Sunday Night With John: The Broken Moral Compass

The Broken Moral Compass

John Paul Derryberry 

We are making excuses for sexually destructive behaviors in order to keep our majority.

We are excusing Hillary's behind the scenes, “not illegal” but morally bankrupt, deal because we wanted our candidate to win.

We're still blaming women who have been sexually assaulted asking what they wore, where they went, and who they hung out with.

I guess as a society we have thrown character out the window and our moral compass only points true north when it casts a good light in our favor.  Now it’s always the other guy's fault. It’s always, we do not know the whole story.  It’s always, a mental health problem or a religion problem. We consult our party’s platform and decide how to spin the next travesty so we do not have to admit there might be something wrong with our line of thinking or our moral compass might be pointing due south.

Fox news wants Clinton investigated for possible ties to Russia, just to rile up their base, so they will ignore Trump's possible ties to Russia. Democrats want us to ignore a possible deal allowing the DNC to be controlled by the Clinton campaign but if Trump did the same it would be all over the news. A white man shoots up Vegas. We take the time to figure out why it happened.  But, after a Muslim man drives a truck through our streets, we have to round up all the Muslims and get them the heck out of here. A man shoots up a Texas church. It’s not a gun problem but a mental health problem. The problem is you do not want to pay for mental health help, either.

Major media darlings are doing serious ethical gymnastics to still support a Republican candidate who may have carried on numerous sexual relationships with teenagers as young as 14 years old. Those same people attempted to tie Bill Clinton's poor sexual behavior to his wife and use it against her as she broke the glass ceiling. It’s not just in the political realm where we are failing the ethics test. Hollywood seems to be way quicker to believe male victims who have accused Kevin Spacey, than the female victims who have come forward accusing multiple powerful men. And let’s not forget the sports world where fans of sports teams want domestic abusers suspended unless it hurts their win-loss record. Rules, morals, and ethics are only iron-clad when the opposition is  breaking them, but more like loose guidelines when it’s your team or your people.

Maybe this double standard sticks out to me because, at times in my life, my moral compass was not always pointing true north. I have hurt people and excused it away, instead of dealing with that fact I was not as good a person as I thought I was. The fact is, we are all a mixture of our horrible, bad, good, and great decisions. My moral compass will not always point north, that is impossible, but I will be sure to surround myself with people who have the courage to correct it, not excuse it.   We are at our best when we hold ourselves accountable and we then hold the ones we support accountable. If a person can get away with murder because they will vote for a tax bill, score a touchdown, or make a sweet action flick, we have failed each other and betrayed ourselves and that will cause us to navigate down the wrong path.