jimboston wrote:Re: Tom Cruise. being âRightâ about Anti-Depressants
Even a broken clock is correct twice a day.
I think heâs right that many of these drugs are over prescribed and abused.
I think heâs right that with Therapy and better physical health you can address the real underlying issues in the vast majority of cases.
That doesnât mean his âReligionâ is right⌠cause they have a better take on this subject doesnât make them right on every subject.
Pretty much.
One can be right about some things and wrong about others. That's true of pretty much everything.
jimboston wrote:bigtoughralf wrote:Point of fact: pilling people up to the eyeballs is not 'western', it's very specifically 'American'
That's why American presidents are all demented skin bags by the age of 60 whereas the queen is still lucid, intelligent and admirable even at the age of almost 100
Right⌠it got nothing to do with the fact that Presidents are more comparable to Prime MinistersâŚ. and as such they have a lifetime of high stress political situations, elections, etc.
Whereas the Queen was born a Princess and never had a serious worry in her entire life. She received the best medical care, food, education, etc. She never worried about working, or where her food would come from, or if she would get elected. Ashe knew from her teenage years she was destined to be Queen. Oh, and as Queen she can fret all she wants but in reality she has no real decision making authority. The lives of the people don;t rest squarely on her shoulders.
f*ck the Monarchy. f*ck any Monarchy.
You're quite right that the Queen lives a very pampered life. You're quite wrong that she has no responsibility and you're totally wrong in disrespecting monarchy.
Looking around the world, the constitutional monarchies tend to produce very long periods of stability and good government, whereas the republics tend to produce rapid declines into despotism, punctuated by upheavals and revolutions.
In the 2100 years since the Roman Republic was subverted into a dictatorship, I can't think of a single example of a republic which did not eventually spiral into absolute dictatorship, unless it disintegrated in a civil war first. On the opposite side of the ledger, look at the world's constitutional monarchies and you see hundreds of years of stable government with strong respect for the needs of the common man.
I believe this is no coincidence, but a fundamental cause-and-effect relationship.
Homo sapiens being a pack animal, we have an instinctive emotional attachment to the pack leader. It served us well in the time of 30-family tribes, but it has become a dangerous lever of power in the time of nation states. In republics, cynical leaders exploit this irrational instinct to gather more and more power to themselves with each passing crisis, gradually taking on a godlike persona.
In constitutional monarchies, this tendency is disabled. All the pomp and ceremony and emotional nonsense is attached to the person of the monarch, who however is largely powerless. The prime minister, in the shadow of the monarch, is seen as just an average joe doing his job, a civil servant. He's a very powerful civil servant, but a servant nonetheless. Thus no emotional baggage accrues to him. In times of crisis, he may get additional powers, but they are removed when the crisis is over. There's no mystical peg for him to hang his hat on.
My favourite illustration of this is the Quebec Conference of 1943. Roosevelt arrived with a security detail of more than 100 Marines, Secret Servicemen, and miscellaneous other agents. Churchill arrived with his usual two bodyguards.
Even then, the American president was seen as a semi-divine persona, like an Egyptian Pharoah. Being able to assassinate him would have been a huge trauma to American morale and a massive boost to the enemy. The British prime minister, on the other hand, was seen as just a mortal man. Churchill was popular, to be sure, and many would have mourned his death, but it would not have been a trauma to the nation. Anthony Eden would have taken over the job and it would have been business as usual the next day.
Do not underestimate the enormous service that the Queen gives us by siphoning away adulation that in a republic could be used to ratchet up the power of the "beloved leader". Nor, do I think, is the Queen ignorant of the importance of this role. Not every monarch is blessed with gravitas, but I think Lizzie feels the weight of this responsibility and takes it very seriously indeed.
