11 September 2013
Good News from New York
If yesterday's mayoral primary in New York City was a rebuke to Michael Bloomberg, it was also more obviously a rebuke to Anthony Weiner. The former congressman and apparent sexting addict had briefly been a front-runner in the Democratic primary race due to name recognition, but his reversion to form and the ability of other candidates to define themselves eventually eclipsed the Weiner candidacy. He ended up with about 5% of the vote yesterday and earned his last headlines by flipping the bird a reporter. Democratic primary voters also rebuked the disgraced former governor Eliot Spitzer, though not as emphatically. He made a more respectable showing in the vote to nominate the party's candidate for city comptroller, and Spitzer behaved more respectably during the campaign, at least to our knowledge, but he still lost to a candidate with far less name recognition outside the metropolis. The primary results thus brought an abrupt end to a narrative of redemption that some sought to spin into a liberalization of sexual ethics in America. Given how many politicians succumb to sex scandals, it's no surprise to see arguments that sexual behavior should not determine politicians' worthiness for office, or against any rush to judgment over unconventional sexual behavior. But the New York scandals were scandals not because of sex but because of ethics. Spitzer and Weiner were disgraced because people believed that they had betrayed certain trusts, if not the actual law of the state. Each man plotted a comeback, presumably on the assumption that their celebrity would overwhelm the competition, or that ideological primary voters would see them as champions of causes greater than sexual ethics. While Weiner proved obviously irredeemable, it's unclear how much disdain for Spitzer's ethics contributed to his defeat. If it contributed at all, let that be a lesson to him. According to one ideal voters should vote for principles, not men, but ideological soundness should not become a license to flout the common sense of right and wrong. The common sense may be old-fashioned or repressive, but as long as everyone else is expected to live by it, so should our elected leaders.
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5 comments:
Spitzer & Weiner losing was not a surprise. In Weiner's case, he had too many opponents in the Democratic primary to overcome, coupled with his own pecadillos. I hear Oscar Mayer may be calling him soon.
Spitzer will probably next turn up back on television or radio, doing the same talk show that's bombed twice already. You know, if at first you don't succeed.......
"According to one ideal voters should vote for principles,..."
Although I don't disagree with this, an ideal can't run for office. The best we can do is vote for an individual who claims to adhere to the same ideal we do. Unfortunately, when it comes to business and politics, it seems the winners come from the bottom of the barrel, rather than the cream of the crop (to mix metaphors).
This is something we need to examine, as individuals. Why does it seem that men of few ethics or morals tend to end up with the power and wealth? Is it because honest and honorable men are inferior? Is it because they are weaker somehow? Or is it because Americans, as a people, truly despise ALL rules - including morals and ethics?
Nietzsche would definitely say it was a matter of weakness and power, but isn't the point of civilization to set a new standard of judgment? That being said, perhaps a certain kind of ruthlessness (or whatever euphemism you might prefer) is still necessary to overcome concerted resistance to innovation from complacency, reactionary traditionalism, etc. A certain degree of ambition is obviously necessary, but it's up to each civilization to influence what people should be ambitious for.
If what our civilization supports is corruption, greed, unrestrained selfishness, then our civilization is a disease.
Our civilization condones ignorance, condones lying, condones anything that "creates" profit and despises (seemingly) anything that supports the ideals of a better world for everyone. Anyone who defends such a civilization is inhuman.
Anon, this brings up the related question of whether the sort of people who would be ideal citizens of a better civilization would be capable of creating it in place of and against resistance from the current one. The Leninists felt that it would take hard men (e.g. Stalin) to topple the old order but hoped that the same thugs could restructure society to generate "new men" and a better civilization. If a revolution based on violence and terror actually produces a civilization of terrorists and terrorized, the purely voluntary communities imagined by anarchists (or maybe some religious sects) that withdraw from civilization without attacking it look like the only other option, unless you have a different idea.
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