Folks, one thing I’m completely incapable of is a personality cult. I grew up in the USSR, I’m immune to this shit. My favorite writer Rafael Chirbes wrote two ridiculously bad novels. I have no problem with saying that they stink.
A negative personality cult is no different from the positive one. Whether you believe that an individual is at the root of all good or of all evil doesn’t matter. You still give that one person an outsize importance. Whether you worship him* as a benevolent or a malevolent deity, it’s the deity part that is the problem.
This is why I very rarely mention Putin or Trump. I’m not very interested in individuals and their failings. Trump has devolved badly since early 2020 when COVID hit. It’s a pity but talking about that looks quite pointless. I’m interested in the issues that he tried or seemed to advance. People come and go but issues remain until they are resolved.
It’s the same with Putin. He’s just a guy who’s trying to hold on to power in the only way available to him. He doesn’t mean much, either positively or negatively, because Russia’s problem – and everybody’s problem – isn’t one bad person. It’s childish thinking to hope that Dorothy’s house will drop on the evil witch’s head and the witch problem will be solved. Even in the fairy-tale it doesn’t work like that.
On the positive side, there’s a million places where Trump and Putin worship (both positive and negative) is raging, so it should be ok that I’m not interested. Nobody needs to feel deprived of indulging in this form of entertainment on my account.
* It’s usually a him but it can be a her, as with some people’s negative worship of Hillary Clinton.
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“Trump has devolved badly since early 2020 when COVID hit. It’s a pity but talking about that looks quite pointless. I’m interested in the issues that he tried or seemed to advance. People come and go but issues remain until they are resolved. ”
I have a similar feeling, before COVID he was a bit of a nuisance but had some good things going, especially on foreign policy.
I think some people who tend to be on the megalomaniac side of things have an extremely hard time letting go of power. A normal person just admits defeat and lets go, others start making up all kinds of excuses and mental gymnastics to stay in power or explain their loss. We’re seeing sooo much of this in the current world from Turkey, to Venezuela, Russia, China, Nicaragua, etc. I think Trump just saw the end coming and could not deal with it. He still can’t.
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Exactly. He has become a one-issue person, and that issue is his loss in 2020. The narrative is “until we fix 2020, nothing else will be fixed.” And since nobody has suggested any practicable way of “fixing 2020”, we are stuck forever. It’s very tiresome.
I’m hoping to see younger, dynamic candidates from both sides in 2024.
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So that long and horrid period where it appears you were in an intellectual love affair with Zygmunt Bauman was what … some kind of scholarly tryst? 🙂
And then wasn’t there this time when you were snuggling up to the economic posery of David Ricardo?
Oh, yes, I checked the archives.
You may not deify or even reify the objects of your intellectual desire, but you are quite evidently not afraid of a few tumbles and some heavy snogging with them as an Intellectual Road Groupie.
That’s you, that’s how you act. 🙂 [guffaw]
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Starting a personality cult of Zygmunt Bauman would be quite an achievement in total nerdiness. 🙂
I like his ideas but I have zero investment in him as a human being.
I have no idea who David Ricardo is Shakti.
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David Ricardo was an 18th century British economist most famous for a theory about the benefits of international trade. 18th century economists also knew about the downsides of international trade, but people tend to quote selectively.
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