WSJ Writer Rips Notre Dame U. - She Needs To Examine Her Own Hollow Morality

An op--ed essay in the WSJ ('Notre Dame Becomes A Bit Less Catholic'.. Mar. 9, p. A13) by Alexandra DeSanctis:

lambastes the University of Notre Dame, and its president,  Rev. John Jenkins, based on a farrago of distortions and ultimately, a gross misunderstanding of the practical limits of  Catholicism's moral capital.  Let's cut to the chase: the Church essentially lost whatever moral authority it possessed in the wake of the priest (and bishop) sexual abuse scandal. In that vile wave of pederasty, thousands of priests were involved - from Ireland to Germany to the U.S. to Australia-   and bishops, as well as the then pope (Ratzinger) protected them.  By being accessories after the fact they basically sacrificed whatever moral capital and voice they had up to then, which now means nothing. The argument that it was "a few bad applies" and it's "time to move on", doesn't cut it. It doesn't cut it because those abominations can't be erased given they're an integral part of Catholicism's moral matrix - or rather pseudo-moral (i.e.. pre-moral) matrix. Hence,  those acts have defiled and totally undermined the Vatican's  and by extension the Church's -  moral validity. Frankly, it no longer has any.

It is in this radical context that one needs to examine Ms. De Sanctis' WSJ essay.  She takes Rev. Jenkins to task in a kind of backhanded manner as when she first applauds his rejection of "abortifacents" (a misnomer) and then cites his justification for allowing artificial  birth control, i.e.

"Catholic tradition 'requires respect for the conscientious decisions of members of our community"

Writing in response:

"Of course Notre Dame community members can exercise their consciences without receiving university -provided contraception"

Which misses the point. That is, the total constellation of Notre Dame "community members" would clearly show a smaller subset (for non-Catholics),  compared to a larger one for Catholics. The former including many professors, lecturers, other staff (custodians, secretaries etc.)  as well as a number of students who elected to attend ND.   Given these are not Catholics they are not obligated to accept Catholic dogmas or ruling, but the ACA did mandate they receive birth control - which is what Notre Dame has since provided. This doesn't make the university "less Catholic" as the author claims, but rather adhering to the formal provisions of the law embodied in the ACA.

Roman Catholics are perfectly entitled to withhold contraceptive services for their own Catholic members, but may not do so for the general public that has no other alternatives or recourse than to go to a Catholic hospital, or work at some other Catholic institution - say like a school. Hence, if I (as an atheist)  am teaching at such a school, I need to be able to secure these.contraceptives for my wife if she should need them. To say I can't based on the fact the school is religious, is an infringement of my rights as a citizen. And certainly, if the Catholic Church is to continue to enjoy tax free status as a religion, it needs to keep its nose out of issues that don't concern it, namely those affecting non-Catholic citizens, irrespective of where they work.

This is why De Sanctis' next statement:

"With the decision to provide birth control, Notre Dame has forfeited its chance to stand in moral opposition to a utilitarian sexual culture."

Amounts  to unadulterated codswallop.  At stake here is the meaning of a genuine morality. We write or talk about this in distinction to what I refer to as "moralism": the use of emotional and subjective markers and memes to invent a false morality or ethics based on eliminating the role of reflective cognition and conscience.  

Perhaps no better formulation exists than  that compliments of Cheryl Mendelson, former Professor of Ethics and author of 'The Good Life'.     On page 157, for example, she writes - in reference to abortion and what she calls the "premoral mind.":

"The premoral mind confuses the disgusting with the wrong and retains an infantile fear of things sexual. Its rationality is overcome by emotion, fantasy, wish and projection. The belief that extracting a 10-week fetus from a woman's womb is murder rests to a large extent on the sense of disgust aroused by the thought of destruction of living tissue.......People who think this way are unable to override disgust with rational appreciation of the objective characteristics of the fetus. The ability to do so is an indispensable trait of the moral mind."

By extension those - like De Sanctis - who believe the prevention of the conception of a fetus amounts to some moral violation, are hostages to their premoral mind and moralism . In this case, De Sanctis' fear of things sexual compels her to see any act of sexual intercourse not geared to procreation as a "grave moral evil".  In other words, she's conditioned by false dogmas to see sexual acts, i.e. performed in marriage, as "evil'' or "disordered" if performed for the sake of mutual pleasure alone. (As one ethics prof once put it, "that would be mutual masturbation.")

