Essays in Idleness

Part of prudence is to care what will be the result of one’s ministrations. For if you don’t care, the results will be nearly opposite to what you are promising. Of course you care, but you are more careful about yourself, and to take credit, and so forth. In the course of which, your care for the results of your ministrations shrinks to the zero it usually does among politicians.

It would be unreasonable to expect perfect sanctity in public life. This is why only very, very stupid people, like President Biden, say that Kamala Harris “has the moral compass of a saint.” I don’t even think Donald Trump has the moral compass of a saint, and to their credit, I don’t think any Republicans do.

But does Trump, in addition to his narcissism and whatever, care for the results of his political actions? Is he actually trying to “make America great again”? (Or at least a little better?) Or is he largely indifferent to the pain and death he spreads about him, except for the personal political consequences? Yes, Trump is, along with his personality defects, above all but a few American politicians. And Ms Harris is well below them.

Politics, with its elections, comes very close to a “zero-sum” game in which such comparisons are necessary. It is also zero-sum long after the election. All a politician can do is negotiate some kind of trade-off, in which he will ideally try to get as much good as possible, in exchange for as little evil. He cannot deliver any absolute, and this is why all (not most, but all) socialists, “liberals,” progressives, &c, should be absolutely dismissed.

“The people” know nothing about how to run a state, and that’s why, in a democracy, we must have such foolish politicians. Their idea of a trade-off is more services for less taxes.

From this you may guess that I am not an “idealist” in politics, or in anything else this far away from God. The world works within the constraints that the world works within. Note the tautology. These constraints are real.