We're being led by Duds and Clods...
You know what really terrorizes me? The enemy within.
They're the people of influence in the Northeast power corridor, especially in New York and the Beltway of DC, that really are not driven by any belief system they are smart enough to understand, even at the basest level. They truly are stupid, unimaginative dull thinkers, far more than we have recognized, and we have placed too much faith and given far too much credit and influence to them in the political class and corporate sector.
I'd rather have a smart enemy than self-interested cunning dullards at the helm. At least you know how to counter with a smarter defense, it's difficult to argue with minds comprised of muddy waters.
I think your post might have gotten me to figure what exactly it is that bothers me the most about these people: almost none of them has accomplished anything of value, even to themselves.
ReplyDeleteSet aside any money any of them has made by guiding legislation to suit their purposes and/or inherited or otherwise been given and/or carved of the earnings of others (fees, commissions, etc.). Then show me where any of them has truly been anything that can be considered a financial success on any level. There may well be some, but I can't name them off the top of my head. I could wrack my brain for an hour and I'd bet they'd still be hidden.
I think a glance at your reading list led me to this. I haven't read any of the books yet but I saw the name Ken Follett...and I'm sitting within 3 feet of a beat-up copy of On Wings Of Eagles. And I'm thinking about Ross Perot, a man who built a business (and helped build others) and was faced with a really bad situation and walked the walk. I'm sure Perot has many faults and might be near-impossible to work for but if he's running things I bet you have a pretty confident feeling that if things get rough he won't leave you twisting in the wind...all of which I say only because almost 20 years ago he ran for president and the only thing you heard about him was that he was crazy. Never mind that he'd actually done things; never mind that he said things in debates that seemed pretty damned logical. The media insisted he was crazy. Implicitly, explicitly, almost everyone except Larry King did their best to run him down...and STILL, Perot received something like 19% of the popular vote in 1992. Which doesn't sound like much but that's a whole lot of people who either didn't think he was nuts, or figured that if he was, he was still an improvement.
Meanwhile here we are in 2010, run by a bunch of people who resemble nothing more than the dopey kid who's the high school starting quarterback only because his parents are on the school board. No thinking person respects them; everybody knows they are creeps and wants them gone. But how do you change it? From school to the White House, the question is the same: how do you change it?
By voting for the right people and trusting them to do the job they've been given, seems like the answer to that.
Who are the right people? No idea, but I'm sure they are among us...if I still believed in free will I'd worry about whether they'll show up in time. But I don't...that's another story. :)
I have rambled WAY too long, JR. Your posts make that happen; you're the modern journalist. I read you, Charles Krauthammer, and Mart Allen (an Adirondack ex-forester and columnist). That's good company, in my book.
A lot of the lack of accomplishment these people have never attained by their own merit has been explained to me by a friend who grew up in New Hampshire and although from a very modest family, he made it to Dartmouth. His explanation is simple, he was never accepted there (although he made it through and graduated) because he didn't come from one of the elite families that occupy these schools nor did he go to "their" prep schools. Bernanke, Geithner, et al all did and his experience is that it's all a "school tie club" that has existed fat too long. It is why he came out west. I think there is an element of truth in that.
ReplyDeleteOddly, of everything you can say about former Bank of America president Ken Lewis, all the years I worked there we had some respect for him because he did not come from that elite group. He was a middle class Mississippi kid who went to the state university, worked his way up the bank and never lived in New York. There was something very simple (although not humble) about him generally. He wasn't far from wearing the JC Penney suit.
Although I wasn't exactly in Perot's camp what he said made a lot of sense to me and the way he was treated by the mass media, and as a result the general population, as some kind of kook wise me up to the sickness of our "two-party" system. I feel similarly about about the lumped-in-one-crazy-bunch tea party believers. Maybe I don't agree or go along with some of their agenda but they have every right to be part of the process without ridicule.
Thanks for your praise, it's greatly appreciated although maybe not all that deserved. I do get compliments on what and how I write on these things and I'm told I'm read by more people than I think. I prefer not to know or think about that. The numbers game killed YouTube for me.