Morality, America and the Hypocrisy of Exceptionalism

We have a problem in America with morality. It's not just because of moral relativism, or what conservatives like to call 'secular humanism' which is their catch phrase for 'socialism'. We have become a morally bankrupt country. I say this as a person who is a reformed Catholic, but who spent my entire childhood and adolescence indoctrinated in the teachings of Christ. I was never a WWJD kid, nor was my family ever conservative in their religious beliefs or practices. In fact, the Christ I was raised to believe in was a loving and forgiving God who befriended the leper and prostitute, was humble in the face of poverty and preached the the values of charity and compassion to all. Also, as far as I know the ordination process for Catholic priests involve vows of Charity and Humility as well as Chastity and Obedience.

All of that translates into a firm believe in the dignity and equality of all people. Those are inalienable rights, aren't they, that all 'men' are created equal? And just as our country has lauded itself on its freedom and equality it has practiced horrible acts of degradation against people who were 'other' or different. This is a problem that's been pervasive in our society and still saturates every level of citizenry. I'm not just talking about slavery, and overt and institutionalized racism. I'm also talking about the subjugation of women, the oppression of ethnic and religious groups, and the demonetization and vilification of sexual minorities and the differently abled. This system of oppression and discrimination only becomes more complicated when considering the structures of political and economic power and their interaction with those minority groups. Add to that the regional cultural differences in all of those things and you have a overwhelming matrix of complexities in social interaction and in our understanding and advancement of civil rights and freedoms.

Perhaps always there has also been an underlying opposition force that is an anathema to those fundamental ideals we have enshrined in the Declaration of Freedom, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. That oppositional force might vaguely be understood as the thirst for power. That thirst is greater in those who already have some, thus leading them to seek more and requires them to control more and more of the political and social system in order to acquire it. In itself this could be defined in part as hubris, certainly it is antithetical to the teachings of compassion, charity and humility embodied in the Christ story. None of us are immune to that thirst, even if it comes from a place of absolute altruism and hope, because especially for those who seek some kind of political recognition or some ability to fulfill the American purpose of the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, true freedom and equality seem so far away without power.

Politics is, of course, about power. I think those who are entrenched in politics, especially those with the expectation of significant gains or losses, lose perspective on the consequences of their actions and of the quality of their actions. Those with a lot to gain or lose, or those who have invested significant resources in the pursuit of a political outcome, the more desperate they get to achieve their end the more likely they are to compromise or outright disavow their supposed principles and beliefs. Hypocrisy is among the most common embodiments of this. It is perhaps one of the most insidious symptoms of the pursuit of power and results in the spread of lies, untruths and the inspiration of cruelty.

The problem of Hypocrisy has become so pervasive in our social and political discourse that there are large groups of people who cannot recognize it even when it is pointedly exposed across our diverse media outlets. There is a large minority in this country who are so indoctrinated in the belief of their own righteousness and who have gone so far in shaping their worldview to justify their own hypocrisy that they refuse to acknowledge or believe it when confronted in the most truthful and thorough way. Those who practice hypocrisy and most often are conscious of it at least in some small way, but their desire for power and their own hubris prevent them from correcting it. In fact many of those who regularly practice hypocrisy and the spreading of falsehoods and untruth have no interest in correcting those errors and merely plow forward continuing those practices.

What are the results of hypocrisy and lies in the pursuit of power? A political system and social situation where those too self-assured of their own righteousness select out those things most comfortable to their self-righteousness and ego, which don't challenge their world view and absolute determination to excuse their own core failings. They create, promote and support organizations and commercial entities that encourage and propagate untruths and which represent provable and irrefutable falsehoods as fact. They believe stories and arguments based on fictitious evidence and outright lies even when they contradict their own supposed values while excusing and justifying that belief through even more hypocrisy and lies. They allow their better judgment and their sense of compassion for fellow human beings to be overridden by the atmosphere of fear and intolerance created for them by those in control of power and who seek to acquire more.

The Tea Party is an example of all of this. The Tea Party, at least in theory, is a libertarian collection of individual groups around the country who represent themselves as 'grass-roots' and as concerned singularly with taxation and the role of the federal government in our society. In reality this 'movement' is a propaganda machine of several small and very well funded organizations commandeered by elements of the radical Christian Coalition and Christian right which we saw rise to power during the 1980's and 90's. While chest thumping about taxation, the size of government and its spending habits those same candidates and leaders were reaching out to their core social conservative base with the same regressive messages and policy positions we've seen over and over again. They won because they were able to weave fiction after fiction of a government out of control, politicians too concerned with power and unconcerned with the will of their constituents, and of a black socialist consumed with destroying America. So much of that is exemplified by the slogan 'It's Time To Take Our Country Back'. Take it back from whom? Who has stolen it?

