Heather Cox Richardson summarizes Eli Stokols' report that New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger is driving his paper's hostile treatment of President Biden because of petty pique that Biden refused to sit for an interview with His Highness.
As I think about this story, I think of the parallel to the current big story that the Supreme Court is even more corrupt than many of us have imagined.
The common factor here: they do it because they CAN do it. Their power to inflict harm is unchecked, obviously by their own values and consciences, but also by the system itself.
The system is designed to allow certain arrogant, overweening, self-inflated and ego-driven people (usually male people) to do it because they CAN do it.
Donald Trump himself long having been an example of this dynamic….
Our big institutions – the Supreme Court, the media – will not save us, because they cannot save us. They cannot save themselves – from crippling arrogance and the belief that they owe nothing to anyone by way of accountability and virtuous behavior that places the well-being of our democracy first and foremost in their deliberations.
As Aristotle told us long ago, far from saving anyone, hubris merely sets up its practitioners for a big fall.
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