GREAT QUOTE from e-mail from a friend... colors and line breaks added...
Alas .. a lot of presidents
get blamed for enacting
the wishes of the people.
The public tends to imagine
futures that are like Star Trek . .
all glossy surface,
but no reality underneath.
And they tend
to elect presidents
for their ability
to convincingly promise
to deliver
what cannot be delivered.
Or they do deliver it. . to the letter. . .
and then the public gets upset
that the Enterprise has no bathrooms.
They want a president who is
smarter than they are ..
who will include
bathrooms
on the Enterprise
even though they forgot to ask for them. .
but they also want a president
who would do things
the same way they would.
And did I mention
that they want
this Enterprise
to built yesterday. .
and for free?
Needless to say. .
there is a tension here . .
And these sorts of issues
hit Putin and his successors
the same way they hit
Bush and his successors.
Germans like to blame Hitler ..
because it implies
that it was him and not them.
But Hitler is just another psychopath
without the deep support of the people.
We get excited about the idea
that electing a new president
will solve the problem,
because it's much harder
to elect a new people.
For context, see:
http://ca-katarina.livejournal.com/9527.html
A friend's response to the responses to the VP debates
[friend locked post]
My comments included:
Well, without the deep support
of a sufficient percentage of them.
(And it is certainly true that
German antisemitism
predates Hitler by ... quite a bit.)
He had enough support
to get the ball rolling,
to get both the sub-structure
(legal and political and bureaucratic)
and propaganda machine going.
He was charismatic and
hit a "nerve" that the resolution of
WWI had left exposed.
And those that did not
support Hitler
were, for the most part,
either
sufficiently apathetic
or
afraid.
Apathy and fear
will serve
just as well
as support
for certain political ends.
"The people..."
is rarely
one thing.
Or there would be no one
to report on.C
OK,
make that MOST
political ends...