“The Greek word for 'return' is nostos. Algos means 'suffering.' So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”
― Milan Kundera, Ignorance
Yes, I'm suffering these days watching America crash and burn. The national debt is in excess of $17.5 trillion, Obamacare is a bust, and Putin has reignited the Cold War with no one in the Oval Office to call his bluff.
Occasionally, I still glance at John McCain's profile and wonder whether a man who turns 80 in 2016 is too old to be president.
Hillary? Other than the fact that she is a woman, where are the accomplishments?
Which brings us to Maureen Dowd's New York Times op-ed entitled "Palmy Days for Jerry" (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/opinion/sunday/dowd-palmy-days-for-jerry.html?ref=maureendowd&_r=0), in which she asks a "mellow" Jerry Brown "how he would feel about a Hillary coronation." Dowd informs us of Brown's answer:
"'The polls say that she’s in an extremely strong position,' he says. 'So prominent in her husband’s administration, then a senator, then secretary of state. Those are powerful milestones. I don’t see anyone challenging her at this point.'
So how does he reconcile what he said in 1992 and now? Have the Clintons changed, or has Brown changed?
He crosses his arms and gives me a flinty look, finally observing: 'In retrospect, after we see all the other presidents that came afterwards, certainly, Clinton handled his job with a level of skill that hasn’t been met since.'
Take that, President Obama."
Bill handled his job skillfully in the past? What does this have anything to do with Hillary's capabilities, unless Bill will again be managing the executive branch of government from a semi-detached White House bachelor suite?
"Take that, President Obama"? Is "that" intended to soothe my suffering and my longing for the past? Brown, now 75, doesn't so much as hint at mounting opposition to Hillary's nomination.
It's over. It's done. Maybe it was never any better, but it surely can't get any worse.
[The Ukraine is still in chaos after Putin's annexation of Crimea, Turkey is being ripped asunder by a corruption scandal swirling around Obama's friend Erdogan, and Syrian madman Bashar al-Assad, encouraged by Russian contempt for Obama, is making headway in his bloody civil war with insurgents. Meanwhile, New York Times foreign affairs "expert" Thomas L. Friedman, who is read by Obama, "is off today." ]
You will recall that Friedman would have us believe that Putin's invasion of Crimea was a "blessing in disguise" (see: http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2014/03/thomas-friedman-from-putin-blessing-in.html). As much as I miss you, Tom Terrific, take your time returning. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and maybe I can even grow nostalgic.]
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