(vanity)
A non-achieving political opportunist can attain great heights is today's dumbed-down culture. She or he can (through shrewdness) actually project the image of "brilliance", without ever having to demonstrate or prove it. The trick is to get others to do it. It requires a large malcontent body, an adoring, obsequious press, along with dysfunctional political sycophants who have abandonded any measure of self-respect in order to curry favor of someone who displays a ruthlessness that both frightens and fascinates them (a psychological aberration that can only bring harm to others, if it helps bring the charlatan to power).
The myth is perpetrated further by said clever advisors, who circumvent the usual channels of verification of this (or anyone's) "superior intelligence", and who arrange for the subject to appear at pre-orchestrated forums in such a way as to protect them from any kind of scrutiny--lest it expose the fraud.
Add to this the unconditional surrender of intellectual curiosity of those who, instead, will weep actual tears over the pretender's banal, insipid utterances, and the hoax is complete.
There is truly something vulgar about all of this. It is, at the very least, contemptuous of what most of us feel- that which we were grought up to believe in- honesty, forthrightness, sincerity, and having the courage to state what you actually believe in and having the chips fall where they may.
We deserve more, even if it means disturbing the fairy tales of others.
Except for the ruthlessness we had that in 1992 and 1996. Fortunately for the nation, XXX-42 was more interested in getting some tail than in changing the nation. If he had been a leftist ideologue with a real desire to rule (like Hillary) he could have been a vastly greater danger to us as a free country than he was.
As for Bill Clinton's political beliefs, if Clinton had thought that Goldwater and Nixon supporters got more college girls in the sack that liberals, he would be a Republican to this day. His political "beliefs" were chosen to support his vanity and physical urges, rather than having his political beliefs as the core.
A non-achieving political opportunist can attain great heights is today's dumbed-down culture. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
With great reluctance I am forced to agree! Dumbed-down is a fact, when I listen to some of the opinions expressed by those under forty today I cringe. The ignorance of all things historical is amazing.