But it goes beyond that.

Indeed, Mendelson argues the "infantile fear of things sexual" has driven nearly all sexual abuses committed by clergy because that fear drives sexual aggression against vulnerable victims.   It was precisely the "infantile fear of things sexual" which spawned those thousands of  priest predators to go after innocent kids in their charge. "Fear of things sexual" in the context of bad press, PR also drove the Vatican's cover up which followed.  But the Vatican, by its tacit actions of cover up, defiled its message of morality and converted it to hypocritical moralism.

In other words, the basis for a truly moral mind presumes the capacity for rationality to assess objectively - as opposed to emotively or via succumbing to dictates of dogma.  This is exactly what Rev. John Jenkins of Notre Dame did by acknowledging the validity of "conscientious decisions" of ND members, in accepting birth control, but which Ms. De Sanctis failed to do. Perhaps she failed because she allowed her emotions and personal investment, i.e. in her previous attendance at "Our Lady's university" (ibid.),   to trump her rational faculties. Or perhaps those faculties, including critical thinking, were co-opted ab initio  by her own unwillingness to challenge an archaic  and fallacious system of "natural law" that holds no ballast. (For example, the Church had earlier invoked natural law theory to justify slavery given "some men were more suited to be guided and mastered by others.")

Cheryl Mendelsohn's most trenchant observation in this connection may be (p. 160):

"The premises that the fertilized egg, embryo and fetus are ensouled or sacred are ideas that cannot be proved  factually and that many religions vehemently reject."

The false assumption highlighted here: "ensoulment",  can also be ascribed to the teachings on artificial contraception in encyclicals such as 'Humane Vitae' and 'Veritatis Splendor'.  Hence, if  the fallacy of zygotes being "ensouled"  is assumed then of course the Vatican's assorted fossils - as well as popes - would declare it to be  'intrinsically evil."  Why? Because the perpetrators are preventing a "soul" (preferably of the  Catholic brand) from entering the world..  Take away ensoulment and nowhere near that investment in "sin" or "evil" emerges. Why would it?  We have essentially ripped away the veneer of  false sanctity as well as human exceptionalism and recognized that  human life is on the same  continuum as that of chimpanzees, dolphins and other remarkably sentient terrestrial life forms.   

Reinforcing this, Mendelson observes we fail to even treat the earliest stages of human life as sacred or in any way special. She writes (p. 159):

"Nature sloughs off early pregnancies at a high rate and we do not hold funerals for these embryos and early fetuses.  As many as 60 to 70 percent of fertilized eggs are lost overall, usually silently - without anyone ever knowing fertilization took place. 

Up to 15 percent of known pregnancies miscarry in the first trimester. Were we to take seriously the morbid pseudo-moralism ... we would recognize these countless millions of miscarried embryos and fetuses as lost lives and be sunk in a vast and permanent sea of endless mourning for the unending deaths of innocents."

But obviously we aren't taking these deaths of alleged "sacred" humans seriously. Why not? Because of the sheer impracticality of holding to such an absolutist stance. If this is "utilitarian" as Ms. De Sanctis frets, then what is her alternative? To separately baptize all those expelled, miscarried embryos after the fact? To then conduct special funerals for each? No, because she herself recognizes these are absurd responses.

With this sober recognition, the two cited encyclicals become redundant and specious as well as De Sanctis  related claim (ibid.):

"As promised the university can send a copy of Humanae Vitae to every enrollee in its health plan. But why would anyone seriously consider the teaching when Notre Dame provides the very contraceptives the document denounces."

So what?   Let us grasp here Humanae Vitae - circulated in 1968 -  was the orphaned brainchild of Pope Paul VI.  I say "orphaned" because it was issued in direct opposition to his own specially appointed Papal Commission on the matter.  Numerous reasons and valid arguments were arrayed against it as any kind of moral document, but Paul ignored them. Why? Perhaps because of an innate fear that if the Church lost control of her members' sex lives she'd also lose control of their brains, their ability to use their prefrontal cortex in critical thought.

