Those who lust for power become its casualties. I have mixed feelings about this. It’s anywhere from painful to cathartic to schadenfreud-tastic to see it in real life.
The Greeks had it all figured out. Roughly, a tragic flaw (called hamaratia and often described in terms like hubris or narcissism) leads invariably to ones nemesis or downfall. (I’m simplifying here, Greek Tragedy fans are asked to be gentle in the comments.) The last part of the tragedy is awful and it’s caused by inner failings in the main character’s personality. They force their own misery into existence.
Fuck going to work. I’m out!
I was reminded of this when hearing someone freak out over Justice Kennedy retiring. Kennedy’s retirement would be boring news if folks hadn’t heaped power on the Court. Don’t stack power in heaps and you won’t freak out over who’s wielding it.
For that matter Kennedy served 30 years on the court and he’s 81. Regardless of politics I think we can all agree he’s earned retirement.
Kennedy doesn’t make me think of Greek Tragedy. His colleague Ginsburg is the tragic one. Unlike Kennedy, who seems to have a spring in his step (despite being 81), his colleague Ginsburg seems to be fading (she is 85).
Ginsburg can retire at any time. But she is trapped. Or rather she has trapped herself.
I’m sure Ginsburg would rather eat a spider sandwich than retire while the president has a “R” in his party affiliation. This is her choice but it turns retirement (which is tied to mortality) into politics. Also, for most of the last decade she had an “out”. From 2008-2016 her favorite party was in power. She could have bailed any time. President Pen And Phone would have exulted in the glory of his wise choice in replacements; just as he did for Justice Sotomayor.
But it’s hard to let go of power once you have it. That’s where tragedy gets its hooks in you. I assume Ginsburg likes making rulings; so she kept working from age 75 – 83 under a regime that (presumably) would arrange a successor to her liking. It’s her prerogative. But it looks to me like the end chapters of a Tragedy. Is grinding out another 8 years in a high stress job a pleasant way to spend your “golden years”?
Then it went from bad to worse. As 2016 lurched toward it’s unlikely conclusion Ginsburg was happily planning (I suspect) a retirement choice that would let the first female president (of the favored party of course) choose a replacement for the first a female Supreme Court Justice. From her point of view it checks all the boxes. (Note: A commenter pointed out that Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female Supreme Court Justice. I’d totally forgotten about her! My bad! Just for the record, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the second female justice and Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan are the third and fourth respectively. I also note the latter two were both appointed by Barack Obama. If anyone wants to whine that it’s unfair that Trump gets to appoint two justices I want to see them on record whining similarly about his predecessor or it’s just bullshit.)
Except those deplorable nitwits in fly over country voted… wrong. People have been saying since forever “your vote doesn’t count”. It does. At least it did in 2016. Voters shoved a grenade down the jockey shorts of a group who assumed the election had only one possible outcome. Anytime someone tells you that votes don’t matter, remind them that “journalists” on live TV burst into tears on November 8th, 2016.
Ginsburg trapped herself. She’d rather let a lizard shit in her tea than have a replacement selected by the Orange Menace. In her zeal to hand a powerful moment to Hillary, she bottled it up and the moment has nowhere to go. She must work for the next 2 – 6 years (remember that she’s already 85) or Cheeto Jesus gets a third (!) Supreme Court pick.
She had options. She let them go in search of more control. I can’t imagine she’s pleased with how it’s playing out. Isn’t slogging to an office to do difficult work until you’re 91 a form of hell? If she catches a cold and goes belly up Literally Hitler gets to replace her. Talk about pressure!
Ginsburg (asleep in the photo) gets a lot of grief from this image but I think it’s humanizing. She’s sleeping through a boring speech (possibly after a drink or two). Speeches make me zone out too. Imagine that fate until you’re 91 years old.
That’s the whole point of tragedy; not that life sucks but people put themselves in a cage made of their own flaws.
I’ve seen this before. Folks who can’t let go of the power once they have it doom themselves to work until they die. What an awful fate!
