With respect, this is simply arguing a flawed view that any single person can have only one experience or the other. I believe that there are those whose experience is broad enough to understand both the reality of sending people to their uncertain fate on the battlefield, as well as the truth about markets, banks and how the system keeps on rolling until something like a brick wall or a broken axle stops it in its tracks.
Then you need someone with strength, conviction and the ability to move public sentiment in a big way.
Few seem capable of meeting the challenge; fewer yet will have that opportunity (or seek it) because we have a press that is permanently out for blood and excitement at the cost of absolutely everything else, including national security and stability. We don’t need external enemies when our own writers and broadcasters are ever doing their very best to undermine every aspect of our own countries. In some European states, any man in office who hasn’t had an interesting sex-life is considered slightly odd, a bit of a hick, and less than broadly experienced in the ways of the world; in Britain and the States that seems to be the very first thing that precludes or ejects any man from office. Why? What has the bedroom to do with the office? Election by hypocrisy seems greatly what it’s about, and plays neatly into the hands of the tabloids and news (news - really?) slots on tv.
I read these threads here, and the single common factor that forces through is this obsession with baring all, with a manic fear of losing some freedom thought constantly under far greater imaginary threat from deep within the state than at the hand of its common, external foes. And there are many.
Perhaps it’s a matter of age, experience and a broader first-hand knowledge of how other parts of the world comport themselves. What strikes me here is an attitude I’d expect from someone who has never left the farm. All in all, it renders these kinds of threads somewhat moribund from the very start.
Rob C
