One of the great delights of the last couple of years has been getting to watch a show with my family called “The Good Place.” It is a funny, thought-provoking depiction of the afterlife in which one of the characters — Chidi Anagonye — is a professor of moral philosophy. While it is always wonderful to sit and share time with our kids, I will acknowledge that I particularly enjoy doing that at the same time that the kids are being exposed to Aristotle and Kant — and laughing!
Kant has been much on my mind this week (how often does one get to say that?). If you can throw your mind back to freshman philosophy class (or if you, too, are watching the Good Place), you will remember that the cornerstone of Kant’s moral philosophy is an idea called the “categorical imperative.” The categorical imperative states that for an action to be moral, one must be able to envision it being universalized.
So, for example, a lie is immoral because if we imagine it being universalized (everyone lying all the time), then any meaningful communication or social interaction ceases to exist. We can only communicate effectively within a context of an assumption of truth telling. Lying will of course always happen, but if it is an aberration, then social discourse goes on.
Which, of course, brings us to this week...
We are all aware that our President is a pathological liar; and, apparently that is not terribly troubling to some significant percentage of the population. But watching the conversations on Capitol Hill this week is to watch the total breakdown of meaningful discourse. People are looking at the same facts and some arguing that he has committed a treasonable, impeachable offense, and others, that he has done absolutely nothing wron
It’s discouraging, of course, when our leaders commit crimes and try to cover them up. But our political system begins to unravel when they commit crimes and half of the population says no crime has been committed. Or half of the Congress says that Kurt Volker’s testimony completely implicates the President in criminal behavior, and the other half says THAT SAME TESTIMONY completely exonerates the President.
It is even more discouraging when the President caught in a clear violation of the law (soliciting a foreign government to interfere with our election), defends himself by simply openly asking other governments to interfere with the election, as if that were normal. At that point our whole framework of normalcy is turned on its head, and we find our selves asea with no bearings for what actions are appropriate or legitimate. His lying has undermined our ability to engage meaningful social discourse.
Does our Congress even have the capacity to turn itself around and embrace any need for accountability? It seems unlikely at this point, but miracles do happen. Or we can hope for some correction in 2020, hoping to regain our moral footing as a nation, by choosing to make truth and the rule of law a priority. I can only pray that will happen next year.
For the moment, however, the President has won. He has proved his point that he “could shoot somebody in the middle of 5th Avenue and not lose his voters.” He could. But that should not keep us from calling it murder.