Here’s a picture of Robert Byrd. A genuine Klu Klux Kaln member who became the the longest-serving Senator in United States history (51 years). He could have retired anytime. He kept his nose to the grindstone until he died in office at age 92. Perhaps he loved it. Perhaps the best and most awesome thing he could think of to do with his last days on earth was run committee meeting and deal with lobbyists. I’ll never know. To me, it feels like self-created hell on earth. It takes humility to let go. He didn’t have it.
No discussion of tragedy would be complete without Hillary Clinton. She’s still publicly bitching that everyone but her failed to properly arrange her rightful coronation. It strikes me now and always as a tragic end.
Did she look like she enjoyed campaigning for President? Trump seems to bask in it. So did Bill Clinton. But Hillary at best endured it. Does she look happy now? She gives interviews about how Russian paratroopers landed in Podunk Ohio to fuck up her vote count and it sure as hell doesn’t sound like pleasant final chapter in a life well lived. To my ear, she sounds miserable.
She’s only 70 but her health is fading. She got a good chance at the brass ring and that’s pretty impressive. Even without winning she could be satisfied having given it a shot. She’s got retirement houses, a herd of toadies, and enough money to have whatever money can buy. (She’s not Trump rich but she could cut a check for a Lamborghini. Isn’t that enough?) She can honestly say she was a Senator and then Secretary of State (which is pretty impressive regardless of how she got there or what she did with it).
Age catches up with us all. That’s the point.
Another person with similar accomplishments might feel pretty damn fulfilled. But not Hillary. Part of tragedy is wanting what you cannot have. She apparently can’t be happy unless she’s the highest ranked politician among 330,000,000 Americans. That’s a cage of her own making.
If you were miserable every moment when you aren’t the president you’d be miserable right now. Like her.
In my next post I’ll discuss two super badass people who knew when to exit the stage and let the next generation take the wheel (one for the better and one for the worse). Neither has anything to do with current politics or even this century’s politics.
Dayum, Dude, that there’s some good writin’!
Is that Hill falling down the stairs?
Thanks.
Yes that’s Hillary Clinton falling down stairs this March in India. In her defense she was at the Jahaz Mahal palace in Mandu, India and it had uneven stones on the stair. I’m not trying to dogpile on human frailty. If an elderly woman needs a hand over bad footing it’s simply a matter of age and time. However, approaching the age when you need a hand getting down the stairs is supposed to be paired with the wisdom to let go of unhealthy passions for power and domination.
At 91 the Gins may have to deal with a President Pence. Not sure what the odds are at this moment but I would put a fiver on that bet. She might as well just get it over with.
Oh man, that would be irony squared.
Except that Pence is not able to fund his own campaign, and therefor would be required to put a filthy lying treasonous piece of Koch-sucking Rove Republican swill on his ticket in order to have any chance of winning the election. Just as President Reagan was forced to put Shrub I on his ticket. And then that filthy lying GD piece of shiite would go around doing his best to sabotage anything decent that Pence tried to do. Just like Shrub I with Reagan. When Davos and the Bilderbergs own someone, they OWN them.
Some few years ago the SJW succeeded in separating a billionaire from his pro basketball team.
I found the most curious thing to me to be that a friendless and obviously senile old man was not robbed blind by his own people by the time he was in the mental and social state he was in.
What is it that keeps a successful rich person rich after they demonstrate a lack of mental acuity?
Any one of the folks managing his affairs could easily have duped him out of many of his holdings in his doddering years.
Happens to old people all the time.
So it occurs to me that it is the Peter Principle that are the bars to the cage you speak of.
A young, firebreathing upstart out to make his mark in the world seeks a staff that has education, knowledge, skill, and experience beyond his own.
He is the leader that guides these energies, defines the vision.
The staff is in constant movement, turnover is high. He does not keep someone that has plateaued.
He is fearless; high risk, high reward, nothing to lose.
With age, energies diminish. Risk-taking loses out to consolidating wealth and power.
Managing aspiring talent becomes burdensome.
