Integrity and Intelligence
Integrity and Intelligence
Integrity and intelligence are not givens but choices. They are acts of will as well as brain power. They require effort, sometimes courage. Their opposites—stupidity and malice (or weakness)—have their attractions. We are witnessing their erosion, indeed gleeful abandonment. I am not just referring to the current political era but to a broader phenomenon, including the universities and so-called intelligentsia. Politics has trumped (Trumped) intelligence and integrity. Your friends have abandoned these admirable traits—you might have yourself (not that you would admit it). Behavioral contagion is real; mass psychology is a thing. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. It’s everywhere. The causes are unclear, but history is full of it. Keep an eye out for it—you can’t miss it. The unmistakable sign of it is giving terrible arguments for absurd positions. Fill in the blanks.
I have an uncle, the brother of my stepmother, who is not an intellectual, and not terribly bright, but he’s seen the world in a sense in the Navy. He knows what the world and reality is like. Maybe part of the problem or one variable is that most people’s map of the world is very little informed by robust and direct engagement with it. I wouldn’t similarly trust any jury trying me for the reason that their model of crime and justice is based at best on TV.
Many of us are like children in our conception of the world.
I totally agree–and Americans tend to be the most childlike of all (they love cartoons and media sensationalism). My grandfather was a coal miner and student of Karl Marx–by all accounts a highly intelligent man and of iron integrity. He was called “Joe the Agitator”.
Maybe it’s just me, but the outcry against “wokism” and “illegal” immigration, chimes a very comic and grotesque echo of the Reformation. And mind you, many of Trump’s base are “Christians” who are illiterate about the Bible and I strongly suspect that modern Christianity is an immortality scam, enabling its believers to live in the fast lane, and be sinners while winning immortality from the Supreme fascist (as Erdos put it) and to boss all non believers that is people who just want to get through this thing called life, around and to bully the rest of the world (citizens of countries other than America apparently have the same rights as immigrants). Returning to my point you’d figure that Trump et al sic were talking of the Babylonian captivity when they spoke of DOGE and “you broke the law when you crossed the border” But don’t forgive them father, for they know exactly what they’re doing.
I believe Vance is the worst of them all.