Denise, the best President EVER? After FDR and Jimmy Carter, the best in my lifetime. Yet far from perfect, sometimes betrayed by his very expertise, because long, extensive and deep experience does tend to entail a number of automatic settings, and these have proved worse than unfortunate in relation to the suppurating, unhealed wound o…
Denise, the best President EVER? After FDR and Jimmy Carter, the best in my lifetime. Yet far from perfect, sometimes betrayed by his very expertise, because long, extensive and deep experience does tend to entail a number of automatic settings, and these have proved worse than unfortunate in relation to the suppurating, unhealed wound of Israel/Palestine.
The total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians, including vast numbers of innocent women and children, have no possible connection with defense or the saving of hostages.
If anyone can justify this and its seemingly uncritical, even enthusiastic, acceptance by all the American Right to me -- or better, to the Israeli people, to former premier Ehud Olmert who thinks (politely) that the current Prime Minister has had "a breakdown", they are welcome. How anyone who remembers what the Jewish people suffered when I was a small child can justify behavior reminiscent of Saddam and the Al-Assads' most heinous crimes against their own cities, I don't know.
Dayan's IDF in 1967 was a model army. Today's army behaves like a rabble. Understandable. Totally inexcusable.
Unlike most of you, I remember what it is like to be bombed. I was a 4-year old in London on the night when the first V1 rockets rained down on the city and I have never forgotten that night which implanted in me a lasting horror of the bombing of cities.
Anywhere. By anyone.
That is why I have spent so much time in Germany, trying both to overcome my own deep fears and to reach a deep understanding with my younger friends in that country. (I know too the former Leningrad and have spent time with friends in Kiev -- the city of Babi Yar -- long before the present horrors. They looked forward to the day when they could take me to visit Crimea...)
Explain to me jaw jaw diplomacy when thousands of children are daily suffering dreadful injuries and over ten thousand have been killed. Explain to me why America could not airdrop food and essential supplies to the homeless and starving. Explain why America has refused to press for an urgent ceasefire when extremist members of the Israeli government speak of war aims more important than the lives of their compatriots taken hostage.
Young Americans who express disgust with President Biden's policy here may lack perspective when it comes to their ultimate responsibility as citizens -- but is that not normal for the young? This is HIGHLY important, for these should be, should have been, among his strongest supporters in the defense of democracy from Trump's intended destruction of all the country's institutions and freedoms.
I have written now of things that mystify me but which call to mind uncomfortable memories of what's most horrific in US history -- "The only good Injun is a dead Injun".
Exported from Brooklyn and the Bronx to the West Bank of the Jordan.
BTW, my personal opinion is that the best President since FDR was Jimmy Carter. And I have a hard time placing Biden until his first term is over and we can figure out how his entire Presidency stacks up. I could see arguments for Kennedy, Johnson, Obama and even Eisenhower. Reagan would be selected by a lot of GOP but he would be in the middle of my list, along with GHWB. GWB is down there near the bottom, and Nixon is obviously just above the last choice.
On the other hand, the WORST is pretty simple. #45 so leads the pack that it boggles the mind.
If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
*
I am no admirer.
At school in England when I'll have been eleven, a well-respected teacher came in one morning and said:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States of America."
I don't know if any of my classmates understood.
I did.
Living near Capetown from late 1946 till end '49, we had a steady supply of American magazines in the house.
I followed the Alger Hiss case, then all the doings of HUAC, getting to recognize all the characters in the Red Scare drama at age 8-9: Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cohn (Trump's mentor) and Schine, Whittaker Chambers and, of course, Richard Nixon.
At the same time, the National Party replaced Smuts' United Party in South Africa, bringing in Apartheid and a heap of race laws, regulations and official signs, everywhere, everywhere.
So this, together with watching the local baboon pack (once narrowly escaping death after a territorial offense, when they rolled an avalanche of rocks on me and my friend at the foot of the cliff...) was where my political education began.
I found American politics and politicians (apart from Ike) strikingly UGLY.
Especially McCarthy, Nixon and the menacing and grossly obese (rare in those days) Whittaker Chambers...
UGLY.
Likewise the faces and expressions of angry white people in the Cape when giving orders to "the lesser breeds"...
Curious, this business of ugly grown-ups and the beginnings of my political education...
Peter, I expect we are probably both not all that much in disagreement. I was trying to play a little safe in putting Nixon near the bottom, but I also agree that he, in many ways, did some things for our country that were far superior to almost anything that has been done by GOP Presidents certainly since Bush 2 and to some degree since Reagan. Nixon was a globalist, at a time when many GOP party members were clear isolationists. It is what made Nixon such a fascinating figure in my mind, both terrifically open-minded about the world condition and yet so incredibly myopic about his own (and his minions') misdeeds. He COULD have gone down as one of the much better Presidents in history (as you note, the opening to China was huge) but for his own personal failings. Trump, on the other hand, has literally zero positive outlook on the world seeing everything only in terms of what happens to him. Sigh...