While polling data from multiple polls illustrated the racial and religious/ideological position of the Tea Party, it also illustrated that the majority of Americans were most concerned about the economy and jobs. Not debt, but jobs. Republicans wove the fiction that somehow out of control spending and too much regulation were choking businesses, hampering the creation of new businesses and killing jobs. That lie is apparent to anyone who can access the internet and read. The true culprit in preventing the expansion of small businesses were the banks who wouldn't give out business loans or lines of credit so businesses could expand. These were the same banks whose blind greed lead them to create instruments for tremendous profit at high risk. The same banks who then were bailed out by the government, and taxpayer, with little oversight or accountability and vastly loosened regulation only to continue the risky practices and hoarding of wealth. Not one of the executives responsible for the creation of the instruments and subsequent crash of our economy has been held criminally responsible.

Even more galling, however, is the crass disregard shown by politicians who represent themselves as Christians and whose messaging and political persona advocates 'traditional family values'. These politicians make careers on demonizing and marginalizing whole groups of people. They make money on the fear and prejudices of others by spreading falsehoods and encouraging the un-education of their constituents. Meanwhile these politicians have proven themselves again and again to be unable to stand the scrutiny of their own rhetoric. Even when Democrats do become embroiled in sex scandals they rarely come under as much media examination or suffer as many public consequences as Republicans. This isn't because the media is so biased towards liberals. It is about hypocrisy and lies, and about the desire to retain power. That's why we have Republican senators who are publicly scrutinized for extramarital affairs resulting in bribery and cover-ups, or for patronizing prostitutes. It is why representatives choose to resign rather than suffer the backlash from their online sex activities or sexual misconduct with underage male pages.

Most galling of all, however, are the national leaders who represent themselves as the vanguard of some fictional 'moral majority' about to sweep away the rot of secular humanism, again, codeword for socialism. These people make enormous sums of money speaking on the topic of morality and its role in shaping our core values, on pressing a radical political position that has little to no basis in reality but which draws together the fears and prejudices of people too purposely uneducated about the world around them to be able to make the distinction between truth and untruth. They take advantage of the ignorance of people too willing to justify their own failings in their Christian beliefs and personal values to examine those messages with any sense of justice beyond its application to themselves.

I don't mean to place all the blame on the conservative politicians and pundits, however. Their voter base and those who blindly agree with their lies and aggressively and purposefully ignore their hypocrisy are just as culpable. Many of these people, as far as I can tell, make no effort to investigate the veracity of the lies bile these people spew. They are so convinced of the truth of their own convictions, in their own righteousness and of their own self-concerned worldview that they allow the politicians and pundits to prey upon their legitimate anxieties over the economy and an increasingly complex and dangerous world. They allow themselves to be manipulated and to twist those values we supposedly hold so dear beyond all recognition or rational understanding. They buy into the rhetoric that we are somehow exceptional just because. That American is somehow the freest, greatest and morally purest nation in the world. They pay no attention to the flaws because they need the comfort of that ignorance so badly in order to cope with their own failings and the failings of their beliefs. They then promote candidates and causes that are grievous violations of those 'American values'.

Also to blame are 'liberal' politicians and Democrats for failing to take a greater role in determining the rhetoric of the public discourse. The idea that Republicans could perform such a complete con on the American people as to make 'entitlements' the common nomenclature for Social Security and Medicare is an indictment of their failure. While they may be the party most concerned with the working and middle class, and with the general welfare, failing to sell the message is as big a problem as failing to act on it. It is a problem when the far-right is able to take nearly complete ownership of the words 'patriot' and 'liberty' when they are neither patriotic nor believe in real and genuine and true liberty. When they do not recognize the reality of liberty and the reality of its honest application. This is perhaps an indication of the extent to which hypocrisy and the pursuit of power has taken hold in that party as well.

Ultimately, after all of that, I have this to say: We deserve better, we deserve more, we have the right to to BE more than this. We deserve politicians who don't just listen to the people and run in fear from necessary and important work because of polling. We deserve politicians genuinely willing to make a case for and take action in the interests of all of the American people. We deserve a land where no one is made to feel less than simply because they do not resemble, either in look, belief or relationship, those around them. We deserve a nation where we make honest steps to live up to the commitments we espouse of educating our children and giving everyone the opportunity to achieve, not just because of some quota or affirmative action, but because they work hard, have talent and have earned it. We deserve a nation where compassion and charity towards others aren't just hollow words used in a church, but result in real action and substantive change to the benefit of the poor, the vulnerable, the disabled and the oppressed. We deserve to become the nation we have always wanted to be by the fruits of our own labors, the achievements of our own talent, and the quality of our spirit.

We deserve better, I deserve, you deserve it, and our future deserves it.