best and the brightest?
nobody said it better
words come back to haunt
At the Trump Inauguration in 2017, it was reported that after the Inaugural address of the New President, according to three people who were present, Former President George W. Bush gave a brief assessment saying, “That was some weird shit.”
The Trump years …
The COVID era …
The Biden / Trump Debate …
Nope there aren’t any better words.
There was a term that was used by the author, David Halberstam, to describe the Kennedy / Johnson Administration.
The best and the brightest.
At least that is how the book was titled.
The Best and the Brightest.
When in fact, it should have been titled, The Best and the Brightest?
Mr. Halberstam would later write that the phrase “… went into the language, although it is often misused, failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”
In other words, in describing the Kennedy / Johnson Administration reaction to Vietnam, Mr. Halberstam was saying, THIS IS the BEST and THE BRIGHTEST?
THIS is the BEST THEY CAN DO?
Instead it became a badge of honor.
That these people WERE the best and the brightest and they were there to serve.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, sure.
Ironic ain’t it?
This election cycle the irony flows thick and fast on both sides of the aisle.
THIS IS the BEST and THE BRIGHTEST?
THIS is the BEST THEY CAN DO?
That is some sad shit.
On the other hand, something did come through to me lately and that is a sense of hope.
Yes, I did say a sense of hope.
Not that the problems presented by the current political cycle will be solved but that have become magnified out of context.
The people involved in politics today, the best and the brightest, are just too small to be of concern unless you are a 24 hour TV news station and you have to fill 24 hours of news so these small people become big.
If the HEADLINE is big enough, the NEWS IS BIG ENOUGH said Charles Foster Kane.
Well, maybe, the sky isn’t falling.
Well, maybe this just a bump, a bad bump.
I am remined the movie The Adventures of Baron Munchausen where the ‘elected official of the people’ forbids anyone to go outside the city walls … ‘as the Turk is out there’ and when finally Baron Munchausen sneaks outside the gates, the isn’t anyone there at all.
The good news is this election will be over in 4 months.
The best news is that we get to do this again in 4 years, and maybe this time, the best and the brightest just might show up.
We DO have to get there and to get there we will, as President Bush put it so well, go through some weird shit.
But I am confident, get there we shall.
No Haiku For You 