Men and women: show us your true character now!

I offer, with appreciation, these few paragraphs from an editorial in the NYTimes today by Jill Filipovic.   One more coherent effort to make sense of how we ended up with Trump in office...a man of such repulsive mediocrity that his one accomplishment is being the perfect icon for all that is truly awful about the United States.  In Filipovic's words,

"The president is a perfect figurehead for this bizarre moment: a man who carries all of the negative characteristics of stereotypical masculinity while adopting almost none of the virtues, occupying the most powerful and exclusively male seat of power in the nation (and perhaps in the world), who ascended in large part because a yawning fear of female power kept one of the best-qualified candidates in history out of office. He is ego unchecked, narcissism in place of dignity.

In a 1961 essay for Vogue, Joan Didion wrote that people with “self-respect have the courage of their mistakes. They know the price of things.” The piece went on to say, “In brief, people with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character.” Character, she wrote, is “the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life.”

Our current president, who can’t even accept responsibility for his own social media use or admit that all-caps tweeting might suggest he’s angry about continuing criminal investigations and low poll numbers, may indeed be a new low. Mr. Trump has ushered in a fresh era of noxious manhood wherein bullying is conflated with toughness and self-interest is more important than self-respect. But all is not lost. Every generation believes it is uniquely observing diminishing standards of behavior, even while by most measures, life improves. Plenty of American men are doing exactly the opposite of Mr. Trump and embracing the more productive characteristics of masculinity while rejecting the malicious ones. And the virtues of self-respect — toughness, moral nerve, character — have never been, unlike the presidency, male-only business."

Let me dwell with peace and happiness for a moment on that last line...because I think that's essential wisdom for all of us--men and women and third gender folks--to survive this hateful regime.   For all of us, as Filipovic writes, the virtues of self-respect are perhaps the (only?) antidote to action and survival.   We must live by our character alone in the wasteland of America in 2017.