“A Foolish Consistency is the Hobgoblin of Little Minds”

Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”  But he would certainly agree that consistency is not but is the reflection of the presence of a “conscious” mind.  To illustrate, Donald Trump when running for election repeatedly criticized Barack Obama for playing golf too much but when he assumed the office proceeded to play golf much more than had any president.  He never offered an explanation and the press never pointedly challenged him on the matter.  When campaigning for the office, he criticized Obama for spending too much time on the golf course when the country had so many problems facing it and declared that, “I’m going to be working for you.  I’m not going to have time to go play golf.”

A “conscious” mind would recognize, “Oh, I said that I would not play golf like my predecessor as that would be in-“consistent” with what I said” but an unconscious mind would not be governed by any need for such any such “consistency”.  This past week a story broke which indicated that Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, suffers from the same malady it turns out that she has used a private email server in her role as a presidential adviser for her father.  This was after Trump had furiously denounced Hillary Clinton for doing this during the 2016 campaign and even created the battle cry of, “Lock her up” over the matter.  If Ivanka had been “conscious” as most of us are she would have realized, “Oh, to use a private email server” would be a bit awkward.”

Trump has demonstrated an imperviousness to rules of decorum, civility, and respect for others.  This is because in the depths of his heart he has no regard for others as he does not play by the same set of rules that we do.  For example, we would probably not tell anyone…at least in public…who had asked us a question, “That is a stupid question” and “You always ask stupid questions” as he did a couple of weeks when a reporter asked a simple question to him.  Trump can do that because of this imperviousness to these societal rules and conventions and he knows he can get by with it and has always been permitted to get by with it.  He has never had firm limits set with him and when anyone attempts he bullies them into submission.  Witness the Republican Party.

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