The Boomer Psychoanalyzes America

This is the 10th post in this particular series. You can read the others at: https://www.bebee.com/@jim-murray

There he met a woman, more or less in his profession, and had an interesting conversation with her about marketing and the Niagara region and the US market, which is on the Boomer’s radar.

The woman had expressed a great deal of concern about what she felt America was becoming under the new regime of supreme incompetence.

The Boomer tried to re-assure her, pointing out that this could, in point of fact be nothing more in a blip on the radar screen, and that it could end up being over just as quickly as it started.

Sadly, the Boomer was doing what a lot of thinking people are doing these days, which is hoping for the best, but not necessarily preparing for the worst.

One his ride home, feeling good with the wind at his back The Boomer thought about that conversation. He also thought about something that an old friend had told him back in his agency days and that was that the character of a company, or an association or even a country in some cases is a direct reflection of the person leading it.

He thought about that while he was thinking about America, which was a country where he spent a good deal of his youth. He thought about all the editorials he had read over the past year or so about the growing lack of civility in the world. About the resurgence of racism. About how mainstream political parties had moved further to the right and to the left as well. And about how people, who used to be able to respectfully disagree with those who espoused different ideologies, now very much appear to hate those people, and are completely unwilling to even consider points of view that do not agree with or reinforce their own.

As he thought about it, it became obvious that what his friend had told him many years ago, about the character of a country being a direct reflection of the character of its leader, was exactly what is happening to America today.

He thought about their current president and their past president and he noted that the past president was sane and intelligent and so the tenor of the country was that way. Did he make mistakes in judgement? Who doesn’t? But did he manage to help pull that country out of the most severe recession since the great depressions? Yes he did. And did he manage to work with his governing bodies to get good things done? Yes he did.

Then he thought about the current president. He thought about the school yard bully tactics that he employed to re-position the other candidates he was running against in the primaries and the candidate he ran against in the election. He thought about how classless this approach was, and by its very classlessness, how much media attention it attracted.

And then he thought again about what his friend had told him about the character of the country and the character of the leader and it all became very clear what was happening there.

The people, not all of them of course, but enough of them for sure, have all imprinted this president’s behaviour…kind of like little baby ducklings will imprint the behaviour of any animal that comes along if their duck mother is taken away.

The Boomer felt a twinge of sadness about this. Because the realization came over him that the effect this president was having on the country through his complete disregard for anything other than that which would benefit him, the result of chronic narcissism, was turning large groups of people into the same sort of narcissists, and causing them to lose any empathy or sense of fair play that they may have once possessed.

And it occurred to the Boomer that even if this president were to be impeached for any number of reasons, finally go insane and be forced to resign or got assassinated by some left wing crazy, the effect that he has had on millions of people would linger on long after his departure.

Finally, the Boomer got home. He was filled with a sadness much more profound than the anger and frustration he had been carrying around for the past year and a half.

This sadness was the direct result of this revelation that leaders come and go. Some are good and some are bad, but the resilience of the people is the thing that carries the country along. But now, and maybe for the first time in a long time, he was genuinely concerned that the effect that this president is having on his country is something that will take a long long time for the people and the country to recover from.

He hoped that he was wrong. But somewhere in his head there was a little voice telling him that he was not.