Triumph of the Mediocre
by Theodore Dalrymple
Hillary Clinton, so we are told, kept a spreadsheet devoted to her enemies, whom she rated on a scale of her own devising. I can’t say this surprised me: Mrs. Clinton doesn’t have a forgiving face. She is more Lady Macbeth than Cordelia (she would be wonderfully cast as the former), and while it is unwise to always judge a person by his or her face, it is even more foolish never to do so. A person’s appearance is at least as trustworthy a guide to his character as his words, especially when his stock in trade is words.
I suppose that keeping your hatreds warm, never forgetting them, and fanning their embers when they threaten to go cold is one way to succeed in life—perhaps the way if you are an ambitious person of no particular talents or gifts for anything but intrigue and bureaucratic infighting. This is not to say that talented persons never bear grudges or never hate, but their ascent is not attributable solely or even in part to acting upon their grievances or resentments, and they would have succeeded in life even if they had been more sweetly disposed to their fellow beings. Nor do I mean, of course, that untalented people are intrinsically prone to hatred: That, too, would be a logical mistake.
No, the deadly combination is lack of talent and ambition, especially when allied to average intelligence and above. Just as talent has little connection to character, it also has little connection to intelligence, beyond the basic cognitive abilities necessary for the talent to flourish...
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http://takimag.com/article/triumph_of_the_mediocre_theodore_dalrymple#axzz2qwvcRvqd
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