2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: DING DING DING! Why would Christie try to TORPEDO the billion $ Fort Lee redevelopment [View all]calimary
(81,198 posts)To me it doesn't read as some sort of display of macho or big balls or bravado or Rambo/John Wayne/Batman/cartoon-cowboy/whatever-it-is-this-week thing. You have a good term for it: repellant. It's not something I admire in a tabloid "hero" or leader or lover. It's not something that I'm attracted to in the least. And I can't imagine having THAT go to the UN or to any NATO or international gathering or conference representing me. Whoever it is, that is MY face to the world as an American citizen. And that's not the image I would ever want to project. That my-way-or-the-highway crap is just that: CRAP. And it went out with bush/cheney (at least for most Americans who recognized the need to go a different direction by the 2008 elections).
Unfortunately there are still people who - I guess - need something projected on their behalf to infer more strength and power and force and macho than they feel within themselves. They're not intimidating in the least, so they gravitate toward someone they perceive as WAY intimidating, and get there once-removed. I'm just guessing here, mind you. But this strikes me as the acting-out of a whole lot of Americans who feel like weenies in and of themselves, and need to sidle up to some bullying brute on the playground to make sure some other bullying brute doesn't come along and snatch their ball away or kick sand in their face.
And I just think we need an entirely different mindset. It's not about who the biggest brawniest caveman is with the biggest stick who can strike the biggest blow and make the biggest noise. It's about being much more wily, much more brainy, much more shrewd. Muscle can only take you so far. Just look at the big ferocious monsters that used to roam the earth. They eventually were driven to extinction - by whatever cause it was, meteor strike or climate change or overactive volcanoes or whatever it was. They were too big to self-sustain. What survived? The smaller, more adaptable, more nimble, more flexible species. They didn't have brawn going for them. But they didn't need it. It's like the big-ass aircraft carrier versus the smaller gunboats. Fearsome as hell, the big one is. But it's slow, cumbersome, takes forever to turn or maneuver. The little boats, by contrast, are lighter weight and with less mass to have to move around, and can zip around and dart around and confound the hell outta the big guy. I can think of a thousand other examples. Look what a ragtag handful of wily sneaky-ass plotters with box cutters did to Fortress America back in September 2001. Sometimes big and blustery gets rolled. All the guns and ammo and tanks and cruise missiles and drones may be no match for some little 98-pound weakling with internet shrewdness and a laptop.
Again, I'm no expert here. Just spouting off, really. Nevertheless, I really believe we need to start thinking differently. Frankly, with power and money at stake all the time, it's probably never gonna happen. We may NEVER evolve as a species the way we really need to.