Shame & Leadership

Ruth Marcus argues that the common thread of shamelessness in our public life today helps us better understand the challenges we face. 

Marcus notes, for instance, that the president and other leaders are openly describing their political calculation to favor a vote they expect to support their tax cut bill even if it means ignoring accusers they say they believe to be credible. For Marcus this is another, albeit more severe, illustration of the trend toward leaders ‘stunning willingness to admit’ that the stories they are telling us are ‘phony.’

She notes that the shameful part, in this case, is not that deficit-hawks are pushing a policy that will add significantly to the deficit. Nor is the shameful part a tax cut bill filled with gimmicks designed to hide who will benefit and who will be harmed. What is most shameful is the concerted effort to do all of this with no sense of shame at all, to openly admit that the bill is a gimmick, that you are lying about it, and that you see no need to hide that fact.

This is not new; it is reaching new heights, however, as Marcus highlights.

George Will reminds us that the leadership in big-money NCAA sports have been exploiting their young athletes and harming higher education for many years. “No matter how many ameliorative measures are adopted, this truth will remain: there is no way gracefully—without unseemly accommodations—to graft onto universities an enormously lucrative entertainment industry.”

Yet, these longstanding facts about harms done remain outside the 'kneeling is disrespectful make American great' narrative that dominates big-money NCAA sports. This has been the case for a long time, providing an alternative public pedagogy within the world of sports that nurtures (and now provides one powerful ‘common sense’ cover for) the ‘brazenly shameless’ culture now driving our public debate and problem solving efforts.

This culture is all about power, often toxic masculine power, and sneers at what is sees as the weakness in ‘safety concerns’ or ‘fairness’ or even being a good sport (when that means anything more than picking yourself up and getting back into the game). I do not want to smear everyone who loves physical activity, athletic competition, or big time sports. In my experience, most are good people. But the leaders of the sports culture they occupy have long cultivated a brazen shamelessness in response to any criticism, encouraging us to accept as routine that power is more important than truth as we watch the powerful distort ‘facts’ to fit their own profit-protecting decision making.

Treating facts as fungible is not new either; but it is also expanding into more brazenly shameless territory. And this is not to accept a rationalist view about facts v values, but to accept the (until recently) shared agreement that we should use the best available data as the basis for our problem solving deliberations. But brazenly shameless leadership deliberately sows doubts about even widely shared notions (climate change) in order to cripple those who want to take actions that will negatively impact the bottom line of the doubt-sowers.

David Ignatius suggests a marketplace of ideas approach to the current struggle over what are the ‘facts’ upon which public deliberations play out. Ignatius solutions are a start and I do not fault him for their weakness, given the magnitude of the challenge. He calls on journalists to “work harder to be unbiased truth-tellers,” without sufficiently addressing the consequences of doing this when others choose not to accept this (until recently) shared professional norm. I do wonder, however, why this marketplace of ideas makes no mention of the great work currently being done by various fact-checking organizations?

A marketplace of ideas interacts with other spheres of action like the marketplaces through which we create and sell products, and the exchanges through which we develop and come to agreement about moral aspirations, and more. Michael Gerson argues that ‘our country is in a much better ethical place’ today not as a result of efforts from ‘family values’ conservatives (and he counts himself as one of these) but because determined and dedicated, smart and persuasive feminists have been a steadfast voice of moral clarity in America.

Gerson may overstate the ‘better place’ we are in today (but I hope he is right) and what sounds like an almost ‘automatic’ mechanism of moral correction, but he sounds right to me when he notes that this shift in our national conversation occurring during the Trump presidency demonstrates clearly that “the moral dynamics of a nation are complex." Change happens, just not usually as we plan in the short term. But our thoughtful and loving string of short term efforts add up over time.

The current assault of angry old white men (mostly) on our shared political and moral values feels particularly threatening in its brazen shamelessness. Is this the last gasp of a dying breed? Will this combination of toxic masculinity and power continue to harm American democracy, education, commerce and community? Are we already seeing signs of resistance and renewal as Gerson suggests? Will this be enough?

Can we learn, as individuals and as a society, from our failures and continue to find ways to build a more perfect, inclusive, just and loving union? As an educator, I believe we can. At the same time, learning takes time and effort, usually starts with unlearning and listening and reflection. And a political culture intent on sowing doubts and confusion in order to re-present the brazenly shameless advancement of one’s own private interests as democratic leadership stands as an obstacle to thinking & talking clearly about the challenges we face.

I struggle with these inter-related questions mightily. We all need to. I want to believe we can learn and grow and recover from hurtful pasts. Ruth Marcus, Ignatius, Gerson and Will help me sort through this today. Since the challenges we face remain daunting, thanks.