Author David Yallop, in his book In God's Name, has portrayed Humanae Vitae in stark terms indeed, as well as its paradoxical consequences

"On a disaster scale for the Roman Catholic Church, it measures higher than the treatment of Galileo in the seventeenth century "

The implicit assumption in Humanae Vitae and later, Pope John Paul II's encyclical Veritatis Splendor, was that procreation takes precedence over any other function of sexual intercourse.  Hence if the act isn't "open" to procreation it's illicit, it's morally deformed. Again, the only way this illogic works at all is if one buys into the untested, unproven belief in "ensoulment". (And also the legitimacy of natural law dogma)

 So again, why would anyone consider the  teaching at all? Well, not because Notre Dame distributed contraceptives but because the beneficiaries would understand the teaching: 1) was originally roundly rejected by Paul VI's own Papal Commission and 2)  is based on the fable of ensoulment. 

In a  world currently overrun by too many people -  too many "sacred beings", in relation to too few resources - a serious limitation on births is needed. I refer here to global ecological overshoot, i.e. depleting the very resources on which human life and biodiversity depend.  Every year Global Footprint Network raises awareness about global ecological overshoot with our Earth Overshoot Day campaign. Earth Overshoot Day is the day on the calendar when humanity has used up the resources that it takes the planet the full year to regenerate. Just like the hands of the  'doomsday clock'  approaching 'midnight' for nuclear cataclysm.

Bottom line: artificial contraception has now become an essential tool to avoid overshoot. Hence,  we simply cannot afford to entertain such fables as embodied by 'Humanae Vitae'  any longer.  The new moral dictum -  the only legitimate one -  is to preserve the existing resources and inhabitants of Earth by rigorously controlling human numbers. 

It was the late Arthur C. Clarke who rightly called all the anti-contraception Popes "enemies of humanity" and with good reason! Their persistent commitment to this deformed doctrine and perverse moral value (again more a "pre-moral" value) has consigned increasing millions of people in Asia and Africa to destitution and starvation. This is because the underlying ‘natural law’ remains uninformed by current data concerning food production in relation to rising birth rates.

The science writer Isaac Asimov himself, at a lecture given in Barbados, was blunt:

"It is now the willingly childless woman who is the heroine of our planet. She is the one who now deserves all the kudos and praise, for helping to do what is necessary to spare humanity from the ravages of over-population"

Cheryl Mendelson's argument is that minds like De Sanctis' are trapped in a pre-moral void unable to invoke moral conscience because of being hamstrung by false moral  authority. This is exactly so.  At least one Pope, John Paul I (Albino Luciano)  saw this and had intended to change the Vatican doctrine, but he didn't live to achieve it, dying suddenly under mysterious circumstances barely a month after the papal vote.

`In his wake it is left to thinking Catholics, including the Rev. John Jenkins at Notre Dame (as well as the Jesuits at my former university,  Loyola),  to take up the rational banner and embrace the higher moral dictum already cited.  If this is done then De Sanctis' final remark, e.g.

"this school's administration has chosen to ignore Catholic teaching".

Is clearly seen as so much malarkey because that teaching is fallacious and unsupported by reason or the exercise of individual conscience.  As Mendelson points out:

"To equate the termination of an early pregnancy with the death, indeed the murder, of an infant or child is not merely morally uncalled for but dangerous. It implicitly demeans the value of real people's lives, both adults' and children's, and confuses the reasons why we protect them so vigilantly. If our moral obligations to one another are abstracted from our capacities for feeling, thinking, intending and wanting - from everything that makes us human and forms the ground for our care and protection of each other- we are thrown back into a premoral kind of thinking."

In like manner, to equate the obstruction of pregnancy to the prevention of  human life- by using contraceptives-  is also dangerous because it regards a genuine moral dictum to preserve the planet as a habitable environment,  as a "grave moral evil" (De Sanctis' own words).

Too much "life", in terms of the human population, can overtake and overburden a fragile world which can barely provide for all the people living on it as it is.  On any given day nearly 1 billion are living on half or fewer calories than they need and it will only get worse with climate change ramping up.  Given this, the greater moral evil today is clearly any willingness to add to the human population  while compromising  the planet's carrying capacity.

In line with Cheryl Mendelson's thinking, we need more contraception, not less  and it needs to be rewarded not indicted by false moraliists..  Notre Dame and its president merit props and kudos in light of the current moral dictum and we need many more Catholic institutions to follow suit.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/12/fellowship-of-catholic-university.html

And:

• http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/12/earth-over-shoot-day-by-2030-what-will.html

Moral Absolutism Is Trumped By Moral Individualism - Developing One's Own Conscience

Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics showed how prudence can be used to develop a moral conscience not based on absolutist mandates.

