Say what you will about the past four years and the man who presided over the leadership of our country. Whatever you may think of him as a leader, I hope we could agree on one thing--his rule, if you choose to call it that, was never about him. In stark contrast to his predecessor, the very same man who has assumed that role for another four years, our country did not rise or fall or awaken each day to the tirades, rants, justifications, and narcissistic preoccupations of the man sitting in the highest office in the land. Nor were we, or for that matter, other countries made subject to the tweets, texts, and posts of a retinue of followers and self-appointed autocrats weighing in on matters of their sovereignty and governance, subjects beyond the purview of those who are not citizens of those nations.
Since the election, the familiar preoccupation of the press and pundits across all media, social and otherwise, has reverted to a daily barrage of dire pronouncements and sycophantic endorsements of the entirely personal grievances, opinions, and animus of the soon to be leadership. That all too familiar dread with which we greeted each day 4 years ago has returned with renewed vigor. I know I share with many the sense that we are being held hostage to the moods and preoccupations of the moment of a single man and the echoes manifested by his oligarchic retinue.
This is of course nothing new. When kings and emperors ruled, their subjects suffered the same and often far worse forms of subjugation to their personal whims and that is why democratic forms of government arose--often through violent revolution. And just as our forebears did, many of us today suffer from a form of Stockholm syndrome, worshipping our psychic and emotional kidnappers as if deities. We may have thought we had left that form of governance behind us, learned our lesson and paid the bitter price to earn our freedom. We may have thought that by placing rule in the hands of the people through their elected representatives, and through laws and constitutions that shielded us from the vagaries of an autocrat we had forever moved beyond autocracy. We were mistaken.
Leaders are imperfect, they make mistakes, but we expect them to act with gravitas, respect for the people, and with statesmanship. We do not expect them to inject their personal agenda --their resentments, recriminations and whims of the moment into the governing of our nation. When foreign leaders do so we condemn their behavior just as history holds accountable those who have betrayed the public trust. Will our elected representatives bow before this personal agenda? Will the people accept four more years of waking to a national nightmare? Whenever her phone rang, the comedienne Betty Green was given to saying " Ah, what fresh hell awaits us", words to live by.
Comments