What To Take From All This

<p>Very few people, if they’re being honest, would want their kids to grow up to be like Donald Trump. And that includes the folks who had perfectly good reasons for voting for him and hope he will be a successful Republican president. Donald Trump is rich, sure, but he’s also vain. He’s mean. He’s paranoid and says cruel things for the fun of it. He wears being uninformed like a badge of honor (I brief myself, he once said), and he cheats on his wi(ves) and lies. A lot. And if the reports on his taxes are even half true, he’s actually not a particularly great businessman, having lost so much money year after year that were it not for the largesse of his father and the extreme negligence of the IRS and the media, he would probably be living under a bridge or in a jail cell. </p><p>That he is president--a job that looms large in so many people’s daily lives--concerns many parents. What should I tell my kid about this? What do I teach them about what they’re seeing on the news? (Again, let’s focus on the fact that this is a problem shared by all parents, even the ones who have decided his personal vices are worth trading for important policy gains). </p><p>The Stoics have a lot to say about this, because they too lived under imperfect politicians as well as amidst corruption and excess. <a href='https://dailystoic.com/seneca/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=what-to-take'>Seneca saw his share</a> of Donald Trumps (and <a href='https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/opinion/stoicism-political-tyrants.html'>worked as best he could with them</a>.) <a href='https://dailystoic.com/epictetus/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=what-to-take'>Epictetus was exiled</a> from Rome by a paranoid and petty emperor. <a href='https://dailystoic.com/marcus-aurelius/?utm_source=convertkit&amp;utm_medium=convertkit&amp;utm_campaign=what-to-take'>Marcus Aurelius himself battled</a> with the corrosive effects of power on his own person. The Stoics also looked regularly at histor