In case you've spared yourself and not read Maureen Dowd's column today, she's gotten her knickers in a twist over the moral dystopia she's found at the heart of the Sandusky trial currently underway.
Bellefonte, the town in the shadow of Beaver Stadium, also looks like a Hollywood creation: the perfect sepia slice of rural Americana reflecting old-fashioned values. There’s an Elks Lodge, a Loyal Order of Moose hall, a Rexall drugstore, the Hot Dog House with hand-dipped ice cream, and a nice senior citizen shooing you into the crosswalk. This was a big “American Graffiti” weekend in town: the annual sock hop and hot rod parade.
How could so many fine citizens of this college town ignore the obvious and protect a predator instead of protecting children going through the ultimate trauma: getting raped by a local celebrity offering to be their dream father figure? A Penn State police officer warned Sandusky in 1998 to stop showering with boys; Saint Jerry ignored him.
My response below.
Okay, let me state up front I'm not defending in any way the horrendous acts and failures now being revealed at the Sandusky trial. I'm horrified myself. My issue with Dowd is the facile way in which she comes up with a rationale explaining how this has happened. Here's a key passage from her piece:
“Most Americans continue to think of their lives in moral terms; they want to live good lives,” said James Davison Hunter, a professor of religion, culture and social theory at the University of Virginia and the author of “The Death of Character.” “But they are more uncertain about what the nature of the good is. We know more, and as a consequence, we no longer trust the authority of traditional institutions who used to be carriers of moral ideals.
“We used to experience morality as imperatives. The consequences of not doing the right thing were not only social, but deeply emotional and psychological. We couldn’t bear to live with ourselves. Now we experience morality more as a choice that we can always change as circumstances call for it. We tend to personalize our ideals. And what you end up with is a nation of ethical free agents.
“We’ve moved from a culture of character to a culture of personality. The etymology of the word character is that it’s deeply etched, not changeable in all sorts of circumstances. We don’t want to think of ourselves as transgressive or bad, but we tend to personalize our understanding of the good.”
emphasis added
Here is the comment I posted in reply to Dowd at the Times:
Seeing evil and doing nothing? What's the big deal?
We got lied into a war, but nobody wants to look back. We tortured people - with the orders coming all the way from the top. Crickets in the silence. The economy got blown up, and the official response: tepid once the bankers got bailed out. A big players screws up again - and Congress falls all over itself fawning on him. Millions suffering with underwater mortgages and fraudulent foreclosures. Ho hum. A critically important conference in Rio coming up which could determine how well - or badly - the world comes together to confront major challenges. Back page stuff if it makes the news at all. A crisis threatens to tear Europe apart - and the people whose failed policies created it are still mostly in charge with more of the same. We have a political party that's gone off the rails, has enabled Big Money to corrupt our political process, and engages in lies, bigotry and worse every day. This remains invisible to the media. In England a corrupt press empire is revealed as engaging in wide scale law-breaking and outright ownership/manipulation of the government at the highest levels. That same media empire in America? Still treated as a respectable member of the 4th estate.
Ms. Dowd? There's plenty of blame to go around, but if you're wondering why we seem to be in a moral dystopia, I suggest you find a few minutes to look into a mirror and ask what you and your colleagues have been doing for the last 40 years.
This is no sea change in character; it's the same as it ever was. People in a position of power abusing that power, and other people ignoring it because the cost of doing anything about it is more than they care to deal with. And besides - they're doing okay, so why jeopardize that?