There is a proper way to live that has no relationship to what trump is doing. He is careening toward a disaster which is predictable and largely of his own making. There are a few liabilities the president brings to the table. most prominent among them power. Power really does corrupt. Trump drools corruption and is delighted if his power puts him in a league with Putin. This is but one of the irrationalities that power breeds in Trump.
Power is the great corruptor
Those who become president need to see that power corrupts and that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
If you have not perceived that absolute power is what the American struggle is about as we speak you have not been reading the right texts or watching the right news. That's alright. Whole populations have been hoodwinked in the past. The only consolation is that the perps -- in this case Trump -- end up going down. The problem is the numbers he may take with him.
1 big thing: "Headed for certain crisis" https://t.co/WUGJbG5ZPr #axiosam
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) July 22, 2017
Power and lust are one
The certain crisis we have been heading for is as old as history. Another liability that Trump has is a failure to see that beauty is truth. Keats understood and promulgated that contention. Trump takes an axe to it and beauty to him is a shapely blonde who conforms exactly to the measurements he keeps in his addled brain.
The truth is not anything to Trump which is why he is unable to perceive justice as the end of the journey we happen to be on.
Truth saying is agonizingly difficult
The liability of misunderstanding the unity of Truth And Beauty is immense. And because so few can see it we have the rather amazing spectacle of Keith Olbermann left with the burden of corralling all the truth he can find and trying at the same time to be a preacher of morality to all of us.
He is indispensable but only a tiny fraction of the news-consuming public pays attention,
The Media Must Fight Back | The Resistance with Keith Olbermann | GQ https://t.co/s0PbniE5Df via @YouTube
— Stephen C. Rose (@stephencrose) July 22, 2017
How all should live
The proper way to live is to consider things before acting or speaking.
More than that, considering should involve submitting whatever you are thinking about to ethics which is values. Tolerance. Helpfulness. Democracy. If these do not seem allied with your impulses, think again. The proper end of consideration is to submit your choices to aesthetics which is the unified reality -- truth and beauty. Aim for this. t is the only route to the goal which is achieving a measure of justice.
Dictator in the wings
This is a picture of reality as foreign to Donald Trump as elementary decency is. It now appears that we have been correct in assuming the next act will be the battle to achieve dictatorial control. That would the result of a Mueller war. We may wish Sean Spicer had never left.
