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Morality and Politics: Do You Try to Make Moral Choices?
I am cringing while I write this post, in a way I never have. I don’t trust that we can have a civil conversation about this topic; that I may open old wounds and create havoc. I’ve asked myself over and over whether I can trust all of you to be decent, moral human beings. I think I can trust you; I hope I can because this question has been nagging at me for months, and I need your help to resolve it. Let’s make this an opportunity to do it together, in our search for truth and understanding. That means putting aside the need to win or be right; I don’t think either of those efforts will be successful.
All that said, I have been struggling with my own morality related to politics.
First, if you know anything about me at all, you know I strive to be a moral person. I’m not bragging about it; I feel compelled to do it. Most of the time, I think I do that with ease; I have clarity about my values in relation to how I act, what I do and how I treat others.
I bring up these questions as I’m nearly finished with a book by Charles Lane, called Freedom’s Detective , a book about Hiram Whitley, the man who began the Secret Service. That organization was originally started to find counterfeiters but eventually was key in rounding up the Ku Klux Klan during and following Reconstruction. It was a fascinating story, but I was especially struck by Whitley himself. He was an excellent manager and strategist, but he was also a liar, thief, finagler, and also showed many other disreputable attributes. Eventually, he was fired, but he did great things under the Grant administration. He was both celebrated and condemned in his time. He made me think of Donald Trump.
That led me to the issue that has been bothering me the last couple of years, particularly after 2016: how to frame and comprehend and hold true to my own morality, particularly in relation to politics. Part of my problem is that I hold people I connect with or feel connected to, to a high moral standard. If you want to be my friend, you have to be a decent person. Figuring out what a “decent person” is might be a key part of this discussion.
I also believe that most of you who participate on Ricochet are moral and principled people. I can’t think of a better place to initiate this discussion. So here it is:
In terms of morality, Donald Trump is a mixed bag. In fact, I guess I could say that most of us are. Some of you believe that G-d will be the final Judge of whether we pass muster on the morality measure.
I wonder how you weigh the question of who to support in any area of life when the person is far from the perfect person. Regarding Trump–
-I realize that many of you might have decided that you would vote for just about anyone who could “clean out the swamp,” no matter their moral attributes or limitations.
-You may have decided that morality was not an issue, that the country was in such dire straits that the questions about the morality of the person you voted for were irrelevant.
-Since we are all a mixed bag, you may have decided that Trump was sufficiently moral, given how he treated his family, how he cared for our veterans, how he loved America and wanted to help us, and the other moral traits he showed.
Please do not use this post as an opportunity to defend Trump or yourself, or to bash others who do not. And for those of you who don’t like Trump, this post may not be for you.
This post is primarily about the moral choices you make regarding politics and politicians, not necessarily attacking or defending particular officeholders or candidates. As a point of information, I didn’t vote for Trump or support him before the election (and I say that without judgment of those who did); I made judgments about his character and reputation. But the simple fact that he is president means for me that I will support him when he does good things, and criticize him when I think he doesn’t. On balance, I think he has done a good job.
To me, supporting him is a moral choice, because the country elected him.
In that vein, what did you think of Hiram Whitley mentioned earlier? What role, if any, does your morality play in your political choices? Does morality play a different role in the policies you support versus the persons for whom you vote?
Published in Culture
True the timing is different, but is that a difference of degree or kind? The Clinton election to me seemed less wrought (maybe not less hard fought) but the stakes of partisanship were less keenly felt back in the early 90’s. Isn’t that what we have learned from the various social science studies looking at political polarization. To me it seems that the animus to Clinton built over the course of his presidency for various reasons, and in 1998 when an excuse became available to allow of such a move as impeachment to be taken it was. All that build up of emotion looking for an outlet was just already baked into the cake by the 2016 election for Trump. He started out at the maximum level of hate and so all that was or is missing is the justifiable pretext. Now it exists in the charges of obstruction based on the Muller report. So whether just or smart or whatever we have just reached that right mixture of animus and opportunity that allow for impeachment to be considered. We now live in a world were everything just happens faster…not different.
