Reflections on hypocrisy in the world

We live in an age where everything about a person can be googled, dissected, and disseminated in the time it takes to empty the garbage or clear the dinner table. If that person happens to be a politician, they should know they are prey for the media and social media predators just waiting for them to make a mistake, say the wrong thing, feel the wrong feeling, express the wrong facial expression, hug the wrong person, write the wrong email, curse under their breath, and so on. The list of sins is long, likewise the punishment for transgressions against some code of behavior that has careened toward the bizarre, as in, no one could possibly live up to it. You'd have to be an angel. Some people can respond as Trump does, with a Twitter tirade that shuts most people up and out, but most people do not. Most people have a sense of shame, a sense of guilt, a sense of hypocrisy, a sense of ethics. Most people will say 'mea culpa' and mean it. But it surprises me how many public personas seem to be clueless when it comes to understanding that they are prey. They think they can live as normal human beings (who are at least afforded a modicum of anonymity). It surprises me that anyone would want to be a politician or public persona these days. Why would you willingly expose yourself to the intense and withering scrutiny of the media and social media organizations that will nail you to the wall within two seconds for any perceived hypocrisy, even though they fail to see their own hypocrisy. Christ said “Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.” But hypocrisy has rooted itself firmly in the world; it is so often the way of the world. I would like a return to a time when dissection and public shaming were limited because there were boundaries for what was decent reporting and what was not, because we risk moving toward a world of politics inhabited only by sociopaths and psychopaths--those who are immune or impervious to what others think of them or their actions, those who will retaliate in a swift and cunning way. If we reach that point, we can kiss democracy goodbye.

I do want truth in media, and I want to believe that the media are interested in the pursuit of the truth and of facts. The reality however often seems to be something quite different--the pursuit of money, ratings, and reputation seems to be paramount for many such organizations, whether they are arch-liberal or arch-conservative. I am sick to death of having the pot stirred each day, of being perturbed by the endless onslaught of crises, hypocrisies, dramas, soap operas, and sins on a daily basis. I don't see the point of it, unless it is to destroy faith in democratic government and principles upon which most Westernized societies are based. Our democracies seem to be undergoing dismantling from within our own countries. We are continually forced into polarizing positions, into a 'divide and conquer' mentality. I cannot ever remember it being this bad. I cannot ever remember that I woke up each day dreading watching the news or reading the newspaper, dreading any form for political discussion or polarizing conversations. Because I dread all of it at present, and I walk around with a foreboding of bad times to come. If I let all of the nonsense in, life will become joyless, depressing, and hopeless. Life will become faith-less. I believe that faith and hope are necessary for life to continue. If there is only hopelessness and despair, there is no point in continuing, and no point in working to save the planet. We cannot continue to appeal to 'crisis mode' in people; it is not a way to motivate people to change. It only creates anger and frustration. The way to get people to change is to educate them with the facts--rationally, clearly, calmly--without hysteria, panic and aggression, without a dangerous flock mentality, without infantile behavior on the part of politicians and leaders of the free world, without a media hell-bent on destroying all that is good in society. We don't need more positive thinking, we need more focus on the good people in the world, who are going about their lives in a rational and good way, who live modestly and who give back to the world what they take from it, who understand that doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, is the best way to live life.

Milking the system

As I grow older, I am finding it harder and harder to stomach politicians, government leaders, company leaders, and religious leaders who lie, blatantly, to our faces, as though we are plain stupid. Whether it's the USA or Norway, or any other modern country, it seems to me that greed has become paramount among the upper echelons. Maybe it's always been this way, or maybe I'm just getting more and more fed up with it. Average citizens are paying high taxes in Scandinavia and we're told that it's to fund infrastructure and healthcare, among other things. But if you do a bit of digging, as some of the dedicated journalists do, you find out soon enough that a good percentage of the money that should be used for infrastructure and healthcare, is actually going into the pockets of leaders of state-owned organizations who give themselves and their cronies (whom they hire as high-paid consultants--it's called corruption) extremely high salaries, or expensive trips to other countries (flying business class of course) that they defend as necessary in order to 'learn how' the other countries do things like build bicycle paths or fund schools. Or they sponsor Christmas parties where the wine and liquor flow freely--all at taxpayers' expense. It infuriates me, especially since most average citizens are living on a budget. I can tell you that we are not flying to other countries several times per month, nor are we sponsoring and defending high-end Christmas parties. In other words, most average people (non-leaders) are not milking the system the way our leaders are.

