When it comes to politics, apparently not.
Nothing—not child and domestic abuse, not illicit love affairs, not 60-something electeds traveling with 20-somethings of the opposite gender, not indictments for securities fraud, or allegations of bribery and obstruction of justice, even impeachment—seems to affect voters. We just keep electing these people year after year, state after state.
Nothing seems offensive, repulsive, or derelict enough to prevent anyone from serving in elective office from the Presidency down to our own North Carolina member of Congress who was censured by his colleagues but who remains in office as you read this. Our current President once bragged that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without consequences, and that has been true so far. As Amanda Taub put it in The New York Times, “his political fortunes have remained buoyant even after he was impeached twice, was found civilly liable for sexual abuse and enriched himself by billions of dollars while in office.”
The entire concept that actions have consequences no longer appears to be true, as no action appears reprehensible enough to make individuals unelectable, much less shameful.
Given our state of affairs today, the premise of Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter seems positively quaint.
That said, we have to wonder how we got to this truly dreadful and terrifying point. If no action is ever wrong, then is every action acceptable?
Political scientists are increasingly pointing at political polarization, not just in the United States but around much of the world.
The argument goes something like this. My political beliefs are superior to yours, and my “team” is promoting the correct policies while your beliefs and your team’s actions are hurting our nation. Therefore, whatever my “teammates” do must be ignored or excused for the good of all. This argument is made by both sides with varying degrees of strength and truthfulness. We are appalled by the crooks and perverts on the other team while we give our own guys and gals a pass no matter what they have done.
I would be massively relieved if I thought this were reparable by people of good will and faith in humanity, but I do not. People in other countries polarized by right and left suffer from the same loss of shame that apparently accompanies acute political division, and they seem no closer to healing than we are. Elected officials at all levels feel totally free to behave and take illegal actions with abandon, secure in the knowledge that the voting public that supports them will be fine with it.
Amanda Taub assessed the loss of shame in public life this way in the Times.
Our current political state “has serious implications for accountability. That chain reaction was traditionally one of the ways that norms and rules were enforced in democracies. If the power of scandal goes away, then we’re left with a vicious cycle in which moral or legal wrongdoing doesn’t lead to consequences, which undermines trust in government and public institutions, which in turn widens polarization and allows more corruption, abuse and lawbreaking. This cycle is hard to break.”
Abraham Lincoln understood the American people, and he said this almost 200 years ago about the danger to our nation.
“It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
I pray we can survive ourselves.