William Rivers Pitt on Presidents' Day — and my escalation of his bashing point

19 February 2019

Presidents' Day — teaching folks to value bad people and their nasty deeds

William Rivers Pitt had this to say about our misguidedly high valuation of the American presidential office:

The office of the presidency is itself a recipe for disaster. The things one is required to do in order to attain that exalted position . . . would put a rabid wharf rat off its breakfast.

Power does not merely corrupt; it attracts the manifestly corruptible.

Most if not all of [presidency seekers] have already done things you wouldn’t believe, and are preparing to do things they won’t believe until they do them . . . .

“No man knows,” said Abraham Lincoln, “when that presidential grub gets to gnawing at him, just how deep it will get until he has tried it.”

Let’s chew that cud for a few minutes[:]

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Tyler, James Polk and Zach Taylor were slaveowners.

Andrew Jackson was an unrepentant mass murderer.

William Henry Harrison didn’t make it to the men’s room.

James Buchanan was a compromised fool.

Abraham Lincoln had newspaper editors arrested.

Andrew Johnson was a racist at the top of his voice.

Ulysses Grant stole everything not nailed down.

Warren Harding was a scandal factory.

Herbert Hoover was trickle-down before it was cool.

Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon gave us the gift of Vietnam.

Ford pardoned Nixon.

Jimmy Carter sowed the seeds of 9/11.

Ronald Reagan is the reason everything is awful. George H.W. Bush made it worse.

Bill Clinton brought full-spectrum corporate sponsorship to the Democratic Party.

George W. Bush oversaw the violent deaths and displacement of millions.

Barack Obama maintained the status quo of badness.

Donald Trump is an unlettered white nationalist clod who may yet oversee the dissolution of the republic.

Precisely what are we celebrating?

Pitt's implied corollary point (about self-induced citizen slavery) is an important one

Ordinary Americans put way too much value in the presidential office. It is as if we want a Clan King to lead us around by our tender noses.

Pitt recommends, instead, focusing on local politics and local service. That's where the constructive work gets done.

I agree, but . . .

I'd go an analytical step further.

American infatuation with celebrity and authority figures explains much of our yearning for a President Big Daddy or Fierce Momma.

Celebrity worship is (arguably) one indicator of arrested psychic and societal development.

The moral? — We live in a developmentally arrested nation

Presidents' Day, and the United States' perpetual Head Person election cycle, are indicators of that undeveloped state.

Ours is a culture that fawns over power and its exhibition. As a result, we get leaders with the lack of soul necessary to mean-spiritedly lord over the rest of us.

Is there a psychically more efficient way of inviting societal self-destruction?

Violence-lauding sheep make ineffective democracies.

PeteFree.com

William Rivers Pitt on Presidents' Day — and my escalation of his bashing point