I watched an American voter on television news last night - elderly, respectable, likely a churchgoer - expressing the view that Trump was indeed a bad person, but delivered everything she personally wanted. Therefore he had her complete and continuing support. /1
This view centred around the common assumption that ‘they’re all as bad as each other’, and so personal policy fulfilment was the only criterion by which to judge a politician. /2
Morality was, I assume, something that could safely be confined to the pews on Sunday – or else uniquely applied to those with whom one disagreed. /3
In this model, our gauge as citizens is limited to that of a consumer, and voting becomes a form of shopping - where the shady origin of goods or the illegal practices of the seller are irrelevant. /4
We transform ourselves as citizens from the electoral arbiters of standards in public life to the enthusiastic purchasers of blood diamonds. /5
Now all of this is doable. We can dismiss our personal responsibility as arbiters of anything - and wave away each scratch of conscience with the claim that, because they are all equally bad, our own consumer’s morality can never be an issue. We shop therefore we are. /6
But deeper down, we know this corrodes. We know that without an aspiration to be the best of us, we can be no better than the worst. We don’t want to live in the sum of all that corrosion, yet pull the duvet over our heads and pretend that we are powerless to prevent it. /7
We are not powerless. Before we were consumers, we were customers – givers with an active human agency, rather than unthinking takers of what is offered. Our agency carried a responsibility to arbitrate – and to care about the quality and origin of the things proffered to us. /8
We can be customers again – power brokers in the transaction of politics - people who choose where, and to whom, power should be given. /9
It takes energy. And conscience. And humility. But it can be done. And it all begins at home, not in the corridors of power. It begins with a more audacious assumption: that we might all be as good as each other. /end
