Super President

The Best and Worst of Times

The 19^th Century … brought a dawn … of realization … on many issues. In England … the restoration was in full swing … in India … the light of the Saivite practices … exalted the individual identity … beyond the mere herd … of acquiescence. It ignited the fire of gnosis … and called on man … in the experience of the human condition … to discover his self worth. It was the start … of the new world.

France had … in the years preceding … raised the worth of the ordinary man … as the model of … of the new hope. It identified his inalienable condition … and returned to the individual … the intimation of his self worth … as the genus of the universe. New discoveries abounded. Pioneers set out … to discover the world … and to engage the greater realization … of our human condition.

It was a time of new hopes and ideas. It was the cream of the renaissance … that took place some years before … and the new nation … America … was like a beacon of light … that inspired … and took on itself … the experiment … to bring these new ideas to validation. And that it did … with the gusto … of the convert … and founded in its practices … the thinking man … who dared to think the unthinkable.

Such a man was the American president Andrew Johnson ( 1808 �" 1875 ). Considered by many … as the worst President in American history … congress had commenced impeachment proceedings against him … that was subsequently defeated. Having succeeded Lincoln … as President … after the civil war … the man was enthused with the possibility of achievement … unprecedented in human thought. But it would appear .. that much of what he brought to everyone … was the nature of the eros experience in him … and had not yet found a coherent voice for it.

Johnson …had lost his father at age 4. He was born in poverty … worked as a tailor … and later found a position … in the Tennessee legislature. He eventually rose to governor of Tennessee … before joining the Lincoln administration as vice-president. It was a meteoric rise … to the highest office in the land. Today … when people say … anyone can become anything they want … in America … … it bears a reference to Johnson.

He represented to many … the belief in oneself … the individual liberty of the French revolution … the social conscience of the Restoration … and the creation thesis of Indic philosophy … in the way they referred to the possibility. In the pulse of his times … Johnson … must have made contact with the vibrant tones of the new promises arising … and sought to have them birthed. He must have seen himself as the man to do that.

In a career thereafter … in facing the incredibly daunting task of … turning dreams into reality … in the true content of the possibilities … Johnson … faced the contradiction inherent in such an experience. Eros impulses … deny death … and exalt immortality. It refers to the enthusiastic strain of life … to go on. It points to the show we perceive … in its mighty majesty of pomp in creation. And it drives us on the imperative that the … show must go on.

Coming as it did … after the civil war … the denial of death … produced a denial of the war. And in exalting the new vein of equality … it found it impossible to deal with people … not intimated on the concept. Hence it encountered a narrow set of choices … to realize its possibilities … and went down the path … of exalting pleasures … as the alternative. It produced the theme of sexual liberation … and product orientation … as the resting place … of good intentions.

It ought to be pointed out … that Johnson was attempting … the great leap forward … at a time … when American psyche … was responding to the remorse of slavery. Its the Gothic hole of self infliction. In such an atmosphere … in the angst of a bad conscience … was it any surprise … that the American people considered him the ' worst.' He was telling them what they didn't want to hear … and he was getting into constant misinterpretations about what he had meant.

Something like that … happens all the time. An individual's impulses share a balance with its opposites … as it does in the physical natures of the world. Oliver Cromwell … in the English experience … raised parliament above the mere whims of royalty … but they simply sunk back down … into the habituated responses of sucking up to the King. Cromwell had beheaded the King … in front of the people.

In America … Johnson was besieged by a system set up by the founding fathers … that worshiped the new qualities … it discovered in man. It was the temple of the body. He certainly could not have … imprisoned congress and imposed martial law in the land. He was in the role of the lone man … fighting with everyone … by the word of what makes things work. In that … he might have borrowed a book from the Greek senators ... who founded the democratic ideal. Johnson would have succeeded … if he had re-discovered democracy in himself.

Johnson's great grand daughter … Margaret Bartlett … passed on in 1992 … in her residence in Greenville … North Carolina. Its where Johnson had set up his tailor shop. Its the passing of a great epoch … in the beginning of ideas … and the way we bring them to experiment and discovery. It lies today as the raw seed of possibilities … in the American psyche … waiting for the seasons … to give it life.