As Americas newly anointed Tin God, Donald J. Trump, deploys National Guard troops to quell the entirely legitimate and almost completely peaceful protests against ICE raids being staged in LA, a thought occurred to me this morning: Principles have become a liability.
This isn’t just in regards to politics though. Its also applicable to those of us working in tech. At this point, I feel certain that it goes beyond that. It’s scary to observe that this trend now eclipses simple spheres such as politics or tech. In my darkest moments as of late I find myself wondering whether humanity itself is devolving. In the moments beyond those, that even I am loathe to speak of, I wonder if humanity has ever actually evolved at all. Maybe we’ve just been lying to ourselves all along.
If that last thought is in any way accurate, then this post is nothing more than pointless garnish on a half-eaten dish laced with poison. So for the purposes of the remainder of this diatribe, we are going to avoid grappling with the horrors buried within that particular rabbit hole. Let’s assume for a moment that the history of humanity doesn’t betray a solid rationale for abandoning hope for our future. Let’s collectively agree to pretend that the misery which appears to be an inherent part of human nature doesn’t begin and end with the birth and death of our species.
So in this theoretical reality, some of us are what we might refer to as principled actors. Those of us who fall into that classification attempt to make choices and live our lives in such a way that are aligned with those principles. Sometimes this is easy. For instance over the past few weeks I choose to not purchase a Switch 2 from Nintendo because Nintendo is a poorly behaved corporate citizen who resents their fans and their customers and takes every opportunity to let them know that.
But sometimes it takes more. Sometimes those principles require me to start an anonymous blog hosted on European servers by a European company with a name registered in Europe so that I can try to ensure my ability to continue to speak out against the vast swathes of those living around me who have abandoned not only principle, but rationality and compassion. Sometimes those same principles have required me to fire clients and quit jobs. Sometimes they have alienated me from people who might otherwise have turned out to be good friends.
The cost of being a principled person is high. The bad news is that this cost is growing. It is becoming harder to bear. Not only that but things are moving so fast that sometimes it can be hard to even realize you are violating some of your sacred principles until it’s too late.
A good example of this is the feud that erupted between Elon and Trump this week. Like most of the remaining sane people in the United States, I was happy to see their bromance come to an end. Nothing could be better for rational and peaceful people interested in preserving and building a future upon the foundations of what what makes society actually work than seeing the world’s most powerful fascist and the world’s richest amoral kleptomaniac finally come to blows and part ways on what was briefly a shared path of narcissism.
But then the escalations began. Trump cronies started suggesting that Trump should deport Elon and seize his assets. Yet we cheered. I cheered. Elon suggested that Trump was named within unreleased Epstein files. We cheered some more. So did I. This is how easy it is to fall off the principled path and give into the emotional turmoil that the current dismal state of the world has sparked deep within my soul.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the world’s richest or poorest man. Being black bagged and flown to an off-shore facility without due process is wrong. It doesn’t matter if his father is a well known pedophile and his entire fortune has subsequently been built upon the foundations of apartheid-era South Africa. Having his assets seized without due process is wrong. It doesn’t matter that he himself has built his entire empire on lies and deceit which position himself as some sort of genius when in fact he is basically an expert at taking credit from others. Punishing him without affording him a reasonable opportunity to defend himself is wrong.
These are hard fucking times for principled people. This isn’t just because of the hordes of unprincipled people are better armed and outnumber people like me three to one (at least where I live), but rather because it’s become so fucking easy to give into what has now become a shared foundation of hatred and anger. However in giving into those impulses like I briefly did over the past few days, I look back and realized that in doing so I gave up something much more important to me.
My principles.
My life hasn’t been hard for the most part. I don’t want for much. I’m grateful for that. I’ve been exceedingly lucky and I’ve also benefited from my own talent. In the past I’ve been able to take principled stands and somehow manage to land on my feet. But what that really means is that up until now, my principles didn’t cost me anything because it didn’t cost me anything to live them out.
But dark days are here and holding steadfast to my principles has now become a lot more difficult. Not because I’m tempted to put on a MAGA hat and join the rest of the fourth-string/reich fascist clowns, but rather because the growing emotional turmoil within me is at the point where it now has the ability to distract me from those principles. It’s allure has only grown over these past few months. As a result I need to be careful. I need to take the extra moment to consider how I react to things because otherwise I may run the risk of becoming somebody else altogether.
A less principled person.
That is something my wise mind cannot and shall not abide. So this post constitutes a promise to myself as well as to others that I’m going to spend the extra moments and try to do better. Because if I am truly a principled person then the cost of living those principles is not a relevant factor. But if I am not, then hard times will surely out me as the kind of person I actually am rather than the person I believed that I was.
In any event the truth here is clear: Principles are a liability. Not so much when I want to boycott Nintendo, but certainly when it comes to navigating the emotional turmoil that has become my constant companion in what I believe will one day be referred to as the “Twilight of the American Experiment”.
My principles could cost me everything but giving up on them would leave me with nothing.