03-23-2019, 08:23 AM
(03-22-2019, 10:34 PM)gabrielle Wrote:(03-22-2019, 04:16 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:(03-22-2019, 08:54 AM)gabrielle Wrote: Obama was the first Gen X president.
If you go by Strauss and Howe's timeline he is Gen X, and while he is definitely a Gen Joneser, he seems more Gen X-like to me than Boomer-like. He is too cautious and lacking in narcissism to be a Boomer.
Those seem like valid points. The difference, though, is that he did not go along with the individualist Reaganoid program, like most Gen X politicians have. He has greater vision and awareness of history, a boomer trait. No Gen X politicians have come forward yet of either party who have the ability to win a general election for the USA presidency. Gen Xers are too cynical for civics class. Those who can win have thus stayed apart from politics.
No, Beto can't win. His score is 11-26. Harris can't win. Her score is 4-16. Gillibrand 8-13, and Booker 6-7. So on with any Gen X contender you look at. The traits that make them losers will soon be obvious. Trump still can beat any known potential Gen X challenger in his party, according to his score.
I can't really see what these politicians' scores according to your astrological system have to do with whether Obama is Gen X or not.
And since Trump is a Boomer does that mean that he has "greater vision and awareness of history?"
I see Donald Trump as so awful that the grudging acceptance that many voters gave him in 2016 has become full-blown contempt. He may have picked up some people who like his plutocratic agenda because it cuts their taxes and lightens regulation, but the opinions of new voters of 2020 (who will be largely Millennial) are as a whole hostile to his Presidency.
"Greater vision and awareness of history" is something that one develops, chooses to neglect in favor of something more practical and enjoyable (let us say engineering or music), or has no desire to develop. Most dangerous is a superficial, biased, and wrong understanding of history that leads one astray into a very flawed vision and awareness of history. Think of Hitler at the extreme, who had the same history teacher that Adolf Eichmann had in the Austrian equivalent of K-12 education. Hitler thought that he knew History as a sort of Providence -- which is terribly wrong.
Almost as bad was Karl Marx, having been fascinated by Roman ruins in his native Trier (Augusta Treverorum in Roman days), and having the Enlightenment-era view of the world as largely progress, believed that the slave system of classical times gave way to the 'progress' of feudalism. A deeper historian Vinogradoff demonstrates that the classical order (and with it its ability to enforce the master-slave relationship and protect the Roman elites from dispossession) simply broke down, and slaves and serfs in rural areas generally became freehold farmers in the Dark Ages, only to become serfs again as they found themselves in danger of ravaging Saracens, Magyars, and Vikings, giving control of what had been their small parcels of land to a defender who created the medieval relationship of lord and serf. Can anyone see the succession of the slave system of the Romans to a community-lacking libertarianism by default to the feudal system as progress? The peasant dream is to own his own land and have little interference from the government even as taxes, which made Peasant parties as reliably conservative as aristocratic parties before World War II in central Europe. To this day, small farmers are a big constituency of the Conservative Party in the UK.
So I am more likely to examine institutions and how they solve problems at first, become institutions of power, either outlaw or render irrelevant any alternatives, and become increasingly rigid, corrupt, repressive, and deranged. Such is more Toynbee than Marx -- or for that matter, Djilas, who explains how Communist regimes went from revolutionary to reactionary about as Toynbee was in his last years. Power, and not formal ownership, creates the potential for severe exploitation; the nomenklatura of 'socialist' administrators of the economy become as rapacious as the executive elite of capitalist countries and develop aristocratic ways even to the extent of passing down power in a hereditary way. Marx thought that the owners were the inevitable oppressors and that 'socialist' democracy in a society with no private ownership would solve all problems. Professors, Party hacks, administrators, and senior officers have the same potential for exploiting the masses as do plutocrats.
It is safe to recognize that Obama understands his history, and was able to draw upon a broad base of knowledge for political wisdom. He could even draw upon knowledge of some Chicago figures that he surely despised (Obama has always been on the side of law and order) in signing off on an underworld-style resembling what Al Capone did to rival gangster Johnny Torrio -- but the victim was Osama bin Laden. Knowing that bin Laden was nearly as hated in places like Moscow, Teheran, and Beijing as in America, he knew what the diplomatic response would be: silence. Of course, whacking Osama bin Laden required more sophisticated intelligence (CIA) and muscle (Special Forces). After this, an egregious terrorist would not be safe even in Langley, Virginia (CIA headquarters).
For those capable of such, a sophisticated knowledge of history is a choice, whatever generational type one is born into (and stays in). Toynbee and Obama are both members of Reactive generations; Toynbee had no generational solidarity with a man born the same year as he was. Hint: 1889. If we are in a Crisis Era, then we need leaders who can call upon the eternal relevance of someone like Lincoln, FDR, Churchill... maybe Garibaldi, Juarez, Gandhi, Mannerheim, or Adenauer under somewhat different circumstances.
Howe and Strauss recognized the best features of Idealist leadership -- virtues of decisiveness, principle, and culture -- but also the hazards of arrogance, selfishness, and ruthlessness. Trump exemplifies few of the cardinal virtues of Idealists at their best; he flamboyantly exhibits arrogance, selfishness, and ruthlessness. He has more in common with Trotsky (an example of an Idealist at the worst) than with Churchill. The most significant similarity that Churchill and Trump share is that they are both rich landowners.
After the flagrant anti-intellectualism, dishonesty, and cruelty of Donald Trump we will want the antithesis.
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.