So, morality.
(I'm more of an ethics person--
ethics largely overlap
morals, but there are some differences. For example, a case can be made [although don't look at me;
I won't make it] that it is moral to marry someone you do not love. It is not, however, ethical. Morality is mostly associated with religion, though it need not be; people who insist that you must be religious to have morals are [to paraphrase somebody or other] trying to sell you something.)
Ideally, morals should be used as a guideline to living a life that harms no one and respects your neighbors as people with their own lives trying to do the same. The enforcement mechanism of morality is
shame, with occasional removal from society for serious infractions. This works reasonably well in small communities in which the members, children to ancient ones, know the other members.
Largely because there's not much privacy.
The problem comes in with the human desire/need to be superior
in some way to other people. Theodore Sturgeon devoted some paragraphs in
Venus Plus X to how that worked in regard to sexism. (Which means that Mr. Sturgeon's
unconscious sexism becomes painfully evident by the time one finishes the book.) In the area of morality, one gets serious moral actors, who appear to be living highly moral lives, following the dictates of the moral system, and expecting you to do the same
and tsk-tsk-ing when you fail. There are people who believe that all others need to be pressed into one moral Jello mold, whether or not other people possess the same sense of right and wrong. There are people who insist on rigid adherence to a set of moral beliefs that they themselves ignore.
Yes, gentlemen-who've-been-caught-with-prostitutes-and/or-boys, I'm talking about you there. Yes, "pro-life until your daughter needs an abortion," I mean you. Yes, "small government and fiscal responsibility" chickenhawks who lied us into a wholly unnecessary war (lying and bearing false witness? Immoral), I'm giving you epic side-eye. It came to the point about two scandals ago that I assume that "conservatives" who harp on "morality" are a scandal waiting to happen.
The politically conservative Religious Right
which isn't in the US would be the Jello mold people; they focus their moral spotlight on abortion and sexuality.
They got a big surprise on election day:
That claim — that framing of these issues as right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, biblical vs. unbiblical, moral vs. immoral — was asserted and accepted for most of the religious right’s 30-year run.
But not any more. That claim is still being asserted, but it is no longer being accepted.
Part of what happened on Tuesday was that millions of people rejected that claim on moral grounds. This was not just a political or pragmatic disagreement that preserved their essential claim of godly morality. It was a powerful counter-claim — the claim that the religious right is advocating immoral, unjust and cruelly unfair policies on both of its hallmark issues. Knee-jerk opposition to legal abortion and to gay rights weren’t just rejected as bad policy, but as bad morals — as being on the wrong side of right vs. wrong, good vs. evil, biblical vs. unbiblical, moral vs. immoral.
OK, how about marital infidelity?
CIA head David Petraeus resigned suddenly, and it turned out he'd had an affair. With his
biographer. And it was discovered by accident. Oooh,
moral panic!
Nope.
He's already resigned, rather than spending time denying the whole thing. His boss expressed disappointment. It's less the adultery than the security problem--the CIA always feared that gay agents could be blackmailed (that shame thing), and here's the chief engaging blah blah blah. No legs. If it's remembered six months from now, I will be astonished. (10@10, during the airing of 10 songs from 1997, slipped in what sounded like a conversation in a bad romcom, and only at the very end did I twig to who those women were and who was under discussion, because I have largely spaced the timing and the details of
that scandal, although I have to wonder how my former employer [who was a staunch Republican and very shocked] took the news that the head caller-for-impeachment was, at the time,
doing the very same thing. I suppose it depends on which side one butters one's politician.) As for the other party in the affair, Mr. Somerby at
The Daily Howler compares her behavior to
the press corps' fawning on (some of) the political candidates in 1999, minus the sex. Which,
ew (the fawning. Not the sex).
Arthur Silber, who has been calling out the evils of people in power for years, has a long essay on the
prime and uncalled-out sin of murder (what? You thought morals were only about sexual improprieties? That's what they
want you to think!) of the First Nations/Native American peoples and enslavement (what? Slavery has been
accepted in the past, but it's never been
moral. And don't even
try to slide libertarian or BDSM arguments at me. Not having. Period) of indigenous people/Africans.
Although systematic, deliberate murder on a vast scale -- murder of an ungraspable number of innocent victims -- is woven into the very fabric of America, we have managed to convince ourselves that it was "necessary" and "justified," that we represent "civilization" and have no choice but to eradicate those "barbarian," "subhuman" forces that threaten us. We have managed to avoid the fact that, with comparatively very rare exceptions, no threat has ever existed until we intentionally provoked it. We learned these strategies of avoidance and self-deception from the beginning; today, they are central to our national mythology, a mythology that is false in every significant respect. This system of lies now operates with staggering effectiveness, blanketing the country and most of its population in a fog of unreality.
I don't believe in American Exceptionalism, except when I do ('50s-'60s childhood and a touch of High Ideals will do that), and over time I have come to understand that we are a country, like any other, with a history and a civic religion (not to be confused with spiritual religion), which other countries also possess (different ones, to be sure), and humans behaving like humans. That is, both well and badly.
I don't think Americans should quit trying to be moral. I think we should recognize, however, that a lot of "moral actors" are acting in bad faith, and that people who whine about morality do not have your best interests at heart. (Also, we need to dump the "I'm squicked"="That's immoral" take on sex. But that's just my opinion.) It's time for adult conversation about morality.
(I heard that.)
PS: This is the 2,000th post. Yay!
