Much has been made recently of the anonymous Op/Ed that appeared in the NYT, purportedly authored by someone in the current administration. I’ve got a few thoughts, and will possibly add more later.
I’ll start with the obvious. It’s anonymous, unsourced, unverified, piece of opinion. By definition, we have no way to judge the veracity of the piece or the credibility of either the piece or the author. Unlike a hard news story, which requires things like sources and facts, this is an opinion. Yet it’s being treated as some sort of holy writ.
As a general rule, my respect for someone increases proportionally with the amount of risk they take or courage they show. In this case the author is either scared that they’ll lose their job, or narcissistic enough to think that they have the power to fix the situation. Neither option fills me with confidence. In most situations, rational people give less credence to anonymous complaints.
While I am sympathetic to the general premise that Trump may suffer from some sort or degree of mental illness or loss of capacity related to his age, one anonymous opinion piece is not justification to invoke the 25th amendment. At this point deposing a president based on one person’s anonymous opinion seems more like some banana republic coup than anything else.
I have to note the hypocrisy (for lack of a better term) of those who use this as a cudgel against Trump, while ignoring the clearly expressed fact that the writer wants to further many of his policies. Policies with which these folx disagree.
Again, I’ve said for quite some time that Trump is amoral and that this is one of the reasons why I couldn’t support or vote for him. However, in a society with no objective standards of morality, by what standard does someone (with no objective moral standard) judge amorality to be objectively bad? Darwinian theory is amoral. Utilitarian philosophy is amoral. Once again, I’m struck by a society which denies objective truth and objective morality, being critical of Trump for violating the standards they deny exist.
Gotta work, more later.