Perhaps the first person of antiquity to recognize that absolute moral imperatives or standards were impractical was Aristotle. He accomplished this by his emphasis on the "golden mean", e.g.  between two extremes of behavior.  as the basis for a generic moral compass. Much of this brilliant and temperate morality was set out in his masterpiece, The Nichomachean Ethics.

In forging his Nichomachean Ethics, Aristotle was careful to invoke the practical wisdom of prudence in pursuing the maximum good (for the greatest number) and avoiding evil, or at least minimizing it if it is impossible to avoid.

Aristotle defined prudence as pre-eminent, that is, it is the practical wisdom of knowing how to act, and thence how to secure the ends and goals one seeks for one's life. The golden mean structure is implicit in the deliberative exercise of prudence but is also evident in the judgment phase of prudence - when one is called to make a right action (or not).

Aristotle's ethics bear a striking similarity to a more modern revival known as moral provisionalism.   In provisional morality the greater relative good is always chosen over the lesser one. For example, the case of the nun some seven years ago who chose to save the life of a 27 year old  woman giving birth  Her moral choice was either to let the birth occur and see both mother and infant die, or prevent the birth (because of the mother’s blood pressure complications) and save the mother.In this case, two deaths with two life saving efforts represents the lesser good, while one death with one life saving effort represents the greater one. 

Anyway, Aristotle's ethics and moral provisionalism occurred to me as I was reading a letter in the WSJ yesterday about the need to impose "absolute moral guideposts to determine the line between sick and healthy behavior", especially as Americans "no longer accept the Judaeo-Christian code as God-given and absolute". The letter writer, Tim Watson, also asked:

"If there no longer are absolutes why should others dictate my morality or judge my online viewing preferences?"

Watson's sentence was interesting in that it appeared to conflate the basis for actual moral actions with a quasi-moralistic temperament subjected to certain stimuli then leading to feelings of disgust.  For example, can a person's porno viewing habits be clearly labeled as "immoral" if they arouse disgust in others but not in himself? (Say watching online videos of pregnant women having lesbian sex?). Ethics professor Cheryl Mendelson in her book, 'The Good Life', provides a perspective, (p. 157):

"The premoral mind confuses the disgusting with the wrong and retains an infantile fear of things sexual. Its rationality is overcome by emotion, fantasy, wish and projection.."

Dacher Keltner in his own book, 'Born to be Good', makes a similar point, referencing (p. 130)  when he once asked students for their reaction to a hypothetical in which a man goes to the supermarket to purchase a raw chicken, then takes it back home and has sex with it. After the majority of students respond with utter disgust they come to their rational senses and realize he hasn't really transgressed against anyone - "so long as he doesn't serve the chicken to guests for dinner".  In other words, one must first clear out the clutter of subjective emotional moralism before one can explore morality.

Thus, Watson appears to believe that because his feelings of disgust might be aroused by what he or  someone else sees or does, that makes the act immoral or even "evil".  He confirms this by also noting that at one time- "before the secularization of recent decades, most Americans knew when their behavior was immoral or depraved."

He may have a point in terms that the ethical compass of too many has become blunted or non-existent. How else explain the fate of a pledge at a UPenn frat, forced to undergo an alcohol quaffing "gauntlet" then falling down stairs, hitting his head,  and being left to lie there for twelve hours before his "frat brothers" called 911?  The young pledge died, and now those brothers are facing charges. The question is why wasn't a basic moral impulse aroused in any of them to immediately act on the kid's behalf when he was unresponsive? This is a far more germane question on moral or ethical norms than asking why a person would view pregnant women having sex.

Blaming "secularization" for any moral or ethical blunting is also off the mark. We live in a secular society, after all, not a religious one governed by the Ten Commandments or Old Testament mandates and mores.  What sort of society would we get by rigidly adhering to the latter? Some examples:

Deuteronomy 22:22

"If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel"

Deut. 21: 18-21

"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and - though they chastise him he will not give heed to them, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of the city, 'This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones.."

So if "old time religion" governed our society instead of a secular Constitution we'd expect adulterers as well as impudent sons stoned to death in the streets. Of course, homosexuals would also face such a fate based on several citations in Leviticus. For example, Leviticus 20:13: 'If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads'.

