One of our new ‘political’ billionaires recently referred to the German Chancellor as an “incompetent fool” on the tragic story of the Christmas market attack in Magdeburg Germany. One really needs to ask who the fool is here. This writer occasionally wonders after reading the news how he would do in a job interview for a position of head safety engineer for a nuclear power plant. I wouldn’t last five minutes before being shown the door with the admonishment: “stop wasting our valuable time”. I am certain far more than 50 % of Americans would agree with plant management’s decision no what I believed the scope of my intelligence was. So why do the news services give this person so much coverage?

With the advances in the science of the brain and the nature of intelligence we have learned that deep intelligence in one part of the brain does not play out necessarily in the other forms of intelligence. Our nation’s billionaires have various forms of intelligence that is often amazing, and yet, when wisdom is called for, or even elementary human empathy is on deck, some of them turn out to be idiotic. Leadership calls for broad intelligence that can integrate the three attributes of a democratic society; empathy, nuance, and ambiguity. If one is ever to understand America you need those attributes otherwise stop wasting our time.

In recovering our dignity as a nation we need to demand dignity in our politics. We cannot tolerate fools of deep, narrow, siloed intelligence hurling childish insults at our allies much less our enemies such as they are. Yes we can and must cover them in the news since it is us who made them newsworthy, but we don’t need to quote them in the headlines or lead paragraph. Like the poor mice pecking at the reward lever those headlines, embarrassing as they are, only reward the intolerable.

So what about good here? Good has, in this projects sense of good, a first place respect for the dignity of all human beings. Correction can be accomplished without the destruction of dignity. Good, however, is hard work requiring broad intelligence and experience, humility and yes in the end wisdom, the caretaker of intelligence.