A corridor at Providence Hospital in Medford, Oregon, has pillars marked with these values:
COMPASSION
DIGNITY
JUSTICE
EXCELLENCE
INTEGRITY
I live in a reddish-purple county. A majority of the people I live among plan to vote for Donald Trump. Most business and political leaders in my community are Republicans. Many of them donate both to Republican candidates and this hospital. Polls indicate that about 85 percent of the country's Republicans will vote for Trump.
I see a profound contradiction.
Somehow the very community and institution that celebrate compassion, dignity, justice, excellence and integrity as values choose to support Donald Trump, notwithstanding behavior that sharply contradicts those very values. I know these values have meaning for them. The virtues are essential for the operation of a workplace. Republican community leaders, if sitting on a hiring committee, would not choose Donald Trump for a job requiring financial integrity. They would not select him to be the trustee for an estate. After all, a court determined that he stole from his foundation. Would they hire him to be a school principal, a gymnastics coach, a university president? I am confident they would not. Courts determined that he sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll and a jury awarded her $83 million in punitive damages for his defamation resulting from that assault. Think of the liability.
Character matters. Honesty matters. We look for co-workers and leaders who show respect and are worthy of it.
Heather Cox Richardson quotes the Republican mayor of Mesa, Arizona, who spoke at a Harris rally this week. He called on Republicans to reconnect with the moral center of their party:
Y]ou don’t owe anything to a party that is out of touch and is Hell-bent on taking our country backward. And by all means, you owe no displaced loyalty to a candidate that is morally and ethically bankrupt.
Yet most Republicans accept Trump. He successfully corrupted his party. He sold it on a seductive and dangerous idea, that winning justifies lawbreaking. The idea is familiar both to Machiavelli and Mao Zedong: Power is seized; it is not offered up by people who respect process. Mao Zedong said power comes from the barrel of a gun. Machiavelli wrote that cruelty, dishonesty, selfishness, and injustice are necessary tools for a leader to gain and keep power. Trump made the case to foreign leaders early in his term of office that he considered this a dog-eat-dog world and that he fully intended to do whatever he considered to be in America's interest, notwithstanding treaties, alliances, trade agreements, or international organizations. He said he expected others to do the same. Life is a struggle. In foreign policy, domestic policy, and politics, one grabbed what one can.
Trump is consistent in that world view. His narcissism and selfishness and dishonesty are features, not bugs. He persuaded the GOP to go along for the ride. Some partisans do so joyfully; some out of fear of his wrath. My Republican neighbors know they are not voting for a good man. Hospital-corridor virtues are irrelevant. They are voting for an unprincipled thug, but he is their thug. His enemies are their enemies. Nice guys finish last.
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11 comments:
If those values meant anything to Republicans, they would have chosen as their leader someone who embraced them and also favored their conservative policies. Instead, they chose a madman who foments fear, anger, hatred and contempt for the rule of law. They revere him, not in spite of his lawlessness but because of it.
In the past, many Americans justified slavery, treating other human beings as chattel, because they valued profit over human life and the common good. Slavery may be illegal now, but the mentality that was able to rationalize it remains very much with us in the MAGA White nationalist movement. Trump embodies their belief that God intended for the U.S. to be a Christian nation run by White guys.
It’s what is so frustrating about Trump that “good “ people still will vote for him. The Republican Party might be saved by a resounding landslide loss in the upcoming election. Then maybe the Republican Party will rediscover morality matters. The problem for them is how to be moral but still get the racist vote.
You might want to ask yourself what concern is so strong among these Republicans that it overrides their commitment to the values on those columns. Or in other words, it might be useful to look at them without putting a mirror in between you and them, because otherwise all you will see is a reflection of your own concerns.
This is the crux of the problem. Enablers.
Those among us who all too easily abandon basic morality to gain power when they cannot persuade and fall behind the bully and demagogue.
What is so tragic about this is that they know they are wrong, but they rationalize it, which in a way explains how they can give to charity but still vote for these characters. Historians have often said that had the Allies not been successful Hitler would not have been overthrown by the German people. Unfortunately, this also seems to be the case with Russia today, and our own country is at risk.
Those values have never meant anything to the GOPee. Never.
Republicans have no values nor morals.
It's impossible to see something that doesn't exist.
If Southern Oregon had credible media it would meld public Trump-supporting statements with donations to local philanthropy.
Let the charities know where their money is coming from.
I’ve been asking myself, what concern is so strong among these Republicans that it overrides their commitment to values? Based on their cult leader’s fixation, their overriding concern is apparently crowd size, the 2020 election and/or coming up with the stupidest nickname for Kamala Harris.
Sure, Mc. They are just a basket of deplorables. That attitude worked out so well for Hillary.
The election is currently a tossup. Do you want to attract more people to your side? Or would you prefer to lose with your virtue intact?
I have to keep asking myself what causes the business leaders and other semi prominent citizens to be blinded by what Trump represents?
No, let's reason with them. That should work like a charm on people who don't believe in election results they don't like. Nothing deplorable about that.
The business leaders and other prominent citizens such as Elon Musk for one aren't blind. They're just plain greedy and their greed trumps all other concerns they might have. Don't forget just how well it worked out for the pocketbooks of the 1% last time Trump was President. It's shameful and embarrassing to anyone who does have basic morals, but it's true.
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