Don’t Make This Mistake (Or Stop Before It’s Too Late)

Why are good people attracted to serving bad people or bad causes? Aristotle taught Alexander the Great. Seneca advised Nero. Da Vinci attached himself to Cesare Borgia. Mattis accepted a cabinet position from Trump. There are, of course, many other examples of academics who were blind to the horrors of the Soviet system or the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge, just as everyday there are good people who go to work for less than ethical companies or leaders. But it is sad that there are two prominent Stoics on that list. Seneca knew what Nero was up to. Secretary of Defense Mattis, a wise, patriotic four-star general, is currently serving a man who is almost his polar opposite in every single way, who says and does things he can’t possibly agree with and would never defend. Now in all these instances, there is a good case to be made that if these wise men didn’t serve in these roles, someone else--someone less disciplined and less compassionate--would simply fill their place. Would we have preferred Alexander without Aristotle’s tempering? Would we want someone less strong, less ethical, less driven by duty to take over as Secretary of Defense? That’s a reasonable argument, and we simply cannot know how much either of these individuals struggled with the dilemmas of their position. Still, that’s only an explanation, not an excuse. The writer Paul Johnson defined an intellectual as someone who believed that ideas were more important than people. It was this fallacy, he said, that wrongly encouraged otherwise smart people to rationalize Stalin’s murderous regime or attracted them to personalities like Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro. Sometimes people are too smart, too in their own heads, to see what was obvious to any outsider. Or worse, their brain and their ambition overrode their heart. Because the heart knows. The heart knows that Alexander and Nero and Borgia and Trump are tragically awful. Even if they do, or did, some good in the world. The point of this email is condemn anyone or to get