It's actually very useful for the Stoic to think of how power is abused. Thinking about the promise of American liberty and the usefulness of a Constitution such as ours would be severely tested in the populist era of an Obama presidency followed by a Trump presidency. So I've come to the following conclusion:
Our hegemonic subjugations must be exceedingly sophisticated such that the most intelligent and capable among us interpret their most excellent achievements as liberating. Thus we sustain the moral propriety of liberty as meritocratic. So we will be fortunate if the most powerful men are not self-loathing or that when they are, that they will destroy with purpose. For to know that the most powerful men are not free would doom us all to chaos and the ambition of ruination.
So the other side of the coin is accepting the possibility that liberty is simply not sustainable in a meritocracy. That's what I'm imagining.
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