The species divides between the debased hormonal and the elevated cerebral
CNN's Don Lemon epitomizes the former. On which side do you fall?
CNN’s Don Lemon projected his own debased, hormonal fantasies in volunteering about Republican presidential aspirant Nikki Haley that at age 51, she “isn’t in her prime. A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s, and maybe 40s.”
Mr. Lemon obviously equates “prime” with sexual appeal or seductiveness, not wisdom or the benevolent instincts of the human heart. One half of the human race he dismisses as sex objects to gratify the sexual lusts of men.
His mind like a teenager’s is fixated at ogling below the waist. I am doubtful the CNN egotist has ever reflected on Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “What is a man, if his chief good and market of his time be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. Sure, he that made us with such large discourse, looking before and after, gave us not that capability and god-like reason to fust in us unused.”
Ms. Haley herself had previously exhibited less prurient, juvenile scorn for white hair or wrinkled skin. She told supporters in proclaiming her presidential ambitions, “America is not past our prime. It’s just that our politicians are past theirs. We won’t win the fight for the 21st century if we keep trusting politicians from the 20th century.”
Socrates at age 71 possessed courage and wisdom infinitely greater than anything Haley has to offer. Socrates to Haley is like comparing the brightness of the sun to a flickering reading lamp. Socrates was at his prime in taking the hemlock for refusing surrender to an unexamined life, tantamount to an emancipation proclamation honoring freedom of inquiry. Socrates inspired Thomas Jefferson: “I have sworn upon the alter of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Contrary to the hormonal likes of Lemon and Haley, the prime of life for the cerebral is untethered to age. The prime represents the apex of wisdom, justice, courage, magnanimity, and kindness which can arrive at any age— more likely as you age and acquire more experience to supersede the callowness of youth. The sage Nestor in Homer’s Iliad was 70. As Abraham Lincoln advised, a person who does not grow wiser by the day is a fool.
We were created and put on earth to seek justice by enlisting all of our reflective faculties in that endeavor. James Madison explained in Federalist 51 that, “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” Your prime is when your meridian has been reached in correcting or ameliorating injustice. Mr. Lemon and Ms. Haley, you should be listening.