It's Sad, Really. . .

It's sad, really, that Hillary Clinton might become our first woman president.  No, it's not sad because she is female.  Not sad because she used her own email server for her Federal communication.  No. . .
It's sad because she is good, but not great.  And that makes me think. . .

In the history of our country, we have probably never had a great person as president.  Never.  Washington was great because he refused to become king.  Lincoln was great because he led the country towards reunification and the liberation of slaves.  FDR was great because he helped the country cope with the Great Depression, sort of.  At least he worked at it.  Teddy Roosevelt was great because he came up with the national Park system.

But none of these people were really, really great.  Not really.  Not like Edison, or Rockefeller, or George Washington Carver.  Not even like Martin Luther King.  The president's job description might as well include, "No creativity needed.  Cleverness useful, but don't bring intelligence, either."

I suppose the ongoing popularity of Trump echoes that of Andrew Jackson in demonstrating that the people who aspire to this political office not only don't need to be great, they don't need to be good or desirable.  They just need to be ambitious, and have few scruples.

I don't agree with those who contend that Americans don't deserve a great person as president.  Rather, the presidency probably won't work very well for a truly great person.  It needs the mediocrity of a G.W. Bush and the dementia of a Ronald Reagan.  Above all, it needs horse-trading skills, tit-for-tat wiliness, and a limited vision of how to work around the advisors and power brokers in order to keep one's family safe.  I suspect being a good shot might be useful, too.

Greatness would be helpful for a Supreme Court justice.  Greatness might be useful for a Representative or Senator committed to helping govern the country.  It might not be necessary, as so many who have been elected have demonstrated.

Meanwhile we citizens reward mediocrity and entertainment value, the marketplace rewards greed and ruthlessness, and the few great people in our world might get a nice obituary some day.

I think it still behooves all of us to figure out what true greatness is, and try to be it.

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.

Fear and Loathing in the USA

This will be short.  Read Seth Godin's blog at this address:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2016/04/apocalypse-soon.html

No one says it better, in my opinion.  Just remember: Adolf Hitler was elected to office.  Elected!

If the parallels today don't scare the bejesus out of you. . . well, please make an appointment with your psychiatrist as soon as possible.  Oh, and read Seth's blog.

Abject Idiocy

You hear a mosquito whirring near your ear and you slap it.  Unthinking, habitual, right?

Some hear anything about controlling the sale and ownership of guns and they scream, shout or jut their chin out and declare, "You can't take way our constitutional rights."  (Some might say Second Amendment rights, or some variant of same.)  Unthinking, lockstep, related psychologically to "Heil Hitler" and "White Power", in my opinion.  

Look back with me at the reason for the Second Amendment.  James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution, was violently against a standing army for the young nation.  He believed that if the men of the colonies owned a firearm, they could be mustered to defend the nation in militias.  He assumed some level of competence (based partly on the experiences they had had in the Revoltionary War.  Keeping  a standing army would have cost taxpayers dollars they needed to live, and build the nation, and was generally not necessary.  

Fast forward to 2016.

We have a standing army.

We train our standing army, and our military reservists.  Some of them (not many) are even trained to kill enemies with guns.  Personally.  Up close.  

Enter the gun lobby and it's supporters.  

An incredible number of people wanting to own firearms and carry concealed weapons have never served in the armed forces, never trained to take lives, and never trained to act responsibly in situations of intense risk.  I think of the Aurora theater shooting, or any of the armed attacks on schools as "situations of intense risk".  Few of the strident shouters are willing to devote one weekend a month and two weeks a year to reservist training.  It would interfere with their lives, after all.  And it might be dangerous.  But they believe they have their rights without corresponding responsibilities. 

Does the phrase "Spoiled brats" come to anyone's mind but mine?

The Swiss is sometimes used as a prime example of a country where gun ownership is not only legal but required.  So is being subject to immediate deployment in the armed services, and for most men, annual military training.  Would Clive Bundy want to be called away from his political protests to serve in the Army?  Or Ted Cruz, or Marco Rubio?  I can't even imagine Trump with a rifle.

(His mouth serves so well!)

We not only license drivers, but examine them for basic skills first.  We license hunters, but do not examine them for safety skills or woodsman's skills.  We have folks unwilling to license or examine gun owners, and yet the number of gun related deaths were nearly the same as the number of auto related fatalities in 2013.  

Can we have non-lockstep conversations about this, please?  With a view to looking twenty, thirty, and fifty years down the road to reducing gun related fatalities?  (And requiring all gun owners under 70 years of age to be trained yearly in the military reserves?)

What do you think?  Leave a comment and let us know.