07-11-2020, 12:03 PM
(07-11-2020, 11:21 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: Well, they need some sort of excuse for being greedy? That's as good a deflection as any.
People are remarkably adept at finding excuses for their horrible behavior. OK, "pathological narcissist", "sociopath", and "psychopath" don't cut it.
Maybe a pathological narcissist like Donald Trump gets away with it for a long time. Maybe fifty years. Figure, though, that someone who has been obliged to humble himself to do a servile tasks or hard labor just to survive in a rough time has some respect for people who have done such.
I remember people telling me that such hardship built character. Regrettably those people, largely Lost and early GI, are no longer around to teach that lesson. The important thing that one learned from such people is that doing such was no hindrance to doing something more rewarding (and intellectually demanding) later in life. Working smart is usually much more rewarding than working hard. But one must ordinarily work hard before one gets the chance to work smart.
I have yet to associate Trump with any virtue. He was lucky to have invested heavily in real estate in New York City, where property values were depressed at one time and now are seriously inflated -- as opposed to Detroit in the 1950's, where property values were inflated (when the auto industry was king of the American economy) and where values have plummeted -- and even suburban property values have been nearly stagnant. Or for that matter, other big cities in New York. Upstate New York used to be a good place to live; about 30 years ago Rochester was great. It is now a wreck, and real estate values show that.
(Yes, Silicon Valley is even better for landlords, but at some point it could be another Gary. You know Gary... the four-letter crossword clue for "a bad place" when "slum" and "Hell" somehow fail to fit...
I have a theory that people develop vices because they can get away with them. K-12 teachers get paid well enough to be able to afford at the least a one-bedroom apartment or (in rural areas) a house, a car (except in New York City), maybe a vacation, a household pet, and some books and recorded entertainments -- but certainly not a drug habit. Highly-successful entertainers have money to burn, which is not to say that they burn it (Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Fred McMurray, Lawrence Welk, and Fess Parker invested heavily in real estate in southern California... and got even richer). Think of such promising musicians as Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin, who died young of drug overdoses. On the average NBA players have several children out of wedlock by different women... not every one of those NBA players, but there are some who have a girlfriend in each city in which they play basketball. (I could make a sexual pun about what they do off court, but I refrain out of decency). The typical K-12 teacher is juggling bills and somehow getting by. I believe that it was Robin Williams who said that cocaine is Nature's way of telling you that you are making too much money.
A K-12 teacher is fired for having a drug problem. One cannot have such an influence in the classroom. Having been a substitute, I can assure you that there are few more anti-drug people than K-12 teachers. But an entertainer? Go to rehab in a resort-like setting, cool off a bit, and people will be clamoring for the dance, song, and punch-lines. At the extreme of getting away with it is what used to be White America's Favorite Black Man, Bill Cosby. Nobody wanted to believe that he was a serial rapist... which he is.
...Entertainers are the people by profession most likely to use drugs and cheat on spouses. They have the means and the cover that many of the rest of us lack.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
