The United States of Puritania

It is hard-wired into the American DNA to look pruriently into other people's sex lives, to gossip and titillate ourselves, to become the world's Gladys Kravitz whenever anyone in a position of power shows a human failing. We have a deep problem with sex in America to an extent that is not replicated worldwide. When an adulterous affair or a dark secret sexual past comes to light we obsess over it. We come descended from a people who thought Eve's original sin extended to all women, and religious doctrine collectively weighed the nation down with near-constant guilt.

This residual Puritanical bent characterizes the reaction to John Edwards' revelation yesterday. It's the reason that no amount of violence in a contemporary film can garner the same rating as a film with any amount of full frontal nudity. We are really dysfunctional when it comes to sex and more so when it comes to judging other people's families. Elizabeth Edwards' statement yesterday shouldn't even have been necessary.

We also are hung up on the idea that a politician's personal life must be a reflection of how he or she would govern. And that's just not the case. Aside from moralistic hypocrisy based on, for example, voting against gay rights while being gay yourself, there's simply no reason to bring these personal peccadillos into the public square. If fidelity was a harbinger of Presidential success, George W. Bush and Richard Nixon would be triumphs while FDR would be a failure.

But more to the point, it's the priority orders we conjure up based on this Puritanical past that become truly maddening. The post I was going to write about this has already been ably penned by clammyc, so I'll just reprint a bit of it and urge you to head over there.

But moving past the issue of sex, which is really only important to people who have so little in their own lives to be proud of that they have to obsess and point fingers at others to feel better about themselves, there are so many other reasons to be absolutely frustrated with the hypocritical moralists and smarmy narcissists that are once again rearing their ugly heads. Over the past week, we found out that the White House not only passed off forged documents to sell the Iraq invasion, but they forged their own documents to sell the Iraq invasion, and there is not a peep about it?

We found out that the US attorney scandal is now focusing on the White House inner circle, yet there is a collective yawn. The much ballyhooed military tribunal of Hamdan resulted in a 5 month sentence even after a kangaroo court trial - basically a repudiation of the entire administration view on military tribunals.

We just passed 500 military deaths in Afghanistan, and the Iraqi Congress adjourned without meeting one benchmark that was supposed to be the main result of the so-called "surge", yet all we hear is the foregone conclusion that the surge worked.

Torture is still on the table. One Attorney General approved of torture memos, while also being part of voter suppression lawsuits while the latest Attorney General approves of waterboarding as long as it isn’t being done to him, and also is a chief obstructor of justice when it comes to the Executive Branch. Iraqi prisoners are being put in small wooden boxes, which of course is most certainly not torture.

Spying on Americans has been given the thumbs up by Congress, criminal defiance of subpoenas by Rove, Miers, Bolton are being allowed to set a dangerous precedent, there is more saber rattling about attacking Iran - with similar lies being trotted out by this administration, and the current republican nominee.

I would add this remarkable story, which received almost no coverage on the blogosphere and in broadcast media after being stuffed into the middle of the Washington Post yesterday:

At least 17 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to a program that moved them repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation, according to U.S. military documents.

Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period.

So the techniques were banned by the Defense Department, banned by international convention and federal statute, and yet were still used and authorized, and if you go back you'll see that authorization coming from the highest levels. This rates barely a whisper.

It is of no consequence to those guardians of the discourse to spend weeks discussing the literal hijacking of our government (for which they receive a handsome sum, indirectly) but we, as the descendants of the Puritans, must go hog wild at the mention of an affair. I think John Edwards is a total idiot for thinking he could keep this secret during a high-stakes Presidential campaign, and for risking the loss of the White House by running, knowing the political environment in the US and our Puritanical lizard brains.

I know these appeals to reason, to assess the gravity of competing situations, often fall short. It's hard to compete with human nature, particularly American human nature. I wish we were in a country where we could accurately determine what shocks the conscience, at a human level, free from ideology or politics. That is unlikely. But I'm still going to let that determine what I prioritize to the best of my ability.