dualstow wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 11:59 am
MangoMan wrote: ↑Thu Apr 25, 2019 11:35 am
And you would save yourself a whole bunch of stress if you just accept the fact that corporate interests and the elites are not going away no matter who you vote for, so just be at peace with what you can not change, and try and use the system (legally) to your best benefit while simulaneously giving back to society what is important to you.
Words of wisdom.
Moda, just to satisfy my curiosity: are there any world leaders whom you think did a good job overall? Separately, any U.S. Presidents?
If we are defining a "good job" as (for example) "advancing the interests of the whole of your population," then yeah probably, but they usually did so while also being war-criminals and having some massive flaws. The easiest ones to name would probably have to be American as I'm simply more familiar. I think Teddy Roosevelt is one. Probably the single best, though I'd sing a different tune if he'd have been president during WWI, as he was pretty disgustingly pro-war/Imperialism.
If you ignore the Indian population, it's hard to argue that the (genocidal criminals) James K. Polk and Andrew Jackson were both similar in their willingness to execute (pardon the pun) an expansive vision of America that was extremely beneficial to the settler colonial class they represented.
There are many nationalist leaders that, through their actions, proved to be somewhat useful to the interests of their selected population. I can't speak with much certainty, but a lot of left-leaning economic nationalists in the face of gangster Imperialism seemed pretty impressive, like Mohammad Mossadegh and Jacobo Arbenz, though I'm certain they had pockets of corruption and resorted to means I don't find particularly palatable.
The architects of the state of Israel for example (Ben Gurion (spelling?), Begin, forgetting a few) had an unbreakable vision and it's hard to say that they didn't do a "good job" of executing it for those they cared about, though their means were pretty manipulative and disgusting IMO. Which sort of highlights the "zero-sum" nature of some "good jobs" out there.
Overall though I take the Dan Carlin approach to this, where to become "great" you probably have to do terrible things at various times. And I tend to be too anarcho-curious to want to waste too much energy fawning praise upon folks who committed terrible acts to help their group. I simply don't desire someone to kill to do a "good job" for me. I actually find that to be a pretty immature instinct. However to the degree that some "leader" is a steward of my/our interests in some way, I'd want him to use non-violent negotiating power in good faith to that interest.
But I'm still learning/growing on these "men of history" types. They're fascinating, to say the least, so I try to look at it all with a certain moral numbness. Once you find yourself so fascinated you're rooting for Genghis Khan by accident, you tend to want to separate "greatness" from other positive traits.