Tim Watson's error inheres in demanding an absolute moral code everyone must adhere to, as opposed to moral individualism, or the development of a refined moral and ethical conscience. The tragedy of the UPenn incident is that none of the frat boys- who allowed their pledge to lie unattended for 12 hours-   had the conscience of a slug. If any of them had, they'd have called 911 immediately, or if obstructed by the "brothers" then gone to an outside phone to make the damned call.

Mendelson herself is clear on the role of conscience and why a highly developed conscience is essential to choice of ethical behavior. She also contrasts this with the moral immaturity that defines the premoral character,  writing (p. 71):

"In the premoral mind, in place of moral individualism - the individual's capacity to think and act according to conscience - there is mere egoism: the demand or wish, to be allowed to do and have what one wants. The premoral individual who confronts a moral culture must cope with social demands that he regards as illegitimate.

Because of his sense of entitlement, his greed and his demand for superiority feel right to him and are not internally moderated as they are in moral minds. Moral restraints may provoke him to outright rage and hatred."

Thus, we beheld Trump's ravenous rage when held to account (by the still existent moral culture) for his groping and forced kissing of women without their will during the 2016 campaign. And now, in the wake of the immoral, thuggish firing of James Comey, compounding his egoism in order to trump conscience. This leads the wary, morally developed citizen to inquire: Do we have a government of laws or of men? If of men, filled with ego and false pride like Trump, we cannot be surprised at the progressive dissolution of our nation and erosion of its collective conscience as he and his toadies destroy the ethical and moral basis for our secular laws as enshrined in our Constitution.

One can sympathize with letter writer Watson's yen for absolute moral guideposts, but in the end it's a fool's errand. For one thing absolutes are inaccessible to limited brains. So one must concede that humans – with limited knowledge- lack the wherewithal to issue absolute, fixed moral laws. Note this is not an absolute statement in itself, merely a statement of limitation, biological and theoretical, based on facts. If brains are limited in size and capacity they simply can't know everything, hence, can't render absolutist propositions about any positive actions. (This also follows from the Godel Incompletness Theorems).

Our best option then is to re-examine Aristotle's own ethics in terms of prudence, and see how they can assist us in the goal of attaining a developed conscience based on moral individualism.

The Battle Against Coarseness and Incivility in Trump Nation Will Be A Long One

"I say nyaaaah! Fuck the country and fuck all those who didn't vote for me! How's that for bein' civil?"

Seriously, this is the state of the Union now: an inherently uncivil state riven with crudity and coarseness, most of which emanates from Trump and his Vulgarians.  Now we know (Denver Post, Mar. 12, p. 12A) there is a dedicated mission afoot to restore some level of civility to the nation especially in terms of public dialogue and discussions. Alas, the chance of returning to a civil era with Trump in the White House is slim and none.

As per the Post article  ('Initiatives Fight Back Against Coarseness') we read:

"Americans alarmed and disheartened by a coarsened culture and incivility in politics - especially after a brutal presidential campaign season - are fighting back with a range of initiatives around the U.S. to restore some semblance of decorum."

Seriously? After 62 million of our fellow citizens helped put a 'pussy grabber" and mocker of the disabled into the freaking White House?  How in the hell can the well meaning decorum seekers get back any degree of comity or civility now that 46 percent of the electorate committed mischief of faction and put the ultimate uncivil renegade into the highest office?

But we now know interest has surged in groups such as the National Institute for Civil Discourse, founded at the University of Arizona and in the wake of the ascension of Trump to the White House, following his unrestrained, caustic, uncivil campaign.  As noted by Carolyn Lukensmeyer, the Institute's Director:

"I don't think there's any question that this is a national crisis at this point."

Indeed.

Let us agree then that one of the roles of a President is to project decorum and respect for this office, and from this office to the world - and to his fellow citizens But what did Trump do in his recent meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel? He sat next to her like a goddamned spoiled brat pouting and refused to even shake her hand! The epitome of classlessness, and gauche behavior. Commenting on this exhibition, NY Times' Richard Cohen wrote:

"When Donald Trump met Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany earlier this month, he put on one of his most truculent and ignorant performances. He wanted money — piles of it — for Germany’s defense, raged about the financial killing China was making from last year’s Paris climate accord and kept “frequently and brutally changing the subject when not interested, "

Meanwhile, one commenter also wrote:

"Trump's behavior with Merkel was not only disgraceful, it showed the rest of the world what a shallow, ignorant, unprepared, know-nothing he really is. Every American, and especially every Republican who voted for this man, ought to be ashamed and embarrassed. The GOP has besmirched the presidency, harmed our national security and soiled our country's international reputation"

Some might think this comment to be hype but not if you've been paying attention the past 75 days. Anyone with eyes and more than air between the ears can see how low Trump and his sickening lot have set the bar for civility.

