Years ago, in Southern California, I was driving near work when some bone-headed idiot nearly hit me. I cheerfully sprang into action, flipping him the bird, and screaming curses. Even though this stupid piece of human refuse was the one at fault, he started cursing and gesturing back. Full on road-rage was about to ensue!
Then we got a good look at each other. It was a guy I worked with. We recognized each other at the same time and froze mid-gesture.
As fast as the rage came, it melted away. We kind of sheepishly waved at each other and drove on.
Sometimes we react differently to friends than we would to a stranger.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. We're tribal creatures, and since we can also be jerks, maintaining tribal unity requires that we sometimes overlook others peoples' jerkiness. After all, we might have to rely on each other some day. With strangers, we don't need to be as careful.
But this human trait is also a prime source of hypocrisy, especially in the political arena. Because we're more likely to tolerate misbehavior from people we consider to be on our side, we have a built-in double standard.
This trait was displayed most recently in the case of the Duggar family, people who have loudly denounced what they see as immoral purity in other people, even though some members of their family were almost as far from morally pure as you can get.
The former governor of Arkansas and Republican presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee defended the Duggars, and that's the kind of hypocrisy I'm talking about. Because the Duggars and Huckabee claim to be Christian, they're on the same team, and so Huckabee had no problem forgiving them their past transgressions.
Would he have been as forgiving of someone who wasn't a Christian? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe. I think Huckabee has a double standard when it comes to morality.
A similar case involved a House member from Tennessee, Scott DesJarlais. Although DesJarlais, like the Duggars, claimed to represent a high standard of morality by praising family values and opposing abortion, it turned out that he didn't practice that morality himself. Even so, his constituents re-elected him.
Would they have been as forgiving of someone who wasn't a Republican? Maybe, but I find it hard to believe. I think DesJarlais' constituents have a double standard when it comes to morality.
A slightly less salacious example might be former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton's use of a personal e-mail server to handle both official and personal e-mails during her tenure as Secretary and her decision to decide which emails would be released. That's not a standard moral issue, but it certainly raises some big concerns about her attitudes toward security and openness in government.
Would the Democrats have been as forgiving... You get the picture.
This isn't a party-specific problem. It's not limited to one religion. I'd risk a guess that it's not unique to American politics or even America itself. But it's still a problem.
As long we tend to apply a different standard to people on our side than we do to people on the other side, we essentially have no standards. It's what we call moral relativism. At least that's what we call it when the other side does it.
Fixing this problem is going to be hard. Real hard. Like landing on the Moon hard. Even if we limit ourselves to standards that we can generally agree on, like not molesting children or not storing government e-mails on your own computer, it's going to be hard to treat our side with the same harshness that we heap on the other side.
The alternative to being equally harsh to our friends and allies is to be more forgiving of our political opponents, to give them a little more slack so that we're closer to a consistent application of standards. That's worked for me a little bit. When I get the urge to rage against another driver, I remember that time I went off on a co-worker, and I calm down a bit.
It might help to remember that we live in a hierarchy of tribes. Even though we have different political teams, at the end of the day we're all on the American team. I doubt that recognizing that higher loyalty will come easily to some people, but it's something to think about
Even though it will be hard, it's necessary to begin dishing out our disapproval based on actions and not on political or cultural identity. Otherwise we're going to remain a nation that works on double standards, and that's the same as having no standards at all.
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