Where do they learn to do this? Is there no accountability anymore, no sense of justice, no conscience, no ethics, no morals? How can leaders justify giving themselves huge raises, while denying underpaid workers a small one? How do green-party politicians justify their hypocrisy--telling us that we should be ashamed of getting on an airplane to travel, while they hop around the globe by plane many times during the year, or telling us that they need to travel around in limousines because their lives may be in danger, while the rest of us are paying through the nose for car tolls (everywhere you turn now here in Oslo) in order to get us to stop driving cars, or paying high prices for collective transportation (you'd think the politicians would be intelligent enough to lower prices for collective transport in order to encourage its use here in Norway, but no). Do they think we're stupid? Because here's a news flash for them--the protests are only just starting. Here in Oslo, a new political party has reared its head; it's called Nei til bompenger (No to Tolls). And I'm voting for them come autumn, because I'm sick and tired of the other political parties that just continue to lie to us. The same with the healthcare system here; is it free? No. It is cheaper than in the USA, and if you need an operation you won't pay an arm and a leg for it like in the USA. But the taxes we pay are what fund the healthcare system. I don't have a problem with this; what I have a problem with is the exorbitant salaries that hospital and healthcare leaders enjoy, also that the bureaucracy of healthcare has grown exponentially. We are paying for administrators to bureaucratize us to death, and the only way to do something about it is to protest and to vote the politicians who support this system out of office.

Greed. It blinds political leaders and company leaders. It encourages them to milk the system. Power blinds them too. God forbid they should have to give it up at some point (think Trump). And that brings me to our illustrious religious leaders who are also blinded by worldly power, the ones who allowed pedophiles to carry on freely in their midst, while the rest of us were trying to live our lives according to the teachings of Christ. Think the Catholic church, that deserves everything it is experiencing now (it should pay out settlements to individuals abused by pedophiles for a long time to come) and more, for sweeping its pedophile problem (a crime) under the rug for decades. How do these religious leaders live with themselves? But they did and they do, because they knew they would not get caught forty or fifty years ago. Their parishioners were loyal, hard-working, law-abiding, and God-fearing. They lived according to their faith and were not the hypocrites that their priests turned out to be. Any priest that defends or protects a pedophile, a wife-abuser, a rapist, or a murderer, is a criminal in my book. They can rot in jail for all I care. They abused their calling, and their parishioners, and God. Perhaps God will show them mercy, I am not interested in doing so.

Behaving decently

I've read a lot of the commentaries and articles dealing with Brett Kavanaugh--whether he lied or didn't, what he lied about, his indignation and self-righteous anger on the stand, and so on. Personally I just don't trust him, since he appears to have lied about words like boofing and devil's triangle, among others (both of which have clear sexual connotations). He wants to make us believe that he was a decent young man with only the best motives where women were concerned. I don't believe that he was so decent. Any time massive amounts of alcohol are involved in order to have a 'good time', a decent mindset and decent behavior go out the window. It's guaranteed that something will go wrong or someone will get hurt. During my teenage years, young men drove when they were drunk, and ended up hurting (or killing) themselves and often others. One young man, quarterback of his high school football team, ended up a paraplegic after a horrific car crash that killed another occupant in the car. And so on. Driving drunk was not unusual then, but that changed dramatically when I reached my mid-twenties and MADD (Mothers against drunk driving--see https://www.madd.org/about-us/our-story/ for more info) forced the drinking age laws to change.

Society often says 'boys will be boys' whenever their 'bad' behavior is brought up, whether that bad behavior is sexual, alcohol-related, or drug-related. We let teenage boys off the hook when we use that expression, as though they somehow deserve to be excused for their bad behavior. They don't, and neither do the teenage girls who behave similarly. Unfortunately, it's often teenage girls who end up getting hurt more often than teenage boys, especially if sexual assault/rape enters the picture.

I know that it's possible that men and women can change, so I won't argue that point. I went to school with male and female bullies, most of whom grew up and became well-functioning, non-bullying adults. But nevertheless, they were not very nice persons when we were growing up. Their behavior was not excused however in my day; it was clamped down upon by parents and schools. All forms of sexual harassment and abuse should also be clamped down upon--by parents, schools and workplaces--whenever it appears. We don't need a lot of new regulations and laws; they exist already. We need to have them enforced; we need to enforce them. The abusers and harassers should be punished. Rapists should go to prison for a minimum of twenty years. They should not be rewarded with cushy positions and a 'get out of jail free' card whenever they've done something wrong. Angry privileged white men defend each other and protect each other. They let each other get away with bad behavior. They call in favors, they make deals, they pay off those they've abused/raped, and they get away with it. They are above the law and are allowed to remain there. They whine about the impact of hearings and investigations on their families; but they never once stop to consider the impact of their sexual assaults/rapes on the women they assault/rape, and on the families of those women. The narcissism, selfishness, and sociopathic tendencies in these men are appalling. Sociopaths are defined by behavior that is antisocial and often criminal; they lack a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. That pretty much sums up the behavior of many of the male politicians in government these days, as well as many of the men in the entertainment business and in the business world generally. It seems to me that many men simply hate women, and I really don't understand why. How we got to this point, I don't know.