Denise, the best President EVER? After FDR and Jimmy Carter, the best in my lifetime. Yet far from perfect, sometimes betrayed by his very expertise, because long, extensive and deep experience does tend to entail a number of automatic settings, and these have proved worse than unfortunate in relation to the suppurating, unhealed wound of Israel/Palestine.
The total destruction of Gaza and the massacre of tens of thousands of civilians, including vast numbers of innocent women and children, have no possible connection with defense or the saving of hostages.
If anyone can justify this and its seemingly uncritical, even enthusiastic, acceptance by all the American Right to me -- or better, to the Israeli people, to former premier Ehud Olmert who thinks (politely) that the current Prime Minister has had "a breakdown", they are welcome. How anyone who remembers what the Jewish people suffered when I was a small child can justify behavior reminiscent of Saddam and the Al-Assads' most heinous crimes against their own cities, I don't know.
Dayan's IDF in 1967 was a model army. Today's army behaves like a rabble. Understandable. Totally inexcusable.
Unlike most of you, I remember what it is like to be bombed. I was a 4-year old in London on the night when the first V1 rockets rained down on the city and I have never forgotten that night which implanted in me a lasting horror of the bombing of cities.
Anywhere. By anyone.
That is why I have spent so much time in Germany, trying both to overcome my own deep fears and to reach a deep understanding with my younger friends in that country. (I know too the former Leningrad and have spent time with friends in Kiev -- the city of Babi Yar -- long before the present horrors. They looked forward to the day when they could take me to visit Crimea...)
Explain to me jaw jaw diplomacy when thousands of children are daily suffering dreadful injuries and over ten thousand have been killed. Explain to me why America could not airdrop food and essential supplies to the homeless and starving. Explain why America has refused to press for an urgent ceasefire when extremist members of the Israeli government speak of war aims more important than the lives of their compatriots taken hostage.
Young Americans who express disgust with President Biden's policy here may lack perspective when it comes to their ultimate responsibility as citizens -- but is that not normal for the young? This is HIGHLY important, for these should be, should have been, among his strongest supporters in the defense of democracy from Trump's intended destruction of all the country's institutions and freedoms.
I have written now of things that mystify me but which call to mind uncomfortable memories of what's most horrific in US history -- "The only good Injun is a dead Injun".
Exported from Brooklyn and the Bronx to the West Bank of the Jordan.
BTW, my personal opinion is that the best President since FDR was Jimmy Carter. And I have a hard time placing Biden until his first term is over and we can figure out how his entire Presidency stacks up. I could see arguments for Kennedy, Johnson, Obama and even Eisenhower. Reagan would be selected by a lot of GOP but he would be in the middle of my list, along with GHWB. GWB is down there near the bottom, and Nixon is obviously just above the last choice.
On the other hand, the WORST is pretty simple. #45 so leads the pack that it boggles the mind.
If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
*
I am no admirer.
At school in England when I'll have been eleven, a well-respected teacher came in one morning and said:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States of America."
I don't know if any of my classmates understood.
I did.
Living near Capetown from late 1946 till end '49, we had a steady supply of American magazines in the house.
I followed the Alger Hiss case, then all the doings of HUAC, getting to recognize all the characters in the Red Scare drama at age 8-9: Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cohn (Trump's mentor) and Schine, Whittaker Chambers and, of course, Richard Nixon.
At the same time, the National Party replaced Smuts' United Party in South Africa, bringing in Apartheid and a heap of race laws, regulations and official signs, everywhere, everywhere.
So this, together with watching the local baboon pack (once narrowly escaping death after a territorial offense, when they rolled an avalanche of rocks on me and my friend at the foot of the cliff...) was where my political education began.
I found American politics and politicians (apart from Ike) strikingly UGLY.
Especially McCarthy, Nixon and the menacing and grossly obese (rare in those days) Whittaker Chambers...
UGLY.
Likewise the faces and expressions of angry white people in the Cape when giving orders to "the lesser breeds"...
Curious, this business of ugly grown-ups and the beginnings of my political education...
Peter, I expect we are probably both not all that much in disagreement. I was trying to play a little safe in putting Nixon near the bottom, but I also agree that he, in many ways, did some things for our country that were far superior to almost anything that has been done by GOP Presidents certainly since Bush 2 and to some degree since Reagan. Nixon was a globalist, at a time when many GOP party members were clear isolationists. It is what made Nixon such a fascinating figure in my mind, both terrifically open-minded about the world condition and yet so incredibly myopic about his own (and his minions') misdeeds. He COULD have gone down as one of the much better Presidents in history (as you note, the opening to China was huge) but for his own personal failings. Trump, on the other hand, has literally zero positive outlook on the world seeing everything only in terms of what happens to him. Sigh...