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American Presidency
Topic Started: Jun 2 2015, 04:33 AM (71 Views)
Catseye
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Pisa-Carp
I'm not a superior thinker. Often I know something before I know I know it, then I'll read something that informs me of what I know that I didn't know I knew.

If you didn't understand that, don't worry; it just means you're normal.

Anyway, I just this morning discovered the academic Walter Russell Mead, the kind of thinker and writer I've been looking for -- that is, someone who sees the way things are, without bias, or minimal bias. I love people like this; they're a beacon for me as I blunder around.

I'm noodling around in Amazon, reading about his books. A reviewer of Mead's book, Power, Terror, Peace and War wrote this: "[Mead] offers an historical examination of U.S. foreign policy and the way it has become so complicated, divisive, and fraught with unintended consequences that it is beyond the control of any one group or ideology."

Thinking about this along with the TNCR post (George's?) about gaps in TSA security practices, France's adoption of its own "Patriot Act" and Klaus' interesting response: These as well as other stuff make me see that I have for some time felt uneasy about how relevant the American Presidency is, to Americans and to the world. The office feels smaller now than when I was a young woman. Are the Presidency and the Congress dwindling in the rearview mirror of the American people? If so, is it because the people intuit that changing global conditions are rendering government policy and actions less relevant? (If in fact they are becoming less relevant?) Are the people correct in this? Or is the American public becoming so dumbed down that American government can no longer reach them? Is this a false impression engendered by media, and the truth is silent?

To what degree is this happening in other developed countries, if it is happening at all?

Increasingly it doesn't much matter what political candidates say about anything. Even when their utterances aren't half-assed, they are phrased in terms so loose, so amorphous, that they cannot later be accused of misrepresentation -- and if they are, they don't care.

Most importantly -- and I could be wrong about this, it's been a long time since I've listened to any campaign rhetoric and things may have changed -- any time political candidates' speeches do not scare the pants off their listeners with how authentically, scarifyingly f#*@ed up America and the planet are, then they are lying. And the media helps right along by making a big deal out of stupid junk like Hil's e-mails. And if they are lying, then really, what difference does it make to the big picture who gets elected?

Bringing me back around to my original question: Are our political leaders losing significance, importance, relevance? How much does it matter who's in and what they do once they're in?

And what are they getting out of the deal?
"How awful a knowledge of the truth can be." -- Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
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Klaus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Catseye
Jun 2 2015, 04:33 AM
I'm not a superior thinker. Often I know something before I know I know it, then I'll read something that informs me of what I know that I didn't know I knew.

If you didn't understand that, don't worry; it just means you're normal.
Donald Rumsfeld understands.
Trifonov Fleisher Klaus Sokolov Zimmerman
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Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Catseye
 
Are the Presidency and the Congress dwindling in the rearview mirror of the American people? If so, is it because the people intuit that changing global conditions are rendering government policy and actions less relevant? (If in fact they are becoming less relevant?) ...
To what degree is this happening in other developed countries, if it is happening at all?
...
Are our political leaders losing significance, importance, relevance? How much does it matter who's in and what they do once they're in?
Perhaps take a quick read on Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World.
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