I leave you with an excellent opinion article--Decent Men Don't Do These Things--published in The New York Times on September 24th: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/opinion/kavanaugh-sexual-assault-blasey-testimony.html?action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article

It's food for thought. I believe we need a national movement (like MADD) that stresses the urgency of learning how to behave decently again. We could hope our current president embraced such a movement and learned something from it as well.

The value of collectively shutting up

My generation grew up with the quote 'Silence is golden'. And my mother also used to say, 'If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all'. Another stellar quote, in my opinion. We were encouraged not to open our mouths on all occasions as young adults, and as children, we were strictly instructed not to. Overall, we were raised to not talk back to our parents or elders. The key word was respect. We were taught to respect our parents and/or elders whether we liked it or not, and whether or not they actually deserved it. When I was around twelve years old, I began to understand that not all adults deserved my respect. But I didn't tell them that to their faces. I simply tried to avoid having anything to do with them whenever possible, which was not always easy. But not always opening my mouth to tell people what I thought--of them or about specific issues--was valuable training. 'Think before you speak' was one of those quotes that took root in my brain from very early on. I learn to be a bit wary of people who were quick to tell you their opinions, who were quick to judge others, who were quick to shift their opinions, and who tended to dominate with their opinions.

But back to the first two quotes. The world appears to have forgotten their value. Every time we turn around, some pundit is telling us what he or she thinks. The media and just about everyone else have an opinion about everything. Everyone is an expert on just about everything. I respect those people who when asked for their opinion, are honest and say they don't have one, or that they don't know enough about the situation to have a conclusive opinion, or something along those lines. I also respect those people who take their time in answering a question about how they think or feel about something. I fall into the latter group--someone who doesn't always have a ready answer or an immediate opinion, someone who needs to retreat into herself in order to think about what she really thinks and feels about a specific situation. I would say that my opinions about things are for the most part well-reasoned. I don't tend to 'open my mouth and insert foot'. I like working with and associating with people who are not quick to open their mouths with their opinions about everything under the sun. Modern workplaces encourage employees to brainstorm. It's all well and good, but again, the opinionated people tend to dominate. Those who wish to think about a specific issue, or who need time to do so, do not. In the world at large, it's the brash and the aggressive people who dominate in the media. Turn on the TV news, and there's another story about Trump--always larger than life, and who never shuts his mouth. After a while, you lose interest. Everything is drama, over-the-top drama. Everything is a crisis, except that it's not. The crises are Trump-made, and he uses them for all they are worth. He incites his followers, many of whom adopt his opinions uncritically. Trump is one example; the media generally are another example of those who never shut their mouths. They are paid to keep talking, to keep spouting the same story, the same rhetoric, over and over. I miss the days when I sat with my father on a Sunday afternoon and watched 'Meet the Press' with him. The debates were interesting; it was possible to listen to reasoned opinions from both political sides without name-calling, harassment, degradation or embarrassing situations. I don't want a world where the press is muzzled; I would appreciate a press that used more time on figuring out what is worth reporting and how to do so. Not everything is interesting, nor does absolutely everything need to be dissected ad nauseam.

I think we need to take a break from talking all the time. We need some silence. We need time to evaluate whether the opinions we are spouting are well-reasoned, and whether they are really our opinions or the opinions of media and political pundits. The world would benefit from a 'collective shut up', e.g. one day a week. We could use that day to digest the news and current events; we could figure out what we really want from our politicians and from the media. Or we could just 'enjoy the silence' as Depeche Mode sings. Whatever we use the day for, it's got to be a better use of our time than being the passive recipients of a constant bombardment of others' opinions. It may even help us to learn to better communicate. Because when we are constantly being bombarded, we lose our footing and we end up adrift. We end up irritated, confused, and even angry--angry at those people and situations that are constantly destroying our peace of soul and peace of mind. That cannot lead to anything good.

