How do we balance our shameless age with the zero-tolerance absolutes?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Shame in a shameless world
"Man is the only animal that blushes," wrote Mark Twain. "Or needs to." Shame is the soft power of justice, a means of punishing, and even banishing, people guilty of sins if not exactly of crimes. But here we are, our pale and shameless age increasingly defined on the one side by a president addicted to outrage and allergic to apology, and on the other by the zero-tolerance absolutes of social activists and partisans of all kinds.
Neither extreme satisfies our instincts for either justice or mercy. So how do we sustain values in an era that seems to dilute them? It's worth asking each day that Ralph Northam (D) remains in the Virginia governor's mansion, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) plans his next campaign after being stripped of committee assignments and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) defends her positions on Israel even as Democrats melt down over how to condemn her for how she expresses them. We can agree that racism and sexism and anti-Semitism are to be condemned. But then what?
Of all the values he has twisted and drained, President Trump has, by his brazen example, sapped the power of shame. Throughout 2016, he said things about women and Mexicans and Muslims that his critics considered disqualifying for the leader of a major party, much less the Leader of the Free World. Yet enough voters in enough states decided they didn't want to be told which values matter most. Ever since, a loyal body of voters has stood by him; his most recent approval rating roughly matches that of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at this stage of their presidencies.
Trump's continued success is clearly changing the math for others who come under fire. Northam, pilloried for days after his yearbook blackface photograph circulated, chose to gut it out, through a mangled apology, a walk-back ("that is not my picture"), then a disappearance from public view. He refused to heed demands from across his party to resign on the grounds that he could no longer govern effectively, as did King. Omar and her allies dismiss her offenses as the collateral damage of diversity and free speech. If professional survival is the ultimate value, those decisions may become the new standard for public figures under fire.
Here's the calculus: a supersonic news cycle and an attention supermagnet in the White House mean that if you can withstand the pain and humiliation of the initial firestorm, chances are the heat will subside and the crowd will move on. As politics grow ever more tribal, charges get filed away as mere partisan attacks. And the dynamic is self-reinforcing: Once one side abandons a character test, the other side is tempted to follow, leveling the political battlefield by lowering everyone's expectations.
While Twitter crackles with indignation, it falls to voters to weigh the evidence: Did the offense occur 30 years ago or this morning, was it an error or a pattern, does the accused take responsibility, demonstrate a capacity for change? King was hardly unreasonable to announce his reelection plans, because his long history of race baiting has yet to sink him with Iowa voters. Northam at least nodded in the direction of penitence; while weaseling about the authenticity of the yearbook photo, Northam promised to address his "white privilege" while setting out on a vague "reconciliation" tour. With the advantage of term limits, he has three more years to convince voters they were right to stand by him, without facing the final verdict of the ballot box.
Saying a politician should resign because he or she can no longer be effective seems more like a rush to judgment than actual justice. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) acknowledges she will pay a price with some in her party for her fierce prosecution of Al Franken, who was driven to resign from the Senate over charges of sexual misconduct without a complete Ethics Committee investigation and despite a solid feminist voting record. Even some victims of his alleged misconduct wanted him to remain in office, and as he left, he noted that "I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving, while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office."
Zero tolerance leaves little room for learning. Worse, it denies voters the right to reckon with their own judgments and misjudgments about the candidates they elect. The very definition of democracy is to trust voters to act as jurors; they don't take well to having their privileges revoked, either by media mobs or political partisans. You can criticize, you can condemn, but in our age of mass acceleration, demanding resignations is less and less likely to work, and that may be a good thing. If you find Omar's views abhorrent, or King's, or Trump's, the trial date has been scheduled: Nov. 3, 2020. There's plenty of time for discovery and oral arguments. And then for justice, as defined by those with the most at stake: we the people.
The writer is the visiting Edward R. Murrow professor of press, politics and public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government.
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Once again we have Trump to thank for a continuing degradation of standards in the society.
Is it only Trump? Perhaps it is the 'swamp' of Washington itself...the place where anything goes for the glory of POWER. Power holder's offenses are watered down and swept under the rug - an act that has been going on far longer than Trump has been in office.
I don't think anything is the result of the actions on only one person, but the "evidence" of Trump's unsuitability to be president was so massive PRIOR to the 2016 election that the fact that he won anyway has to be considered a turning point in the history of shamelessness.
Don't clutter up my seeds with nonsense. You do it all the time and we are not allowed by the moderators to confront you about it.
The seeded article blames Trump.
Trump is indefensible. You can't defend this fucking moron, so you constantly whine that people are mentioning his name negatively.
Trump was more suitable than Hillary to many...that's why he won. When the People are faced with the choice of unsuitability from both parties...well, they make their best choice...or they don't choose at all.
I voted for Obama in the 2008 primaries...because he was the better choice over Hillary. That primary should have indicated to the Dems that they probably shouldn't put Hillary out there in 2016...but they did...and they bolstered her up and did away with Bernie.
So...was it only Trump's 'unsuitability' that was so massive and shameless?
People who voted for Trump should be ashamed of themselves for the rest of their lives.
Address the article or I will ask to have your off topic comments removed.
[deleted]
"Your seeded article is a fucking OPINION piece, John, I have EVERY right to disagree with it, and as long as I am on topic, don't dare to chastise me"
That is your FIRST comment on this seed. It is about ME, not the article. Do you even know what you are doing?
That is a rather broad and disparaging statement given the option of either voting for Hillary or Trump...people made their best choice, or no choice at all. If they felt Trump was their best choice, that is not something they should be ashamed of.
Had they been given better choices....
Perhaps the Democrat Party will give better options for 2020 - the socialistic choices at the moment are rather disconcerting but there's still time.
Monkey see monkey do. If Trump had not gotten away with everything , it is entirely possible that Northam would not have tried it as well. and so on and so on.
Again, this type of behavior from the POWER grabbers in Washington, and elsewhere, is not new. It began long before Trump was elected and will continue long after he leaves office. To lay the blame of all political sins on one person is severely myopic.
Trump has been in the public eye for 40 years and society's standards don't change overnight. Blame society for its choices, not a single person.
So...was it only Trump's 'unsuitability' that was so massive and shameless?
Nope there is plenty of shame to go around for everyone to enjoy, beginning with ourselves who have allowed our system to reach this point.
Trump was more suitable than Hillary to many...that's why he won. When the People are faced with the choice of unsuitability from both parties...well, they make their best choice...or they don't choose at all.
Nicely said number one, everyone seems to forget that 58% of the electorate sat 2016 out, and the choices we have had of late have ranged from bad to worse.
Speaking of people with no shame. It's hard to believe he is a point of comparison for this piece.
This is wisdom. In other contexts, we have seen how foolish zero tolerance is. And to be fair to voters, there is no such thing as a perfect candidate (or incumbent for that matter). If you have a core issue and a candidate doesn't conform to your beliefs on that matter, then you don't vote for that candidate. But in most cases - probably all cases - there is going to be something about the person on the ballot you disagree with or maybe even find repulsive. You have to decide what the priorities are.
On Election Day you have to make a choice: that person or some other person on the list. It's easy to be critical of Trump, but in the November election the choice was between him and one other person on the planet. If you hate Trump, it can be easy to forget that Hillary Clinton was the most disliked Democratic nominee in at least the last 35 years - maybe ever.
Americans’ Distaste For Both Trump And Clinton Is Record-Breaking