It’s something bequeathed from one generation to another. It can also be thought of something inherited by one generation from a preceding generation. When we think of bequests, aka inheritances, we most often think of good things – a home, wealth, knowledge, or something else that makes the life of the inheritor just a bit better. It isn’t always so.
Really big legacies are often complicated things. Consider our inheritance of the knowledge of nuclear physics earned by the Greatest Generation and handed to its posterity. It gave us the benefits of nuclear power, the ability to power spacecraft for decades-long missions, and nuclear medicine to help us fight cancer. It also gave us nuclear reactor meltdowns, nuclear fallout, nuclear weapons, and a world teetering on the brink of planetary destruction. Yeah, it’s complicated.
I read a Daily KOS item just a bit ago that had the title, Trump Immunity Ruling Will Be John Roberts’ Legacy to American Democracy. It made me wonder, “Is that really a legacy to American Democracy or is it a legacy to American Autocracy, American Fascism, or American Oligarchy? I suppose it is all of these things.
Roberts’ legacy is a gift of POWER. And those who inherit power are most often loathe to surrender it, abdicate it, or otherwise refuse it. Only an honest and humble man will decline power. I suppose Justice Roberts’ tastes in literature and cinema favor RomComs, historical novels, and dramas rather than the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres. If he favored the latter, he would know that Trump, like Emperor Palpatine, would never give up emergency powers granted to him by either the Imperial Senate or the courts (as in Trump’s case).
Roberts’ legacy is a Greek Tyrannus. Perhaps our next foundational document will be a Declaration of Submission with words like: “We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all people are created equal. That they are endowed by their absolute ruler with certain limited and mutable rights, and that among these are the rights to life, servitude, obedience, and the pursuit of endeavors that the ruler requires of them.”
Sometimes, I wonder whether mushroom clouds too have silver linings.
I wonder how we as citizens of USA ever think that believing that inciting an insurrection, fraudulent electors, having documents of US security at home post losing a presidency and hush money could possibly be okay and given immunity as a presidential act. I am disgusted.
I wonder how we as citizens of USA ever think that believing that inciting an insurrection, fraudulent electors, having documents of US security at home post losing a presidency and hush money could possibly be okay and given immunity as a presidential act. I am disgusted.
I think that it is in our nature to deny anything that doesn’t square with our preconceived notions. That said, Liberals tend to keep that part of our psyche in check by being so uncertain about everything – including our beliefs. Conservatives more often have fixed beliefs. They think that they know the “Mind of God,” and that makes them dogmatic, inflexible, and ineducable. 🙁