Tagged: vanity

On Changing

If you absolutely need something to be true, that would be an excellent place to begin your most painstakingly openminded inquiry. For emotional investment is the hardest obstacle for the mind to overcome, and therefore the greatest bar to discovery. A philosopher, essentially, is a man whose investment in a certainty never supersedes his desire for the truth. Consistency across time is not...

Russia’s Trump?

Six days ago, I wrote of the Russian state media’s calls for Vladimir Putin to consider the use of tactical nuclear weapons in response to NATO’s alleged nuclear threats against Russia. At that time, I wrote: In short, Russia, in desperation and about to suffer the most humiliating military defeat since the United States scurried away from the Taliban like the frightened rats...

Trump’s Deliberative Processes

As a child, I often lay awake at dawn conceiving of fanciful notions like this: I blow into the air in my room, and some dust on my night table is swept up in the breeze and sent sailing about the room, and then an alternate breeze from the window carries that dust out of the room, followed by subsequent little gusts throughout...

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity

Donald Trump has gotten himself into a pickle by issuing hush money payments during his presidential campaign to (at least) two bimbos he bedded years ago. Thinking this over again and again, I keep coming back to the question I wish to raise here: Why? Why, that is, should Trump, or his political handlers, have thought such payments advisable in the first place?...