The title of this post is a quote from an article entitled "If it ain't broken, it must not be America" by George Korda in the Knoxville News Sentinel of 1 November 2016.
That article suggests things may not be as bad as they seem. We humans do seem to have a proclivity towards pessimistic presentism whereby, when we feel that things are going badly for us (like now in the midst of this appalling US presidential election campaign), we tend to think that our lot is worse than it has been in the past. Clearly this is an over-reaction.
In the previous post on this blog I suggested that although things do feel pretty rum in the world right now, fear not; we are all probably not going to ruin, provided enough of us stick to our jobs and do our duty undistracted by the whirling noise of potential chaos.
Similarly, George Korda in his article quotes his own father as telling him:
I'm listening George. Here's an example of perceived good being praised, and I'm here to praise the sentiment too, even if the praise being praised here is over the top, American centric and politically slanted. I get what he's saying about standing tall to do the right thing, even when doing so risks your personal advancement:
If the tendency to polarization in politics seems largely to do with the contest to claim higher moral ground than your enemy, the kind of perspective Goldman's article brings may help us observers outside the US understand just what moral ground Trump could possibly even be standing on in this contest. Until this article I perceived him as just standing for "I'm not one of those Washington types". A negative. What this article is suggesting, as George Korda would have us do, is that many see Trump as standing for something positive. Something along the lines of standing for those who "do their duty and what they believe is right, rather than following the latest whim of some perceived prevailing political and cultural fashion."
Can this ghastly election spectacle therefore really be just the latest iteration of the ancient civilizational contest between those who believe in permanent values and those who see values as changing (conservatives v progressives), but now amplified to new dizzying and unprecedented heights by the spectacular speed and pervasiveness of contemporary communications?
The more things change the more they stay the same.
That article suggests things may not be as bad as they seem. We humans do seem to have a proclivity towards pessimistic presentism whereby, when we feel that things are going badly for us (like now in the midst of this appalling US presidential election campaign), we tend to think that our lot is worse than it has been in the past. Clearly this is an over-reaction.
In the previous post on this blog I suggested that although things do feel pretty rum in the world right now, fear not; we are all probably not going to ruin, provided enough of us stick to our jobs and do our duty undistracted by the whirling noise of potential chaos.
Similarly, George Korda in his article quotes his own father as telling him:
“Quit worrying. Times are always desperate.”And George counsels us to lead by finding the good and praising it, rather than calling on people to act simply because the system is broken. I hear what he is saying. I may have been partially guilty of doing that in my "...We'll all be rooned" post. That is saying: "Hey you out there, do the right thing because no-one else is". What I understand George to be counseling us with is we would be better served by saying act positively because it is positive. "Find the good and praise it" he says, quoting Alex Haley (who?).
I'm listening George. Here's an example of perceived good being praised, and I'm here to praise the sentiment too, even if the praise being praised here is over the top, American centric and politically slanted. I get what he's saying about standing tall to do the right thing, even when doing so risks your personal advancement:
"The FBI Agents Who Stood Up for the Rule of Law Make me proud to be an American". So says David P Goldman in an article dated 31 October 2016 in PJ Media.This article seems to make a similar point in the heat of a real political battle, to the more generic point I made at the end of the previous post about being prepared to make personal sacrifices for what you believe in. More interestingly, it also may just help explain to mystified non-Americans like myself, just what the appeal of Donald Trump is to so many Americans, even though they know he is a blow hard egotistical creep who shoots from the hip.
If the tendency to polarization in politics seems largely to do with the contest to claim higher moral ground than your enemy, the kind of perspective Goldman's article brings may help us observers outside the US understand just what moral ground Trump could possibly even be standing on in this contest. Until this article I perceived him as just standing for "I'm not one of those Washington types". A negative. What this article is suggesting, as George Korda would have us do, is that many see Trump as standing for something positive. Something along the lines of standing for those who "do their duty and what they believe is right, rather than following the latest whim of some perceived prevailing political and cultural fashion."
Can this ghastly election spectacle therefore really be just the latest iteration of the ancient civilizational contest between those who believe in permanent values and those who see values as changing (conservatives v progressives), but now amplified to new dizzying and unprecedented heights by the spectacular speed and pervasiveness of contemporary communications?
The more things change the more they stay the same.
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