The Trump-Harris Circus - Where Are Ataturk, Churchill, And Roosevelt When When We Really Need Them?

Every year on the day and moment of Ataturk's death, the whole country comes to a standstill in silent memory of the father of modern Turkey.  Politicians may come and go, claims made for and against reform or historical revival recur, and arguments for secularism and Islamization are debated every electoral cycle, but reverence for Ataturk remains.  He is the emblem, the icon, the saint of the Republic, and as Turkey like all countries goes through the throes of political identity, admiration and love for the man remain. 

 

America is at a loss for heroes.  No one escapes the harsh, punitive assessment of today's revisionists.  Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights is cancelled because of his affair with a slave.  George Washington, the country's first President is equally dismissed because he too was a slaveowner.  John Adams had investments in New England shipbuilding and transatlantic trade and thus, although indirectly was a participant in the Three-Cornered slave trade. 

 Every one of the residential colleges at Yale, all named for prominent American leaders, is being renamed because of some discovery of racial malfeasance.  Their contributions to the commonwealth, noteworthy and historical are overlooked, forgotten, and dismissed in light of one unforgiveable sin, 

The times have never been more censorious, more intolerant, and more revisionist.  When history is looked at only through the Deconstructionist lens of race, gender, and ethnicity, it can only be seen in one way. 

So America has no Ataturk because it has no central, defining ethos.  Society, culture, and history have been reduced to racial, sexual, and ethnic identity.  In a country defined as a systemically racist, oppressive, and exploitative country, only the signifier of minority pride remains. White men ipso facto are the causes of such dysfunction - they were the architects of slavery, the Robber Barons which oppressed and robbed the poor of their dignity, domineering patriarchs, and haters of women.  Every white man bears the burden of guilt. 

 

In the past each of America's most important presidents was honored on their special day - Lincoln's Birthday and Washington's Birthday were celebrations of the patriotism, political courage, or historical importance of each.  Washington was a Revolutionary War hero and the country's first president, a unifying symbol of the new Republic.  Lincoln freed the slaves and did his best to save the Union. Both were men of inestimable honor, justice, and leadership. 

Now there is only 'Presidents Day', a three day weekend celebrating nothing in particular. The day could be a remembrance of Washington and Lincoln or all presidents or both or neither.  Who knows?

Roosevelt was President during the Great Depression and World War II and was instrumental in helping Americans recover from the poverty and dislocation of the most severe economic disruption the country had ever seen and be victorious in a devastating worldwide conflict.  He was a hero, a man of pedigree, wealth and breeding who represented the best of aristocratic values and a commitment to serve. 

Churchill was a man of redoutable courage, vision, intelligence, and humanity.  He was resolute in his intent to stop Hitler, save the British Isles from conquest, and to defeat an immeasurably evil enemy.  He was a man of erudition and particular political vision.  He saw the dangers of Hitler and later Stalin before anyone else.   Churchill was Britain, he embodied all the pluck, confidence, and historical imperative of the British people. 

You get what you deserve; and in the present case, America has no Roosevelt, Churchill, Jefferson, Hamilton, or Lincoln.  We have Trump - a buffoon, Borscht Belt tummler, vaudevillian and circus clown - and Harris, an opportunistic, operatic diva of race-gender-ethnicity.  How in what is supposedly a land of opportunity when 'anyone can become President', can there be only these two poseurs left standing? 

The Harris thing is obvious - this is what a focus on race, gender, ethnicity and identity get you.  A woman who is running simply and only because she is a woman and a woman of color.  The Trump phenomenon is more complicated.  He, for all his bombast and braggadocio is as American as you can get - a man of Hollywood, Las Vegas, the mean streets of New York, low-bourgeois in taste and performance, wildly successful in making a buck, all image and showmanship, gunslinging persona, and an oversized, outrageous personality. 

In any case the two are as far from Ataturk, Lincoln, or Jefferson as anyone can imagine.  The real leaders of the world, those that embody the ethos, history, and legacy of their countries, Xi of China, Putin of Russia, and the Ayatollah of Iran, hated as they may by America, are central to the historical flow.  All three have vivid memories of their countries' imperial past and have no shame in recalling it and wanting to relive it.  Iran's mullahs do not want to replace their Islamic Republic with any of the Shah's secularism, but they have the same reverence for Persian power and hegemony.  

There can be no such leaders in the fragmented, ethos-less, identity-obsessed America of today. If there is no longer a sense of 'one country, indivisible under God', words of the Pledge of Allegiance, then how can there be a true, patriotic, selfless, inspired, and respectful leader?

The electoral campaign is a side show, a circus, a turkey shoot, a Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show.  An extravaganza, a lollapalooza, sound and fury, immeasurable bullshit; and one of these non-starters will become President in three months.