The controversy rolls on in reference to the President’s profane characterization of the inhabitants of Haiti and of the African nations.  Today when questioned the Secretary of DHS Kristen Nielsen said that she did not hear the vulgar language that others heard the President say.  She was in the room.  All she heard was “tough language.” Well, Ok. Clearly she wants to keep her job.

What has happened to us?  As a child of the 1950s I recall hearing talk of the Eisenhower administration around the family table.  Today’s arcane, twisted, fact-adverse official discourse would, and could not have been imagined by President Eisenhower, or the politicians around him, or by my parents who as I recall, felt appreciation for the government they lived under.

What has happened to us?  I remember the Canon commercial of many  years ago; spokes person Andre Agassi leaping, making a signature slashing swing with his tennis racket, says to the camera, “Image is everything.”  I get it. Canon wants to sell cameras.  They are in the image business.  With respect to photography, yes image manifestly is everything.  But as a maxim for life in general, the statement is an arrow pointing us down the road ahead, a road that ends abruptly at the edge of a cliff.

We are in free fall…….

.…..a man becomes just by the performance of just, and temperate by the performance of temperate actions; nor is there the smallest likelihood of a man becoming good by any other course of conduct.  It is not however a popular line to take, most men preferring theory to practice under the impression of arguing about morals proves them to be philosophers, and that in this way they will turn out to be fine characters.  They resemble invalids…..who listen carefully to all the doctor says but do not carry out a single one of his orders.  The bodies of such people will never respond to treatment — nor will the souls of such ‘philosophers’. 

–excerpt Nicomachean Ethics Book II by Aristotle