Analysis, Commentary, Opinion
06.23.2018
Nostalgia
I
watched the David Letterman interview of Barrack Obama this week. The interview
itself was conducted in 2017, after the former president left office.
What
a loss we have endured.
I
miss his self-confidence and dignity, the thoughtful way he answered every
question.
I
do not expect a lot from the office of the president.
I
do not expect any president to be a champion of human rights, or a just actor
on the global stage, not actually, because I know what kind of dirty business
the United States of America is engaged in around the world, and I know that
every president is called on to defend American interest, which are not really
the interests of the American people, but the interests of multinational corporations,
big agriculture, big banks, big oil, and the rest of the military industrial
complex.
I
miss the theatre of the presidency, the elegance of the former first couple,
their command of appointments of the office they occupied.
I
am nostalgic for it.
I
am use to being lied to by our political leaders, I am one of those who believes
that all politicians are liars and narcissists, self-serving egomaniacs. I do
not expect them to tell me the truth, but it is horrifying to watch as the
current administration and all of his allies in congress, in the courts, even
in houses of worship all over the nation, act as if there were no such thing as
the truth at all.
I
hear people asking all the time: “How did we get here?”
We
got here because we collectively decided that football is more important than
critical thinking, that basketball is more important than the arts, that
competitive dance is more important than civics, and because we allowed those
values to shape the budgets of our school systems nation-wide.
That
is how we got to the point where the average American cannot parse the findings
of basic science, and our leadership is so ignorant that they will tell you it
does not matter.
It
is not just that the current president lies (all the time), it the angry
venomous nature of the lies, and the defense of those lies, the sickening, groveling,
obsequious, acceptance of this fundamental change in our culture.
It
did not happen overnight, the water in the pot was slowly boiling, and now it
has boiled over.
How
do we recover from this, when we do not even have the basis for a dialogue?
We
cannot call the truth a liar, and then sit down at the table to negotiate a
deal.
If
you say that 2 + 2 = 5, how can I trust any agreement you might sign.
For
all of Barrack Obama’s faults, George Bush’s, Bill Clinton’s; they did not take
us to this place.
Do
you recall the Roman Emperor, Nero, how he played the fiddle while the city
burned, or his predecessor Caligula, who made his horse a senator.
Have
you ever seen the Nazi propaganda films, which they used to justify their
annexation of the Sudeten lands, and the invasion of Poland? Those films
depicted the Slavic and the Polish people as marauding rapists and murders, as lawless
animals who struck fear into the hearts of innocent Germans, before they
assaulted and killed them.
There
are echoes of those themes playing out now, playing out in our name, the people
of the United States of America.
A
majority of us are outrages, we want it to stop, but the majority of our
elected peoples, those with the power to stop, are more concerned about keeping
their own power than they are about the interests of justice.
Remember
this, law is the servant the servant of justice, the demands of justice must
always come first.
