It’s especially egregious (and punishable) when the perpetrator is the President of the United States. He has betrayed his oath, his country, and the generations that have built it.
It has to do with how the citizens view themselves, and their society, and how they relate to their government – and vice versa. It is a shared state of mind.
Not since the Watergate tapes has there been such a trove of direct evidence about a President’s private conduct. It could well be that Trump is a puppet of Putin. Or maybe not.
Either way, the Putin tapes will be historic, if they survive.
The first five million years of our evolution went very well, overall.
The next 980 years could be a problem.
A morality play that’s especially relevant for this dark time in our history.
Shakespeare nailed it in Julius Caesar: “The fault, dear Brutus,
is not in our stars, but in ourselves…” Enter Donald Trump, stage right.
His crypto fascism has done a lot of damage to our democracy, but he is also failing at it –
for various reasons – compared to his notorious predecessors and peers.
The bottom-line test for any government is procuring the “common good.” China
has excelled at it. The enduring problem, as Plato warned, is how to control the controllers.
We need to stop repeating old, costly, and deadly mistakes. Will we ever learn?
A real-life version of William Golding’s famous (dark) novel tells a very different tale
about human nature. But what about Donald Trump?