03-01-2019, 10:13 PM
(03-01-2019, 08:09 PM)Hintergrund Wrote:(02-26-2019, 12:37 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: ...This was perfectly good for Harry S. Truman's whistle-stop tour in 1948.
Yeah, Truman was a different kind of POTUS.
Yes, Truman -- the last American President to not have a college degree, from a time in which a college degree was not a necessity. Still, we may miss the rough-hewn quality that creates a realism that comes from (among other things) the outside toilet and having done real labor as on a family farm.
I made much of a difference between the official residence of the British Prime Minister (its decoration is seemingly identical with the Georgian style of the 18th century) and the gaudy displays of despotic and dictatorial power.The difference is not power; the British PM could have in extreme powers, the power to do everything but murder and steal at will... or to make big changes in the interior decoration of 10 Downing Street. All the leaders whose lair have been shown have records of murder or grand theft, if not both. Yes, Donald Trump is a kleptocrat, if not a murderer.
Restraint is the antithesis of excess, excess itself manifesting itself in bad taste. Maybe the bad taste is a side effect more than a cause. I'm not saying that someone infamous for flamboyant bad taste, like Liberace, represents evil. It may impress people of limited refinement (Oh, look how far Liberace raises his hands before striking the piano keys -- Artur Rubinstein, Vladimir Horowitz, and Van Cliburn didn't do that, and no competent piano teacher will teach a budding pianist to do this. It's a great effect, like the candelabra set upon the piano -- or the robes -- to impressing people who rarely experience classical music in the usual setting. It contributes nothing to playing the piano). Liberace's rube audiences had little appreciation for nuance. OK, if you have an appearance in Ann Arbor, Michigan and there is a call for an encore, you might have Hail to the Victors! available, as it fits the community. (If you don't know why, then you know nothing about the University of Michigan). You do not put that between works by Chopin and Schumann as Liberace did.
Restraint by elites is a show of decency toward the masses, who may be much more prudish and prissy. Besides, the British PM might have as his main voting constituency either blue-collar workers and may have been one at time -- or small-scale entrepreneurs and yeoman farmers. Such people might come visiting.
A hint: both Barack and Michelle Obama seemed very comfortable in the PM's official residence. I doubt that Trump would.
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.