Nostalgia - Editorial, The Week in Review

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.