Dumping the less productive becomes less important than keeping the lackeys, gold-brickers, ass-kissers, and shoe polishers.
Those individuals who have Peter-Principled into the best they will ever see.
These are the bars to the cages of the very successful.
These are the men and women who realize that they do not have the stomach to hit the pavement with their curriculum vitae.
They have risen as high as they can go and going elsewhere bears the spectre of living a level or two down from what they have become accustomed to.
These are smaller minded people, selfish, capable of whatever it takes to maintain status quo.
The old bag is now just a hood ornament on a vehicle a pack of hyenas is riding into the sunset.
I seriously doubt folks such as Byrd, H Clinton, Ginsberg can envision themselves as anything other than what they have compromised so much of themselves away to become.
But just behind each is a staff of henchmen that stand to lose so much if they were to actually retire.
That’s a pretty insightful observation. A person becoming their own personal example of the Peter Principle is not something I’d ever considered before. Very perceptive.
Sandra Day O’Connor was the first female Supreme Court Justice…not Ginsberg.
Holy shit! I totally forgot! What a rookie mistake. Thanks for catching my error. I’ll fix it in the text too.
AND the only Supreme Court Justice to be a member of the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
No shit! Ya’ learn something new every day.
“Voters shoved a grenade down the jockey shorts of a group who assumed the election had only one possible outcome.”
Is a sentence that proves, once again, that AC should, now and again, post political.
Glad you don’t mind. I try to avoid politics but I can’t help myself.
Yeah, yeah, yadda. yadda. Where are the lesbian skwerls?
They’re stuck in my pointy head.
The best Supreme Court Justice panel would be comprised entirely of moderates. What’s your opinion of Merrick Garland?
What’s your take on Presidential term limits?
Trump said of Xi Jinping: “President for life. No, he’s great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”
And, referencing FDR’s 12 year presidency: “Should we go back to 16 years? Should we do that? Congressman can we do that?”
He aims to be President-for-Life (like Putin, so far)
The best Supreme Court would be boring and irrelevant to most of us. A bunch of robed nerds very carefully analyzing legal minutiae so dull it makes your teeth hurt. I’m a fan of determining the original intent of the Constitution based on the text itself which is precisely not what they’re doing right now. I’m upset they seem to find ways to make words from the late 1700’s mean whatever they’d like them to say in 2018. That’s unacceptable. We have methods for evolving the body of law and we should use them. Once the Court decided to call growing wheat in your backyard “interstate commerce” they were officially assholes.
I’m a big fan of presidential term limits. Two is good. One would be fine. Getting shot at dawn if you ever speak publicly about politics after 8 years in office is OK. Also once you’ve sat in the big chair I think you’re done for life with elected office. (Which is generally true anyway.) Diocletian and Washington both reserved themselves for gardening. Wise!
Technically we have term limits on all elected officials in that they must win re-election. Theoretically Congresscritters have a 50/50 chance of flaming out every election cycle. I’m disappointed how often we re-elect the same toad cycle after cycle.
I don’t think Trump wants to be president for life. Putin is less president and more evil-supervillian (though I still find him more trustworthy than much of our American politicians). FDR is the reason we have term limits… if he’d shown any humility it wouldn’t have been necessary. We’re lucky the guy croaked when he did instead of living to 92 like Byrd.
Once, just once, I’d like to meet a President or a Supreme Court Justice, and after introductions inform them, politely, “You know, the county sheriff and the township board have far more influence on my daily affairs than you ever will. And that’s a good thing.” Then I’d like to hear their reply. If they understand the republican form of government, they will agree. I’d also like to meet some media celebrity and after introductions politely ask, “Should I know you?” But that’s just me being a jerk and wanting to deflate their egos.
In particular, the Supreme Court should be boring; like a meeting of nerds discussing the standard thread pitch on a 9mm bolt. It was definitely not intended to do what it does now. Ironically, I blame Congress more than the Court for this sorry state.
Yes, thread pitch is important.
Far too important to let drama lamas mess with it.