A Rush to Perspective

"Perspective" is what we develop when, with the benefit of time, we're able to frame something more aptly than is possible from within the thick of it.

As his support collapses and oversight looms, why wait years? It's never too early to seek perspective. Here's mine:

He’s a 4. Maybe a 4-1/2.

If we ever had a 3 (Putin, Maduro, Orban, roughly), we’d feel as warmly nostalgic for Trump as dems now feel toward GWB. (Remember how just after 9/11 he visited a mosque to support our Muslim neighbors? Yeah, that guy!)

If we ever had a 2 (Kim, Saddam, Stalin, Mussolini), 2026 would seem like paradise lost.

If we ever had a 1 (Pol Pot, Hitler, Amin), we’d be too busy staying safe and finding food to even make comparisons.


Am I minimizing his horribleness? Am I advocating for complacency? God, no.

We've developed a conviction that everything bad is The Worst. This makes it very hard to perceive—much less aptly handle—worsening. And it leads to a dizzy, bitterly unpleasant society that's even less amenable to coalition and compromise than ever. We've lost all sense of proportionality. And the antidote is perspective.

He's a ZERO!!!! scream back a substantial number of readers with little patience for my fiddly nonsense.

And the fact that 1. they'd all concede that GWB looks pretty good right now, and 2. they'd have harshly screamed "He's a zero!!!!" at any such assertion back at the time, cannot be considered. Such uncontestable observations are irreconcilable with gut assumptions, and thus beyond reflection. The old "Daily Show" trick of catching people in flagrant hypocrisy no longer works. "My obvious self-contradiction is off the table."

Many of us are colicky children unwilling to seek, find, or appreciate perspective, which seems like shameful tolerance for the supreme evil of whatever rubs us the wrong way.