The Most Powerful Man In The World Redux

"The man who has millions will want everything he can lay his hands on and then raise his voice against the poor devil who wants ten cents more a day." — Samuel Gompers, founder of the American Federation of Labor...

The logic of the rich? - want more, get more. But there's never enough. Towers all over the world with your name emblazoned in big gold letters, proclaiming, extolling celebrating...ME. If billions of dollars and a constant torrent of publicity and attention don't satisfy, what is left? Power - what else? Whenever it was that the president of the United States started being called the Most Powerful Man in the World, as a kid who had grown up reading Superman comics, I knew, felt strongly, that something wasn't right about this. POTUS had become a comic strip character. Somewhere I had read that the desire for a position of authority and power ought to be the primary disqualification for the job.

So now we have the perfect example of rich guy with only power left to want, as the most powerful man in the world. Is it surprising what a fuck-up he is or how utterly out of his depth he is, or the shocking disability of his supporters to notice this? Do they imagine whatever they think he has is contagious? That it will trickle down? Do we get the leaders we deserve? Really?

My facebook feed is loaded down with stinko stories and horrible publicity about the orange monster. Does he have a full time staff member to shield him from the torrent, or is it that any publicity is good publicity... With all the video examples of his horrible behavior, one might wonder how he can live with himself, and the fact that he can indeed live with himself in spite of it all, may be the very worst of it. An astounding capacity for self-deception.

There are a couple of people I keep in touch with back east, from school days in Connecticut. One of them, Bill, is a social democrat who spent a career as a machinist at Pratt and Whitney aircraft - ironically, helping build engines for military aircraft - as an active and aggressive union representative. Another is Jill, a woman who as a high school kid sort of followed my little rock and roll band with a few other girls. She is a liberal democrat who follows the rules but argues with right wingers, some of whom are friends of hers from school days. The third, with whom I am not in touch except through his dialog with Jill on facebook, lived down the street from me, and who I pegged as nut case early on. His name is Richard. One day he blurted out to me his version of a Pepsodent toothpaste commercial: "You'll wonder where your head went when you brush your teeth with dynamite." (We early baby boomers are the first generation raised on television). I asked Bill about him recently and was told, "He's a fascist." Richard is a diehard republican Fox news believer, think liberals are all liars and speaks reverently of "our president." A crackpot. Hated Obama but stops short of calling him "nigger." Many of them do but many also come right out with it, and not only in the south As Trump voters go, Richard is relatively mild, but only relatively in that he doesn't march with swastikas. The difference is puzzling, and as a devoted observer of human behavior, I still can only wonder how people become what they are.