The government shutdown

The U.S. federal government officially shut down as of early this morning. This has happened before, e.g. back in 2013 under President Obama, but it is interesting to listen to the recriminations from both sides this time. Not unexpected in any case. It's just more proof that America is a deeply-split country at present (it was under Obama also and has just gotten worse), and it's not likely to change any time soon. We need a new leader (president), one that can unite both parties, or at least appeal to their compromise instinct. Because the compromise instinct exists on both sides. Leaders in both parties need to find the common ground and get rid of the rhetoric. They need to stop blaming each other and get on with the business of governing. We need to get back to a time when people talked to each other and really listened to each other. We need more Lincolns and less Trumps. We don't need another Civil War. We need more focus on respect for the other side. We need more politicians who 'agree to disagree' for the sake of their nation. We need more politicians who truly love their country. We don't need politicians who are only interested in ripping those in the opposing party to shreds. We don't need more politicians who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the American taxpayers. There seems to be little in the way of strong moral and ethical focus in many politicians these days. 

Mostly, we need a president who appeals to the best nature in people. The current president does not. He appeals to the base instincts in us, those instincts that would have us hate rather than love or try to love, those instincts that would have us exclude rather than include others, those instincts that compel us to be selfish, narcissistic, self-involved, arrogant, proud, superficial, lazy, and ultimately unintelligent while screaming 'I know it all'. This is the complete opposite of how we were raised as Christians. I have no use for priests and clerics who praise Trump for his pro-life stance while ignoring his support for white supremacy, racism, poor business ethics, greed, lack of respect for women, and other such issues. He is no role model in any of those areas, and no role model for children. And yet, he is held up as a good role model on church pulpits across America because he is (claims to be) anti-abortion. I'm sorry to say that those who promote him are at best, misinformed. His philosophies and way of living bear little resemblance to the Christianity we were taught to practice.

In any case, a Facebook member (Nick Velander) posted the following statements made by Trump back when the government shut down under Obama. Can you feel the hypocrisy in these quotes? Can you feel the 'do as I say not as I do'? Aren't we waiting for Trump to say these quotes are 'false news'? Because if he says they are, the Trumpers will believe it. We are living in strange times. I have come to believe that we are moving toward dangerous times, and I take nothing for granted anymore. 

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"Obama's complaints about Republicans stopping his agenda are BS since he had full control for two years. He can never take responsibility." - Sept. 26, 2012 - Donald Trump - Twitter

"Does any Republican have the ability to negotiate?" - Jan 2, 2013 - Donald Trump - Twitter

"Just shows that you can have all the cards and lose if you don’t know what you’re doing." - January 3, 2013 - Donald Trump - Twitter

"FACT – the reason why Americans have to worry about a government shutdown is because Obama refuses to pass a budget." - Aug 9, 2013 01:33:39 PM - Donald Trump

"My sense is that people are far angrier at the President than they are at Congress re the shutdown—an interesting turn!" 2:05 PM - 7 Oct 2013 - Donald Trump - Twitter

"Congress must pass a budget and hold Obama to it. No more continuing resolutions and no more excuses. Republicans soon hold both houses." 12:00 PM - 3 Dec 2014 - Donald Trump - Twitter

Sexcapades

This past week the news has been dominated by sex scandals—some of them of an (alleged) illegal criminal nature and some of them not. What they have in common is that the men involved in all cases risked their marriages, personal lives and reputations to live out their different sexual fantasies. Again, I have to ask the question, what were these men thinking? But I know I won’t get a satisfactory answer. Or I’ll get the standard wisecrack answer—they weren’t—it was their second brain that was doing the thinking.

This time it was Arnold Schwarzenegger who ‘took full responsibility’ and stepped up to the proverbial plate to inform us about his extramarital affair with one of his household staff members and the resulting love child. The news was apparently kept secret even from his wife Maria Schriver, who when she heard it from him apparently a few months ago, promptly moved out of the house. They are currently separated and will likely divorce. When I first heard the news I thought, yet another male politician who couldn’t keep his pants zipped. Really, what is the world coming to, I ask you? One politician after another caught up in the arms of sleaze—affairs with household staff/servants (Schwarzenegger and a few of our country’s founding fathers), dabblings with prostitutes (Eliot Spitzer), oral sex with congressional pages and sex with nightclub singers (Bill Clinton), adultery with women sneaked into the White House (John F. Kennedy), adultery with an Argentinian girlfriend (Mark Sanford) and adultery with other (healthy younger) women while their wives struggled with cancer (Newt Gingrich, John Edwards, and a few other men I know of who are not politicians). The latter especially is distressing to read about if you own an iota of empathy, because you know that the news that your husband is fooling around or having children with another woman while you battle cancer cannot be anything other than immensely stressful precisely at the time when you need little to no added extra stress. And how sad to leave this life knowing that your husband was a ‘rotter’ as my mother would have called these types of men. What a thing to forgive, and can you really? What a betrayal—the ultimate betrayal. Even if you did live, could you trust a man again? Again I find it hard to believe that men can behave this way. Of course I know that there are two sides to every story. If I didn’t write that here I’d be reminded of it by some well-meaning person. And I agree, there are two sides to every story. But it’s hard to find equivalently awful stories about female politicians who behave in this way toward their husbands. I’d like to know about them, I really would.

