Monday was Yom Kippur, the annual Jewish day of repentance. A Jewish friend once told me, “Catholics are lucky. You can go to confession and get absolved of your sins any time you want. Jews only get the chance once a year. It’s a big schlep.” (Schlep: verb, to carry, lug – Yiddish.) I responded that maybe Catholic absolution is too available, because many Catholics -mea culpa – don’t take the opportunity to get things off our chests as often as we should. (Mea culpa: phrase, my fault – Latin.)
Saturday, a friend confessed that he has been indulging in schadenfreude. (Schadenfreude: noun, to take pleasure in another’s misfortune – German.) “I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help enjoying watching the Republicans self-destruct.” He’s right; it’s wrong. I’ve indulged the same guilty pleasure – mea culpa redux.
It’s wrong to take pleasure in the wreckage strewn across the American landscape by the people running the country, because it is our country that’s being ruined. It is, however, important that these moral and ethical failings come to light now, before the election, because voters need to know about them and act on that knowledge when the curtain closes on the voting booth.
Wednesday’s Washington Post said stories about ex-Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) inappropriate behavior with House pages had been noted, by the pages at least, since 1995, the year the GOP took over the lower house of Congress. The pages may not have told the authorities in ’95, but it’s clear the House leadership has been aware of this issue for three or four years and while they took deliberate actions to keep the whole thing quiet, they took no action to protect the underage citizens entrusted to their care.
Now that the sad story is being revealed, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-NY), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who look to be the primary cover-up culprits, are puffing up their chests and resisting calls for their resignations.
In Vermont, Martha Rainville, the Republican candidate for our state’s lone House seat, got caught plagiarizing policy language from three other candidates (two Democratic, one Republican). She fired a staffer and revamped her campaign web site. Then she was accused of covering up a pornography scandal in her former job as commander of the Vermont National Guard. Unclear yet how it will all shake out, but Ms. Rainville has for now adopted the Republican Posture.
That posture – chest and chin thrust out – is a common one in Republican Washington. It was all too much on display in the excerpts from two new books published over the weekend. It seems the higher up the chain of command one goes the more pronounced the swagger becomes.
Karen DeYoung’s “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell” draws a detailed picture of the lengths to which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to marginalize and humiliate former Secretary of State Colin Powell or anyone else who disagreed with his lunatic plans for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. (Humiliate: verb, to cause a person a painful loss of pride, self-respect or dignity.)
Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” shows the same virus rampant in the White House, reaching epidemic states in the offices of vice president and president. The United States of America has been ruled for the last five years by people who have no vision, no competence, no compassion – all they have is the arrogant, swaggering posture. They brush aside laws, the Constitution and international treaties with no regard for anything other than feeding more money and power to their already-bloated cronies. The leading posturer in the judicial branch is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the man who engineered this mess in December 2000.
They chastise critics and opponents as “weak” and “wafflers,” because perhaps those people lack the same idiotic swagger. It doesn’t mean you’re weak if you admit you might not have all the answers or that maybe the best answer isn’t the perfect answer. It might mean you have a measure of humility. (Humility: noun, an awareness of one’s own imperfections.)
They don’t know that humility and humiliation are far different things; as a result they’ve humiliated us all in the eyes of the world and history. We will all need a strong draft of humility to repair the damage they’ve done. Let’s hope the season of repentance and days of atonement are not yet passed. It’s going to be a big schlep.
The Big Schlep (Glossary Included)
Monday was Yom Kippur, the annual Jewish day of repentance. A Jewish friend once told me, “Catholics are lucky. You can go to confession and get absolved of your sins any time you want. Jews only get the chance once a year. It’s a big schlep.” (Schlep: verb, to carry, lug – Yiddish.) I responded that maybe Catholic absolution is too available, because many Catholics -mea culpa – don’t take the opportunity to get things off our chests as often as we should. (Mea culpa: phrase, my fault – Latin.)
Saturday, a friend confessed that he has been indulging in schadenfreude. (Schadenfreude: noun, to take pleasure in another’s misfortune – German.) “I know it’s wrong, but I can’t help enjoying watching the Republicans self-destruct.” He’s right; it’s wrong. I’ve indulged the same guilty pleasure – mea culpa redux.
It’s wrong to take pleasure in the wreckage strewn across the American landscape by the people running the country, because it is our country that’s being ruined. It is, however, important that these moral and ethical failings come to light now, before the election, because voters need to know about them and act on that knowledge when the curtain closes on the voting booth.
Wednesday’s Washington Post said stories about ex-Rep. Mark Foley’s (R-FL) inappropriate behavior with House pages had been noted, by the pages at least, since 1995, the year the GOP took over the lower house of Congress. The pages may not have told the authorities in ’95, but it’s clear the House leadership has been aware of this issue for three or four years and while they took deliberate actions to keep the whole thing quiet, they took no action to protect the underage citizens entrusted to their care.
Now that the sad story is being revealed, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and Rep. Thomas Reynolds (R-NY), chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, who look to be the primary cover-up culprits, are puffing up their chests and resisting calls for their resignations.
In Vermont, Martha Rainville, the Republican candidate for our state’s lone House seat, got caught plagiarizing policy language from three other candidates (two Democratic, one Republican). She fired a staffer and revamped her campaign web site. Then she was accused of covering up a pornography scandal in her former job as commander of the Vermont National Guard. Unclear yet how it will all shake out, but Ms. Rainville has for now adopted the Republican Posture.
That posture – chest and chin thrust out – is a common one in Republican Washington. It was all too much on display in the excerpts from two new books published over the weekend. It seems the higher up the chain of command one goes the more pronounced the swagger becomes.
Karen DeYoung’s “Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell” draws a detailed picture of the lengths to which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went to marginalize and humiliate former Secretary of State Colin Powell or anyone else who disagreed with his lunatic plans for the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. (Humiliate: verb, to cause a person a painful loss of pride, self-respect or dignity.)
Bob Woodward’s “State of Denial” shows the same virus rampant in the White House, reaching epidemic states in the offices of vice president and president. The United States of America has been ruled for the last five years by people who have no vision, no competence, no compassion – all they have is the arrogant, swaggering posture. They brush aside laws, the Constitution and international treaties with no regard for anything other than feeding more money and power to their already-bloated cronies. The leading posturer in the judicial branch is Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the man who engineered this mess in December 2000.
They chastise critics and opponents as “weak” and “wafflers,” because perhaps those people lack the same idiotic swagger. It doesn’t mean you’re weak if you admit you might not have all the answers or that maybe the best answer isn’t the perfect answer. It might mean you have a measure of humility. (Humility: noun, an awareness of one’s own imperfections.)
They don’t know that humility and humiliation are far different things; as a result they’ve humiliated us all in the eyes of the world and history. We will all need a strong draft of humility to repair the damage they’ve done. Let’s hope the season of repentance and days of atonement are not yet passed. It’s going to be a big schlep.
© Mark Floegel, 2006