Morality

07:42 Wednesday, 3 December 2025
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Words: 510

Brief definition: Principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

Moral authority. Moral courage. Moral hazard. Moral injury.

Values. Faith and honor.

What is a "good life"? What is "service to others"?

There is no more challenging crucible or more severe trial in confronting these questions than service in uniform that grants the authority to use violence in the course of doing one's duty.

"Right" and "wrong" are binary terms, and "reality" is seldom so clear, which is why it is so challenging to confront those questions in the moment.

Which is why leadership is so important.

When we elected a president who has exhibited, proudly, a personal character devoid of any morality, we invited the appointment of an entire leadership team similarly unequipped. And we are witnessing the consequences of that choice today.

Morality is a freighted concept. Rather than wrestle with difficult questions, some people rely on prescriptive rules laid down in ancient texts, which themselves are described as being "sacred," or "holy" and from a God that commands obedience. This empowers people who embrace one particular faith and set of holy texts to seek to impose those rules on everyone, whether they share that faith or not. Because God is an absolute, and must be obeyed.

This causes conflict and division. Politicians have exploited this view of morality to divide us for generations. They aren't questions we examine to try to find the common good, or to improve our relationships with one another. When they are discussed in the public sphere, they're used as cattle prods to herd us into red and blue corrals, where "red" and "blue" can be political parties or religious faiths.

These aren't "inviting" questions, they are repellant. We don't wish to question our own "morality," or have others question it either. So we ignore them, except insofar as they may be summoned from time to time by ambitious "leaders" to divide us from one another. Except insofar as we embrace them to judge and wholly condemn others over single issues where we may not agree. Our morality serves not so much to inform our actions, but to direct our attacks.

As a result, morality and ethics are ideas that aren't genuinely part of our popular culture. To the extent that they are live questions, they exist mostly in academic institutions, sometimes in the law and the courts. Sometimes in professional societies or organizations. But many voters have such an ill-defined sense of personal or public morality that they were unable to recognize the complete and utter amorality and immorality of a man like Trump, and what the consequences of that form of personal character in office would be.

To the extent that this whole sorry affair may invite a wider, more open, less judgmental, examination of the morals, ethics and values we wish to embrace as a society, it would be a worthwhile outcome. And it might go some way toward atoning for the sin of giving that creature, Donald J. Trump, power.

I'm not optimistic.

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