This is as stupid as the previous drama around classified documents and Trump. No, forget that. It’s more stupid because it’s nothing but an imitation of what the opponent did.

If you want to win – and I’m not talking about politics right now – you can’t be a resentful, pouty follower. You need your own strategy that you carry out as if the opponent were so much dust at your feet.

Talent is not a reward for good behavior. Neither are brilliance, luck, or success. If this feels weird or wrong, congratulations, you are a Protestant.

It sounds like a great idea to get rid of the church hierarchy, address God directly, and interpret the Bible yourself. But then you end up having no external moral authority. The only moral authority is yourself. So you have to judge everything and everyone all the time. Pure enjoyment disappears because every act that can bring joy turns into an opportunity to pass judgment.

As a result, whenever you say “X did / wrote / said something brilliant”, people interpret this as an opportunity to stage a symbolic trial where X will be judged for everything he ever did and will always be triumphantly declared morally flawed. And everything flawed has to be destroyed because it can taint us.

The thirst to enact spectacles of outrage over somebody’s imperfection is unquenchable. All humans are flawed, so as long as there are human beings, there will be opportunities to bemoan human imperfection.

There is a cure for this hyper-vigilant state of exhausting moral judgment. It’s to accept that some things are independent of our desire or judgment. Some things can never be understood, and that’s fine.