demands upon the Presidency changed greatly during the Hoover administration and caught him off guard. Expectations for the Presidency were low, which may explain why Presidents ranked from #6 to #11 are all post-WWII Presidents. That Obama and Eisenhower seem to have similar conduct, political skills, and electoral appeal suggests how close #6 and #11 are. Trump is still rotten to the core of his slimy personality, and Dubya is still awful.
Quote:If I'm being honest, I hate that I have to ask this question. Ideally, people would be adults with their own life missions, motivations and ability to make rational decisions, but realistically, most people need leaders to get them through crises. The "facts don't care about your feelings" angle most conservatives have taken is just not going to work for most people, especially not in a 4T. You can't solve political problems by only thinking about the perspective of people you like.
Giving children adult responsibilities without guidance, as was especially so with the Lost, is gross exploitation. Adults trying to stretch their childhood while demanding adult means without adult responsibilities (the worst, but all-too-prominent Boomers) is abuse of everyone else. As I have noticed, liberals have turned "facts do not care for your opinions" upon the Hard Right.
Quote:On a less personal basis, when I look at history....the traits that make someone a strong, heroic leader and the traits that make someone a strong, despotic dictator have a disturbing amount of overlap, so the choice is between two options
1) an impotent leader who won't take the reigns of power or curb civil rights, but who is flaccid with regards to dealing with opposition or instigating real change
2) a leader with power and charisma who can rally people to solve problems...but whom you must take a leap of faith to support, because the chance that he'll become corrupt is always looming in the background.
How much of a dictator? When a country is in extreme Crisis its democratic government typically gives its leadership great power. Churchill could do anything but murder and steal at will, which are hallmarks of the nastiest tyrants. The British wartime economy was the one under tightest economic controls except perhaps for Stalin's Soviet Union at the time. Even Hitler left much slack for the production of luxury goods as late as 1944. except for the niceties of rule of law and civil liberties that did not hamper the war effort, wartime Britain was totalitarian for the Duration.
Lincoln, FDR, and Churchill were not corrupt. They had concerns other than lining their pockets. Contrast Nazi Germany: Goering had his fingers in every economic activity, and a common underground joke was "Im Westen liegt Frankreich; im Osten wird Frank Reich". (In the west lies France; in the East, Hans Frank gets rich). Hans Frank was the brutal overlord of the General Gouvernement of occupied Poland not annexed outright by Germany. Dictatorships often must offer booty as rewards. For Lincoln, Churchill, and FDR, booty is not an objective.
Quote:So tell me....who is exactly do we have to lead us? Trump? No. Biden? Hell no? Bitch McConnell or Pansy Pelosi? nope. Ben Shapiro or AOC? lmao. The mainstream cultures of the two political parties remind me of teenagers. The right are like rebellious teenage boys, the left like nagging, bratty and histrionic teenage girls. Do we have anyone truly inspiring? Someone who makes us feel mighty, powerful and motivated? Someone with vision that can bring together large factions from both wings of the political eagle?
We are in a Crisis Era, but one hardly as dangerous as the American Revolution, Civil War, or the Great Depression and World War II. Donald Trump has made the current 4T more dangerous than it need be. Obama and Biden seem to go by the book. This said, the Democrats are picking up the conservative virtues that the GOP has abandoned on behalf of what at first seemed like a successful populism. People dressing up as shamans or bringing Confederate flags into the Capitol, or erecting a gallows in front of the Capitol and shouting "Hang Mike Pence!" on January 6 were anything but adults. We may have the Democrats collecting the sane part of the political spectrum, and history shows that that is usually so large and unwieldy that it requires the split of the surviving Party into two.
Putting the Center Left and the Hard Right together is like putting water on a fire. The fire will evaporate the water away and come out of the attempt as strong as ever, or the water will quench the fire.
Let's face it; in normal times politics is not the center of our lives. We don't end friendships because someone else is on the opposing side of the political debate. OK, I taunted a leader of the ultra-Trumpist Patriot Party at a county fair as I walked by with a pulled-pork sandwich. I said
"This pulled-pork sandwich reminds me of the fascist pig you supported as President".
I don't ordinarily use the words "fascist pig" cheaply. But he had his children in tow (children should not be drawn into partisan politics), and his Trumpist faction had plenty of characteristics of a fascist movement. I proved what I suspected about extreme supporters of Donald Trump: that they have little self-restraint. The regular GOP was comparatively polite as were the Right-to-Life people.
Quote:I have claimed to be a moderate on several occasions, but applies more to the policies that I want, not the personality I would like to see in a leader. Make no mistake, I want someone with balls, and at present, I see very few contenders, whether we're talking young heroes, middle aged family leaders or elder sages.
Toxic masculinity ("he has balls") that societies once tolerated may have made sense when kings were leading armies in the field, but that is over. Victories often involve logistics and military technology. It is arguable that the British and Americans fared better than their German, Italian, and Japanese enemies because they fought in ways to reduce losses in the field. Much wartime death has been from communicable diseases and septic conditions; the British and Americans used antibiotics and field sanitation to reduce those. The human wave attacks of the sorts used by most armies in WWI or in the Iran-Iraq war are one way of ensuring that nearly all the soldiers at the front are green. The British and Americans had plenty of experienced, battle-hardened NCO's who made battlefield decisions that a junior officer in the German, Italian, or Japanese armies got stuck with because there were few NCO's.
Quote:PS: I'm not necessarily asking for a single grey champion. Feel free to list potential leadership figures for a range of positions.
Literary device, and far from certain or even necessary to emerge.
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.