Feeling demoralized lately?
"Demoralization" is the word that currently burbles up at
3 a.m. like the red pepper flakes from a second helping of spaghetti. Demoralization is afoot. We must define it. We must think about it. We must, in the end, worry about it.
We need, for starters, a moral Alka Seltzer.
The definition of "demoralize," from the Oxford English Dictionary: "Corrupt the morals or moral principles of; deprave." From which I extrapolate: Demoralization means, in large part, accepting as fine and fitting and whocares-anyway that which once you wouldn't have accepted on account of principles seen as right and wise and honorable. It means lowering yourself. That is the prospect to be guarded against in this tumultuous : the lowering of the American character, its demoralization.
You guessed I was talking about the president? Aw, how come? On account of his insulting, in the presidential office last week, countries and peoples a U.S. president doesn't normally insult in public, perhaps? No one should wonder at the fire and fury Trump's reported remarks about supposedly primitive nations ignited. Their flame revealed much that is, well, demoralizing.
Our president — and he is ours, the president of us all — is walking, and has been, a pathway strewn with antipersonnel mines and elephant traps. Pride, I have always heard, goeth before a fall, the kind of fall that awaits any personage in love with his own importance, never at fault, never guilty of bad judgment or behavior, in spite of "fake news." If — when — he does fall, it's going to be a mess, with bloody noses and cracked crowns all around.
I want to make clear none of this is to disparage the political good that our president, or others in his name, have done in a year's time — whacking regulations, cutting tax rates, naming explicit conservatives to the federal bench, etc.
It is all quite grand. Hillary Clinton wouldn't have done the like. Any more questions before I make the next inquiry? Which is: When is our noble leader going to figure out that his personal style of democratic leadership — "Big I, Little You" — is neither democratic nor leader-like? It's more the style of an "Arabian Nights" sultan than a representative of the American people.
The argument for the Trumpian, you-goto-hell style in politics is, look, we can't wait for a class of debutantes to clean house after all those years of Clintons and
Bushes.
Maybe not. But in democratic practice and theory, mere achievement is rarely enough. Achievement with finesse and respect for procedures, maximizing agreement, minimizing the opposition's plans to pay you back, first chance they get — that's what is wanted.
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