Such leadership raises the question: if folks like this get swept into office by the dick-swinging swagger of a nation riding a wave of good times and economic prosperity–a state of mind that, I guess, encourages the slope-browed 'fuck you, rest of the planet' mentality–while other, even more hideous leadership gets swept into office by disastrous times–I'll steer away from the inevitable Hitler analogy and stick with Papa Doc, Marcos, and Nixon–then, well, what the fuck? If bad times AND good times make for assholes in charge, what hope is there? What should we wish for? Mediocrity? But then you wind up with medicrities like Grover Cleveland and all those other presidents between Grant and McKinley we never bother to memorize. On the other hand, shitty times did give us FDR and Churchill, so maybe my equation is flawed somewhere. Must go back and check the math…
Ed says:
I think the base of the argument has to be that democracy in uneducated or ignorant populations pretty much relies on luck. If people are voting with their wallets and a head full of backward, hateful ideas then getting a good elected leader is pretty much dependent on coincidence. Every once in a while you get someone who is not only effective but also appealing to people who don't like to think about stuff (Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Reagan).
True–and, sadly, many of the good guys (Truman, Teddy R., Johnson) have to stumble into office when someone else takes an unexpected dirt nap.
Dave says:
I was doin' some o' that ther fancy book learnin', when I came across this quote:
"The money power will endeavour to prolong it's reign by working on the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed."
You'd think even a semi-literate republican would be familiar with the works of one Mr. Abraham Lincoln. You'd also hope that they'd understand what that meant.
Dave says:
Oh, and sorry Ed, but Mel Gibson is one of yours. His folks rightly emigrated to avoid that whole 'Vietnam' thing. But he's still a U.S. citizen.
Fosters, on the other hand, is inexcusable.
myconfidence says:
Re: Lyndon Johnson being a good guy, I would have agreed until I started reading Robert Caro's LBJ biography. The first three volumes have been released and the fourth and final one is due sometime this year. The picture of LBJ that Caro paints is of a narcissistic, power-gluttonous, pragmatic-to the-point-of-absurdity pathological liar who stabbed every one of his three mentors (Franklin "I can't believe the fucking mess they've made of the magnificent society I helped liberate" Roosevelt, Sam "Woulda' been president if he hadn't been from the South" Rayburn, and Richard "I never met a docile, knows-his-place nigger I didn't like to oppress with the help of Northern Republicans" Russell) in the back as easy as he buttered his fucking grits in the morning, never mind that some Brother who would eventually lose his dignity or his life to the scum that Russell represented in its most putridly arrogant and pompous form should have literally done it to Russell as soon as they could find a Ginsu. Anyway, I just thought it was probably a questionable call to say that Johnson was a good guy. I'll grant that the turmoil he helped create was destructively beneficial to America in some ways, and I can't wait to see what conclusions Caro draws regarding Johnson's role in Kennedy's assassination. From the story up to the end of Vol. 3, I would take 3:4 odds that Johnson had to at least know that it was going to happen, if nothing else. War is very politically useful, profitable, and emotivist, hence warmongers, war-profiteers, and wannabe empire-builders (Dick Cheney=Trifecta!).
Ed says:
I never said Johnson wasn't a rotten bastard or that he is not currently burning in hell. He was a good president.
I DID call Johnson a "good guy"–but I did so in the professional sense of the term. That is, he was probably 'good' only in the sense that a Machiavellian prince can/should be. Though it's hard not to view the Civil Rights Act as a strong contender for the most fearlessly moral act of any administration last century. But then there's that whole 'let's make a bad situation in Southeast Asia even worse' thing…
myconfidence says:
No doubt, Johnson is arguably/in my opinion the greatest purely political mind of the twentieth century. I'm just grateful that Rove, Luntz, and modern medicine weren't around to help him pull the crazy-ass mindfuck that they've accomplished recently by getting the most incompetent administration since Coolidge reelected. It kills me that Bush affects a persona that pretty much was Harry Truman's personality. If Harry Truman met a punk bitch like Dubya', I believe he'd probably kick him right in the ass. Frankly, I think a Truman-esqe candidate is just what what the Dems need next go-round. Unfortunately, the closest thing there is is John McCain, who (I think) sold his short-term political soul to support/not not support Bush leading up to the last election in exchange for assurance that he'll get the nomination when Cheney returns from sabbatical to reign over the fourth ring of hell in '08.
Thanks for the catch, J. Dryden. The Machiavellian effectiveness is not lost on Caro, who goes the extra mile in trying to analyze how a man as addicted to sheer power could have done some of things he did. I guess it has to do with the fact that a pure pragmatist will do what needs to be done to get what he wants. In other words, the Civil Rights Act, I suspect, was less a magnanimous effort by LBJ, who had he a sincere bone in his body would have been a racist Dixiecrat, than a self-aggrandizing expedient to counterbalance the escalation in Viet Nam that made the military industrial complex of Eisenhower's farewell address what it is today. Caro goes into great detail about some of the shady deals Johnson put on Kellogg, Brown, and Root's plate over decades. Thank goodness for our entrenched national security interests in ensuring that Raytheon, Hughes, Halliburton, etc. have a vested interest in manufacturing war materiel even when we don't need it. Otherwise, we might (gasp!) have used the trillions of dollars we've wasted on aircraft carriers, redundant nukes, and other useless/redundant military programs to feed, clothe, house, and educate the millions of people we've (the US and our allies) starved, stripped, made homeless, kept impoverished, and killed over the past forty-odd years. With good (read: in the professional sense of the term) guys like we've had since then in the White House, who needs a military junta?
