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What we want our parents to have been and our presidents to be — the father/mother who knows best and takes care of everything.
Most of us who grew up in homes with a mother and father in residence remember our childhoods as times of absolute safety. If the slightest thing went awry, Mom or Dad would fix it immediately. In our adult lives, facing existential threats (whether real or imagined, still threats) on a daily basis, we often wax nostalgic about that Golden Age when Mom and Dad, all powerful, provided for our every want and vanquished every threat to our well-being.
Every once in a while, reality intruded into our cocoons and someone suffered an accident or a sudden illness or a crime, sometimes someone died, and we all reeled in shock at this thing that could not happen. But in time we either returned to our cheery confidence or gave ourselves over to permanent nostalgia for the old days, when everybody was safe.
We weren’t safe, of course. We were ignorant. We believed in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and omnipotent parents. Meanwhile our parents were just as scared, insecure, uncertain and self-doubting as we are now. Thinking differently — believing in that Golden Age — warps our thinking about ourselves, for one thing makes us fault ourselves for not being as stalwart as we suppose they were.
But there’s more to it than that. Believing our parents were god-like and our childhoods were inviolate is childlike, perhaps, but it does scant harm, and that only to ourselves. But when you expand that mistaken belief into an entire worldview, the increase in harm is exponential.
An astonishing number of people have transferred their faith in their fathers and mothers to a misguided faith in their president of the United States. They believe the president “runs the county,” “manages the economy,” is the “commander in chief,” “the most powerful man in the world.” He sets the price of gasoline, the rate of inflation and the unemployment rate, all presumably before breakfast. And — this is the most childish part — we expect him to restore the feelings of security and well-being that we remember from our own mythical Golden Age of childhood.
Although the great majority of the mainstream media pander to these assumptions all day every day, the president does none of these things. His job is to administer the laws passed, and spend the money appropriated by Congress. He’s just another CEO, except that he is also, while in office, the head of state, the living embodiment of the United States of America (hence the trappings of office, i.e. “Hail to the Chief,” the protocols of respect required while in his presence –for example no one, male or female, is supposed to go through a door ahead of him — not because he is president, but because he is the head of state.
(This is the distinction Harry Truman was making when he famously told General Douglas MacArthur, “You can say anything you want about Harry Truman, but by God you will respect the office of President of the United States.”)
The root of this disease is, of course, ignorance; forgivable in an innocent child, but not in the possessor of a smartphone. Anyone who thinks the president “runs the country” has no concept of the size and complexity of this enormous nation, the millions upon millions of decisions and events that shape a day in its life. Likewise, “managing the economy” is a sort of oxymoron, like steering the tornado.
People who like the president, when times are good, feel validated and like him even more. When times are bad, they tolerate him, make excuses for him, and insist that the times are not as bad as they seem. People who do not like the president, when times are good, insist that times are actually very bad. When times are bad, they feel validated and berate him tirelessly.
It surely is no coincidence that the most popular movies of our age are about omnipotent superheroes who save the day for us while we watch from a safe distance.
Magical thinking is not thinking, it is fatalism, a surrender of our futures to forces beyond our comprehension or control. To survive, a democratic republic requires its citizens to be educated, informed and involved. People who are none of the above, but who stridently advance their half-baked ideas about the all-powerful president and the conspiracies that swirl around him, are not citizens, they are dead weight.
We just had a wind storm,* and we lost power for a couple of hours, and I blame Joe Biden!
Seriously, I do. What an inconvenience. Thanks for nothing Joe.
Why Sleepy Joe? Why not. Here’s the logic. He asked for $738 billion for defense and they gave him $768 billion, and he didn’t reject it, didn’t say, “no, no, no, that’s way too much,” and decisions like that are the reason why my country can’t have nice things.
Like infrastructure, and peace of mind, and so on.
*I admit, it was a helluva wind storm. I think Buffalo caught the tail end of whatever that was that ripped through the mid-west. A tornado that touched down for 227 miles. Man, shit just keeps getting freakier.
In Parliamentary systems, usually, the Head of State and the Head of Government are different. Nobody in Canada, I believe, thinks that Justin Trudeau is going to solve their problems. The sacredness of the State is embodied in the – distant – sovereign, Queen Elizabeth I, and in her representative in Canada, the Governor-General, presently Mary Simon, a former diplomat, and broadcaster, who is half Inuk. Separating the sacred function, the State, from the political function or the Government of the Day is very useful and helps reduce political projection and paranoia. Walter Bagehot, an editor of The Economist, pointed this out in the 19th Century. Utopian projections – and consequent paranoia – are more difficult in muddling-through parliamentary systems.
Exactly.
I think you mean Queen Elizabeth II
Agree that the heads of state do not possess the power to do personally all the things accomplished by society in aggregate (and steered by no one but coopted by a few). Problem is, they know that and so adopt quite different agendas, often ongoing bully pulpit mansplaining. They’re typically corrupt war criminals on top of that. I wish a truly beneficent leader would emerge who took to heart the fiction (utopian projection is a good term) that daddy will fix it and at least tried to move in the direction demanded by circumstances and felt he owed the citizenry something for their troubles.
[“Problem is, they know that and so adopt quite different agendas, often ongoing bully pulpit mansplaining. “]
I see it as exactly the opposite. They don’t mansplain anything. They wallow into gibberish and bland, spineless politico-corporate bullshit speak as if it were a demonstration of prodigious intelligence and dilligent professionalism.
I thought what you describe is what mansplaining means … so we’re in agreement.
“People who are none of the above, but who stridently advance their half-baked ideas about the all-powerful president and the conspiracies that swirl around him, are not citizens, they are dead weight. ” Mr. Lewis
Agreed, the media industry is dead weight.
“Those who do not read the newspaper are uninformed, those who do are misinformed” Samuel Clemens
Jesus Tom … Eat some more of what you’ve just eaten.
Fire-in-the-Belly Tom is what the world needs more of in my humble opinion ;-)
Did Canute not deal with this in the 12th century?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Canute_and_the_tide#:~:text=In%20Huntingdon%27s%20account,almighty%20King%22.%5B2%5D
Suppose it has more to do with vesting too much power (real or perceived) in a position of power. And we can start with disabusing the term “Leader of The Free World”? Not my leader, and aforesaid country making such claims ranks about 28th (give or take) in the national freedom index. Its a general sentiment throughout the globe.
So not a good example to follow if making such hyperbolic claims.
Ya know, holding a World Series but not really inviting any other baseball teams to compete. This list goes on…
The point is the problem lies in the narrative, the myth, the illusion, (and woefully), the ignorance.
Just a detail, but the World Series is so named because the newspaper “New York World” put up the original trophy. It’s surprising that they haven’t resold the naming rights., it can only be that they’ve not thought of it.
I will make a strong suggestion to all I am currently rereading “A Connecticut Yankee in King Aurthers Court” by Mark Twain and twain speaks volumes for trusting in the Aristocracy, church and or many elected officials for being able to run a lemonade stand much less a country. So if you have not read it it is worth your time and a second read is even better.