01-07-2020, 11:52 AM
I'd rather spend $19 a month on dog food and have an awesome companion. Polar bears will not go extinct; the Tigers of the Arctic will be popular in zoos should Greenland become like what Iceland is now.
As for conservatism -- we liberals are much less erratic than Trump, much less demagogic, and much more loyal to this country and what it has long stood for. Oddly, when Donald Trump shows his disdain for traditions that most Americans take for granted, we are still here and we are a default. Trump has shown where his loyalties are: his vanity and his self image. We have learned the hard way that despite economic advances and cultural additions, human nature has changed little from what Socrates knew.
Trump is showing us through his failures as a person the necessity of human kindness, cool-headed reasoning, and loyalty to benign institutions. In him we see much that is wrong with America. The Seven Deadly Sins (anger, lust, gluttony, envy, sloth, incontinence, and vainglory) may have treatments that make them less deadly, but they all degrade life and make it more precarious. Within sloth is intellectual laziness.
As for conservatism -- we liberals are much less erratic than Trump, much less demagogic, and much more loyal to this country and what it has long stood for. Oddly, when Donald Trump shows his disdain for traditions that most Americans take for granted, we are still here and we are a default. Trump has shown where his loyalties are: his vanity and his self image. We have learned the hard way that despite economic advances and cultural additions, human nature has changed little from what Socrates knew.
Trump is showing us through his failures as a person the necessity of human kindness, cool-headed reasoning, and loyalty to benign institutions. In him we see much that is wrong with America. The Seven Deadly Sins (anger, lust, gluttony, envy, sloth, incontinence, and vainglory) may have treatments that make them less deadly, but they all degrade life and make it more precarious. Within sloth is intellectual laziness.
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.