Specify “that,” please, and distinguish from the judgments and warnings across the whole of the commonly accepted canon that princes/kings usually seek flattering priests and prophets, and that the supply of such priests and prophets has always been ample.
It is very hard for a church sponsored by Caesar to render him only his due and to speak the whole truth, hard enough apart from state entanglement.
That said, I’m thinking we’re starting to veer off the OP topic.
Perhaps you’re confusing accepted with supporting. For example, most Republicans accepted the fact that Obama was elected despite serious misgivings about and lack of support for his policies yet there was no movement by Republicans to impeach him.
Obama had primary opponents, but was supported by his party once elected. The same can be said of Trump who had many primary opponents but since his election now has the support of 91% of Republicans, 37% of Independents and 12% of Democrats according to the latest Gallup poll which you may access here. The same poll also shows his overall rating 2% higher than Obama at the same time in his presidency.
He was not charged with obstruction as Mueller said he could reach no conclusion. The report is available online here. Please read it for yourself
Just so. You can’t be good without the opportunity to do evil.
One should not expect to see clearly through muddy water. Right and wrong are black and white, but people come in all shades of gray. In a situation with many people and conflicting goals, you have a mess. In the case of right or wrong actions by politicians, the morality has to be weighed against their individual effectiveness, which is not a systemic decision, but an individual decision. No one expects perfection, the issue is how much imperfection can one stand and still vote for someone. We all have different standards depending, in part on where we stand on the political spectrum. So, of course Democrats are inclined to overlook Bill Clinton’s peccadilloes and I am inclined to give Trump a hell of a lot more rope than I would give a Democrat. That doesn’t mean I approve of him at all. I just think at this point he is much less dangerous than the alternatives. Morality is broadly shared with a lot of individual variation and the political system achieves practical results in spite of individual differences with regard to moral assessments. When the broadly held morals of the populace are sufficiently outraged, the offending politician will no longer be able to retain office. It doesn’t happen very often, so we spend a lot of time in the muddy waters.
I guess the bottom line is that, if someone refuses to support Trump for moral reasons, that person has a different assessment of the potential for harm to the country than I do. We can argue with each other about the incorrectness of our respective assessments, but in the end I think we have to respect the fact that honest thoughtful people can come to different conclusions. I think that respect is what is missing from so much of our political discourse right now.
I just can’t get excited about this.
Well said. Of course we are influenced based on the party we associate with! Thanks, @secondbite.
Clinton’s election in 1992 was part of an overall “Year of the Women” theme created by the Democrats and supported by most of the media, supposedly in reaction to the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings. And in the aftermath of the ’92 election, the same two groups banded together to oust liberal Republican Bob Packwood from his Oregon Senate seat over sexual harassment claims.
Basically it was the pre-Internet version of #metoo, but where the harassment claims were only meant to target one side of the political aisle. That Clinton already was dealing with bimbo eruptions (their term) with things like the Paul Jones accusations was the soil on which the Lewisnky scandal was planted, and getting Clinton off in the eyes of the public meant going as far as attempting to spin the notion that oral sex wasn’t sex. That’s the atmosphere that helped desensitize the public to sexual activities that would have previously been career-enders.
Except that she is peddling a lie, which she knows is a lie: “sexual assault.” But lying is justified for the Frenches in their loathing of President Trump and his voters, who do not need or heed French. If President Trump is reelected and continues to follow through on political promises, unlike the crew French et. al. have covered for over the years, the well is going to run dry for the French family business.
I agree completely. So many people just make stuff up about Trump.
Time to trot out one of the familiar sayings from the Book of Reticulator:
All choices are moral choices, including the choice of whether to take the oatmeal-raisin cookie or the chocolate-chip one.
Here’s another one. The Bulwark will get the first interview.