The D. Post article actually included some referenced head scratchers, such as this one compliments of Brendon Holloway who "participated in various Democracy Project Initiatives", e.g. at Middle Tennessee State:

"There's so many people with a difference of opinion. It's really important to bridge that gap."

Why? This comment shows me that Holloway has no clue why this gap exists and why people are becoming more energized about expressing differences of opinion. But in the wake of the fail of the misbegotten GOP tax cut plan (AHCA) - masquerading as a health care plan - he at least ought to have a clue by now.  In particular, seeing how many items would have been cut had it passed, including ER visits, hospitalizations, maternity care, and mental health services.

The point is that when you threaten a citizen's basic welfare and health care access he is not going to just take it lying down, not if he or she is sentient. No, he will protest and do so loudly and regularly at town hall meets. (And no, he doesn't need to be paid to do so!)

In the same way, after I learned yesterday that a gaggle of Republicans in the Colorado State House plan to block implementation of the medical aid in dying act (despite it being passed by 65 percent of Colo. voters on Nov. 8th) I was furious. I am now advising members of the 'Indivisible" movement in our state to protest at the actual homes of these presumptuous reprobates. One of whom was actually quoted in yesterday's Post as saying: "I find that law so morally offensive I cannot in good conscience allow taxpayer dollars for any part of this process."

Sorry, asshole, it's NOT up to you! That is what the people - taxpayers, voted for. At least 65 percent did,  so that they WANT their taxpayer dollars used for that purpose, To turn it upside down and make it like you will impede the bill based on the 35 percent minority (that didn't vote for it)  is to commit mischief of faction. In that case, you merit being protested relentlessly and vociferously - and in front of your home!

Is that being "uncivil"? In some quarters it might be so considered, certainly politically incorrect. But I make no apologies.  My reasoning is that it is more uncivil, more barbarous,  to disrespect the will of the state's voters.  Hence, those who do so - like these three GOP lawmaker mavericks - make a mockery of democracy  Since civility will be in greater regress if democracy fails, there must be payback for their actions. The desire to move toward civility - while worthy in itself- cannot be used as a smokescreen (or bludgeon)  to inhibit or prevent robust outrage or protest when and where it's justified. As it surely is in the cases I've cited. 

Having said that, there's is much to be said for retaining civility in interpersonal discussions and  debates.  This despite a recent Zogby poll that found more Americans believe it's okay to interrupt, shout over, belittle, insult and personally attack a person or question his or her patriotism. Absolutely not okay. We treat each other with respect even in the midst of heated exchange. The only exceptions I make are in the case  - say for town hall or other meetings - when reps disrespect their constituents. Say by not allowing a meeting in the first place, or not allowing them to speak and voice their complaints, such as in the recent meetings about the repeal of Obamacare.

Will people speaking out get excited and perhaps over the top in their vehemence? Yes, perhaps they will. But what does one expect when their family welfare may be on the line, or worse a family member may face his untimely end if he is unable to get the care he needs.

British author and manners gadfly Lynne Truss, in her book, 'Talk To The Hand: The Utter Bloody  Rudeness Of Everyday Life', documents a whole litany of examples of how basic civility has declined. She examines many reasons for this state of affairs, including the breakdown and erosion of class and power barriers - which over the centuries ensured common folks toed the line. Now with those barriers collapsed, every manjack believes he's owed the same deference and respect as a prince, king or Lord  - no matter what he says or how he behaves.  This has even led to the extreme situation (p. 131)  of a "Universal Eff Off Reflex" in which many aren't prepared to tolerate a whiff of criticism by an equal or a higher up. (She cites one London youth wearing the tattoo "FUCK OFF!" on his arm, as if to deliver pre-emptive warning to anyone who might castigate him for his long green hair, shaggy jeans or beard.)

