(01-06-2021, 08:06 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: Well, looks like a bit of drama today in DC. All the people who don't know generational theory are shocked.
If I see any generational angle is that Americans finally split between those who endorse the worst Boom traits and everyone else. Trump is Boomer vices (arrogance, ruthlessness, and egoism) at their extreme and and a rejection of two of the three cardinal virtues (education and principle) of Boomers that one ordinarily expect of Idealist generations. If he is decisive, he is decisively wrong.
Personality is gravely important in leadership of any kind. This applies just the same to clergy as to soldiers, business executives as to union officials, and to college deans as to the police. A free-enterprise system with an adequate welfare state (to be sure we are not quite either, and few of us think that we have an adequate compromise between the two.. you tell me if you think that we live in what Voltaire's philosophical antihero Doctor Pangloss calls "the best of all possible worlds" in Candide) has plenty of use for flawed people as ciphers within the system... laborers, clerks, shopkeepers, and technicians. Many people must live on the brink of economic failure due to marginal competence, character flaws, and poor choices in life. Ideally we all have incentives to make ourselves better and not have inexcusable attachments and inappropriate desires. Whatever generation we are in we cannot excuse criminality, and we should not be so surprised at the fates of such Boomers as Ted Bundy, Judias "Black Widow" Buenoanno, David Koresh, Osama bin Laden, or Jeffrey the Pedophile Epstein, all five of whom died for their monstrous choices in life.
Donald Trump is more subtle than those monsters, but not so much that he could avoid such spectacular failure. His faults are obvious to practically all but his cult now. He may have been useful for some political and economic objectives, but of those objectives require a vehicle such as him to make them work, then those objectives themselves are suspect. Trump saw himself more important than nearly 400 years of political reality with the effective founding of the General Court of Massachusetts (in practice a responsible, elected legislature) and even longer with the tradition of English common law. Such is what the Colonies already had in operation at the time at the time of the American Revolution. It took nearly eighty years for America to recognize what can be so horribly wrong with an Idealist generation while doing nothing to protect against such.
It is wonderful to say that we have a solid Constitution and that it works even in a Crisis. Even in the desperate times of the American Civil War in the Crisis of 1860, and the economic collapse of the Great Depression and the initial successes of fascist gangsterism in dangerous foreign powers in the Crisis of 1940 the Constitution prevailed and defined our response as the most benign one under the circumstances. But even the Constitution suggests some tradition behind it, and wise people solidified that tradition in formal law as rules of government in the Crisis of 1780.
1780, 1860, 1940, and now 2020. As in those other grave times we have an existential crisis. We have a costly war, and if the enemy isn't George III, Confederate secessionists defending slavery, or such demonic enemies as Hitler and Tojo it is the SARS-2 virus more contagious than AIDS and similarly lethal. So we drive out the Redcoats, wage a war against the one greatest fault in the inception of our Republic, or liberate territory as far away as battlefields of the Second Punic War in a war analogous to the Second Punic War (except that we wisely choose -- we are better than the Roman Republic, let alone its depraved Empire) that allow the reconstitution of Germany, Italy, and Japan as respectable members of the international community. Still, the implacable enemy of all that is good and vital in America must be destroyed and if it is not so much a place as is Carthage (Carthago delenda est, as said Cato the Censor), much the same applies to the monstrous evil that Hitler and Tojo represented eighty years ago or SARS-2 today. Even with my limited knowledge of Latin I can imagine a near-analogue in Churchill's less-succinct but more explicit rhetorical call for the obliteration of the pernicious influence and design of Adolf Hitler.
Usually classical Latin is more succinct than English, but this time "COVID-19 must die" is just as complete as "Morbus coronarii viri anni 2019 est delenda" despite being shorter as an expression.
...At the least, let us become what we insisted that post-fascist Italy, the German Federal Republic, and a lesser Japan become. Donald Trump may be far from the monstrosities that Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo were... but he has clearly shown how inadequate he is as a leader. From a generational standpoint, Obama was in all likelihood about the best sort of leader that a Reactive type can be, as he is "weak" on the usual pitfalls of a Reactive leader (he isn't cynical, greedy, or unlearned) and strong on the virtues (respectful of tradition, perceptive, and pragmatic). He is more typical of the sort of leader that Americans get after a Crisis is over, and all that keeps him from being a fine conservative President is that he is not particularly conservative in his agenda. I see him as a more liberal version of Eisenhower more than anything else. But Obama is no Idealist, and certainly no Boomer. As he showed with the underworld-style hit (the only way such was possible) on Osama bin Laden, he serves his revenge cold (sorry about the Star Trek reference). What else could one expect? He could learn from anyone, and if he seems like the sort who had he had a career as a prosecutor or judge he would be a rackets-busting and corruption-busting DA or judge (such is his temperament) he could learn something from the Dark Side of Chicago history and apply it to the worst terrorist in history. Obviously he had far more justification for whacking Osama bin Laden than Al Capone had for whacking rival gangsters.
In view of the sick spectacle in the Capitol yesterday, we must all repudiate the dangerous cult of personality surrounding Donald Trump. If the first significant act of the 117th Congress is the impeachment of Donald Trump, then so be it. America must extricate the scorpions in its collective soul if it is to avoid the abyss of tyranny.
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.
