Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Caussidière for Danton, Louis Blanc for Robespierre, the Montagne of 1848 to 1851 for the Montagne of 1793 to 1795, the nephew for the uncle.I'm sure you get the basic idea, even if some of the references to 19th century French politics escape you. (The uncle and the nephew are Napoleon I and Napoleon III; the "Mountain" was a left-wing political party; Louis Blanc was a politician and writer for whom I might have voted had I been alive then.)
Can we translate this "tragedy to farce" thing out of French and into American terms?
Seems to me that Rick Perry -- who thinks that he can achieve high office by spreading paranoid stories about how much Obama hates Baby Jesus -- is the farce version of George W. Bush. Dubya seems, at first blush, to be a rather farcical creature in his own right -- until you think of the lives lost in his foolish war, and of the surplus he turned into a horrifying debt. Absurd as that man was and is, his presidency was the greatest tragedy in this country's history.
And then there's Obama. Tragedy or farce? If the latter, then the tragic figure who preceded him was Jimmy Carter -- the man who made the Reagan revolution possible. On the other hand, if Obama is himself the tragedy, then perhaps Romney (Obama's GOP dopplegaenger) will turn out to be the farce.
2 comments:
One thing that Bush the Lesser(R-Tragedy) and Obama(R-Fairytale) have in common was the support of the print and broadcast media during the run up to the elections. When you look at the results of their governance you have to ask yourself, are the Chris Matthews and the Maureen Dowds in the media that stupid that they couldn't foresee the looming disaster or did they have darker motives for doing Al Gore and Hillary Clinton in?
Could a President Gore have prevented or mitigated the damage of 911?
What about the Katrina deaths caused by FEMA's poor response?
Its a safe bet that Al Gore would have followed up on the warnings pre-911 and that he wouldn't have appointed a stooge as head of FEMA.
How many needless deaths at home and abroad have been caused by the print and broadcast media abusing of the Founding Fathers idea of a free press?
tragedy of the 60's anti-war movement/today's OWSers
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