But this could encapsulate the present state of affairs in our social media realm too. I addressed a lot of this in my August 26 post on 'internet hate culture', e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/08/internet-hate-culture-why-so-many.html

wherein I noted the rise of hate on the Internet and  especially in sites as  diverse as Reddit, Twitter and even Facebook, that hate speech and vitriol  has become the new coin of the realm.  This was thanks to mentally deranged trolls who get off on pissing in public and on fellow commenters.  The frequency of vile comments, particularly in media comments forums, caused many sites to simply shut them down rather than consume resources to monitor and exclude the worst transgressors.

Truss' theory is that much of this can be traced to so many now carrying around them a personal "bubble" wherein  they perceive what they do at home or in the company of fellow degenerates, is now acceptable in public. So, because one carries his or her "bubble" in a kind of "omnipresence", i.e.  in which these things are allowed they aren't subject to behavioral norms. So we see airline passengers with no thought or consideration for others' sensibilities putting their bare feet on the tops of seats during a flight, or cutting their toenails and tossing the clippings into the air, or worse, picking their noses and rubbing the extracted nasal effluent on sundry backs of seats. Because these simpletons believe they're in their own personal bubbles it doesn't matter to them - and if others were to complain ("Why'd you wipe that bugger there?"), they'd likely invoke the Universal Eff Off.

Truss also extends this to the public square and political spaces. She doesn't mention Trump or his followers, because her book was published before he arrived. But it doesn't take a mind reader to know what she'd say of the Trump phenomenon and why he got elected: He epitomizes the brashness of the "ego bubble" trumping all personal niceties and sensibilities and hence applauded as being "different', anti-establishment and a "rebel". More to the point, his actions such as bragging about "pussy grabbing" were seen as transcending political correctness and "phony manners".

It would follow to Ms. Truss that Trump's ascension meant that a sizeable proportion of the population bought into this meme, or the "Universal Eff Off" reflex on a national scale. Is this bad for the nation? Of course! Because, as she puts it (p. 144):

"Other people have been eradicated, expunged ...or just ordered to stay indoors and stay out of my bloody way."

One of Ms. Truss statements stands out and ought to be taken to heart by Trump and his gang (p. 196):

"it is time to be plain at last. Manners are good. Rudeness is bad. Modern people are impatient with the good-bad distinction. They consider it intellectually primitive.  But rudeness is a moral issue and it always has been. The way people behave towards each other, even in minor things, is a measure of their value of human beings.."

Ignore the small niceties and what happens? Well, before long pussy grabbing is accepted, as well as mocking disabled people, belittling a Senator who spent 6 years in a North Vietnamese prison, and .... engaging in nefarious activities with a foreign power to interfere in an election. Of course, the ultimate embodiment of rudeness today is the Trump tweet, because it is aimed at further eroding manners while exalting the personal "bubble" of his own ego.  And Trump is the perfect embodiment of the rude human who lacks any superego that might otherwise exert control on his wanton, toddler-esque blurtations.

What is Trump's biggest crime against the polity? Ms. Truss would say without hesitation, it is defiling and undermining the conception of the "common good" and hence all those political actions that have a bearing on the common good. All his actions, as we've seen, explicitly are about exactly the opposite: eschewing the common good for whatever Trump believes is his personal good. In tandem with this dismissal is his yen for untruth, outright falsehoods. The one plays into the other: dismiss the "common good" as a lie or fabrication or mistake and you pave the way for its disrespect.

The media, alas, plays into this by not calling Trump out where and when he flouts the very concept of truth. Such was the case in the recent TIME  (April 3rd) with magazine cover asking "Is Truth Dead?" and in the related article 'Can Trump Handle The Truth' by Michael Scherer (p. 32). Throughout the piece Scherer cites Trump's disdain for the truth even referencing his praise - "as a businessman for strategic falsehood and truthful hyperbole" .  Of course, being truthful excludes hyperbole, so the phrase is an oxymoron. there's no such entity.  Incredibly, Scherer quotes Hanna Arendt's famous 1968 quote that "Truth is therefore hated by tyrants who rightly fear the competition of a coercive force they cannot monopolize". 

