I am reading a biography of Ronald Reagan (“Sleepwalking Through History” by Haynes Johnson). Donald Trump is pictured in the book and also described as a symbol of the Reagan years product of self-promoting greed, over-hyped success, and accumulation and flaunt of wealth. Inaugural balls and subsequent events gave the rich and famous ample opportunity to showcase gold, diamonds and luxuries that was previously thought immodest to flaunt.
I happened upon this book in a free book bin while on a road trip. It has been on my list to read, since I have long thought that Reagan’s Presidency was the beginning of the degradation of America. Reading is timely since we are now in the Trump era, where it is once again time for the greedy rich to scheme to overcome the health and wellbeing of everyone else, in order to normalize what is currently seen as ostentatious, in order to gain all the more.
Two generations have passed since the Reagan era and now we enter a repetition of sleepwalking through history. As I grow older, I grow more pessimistic about humanity. With my scientific background, I learn of the wonders that science, technology engineering and mathematics have accomplished. I experience the wonders of new music, art and cinema. Meanwhile, the social aspects of human development are mired in egotistical self-promotion, faddism, the artificial influence of advertising and the cirus that is our political system. It is easy to lose sight of the advancement the few bring to humanity when it is overwhelmed by the mental masturbation of the majority.
In my life I focus on the Presidencies I have lived through, which have nearly all been orchestrated from the pit of a shallow grave. In reading of history, I see that nearly all of America’s life has been a compromise between institutional stupidity and willful ignorance.
Someone I know has a pet phrase, “we are not highly evolved”. Some of us are quite highly evolved while most of us are Neanderthals with drivers licenses. When one imagines where we could be if we all acted as if we were highly evolved, then the current state of humanity is a source of great depression.
It would be wondrous if the Reagan and Trump administrations were the bookends the only shelf of trash fiction in the library. I wish I could be that optimistic. Really, what I see is that the potential in the world during my brief time in the wondrous consciousness of life is shortchanged by the shortsighted immaturity of most of humanity.