Where is their self-respect?
How can people habitually lie and humiliate themselves to serve Trump? Have they no shame? Those who deny themselves dignity will deny it to the rest of us.
Dignity is an underrated concept. Odd, because it’s core to the idea of freedom; it’s right there in the first sentence of Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.”
Dignity is the quality or state of being worthy of honor or respect. A synonym is self-respect – how a person applies their own inherent dignity to themselves.
In a couple weeks we celebrate the 250th birthday of the United States of America. July 4th marks the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. You could call it the Declaration of Dignity.
The Declaration is a bussin’ diss track against the King. It’s a list of grievances for which the Colonies demand satisfaction. Two hundred years later, Peter Finch’s character in the movie Network invokes its signatories’ mood: “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!” Notably, two lines before that, Finch’s character shouts. “I’m a human being, goddammit! My life has value!” He is asserting his right to dignity. Just like the Founding Fathers did.
As we mark the 250th, the nation the Founding Fathers established is being run by a set of people who do not value dignity, who have no self-respect. The contrast could not be more stark.
Officials of the Executive Branch and Members of Congress are required to forfeit their dignity to remain in good standing with the President. They habitually praise, flatter, and genuflect before Donald Trump. They boast, lie and deceive in order to please Donald Trump. They repeat and amplify Donald Trump’s falsehoods. It’s not optional.
This is a problem for governance. A political system fueled by sycophancy is not healthy. Flattery and lies corrode a republican democracy, which requires public trust and rule of law. Lathered obsequiousness is a feature of a personalist regime, like in China, Russia and Turkey – states in various stages of authoritarian control.
But what troubles me more is the personal dimension. What kind of person spends their entire waking day in a perpetual state of mendacity and toadyism, constantly lying and praising and fawning over another person? What kind of person wakes up in the morning and starts thinking about how to say things that are demonstrably untrue? How do they sleep at night knowing that their role in life is to kiss ass?
As government officials and Members of Congress, their cucking is public. They choose to do this. Their insincerity and lies are there for all to see, recorded for posterity in video and online. They know they will get asked by journalists and their own constituents to defend their own lies and those of the Leader they relentlessly praise. And they go back out there, again and again, and lie some more.
That kind of person is not me. I am no saint. But I do safeguard my own dignity. I value my self-respect. There have been times where I have walked away from something rather than put myself in an embarrassing position. There are times when I have refused on principle. I am not a public figure, so I can’t speak from the perspective of those who are. But I have worked for a LOT of public figures, government officials elected and appointed, who do not make themselves agents of sycophancy. Yes, most of them have had to take a hit for team. That’s politics. But nothing on the scale of the flatterymaxxing we see today from those in thrall of Trump.
And what does this toadying get them? Take Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, known for being one of the more obsequious members of the Cabinet, a group so subservient that one of every six sentences they utter flatter the president, an analysis finds.
Today there’s a report that Trump called Lutnick a “pussy” to his face. That happened last year. Lutnick stayed in is job. Where is his self-respect?
Some do appear to want to save their dignity. A record number of Republicans are leaving the House. They do not say this publicly, but one can guess that Members like Don Bacon and Vern Buchanan are tired of forfeiting their self-respect to stay on the job.
And that fact that some opt out for the sake of dignity says a lot about who do not – those who actively choose to humiliate themselves for the privilege of kissing the Leader’s toes. I’m looking at you Marco Rubio.
I make an effort to try to understand those who don’t think like me. For this I cannot. In no way can I put myself in the shoes of someone who allows themselves to be humiliated and returns for more. I cannot identify with someone who repeatedly flatters and lies in service of another.
This is not just about personal behavior. It affects all of us. A person who cannot respect themselves will not respect others. A person who denies themselves dignity will deny it to others.
This manifests in today’s government policy. The Trump Administration’s extrajudicial killings at home and on the ocean. The arbitrary detentions and abuses of Americans. The cancellation of humanitarian aid that caused half million preventable deaths. These are the actions of people without empathy. People who will not or cannot see the dignity in fellow human beings.
The Founding Fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence 250 years ago took a brave stand in defense of their own dignity. For their second act, they codified this principle in the Bill of Rights within the Constitution. This document was a major influence for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), with the word “dignity” in in its first sentence.
But today, Republicans are working insidiously to undermine the UDHR. A leaked version of the State Department’s instructions for the Country Reports on Human Rights prohibits the report from referring to the UDHR. They are removing human rights language from documents and considering withdrawing from international human rights treaties.
The people running this country deny themselves dignity. Then they deny it to Americans. And now they’re denying it to the whole world.
What to do?
I believe that to change the world, we need to first change within. So sayeth my philosopher John Lennon:
You say you’ll change the constitution
Well, you know
We’d all love to change your head
You tell me it’s the institution
Well, you know
You better free your mind instead
It would be ideal to let the sycophants find self-respect. But waiting gives them time to strip dignity from the rest of us. Better if we remove them from positions where they can use the power of the state to deny us the dignity we deserve.