I have been witness to some strange male (and female) relationship behavior during the past thirty years, so I know that bad behavior does happen. I know of married men who traveled under assumed names to meet their lovers so that their wives wouldn’t find out, I know of men who were on message boards and internet dating sites passing themselves off as single when in fact they were married, I know of men who were fooling around with their current wives while their soon-to-be ex-wives were succumbing to cancer, I know of men who strung women along for years telling them that they would marry them and then dropping them the minute they found the woman they ‘wanted to marry’. I know of swinging couples and wife-swappers; of men who lied to women about being ‘separated’ in order to get a woman to sleep with them. I know of men who travel on business who pick up prostitutes and call girls when they are in another city. I know of married men who offered to be sperm donors for single women and whose wives would probably not have appreciated the offers had they known about them.  I also know of women (married and single) who have contacted the wives of the men they have decided to seduce, to tell the wives that they and the husbands are very attracted to each other and that if the husband hadn’t been married they would be together. I know of women who pursue married men on social network sites, by email, and via text messages. I know of women who worked for men who told them at the outset that they’d like to be their mistresses, who ended up being so, and who ended up marrying them after causing hell for the wives involved. In Norway alone, infidelity in marriage occurs in one of two marriages according to what I hear from other people and from news reports; I have no way of knowing whether this is true, since most people would never talk about this honestly. In turn, I know of wives who fought back and told some of these women off and told their husbands off at the same time. I know of some women who divorced the louts they were living with. I know of some wives who really fought back—when their husbands went to live with the other women and the scorned wives made their lives a living hell. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. You bet. And maybe it’s good that it is that way at least in some cases. But sometimes I believe in divorce as the solution to painful hellish lives. I’ve seen a number of abusive and depressing marriages during my growing up—drunken men who hit women, eternal flirters and skirt-chasers who were never happy with the women they had at home, or men who always had to have the last word—who controlled their wives and families with an iron fist. And this took place/takes place in Westernized society. So every time people say to me that women have it so much better in our neck of the world, I remind them of this, and then we come down a few notches on the ‘everything is great for women in our society’ scale.

Which brings me to the men and women I know who are unsung heroes in my book. The men and women who have stayed married through thick and thin without cheating, without abuse, without carping. Who start each day with a smile and who never cease to amaze me with their cheerfulness and helpful spirits. Who are loyal and kind to their spouses and children. Who have probably been tempted to leave a few times in their lives, but didn’t, because they put the happiness and needs of their spouses and families ahead of their own. Who stuck by spouses in times of sickness—the true test of love. I’ve seen what sickness in one or the other partner can do to relationships, so I know it’s not easy. Loyalty is underrated in our society these days. But it is what makes marriages and friendships last. Without it, there can’t really be much trust. You have to be able to see into the future and ‘know’ with your gut that the person you share your life with will be there for you when you are sick, when you need help, and vice versa. No one said it would be easy. Maybe you’d like to run at the first sign of trouble. But maybe you didn’t; maybe you wrestled with your doubt and anxiety and temptation and stayed put. These are the people who impress me. You don’t need to climb Mt. Everest or practice extreme sports or any of those things to impress me. ‘That don’t impress me much’, as Shania Twain sang a few years ago. What does impress me is longevity and the ability to be positive and cheerful in a marriage. I’m not saying that all people should stay together for an entire lifetime; I’ve already argued for divorce as a solution to hellish relationships. But if after some years of being together, an otherwise decent marriage loses a bit of its luster and temptation comes one’s way, maybe one should take a closer look at what one has before tossing it away for a sexcapade. It is possible to stay faithful, and I know couples married for forty or more years who have been faithful to one another. They say so, they are still in love with their spouses, and they are my heroes.