On Vice

Some examples of why living a life dedicated to good is better than living one dedicated to evil.

Plato’s Republic is a deep well that we often return to on this newsletter, but I’ve been particularly troubled by some specific events in the news that have shown how normalized vice has become. Socrates explains in Book 2 exactly why leading a good life does not bear fruit in the next world alone, but that it is a reward in and of itself.¹ It can be difficult to visualize this argument in abstract, and the parables he invents don’t translate all that well into the modern era, so it can be helpful to look at some recent examples of vicious individuals and how they have to contort themselves to follow the demands of their malfeasance. 

The trope of the lying politician came around at the same time as the concept of structured government, which is fitting because the two men running for the highest position in America seem old enough to remember a time before it. Both Joe Biden and Donald Trump are over the hill. I’m not a doctor, so I can’t say whether (or to what degree) either candidate has textbook dementia, but the APA has set a rule in place to prevent doctors from attempting to diagnose politicians altogether, so it’s up to one’s own common sense to observe this. Each party has mobilized a cohort of gormless ass-kissers to show up on television and argue why their candidate is experiencing less mental decline than the other’s. Each candidate, in turn, has shown themselves to be mentally unfit in almost exactly the same ways. Trump famously went on TV and ranted about passing a baseline mental acuity test that he called “not that easy before walking it back, but on the other hand, Biden has refused to take that same test. Conversely, yes, Biden called Abdel el-Sisi the president of Mexico (which borders Palestine), but at the same time Trump has called Viktor Orban the leader of Turkey (which borders Russia). In this conversation about mental acuity, Biden very slightly edges out Trump because he had the necessary knowledge at some point 20 years ago, whereas Trump has never had it, but neither are fit to run a Target, much less a country. Of course, none of this matters to either’s underlings. Kari Lake has claimed that Trump’s cognitive abilities are “unlike anything I’ve ever seen.” Meanwhile on the other side of the aisle, Pete Buttigieg has given a bizarre anecdote about the president asking a question that was too complex for both him and an expert from the Federal Rail Administration to answer. Both of these people are utterly convinced that these obvious lies will further their political careers, and they are both utterly wrong. In Aristotelian terms, it is the excess of ambition, or minor honor, that drives them to be so vicious. The worst part is, they don’t even understand that they’re making fools out of themselves. Their vice clouds their judgment so completely that they cannot see how the immediate goal of furthering the career of a senile old man will sabotage their ultimate goal of achieving higher power. Most politicians in their shoes would know when to abandon ship, but as Socrates has predicted, they have become slaves to their vice and must maintain the deception to keep their immediate future intact.