J. Dryden says:
Such leadership raises the question: if folks like this get swept into office by the dick-swinging swagger of a nation riding a wave of good times and economic prosperity–a state of mind that, I guess, encourages the slope-browed 'fuck you, rest of the planet' mentality–while other, even more hideous leadership gets swept into office by disastrous times–I'll steer away from the inevitable Hitler analogy and stick with Papa Doc, Marcos, and Nixon–then, well, what the fuck? If bad times AND good times make for assholes in charge, what hope is there? What should we wish for? Mediocrity? But then you wind up with medicrities like Grover Cleveland and all those other presidents between Grant and McKinley we never bother to memorize. On the other hand, shitty times did give us FDR and Churchill, so maybe my equation is flawed somewhere. Must go back and check the math…
Ed says:
I think the base of the argument has to be that democracy in uneducated or ignorant populations pretty much relies on luck. If people are voting with their wallets and a head full of backward, hateful ideas then getting a good elected leader is pretty much dependent on coincidence. Every once in a while you get someone who is not only effective but also appealing to people who don't like to think about stuff (Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Lyndon Johnson, Reagan).
J. Dryden says:
True–and, sadly, many of the good guys (Truman, Teddy R., Johnson) have to stumble into office when someone else takes an unexpected dirt nap.
Dave says:
I was doin' some o' that ther fancy book learnin', when I came across this quote:
"The money power will endeavour to prolong it's reign by working on the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed."
You'd think even a semi-literate republican would be familiar with the works of one Mr. Abraham Lincoln. You'd also hope that they'd understand what that meant.
Dave says:
Oh, and sorry Ed, but Mel Gibson is one of yours. His folks rightly emigrated to avoid that whole 'Vietnam' thing. But he's still a U.S. citizen.
Fosters, on the other hand, is inexcusable.
myconfidence says:
Re: Lyndon Johnson being a good guy, I would have agreed until I started reading Robert Caro's LBJ biography. The first three volumes have been released and the fourth and final one is due sometime this year. The picture of LBJ that Caro paints is of a narcissistic, power-gluttonous, pragmatic-to the-point-of-absurdity pathological liar who stabbed every one of his three mentors (Franklin "I can't believe the fucking mess they've made of the magnificent society I helped liberate" Roosevelt, Sam "Woulda' been president if he hadn't been from the South" Rayburn, and Richard "I never met a docile, knows-his-place nigger I didn't like to oppress with the help of Northern Republicans" Russell) in the back as easy as he buttered his fucking grits in the morning, never mind that some Brother who would eventually lose his dignity or his life to the scum that Russell represented in its most putridly arrogant and pompous form should have literally done it to Russell as soon as they could find a Ginsu. Anyway, I just thought it was probably a questionable call to say that Johnson was a good guy. I'll grant that the turmoil he helped create was destructively beneficial to America in some ways, and I can't wait to see what conclusions Caro draws regarding Johnson's role in Kennedy's assassination. From the story up to the end of Vol. 3, I would take 3:4 odds that Johnson had to at least know that it was going to happen, if nothing else. War is very politically useful, profitable, and emotivist, hence warmongers, war-profiteers, and wannabe empire-builders (Dick Cheney=Trifecta!).
Ed says:
I never said Johnson wasn't a rotten bastard or that he is not currently burning in hell. He was a good president.
J. Dryden says:
I DID call Johnson a "good guy"–but I did so in the professional sense of the term. That is, he was probably 'good' only in the sense that a Machiavellian prince can/should be. Though it's hard not to view the Civil Rights Act as a strong contender for the most fearlessly moral act of any administration last century. But then there's that whole 'let's make a bad situation in Southeast Asia even worse' thing…
myconfidence says:
No doubt, Johnson is arguably/in my opinion the greatest purely political mind of the twentieth century. I'm just grateful that Rove, Luntz, and modern medicine weren't around to help him pull the crazy-ass mindfuck that they've accomplished recently by getting the most incompetent administration since Coolidge reelected. It kills me that Bush affects a persona that pretty much was Harry Truman's personality. If Harry Truman met a punk bitch like Dubya', I believe he'd probably kick him right in the ass. Frankly, I think a Truman-esqe candidate is just what what the Dems need next go-round. Unfortunately, the closest thing there is is John McCain, who (I think) sold his short-term political soul to support/not not support Bush leading up to the last election in exchange for assurance that he'll get the nomination when Cheney returns from sabbatical to reign over the fourth ring of hell in '08.
Thanks for the catch, J. Dryden. The Machiavellian effectiveness is not lost on Caro, who goes the extra mile in trying to analyze how a man as addicted to sheer power could have done some of things he did. I guess it has to do with the fact that a pure pragmatist will do what needs to be done to get what he wants. In other words, the Civil Rights Act, I suspect, was less a magnanimous effort by LBJ, who had he a sincere bone in his body would have been a racist Dixiecrat, than a self-aggrandizing expedient to counterbalance the escalation in Viet Nam that made the military industrial complex of Eisenhower's farewell address what it is today. Caro goes into great detail about some of the shady deals Johnson put on Kellogg, Brown, and Root's plate over decades. Thank goodness for our entrenched national security interests in ensuring that Raytheon, Hughes, Halliburton, etc. have a vested interest in manufacturing war materiel even when we don't need it. Otherwise, we might (gasp!) have used the trillions of dollars we've wasted on aircraft carriers, redundant nukes, and other useless/redundant military programs to feed, clothe, house, and educate the millions of people we've (the US and our allies) starved, stripped, made homeless, kept impoverished, and killed over the past forty-odd years. With good (read: in the professional sense of the term) guys like we've had since then in the White House, who needs a military junta?