Inner Ramblings

Reputation

As you may know, I’ve been binge-watching The Americans. I’m at the end of Season 3 and have been really enjoying it. One of the newer characters (I think this season) is named Pastor Tim. As the name implies, he’s a pastor (and the youth minister) at the church that Paige (the Jennings’ 14 or 15-year old daughter) attends. Given that very dry, just-the-facts-ma’am description, his character seems fairly innocuous.

But as we see in the course of season 3, Paige develops a relationship with Pastor Tim (and his wife). Not in the way you might be thinking and/or fearing, just a close relationship. To the point where during one of the episodes, she leaves a note for her parents saying she’s gone to a church lecture and will be spending the night with Pastor Tim and his wife afterward.

If you’re anything like me, that sounds…well…icky. This would in no way be okay with me (as the parent). Even allowing for the culture changes in the past 30 years, I can’t imagine my parents being ok with a 15-year old me spending the night at my pastor’s house outside of a youth group outing. And I’m a guy. Imagine if I’m a 15-year old girl. Hard “no”.

But why is that? After all, (at least from what we’ve seen so far) Pastor Tim has done nothing to indicate he’s creepy or bad for Paige. In fact, during this season, he’s served as an adult (dare I say father) figure for Paige when Phillip has not been available. (Let’s face it, Phillip and Elizabeth have not exactly been poster parents).

The answer is simply reputation.

I have grown up in a time when:

Men have repeatedly taken advantage of teenage (or even younger) girls. And guys for that matter.
Supposedly religious men have taken advantage / outright abused young people (of both sexes).
People of authority / Mentors have overstepped that authority and taken advantage of mentees.

Time after time, story after story, allegation after allegation, these themes have pierced our collective consciousness to the point where the idea of a male mentor / female mentee relationship raises suspicions right away.

Is it justified in every case? No, of course not. Is it always in the back of people’s minds? Absolutely.

That’s the power of reputation.

And that’s what troubles me the most in the wake of the first year of Trump’s second administration. The reputation of so many things are just being tarnished. And the result, the damage, it is causing might not be felt for months, years, or even decades.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do you believe that elections are fair?
Do you trust vaccines?
Do you trust experts?
Do you believe the president is supposed to obey the law and/or the Constitution?
Do you believe America stands for the ideals and principles it espouses?
Did you ever believe that you could watch a killing with your own eyes but be told by “officials” exactly the opposite?
Do you believe that any country has the right to simply take another sovereign country?
Do you believe that the world looks to America as a moral leader?

All of these questions were (I think, at least) easily answered 12-18 months ago. Or at the very least 10 years ago. Not only did we have laws, we had laws that were obeyed (by everyone). We had norms that a civilized society (one in which we believed we lived in) abided. I would argue (and have vociferously argued) that the answers to these same questions are now very different.

One of the most powerful statements I’ve heard recently was from an opinion columnist Aaron Retica at the NYT describing the recent killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. In describing the incident, he said:

She had crossed over a border without realizing it. She thinks she’s still living in the regular world and she has moved into an irregular world.

That’s terrifying.

Up is down. Down is up. Laws are suggestions. Norms are “woke”. Doing what is right is weak. Doing whaterver you want, however you want, is seen as strength.

I ask you this: What does America stand for now?

How long will that reputation last?

NOTE: There’s a longer explanation of the idea of the Dual State, as explained by David French here. Well worth a listen/watch. If you’re interested in the actual work, the Internet Archive has the German translation here.

MAGA’s Foundational Lie - The Atlantic

We have been watching indecency triumph in the public sphere on and off for more than 10 years now, since the moment Trump insulted John McCain’s war record. For reasons that are quite possibly too unbearable to contemplate, a large group of American voters was not repulsed by such slander—they were actually aroused by it—and our politics have not been the same. Much has been said, including by me, about Trump’s narcissism, his autocratic inclinations, his disconnection from reality, but not nearly enough has been said about his fundamental indecency, the characteristic that undergirds everything he says and does.

So, so good. It encapsulates everything I wish I had the authorial temperament to write.

And later:

We are in a long Lord of the Flies moment, led by a man who, to borrow from Psalm 10, possesses a mouth “full of cursing and deceit and fraud.” For many people—government scientists seeking cures for diseases; FBI agents investigating corruption and terrorism; military leaders trying to preserve respect for the rules of warfare; and, in particular, police officers who were brutalized by Trump’s army of deluded followers—these days can seem infernal.

Chef’s kiss.

Lee Feagin

Follow @leefeagin on Micro.blog.

College Costs Way Beyond Inflation

Reputation