Monday, November 3, 2008

WHY THE USA IS NO ROSY FUTURE.

A NEW MAN DOES NOT MAKE A REPUBLIC.

Mr. Obama lived overseas for a little while as a child, and then had a long, exceptional, highly instructive childhood in Hawaii (See "Our Friend Barry" by Constance Ramos). Hawaii has long been known as a rare case of multiethnic integration. All this makes Mr. Obama's mind uniquely qualified to practice mental flexibility.

But one man will not a new world make. Comparing Switzerland, with its highly democratic system, and the awkward United States presidential system, one may doubt that the future lays in the direction of the personalized US presidency. Sure, the US Presidential system was ideally suited to Presidents Jefferson, and Jackson, and their antidemocratic maneuvers. Sure, their conquests of immense Indian lands made the USA a great power. And sure that is what the Europeans wanted (France, in particular, wanted a mighty America, that came in handy later). Sure, by making dirty deals in 1945 (with Stalin and Ibn Saud), President Roosevelt insured US supremacy for a generation or two. The waters have gone below those antidemocratic bridges to the present, the USA as a world country. But it remains that the US Presidency is both too strong in its antidemocratic ways, and too weak against the plutocracy.

The lesson of the Bush years has not been drawn. With W the lesson is that not much of a man, not much of a mind, can lead an entire democratic nation astray. But the Bush saga started two generations ago, when both of W's grandfathers collaborated with the Nazis at the highest level (Prescott and Mr. Walker). The lessons of the collaboration between some of the mightiest US citizens and Nazism was not seriously investigated, let alone drawn. But it is the heart of the problem. The present financial crisis is just another manifestation of the same elite going too far. Once again.

We have here in the USA a system where plutocracy is strong, and the democratic institutions are omnipresent, but weak. One man will not change this. It will take a nation. The conscience of a nation, not just of one liberal. Now, of course, that man, the president, could turn into a great teacher. The tenacity of hope.

Patrice Ayme
Patriceayme.wordpress.com

P/S: Novus Homo was a well known concept in Rome. The most famous was Cicero, and his hands got nailed on the Senate door by Marc Anthony. No Novus Homo never changed the republic (or the empire). Augustus, or Constantine were pretty much their dad's sons.

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