06-01-2018, 04:56 PM
Well, some of us know the answer to this:
Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early (Barack Obama).
Barack Obama is a mature reactive, the best sort that there can be -- someone who is unable to convince others of some great moral agenda, but on the whole shows respect for protocol and precedent. Unlike the worst sort of Reactive, he is in no way alienated. He does not use power to settle old scores (as with someone who might have thought 'those Jews/Poles/liberals/socialists, etc. offended me, so send them to the concentration camp!), which would be consummately dangerous as well as destructive and dehumanizing.
His sort typically follows the last act of an Idealist generation in achieving the apex of power -- if events go right. OK, so he is rational, learned, and honest... but he might be incapable of recognizing the sheer ruthlessness of his potential opponents. He thought that he could ridicule Donald Trump, a hollow man unlike anyone that America has known as a President on the assumption that that hollow man could fade into the obscurity best for all (and in view of how the Trump Administration has gone, probably for Trump himself and his coterie). It would be better had Trump been known simply as a loud-mouth billionaire whose shyster tendencies could be ignored by most of us.
Beyond any doubt, objective histories will recognize Obama as an above-average President far better than his predecessor, let alone his successor. But will history be objective? Not if America sinks into a new era of dictatorial rule that sticks. Obama might be seen as an example of a last gasp of liberalism that a Franco-like tyranny uses as an excuse for numbing conformity, severe inequality, and harsh repression. We need remember that the winners write the history books, and we can all just imagine how glorious the triumph of fascism or Communism might be -- or for that matter, how crazy was the idea of a bunch of people in powdered wigs standing up to the British Crown in 1776. Big mistake, Messrs. (Sam) Adams, Hancock, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Marion, etc, as the gallows prove.
Things can get worse -- far worse -- than Trump.
Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early (Barack Obama).
Barack Obama is a mature reactive, the best sort that there can be -- someone who is unable to convince others of some great moral agenda, but on the whole shows respect for protocol and precedent. Unlike the worst sort of Reactive, he is in no way alienated. He does not use power to settle old scores (as with someone who might have thought 'those Jews/Poles/liberals/socialists, etc. offended me, so send them to the concentration camp!), which would be consummately dangerous as well as destructive and dehumanizing.
His sort typically follows the last act of an Idealist generation in achieving the apex of power -- if events go right. OK, so he is rational, learned, and honest... but he might be incapable of recognizing the sheer ruthlessness of his potential opponents. He thought that he could ridicule Donald Trump, a hollow man unlike anyone that America has known as a President on the assumption that that hollow man could fade into the obscurity best for all (and in view of how the Trump Administration has gone, probably for Trump himself and his coterie). It would be better had Trump been known simply as a loud-mouth billionaire whose shyster tendencies could be ignored by most of us.
Beyond any doubt, objective histories will recognize Obama as an above-average President far better than his predecessor, let alone his successor. But will history be objective? Not if America sinks into a new era of dictatorial rule that sticks. Obama might be seen as an example of a last gasp of liberalism that a Franco-like tyranny uses as an excuse for numbing conformity, severe inequality, and harsh repression. We need remember that the winners write the history books, and we can all just imagine how glorious the triumph of fascism or Communism might be -- or for that matter, how crazy was the idea of a bunch of people in powdered wigs standing up to the British Crown in 1776. Big mistake, Messrs. (Sam) Adams, Hancock, Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Marion, etc, as the gallows prove.
Things can get worse -- far worse -- than Trump.
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.