Most of us can abide a lot, but there’s something about hypocrisy that sticks in most people’s craw.
For years, we had “deficit hawks” in the GOP leadership clutch their pearls and get the vapors over all of this irresponsible spending on the part of the Obama Administration. And this when the country was in its worst economic shape since the Great Depression, and every economic textbook says stimulus is vital. We got morality lectures about how negligent Democrats were suffocating unborn generations with debt payments (while saying somehow the fiscal recklessness during the Bush Administration was an aberration). And now…. Big tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy and corporations). Big spending increases. We’re blowing up the deficit when the economy is overheating. Hypocrisy.
For decades we’ve heard from “faith” leaders about the moral rot of the United States, of “San Francisco values.” We heard about how important family and marriage was. And now we have a thrice-married President who has been credibly accused of sexual assault – something of which he boasted on tape. We have evidence that he paid off a porn star for an affair (with what money is not clear). We had a Senate candidate accused of molesting young girls. And now we seem to have an administration that has protected a known wife beater (times two wives) for months. Hypocrisy.
Family values and budget austerity were the longstanding rallying cries for the GOP. Now such arguments need to come with a footnote – hypocrisy.
And finally, on the note of hypocrisy, a fun definition from The Devil’s Dictionary from the iconoclastic American journalist Ambrose Bierce. (If you haven’t heard of the Devil’s Dictionary or Bierce, Google them. You won’t be disappointed)
HYPOCRITE, n. One who, professing virtues that he does not respect, secures the advantage of seeming to be what he despises.
