Sunday, November 30, 2014

Cultural Choice or Cultural Marketing

In recent decades we in the industrialized world have a variety of cultural experiences available to us which we consider a form of recreation and entertainment. It usually involves an immersion into a different way of life, one that we would never see other than as cultural tourists. We buy the clothes that we wouldn't normally wear and try to talk the same way and about the same things as the people where we're going. But we're outsiders pretending briefly to be a part of the world that we've only read about or watched in the movies.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Now or Never

Graceland, 1987

Elvis Presley
After being dumped by our respective girlfriends, Hans and I decided on the spur of the moment to drive to Graceland in August 1987 for the 10th anniversary of Elvis' death. Hans' mother had been a big Elvis fan and owned a lot of his old LPs that we'd made fun of as kids. They had cheesy photos of Elvis with his arm around some buxom girls or a picture of him in his military uniform driving a convertible with the caption, "A Date with Elvis." We thought it was ridiculous. But then he died and we changed our tune, so to speak.

The U.S. Presidency and Hero Worship

The U.S. presidency has become a committee of a couple of dozen well connected and well educated people who advise a single, charismatic, photogenic person who implements the policies decided by the committee.

This may be objectionable, especially to those who have never considered the idea and who are accustomed to hero-worship. But it is unreasonable anymore to expect a single individual to have the capacity to handle the duties of the office. No single person knows the intricacies of energy and science policy and is at the same time able to negotiate trade or arms agreements with a variety of nations.

But that's just want most Americans want and expect from their president. They want John Wayne (as Gil Scott-Heron once surmised) or George Washington. A man who will walk over and punch the collective Islamic State right in the nose and tell them to sit down and shut up. Then walk calmly back home. That's an allegorical scenario but that kind of thing is just what this country thinks it can find if it just keeps looking for the right candidate. Delusional is what I would call it.