Comment by paiute
5 years ago
During his 'The president has total power' gaffe he at one point said something along "I am president, the president isn't a person, but the office. I have the office now. Then the next guy will have the office..." You know, the kind of thing a dictator would say. Sometimes I feel like defending him due to people's over reactions when I wouldn't otherwise.
The context for this is also that although Democrats wanted Obama to use executive orders to advance their agenda, Obama understood that future presidents would use his use of executive orders as precedent for their own--regardless of to what party they belong.
> Sometimes I feel like defending him due to people's over reactions when I wouldn't otherwise.
You feel the urge to defend someone whose actions are indefensible. Why is that? If I had to guess, I would say it's because you feel the urge to always be the contrarian. Whatever you feel the majority opinion is, there is an urge to go against it. This is probably because your feeling of self-worth is attached to the notion of being a contrarian. Going against the majority opinion makes you feel special, and in a way, it makes you feel superior. In my experience, it is a symptom of deeper issues - insecurity, fear of the unknown. The risk, if you don't address this issue, is that you will find yourself defending more and more extreme positions, and even seeking out more extreme positions to defend. This will cause social isolation, as people with more maintstream opinions such as "dangerous criminals should not be elected president" start avoiding you, and are replaced by other "contrarians".
That’s awfully ungenerous to your fellow HNer. Maybe it would be better to wait for his response to your question (“Why is that?”) rather than answering it yourself.
If I had to guess you're the kind of person who always thinks you're the smartest guy around. You know absolutely nothing about this person, just went on this rant against a strawman to feel intelligent.
Yes, that’s always a possibility. I try to check myself for this kind of behavior, and I don’t think that your description is accurate, but of course you never know for certain.
Vladimir Putin talks about his office in a similar way. Yet he's managed to hold it for 20 years even though the Russian constitution was supposed to limit him to two four-year terms.
At least since Augustus, dictators have been diligent in paying lip service to law and established tradition while trampling over both.