Muller said he could reach no conclusion because department policies prevented an indictment being issued. So it would be unfair to say if he thought Trump should be indicted when he could never be and therefore have a chance to plead his case before a jury. Barr had a different opinion of the matter, namely yours, and other prosecutors think he should have been indicted for obstruction.
Yes, but Hannity, Graham, and the rest of the Trumper celebrities are all making piles of money, way more than David French, making stuff up about how good a person Trump is and how evil his opponents are. So what can we do? Everyone is clearly lying for their supper here. Right?
But we have already established there is no morality only power.
I don’t disagree. I am just blown away and how inaccurate the rhetoric is in politics and media in the service of power and money.
The only answer is to decentralize the government, and think of how many Republicans are against that.
Isnt this though where the rubber meets the morality road? If you will give more slack to someone you agree with over someone you disagree with is that moral of you? Should you not judge all people equally? Is a biased judge a moral judge?
Government is at least 38% of the economy. It also pushes people around on their rights and social issues.
How is this controlled? #1. We vote on political personalities that lie to us and then they get in there and push things around, either in our favor or not. #2. Discretionary Fed activity, but no one cares about that. It does however affect #1.
What is to be done?
Further research:
https://twitter.com/Shabbosgoy?lang=en
Government Is How We Steal From Each Other™
“If you like your doctor…” “God is in the mix.”
Sorry to keep bludgeoning this thread.
I see a lot of anti-Trumper’s that are getting really excited about the big deficit. Trump and the Republicans are clearly creating a big deficit.
Here’s my question: how do you improve spending with political will? What is the trend since 1971 or Ronald Reagan? If you want to pick a different starting point, just say why.
How do you hold political power without Credit growth, spending, in the Federal Reserve not raising rates before or during your election cycle?
I always recommend this: Watch the interview of David Stockman on real vision. It’s proprietary, but you can get a two-week pass.
Not true. Mueller specifically said that he did not factor in that criteria.
Good and evil do not factor into their commentary. You keep making generalizations that are simply untrue, @valiuth.
Not much, because of my pragmatism, and because I don’t let my political choices define my morality. Others might think badly of me if I vote for Mr. X, but I don’t care.
Not every choice in life is a moral choice: Do I buy vanilla ice cream, or chocolate today? No morality choice there, unless you’re 100 lbs overweight and have congestive heart failure. Then buying the ice cream is a bad choice (unless you’re celebrating losing 50 lbs. In that case celebrate, then lay off the ice cream for another year).
But there is a degree of severity involved. For example, deciding whether or not to leave your wife for Sandra Bullock is a much worse moral choice (one I have to make every day, until my wife asks me if I’ve looked in the mirror lately).
Finally, there is the lifeboat scenario. However, this scenario was designed to reveal how different people make different moral choices based on their personal criteria, because every choice gives a win-lose result.
What about 49 lbs? Not a moral choice?
No, he said because an indictment could not be issued, they chose not to make a “normal prosecutorial decision” ie. if a Federal law had been broken, but that if they found no evidence of obstruction they would state that. At the end of his summary he says that they could not exhonorate Trump of obstruction out right, but that because they were not going to make a prosecutorial decision neither would they declare a law had been broken and that an indictment could be issued. So I don’t understand what your complaint is with my recap of Muller’s finding? They themselves state that their decision not to make a decision is because of the guidelines against indictment of a sitting president, with the odd exception that they would make a decision if it was clear there was no obstruction. Based on that one can surmise that to them it was not clear there was no obstruction. ie. there is evidence for it, which is laid out in the report, and everyone can just look at that and then determine for themselves if what they are reading is obstruction. So in other words one can level charges of obstruction of justice against Trump based on the evidence for it in the Muller report.
I think I missed that meeting. I will agree that it’s difficult to know and possibly as rare as a nugget of gold in a riverbed but I’m still not comfortable throwing out that baby with the river water.