Integrity or Lack of Same
By ice rivers
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To integrate is the ability to combine components into a single congrous whole. Integration of this nature is only fully achievable in mathematics yet we have a propensity to apply the mathematical concept to human behavior. Thus we arrive at the word integrity. According to Shakespeare, Marc Antony saw Brutus as a person within whom the elements of nature were rightly mixed.
Human behavior eventually manifests itself as politics and the personalities of our politicians shape the components of the particular party that they represent. Some of our politicians are leaders with the ability to integrate their authentic beliefs into a rightly mixed combination of conviction and congruity or as close as humanly possible. Others are bystanders and grandstanders who discover a parade and decide to leap in front of it. They reduce human behavior to numerical integers called polls and attempt through their translation of those numbers to stay in front of the parade without actual belief in anything other than the mathematicians who interpret the polls while they mistake the numbers for reality.
When authentic politicians deliver "authentic" conviction and congruity, that combination becomes the "platform" of the party which will be defended and amended until the next electoral process begins. The platform means something.
Now let's flashback BT (Before Trump) when both parties stood on platforms. The platform adopted by a party every four years outlined the agenda and major issues of the party.Then Trump descended on the escalator and personality replaced platform. This was the set up for the horifying national joke called the Republican party which 20,000 lies later would leave the word "integrity" as a sad punch line.
After his astonishing election in 2016, Trump's presidential platform devolved into a personal parade of particular vanities and preconcieved notions reinforced by the MAGA capped masses who joined the parade.
When he ran for president a second time after his first impeachment but before the second impeachment, he was asked just before his convention to describe his agenda for the next four years. Trump said this: "so, I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very,very solid. We would continure what we're doing, we'd solidify what we've done and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done." ( Peter Baker, New York Times, August 27,2020)
At that same convention, the Republican party produced no platform for the first time in memory simply releasing a resolution that enthusiastically supports President Trump.
Yup
The party stood for nothing other than its leader who no one knew what the hell he stood for other than to win at all costs and attack his percieved enemies with all the power afforded by the bully pulpit of the most powerful man on earth.
And a fondness for Putin
So yeah, integrity as a human capacity rather than a numerical function is hard to define and even harder to realize. A total lack of integrity is much easier to recognize due to its disastrous after effects.
Divided States of America
November
2022.
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Comments
Hi ice rivers ...
Just read your rant, how come you put November 2022? Is it because it is almost here?
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