Politics of Personality

by mtmynd

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2004-06-18 06:38:00

I remember when Clinton was President and I heard from many people “I can’t stand that man! Every time I see him I just… I don’t know – I just can’t stand to look at him, hear him…” and their voice would trail off.

I couldn’t understand that. I felt that he was a good speaker, a nice man basically… he had a sense of humor that appealed to me and blah, blah, blah. (You get the idea)

But this character George W. Bush – forget Iraq for a moment (is that possible?)… even when he was governor of Texas I couldn’t stand the man. I didn’t like his beady fucking eyes, I felt his smerky face was an insult to others, and I hated the way he trashed the language. Then he becomes President! Damn… I could never get behind this fellow and I still can’t. Even if he was a liberal Democrat I wouldn’t trust this man.

We are constantly barraged with “the media” and their opinions – leftist, right-wing, liberal, neo-con, this side, that side… who among us really knows what the fuck is going on? No.. really??

We all depend upon the media whether it be the ‘mainline injection’ from ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, etc… or the newspaper/news weeklies, i.e. Time, Newsweek, U.S. Reports, etc… or we use the internet to seek out our comfort levels. Is there anyone irregardless of their political side that does not seek out “proof” that their concerns or beliefs are correct?

All of us, whether we be Political Scientists or simply occasional gawkers into todays news read/listen/watch only that which suits our personalities. Sure, some of us tune in to ‘the other side’.. usually just to take a pulse of what is going on ‘over there’, but anyone that has any level of interest in the political world will look for some story that suits their own interests or beliefs. It is our human conditioning… our link to our tribal past.

We need to be around like-minded people. It strengthens our beliefs, it gives more power to our dreams, our wants, our desires. This need to be with others that think closely to what we think is right is innate… we are born with that.

Even here on Litkicks… we gather around the common monitor to write our thoughts and share a commonality. That in itself is ‘political’… albeit a smaller version of what world politics is, of course. But we as humans have no choice but to identify, like a newly hatched duckling seeing the first life-form identifies with it, we, merely as another life-form have to identify with another in order to survive.

That makes any form of Nationalism a very difficult task. The larger a Nation becomes the more fragile the identity of untity becomes. We all simply cannot identify with the same thing/person/idealogy… it is inhuman, unnatural.

That is why religions have become so powerful. We are asked to identify with an unknown.. something unseen… an illusory veil of some thing omnipresent. There hopefully is no personality conflict here… how can one not ‘like’ something that cannot be seen? It helps glue societies together… not perfect, of course, but it’s something to help keep societies together.

Back to our Political situations. Remember ever seeing film of Hitler… how he seemed to enthrall the crowds with his speeches? How thousands and thousands of Russians lined to view the body of Lenin.. of Stalin? How about the week long funeral of Reagan? We cannot deny the cult of Personality… that special something that attracts people.

It is all an identity thing. If we cannot collectively agree with a personality to lead the country, thankfully in the U.S., we only have to put up with this personality for 8 years, max. Then another face takes over… maybe one that one side can relate to that couldn’t relate to the other side… the hopefull balance act – right/left, conservative/liberal, Democrat/Republican… the United State of Aggravation – one side or the other aggravated over the Personality of Presidency.

[TGIF]