“The best argument against democracy is a five minute
conversation with the average voter.”

Winston Churchill

Much of what we do as mankind are responses to needs that have been addressed for thousands of years. Besides the minor tweaks that knowledge and technology afford us, there is, as Ecclesiastes tells us, little new under the sun when it comes to basic societal needs or the exercise of political power. Plato wrote in The Republic that democracy was a flawed system of government inasmuch as leaders ill qualified to lead were nevertheless adept at convincing their fellows to vote for them, that the skills and attributes that win elections, are not at all the same skills that make a great leader. In his argument, he formulated the allegory of the “Ship of Fools”, where a ship’s crew mutiny the captain and then by collusion, flattery, violence, persuasion, and impugning the characters of their enemies, new navigators are elected, though they have no skills in navigation. The result being a ship adrift, the steering left to those least able to guide it. Plato is said to have preferred the idea of philosopher kings, an oligarchy of the most qualified thinkers, himself possibly being a reasonable candidate.

Of course, any system of government dependent on human beings to guide it will be flawed, whether it is led by a slick politician, a benevolent monarch, or a philosopher king. For this reason, the forefathers sought to mitigate the manifest corruption of humanity by creating us as a constitutional republic, a nation guided primarily by laws, and not by people… a type of auto pilot for the Ship of fools. As we move away from the primacy of that Constitution, we more closely resemble the ship of Plato’s allegory, where fools elect fools on the basis of party loyalty, sound-bites, and intentional disregard of reality.

So today’s news is the leaked tape of Donald Trump making lewd comments about women, saying outrageous things about women’s anatomy, bragging about his sexual prowess, and acting like, well, Donald Trump. And so the collapse of Obamacare goes to the back page. The exposition that Hillary Clinton admits to a public persona that doesn’t actually jive with her private persona that supports open borders and believes Wall Street should be in charge of fixing their own problems, yes, back page stuff. Sex always leads. Bad news for Trump always leads. And so, this completely unsurprising audio of Trump being Trump is front page news.

Politicians know the political response, and it is the same response that men have learned from their earliest interactions with the fairer sex; mock outrage. “Oh how disgusting!”, “How misogynistic!”, “How objectifying of women!”, “How unlike anything I would ever say!” If we as men don’t fulfill our part of this kabuki theater, mock outrage, then women might not fulfill their part, intentional naivety. Truth is, and those of us no longer mired in adolescent innocence know it in our hearts, that men think about sex, and they think about it a lot. Once in awhile ugly thoughts come out in ugly words, sometimes in the locker room, sometimes in the bedroom with their own women. I’ve read the transcript, and frankly I don’t see any news here. After Stern, the Playboy interviews, and the adulteries, did we think Trump would talk any differently in private? Do we suppose that most men talk together about women by quoting poetry?   Do we really believe Bill Clinton revered women in all of his private conversations? We as a society have already decided that such things are not a disqualifier. I daresay we have survived several Presidents who have said such things and worse in private conversations, but that doesn’t matter because we have audio on this, and audio demands a response, and that response must include outrage, shock, and piety. I haven’t the knowledge the Christ had as he traced in the sand the words and deeds of the men seeking to stone the adulteress, but you all know your own darkness, let he who is without sin cast the first stone. Not to excuse the transgression, or the transgressor, this is why Trump was last on my list for GOP candidates, but the hypocrisy and hysteria over boorish behavior to the exclusion of concern over Hillary Clinton’s criminal behavior, and worse, her destructive ideas, is appalling.

IMHO: Mr. Trump is likely to learn that billionaires expressing sexual perversion might entice women as they flock to theaters to see Fifty Shades of Grey, but it won’t fly as they flock to polling places. Plenty of men (and politicians) will probably need to drop their support for Trump if only to prove that they are not like him… even if they are. On this ship of fools we are always choosing between two flawed navigators; this time around they are even more flawed than usual. My highest concern is less with what one of the candidates said eleven years ago, but more with what one of them has said and done recently, and even more so what each of them promises for the future. I resent it, but we have a choice only between two courses; I don’t like where one has been, but I cannot abide where the other is going.