Yet her words seem to sail serenely over his head because, in the next sentence, as if taking leave of all his gray matter, he writes: "Although Trump is a tyrant only in the minds of his of his most fevered critics he often talks like one, e.g. any negative polls are fake news".  As if agreeing with Arendt then contradicting himself in the same sentence, especially as Trump always "talks like one".  His 'fake news' claim echoes on every item from climate change, to the Russian intelligence reports, to the election results.  Or to quote a recent WSJ editorial ('A President's Credibility'):

"Gallup has Trump's approval rating at 39%. No doubt he considers that fake news, but if Trump doesn't show more respect for the truth most Americans may conclude he's a fake President."

Or to quote Denver Post editorial page editor Chuck Plunkett in a recent piece: "Can anyone in their right mind believe anything this man says anymore?"  Well, evidently, Scherer can manage that feat given he dismisses those who do as "fevered critics". (Yes, this referred to Trump being a tyrant, but as Arendt said, truth is hated by tyrants. Hence by definition Trump is a tyrant. Those who refuse to call a spade a spade or a tyrant a tyrant, are part of the problem.)

Thus it is cutesy, 'maybe -he is- maybe he isn't' passes like Scherer's which cause us to properly impute guilt to media nabobs who gloss over Trump's total disrespect for truth, even in so-called interviews. In trying to be objective and impartial, therefore, Scherer loses nearly all his credibility - by giving Trump's lies (and hence yen for tyranny) partial cover - as he dismisses those who recognize them as "his most fevered critics". As if they under some kind of delirium or spell. To bolster this, in the following TIME issue, April 10, in the 'What You Said' section with letters in reply to the previous issue, the editors quote an Alabaman commenter  who insists the "left as well as the right media is guilty" - employing the false equivalence meme. It is tripe like this that makes one want to tear his hair out, despairing this country will ever get its act together.

This evident tolerance of dissembling again goes back to the defects I described in terms of the dominance of the premoral mind. This was elaborated by Cheryl Mendelson, former Professor of Ethics and author of 'The Good Life'   who wrote (p. 77):

"In the premoral mind, in place of moral individualism - the individual's capacity to think and act according to conscience - there is mere egoism: the demand or wish, to be allowed to do and have what one wants....Because of his sense of entitlement, his greed and his demand for superiority feel right to him and are not internally moderated as they are in moral minds. Moral restraints may provoke him to outright rage and hatred."

Hence, we have the perfect tie -in to Ms. Truss' point of why one would regard Trump as rejecting any common good, hence any adherence to moral basis for manners, civility.  As Ms. Truss writes (p. 197):

"If we each let that part of our brains 'for the common good' shrivel on the vine, the ultimate result is crime, alienation and moral hell.  Manners are easy to dismiss from discussions of morality because they seem to be trivial.  The words 'moral panic' were invented to belittle those of us who burst into tears at the sight of 300,000 pieces of chewing gum on Oxford Street.  But if we can't talk about the morality of manners, we can't talk about the morality of anything. "

 Her next point is what that needs serious attention if those associated with the Democracy Project Initiatives are to make headway in returning our nation to civility after Trump leaves office. That is, "in place of manners, we now have doctrines of political correctness, against which one offends at one's peril."

The crux of our problem then is to excavate the need for attention and respect for the common good from the banal bane of political correctness.  We therefore cannot have a case where one expresses convictions or arguments that are politically incorrect and  then "by circular logic is marked as reactionary and therefore bad".

My earlier comments (endorsing protests in front of GOP lawmakers' homes) may be seen by some
as impolitic or politically incorrect, but their intention was for the common good.  And as Ms. Truss observes (p. 198): "Manners are about being connected to the common good".

In this sense, I believe firmly the Colorado medical assistance in dying act is FOR the common good, and at the same time that anyone who seeks to impede or obstruct it is acting against the common good. Hence, it is my duty as a citizen to inveigh against him - or them - and if that means energetic protests in front of his home, so be it. I apply the same thinking and actions to those who attempt to overturn the ACA or implement the god awful AHCA of Trump and Co.

What we really need to get this country back on an even civil keel then, is to follow Ms. Truss final bit of advice (p. 199) and assert "I am not going to calculate the cost of this action to me, I am just going to do the right thing."

Don't know what the 'right thing' is? Then step out of your personal bubble for the time you're considering what to do and then act with purpose toward the common good. You won't go wrong. If you are unable to perceive the common good or recognize it, then you are too much under the spell of Vulgarian Trumpism.

See also:

http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-ed-our-dishonest-president/

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/p-m-carpenter/71939/how-long-can-trumps-incompetence-and-madness-go-on