By Tim Wood
I believe as we come of age, say, within the 15-, 16-, 17-year range, we start to rebel against our parents as we learn how, as we ourselves mature, to identify the older generation’s hypocrisies. This is, perhaps, a traditional, if not easy, excuse to rebel against an establishment, but I also think it is one of the first steps to cutting our own apron strings. Learning how to identify one’s own hypocrisies seems to be a much harder endeavor.
I was very active in the late 1960’s counter-culture. I spent a few months in a hippie commune as I was turning 20 and searching out the new “enlightened” generation. It didn’t take too long for me to see and understand the obvious hypocrisies of my fellow brothers and sisters, even though we shared anti-capitalism bullet points. It soon became clear to me that they weren’t universally embracing the peace and love movement as I had envisioned it.
I’ve been trying to dredge up when I first realized my own hypocrisies. I suppose embracing the 60s’ sexual revolution and then becoming terribly jealous when a girlfriend felt obligated not to be monogamous could be counted as sort of hypocrisy. I believe, however, it wasn’t until I became a parent myself, struggling to help make a home and living with my own family, that a number of personal hypocrisies came to light; hypocrisies that were perhaps the compromised principles of my vanishing youth. … Me, now, the “older” generation.
Last year I had a little self revelation about hypocrisy: When a person comes to identify and realize their own hypocrisies they start to work hard at not continuing to be hypocritical. I wonder if this is true? After all, do you know anyone who thinks of hypocrisy as a virtue? I don’t think so.
My conclusion, from a sort of rationalization, then settles on thinking that perhaps most hypocrites don’t even realize that they are hypocrites, because why would anyone knowingly want to be a hypocrite?
Yet, today’s society seems to be so full of such obvious hypocrisies we seem now to take them for granted, as part of our everyday life. Why shouldn’t we? I think we can all agree that most modern day politicians have been, at some point, hypocritical; both left and right. Are we simply becoming completely insensitive to those hypocrisies?
Is it comparative to our not demanding the much needed revisions to our gun laws, and now, book banning? If we normalize gun violence and book banning, normalizing hypocrisy seems like small potatoes, doesn’t it?
A very recent hypocrisy from Jim Jordan is this: Now that he is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he is demanding that any of this committee’s new subpoenas must be honored by all that are served those subpoenas. Yet he himself ignored the subpoena issued by the Congressional January 6th special committee, which was unraveling something much more important than Hunter Biden’s laptop. It doesn’t get more hypocritical than that, even though one could write a book filled with congressional as well as presidential hypocrisies.
The real problem now is horrendous behavior is common; it was much rarer (mostly hidden) in our past, and generally people were held accountable for proven behavior that crossed moral lines. I guess as older generations die out a period like McCarthyism (1950-1954) is simply forgotten, even though there are many parallel assertions and behavior now coming with Trump supporters.
Their ideology wants you to believe that progressives like me are socialists without even knowing what a true socialist is. We are not learning from our own history. In fact there are people that would prefer to suppress examining and learning about true history (as with Critical Race Theory and Holocaust Denial) being taught and discussed in public schools.
The point I want to make here is that, to me, our present society seems to be normalizing horrendous behavior. Trump is presently the King and the supreme example of accepted bad behavior, though I still shake my head with disbelief when I see new examples of societal disrespect, like what was exposed publicly during Biden’s State of the Union address. So I ask myself, is our society regressing?
The acceptance of horrible behavior, to me, is a form of societal decadence; not people trying to figure out whom they should love and desire to live with, or dealing with the difficult problems associated with a confusing gender identity, or being told what my children should or should not read. I mean, don’t we want to move forward and not regress back into our past? And who could convince me that we are not witnessing a regression in our present, supposedly, civilized democracy?
I look at junior Congress members like George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene, proven liars and people that obviously live outside of a fact-based and reality-based existence. The fact that they receive around $174,000.00 per year from our taxes, (not including benefits like free health care, staff and chauffeuring), that is real salt in the wound. And when I read that Greene had actually, publicly complained about her pay, that was like acid in a wound. Should these two politicians even been elected in the first place? No, but they still have supporters.
The real decadence in our society is not same-sex marriage, changing your given birth gender, nor seeking an abortion. Real, destructive decadence is greed, normalizing hypocrisy, sustaining lies as truth, and accepting corruption as a good business practice. If you research and study history you would soon learn that it is those traits that destroy most societies and empires as they did with the Romans and the English. It is not God that destroys a civilization, it is our own, human decadence. People destroy a society.
Tim and Kristy Wood moved to Beaufort in 1974. He worked as a carpenter in both restoration and new home construction, as well as operating a shop specializing in custom woodwork, Wood on Wood Specs. He is semi-retired, involved with fine woodworking and formerly sat on the City of Beaufort Zoning Board of Appeals.
